Ship of Brides Read online

  It was no longer her past that troubled him. It was that she had escaped it.

  ‘Leading hand was still in his pit at ten to bloody eleven in the morning. You should have heard the captain: “You’re no more fit to be a leading hand than one of those bloody girls downstairs.” You know where he was, don’t you? Master-at-arms reckons he was in the infirmary with the American. Investigating the . . . curative properties of alcohol.’

  There was a burst of laughter. He stared up at the picture of the King, which took pride of place on the wall, then took his place next to Jones, preparing to file out of the wardroom. He had received a wire four days after he had sent his own. It said simply, ‘Thank you!’ The exclamation mark, with all it conveyed, had made him wince.

  Unexpectedly, the dog began to howl when Margaret opened the door. She placed her hands frantically round Maude Gonne’s muzzle and stumbled for the bed, hissing, ‘Shush! Shush, Maudie! Shush now!’ The dog had barked twice, and Margaret had come as close as she ever had to smacking her. ‘Shut up now!’ she scolded, her eyes fixed on the door. ‘Come on, now, settle down,’ she murmured, and the dog turned tight circles on her bunk. Margaret looked guiltily at her watch, wondering when she could next take her out. Maude Gonne had tried to escape several times now. Like Joe Junior, she thought, the confinement was starting to tell. ‘Come on now,’ she said, her tone soothing. ‘Not much longer, I promise.’

  Only then did she realise she was not alone in the dormitory.

  Avice was lying motionless on her bunk, facing the wall, her knees drawn up to her stomach.

  Margaret stared at her as the dog leapt down and scratched half-heartedly at the door. It was, she calculated, the fourth day that Avice had lain like this. On the few occasions that she had risen for food she had picked at whatever was on her plate, then excused herself. Seasickness, she had said, to enquiries. But the water hadn’t been choppy.

  Margaret stepped forward and bent over the prostrate figure, as if she could glean some clue from her face. Once she had done this believing Avice to be asleep, and had felt a mixture of shock and embarrassment when her eyes were wide open. She had wondered whether to talk to Frances: perhaps Avice was suffering from some medical complaint. But given the bad blood between the two women, she didn’t feel it fair on either of them.

  Besides, Frances was rarely here now. For reasons no one could explain, she had been helping out in the infirmary, Dr Duxbury having gleefully accepted the responsibility of organising the final of the Queen of the Victoria contest. Otherwise she disappeared for several hours every day, and offered no explanation as to where she had been. Margaret supposed she should be glad to see her so much happier, but she missed her company. Alone, she had had altogether far too much time to think. And, as her dad was fond of saying, that was never a good thing.

  ‘Avice?’ she whispered. ‘Are you awake?’

  She did not reply until the second prompt. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Margaret stood awkwardly in the centre of the little dormitory, her distended body briefly forgotten as she tried to work out what to do for the best. ‘Can I . . . can I get you anything?’

  ‘No.’

  The silence expanded round her. Her mother would have known what to do, she thought. She would have marched up to Avice, taken her in her arms in that confident maternal way of hers, and said, ‘C’mon, now, what’s up?’ And faced with her degree of certainty, Avice would have confessed her anxieties, or her medical problems, or her homesickness or whatever was troubling her.

  Except her mother wasn’t there. And Margaret was no more capable of taking Avice in her arms unprompted than she was of rowing this ship all the way to bloody England. ‘I could get you a cup of tea,’ she ventured.

  Avice said nothing.

  Margaret lay on her bed reading for almost an hour, not feeling able to leave either Avice or the dog, whom she did not trust to keep quiet.

  Outside, the faint increase in movement of the ship told of the shift into cooler, rougher waters. Now, after weeks aboard, they were finely attuned to the vibrations of the Victoria, used to the ever-present hum of her engines, able to ignore the incessant piped commands that punctuated every quarter-hour.

  She had begun a letter to her father, then discovered she had nothing to say about life on board that she had not already told him. The real events that had taken place she could not conceive of putting on paper, and the rest of it was just waiting. Like living in a corridor, waiting for her new life to begin.

