‘I take it you’re not getting up.’

‘Oh no, Mrs Clark is being so sweet’; she was always quick to get servants’ names. ‘Don’t bother. Come in sometimes and tell me what’s going on.’

‘Now, now, dear,’ said the stewardess, ‘the less we are disturbed today the better.’

My wife seemed to make a sacred, female rite even of seasickness.

Julia’s cabin, I knew, was somewhere below ours. I waited for her by the lift on the main deck; when she came we walked once round the promenade; I held the rail; she took my other arm. It was hard going; through the streaming glass we saw a distorted world of grey sky and black water. When the ship rolled heavily I swung her round so that she could hold the rail with her other hand; the howl of the wind was subdued, but the whole ship creaked with strain. We made the circuit once, then Julia said: ‘It’s no good. That woman beat hell out of me, and I feel limp, anyway. Let’s sit down.’

The great bronze doors of the lounge had torn away from their hooks and were swinging free with the roll of the ship; regularly and, it seemed, irresistibly, first one, then the other, opened and shut; they paused at the completion of each half circle, began to move slowly and finished fast with a resounding clash. There was no real risk in passing them, except of slipping and being caught by that swift, final blow; there was ample time to walk through unhurried but there was something forbidding in the sight of that great weight of uncontrolled metal, flapping to and fro, which might have made a timid man flinch or skip through too quickly; I rejoiced to feel Julia’s hand perfectly steady on my arm and know, as I walked beside her, that she was wholly undismayed.

‘Bravo,’ said a man sitting nearby. ‘I confess I went round the other way. I didn’t like the look of those doors somehow. They’ve been trying to fix them all the morning.’

There were few people about that day, and that few seemed bound together by a camaraderie of reciprocal esteem; they did nothing except sit rather glumly in their armchairs, drink occasionally, and exchange congratulations on not being seasick.

‘You’re the first lady I’ve seen,’ said the man.

‘I’m very lucky.’

‘We are very lucky,’ he said, with a movement which began as a bow and ended as a lurch forward to his knees, as the blotting-paper floor dipped steeply between us. The roll carried us away from him, clinging together but still on our feet, and we quickly sat where our dance led us, on the further side, in isolation; a web of life-lines had been stretched across the lounge, and we seemed like boxers, roped into the ring.

The steward approached. ‘Your usual, sir? Whisky and tepid water, I think. And for the lady? Might I suggest a nip of champagne?’

‘D’you know, the awful thing is I would like champagne very much,’ said Julia. ‘What a life of pleasure – roses, half an hour with a female pugilist, and now champagne!’