Voyage In The Dark

Anna wakes up to a now-doting Ethel, who remarks on her sickly countenance. Anna is simply lethargic and repeats to herself: “You’ve got to think of something. You can’t stay here. You’ve got to make a plan” (128).

Instead, her thoughts turn to Constance Estate as she tries to recreate in her mind the geography, people and stories: “That’s how the road to Constance is—green, and the smell of green, and then the smell of water and dark earth and rotting leaves and damp” (129).

Her memory of home is disturbed when Ethel tells her that Carl and Joe are downstairs waiting for her and urges her to go meet them. Anna tries to give Carl a manicure and her abilities as a manicurist are revealed as her file slips. Carl laughingly disregards this and tells her he has really wanted to see her. He remarks that she looks like she takes ether, which she does not, and approaches her further by taking her hands and commenting on the story he heard about her past from Laurie.

Anna decides to sleep with Carl: “When he touched me I knew that he was quite sure I would. I thought, ‘All right then, I will.’ I was surprised at myself in a way and in another way I wasn’t surprised” (132).

Ethel brings Anna breakfast, and she expresses that she “doesn’t mind people enjoying themselves” (133). She cautions Anna against Denby, the landlord below, but approves of Anna’s relationship with Carl.

Ethel leaves after Anna appears to agree with her to speak about the rent at some point. Carl has given Anna “five quid” (133) and for a time, does not contact her until he calls her to have dinner with him. Anna begins to resent Ethel’s interest in her activities after she appears to be “suddenly respectful. That was when I started really hating her. I hated the way she smiled, I hated the way she’d say, ‘Did you have a good time? Did you enjoy yourself?’” (134).

She still continues to meet Carl and brings him over on occasion. She understands, however, that she is temporarily in his life as she discovers that both Carl and Joe have wives and children.

For the next few weeks, while Carl is still in London, they see each other. On their last date, he gives her 15 quid, and Anna contemplates leaving London for other places. She happens to meet Maudie, by chance, coming out of Selfridge’s, and they go to a teashop. Maudie is seeing an electrical engineer who she thinks “she could get him to marry her if she could smarten herself up a bit,” (136) as the engineer pays attention to her wardrobe.

Anna lends her the money that she needs, leaving her with less.

Anna brings home a man with a bandaged hand. She puts on a record and while they are dancing, she decides to smash the picture of the dog in her room, not caring about the noise or disruption she may be making. She begins to feel nauseous.

The man thinks she is joking and tries to restrain her until she hits his wrist so she can leave. As he curses her, Anna describes how she feels: “Like seasickness, only worse, and everything heaving up and down. And vomiting. And thinking, ‘It can’t be that, it can’t be that. Oh, it can’t be that’” (138).

The man has left when Anna returns, and she tries to clean up her room. She climbs into bed and remembers the West Indies and her music lessons with Miss Jackson and dips into other memories while trying not to think that she may be pregnant.

She counts the days to understand when the pregnancy could have happened until she falls asleep and dreams she is on a ship going toward islands that are her home, and she sees “a sailor carrying a child’s coffin” (140). When Anna awakes, the feeling of sickness is still not gone as “everything was still heaving up and down” (141).