Ship of Brides (23 page)

‘He’s nodding at you,’ said Margaret, waving cheerfully. ‘There! You not going to wave back?’

But Frances didn’t appear to have heard.

‘Look!’ interrupted Jean, grabbing Margaret’s elbow. ‘Bloody hell! They’ve got one of the officers!’

‘And he’s no ordinary officer,’ said Avice. ‘He’s the executive officer. He’s terribly high up, you know. Oh, my goodness!’ Her mouth twitched under her hand, as if she thought that, for the sake of propriety, she shouldn’t be seen to enjoy this quite so much.

Swearing and spluttering, the XO had been carried from beside the captain to the ducking stool and strapped in. There, set upon by Bears, his shirt was removed and, as the brides shrieked their approval, he was smothered in grease and his face plastered with what might have been oatmeal.

Several times he twisted in the seat, as if to appeal to someone behind him, but syrup was rubbed into his hair and feathers scattered on top. With every humiliation the noise level grew higher, until even the gulls circling the scene were shrieking. It was as if, having been made brutally aware of their own lack of control over their lives, the women took a cathartic pleasure in determining what happened to someone else’s.

‘Off! Off! Off!’ yelled the crowd, men’s voices mingling with women’s.

Margaret’s own humiliation was forgotten. She was grinning and shouting, reminded of her brothers’ rough-housing, of the way, as children, they had pinned each other to the dirt and forced cow dung into each other’s mouths.

She was distracted by a tap on her shoulder. Frances was mouthing something at her. It was impossible to hear what she was saying, but she seemed to be gesturing that she was leaving. She looked pale, Margaret thought, then turned back to the XO’s misery.

‘Look at him,’ yelled Avice, marvelling. ‘He looks absolutely furious.’

‘Mad as a cut snake,’ said Jean. ‘I didn’t think they’d do it to someone that high up.’

‘Are you okay—’ Margaret began, then saw that Frances had already gone.

At the urging of the now delirious crowd, the Royal Barber applied foam to the officer’s hair, then took a pair of oversized scissors and hacked at it. Then his mouth was cranked open by gleeful men and he was fed what Neptune announced as ‘seafarer’s medicine’. As he retched and spluttered, his face now all but unrecognisable, one of the Bears walked round the assembled women, proudly detailing its ingredients – castor oil, vinegar, soapsuds, and powdered egg. Two rotting fish were stuck into the XO’s ears, a woman’s scarf tied around his neck. There was a brief countdown, and then he was ducked, emerging twice to express his outrage.

‘You’ll all bloody well pay for this,’ he was shouting, through the suds. ‘I’ll get your names and take this up with your superiors.’

‘Hold your tongue, Dobbo,’ ordered Queen Amphitrite, ‘or you may find something even fishier on it.’

The women laughed louder.

‘I really can’t
believe
they’re meant to do that,’ said Avice fizzing with excitement. ‘I’m sure someone so high up isn’t meant to be included.’ Then she took on the stillness of a gun-dog scenting sport. ‘Oh, my goodness! That’s Irene Carter!’

Neptune’s court – and her companions – forgotten, she stood up and pushed her way through the jeering crowd, one hand raised to her hair as she went. ‘Irene! Irene! It’s Avice!’

‘Do you think the captain will report them for it?’ Jean said, wide-eyed, as the noise subsided and the spluttering victim was unstrapped from the ducking chair. ‘You’d think someone like that was off-limits, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Margaret.

She scanned the deck for Frances and spotted the captain. He was standing beside the island, his face partially obscured by the men around him. A shorter man with a heavily lined face stretched up to mutter something into his ear. It was hard to tell from that distance, what with the captain wearing his cap, and with so many people moving around, but she could have sworn he was laughing.

It was almost two hours before she found Frances.
National Velvet
was playing and she was seated alone in the cinema, several rows from the front, her sunglasses pushed back on her head, apparently absorbed in the sight of Mickey Rooney drunk in a saloon bar.

Margaret paused at the side of the little aisle, squinting in the dark to confirm to herself that it was Frances, then went over to her ‘You all right?’ she said, easing in beside her.

‘Fine,’ Frances murmured.

Margaret thought she had never met someone so determinedly emotionless in her life. ‘The ceremony was a good laugh,’ she said, raising her feet on to the seat in front. ‘The chef was charged with cooking inedible food. They stuck a dead squid on his head and made him eat yesterday’s slops, all mixed up. I thought it was a bit unfair. I mean, I couldn’t do any better.’

