The Ship of Brides

The air had been sucked from the room. Even the captain looked shocked. He had stepped back.

‘Shall I take them back, sir?’ The rating had entered the room, Frances saw.

Jean had subsided.

The captain nodded. ‘It would be best. I’ll have someone talk to you about the . . . arrangements . . . a little later. When things have . . . calmed down.’

‘Sir,’ said Frances, breathing hard, holding the shaking girl in her arms. ‘With respect, you have done her a great disservice.’ Her head whirled with the unfairness of it. ‘She was a victim in this.’

‘You’re a nurse, not a lawyer,’ hissed the women’s officer, one hand at her bleeding head. ‘I saw. Or have you forgotten?’

It was too late. As Frances led Jean out of the captain’s office, supported – or perhaps restrained – on the other side by the rating, she could just hear, over the noise of Jean’s sobbing, the woman officer: ‘I can’t say it surprises me,’ she was saying, her voice querulous, self-justifying. ‘I was told before we set out. Warned, I should say. Those Aussie girls are all the same.’

14

If you receive the personal kit of a relative or friend in the Forces, it does not mean that he is either killed or missing . . . Thousands of men, before going overseas, packed up most of their personal belongings and asked for them to be sent home. The official advice to you is: ‘Delivery of parcels is no cause for worry unless information is also sent by letter or telegram to next of kin from official sources.’

Daily Mail, Monday, 12 June 1944

Twenty-three days

Jean was taken off the ship during a brief, unscheduled stop at Cochin. No one else was allowed to disembark, but several brides watched as she climbed into the little boat, and, refusing to look at them, was motored towards the shore, an officer of the Red Cross beside her, her bag and trunk balanced at the other end. She didn’t wave.

Frances, who had held her that first evening through tears and hysteria, then sat with her as her mood gave way to something darker, had tried and failed to think of a way to right the situation. Margaret had gone as far as asking to see the captain. He had been very nice, she said afterwards, but if the husband didn’t want her any more, there wasn’t a lot he could do. He hadn’t actually said, ‘Orders are orders,’ but that was what he had meant. She had wanted to wring that bloody WSO’s neck, she said.

‘We could write to her husband,’ said Frances. But there was an awful lot to explain, not all of which they could do with any degree of accuracy. And how much to tell?

As Jean lay sleeping, the two women had composed a letter they felt was both truthful and diplomatic. They would send it at the next postal stop. Both knew, although neither said, that it was unlikely to make any difference. They could just, if they shielded their eyes from the sun, make out the boat as it came to a halt by the jetty. There were two figures waiting under what looked like an umbrella, one of whom took Jean’s cases, the other of whom helped her on to dry land. It was impossible, at this distance, to see any more than that.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ said Avice, when the silence became oppressive. ‘You don’t need to look at me like that.’

Margaret wiped her eyes and made her way heavily inside. ‘It’s just bloody sad,’ she said.

Frances said nothing.

She had not been a beautiful girl, or even a particularly pleasant one. But Captain Highfield found that in the days that followed he could not get Jean Castleforth’s face out of his mind. It had been uncomfortably like dealing with a POW, the putting ashore, the handing over into safe custody. The look of impotent fury, despair, and, finally, sullen resignation on her face.

Several times he had asked himself whether he had done the right thing. The brides had been so adamant, and the nurse’s tones of quiet outrage haunted him still: ‘You have done her a great disservice.’ But what else could he have done? The WSO had been certain of what she’d seen. He had to trust his company – the same company he had warned that he would tolerate no such misbehaviour. And, as the officer had said, if the husband no longer wanted her, what business was it of theirs?

And yet those two faces – the tall thin girl with her vehement accusation, and the raw grief on the face of the little one – made him wonder how much they were asking of these women, to travel so far on a promise based on so little. To put them in the face of such temptation. That was if it had been temptation at all . . .

The removal of the girl – the second to be taken off in such circumstances – had cast a pall over the ship. He could tell the brides felt more insecure than ever. They cast sidelong glances at him as he moved along the decks on his rounds, huddled into doorways as if fearful he might consign them to the same fate. The chaplain had attempted to address the women’s fears with a few carefully chosen words during devotions but that had only added to their heightened anxiety. The women’s officers, meanwhile, were ostracised. The brides, having heard of Jean’s treatment, had chosen to express their contempt in various ways, some more vocal than others, and now several of the women’s officers had come to him in tears.

Several weeks ago he would have told them all to pull themselves together. Now he felt bleak sympathy. This was not misbehaviour: the brides were not on some great adventure. They were essentially powerless. And such powerlessness could invoke unusual emotions both in those who experienced it and the onlookers.

