Ship of Brides Read online

  ‘Are you all right, Maggie?’

  Frances handed Margaret the ice-cream she had been proffering, unnoticed, for several seconds, exchanging a brief glance with Jean as she did so.

  ‘It – it’s not the baby, is it?’

  Margaret turned to them. ‘No, I’m fine. Honest.’

  She looked neither of them in the eye.

  ‘Oh, Dennis is in again. I’m going to see if anyone wants to have a wager with me. Mind you, I can’t see that anyone’s going to offer odds against him. Not at this rate.’ Jean got up, straightened her skirt, and skipped over to the other onlookers.

  Margaret and Frances sat in silence with their ices. In the distance, a tanker moved across the horizon, and they followed its steady progress until it was no longer visible.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Margaret looked at the letter in her hand, evidently having realised that the name of the addressee was showing.

  Frances said nothing, but there was a question in her eyes. ‘Were you . . . going to throw it into the water?’

  Margaret gazed out at the turquoise waves.

  ‘It . . . would be a nice thing to do. I had a patient once whose sweetheart got bombed, back in Germany. He wrote her a goodbye letter and we put it into a bottle and dropped it over the side of the hospital ship.’

  ‘I was going to post it,’ Margaret said.

  Frances looked back at the envelope, checked that she’d read the name correctly. Then she turned to Margaret, perplexed. Behind her, voices were raised in shock at some misdemeanour in the ring, but she kept her eyes on the woman beside her.

  ‘I lied,’ said Margaret. ‘I let you think she was dead but she’s not. She left us. She’s been gone nearly two and a half years.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Yup.’ She waved the letter. ‘I don’t know why I brought it up here.’

  Then Margaret began to talk, at first quietly, and then as if she no longer cared who heard.

  It had been a shock. That much was an understatement. They had come home one day to find dinner bubbling on the stove, the shirts neatly pressed over the range, the floors mopped and polished and a note. She couldn’t take it any more, she had written. She had waited until Margaret’s brothers were home from the war, and Daniel had hit fourteen and become a man, and now she considered her job done. She loved them all, but she had to claw back a little bit of life for herself, while she still had some left. She hoped they would understand, but she expected they wouldn’t.

  She had got Fred Bridgeman to pick her up and drop her at the station, and she had gone, taking with her only a suitcase of clothes, forty-two dollars in savings, and two of the good photographs of the children from the front parlour.

  ‘Mr Leader at the ticket office said she’d got the train to Sydney. From there she could have gone anywhere. We figured she’d come back when she was ready. But she never did. Daniel took it hardest.’

  Frances took Margaret’s hand.

  ‘Afterwards, I suppose, we could all have seen the signs. But you don’t look, do you? Mothers are meant to be exhausted, fed up. They’re meant to shout a lot and then apologise. They’re meant to get headaches. I suppose we all thought she was part of the furniture.’

  ‘Did you ever hear from her?’

  ‘She wrote a few times, and Dad wrote begging her to come back, but when she didn’t, he stopped. Pretty quickly, come to think of it. He couldn’t cope with the idea of her not loving him any more. Once they accepted she wasn’t coming back, the boys wouldn’t write at all. So . . . he just . . . they . . . behaved as if she had died. It was easier than admitting the truth.’ She paused. ‘She’s only written once this year. Maybe I’m a reminder of something she wants to forget, guilt she doesn’t want to feel. Sometimes I think the kindest thing I could do would be to let her go.’ She turned the envelope in her free hand.

  ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t want to cause you pain,’ said Frances, quietly.

  ‘But she is. All the time.’

  ‘You can get in touch with her, though. I mean, once she hears where you are, who knows? She might write more often.’

  ‘It’s not the letters.’ Margaret threw the envelope on to the deck.

  Frances fought the urge to pin it down with something. She didn’t want a stray breeze to take it overboard.

  ‘It’s everything. It’s her – her and me.’

  ‘But she said she loved you—’

  ‘You don’t get it. I’m her daughter, right?’