In the light from the screen she saw Frances smile in a way that suggested a complete lack of interest.

Margaret continued doggedly: ‘Jean’s gone to take tea with the able seamen. Oh, and Avice has left us. Found some old friend and they fell on each other like long-lost sweethearts. They even looked like each other – perfect hair, lots of makeup, that kind of thing. My guess is she’ll drop us like a hot brick now. I got the feeling we were a bit of a disappointment to her. Or I was,’ she said hurriedly. ‘You know, the fat old milkmaid with the stinky little dog. Probably not her idea of a social scene.’ The baby was kicking. Margaret shifted, scolding it silently.

‘I . . . was wondering why you left,’ she said. ‘I thought . . . well, I just wanted to check you were all right.’

At this point Frances evidently realised she was not going to be allowed to watch the film. Her posture softened a little and her head dipped towards Margaret. ‘I’m not very good with crowds,’ she said.

‘That it?’ said Margaret.

‘Yes.’

Elizabeth Taylor mounted her horse with the kind of easy leap that suggested weightlessness, a joy in the simple act of movement. Margaret watched her, reminded of her mother’s bad-tempered mare, remembering how, months earlier, she had been able to vault lithely on to its back, and then, showing off to her brothers, spin round athletically to face its rear. She had been able to do handstands on the older, quieter horse.

‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘About being a bit sharp earlier.’

Frances kept her eyes on the screen.

‘I just find – I find being pregnant a bit difficult. It’s not really me. And sometimes . . . I say things without thinking.’ Margaret rested her hands on her belly, watching as they lifted with the baby’s squirms. ‘It’s because of my brothers. I’m used to being direct. And I don’t always think about how it comes across.’

Frances was looking down now and the screen was illuminated briefly by cinematic sunlight. It was the only sign by which she could tell that the other woman was listening. ‘Actually,’ she continued, the darkness and their solitude allowing her to say the things she had kept to herself for so long, ‘I hate it. I shouldn’t say that but I do. I hate being so big. I hate not being able to walk up two bloody stairs without puffing like an old codger. I hate the look of it, the idea that I can’t do a bloody thing – eat, drink, walk around in the sun – without having to think of the baby.’

She fiddled with her hem. She was heartily sick of this skirt and of wearing the same things day after day. She had hardly worn a skirt in her life until she had become pregnant. She smoothed it distractedly.

Eventually she spoke again. ‘You know, almost as soon as Joe and I got married he was gone and I was living with Dad and my brothers. Married in theory, I guess you could call it. It certainly didn’t feel like being married. But I didn’t complain because we were all in the same boat, right? None of us had our men with us. And then the war ended. And then I discovered . . . you know . . .’ She looked down. ‘And instead of finally getting my passage overseas and meeting Joe again and just being able to enjoy me and him being together, finally being together, which was all I really wanted, we’ve already got this thing to take into account. No honeymoon. No time to ourselves. By the time it’s born we’ll have been alone together for about four weeks of our married life.’

She rubbed her face, grateful that Frances couldn’t see it. ‘You probably think I’m awful for saying all this. You’ve probably seen all sorts of death and sickness and babies and are sitting there thinking I should be grateful. But I can’t be. I just can’t. I hate the thought that I’m meant to feel all these feminine, maternal things that I can’t make myself feel.’ Her voice caught. ‘Most of all, I hate the thought that once it’s born I’m never going to be free again . . .’

Her eyes had filled with tears. Awkwardly she tried to wipe her eyes with her left hand so that Frances would not know. This was what it was turning her into: a stupid, weeping girl. She blew her nose on a damp handkerchief. Tried to get comfortable again and flinched as the baby delivered another sharp kick to her ribs, as if in retribution. It was then that she felt a cool hand on her arm.

‘I suppose it’s to be expected,’ Frances said, ‘that we’ll get a bit tense with each other. I mean, living so close and all.’

Margaret sniffed again. ‘I didn’t mean to cause offence.’

It was then that Frances turned to her. Margaret could just discern her huge eyes. She swallowed, as if what she had to say required effort. ‘None taken.’ And, after the briefest of squeezes, she took her hand back into her lap and returned to the film.