Besides, he had other concerns. The ship, as if she had heard of her own planned fate, had suffered a series of breakdowns. The rudder had jammed, necessitating an emergency switch to steam steering, for the third time in the past ten days. The water shortage continued, with the engineers unable to work out why the desalination pumps kept breaking down. He was supposed to pick up a further fourteen civilian passengers at Aden, including the governor of Gibraltar and his wife who had been visiting the port, for passage back to their residence, and was not sure how he was going to cater for them all. And he was finding it increasingly hard to disguise his limp. Dobson had asked him pointedly if he was ‘quite all right’ the previous day and he had been forced to put his full weight on it even though it throbbed so hard he had had to bite the inside of his cheek to contain himself. He had considered going to the infirmary and seeing if there was something he could take; he held the keys, after all. But he had no idea what medicine he should use, and the prospect of doing further damage to it made him wince. Three more weeks, he told himself. Three more weeks, if I can hang on that long.

And that, in the end, was why he decided to hold the dance. A good captain did everything in his power to ensure the happiness and well-being of his passengers. A bit of music and some carefully monitored mixing would do everyone good. And he, of all people, understood the need for a diversion.

Maude Gonne was not well. Perhaps it was the subdued mood of the little cabin, which seemed empty without Jean’s effervescent presence, that had drawn her down. Perhaps it was simply the effect of several weeks of poor food and confinement in the heat. She had little appetite and was listless. She was barely interested in her trips to the bathroom or late-night flits around the deck, no longer sniffing the unfamiliar salt air from under whatever disguise they chose to carry her. She had lost weight and felt damningly light, her frame insubstantial.

Frances sat on her bunk, one hand gently stroking the little dog’s head as she wheezed her way into sleep, milky eyes half closed. Occasionally, perhaps remembering Frances’s presence, she would wag her tail as if politely affirming her gratitude. She was a sweet old dog.

Margaret blamed herself. She should never have brought her, she had told Frances. She should have thought about the heat, the perpetual confinement, and left her in the only home she knew, with her dad’s dogs and endless green spaces where she was happy. Frances knew that Margaret’s uncharacteristic neurosis echoed the silent undercurrent of her thoughts: If she couldn’t even look after a little dog properly, then what hope . . . ?

‘Let’s take her for a walk upstairs,’ she said.

‘What?’ Margaret shifted on her bunk.

‘We’ll pop her in your basket and put a scarf over the top. There’s a gun turret a bit further on from the bathroom where no one ever goes. Why don’t we sit out there for a bit and Maudie can enjoy some proper daytime fresh air?’

She could tell that Margaret was nervous about the idea, but she had few other options.

‘Look, do you want me to take her?’ Frances said, seeing how exhausted Margaret was. Discomfort meant she hadn’t slept properly for days.

‘Would you? I could do with a nap.’

‘I’ll keep her out as long as I can.’

She walked swiftly down to C Deck, conscious that if she looked confident in what she was doing no one was likely to stop her. Several brides were now undertaking duties on the ship, clerical work, and cooking. Some had even joined the recently formed Brides’ Painting Party, and the sight of a woman on a deck previously considered the domain of service personnel was not as irregular as it might have been two weeks previously.

She opened the little hatch, then ducked, stepped out and propped it open behind her. The day was bright, the heat balmy but not oppressive. A gentle breeze lifted the silk scarf on Frances’s basket and swiftly a small black nose poked out, twitching.

‘There you go, old girl,’ Frances murmured. ‘See if that helps.’

Several minutes later, Maude Gonne had eaten a biscuit and a scrap of bacon, the first morsels in which she had shown interest for two days.

She sat there with the dog on her lap for almost an hour, watching the waves rush by beneath her, listening to snatches of conversation and occasional laughter from the flight deck above, punctuated by the odd summons from the Tannoy. Although her clothes, unwashed for several days, felt stale and, occasionally, the movement of her body sent up scents that made her long for a bath, she knew she would miss this ship. Its noises had become familiar enough to be comforting. She wasn’t even sure whether, like everyone else, she wanted to disembark at Aden.

She had not seen the marine in two days.

Another marine had been on duty the previous evenings, and even though she had spent an unusual amount of time wandering the length of the ship, he had failed to materialise. She wondered, briefly, if he was ill and felt anxious about the prospect of him being treated by Dr Duxbury. Then she told herself to stop being ridiculous: it was probably for the best that she hadn’t seen him. She had felt disturbed enough by Jean’s removal without an impossible schoolgirl crush.

But almost an hour later, as she prepared to step inside, she found herself leaping back. His face was pale where many of his colleagues now sported Pacific tans, his eyes still shadowed, betraying sleepless nights, but it was him. The easy movement of his shoulders, square in his khaki uniform, suggested a strength she had not seen when he was immobile outside the door. He was holding a kitbag on his shoulder and she was paralysed by the thought that he might be preparing to disembark.

Not sure what she was doing, Frances slid back against the wall, her hand to her chest, listening for his steps as he moved past her down the gangway. He was several paces beyond her when they slowed. Frances, inexplicably holding her breath, realised that he was going to stop. The door opened a little, his head came round, a couple of feet from hers, and he smiled. It was a genuine smile, one which seemed to rub the angles from his face. ‘You all right?’ he said.

She had no words to explain her hiding-place. She was aware that she had blushed and made as if to say something, then nodded.

He gave her a searching look, then glanced down at the basket. ‘That who I think it is?’ he murmured. The sound of his voice made her skin prickle.

‘She’s not too well,’ she replied. ‘I thought she needed fresh air.’