Page 94 of The Ship of Brides
She stared at the money, wondering if she was drunk enough to have imagined this scene. But when she put out a finger, it was solid. ‘You don’t think he’ll tell Mr Radcliffe?’
‘So what? You be gone then. There’s a train leaves tomorrow. Go on. You go.’ When she said nothing, he made a mock-angry face. ‘This is no good for you, Frances. You’re a good girl.’
A good girl. She stared at this man, whom she had thought hardly capable of speech, let alone such kindness. She took the money and put it into her pocket. His sweat had softened the notes, and they crumpled as they slid between the fabric. Then she moved to take his hand to say thank you.
When his failed to meet hers she grasped that Hun Li’s sympathy might be tinged with something she didn’t want to think about. Something that in just three months her ‘profession’ had bestowed on her.
He nodded at her, as if ashamed of his own reticence.
‘What about you?’ she said.
‘What about me?’
‘You don’t need this for yourself?’ She didn’t want to ask him: she could already feel it glowing beneficently in her pocket.
His face was unreadable. ‘I never needed it like you,’ he said. Then he turned, and his broad back vanished into the darkness.
16
Laundry: Limited facilities only exist for laundry onboard... Never hang anything out of a scuttle or port hole or anywhere where it can be seen from outboard.
Instructions for Women Passengers, HMSVictorious
Twenty-five days
‘Poor old girl. It wasn’t a fate you deserved, however you look at it.’ He laid his hand gently on her, sensing, he fancied, the years of struggle echoing through the cool metal. ‘Too good for them. Far too good.’
He straightened up, then glanced behind him, conscious that he was talking aloud to his ship and keen to ensure that Dobson had not witnessed it. Dobson had been thoroughly discomfited by the captain’s changes in normal routine, and while he had enjoyed unbalancing the younger man, he recognised that there was only so far he could go before he became answerable to someone else.
There had not been a square inch ofIndomitablethat Highfield hadn’t known, no part of her history with which he wasn’t familiar. He had seen her decks submerged in high seas in the Adriatic, her huge frame tossed around as if she were a rowing-boat in a storm. He had steered her through the Arctic in the winter of ’41, when her decks had been six inches thick with snow, and her gun turrets had become so encrusted with ice that twenty ratings with picks and shovels had had to spend hours trying to keep her workable. He had held her steady as she fought off the suicide bombers of the Sakishima Gunto airfields, when the kamikaze aircraft had literally bounced off the flight deck, covering her with tidal waves of water and aviation fuel, and he had swept her through the Atlantic, listening in silence for the ominous echo that told of enemy submarines. He had seen her flight deck a huge crater when, during the early part of the war, no less than three Barracudas had collided in mid-air and crashed on to it. He was not sure whether he could count the number of men they had lost, the funerals at sea that he had presided over, the bodies committed to the water. And he had seen her at her last. Watched her deck canting as she slid down, taking with her those few men they had told him were already gone, his beloved boy, his body somewhere in the inferno that belched foul smoke over what remained above the surface, his funeral pyre. When her bow had sunk and the waves closed over her, there had been no sign left that she had existed at all.
TheVictoria’s layout was identical to that of her twin; there had been something almost eerie about it when he had first stepped aboard. For a while he had been resentful. Now he felt a perverse obligation to her.
They had contacted him that morning. The commander-in-chief of the British Pacific Fleet had wired him personally. In joking terms he had told Highfield that he could lay off the painting parties for the remainder of the voyage: no need to exhaust the men with too much maintenance. TheVictoriawould be examined in dry dock at Plymouth before being modified and sold off to some merchant shipping company or broken up. ‘Nothing wrong with the old girl,’ he had wired back. ‘Suggest most strongly the former course.’
He had not told the men: he suspected most would not notice what ship they were on, as long as the messes were of a decent size, the money regular and the food edible. With the war over, many would leave the Navy for good. He, and the old ship, would be no more than a dim memory when war stories were exchanged over dinner.
Highfield sighed, and placed his weight tentatively on his bad leg. They would dock at Bombay the following day. He would pay no attention to the C-in-C’s instruction. For several days now he had had teams of dabbers and ratings buffing, painting, polishing. The Navy knew that sailors kept busy were sailors less likely to get into trouble – and with a cargo like this one that struggle was constant. There would not be a brass bolt on the ship that he couldn’t see his face in.
The men, he guessed, were speculating that something was wrong with him. It was possible too that the governor of Gibraltar would notice. He was not a stupid man. I’m buggered if I’m leaving you early, he told the ship silently, tightening his grip on the rail. I’ll hang on to you till my damn leg falls off.
‘What you do, ladies, is mix one level tablespoon of the powdered egg with two tablespoons of water. Allow it to stand for a few minutes until the powder has absorbed all the moisture, then work out any lumps with a wooden spoon. You may have to be a bit vigorous... a bit of elbow grease, you know.’ She took in the blank faces. ‘That’s an English expression. It doesn’t mean... grease as such.’
Margaret sat with her notebook on her lap, her pen in her hand. She had given up writing several recipes ago, distracted by the murmur of conversation around her.
‘A prostitute? I don’t believe it. Surely the Navy wouldn’t let one travel with all the men.’
‘Well, they didn’t know, did they? They can’t have.’
‘There are all sorts of things you can bake with powdered egg. Add a bit of parsley or watercress and you can make quite a good... approximation of scrambled egg. So don’t feel limited just because you may not have the ingredients you’ve been used to at home. In fact, girls, you will not have the kind of ingredients you’ve been used to at home.’
‘But who on earth would have married her? Do you think it was one of her... customers?’
‘And what if he doesn’t know? Don’t you think the Navy should tell him?’
It had been the same story all over the ship. For the last few days Frances Mackenzie, possibly the least conspicuous passenger theVictoriahad ever transported, had become its most notorious. Those who had had any dealings with her were fascinated that this supposedly demure young woman had such a chequered past. Others found the story of her past career compelling, and felt obliged to embellish it with information that no one was yet in a position to disprove. That was if anyone had had the inclination to do so; the next shore leave was still a fair distance away and there was little doubt it was the most fascinating thing that had happened on the voyage so far.
‘I heard she was on the train. You know, the one they used to send up to the troops. It was full of... those sorts.’
