Not the Same Sky by Evelyn Conlon

could write. He went back upstairs and was especially nice to the girls, forgave those needing forgiveness and made an extra effort to speak to the shy.
    ‘He is nice.’
    ‘Nice enough, you’re right.’
    Julia Cuffe didn’t make her usual sound.

CHAPTER 11
    Charles wrote in his diary that nothing much of note had happened for a while, other than a small problem about Sunday service. Charles liked when nothing much of note happened. There were of course the usual little things, the Sunday service being one of these. One of the sub matrons, who should have been keeping order while Charles preached, was either too busy or inattentive to quiet a few noisy girls. It wasn’t as if it was a difficult job with so few girls at his service. Charles confiscated a lime juice—any slip of order now could quickly undo all the good work. But later that night while out checking the decks he relented, and decided that the small gesture was all that was required. It hadn’t been a serious derogation of duty. Getting the balance right required flexibility. It would be forgotten about, though learned from, by next Sunday. As he was thinking about this he tripped over an errant steward, who was in irons, but already getting his apologies in order, having decided that work of any and all kinds was preferable. Charles bade him goodnight then engaged in a few pleasant words.
    ‘You won’t do it again,’ Charles said. The tone of the words gave the man some ease and he got his apology polished. The next day, happily back at work, he was most helpful in the landing and gutting of a shark. Out here at sea all kind of things reaped their own rewards. They would have the shark for dinner. There had been little variety of food, so this would be useful for the relief of all their palates.
    Thus they sailed, bobbing their way across the Tropic of Cancer, out of sight of Senegal and Sierra Leone and Gabon. Charles imagined these places on deck at night because that’s what would have been close if they’d been going south straight along the west of Africa. Sometimes he longed to see a light that was not that of another ship.
    The dancing nights were now well organised. On the first night there had been a bit of consternation.
    ‘We have no boys to whistle,’ Anne Sherry said.
    ‘Can none of us do it?’ Honora asked. ‘How do you do it?’ She puckered her lips and blew but no sound came out.
    ‘We’re not supposed to whistle, we’re girls,’ Anne Sherry said.
    ‘Why’s that?’ Honora asked, never having heard this before.
    ‘A whistling woman and a crowing hen, are neither fit for God nor men,’ Julia said, and laughed out a huge gleeful sound.
    ‘It gets you into trouble, so I’d better do it then,’ she added.
    She pursed her lips, blew out a few melodic notes, straightened her back, fluttered her tongue and flew into a piercing sweet sound that echoed through the ropes. The sails slapped to it.
    But then a sailor’s voice was heard shouting, ‘No whistling on a boat. Do yiz not know that, calls up a storm. And anyway, a girl could get a beard whistling.’
    This brought much laughter from everyone except from Julia, who said, ‘God yiz would believe anything.’
    Honora stuttered into a lilt, and more girls joined in. Many of them could do it well, some better than others, and from this night on they were often dry mouthed by the time the evening was over. In the beginning some girls had stood at the edges while the better dancers, the girls maybe one year older who had been to a dance at home, took the centre of the floor. Or a girl might sit and watch because that was what she wanted to do—to be riveted by someone else’s movement. But gradually most girls filtered in, seduced by the joy that came of its own accord when you learned to let your feet and shoulders move to the sound of notes. And a girl might learn for the first time, if she was one of the very young ones, that once her feet and shoulders were in time