  She had written to Daniel instead: a series of questions about the mare, an urgent demand that he should skin as many darn rabbits as he could so that he could get over to England to see her. Daniel had written once, a letter she had received at Bombay. It comprised just a few lines and told her little, other than the state of the cows, the weather, and the plot of a movie he had seen in town, but her heart had eased. She had been forgiven, those few lines told her. If her father had threatened him with the belt to do it he would have put a blank sheet in an envelope rather than comply. There was a sharp rap on the door, and she leapt on her dog, cutting short her bark. Holding her, she broke into a fake coughing fit, trying to emulate the noise. ‘Hold on,’ she said, her broad hand clamped gently but firmly round Maude Gonne’s muzzle. ‘Just coming.’

  ‘Is Mrs A. Radley there?’

  Margaret faced Avice’s bunk. Avice, blinking, sat. Her clothes were crumpled, her face pale and blank. She slid slowly to the floor, lifting a hand to her hair. ‘Avice Radley,’ she said, opening the door a little way.

  A young rating stood before her.

  ‘You’ve had a wire. Come through the radio room this afternoon.’

  Margaret dropped the dog behind her and stepped forward to take Avice’s arm. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said involuntarily.

  The rating registered the two wide-eyed faces. Then he thrust the piece of paper into Avice’s hand. ‘Don’t look like that, missus – it’s good news.’

  ‘What?’ said Margaret.

  He ignored her. He waited for Avice’s eyes to drop to the paper before he spoke again, his voice thick with mirth. ‘It’s family. Your folks are going to be in Plymouth to meet you off the ship.’

  Avice had sobbed for almost twenty minutes, which had initially seemed excessive and had now become alarming. Margaret, her previous reticence forgotten, had climbed on to Avice’s bunk and now sat beside her, trying not to think about the way it creaked ominously under her weight. ‘It’s okay, Avice,’ she kept saying. ‘He’s all right. Ian’s all right. That bloody wire just gave you a bit of a fright.’

  The captain wasn’t best pleased, the rating had said gleefully. Said he’d be using the radio room for taking down shopping lists next. But he’d allowed the message through.

  Margaret tutted. ‘They shouldn’t have sent someone down here like that. They must have known it would scare you half to death. Specially someone in our condition, eh?’ She tried to get the girl to smile.

  Avice failed to answer her. But eventually the sobbing subsided, until it was just a stuttering echo of itself, a breath that caught periodically in the back of her throat. Finally, when Margaret felt the worst was over, she stepped down.

  ‘There now,’ she said uselessly. ‘You get some rest. Calm yourself down a bit.’ She lay on her own bunk and began to chat about their plans for the last few days – the best lectures to attend, Avice’s preparations for the Queen of the Victoria final, anything to shake her out of her depression. ‘You’ve got to wear those green satin shoes again,’ she rattled on gamely. ‘You don’t know how many girls would give their eye teeth for them, Avice. That girl from 11F said she’d seen some just like them in Australian Women’s Weekly.’

  Avice’s eyes were raw and red-rimmed. You don’t understand, she thought, as she stared at the blank wall, not registering the endless stream of words that floated up from below. Just for a moment, I thought everything was going to be okay, that there was going to be a way out of this for
me.

  She lay very still, as if somehow she could turn herself to stone.

  Just for a moment, I thought they had come to tell me he was dead.

  ‘So, anyway, there I was, dirty water up to my ears, pans sloshing up and down the galley, ship listing forty-five degrees to port, and the old boy wades in, looks me up and down, empties several pints of bilge water out of his cap and says, “I hope those aren’t odd socks you’re wearing, Highfield. I won’t have standards slipping on my ship.”’

  The captain stretched out his leg. ‘Best bit about it was he was right. God only knows how he could tell under four foot of water, but he was right.’

  Frances straightened up and smiled. ‘I’ve had matrons like that,’ she said. ‘I reckon they could tell you the number of pills in every bottle.’