Margaret and Frances walked back along the hangar deck, having joined the second shift, rather than their allotted one, for dinner, due to the late finish of the film. This request had prompted as much cheek-sucking and ill-tempered acquiescence among the women’s officers, Margaret said, as if they had asked to eat in the nude. ‘Lukewarm corned-beef pie as opposed to warm corned-beef pie. It hardly requires an international treaty, does it?’

Frances had smiled for the second time that evening; Margaret had noted it because each time her face had been transformed. That porcelain stillness, the melancholy air of withholding, had evaporated briefly and this sweetly beautiful stranger had broken through. She had been tempted to comment on it, but what little she knew of Frances had told her that any remark would bring down the shutters again. And Margaret was not a stickybeak.

Frances was talking about life on board a hospital ship. As her quiet, precise voice detailed the rounds, the injuries of a young marine she had treated outside the Solomon Islands, Margaret thought of that smile, then of Letty. Of the brief, blushing youthfulness of her, that strange almost-prettiness that beset her features when she had dared briefly to believe in a future with Murray Donleavy. She pushed away the memory, feeling darkly ashamed.

The temperature had not cooled as much as it had on previous evenings, and a balminess in the air reminded her of summer at home, of sitting out on the front porch, bare feet warm against the rough boards, the sound of the occasional slap as one of her brothers abruptly ended the night flight of some carnivorous insect. She tried to imagine what they would be doing that night. Perhaps Daniel would be sitting on the porch skinning rabbits with his penknife . . .

Suddenly she became aware of what Frances was telling her. She stopped. Got Frances to repeat herself. ‘Are you sure? He knows?’ she said.

Frances’s hands were thrust deep into her pockets. ‘That’s what he said. He asked whose she was.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘No.’

‘So what did you say?’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘What do you mean, you didn’t say anything?’

‘I didn’t say anything. I shut the door.’

They fell back against the pipe-lined wall as two officers walked past. One tipped his hat, and Margaret smiled politely. She waited until they were far down the gangway before she spoke again. ‘He told you he knew about the dog and you didn’t ask him whether he was going to tell on us? Or how long he had known? Nothing?’

‘Well, he hasn’t told on us yet, has he?’

‘But we don’t know what he’s going to do.’ Frances’s jaw, Margaret realised, was peculiarly set.

‘I just . . . I didn’t want to get into a discussion about it.’

‘Why not?’ Margaret asked incredulously.

‘I didn’t want him to get any ideas . . .’

‘Ideas? About what?’

Frances managed to look furious and defensive at once. ‘I didn’t want him to think he could use the dog as a bargaining ploy.’

There was a lengthy silence, Margaret frowning in incomprehension.

‘It’s a big deal. I thought he might want something . . . in return.’ She seemed faintly embarrassed now, as if she had understood how this logic might sound.

Margaret shook her head. ‘Jeez, Frances. You’ve got a strange view of how people go about things.’

They had arrived at their cabin. Margaret was trying to think whether there had been some hidden meaning in the way the marine had waved to them and was about to suggest that she should be the one to talk to him when he arrived, but she was distracted by the sight of a girl running up the passageway. She had shoulder-length dark hair secured off her face with bobby pins, one of which had become detached and was hanging loose. She skidded to a halt when she reached them, and scanned their door. ‘You live here? 3G?’ she panted.

‘Yeah.’ Margaret shrugged. ‘So?’

‘You know a girl called Jean?’ she asked, still breathless. And when they nodded: ‘You might want to get downstairs. Keep an eye on your little mate, before someone official finds her. She’s got herself into a bit of trouble.’

‘Where?’ said Margaret.

‘Seamen’s mess. E Deck. Go left by the second flight of stairs. It’s the blue door near the fire extinguisher. I’ve got to go. The marines are going to be here in a minute. You’ll have to hurry.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Frances to Margaret. ‘I’ll be faster. You catch me up.’ She slipped off her shoes, dumped her cardigan and bag at their door, then sprinted down the passageway, her long thin legs flying up behind her as she went.

There were all manner of hardships one could endure, Avice thought, if one happened to be in the right company. Since she had found Irene Carter that afternoon, and had been invited to join her and her friends for tea, then a lecture (Irene had sewn some simply marvellous peg-bags) and finally supper, they had talked for so long and so animatedly that she had forgotten not only the time but how much she detested the old ship.