Ship of Brides Read online

  ‘I don’t need you to have my arguments for me, okay?’

  Mr Vaghela tapped her arm. ‘If you will forgive me for saying so, Miss Jennifer, I do not believe your grasp of Urdu leaves you up to the task.’

  ‘He understands English. I heard him.’

  ‘What is the girl saying now?’ Mr Bhattacharya, he could tell, was offended by her barely decent mode of dress. Mr Vaghela suspected that while he secretly knew the young people were innocent of his charges, he had worked himself into such a rage that he was determined to continue the argument. Mr Vaghela had met many such men in his life.

  ‘I don’t like the way he’s talking to me.’

  Mr Sanjay moved towards the girl. ‘You don’t even know what he’s saying! You’re making things worse, Jen. Go back to the car and take your gran with you. We’ll sort this out.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do, Jay.’

  ‘Where is he going? Where are they going?’ Mr Bhattacharya was watching Mr Sanjay with increasing fury.

  ‘I think it would be better if the girl left your yard, sir. My friend is just persuading her of that.’

  ‘I don’t need you to—’ Miss Jennifer stopped abruptly.

  There was a sudden silence, and Mr Vaghela, who was uncomfortably warm, followed the eyes of the crowd to the shaded area under the hull of the next ship.

  ‘What is wrong with the old lady?’ said Mr Bhattacharya.

  She was sitting slumped forward, her head supported in her hands. Her grey hair looked silver white.

  ‘Gran?’ The girl sprinted over to her.

  As the old woman raised her head, Mr Vaghela exhaled. He was forced to admit he had been alarmed by her stance.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, dear.’ The words seemed to come out automatically, Mr Vaghela thought. It was as if will hadn’t had anything to do with them.

  Forgetting Mr Bhattacharya, he and Mr Sanjay walked over and squatted in front of her.

  ‘You look rather pale, Mammaji, if I may say so.’ She had one hand on the ship, he noticed, a curious gesture, which she had to bend awkwardly to make.

  The shipbreaker was beside them, cleaning his expensive crocodile shoes on the back of his trousers. He muttered to Mr Vaghela. ‘He wants to know if you’d like a drink,’ he told her. ‘He says he has some iced water in his office.’

  ‘I don’t want her to have a heart-attack in my yard,’ Mr Bhattacharya was saying. ‘Get her some water and then please take her away.’

  ‘Would you like some iced water?’

  She looked as if she was going to sit upright, but instead lifted a hand feebly. ‘That’s very kind, but I’ll just sit for a minute.’

  ‘Gran? What’s the matter?’ Jennifer had knelt down, hands pressed on her grandmother’s knee. Her eyes were wide with anxiety. The posturing arrogance had evaporated in the heat. Behind them, the younger men were murmuring and jostling, conscious that some unknown drama was being played out before them.

  ‘Please ask them to go away, Jen,’ the old woman whispered. ‘Really. I’ll be fine if everyone just leaves me alone.’

  ‘Is it me? I’m really sorry, Gran. I know I’ve been a pain. I just didn’t like the way he was talking to me. It’s because I’m a girl, you know? It gets up my nose.’

  ‘It’s not you—’

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have been more thoughtful. Look, we’ll get you back to the car.’

  Mr Vaghela was gratified to hear the apology. It was good to know that young people could acknowledge their irresponsible behaviour. She should not have caused the old lady to walk such a distance in this heat, not in a place like this. It indicated a lack of respect.

  ‘It’s not you, Jennifer.’ The old woman’s voice was strained. ‘It’s the ship,’ she whispered.

  Uncomprehending, they followed her gaze, taking in the vast pale grey expanse of metal, the huge, rusting rivets that dotted their way up the side.

  The young people stared at each other, then down at the old lady, who seemed, suddenly, impossibly frail.

  ‘It’s just a ship, Gran,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘No,’ she said, and Mr Vaghela noted that her face was as bleached as the metal behind it. ‘That’s where you’re quite wrong.’

