Not like the Oriana or the Castel Felice she’d seen in the brochures. No, the Australis was a peeling monster, a colossus of weeping rust and complaining steel; the gangways smelled of sea rot. When they’d pulled out of Southampton, the passengers had unspooled thousands of streamers, the frail satin-coated ribbons of candyfloss pink and bridal white strained and then snapped, amidst a tremendous symphony of triumph and grief. Names were flung into the air, arcing flimsily like trailing cobwebs across the narrow strip of roiling water that separated ship from shore, as the streamers sank dejectedly into the fermenting foam and the crowd on the quay was reduced to a frantic, fleshy blur. Anita imagined the Australis as the little ship, swollen-sailed, in the bottom right-hand corner of the schoolroom map at the Tranquila convent. She heard the ports of call in a teacher’s droning rote. Port Said, Aden, Colombo, Fremantle, Melbourne, Sydney. The momentousness of the journey only became real when they were gathered all together for safety drill on A deck, a ragbag of refugees and migrants, families like steps of stairs, gangs of lanky young men and tight bunches of girls with brassy laughter and high-built hair.
