Ship of Brides Read online

  The song collapsed in a melancholy trail. Frances let herself in silently, eyeing in the dim light the girl who lay pale and motionless on the bed.

  The worst, for Avice, was over. She was asleep now, pale and somehow diminished, the coverlet and rough Navy-issue blanket pulled high round her neck. She frowned in her sleep, as if even now anticipating the trials of the weeks ahead.

  She left the light off, but instead of climbing into the spare bed, Frances walked over to the little chair beside it and sat down. Here she stayed for some time, staring at the cardboard boxes around them, listening to the sounds of the singing, which had begun again, punctuated by coughing, or by Dr Duxbury interrupting to offer some alternative version. Beneath the noise in the adjoining room she listened to the remaining engine, weaker and less dynamic than it had been, imagining the curses of the stokers who sweated away in their efforts to bully the unwilling ship into harbour. She thought of the navigator, the radio operator, the duty watch, all the others still awake across this vast ship, contemplating their return to their families, the changes that lay ahead. She thought of Captain Highfield, in his palatial quarters above them, knowing that tonight might be the last he spent at sea. We all have to find new ways of living, he had told them. New ways of forgiving.

  I have to try to feel as I did when I first stepped aboard, she told herself. That sense of relief and anticipation. I have to forget that this, and he, ever happened. Instead, she would thank Chalkie every day for what he had given her.

  It was the least she could do in the circumstances.

  She thought she might have drifted off to sleep when she heard the sound. A cough so discreet, so far on the periphery of her consciousness that she was never quite sure afterwards why it had woken her. She opened an eye, gazed across at Avice’s dim shape, half expecting her to sit up and demand a glass of water. But Avice didn’t move.

  She sat upright, and listened.

  Another cough. The kind of cough that denotes the desire to draw attention. She slid out of the chair and made her way across the floor. ‘Frances,’ a voice said, so quietly that only she could have heard it. And then again. ‘Frances.’

  She wondered briefly if she was still asleep. Next door Dr Duxbury was singing ‘Danny Boy’. He broke off to weep noisily, and was consoled by those around him.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she murmured, stepping forward. She did not open the door. They were all under the strictest instructions: there was to be no mixing this evening, the XO had warned, as if the fact of it being the last night might induce a kind of sexually charged madness.

  For a moment he said nothing. Then, ‘I wanted to make sure you were all right.’

  She shook her head in incomprehension and exhaled slowly. ‘I’m . . . fine.’

  ‘What I said . . . I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Please don’t worry.’ She didn’t want to have this conversation again.

  ‘I wanted to tell you . . . I’m glad. I’m glad to have met you. And I wish . . . I wish . . .’ There was a long silence. Her heart was pounding.

  The singing had stopped. Somewhere, out in the Channel, a foghorn sounded. She stood there in the dark, waiting for him to speak again, then realised the conversation was ended. He had said all he was going to say.

  Barely knowing what she was doing, Frances moved closer to the door. She laid her cheek against it, waiting in silence until she heard what she was waiting for. Then she stepped back and opened it.

  In the dim light outside the infirmary, his eyes were shadowed, unreadable. She stared up at him, knowing that this was the last time she would see this man, trying to make herself accept a fate that for the first time she wanted to smash into little pieces. He was not hers to want. She had to keep telling herself that, even if every atom of her screamed the opposite.

  ‘Well.’ Her wavering, brilliant smile would have broken his heart. ‘Thank you. Thank you for looking after me. Us, I mean.’

  Frances allowed herself a last look, and then, not sure why, she held out a slim hand to him. After a moment’s hesitation, he took it, and they shook solemnly, their eyes not leaving each other’s face.

  ‘Time to get to bed, boys. Got to be fresh for the morning!’

  They stared at each other. Vincent Duxbury’s voice increased in volume as the infirmary door opened, throwing out a rectangular flood of light. ‘Home, boys! You’re going home tomorrow! “Home, home on the range . . .”’