  ‘Yes . . . but—’

  ‘So what am I meant to feel, if motherhood is so bad that my mum had always been desperate to run away?’ She rubbed swollen fingers across her eyes. ‘What if, Frances, what if when this thing is born, what if when this baby finally gets here . . . I feel exactly the same?’

  The weather had broken at almost four thirty, just as the boxing finished – or as Tims grew bored: it was hard to say which. The first large drops of rain landed heavily on the deck, and the women had swiftly disappeared, exclaiming from under sunhats or folded magazines, sweeping their belongings into bags and scurrying, like ants, below decks.

  Margaret had retreated to the cabin to check on the dog, and Frances sat with Jean in the deck canteen, watching the rain trickling through the salt on the windows and into the rusting frames. Only a few brides had chosen to stay on deck, even under the relative shelter of the canteen: a storm on the sea was a different prospect from one on land. Faced with 360-degree visibility and nothing between human life and the endless expanse of rolling grey seas, with the thunderous clouds coming relentlessly from the south, it was possible to feel too exposed.

  Margaret had seemed a little better once she’d spoken out. She had wept a little, crossly blamed the baby for it, and then, smiling, had apologised, several times. Frances had felt helpless. She had wanted to tell her a little about her own family, but felt that to do so would require further explanation, which she wasn’t prepared to give, even to Margaret. The other woman’s friendship had become valuable to her, which made her vulnerable. Also, it brought with it a sense of foreboding. She toyed with the metal spoon in her empty cup, hearing the ship groan, the sheets of metal straining against each other like fault lines before an earthquake. Outside the lashings clanked disconsolately, and the rain ran in tidal rivers off the deck.

  Where is he now? she thought. Is he sleeping? Dreaming of his children? His wife? Just as Margaret’s friendship had introduced new emotions into her life, so thoughts of the marine’s family now brought out something in her that filled her with shame.

  She was jealous. She had felt it first on the night that Margaret had spoken to Joe on the radio; hearing their exchange, seeing the way Margaret had been illuminated by the mere prospect of a few words, made Frances aware of a huge chasm in her own life. She had felt a sadness that wasn’t, for once, assuaged by the sight of the ocean. Now, a sense of loss was sharpened by the thought of the marine and his family. She had thought of him as a friend, a kindred spirit. It was as much as she had ever expected of a man. Now she found it had crossed into something she couldn’t identify, some nagging impression of separation.

  She thought of her husband, ‘Chalkie’ Mackenzie. What she had felt on first meeting him had been quite different. She put down the spoon and forced herself to look at the other women. I won’t do this, she told herself. There is no point in hankering for things you can’t have. That you have never been able to have. She made herself think back to the beginning of the voyage, to a time when the mere fact of the journey was enough. She had been satisfied then, hadn’t she?

  ‘The cook says it’s not going to be a bad one,’ said Jean, returning to the table with two cups of tea. She sounded almost disappointed. ‘This is about as rough as it’s going to get, apparently. Shame. I didn’t mind all that rocking when we came through the Bight. Once I stopped chucking my guts up, anyway. Still, he says we’ll probably get more bad weather once we get the other side of the Suez
Canal.’

  Frances was getting used to Jean’s perverse enthusiasms. ‘There can’t be too many other passengers praying for rough weather.’

  ‘I am. I want a real humdinger of a storm. One I can tell Stan about. Oh, I know we won’t feel much on a big old girl like this, but I’d like to sit up here and watch. A bit of excitement, you know? Like the movies, but real. Far as I’m concerned, it’s all getting a bit boring.’

  Frances gazed out of the window. Some unfathomable distance away bolts of lightning illuminated the skies. The rain was heavier now, hammering on the metal roof so that they had to speak up to be heard. On the other side of the canteen several brides were pointing at the distant horizon.

  ‘Oh, come on, Frances. You like a bit of excitement too, don’t you? Look at that lightning! You telling me that doesn’t get you a bit – you know?’ Jean jiggled on her seat. ‘I mean, look at it.’