  She began to place the instruments back in the carrying case.

  ‘Ah,’ said Highfield. He cleared his throat. ‘Well, then. Forty-one torpedo heads, separated from cases, two empty cases, thirty-two bombs, most dismantled, four cases ammunition for 4.5 inch magazine, one case 4.5 inch HA/LA twin mounting, nine cases assorted armaments, small-arms magazine and pom-poms. Oh, and twenty-two rounds for several assorted handguns. Those currently locked in my personal stores.’

  ‘Something tells me,’ said Frances, ‘you’re not entirely ready for retirement.’

  Outside, behind his left shoulder, the sun was setting. It sank towards the horizon at a gentler pace than it had in previous waters. The ocean stretched around them, its greyish hue the only clue to the cooler temperature. Now they were often pursued by gulls, scavenging after the gash, or rubbish, the ship’s cook threw overboard, or bits of biscuit the girls hurled at them for the fun of watching them catch scraps in mid-air.

  Highfield leant forward: the scar tissue on his leg was like melted candlewax. ‘How’s it . . . ?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You must be able to feel it.’

  ‘I feel better,’ he said. Then, catching her eye, ‘It’s still a little sore, but much improved.’

  ‘Your temperature’s normal.’

  ‘I thought I’d got a touch of the tropical sweats.’

  ‘Probably had those too.’ She knew he felt better. It was in his demeanour; something in him was no longer quite so grimly contained. Now his eyes held a glint of something else, and his smile came readily. When he stood straight, it was with pride rather than the desperation to prove he still could.

  He had embarked on another story; one about a missing torpedo case. She had finished, and allowed herself to sit neatly in the chair opposite him and listen. He had told her this story some days previously but she didn’t mind: she sensed that he was not a man who talked easily. A lonely man, she had concluded. She had often found those in charge to be the loneliest.

  Besides, she had to admit, faced with the cold reception she still received from most of the brides, with Avice’s strange melancholy and the marine’s absence, she enjoyed his company.

  ‘. . . and the ruddy man was only using it to cook fish. “Couldn’t find anything else that looked like a fish kettle,” he said. I tell you, when we thought about it, we were only grateful he hadn’t used the warhead.’

  Highfield’s laugh emerged from him like a bark, as if it surprised him, and she smiled again, keen not to reveal her familiarity with what he had said. He would glance at her after each joke, an infinitesimal movement, but one in which she recognised his awkwardness with women. He would not want to bore her. She would not allow him to think he had.

  ‘Sister Mackenzie . . . can I offer you a drink? I often have a little tot at this time of day.’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t drink.’

  ‘Sensible girl.’ She watched as he manoeuvred himself round his desk. It was beautiful, a deep walnut colour embossed with dark green leather. The captain’s private room could have sat happily in any well-off house, with its carpet, paintings and comfortable upholstered chairs. She thought of the sparse conditions of the men below, their hammocks, lockers and bleached tabletops. Nowhere but in the British Navy had she seen the blatant difference in the men’s living conditions, and it made her wonder about the country she was heading to. ‘How did you do it?’ she asked, as he poured his drink.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your leg. You never said.’

  He was standing with his back to her and for a moment it went still enough for her to understand that her question had not been as inconsequential as she had intended. ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.’

  It was as if he had not heard her. He stoppered the decanter, then sat down again. He took a long slug of the amber liquid, and then he spoke. The Victoria, he said, was not his ship. ‘I served on her sister, Indomitable. From ’thirty-nine. Then shortly before VJ Day we came under attack. We had six Albacores, four Swordfish and God knows what else up there trying to cover us, men on all the guns, but nothing hit them. I knew from the start we were done.

  ‘My nephew was a pilot. Robert Hart. Twenty-six years old. My younger sister Molly’s boy . . . He was a . . . We were close. He was a good chap.’

  They were briefly interrupted by a knock on the door. A flash of irritation briefly illuminated Highfield’s features. He rose and walked heavily across the floor. He opened the door, glanced at the papers that were handed to him and nodded at the young telegraphist. ‘Very good,’ he muttered.

