Page 131 of The Ship of Brides
‘Look, Marine, please can you sort this out? I need to set my hair or it’ll never be dry in time.’ The girl in the doorway pointed at her watch.
‘She came back last night and then she went again.’
‘Where is she?’ He grasped Margaret’s wrist. His face was alive with anxiety, as if he had only just worked out how close they all were to dispersing. ‘You’ve got to tell me, Maggie.’
‘I don’t know.’ Then she understood something that had been nagging at her for weeks. ‘I guess I thought she might be with you.’
Avice stood in the infirmary bathroom, applying a final coat of lipstick. Her eyelashes, under two layers of block mascara, widened her marble-blue eyes. Her skin, which had been ghostly pale, was now apparently glowing with health. It was always important to look one’s best, especially at an occasion, and that was the marvellous thing about cosmetics. No one would know what awful things were going on inside one, given some pressed powder, rouge and a good lipstick. No one would know that one still felt a little shaky, even if there were mauve shadows under one’s eyes. Underneath the dark red two-piece, firmly enclosed by a quality girdle, there was no clue that one’s waist had been even an inch wider than it was now, or if what remained of one’s dreams was still bleeding away into unmentionable wads of cotton padding. No one would need to know if secretly one felt like one had been literally turned inside-out.
There, she thought, as she stared at her reflection. I look – I look...
He would not be there to meet her. She knew this as surely as she believed that now, finally, she knew him. He would wait until he had heard from her, until he knew which way the land lay. If she said yes, he would fall on her with protestations of eternal love. He would probably spend years telling her how much he loved her, how he adored her, how anyone else (she could not bring herself to use the words ‘his wife’) meant nothing to him. If she told him she didn’t want him, she suspected he would grieve for a few days, then probably consider himself to have had a lucky escape. She pictured him now, at the kitchen table, his mind already on this ship, bad-tempered and distant with this uncomprehending Englishwoman. A woman who, if she knew Ian as well as Avice did, would choose not to ask too many questions as to the cause of his foul mood.
The WSO, for whom the word ‘brisk’ might have been coined, stuck her head round the door. ‘You all right, Mrs Radley? I’ve arranged for your small suitcase to be taken up to the boat deck for you so you won’t have to carry anything.’ She smiled brightly. ‘There, now. Don’t you look a hundred per cent better than yesterday? Everything all right?’ She nodded towards Avice’s stomach and lowered her voice discreetly, even though they were the only people in the room: ‘Did you have any more undergarments you wanted me to fetch from the laundry room?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Avice. After everything else she had been forced to endure, she was not prepared to suffer the indignity of discussing her underwear with a stranger. ‘I’ll be ready in two minutes,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
The WSO withdrew.
Avice placed her lipstick back in its case and dusted a last layer of fine powder over her face. She stood for a moment, turned a few degrees to each side, checking her reflection – a well-practised movement – and then, just for a second, her face fell and she gazed baldly at herself, seeing beyond the carefully pinked cheeks, the disguised eyes. I look, she thought... wiser.
Highfield stood on the roof of the bridge, flanked by Dobson, the first lieutenant and the radio operator, and gave orders down the intercom to the coxswain as the great old warship negotiated her way by degrees into the narrower water, and the English coastline, at first a misty hint, grew into solid reality around them. Below him the sailors, dressed in their number-one uniforms, stood in perfect lines round the outside edge of the flight deck, while officers and senior ranks manned the island area – a ‘Procedure Alpha’, or Prod A, as it was known to the men. They stood in near silence, feet apart, hands behind their backs, immaculate dress somehow disguising the tired, shabby vessel they travelled on. Coming alongside was traditionally one of the finest moments of a captain’s journey: it was impossible not to be filled with pride, standing on a great warship with one’s men below, the noise of the welcoming crowd already in their ears. Highfield knew that there wasn’t a man among them for whom the last few months weren’t briefly forgotten in the well-ordered pleasure of such a ceremony.
Not soVictoria. Engine hiccuping, rudder threatening intermittently to jam, the battered ship laboured in, bullied by the engineers and tugs, oblivious to the beauty of the hills of Devon and Cornwall that swelled on each side of her. When he had visited the starboard engine room earlier that morning, the chief engineer reported that it was probably just as well they were finally home. He wasn’t sure he would be able to get her going again. ‘She knows she’s done her job,’ he observed cheerfully, wiping his hands on his overalls. ‘She’s had enough. I got to say, sir, I know how she feels.’