  It was not often, Mr Ram B. Vaghela observed to his wife on his return, that one saw an old lady weeping. Evidently they were much more free with their emotions than he had imagined, these British, not at all the reserved stiff-upper-lips he had anticipated. His wife, rather irritatingly, raised an eyebrow, as if she could no longer be bothered to make an adequate response to his observations. He remembered the old woman’s grief, the way she had had to be helped back to the car, the way she had sat in silence all the way to Mumbai. She was like someone who had witnessed a death.

  Yes, he had been rather surprised by the English madam. Not the kind of woman he’d had her down as at all.

  He was pretty sure they were not like that in Denmark.

  PART ONE

  I

  Money in rabbits! At recent sales in Sydney best furred full-grown bucks made 19s 11d per pound, the highest price I ever heard of in Australia. The percentage of top pelts would be small, but at about five to the pound just on 4s each is a remarkable return.

  ‘The Man on the Land’, Bulletin, Australia, 10 July 1946

  Australia, 1946

  Four weeks to embarkation

  Letty McHugh halted the pick-up truck, wiped non-existent soot from under her eyes, and noted that on a woman with ‘handsome features’, as the saleswoman had tactfully defined hers, Cherry Blossom lipstick was never going to alter much. She rubbed briskly at her lips, feeling stupid for having bought it at all. Then, less than a minute later, she reached into her bag and carefully reapplied it, grimacing at her reflection in the rear-view mirror.

  She straightened her blouse, picked up the letters she had collected on her weekly visit to the post office and peered out at the blurred landscape through the windscreen. The rain probably wouldn’t let up no matter how long she waited. She pulled a piece of tarpaulin over her head and shoulders and, with a gasp, leapt out of the truck and ran for the house.

  ‘Margaret? Maggie?’

  The screen door slammed behind her, muffling the insistent timpani of the deluge outside, but only her own voice and the sound of her good shoes on the floorboards echoed back at her. Letty checked her handbag, then wiped her feet and walked into the kitchen, calling a couple more times, even though she suspected that no one was in. ‘Maggie? You there?’

  The kitchen, as was usual since Noreen had gone, was empty. Letty put her handbag and the letters on the scrubbed wooden table and went to the stove, where a stew was simmering. She lifted the lid and sniffed. Then, guiltily, she reached into the cupboard and added a pinch of salt, some cumin and cornflour, stirred, then replaced the lid.

  She went to the little liver-spotted mirror by the medicine cupboard and tried to smooth her hair, which had already begun to frizz in the moisture-filled air. She could barely see all of her face at once; the Donleavy family could never be accused of vanity, that was for sure.

  She rubbed again at her lips, then turned back to the kitchen, her solitude allowing her to see it with a dispassionate eye. She surveyed the linoleum, cracked and ingrained with years of agricultural dirt that wouldn’t lift, no matter how many times it was mopped and swept. Her sister had planned to replace it, had even shown Letty the design she fancied, in a book sent all the way from Perth. She took in the faded paintwork, the calendar that marked only this or that agricultural show, the arrival of vets, buyers or grain salesmen, the dogs’ baskets with their filthy old blankets lined up round the range, and the packet of Bluo for the men’s shirts, spilling its grains on to the bleached work surface. The only sign of any female influence was a copy of Glamor magazine, its straplines advertising a new story by Daphne du Maurier, and an article entitled ‘Would You Marry A Foreigner?’. The pages, she noted, had been heavily
thumbed.

  ‘Margaret?’

  She glanced at the clock: the men would be in shortly for lunch. She walked to the coathooks by the back door and pulled off an old stockman’s jacket, wincing at the smell of tar and wet dog that, she knew, would linger on her clothes.

  The rain was now so heavy that in places around the yard it ran in rivers; the drains gurgled a protest, and the chickens huddled in ruffled groups under the shrubs. Letty cursed herself for not having brought her gumboots but ran from the back door of the house to the yard and round to the back of the barn. There, as she had half expected, she made out what looked like a brown oil-proofed lump on a horse, circling the paddock, no face visible under the wide-brimmed hat that fell down to the collar, almost mirrored with slick channels of rainwater.

  ‘Margaret!’ Letty stood under the eaves of the barn and shouted to be heard over the rain, waving half-heartedly.