  She tugged him into the little room, and closed the door silently behind them. They stood inches apart, listening as the men fell out of the infirmary into the passageway. There was much slapping of backs and a brief, painful interlude of coughing.

  ‘I have to inform you,’ said Dr Duxbury, ‘that you are quite the finest band of men I have ever had the privilege . . . “My merry band of brothers . . .”’ His voice floated along the passageway, was briefly joined in tuneless discord by the others.

  She was so close he could feel her breath upon him. Her body was rigid, listening, her hand still unwittingly in his. Her cool skin was blistering.

  ‘“My merry band” . . . la la la la.’ If it hadn’t been that she had chosen that moment to look up at him he might never have done it. But she had raised her face, lips parted, as if in a question, and put her hand to the cut above his brow, tracing it with her fingertips. Instead of stepping away from her, as he had intended, he raised his hand to hers, touching it, and then, more firmly, enclosing it within his own.

  The singers outside increased in volume, then broke into conversation. Someone fell over and from a distance there was a muffled ‘You there!’, the brisk steps of someone in authority.

  Nicol hardly heard them. He heard instead her faint exhalation, felt the answering tremble in her fingertips. His skin burning, he brought her hand down, let it slide across his face, feeling no pain even as it touched those places that were sore and bruised. And then he pressed it, hard, to his mouth.

  She hesitated, and then, with a sound that was like a little gasp of despair, she pulled back her hand and her mouth lifted to his, her hands gripping his now as if she would make them stay on her for ever.

  It was sweet, so sweet as to be indecent. Nicol wanted to absorb her into him, to fill her, enclose her, take her in to his very being. I knew this! some part of him rejoiced. I know her! Fleetingly, as he became aware of the heat of his own desperate need, he felt a hint of danger, something condemnatory, and was unsure whether it was directed at her or himself. But then his eyes opened and locked with hers, and in their infinite pain and longing there was something so shocking, so honest that he found he could not breathe. And as he lowered his face to hers again it was she who pulled back, one hand raised to her lips, her eyes still on his. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’ She glanced briefly at Avice, still asleep on the bed, then lifted a hand fleetingly to his cheek, as if imprinting the sight and feel of him on some hidden part of her.

  Then she was gone, the men outside exclaiming as they tried to grasp what they had seen. The storeroom door closed gently but firmly between them, the dull metallic clang like that of a prison gate.

  The ceremony was carried out at nearly half past eleven on Tuesday night. In different circumstances, it would have been a beautiful night for a wedding: the moon hung low and magnified in a tropical sky, bathing the camp in a strange blue light, while the whispering breeze barely disturbed the palm trees, but offered discreet relief from the heat.

  Aside from the bride and groom, there were just three people in attendance: the chaplain, the matron and Captain Baillie. The bride, her voice barely audible, sat by the groom for the entire service. The chaplain crossed himself several times after the ceremony, and prayed that he had done the right thing. The matron shushed the captain’s own thoughts that he might not be, and reminded him that, given the state of the world around them, this one small act should not play on his conscience.

  The bride sat, head bowed, and held the hand
of the man beside her, as if in apology. At the end of the service she placed her pale face in her hands and sat still for some time, until her face emerged again, gasping slightly, like a swimmer breaking through water.

  ‘Are we done?’ said the matron, who seemed the most composed of them all.

  The chaplain nodded, his brow still furrowed, eyes cast down.

  ‘Sister?’ The girl opened her eyes. She seemed unable, or unwilling, to look at the people around her.

  ‘Right,’ said Audrey Marshall, looking at her watch and reaching for her notes. ‘Time of death, eleven forty-four.’

  24

  When the aircraft carrier Victorious reached Plymouth last night . . . some of the girls were so eager to get a glimpse of Britain that they crowded against a stanchion till it collapsed and twenty of them fell eight feet to the deck below. They were unhurt. One bride could not share the general excitement. She learnt at the end of her 13,000-mile journey that her husband who was to have met her had been posted missing after a flying accident.

