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of going up alone to the dark deck, she knew that she had never known anticipation of this kind in all her life. He seemed no longer a stranger, but someone who was urgently her concern—some intense and startling connection that she could neither understand nor challenge. Her feelings amazed and embarrassed her; she knew about being in love, but if that was what was going on, then she had had no idea that it was like this. That you felt it—well, in your body. At times she scolded herself: you’re being daft—stop it.
    He talked mostly about England, about his life before the war. Listening, she experienced a nostalgia, but it was a yearning for a world that she hadn’t known since she was a schoolgirl—the comfortable community of Pinner, which was not like his village but nevertheless bore some eerie likeness. A place in which everyone knew their neighbors, in which people did not talk up or down to anyone else. She had for so long been a subordinate, an accessory to families not her own, that she had forgotten the easy equality elsewhere. There floated into her mind the notion that she would not want to go on like this for always, perhaps only until Jean no longer needed her. After the war, perhaps she would think about some other kind of work.
    Once, they saw a school of porpoises—swift shapes breaking up the silvery sheen of the water. She cried out in delight, and he put his arm round her.
    â€œListen,” he said. “In Cape Town there’s wonderful beaches, the lads say. You’ll get some days off, won’t you? I’ll take you swimming.”
    That was when he kissed her. At the time, she could barely believe that this was happening. Only later, reliving it, did she realize that she had not known at all what a kiss was like—that it was warm and wet, that you felt his tongue push between your lips, that you opened your mouth, that a thrill rushed down your body. What you saw people doing in films bore no resemblance.
    She felt these days as though she were two people; there was this new self, who lived differently, for whom each morning was a rich, fresh realization, and there was the old Shirley, who knew nothing of this, who walked in a kind of innocence. She knew too that, whatever came of all this, nothing would be the same again. She could not go back to that former self.
    They arrived at Mombasa. There was a long quayside with ships tied up; they disembarked in the afternoon and went to the old town, where there were little narrow streets with verandas that jutted out from the houses, and markets with toppling heaps of fruit, and stalls selling colored baskets, and others with bales of bright materials. Mrs. Leech bought a length for a dress—“There’s bound to be some wonderful little dressmaker when we get to Cape Town”—and another for Jean, and piled a basket high with fruit to take on board. Then they walked around the harbor and looked at the dhows until it was time to go back to the ship. There were crowds of people—Arabs, Africans, lascar seamen—and Shirley had to keep a tight hold of Jean. They kept running into others from the ship; one of Mrs. Leech’s officer friends joined up with them. Shirley looked for Alan Baker, but probably he had stayed on board with the soldiers. Just thinking of him made her buoyant; she seemed to float through this place with its vibrant people, the exotic smells and sounds. Soon, she would see him again.
    They sailed the next morning; now there would be the long plunge down past the rest of Africa, through the Mozambique Channel and on to the next stop, Cape Town. The last stop. Back at the start, she had thought that two weeks on this ship would be unbearable; now, she wanted this time to go on and on.
    The days were long; the sun swung slowly across the sky and the hours crept toward evening. They could not always meet. Once there was a concert arranged for the soldiers and another