  The horse was plainly fed up: its tail clamped to its soaking hindquarters, it was tiptoeing sideways round the fence, occasionally cowkicking in frustration while its rider patiently turned it to begin each painstaking manoeuvre again.

  ‘Maggie!’

  At one point it bucked. Letty’s heart lurched and her hand flew to her mouth. But the rider was neither unseated nor concerned, and merely booted the animal forwards, muttering something that might or might not have been an admonishment.

  ‘For God’s sake, Maggie, will you get over here!’

  The brim of the hat lifted and a hand was raised in greeting. The horse was steered round and walked towards the gate, its head low. ‘Been there long, Letty?’ she called.

  ‘Are you insane, girl? What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ She could see her niece’s broad grin under the brim of the hat.

  ‘Just a bit of schooling. Dad’s too big to ride her and the boys are useless with her, so there’s only me. Moody old girl, isn’t she?’

  Letty shook her head, exasperated, and motioned for Margaret to dismount. ‘For goodness’ sake, child. Do you want a hand getting off?’

  ‘Hah! No, I’m fine. Is it lunchtime yet? I put some stew on earlier, but I don’t know what time they’ll be in. They’re moving the calves down to Yarrawa Creek, and they can be all day down there.’

  ‘They’ll not be all day in this weather,’ Letty responded, as Margaret clambered down inelegantly from the horse and landed heavily on her feet. ‘Unless they’re as insane as you are.’

  ‘Ah, don’t fuss. She looks worse than she is.’

  ‘You’re soaked. Look at you! I can’t believe you’d even consider riding out in this weather. Good gracious, Maggie, I don’t know what you think you’re doing . . . What your dear mother would say, God only knows.’

  There was a brief pause.

  ‘I know . . .’ Margaret wrinkled her nose as she reached up to undo the girth.

  Letty wondered if she had said too much. She hesitated, then bit back the awkward apology that had sprung to her lips. ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Forget it. You’re right, Letty,’ said the girl, as she swung the saddle easily under her arm. ‘She wouldn’t have had this mare doing circles to balance her up. She’d have put her in a pair of side reins and be done with it.’

  The men returned shortly before one o’clock, arriving in a thunderous cluster of wet overshoes and dripping hats, shedding their coats at the door. Margaret had set the table and was dishing up steaming bowls of beef stew.

  ‘Colm, you’ve still got mud all the way up the back of your heels,’ said Letty, and the young man obligingly kicked off his boots on the mat rather than waste time trying to clean them.

  ‘Got any bread with that?’

  ‘Give us a chance, boys. I’m going as fast as I can.’

  ‘Maggie, your dog’s asleep in Dad’s old hat,’ said Daniel, grinning. ‘Dad says if he gets fleas off it he’ll shoot her.’

  ‘I said no such thing, eejit child. How are you, Letty? Did you get up to town yesterday?’ Murray Donleavy, a towering, angular man whose freckles and pale eyes signalled his Celtic origins, sat down at the head of the table and, without comment, began to work his way through a hunk of bread that his sister-in-law had sliced for him.

  ‘I did, Murray.’

  ‘Any post for us?’

  ‘I’ll bring it out after you’ve eaten.’ Otherwise, the way these men sat at a table, the letters would be splashed with gravy and fingered with greasemarks. Noreen had never seemed to mind.

  Margaret had had her lunch already, and was sitting on the easy chair by the larder, her socked feet on a footstool. Letty watched the men settle, with private satisfaction, as they lowered their heads to eat. Not many families, these days, could boast five men round a table with three of them having been in the services. As Murray muttered to Daniel, his youngest, to pass more bread, Letty could still detect a hint of the Irish accent with which he had arrived in the country. Her sister had occasionally mocked it good-humouredly. ‘That one!’ she’d say, her accent curled round a poor approximation of his own. ‘He’s got more fight in him than a Dundalk wedding.’

  No, this table lacked someone else entirely. She sighed, pushing Noreen from her thoughts, as she did countless times every day. Then she said brightly, ‘Alf Pettit’s wife has bought one of those new Defender refrigerators. It’s got four drawers and an icemaker, and doesn’t make a sound.’

