Page 14 of The Ship of Brides
‘When’s the next one due in?’
‘Around three weeks, according to my orders,’ said the dark-eyed girl. Avice thought she might have said her name was Jean, but she was hopeless with names and had forgotten them all immediately she’d been introduced. ‘She’d better be as nice as theQueen Mary. She even had a hair salon with heated dryers. I’m desperate to get my hair done properly before I see Stan again.’
‘She was a wonderful woman, Queen Mary,’ said Mrs Proffit, from the end of the table. ‘Such a lady.’
‘You’ve got your orders?’ A freckled girl on the other side of the table was frowning at Jean.
‘Last week.’
‘But you’re low priority. You said you didn’t even put in your papers until a month ago.’
There was a brief silence. Around the table, several girls exchanged glances, then fixed their eyes on their embroidery. Mrs Proffit looked up; she had apparently picked up on the subtle cooling in the atmosphere. ‘Anyone need more thread?’ she asked, peering over her spectacles.
‘Yes, well, sometimes you just get lucky,’ said Jean, and excused herself from the table.
‘How come she gets on?’ said the freckled girl, turning to the women on each side of her. ‘I’ve been waiting nearly fifteen months, and she’s getting on the next boat out. How can that be right?’ Her voice had sharpened with the injustice of it. Avice made a mental note not to mention her own orders.
‘She’s carrying, isn’t she?’ muttered another girl.
‘What?’
‘Jean. She’s in the family way. You know what? The Americans won’t let you over once you’re past four months.’
‘Who’s doing the penguin?’ said Mrs Proffit. ‘You’ll need to keep that black thread for whoever’s doing the penguin.’
‘Hang on,’ said a redhead threading a needle. ‘Her Stan left in November. She said he was on the same ship as my Ernie.’
‘So she can’t be in the family way.’
‘Or she is... and...’
Eyes widened and met, accompanied by the odd smirk.
‘Are you up for a little roo, Sarah dear?’ Mrs Proffit beamed at the girls and pulled some pieces of fawn felt out of her cloth bag. ‘I do think the little roos are rather sweet, don’t you?’
Several minutes later Jean returned to her chair, and folded her arms rather combatively. She seemed to realise that she was no longer the topic of conversation and visibly relaxed – although she might have wondered at the sudden industriousness of the toy-making around her.
‘I met Ian, my husband, at a tea-dance,’ said Avice, in an attempt to break the silence. ‘I was part of a young ladies’ reception committee, and he was the second man I offered a cup of tea to.’
‘Was that all you offered him?’
That was Jean. She might have known. ‘From what I’ve heard I don’t suppose everyone’s idea of hospitality is quite the same as yours,’ she retorted. She remembered how she had blushed as she poured; he had been staring conspicuously at her ankles – of which she was rather proud.
Petty Officer Ian Stewart Radley. At twenty-six, a whole five years older than her, which Avice considered just right, tall and straight-backed with eyes the colour of the sea, a gentlemanly British accent and broad, soft hands that had made her tremble the first time they ever brushed hers – even holding a shortbread finger. He had asked her to dance – even though no one else was on the floor – and with him being a serviceman, she had thought it mean-spirited to refuse. What was a quickstep or a Gay Gordons when he was looking death in the face?
Less than four months later they were married, a tasteful ceremony in the Collins Street register office. Her father had been suspicious, had made her mother quiz her – in a discreet woman-to-woman way, of course – as to whether there was any reason for such a hasty marriage other than Ian’s imminent departure. Ian had told her father, rather honourably, she thought, that he was happy to wait, if that was what Avice’s parents wanted, that he would do nothing to upset them, but she had been determined to become Mrs Radley. The war had hastened everything, foreshortened the natural timescale of such things. And she had known, from that first cup of tea, there was no one else in the world she could envisage marrying; no one else upon whom she could consider bestowing her many gifts.
‘But we know nothing about him, dear,’ her mother had said, wringing her hands.
‘He’s perfect.’
‘You know that’s not what I mean.’
‘What do you need to know? He’s been out there holding the Brisbane line, hasn’t he? Doesn’t protecting our country, putting his own life at risk twelve thousand miles from his home to save us from the Japs, make him worthy of my hand?’
‘No need to be melodramatic, sweetheart,’ her father had said.
They had given in, of course. They always did. Her sister Deanna had been furious.
