Page 90 of The Ship of Brides
‘What’s going on?’ said Avice, from above. ‘What’s he talking about?’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Jones-the-Welsh, and burst out laughing. ‘A nurse! Wait till we tell old Kenny! A nurse!’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Jones?’
Jones’s face, when it met Nicol’s, held the same amused smile with which he greeted most of life’s great surprises, whether they were extra sippers, victories at sea or successful cheating at cards. ‘Your little nurse there, Nicol,’ he said, ‘used to be a brass.’
‘What?’
‘Duckworth knows – we came across her at a club in Queensland, must be four, five years ago now.’
His laughter, like his voice, carried over the noise of the engine to the ears of the exhausted men and the brides heading wearily out on to the walkway. Some had stopped, in response to Jones’s exclamation, and were listening.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, man.’ Nicol looked up at Frances, who was nearly at the hatch. She stared straight ahead, and then, perhaps at the end of some unseen internal struggle, allowed herself to glance down at him. In her eyes he saw resignation. He found he had gone cold.
‘But she’s married.’
‘What? To her bludger? Manager’s prize girl, she was! And now look! Can you credit it? She’s turned into Florence Nightingale!’ His burst of incredulous laughter followed Frances’s swift footsteps all the way out of the hatch and back out along the passageway.
15
There was one girl from England,
Susan Summers was her name,
For fourteen years transported was,
We all well knew the same.
Our planter bought her freedom
And he married her out of hand,
Good usage then she gave to us
Upon Van Diemen’s Land.
from ‘Van Diemen’s Land’,
Australian folk song
Australia, 1939
Frances had checked the Arnott’s biscuit tin four times before Mr Radcliffe came. She had also checked the back of the cutlery drawer, in the pot behind the screen door and under the mattress in what had once, many years previously, been her parents’ room. She had asked her mother several times where the money was, and in her mother’s snoring, alcohol-fumed reply the answer was obvious.
But not to Mr Radcliffe. ‘So, where is it?’ he had said, smiling. The same way that a shark smiles when it opens its mouth to bite.
‘I’m real sorry. I don’t know what she’s done with it.’ Her ankle was hooked behind the door to restrict his view inside, but Mr Radcliffe leant to one side and gazed through the screen to where her mother lolled in the armchair. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
‘She’s not very well,’ she said, pulling at her skirt awkwardly. ‘Perhaps when she wakes up she’ll be able to tell me.’
Behind him, she could see two neighbours walking along the street. They murmured something, their eyes trained on her. She didn’t have to hear the words to know the tenor of their conversation. ‘If you want I could stop by later with it?’
‘What? Like your mum did last week? And the week before that?’ He brushed at a non-existent crease in the front of his trousers. ‘I don’t suppose there’s enough left in her purse to buy you a loaf of bread.’
She said nothing. The way he kept hovering, he seemed to expect her to invite him in. But she didn’t want Mr Radcliffe, with his expensive clothes and polished shoes, to sit down in the squalor of their front room. Not before she’d had a chance to put it right.
They faced each other on the porch, locked in an uneasy waiting game.
