‘Of course, of course. I understand. In any event, I will retire there now to work on these birds, and if you care to join me, that is where I will be.’ He smiled brightly and with a small gesture excused himself. He brushed past with the merest touch on my arm and went down the short steps into the passageway that led aft to his cabin, tilting his shoulders slightly aside so the narrow corridor would accommodate his width. The gloom swallowed him.

I dwelt on his invitation for some time as I watched over the food. Yes, it was improper of him to have asked. But propriety had lost its way here. We had been living so close over these days.

I went to my father in his bed, intending to feed him but following some other instinct. He was awake and restless, but it was not a simple matter for him, as it was for the rest of us, to then go and occupy the living world. There were layers to rise through, visions to unscramble and sort—some into reality and some to cast back into the cesspit of dreams. I sat on the edge of his cot and made a spoonful of the soft vegetables, a little pork. He sniffed at it unhappily, making no move either to find the spoon or open his mouth.

‘You need your strength,’ I said.

He shrugged, dazed. His hair stood as though to walk off. I tried again. His fingers shook as he pushed the spoon away.

‘It’s good of you. Good of you,’ he murmured. ‘Leave me now, dear girl.’

I placed the bowl on the narrow shelf behind his head, hoping he might take it up when he felt more able. As I did so, a thought occurred to me: he had shown no further signs of the delirium tremens.

On the shelf, beside where I had put the bowl, I saw little talismans: the shell cameo I had seen in his sea chest, a clutch of tiny ear-shells cupped inside each other in descending order of size. And there beside the shells lay a glass pipette. I had never known my father to own such a thing. But then, I had never known him to be in such a strange state.

~

I sat beside him until he dozed, and then went back to the galley, took two bowls of food and returned to the dim passageway, the door to the captain’s cabin that was now the doctor’s. I knocked quietly so as not to wake my father who lay so close by.

That deep, sure voice of his, bidding me enter.

I knew the door latches on the Moonbird by now. Aiming to separate the worlds of my father and the doctor—but wanting neither to know it—I balanced the second bowl in the crook of one arm while I snibbed the door quietly behind me with the other.