Page 41 of The Ship of Brides
It was at this point that the passengers, who had spent the previous days meandering round the decks like a restless swarm, retired, at first one by one, then in greater numbers, to their bunks. Those remaining on their feet made their way unsteadily along the passageways, legs braced, leaning whey-faced against the walls. Lectures were cancelled, as was the planned lifeboat drill when the ship’s company realised that too few women could stand to make it worthwhile. The women’s service officers still able to walk did their best to distribute anti-nausea pills.
The pounding of the seas, the periodic sounding of the ship’s horn and the incessant clanging of the chains and aeroplanes above them made sleep impossible. Avice and Jean (it would be Jean, wouldn’t it?) were lying on their bunks locked into their private worlds of nauseous misery. At least, Avice’s world had been private: she thought she knew Jean’s every symptom – how her stomach felt like it had curdled, how even a piece of dry bread had led her to disgrace herself outside the flight-deck canteen, how that horrible stoker who kept following them along by the laundry had eaten a cheese and Vegemite sandwich right in front of her, just to make her go even more green. It had all been hanging out of his mouth and—
‘Yes, yes, Jean. I get the picture,’ Avice had said, and blocked her ears.
‘You not coming for some tea, then?’ said Margaret, standing in the doorway. ‘It’s potted steak.’ The dog was asleep on her bed, apparently unaffected by the rough weather.
Jean was turned to the wall. Her reply, perhaps fortuitously, was unintelligible.
‘Come on, then, Frances,’ said Margaret. ‘I guess it’s just you and me.’
Margaret Donleavy had met Joseph O’Brien eighteen months previously when her brother Colm had brought him home from the pub, along with six or seven other mates who became regular fixtures in the Donleavy household in the months leading up to the end of the war. It was her brothers’ way of keeping the house busy after their mother had gone, she said. They couldn’t cope with the emptiness at first, the deafening silence caused by the absence of one quiet person. Neither her father nor her brothers had wanted to leave her and Daniel alone while they drowned their sorrows in the pub (they were mindful sorts, even if they didn’t always come across that way) so for several months they had brought the pub to the farm, sometimes fourteen or fifteen men hanging off the back of the pickup truck, frequently Americans bearing spirits and beer, or Irishmen singing songs that made Murray’s eyes brim with tears, and the house was filled nightly with the sound of men singing, drinking, and occasionally Daniel weeping as he tried to make sense of it all.
‘Joe was the only one who didn’t ask me out or make a nuisance of himself,’ she told Frances, tucking into mashed potato as they sat in the near-empty canteen. ‘The others either treated me like some kind of barmaid, or tried to give me a squeeze when my brothers weren’t looking. I had to whack one with a shovel when he came on a bit fresh in the dairy.’ She grabbed her metal tray as it slid across the table. ‘He didn’t come back.’ A week later Colm had caught another peeping through the door when she was in the bathroom, and he, Niall and Liam had thrashed him to within an inch of his life. After that they had stopped bringing men home.
Except Joe, who had come every day, had teased Daniel into good humour, had offered her father advice gleaned from his father’s own smallholding in Devon, and had cast surreptitious glances at her with offerings of too-small nylons and cigarettes.
‘I had to ask him in the end,’ she said, ‘why he hadn’t made a move on me. He said he thought if he hung on long enough I’d decide he was part of the furniture.’
They had walked out for the first time three months to the day before the US Airforce dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, and had wed several weeks afterwards, Margaret in her mother’s wedding dress, on the last occasion Joe could get leave. She had known they’d be all right together. Joe, she said, was like her brothers. He didn’t take himself or her too seriously.
‘Was he pleased about the baby?’
‘When I told him I was expecting, he asked me whether it was due at lambing season.’ She snorted.
‘Not the romantic kind.’ Frances smiled.
‘Joe wouldn’t know romance if it smacked him in the face,’ Margaret said. ‘I don’t mind, though. I’m not really one for all that sappy stuff. Live with four farming men long enough, it’s hard to associate romance with the same sex that have spent years flicking nose-pickings at you under the kitchen table.’ She grinned, took another mouthful. ‘I wasn’t even going to get married. To me marriage was just more cooking and wet socks.’ She glanced down at herself, and the grin disappeared. ‘I still ask myself every now and then how I’ve managed to end up like this.’
‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ said Frances. She had had a second helping, Margaret noted – the baby’s position meant she couldn’t manage very much without indigestion – yet she was as thin as a rake. Pudding had been a ‘bathing beauty’, blancmange, so named, the chef had said, smirking, because it shivered and had lovely curves.
‘How did she die? Sorry,’ said Frances, hurriedly, as Margaret’s pale skin coloured. ‘I don’t mean to be... indelicate. It’s the nursing.’
‘No... no...’ said Margaret.
They clutched the table, which was clamped to the floor, arms shooting out to stop salt, pepper or beakers sliding off.
‘It came out of nowhere,’ she said eventually, as the wave subsided. ‘One minute she was there, the next minute she was... gone.’
The canteen was almost silent, apart from the low muttering of those women brave or hardy enough to contemplate food, and the occasional crash as a piece of crockery or a tray fell victim to another swell. The queues of the early days had evaporated, and the few girls with an appetite dawdled in front of the serving dishes, taking their time to choose.
‘I’d say that was rather a good way to go,’ said Frances. Her eyes, when she looked at Margaret, were clear and steady, a vivid blue. ‘She wouldn’t have known a thing.’ She paused, then added, ‘Really. There are far worse things that could have happened to her.’
Margaret might have dwelt on this peculiar statement longer had it not been for the giggling in the corner. Distantly audible as background noise for some minutes, it had now built up into a peak, rising and falling in volume as if in conjunction with the waves outside.
The two women turned in their chairs to see that some women in the corner were no longer alone: they had been joined by several men in engineers’ overalls. Margaret recognised one – she had exchanged a greeting with him as he had scrubbed the decks the previous day. The men had closed in around the women, who appeared to be enjoying a little male attention.
‘Jean should be here,’ said Margaret, absently, and turned back to her food.
‘Do you think we should take them something? Some mashed potato?’
‘Be cold by the time we get it there,’ said Margaret. ‘Besides, I don’t fancy Jean bringing it up over my bunk. It smells bad enough in there as it is.’
Frances stared out of the window at the water heaving and churning around them, occasionally meeting the salt-stained windows with an emphatic slap.
She was reserved, thought Margaret, the kind who always seemed to have a second conversation taking place in her head even as she spoke. ‘I hope Maude Gonne’s all right,’ she said aloud.
Frances turned, as if brought back reluctantly from distant thoughts.