  Daily Mirror, Wednesday, 7 August 1946

  Eight hours to Plymouth

  A naval uniform, unsupported by the human frame, is a curious thing. With its thick dark material, its braid and brass buttons, it speaks of whole other realms of being, of parades, of the effort – pressing, mending, polishing – involved in its upkeep. It speaks of propriety, routines and orderly habits, of those who inhabit it and those whose uniforms match it. Depending on its stripes, or badges, it also speaks of a history of conflict. It tells a story: of battles fought and won, of sacrifices made. Of bravery and fear.

  But it tells you nothing about a life. Highfield stared at his uniform, carefully pressed by his steward, now hanging under little epaulettes of tissue paper, ready for its last outing when Victoria docked the following day. What does that uniform say about me? he thought, running his hand down the sleeve. Does it tell of a man who only knew who he was when he was at war? Or of a man who realises now that the thing he thought he was escaping from, intimacy, humanity, was what he had lacked all along?

  Highfield turned to the chart that lay folded upon his table with a pair of dividers. Beside it stood his half-packed trunk. He knew where his steward would have placed it, did not have to slide his hands too far under the carefully packed clothes before he found the frame that had spent the last six months face down in his drawer. Now he took it out, unwrapped the tissue paper in which Rennick had thoughtfully placed it. It was a silver-framed photograph of a young man, his arm round a smiling woman who tried, with one hand, to stop the wind blowing her hair in dark ribbons across her face.

  It would make a man of the lad, he had told his sister. The Navy turned boys into men. He would take care of him.

  He stared at the image of the young man grinning back at him, one arm resting on his wife’s shoulders. Then he moved the chart a little and placed it upright on the table. It would be the last thing he would take from this ship.

  They were a matter of hours from Plymouth. By the time the women woke, the ship would be preparing to disgorge them into their new lives. Tomorrow, from the earliest pipes, the ship would be a vortex of activity: endless lists crossed and checked, women and men queuing for their trunks, the procedural and ceremonial duties involved in the bringing of a great ship into harbour. He had seen it before, the excitement, the nervous anticipation of the men waiting to disembark. Except this time the war was over. This time they knew their leave was safe, their return permanent.

  They would pour off the ship, straight into those tearful embraces, eyes shut tight in gratitude, the pawing excitement of their children. They would walk or drive off in noisy cars to homes that might or might not be as they remembered them. If they were lucky, there would be a sense of a hole filled.

  Not everyone would be so lucky. He had seen some relatives turn up even after they had received the dreaded telegram, unable or unwilling to accept that their John or Robert or Michael was never coming home. You could spot them even in the teeming crowds, their eyes fixed on the gangplank, hands tight on handbags or newspapers, hoping to be proved wrong.

  And then, on board, there were those like Highfield. Those whose return was not marked by joyous or clamorous thanks, but who made their way inconspicuously through the crowds of jostling, reunited families, perhaps to be met miles away by the muted pleasure of relatives who tolerated them through familial pity. Through duty.

  Highfield stared again at the uniform he would wear for the last time tomorrow. Then he pulled out a chair, sat down at his desk and began to write.

  Dear Iris,

  I have some news for you. I am not coming to Tiverton. Please send Lord Hamworth my apologies and tell him I will be happy to make up any financial disadvantage my decision might cause on his part.

  I have decided, upon reflection, that a life on land is probably not for me . . .

  Nicol could think of nowhere else to go. Even at a quarter to one at night the mess was a seething mass of noisy men, high on anticipation and extra sippers, pulling their photographs from their lockers and packing them into overstuffed kitbags, exchanging stories about where they would be, what they wanted to do first. If the missus could find someone to mind the kids . . . He had not wanted to sit among them, had not thought himself capable of deflecting their good-natured joshing. He needed to be alone, to digest what had happened to him.

  He could still taste her. His body was charged, shot through with painful urgency. Did she hate him? Did she consider him no better than Tims, or any of them? Why had he done that to her, when she had spent weeks, years even, despising men who thought of her only in that way?

