Collis waited a little while longer, and then said, ‘What’s going to happen to you? And what about your baby?’

She shrugged. ‘You needn’t worry. It isn’t your problem. If you’re poor, then you must have problems of your own.’

He bit at his thumbnail thoughtfully. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I guess it’s soft-headed, but who cares. Do you know any places in San Francisco?’

‘I’ve never been there before.’

‘Well, let’s say Montgomery Street. That’s a street that my lady friend mentioned. Her husband’s name is Walter West — have you got that? — and he owns a general store.’

‘Walter West,’ Maria-Mamuska enunciated carefully. ‘Who is Walter West?’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Collis told her. ‘The important thing is that I’ll meet you outside of Walter West’s store on Montgomery Street three years and some weeks from now, on 18 September, my father’s birthday, at noon. By then you’ll have had your baby, and I’ll know if I’m going to make any money or stay flat broke for the rest of my life. If it looks as though I’ve got some money to spare, well, I’ll give you a little to help you bring up the child. If it doesn’t, I’ll say hello, and that’ll have to be it.’

Maria-Mamuska brushed back her hair. ‘Why should you do this?’ she asked him.

He glanced back at the porthole, still with its drapes drawn, where Hannah had appeared. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s an act of — I don’t know, defiance.’

‘Defiance? What do you mean? You don’t talk straight.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I just get the feeling that once you’re out of step with the world, once you’re an outcast, it takes a hell of a lot of hard work and suffering to make your way back.’

‘I still don’t understand you. You’re a funny man. A little crazy, as I said.’

‘I’m only crazy because I’m not supposed to be here on the deck of this godforsaken ship at all. I should be waking up in my own bed on Twenty-first Street, in New York City, and I should be wealthy and organised and perfectly content. I should have gone out gambling last night, and had my supper at the Union Club, and maybe gone to a whorehouse to top off the evening properly. Instead of which I tried to seduce a married woman in a ship’s cabin, and got myself thrown out by some hair-curlered Tartar I’d never seen before in my life, and then I spent the rest of the night arguing with a Mexican-Polish lady about whether I was morally responsible for her pregnancy or not.’