  Just for a moment, Frances allowed herself to see the squall as Jean did, to let its raw energy flood over her, illuminate her, charge her up. But the habits of years were too strong, and when she turned to Jean, her demeanour was calm, measured. ‘You might want to be careful what you wish for,’ she said. But she kept her eyes on the distant storm.

  They were about to leave, standing beside each other at the canteen doorway, waiting for the rain to ease off a little so that they could bolt towards the hatch that led down to the cabins, when the rating arrived. He pushed through the door, dripping wet after having made the short journey across the deck, bringing with him a gust of the rain-soaked cool air.

  ‘I’m looking for a Jean Castleforth,’ he said, reading from a piece of paper. ‘Jean Castleforth.’ His voice had been portentous.

  ‘That’s me.’ Jean grabbed the man’s arm. ‘Why?’

  The rating’s expression was unreadable. ‘You’ve been called to the captain’s office, madam.’ Then, as Jean stood still, her expression rigid, he said to Frances, as if Jean were no longer there, ‘She’s one of the young ones, right? I’ve been told it’s best if someone comes with her.’

  Those words halted any further questions. He led them on what Frances thought afterwards was the longest short walk of her life. Suddenly heedless of the rain, they strode briskly across the hangar deck, past the torpedo store, and up some stairs until they reached a door. The rating rapped on it sharply. When he heard, ‘Enter,’ he opened it, stood back, one arm out, and they walked in. At some point during the walk, Jean had slid her hand into Frances’s and was now gripping it tightly.

  The room, set on three sides with windows, was much brighter than the narrow passageway and they blinked. Three people were silhouetted against one of the windows, and two faced them. Frances noted absently that the floor was carpeted, unlike anywhere else on the ship.

  She saw with alarm that the chaplain was there, then recognised the women’s officer who had come across them that night in the engine area. The temperature seemed to drop and she shivered.

  Jean’s eyes darted round the grim faces in front of her and she was shaking convulsively. ‘Something has happened to him, hasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Oh, God, you’re going to tell me something’s happened to him. Is he all right? Tell me, is he all right?’

  The captain exchanged a brief look with the chaplain, then stepped forward and handed Jean a telegram.

  ‘I’m very sorry, my dear,’ he said.

  Jean looked at the telegram, then up at the captain. ‘M . . . H . . . Is that an H?’ She traced the letters with her finger. ‘A? You read it for me,’ she said, and thrust it at Frances. Her hand shook so much that the paper made a rattling sound.

  Frances took it in her left hand, keeping hold of Jean’s hand in the other. The girl’s grip was now so tight that the blood was pooling in her fingertips.

  She took in the content of the telegram a second before she read it out. The words dropped from her mouth like stones. ‘“Have heard about behaviour on board. No future for us.”’ She swallowed. ‘“Not Wanted Don’t Come.”’

  Jean stared at the telegram, then at Frances.

  ‘What?’ she said, into the silence. Then: ‘Read it again.’

  Frances wished that in the telling of those words there was some way to soften their impact.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Jean.

  ‘News travels between ships,’ said the WSO, quietly. ‘Someone must have told one of the other carriers when we docked at Ceylon.’

  ‘But no one knew. Apart from you . . .’

  ‘When we spoke to your husband’s superiors to verify the telegram, they said he was rather disturbed by news of your pregnancy.’ She paused. ‘I understand that, according to your given dates, it would be impossible for him to be the father.’ The woman spoke cruelly, Frances thought, as if she were pleased to have found some other stick with which to beat Jean. As if the Not Wanted Don’t Come had not been sufficiently damaging.

  Jean had gone white. ‘But I’m not pregnant – that was—’

  ‘I think in the circumstances, he probably feels that is irrelevant.’

  ‘But I haven’t had a chance to explain to him. I need to speak to him. He’s got it all wrong.’

  Frances stepped in. ‘It wasn’t her fault. Really. It was a misunderstanding.’

