She replied: "Well, frankly, since you ask me, I'm not particularly keen...."
II
There was no doubt about the weather; as soon as the harbour was left behind, the ship began to sway and shiver sickeningly. I chatted for a while with one of the stewards; he told me uncomfortingly that a storm in July was rather rare, but that when it did come it was usually severe. All the time we were talking I could hear the wind rising to gale ferocity; there were also intermittent rumblings of thunder. I felt an obligation to look after Helen, despite her rudeness to me, so I climbed on deck and met her dragging a deck-chair along one of the companionways; she handed it to me rather sulkily, remarking that she was looking for a spot that was better sheltered from the rain and spray. I said I would find one for her, and we staggered with difficulty along the heaving decks. With the port-lights falling on them, the waves looked like rolls of dark moorland peaked with snow. Then, quite suddenly, one of them lifted over the edge and mounted towards us in a huge black wall; we just managed to escape its full onrush, and were immediately and peremptorily ordered below by a ship's officer.
After that the terrible became merely the sordid. In the lower saloons the occupants were horridly inert and comatose; many were engulfed in the varying throes of mal de mer; most were grimly unhappy. The smells of oil and stale cooking were all-pervading; intermittent crashes told of casualties in the pantries; the ship's engines groaned like the breathing of a pneumonia sufferer. All this I relate, not as descriptive padding, but to show how force of circumstances drove Helen and me together that night. I suggested first of all that she should share June's cabin, but after visiting it and finding June comfortably asleep, she returned to say that she would rather do anything than lie down. "Then," I said, "there remains the bar. It's probably the most cheerful spot on the whole boat, and French beer isn't a bad sort of tonic."
She said: "You'll have to take me then," and I nodded and took her.
We hung on to the counter and heard the bartender being violently sick behind the scenes. And she said: "I suppose you think you're heaping coals of fire on my head?"
"How so?"
"By being kind to me after I've been rude to you."
"Well—you certainly have been rude to me, haven't you?"
"Yes," she replied simply. And after a pause she added: "I rather loathe the sentimental way you assume that everything else is going to be forgotten just because of what's happened to Geoffrey."