  Frances, still lost in the captain’s previous words, barely noticed.

  The captain sat down again, dropping the papers beside him on the desk. There was a long silence.

  ‘Was he . . . shot down?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said, after another slug of his drink. ‘No. I think he would have preferred that. One of the bombs dropped into number-two hold and blew out several decks, from the officers’ berths to the centre engine room. I lost sixteen men in that first explosion.’

  Frances could imagine the scene on board, her nose scenting the smoke and oil, the screams of trapped and burning men in her ears. ‘Including your nephew.’

  ‘No . . . no, that’s the problem. I was too late getting them out, you see? I’d been blown off my feet, and I was a bit dazed. I didn’t realise how close the explosion had been to the ammunition stores.

  ‘The fire cracked several of the internal pipes. It ran along the tiller flat, the steering-gear store and the admiral’s store and came up again under the ammunition conveyor. Fifteen minutes after the first, they caught and blew out half the innards of the ship.’ He shook his head. ‘It was deafening . . . deafening. I thought the heavens themselves had cracked open. I should have had more men down there, checking the hatches were closed, stopping the fire.’

  ‘You might have lost more.’

  ‘Fifty-eight, all told. My nephew had been on the control platform.’ He hesitated. ‘I couldn’t get to him.’

  Frances sat very still. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘They made me get off,’ he said, his words coming thick and fast now as if they had waited too long. ‘She was going down, and I had my men – those who could still stand – in the boats. The seas were eerily calm, and I could see the boats all sitting there below me, almost still, like lily-pads on a pond, all smeared with blood and oil as the men hauled in the injured from the water. It was so hot. Those of us still aboard were spraying ourselves with the hoses, just to try to stay on the ship. And while we were trying to reach our injured men, while bits of the ship were cracking open and burning, the bloody Japanese kept circling. Not firing any more, just circling above us, like vultures, as if they were enjoying watching us suffer.’

  He took a gulp of his drink.

  ‘I was still trying to find him when they ordered me off.’ He dropped his head. ‘Two destroyers came alongside to help us. Finally saw off the Japanese. I was ordered off. And all my men sat there and watched as I let the ship go down, knowing that there were probably men alive down there, injured men. Perhaps even
Hart.’

  He paused. ‘None of them said a word to me. They just . . . stared.’

  Frances closed her eyes. She had heard similar stories, knew the scars they caused. There was nothing she could say to comfort him.

  They listened to the Tannoy calling the ladies to a display of feltwork in the forward lounge. Frances noted, with surprise, that at some point it had become completely dark outside.

  ‘Not much of a way to end a career, is it?’

  She heard the break in his voice. ‘Captain,’ she said, ‘the only people who still have all the answers are those who have never been faced with the questions.’

  Outside his rooms the deck light stuttered into life, throwing a cold neon glow through the window. There was a brief burst of conversation as several men left the squadron office and a pipe called repetitively ‘stand by to receive gash barge alongside’.

  Captain Highfield stared at his feet, then at her, digesting the truth of what she had said. He had a long slug of his drink, his eyes not leaving hers as he finished it. ‘Sister Mackenzie,’ he said, as he put his glass on the table, ‘tell me about your husband.’

  Nicol had stood outside the cinema projection room for almost three-quarters of an hour. Had he been allowed in to view the film, he would have been unwilling to watch The Best Years of Our Lives, even with its happy endings for those servicemen returning home. His attention was focused on the other end of the corridor.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ Jones-the-Welsh had said, as he dried himself in the mess. ‘I heard she was being put off. The next thing captain’s saying it’s all a bloody misunderstanding. It was not, I can tell you. You saw her, didn’t you, Duckworth? We both recognised her. Don’t understand it.’ He rubbed briskly under his arms.

  ‘I know why,’ said another marine. ‘She’s in there having a drink with the skipper.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In his rooms. The old weather-guesser just took him in the long-range reports, and there she is, curled up with him on the settee having a drink.’