  He had gone up to the flight deck.

  He had not expected to find himself in company.

  The captain was standing on the foredeck, in front of the bridge. He was in his shirtsleeves, head bare to the wind. Nicol, emerging on to the deck, halted in the doorway and prepared to retreat but Highfield had spotted him and Nicol realised he would have to acknowledge him.

  ‘Finished your watch?’

  Nicol stepped forwards so that he was standing beside the captain. It was cold out here, the first time he had felt properly cold since they left Australia. ‘Yes, sir. We’re not posted outside the brides’ area tonight.’

  ‘You were outside Sister Mackenzie’s lot, weren’t you?’

  Nicol looked up sharply. But the captain’s look was benign, lost in thought. ‘That’s the one, sir.’ He couldn’t believe that she had been disgusted. Her cool hands had been pulling him in, not pushing him away. Nicol felt almost dizzy with uncertainty. How could I have done it after what Fay has done to me?

  The captain’s hands were thrust deep into his pockets. ‘They all all right, are they? I heard two of them were in the sick bay.’

  ‘All fine, sir.’

  ‘Good. Good. Where’s Duxbury?’

  ‘He’s – er – I believe he’s probably taking a nap, sir.’

  The captain gave him a sideways look, registered something in Nicol’s face and let out a faint but definite ‘hmph’. ‘You married, Nicol? Not sure I can remember if Dobson told me.’

  Nicol paused. He stared at the point where the black sea met the sky and a patch of stars were revealed as the clouds parted, the moon briefly illuminating the endlessly moving landscape. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’ He noted the captain’s enquiring look.

  ‘Don’t become too enamoured of your freedom, Nicol. A lack of responsibility, of ties . . . can be a two-edged sword.’

  ‘I’m starting to understand that, sir.’

  They stood there for some time in companionable silence. Nicol’s thoughts churned like the seas, his skin prickling when he thought of the woman below. What should I have done? he asked himself, over and over. What should I do?

  Highfield stepped a little closer to him. He pulled a cigar box from his pocket and offered one to Nicol. ‘Here. Celebration,’ he said. ‘My last night as a captain. My last night after f
orty-three years in the Navy.’

  Nicol took the cigar and allowed the older man to light it, his hand braced against the sea breeze. ‘You’ll miss it. Out here.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  Perplexed, Nicol turned to him.

  ‘I’m going to go straight back out,’ Highfield said. ‘See if I can crew merchant ships, that kind of thing. I’m told there’s plenty of demand. I don’t know, Nicol. These girls have made me think. If they can do it . . .’ He shrugged.

  ‘You don’t feel . . . like you’ve earned your time on land, sir?’

  The captain exhaled. ‘I’m not sure, Nicol, that I’d know how to be on land. Not for any length of time.’

  Somewhere beneath their feet, the riveted metal plates that made up Victoria’s flight deck groaned, signalling some distant tectonic shift. The two men gazed across the repainted surface, the sectioned-off areas where her innards lay exposed to the night sky. Their thoughts drifted to the engine, whose laboured efforts were apparent in the juddering, the broken trails of foam that should have been a continuous, sweeping line in the water. The ship knew. They both felt it.

  Captain Highfield drew on his cigar. He was in his shirt, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold. ‘Did you know she served in the Pacific?’

  ‘Victoria?’

  ‘Your charge. Sister Mackenzie.’

  ‘Sir.’ What was she doing now? Was she thinking of him? Unconsciously he raised his hand to his face where she had touched it. He had hardly heard what the captain was saying.

  ‘Brave woman. Brave the lot of them, really. Think about it. This time tomorrow they’ll know which way their future lies . . .’

  With that man, the man Nicol wanted to hate, wanted to disparage for the mere fact that he had a claim to her. But the way she had described him – how could he hate the gentle, affectionate soldier? How could he despise a man who had managed, from a sickbed, to be more of a husband than he himself had ever been . . . ?