‘Port bridge, alter course to zero six zero.’
He turned to the radio operator and heard his command repeated back to him.
The light was peculiarly bright, the kind of light that heralds a fine, clear day. Plymouth Sound was beautiful, an appropriate send-off for the old ship, and a good welcome, he thought, for the brides. A few white clouds scudded across the blue sky, the sea, flecked with white horses, glinted around the ship, somehow reflecting her in a little of their glory. After Bombay and Suez, after the endless muddied blue of the ocean, everything looked an impossible green.
The docks had begun to fill almost at first light. First a few anxious-looking men, their collars turned up against the cold, smoking or disappearing briefly to refuel with tea and toast, then larger groups, families, standing in huddles on the dockside, occasionally pointing at the approaching ship. Waving at those brides who were already on the deck. The radio operator had had an exchange with the harbourmaster and members of the British Red Cross. He had reported that some of the husbands had been forced to sleep in doorways; there was not a room to be had in the whole of Plymouth.
‘Hands to harbour stations, hands to harbour stations, hands out of the rig of the day, clear off the upper deck, close all doors and hatches.’ The Tannoy closed off. It was the last command before they came into harbour.
The captain stood, his hands on the rail in front of him. They were coming home. Whatever that meant.
Nicol had checked the infirmary, the deck canteen and the brides’ bathroom, prompting a shrieking near-riot in the process. Now he ran swiftly along the hangar deck towards the main brides’ canteen, oblivious of the curious glances of the last women returning from breakfast. Arm in arm they walked, their hair set, their dresses and jackets pressed into razor-sharp creases, their shoulders hunched with excitement. Twice he had passed other marines as they headed for the flight deck; seeing him at speed, and knowing his reputation, they had assumed him to be on some urgent official duty. Only afterwards, as they registered the crumpled state of his uniform, his unshaven face, might they have remarked that Nicol was looking a bit rough. Amazing how some men felt able to let themselves go once they knew they were headed home.
He skidded to a halt at the main doorway, and scanned the room. There were only thirty or so brides still seated: so close to disembarkation, most were finishing their packing, waiting on the boat deck or in turrets, skirts billowing in the stiff sea breeze. He paused for a moment, waiting for this girl to turn, or that one to look up, making sure neither of them was her. Then he cursed his befuddled head.
Where would he start his search? There were people milling around everywhere. In half an hour, how was he meant to find one person in a ship, a rabbit warren of rooms and compartments, among sixteen hundred others?
‘Trevor, Mrs Annette.’ The WSO stood at the top of the gangway and waited for Mrs Trevor to fight her way to the front of the group. There was a brief hush before a suitcase was held aloft by a blonde woman, hair set in huge ringlets, hat askew as a result of her struggle through the others. ‘That’s me!’ she squealed. ‘I’m getting off!’
‘Your belongings have been cleared by Customs. Your trunks will be on the dockside, and you will need proof of identity when you collect them. You may disembark.’ The WSO moved her clipboard to her left hand. ‘Good luck,’ she said, and held out a hand.
Mrs Trevor, her eyes already on the bottom of the gangplank, distractedly shook it and then, hoisting her case to her hip made her way down, wobbling in her high heels.
The noise was deafening. On board the women’s voices rose in a swell of anticipation, their heads bobbing as they fought to catch a glimpse of a loved one in the crowd. Around the bottom of the gangplank, several marines now stood firm, holding back the crowds pressing forward to meet them.
On the dockside, a brass band played ‘Colonel Bogey’, and a loudhailer tried vainly to direct people away from the edge of the quay. Jostling groups cheered and waved, trying to attract attention, shouting messages that were carried away on the breeze, lost in the general cacophony.
Margaret stood in the queue, her heart thumping, hoping it wouldn’t be too long before she could sit down. The woman in front of her kept jumping up and down in an attempt to see over the others’ heads and had twice barged into her. Normally this would have been enough for Margaret to mutter a salty word or two in her ear, but now her mouth was dry, nervousness rooting her to the spot.
It all seemed so abrupt, so rushed. She had had no chance to say goodbye to anyone, not Tims, not the cook at the flight-deck canteen, not her cabin-mates, both of whom had vanished into thin air. Was this it? she thought. My last links with home, just vanishing on the breeze?
As the first bride reached the bottom of the gangplank a cheer went up, and the air was lit with a battery of flashbulbs. The band struck up ‘Waltzing Matilda’.