  The woman’s expression said she had heard this many times. The men just looked embarrassed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the captain. ‘We have spoken to the Red Cross and arrangements will be put in place for your passage back to Australia. You will disembark at—’

  Jean, with the ferocity of a whirlwind, launched herself at the women’s officer, fists in tight balls. ‘You bitch! You fucking old bitch!’ Before Frances dived in she had landed several flailing punches on the woman’s head. ‘You vindictive old whore! Just because you couldn’t find anyone!’ she screamed. She was heedless of the men trying to pull her away, to Frances’s entreaties. ‘I never did nothing!’ she shouted, tears streaming down her cheeks, as Frances and the chaplain held her back, faces flushed with effort. ‘I never did nothing! You’ve got to tell Stan!’

  The air had been sucked from the room. Even the captain looked shocked. He had stepped back.

  ‘Shall I take them back, sir?’ The rating had entered the room, Frances saw.

  Jean had subsided.

  The captain nodded. ‘It would be best. I’ll have someone talk to you about the . . . arrangements . . . a little later. When things have . . . calmed down.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Frances, breathing hard, holding the shaking girl in her arms. ‘With respect, you have done her a great disservice.’ Her head whirled with the unfairness of it. ‘She was a victim in this.’

  ‘You’re a nurse, not a lawyer,’ hissed the women’s officer, one hand at her bleeding head. ‘I saw. Or have you forgotten?’

  It was too late. As Frances led Jean out of the captain’s office, supported – or perhaps restrained – on the other side by the rating, she could just hear, over the noise of Jean’s sobbing, the woman officer: ‘I can’t say it surprises me,’ she was saying, her voice querulous, self-justifying. ‘I was told before we set out. Warned, I should say. Those Aussie girls are all the same.’

  14

  If you receive the personal kit of a relative or friend in the Forces, it does not mean that he is either killed or missing . . . Thousands of men, before going overseas, packed up most of their personal belongings and asked for them to be sent home. The official advice to you is: ‘Delivery of parcels is no cause for worry unless information is also sent by letter or telegram to next of kin from official sources.’

  Daily Mail, Monday, 12 June 1944

  Twenty-three days

  Jean was taken off the ship during a brief, unscheduled stop at Cochin. No one else was allowed to disembark, but several brides watched as she climbed into the little boat, and, refusing to look at them, was motored towards the shore, an officer of the Red Cross beside her, her bag and trunk balanced at the other end. She didn’t wave.<
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  Frances, who had held her that first evening through tears and hysteria, then sat with her as her mood gave way to something darker, had tried and failed to think of a way to right the situation. Margaret had gone as far as asking to see the captain. He had been very nice, she said afterwards, but if the husband didn’t want her any more, there wasn’t a lot he could do. He hadn’t actually said, ‘Orders are orders,’ but that was what he had meant. She had wanted to wring that bloody WSO’s neck, she said.

  ‘We could write to her husband,’ said Frances. But there was an awful lot to explain, not all of which they could do with any degree of accuracy. And how much to tell?

  As Jean lay sleeping, the two women had composed a letter they felt was both truthful and diplomatic. They would send it at the next postal stop. Both knew, although neither said, that it was unlikely to make any difference. They could just, if they shielded their eyes from the sun, make out the boat as it came to a halt by the jetty. There were two figures waiting under what looked like an umbrella, one of whom took Jean’s cases, the other of whom helped her on to dry land. It was impossible, at this distance, to see any more than that.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ said Avice, when the silence became oppressive. ‘You don’t need to look at me like that.’

  Margaret wiped her eyes and made her way heavily inside. ‘It’s just bloody sad,’ she said.

  Frances said nothing.

  She had not been a beautiful girl, or even a particularly pleasant one. But Captain Highfield found that in the days that followed he could not get Jean Castleforth’s face out of his mind. It had been uncomfortably like dealing with a POW, the putting ashore, the handing over into safe custody. The look of impotent fury, despair, and, finally, sullen resignation on her face.

  Several times he had asked himself whether he had done the right thing. The brides had been so adamant, and the nurse’s tones of quiet outrage haunted him still: ‘You have done her a great disservice.’ But what else could he have done? The WSO had been certain of what she’d seen. He had to trust his company – the same company he had warned that he would tolerate no such misbehaviour. And, as the officer had said, if the husband no longer wanted her, what business was it of theirs?