Page 56 of The Ship of Brides
Then, as they stood in silence around her, ‘I bought two pairs of new shoes. They cost me all my savings. For going ashore. I thought he’d want to see me in nice shoes.’
‘I’m sure they’re very nice shoes,’ the chaplain murmured helplessly.
Then, with a heartbreaking look round the room, she said, ‘I don’t know what I do now.’
Captain Highfield, along with the women’s officer, had wired the girl’s parents, then contacted London, who had advised that they should put her off at Ceylon where a representative of the Australian government would take charge of the arrangements to bring her home. The radio operator would make sure that her parents or other family members had any relevant information. They would not let her go until they were sure that arrangements were in place to meet her at the other end. These procedures were laid out in the paperwork recently sent from London and had been put in place for the earlier return of GI brides.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said, once the arrangements had been made, thin shoulders straightening as she pulled herself together. ‘To put you all to so much trouble, I mean. I’m very sorry.’
‘It’s really no trouble, Mrs... erm... Millicent.’
The women’s officer had placed an arm round the girl’s shoulders to steer her out; it was hard to tell whether the gesture was protective or merely indicative of her determination to get her away from the captain’s office.
For several moments after she had left the room was silent, as if, in the face of such emotional devastation, no one knew what to say. Highfield, sitting down, the girl’s forlorn voice still echoing round his walls, found he was developing a headache.
‘I’ll get on to the Red Cross in Ceylon, sir,’ said the chaplain, eventually. ‘Make sure there’s someone who can stay with her a little. Give her a bit of support.’
‘That would be a good idea,’ said Highfield. He scribbled something meaningless on the notepad in front of him. ‘I suppose we should contact the pilot’s supervising officer as well, just to make sure there are no extenuating circumstances. You take charge of that, Dobson, will you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Dobson. He had entered just as Millicent was leaving, and was whistling a jaunty tune that Highfield found intensely annoying.
He wondered whether he should have spent more time with the girl, whether he should get the WSO to bring her to dinner. A meal at the captain’s table might be consoling after her humiliation. But he had always found it difficult to judge these things.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Dobson said.
‘What?’ said Highfield.
‘She’ll probably have found another young dope by the time she leaves Ceylon. Pretty girl like that.’ He grinned. ‘I don’t think these Aussie girls are too fussy, as long as they find someone to get them off the old sheep farm.’
Highfield was speechless.
‘Besides, it’s one less bride on board, eh, Captain?’ Dobson laughed, apparently pleased with his own humour. ‘Bit of luck we could have jettisoned the lot by the time we reach Plymouth.’
Rennick, who had been standing in the corner, briefly met his captain’s eye, then quietly left the room.
Until that point the world as the brides had known it had steadily receded by nautical miles, and theVictoriahad become a world of its own, existing discretely from the continuing life on land. The routines of the ship had become the routines of the women, and those faces who daily moved around them, scrubbing, painting or welding, their population. This new world stretched from the captain’s office at one end to the PX store (purveyors of lipstick, washing-powder, writing paper and other essentials – without a ration book) at the other, and from the flight deck, surrounded by its endless blue horizon to the bowels of the bilge pumps, the port and starboard engines.
The days were marked off for some women by letter-writing and devotions, for others by lectures and movies, punctuated by walks round the free sections of the blustery deck or by the odd game of bingo. With food provided, and their lives dictated by the rules, there were few decisions to make. Marooned on their floating island, they became passive, surrendered themselves to these new rhythms, surrounded by nothing except the slowly changing climate, the increasingly dramatic sunsets, the endless ocean. Gradually, inevitably, in the same way as a pregnant woman cannot imagine the birth, it became harder to look forward to their destination, too much of a struggle to imagine the unknown.
Still harder to think back.
In this stilled atmosphere, news of the Not Wanted Don’t Come filtered through the ship as rapidly and pervasively as a virus. The collective mood, which had taken on a hint of holiday as the girls felt less nauseous, was suddenly, distantly, fraught. A new low note of anxiety underlay the conversation in the canteen; a spate of headaches and palpitations presented themselves to the sick bay. There was a rapid rise in the number of queries about when the next batch of letters was to arrive. At least one bride confided in the chaplain that she thought she might have changed her mind, as if by saying the words, and hearing his reassurance, she could ward off the possibility of her husband doing the same.
That one piece of paper, and its four bald words, had brought home to them rudely the reality of their situation. It told them that their future was not necessarily their own, that other unseen forces were even now dictating the months and years to follow. It reminded them that many had married in haste, and that no matter what they felt, what sacrifices they had made, they were now waiting, like sitting ducks, for their husbands to repent at leisure.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the arrival that afternoon of King Neptune and his cohorts prompted an atmosphere on board that could at best be described as fevered and at worst as manic.
After lunch Margaret had dragged the others up on to the flight deck. Avice had declared she would rather rest on her bunk, that she was feeling too delicate to enjoy herself. Frances had said, in her cool little voice, that she didn’t think it was her kind of thing. Margaret, who had not failed to notice the chill in the air between the two, and a little unbalanced herself by the discovery in the bathroom that morning of a weeping girl convinced – in the face of no evidence – that she was about to get a telegram, had determined it would do them all good to go.
Her motives were not entirely selfless: she didn’t want to act as a buffer for the others’ jangling moods, couldn’t face yet another afternoon ricocheting aimlessly between the canteen and the confines of the dormitory.
Jean, at least, had needed no persuading.
When they had emerged outside, the flight deck – normally deserted apart from rows of attentive seagulls, lost brides, or lonely pairs of seamen scrubbing their way backwards in steady formation – was a seething mass of people, the sun bouncing off the deck around them, their chatter lifting above the sound of the engines as they seated themselves around a newly constructed canvas tank. It was several seconds before Margaret noticed the chair suspended above it from the mobile crane.
‘Good God! They’re not going to stick us in that, are they?’ she said.
‘Need a dockyard crane for you,’ said Jean, as she pushed, elbows out like elephants’ ears, through the crowd, oblivious to sharp looks and muttering. ‘Come on, girls. Plenty of room over here. Mind your backs! Pregnant lady coming through.’
