Page 36 of The Ship of Brides
‘No,’ said Margaret, sliding her feet back under the covers. ‘No, just...’ She couldn’t explain. ‘Just having trouble getting to sleep.’
‘Me too.’
Her voice had sounded uncharacteristically small. Margaret felt a swell of pity for her. She was barely more than a child. ‘Want to come down here for a bit?’ she whispered.
She could just make out Jean’s slender limbs climbing rapidly down the ladder, and then the girl slid in at the other end of her bunk. ‘No room at the top end.’ She giggled and, despite herself, Margaret giggled back. ‘Don’t let that baby kick me. And don’t let that dog slip its nose up my drawers.’
They lay quietly for a few minutes, Margaret unable to work out whether she found Jean’s skin against hers comforting or unsettling. Jean fidgeted for a while, legs twitching impatiently, and Margaret felt Maude Gonne lift her head in enquiry.
‘What’s your husband’s name?’ Jean asked eventually.
‘Joe.’
‘Mine’s Stan.’
‘You said.’
‘Stan Castleforth. He’s nineteen on Tuesday. His mum wasn’t too happy when he told her he’d got wed, but he says she’s calmed down a bit now.’
Margaret lay back, staring at the blackness above her, thinking of the warm letters she had received from Joe’s mother and wondering whether courage or foolhardiness had sent a half-child alone to the other side of the world. ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine once you get to know each other,’ she said, when continued silence might have suggested the opposite.
‘From Nottingham,’ said Jean. ‘D’you know it?’
‘No.’
‘Nor me. But he said it’s where Robin Hood came from. So I reckon it’s probably in a forest.’
Jean shifted again, and Margaret could hear her rummaging at the end of the bunk. ‘Mind if I have a smoke?’ she hissed.
‘Go ahead.’
There was a brief flare, and she glimpsed Jean’s illuminated face, rapt in concentration as she lit her cigarette. Then the match was shaken out, and the cabin returned to darkness.
‘I think about Stan loads, you know,’ she said. ‘He’s dead handsome. All my mates thought so. I met him outside the cinema and he and his mate offered to pay for me and mine to go in.Ziegfield Follies. In technicolour.’ She exhaled. ‘He told me he hadn’t kissed a girl since Portsmouth and I couldn’t really say no in the circumstances. He had a hand up my skirt before “This Heart Of Mine”.’
Margaret heard her humming the tune.
‘I got married in parachute silk. My aunt Mavis got it for me from a GI she knew who did bent radios. My mum’s not really up for all that stuff.’ She paused. ‘In fact, I get on better with my aunt Mavis. Always have done. My mum reckons I’m a waste of skin.’
Margaret shifted on to her side, thinking of her own mother. Of her constancy, her bossy, exasperated maternal presence, her freckled hands, lifting to pin her hair out of the way several hundred times a day. She found her mouth had dried.
‘Was it different, when you got... you know?’
‘What?’
‘Did you have to do it differently... to have a baby, I mean.’
‘Jean!’
‘What?’ Jean’s voice rose in indignation. ‘Someone’s got to tell me.’
Margaret sat up, careful not to bang her head on the bunk above. ‘You must know.’
‘I wouldn’t be asking, would I?’
‘You mean no one’s ever told you... about the birds and the bees?’
Jean snorted. ‘I know where he’s got to put it, if that’s what you’re talking about. I quite like that bit. But I don’t know how doing that leads to babies.’
