God only knows how long they’ve been standing there like skeletons, not twenty yards away. She’s wearing a long, sleeveless dinner dress in her favorite shade of blue, and her chest and neck and arms are crusted in jewels. He’s wearing a dinner jacket identical to that of my husband. The years have not been kind. Her features have hardened into something more resembling a mask than a human face. The eyebrows are a painted caricature of their former selves. As for him. He’s haggard and goggle-eyed, and his thick gold hair is turning thin and gray. But it’s them, all right. You can’t mistake them. Their expressions are frozen in shock. We meet eyes, and I can tell they recognize me. I can tell they’ve witnessed the entire scene, the necking and the children, the late, golden sunlight drenching us.

For a moment, as we stand there arrested in silent, mutual recognition, I’m reminded of the duchess once telling me—I can’t remember where or when—how she hoped that their faithful years of service in this dump, as she called it, would lead to bigger things. I think she expected a governorship in Australia or Canada. Something suited to their station and his imagined abilities. And in these two stricken faces, which seem to have aged twice those seven and a half calendar years since I’ve seen them last, I believe I read the story of all those disappointed hopes, the glister, the vapid pointlessness of their lives. Standing before them, on a patch of wooden deck in the middle of the ocean, I imagine those painted faces are like shells around a hollow core.

Possibly I should say something. Certainly I should feel something. But I do neither of those things. I simply can’t summon them up. The strap of my dress hangs down my arm—I can feel it tickle my skin—so I secure it back atop my shoulder and proceed in the same direction as Thorpe and the children, toward the hatchway that leads to the staircase that leads to our humble cabin, where perhaps Wilfred and Maggie and Jack will eventually fall asleep and I can sneak into my husband’s bunk for the kind of silent, giggling, undercover lovemaking that is our present lot in life.

As I pass them, I nod my head and say good evening.

Good evening, Mrs. Thorpe, says the duke.

His wife remains silent. But salt breeze nudges her hair, and the setting sun flickers on her jewels.

Historical Note