  ‘Unlike Alf Pettit’s wife,’ said Murray. He had pulled over the latest copy of the Bulletin, and was deep in ‘The Man on the Land’, its farming column. ‘Hmph. Says here that dairy yards are getting dirtier because all the women are quitting.’

  ‘They’ve obviously never seen the state of Maggie’s room.’

  ‘You make this?’ Murray lifted his head from his newspaper and jerked a thumb at his bowl, which was nearly empty.

  ‘Maggie did,’ said Letty.

  ‘Nice. Better than the last one.’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ said Margaret, her hand held out in front of her the better to examine a splinter. ‘I didn’t do anything any different.’

  ‘There’s a new picture starting at the Odeon,’ Letty said, changing the subject. That got their attention. She knew the men pretended not to be interested in the snippets of gossip she brought to the farm twice a week, gossip being the stuff of women, but every now and then the mask of indifference slipped. She rested against the sink, arms crossed over her chest.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s a war film. Greer Garson and Tyrone Power. I forget the name. Something with Forever in it?’

  ‘I hope it’s got lots of fighter planes. American ones.’ Daniel glanced at his brothers, apparently searching for agreement, but their heads were down as they shovelled food into their mouths.

  ‘How are you going to get to Woodside, short-arse? Your bike’s broke, if you remember.’ Liam shoved him.

  ‘He’s not cycling all that way by himself, whatever,’ said Murray.

  ‘One of youse can take me in the truck. Ah, go on. I’ll pay for your ices.’

  ‘How many rabbits you sell this week?’

  Daniel had been raising extra cash by skinning rabbits and selling the pelts. The price of good ones had risen inexplicably from a penny each to several shillings, which had left his brothers mildly envious of his sudden wealth.

  ‘Only four.’

  ‘Well, that’s my best price.’

  ‘Oh, Murray, Betty says to tell you their good mare is in foal finally, if you’re still interested.’

  ‘The one they put to the Magician?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Murray exchanged a glance with his eldest son. ‘Might swing by there later in the week, Colm. Be good to have a decent horse around the place.’

  ‘Which reminds me.’ Letty took a deep breath. ‘I found Margaret riding that mean young filly of yours. I don’t think she should be riding. It’s not . . . safe.’

  Murray didn’t look up from his stew. ‘She’s a grown woman, Letty. We’l
l have little or no say over her life soon enough.’

  ‘You’ve no need to fuss, Letty. I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘She’s a mean-looking horse.’ Letty began to wash up, feeling vaguely undermined. ‘I’m just saying I don’t think Noreen would have liked it. Not with things . . . the way they are . . .’

  The mention of her sister’s name brought with it a brief, melancholy silence.

  Murray pushed his empty bowl to the centre of the table. ‘It’s good of you to concern yourself about us, Letty. Don’t think we’re not grateful.’

  If the boys noted the look that passed between the two ‘olds’, as they were known, or that their aunt Letty’s was followed by the faintest pinking of her cheeks, they said nothing. Just as they had said nothing when, several months previously, she had started to wear her good skirt to visit them. Or that, in her mid-forties, she was suddenly setting her hair.

  Margaret, meanwhile, had risen from her chair and was flicking through the letters that lay on the sideboard beside Letty’s bag. ‘Bloody hell!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Margaret!’

  ‘Sorry, Letty. Look! Look, Dad, it’s for me! From the Navy!’

  Her father motioned for her to bring it over. He turned the envelope in his broad hands, noting the official stamp, the return address. ‘Want me to open it?’

  ‘He’s not dead, is he?’ Daniel yelped as Colm’s hand caught him a sharp blow to the back of the head.

  ‘Don’t be even more of a mongrel than you already are.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s dead, do you?’ Margaret reached out to steady herself, her normally high colour draining away.

  ‘Course he’s not dead,’ her father said. ‘They send you a wire for that.’

  ‘They might have wanted to save on postage but—’ Daniel shot backwards on his chair to avoid an energetic kick from his elder brother.