A Rough Crossing

Text 1: Seven Letters, by Konrad Elsby

An original short story extract.

The ferry had seemed enormous in the harbour, a white wall of steel with lifeboats hanging off it like charms on a bracelet. Twenty minutes out, it was a toy. The sea picked it up, considered it, and dropped it, and my stomach went on falling long after the ship had stopped.

I sat in the lounge with my eyes fixed on the horizon, the way the leaflet advised, but the horizon would not keep still. It rose up the windows until there was nothing but grey water, then sank until there was nothing but grey sky. A cup slid the full length of a table and smashed. Somewhere a child was crying in long, hopeless wails. The air smelled of chips and diesel and something worse.

Gran sat beside me doing a crossword. ‘Seven letters,’ she said. ‘Sickness at sea.’ I did not answer. I was concentrating very hard on not being a person who was sick in public. I breathed in through my nose. I breathed out through my mouth. The ship climbed a wave, hung there, and plunged, and I stood up, quite calmly, and walked very fast towards the deck.

How does Konrad Elsby use language and structure to show the narrator’s discomfort during the crossing?

You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.