The Ship of Brides

There was a brief silence.

‘It is late,’ he conceded. ‘I was hoping to get up here earlier, but we had a bit of an incident downstairs in the kitchens, and a few of us got called to sort it out.’

‘Thank you, anyway,’ she said. ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.’ There was a lump in her throat. She gathered up her things, and he stood up to let her pass.

‘Don’t go,’ said Margaret.

Frances spun round.

‘Go on. For God’s sake, woman, you’ve kept me company all bloody night and now the least you can do is have a turn round the dance floor. Let me see what I’m missing.’

‘Margaret, I’m sorry but I—’

‘Sorry but what? Ah, go on, Frances. There’s no point in both of us being wallflowers. Shake a leg, as our dear friend would have said. One for Jean.’

She looked back at him, then at the crowded deck, the endless whirl of white and colour, unsure whether she was fearful of entering the throng or of being so close to him.

‘Get on with it, woman.’

He was still beside her. ‘A quick one?’ he said, holding out his arm. ‘It would be my pleasure.’

Not trusting herself to speak, she took it.

She wouldn’t think tonight about the impossibility of it all. About the fact that she was feeling something she had long told herself it was unsafe to feel. About the fact that there would inevitably be a painful consequence. She just closed her eyes, lay back on her bunk, and allowed herself to sink into those moments she had stored deep inside: the four dances in which he had held her, one hand clasping hers, the other resting on her waist; of how, during the last, even as he kept himself, correctly, several inches from her, she could feel his breath against her bare neck.

Of how he had looked at her when he let go. Had there been reluctance in the way his hand had separated slowly from hers? Did it hurt anyone for her to imagine there had been? Was there not a strange emphasis on the way he’d lowered his head to hers and said, so quietly, ‘Thank you’?

What she felt for him shocked and shamed her. Yet the discovery of her capacity to feel as she did made her want to sing. The chaotic, overpowering emotions she had experienced this evening made her wonder if she was in the grip of some seaborne virus. She had never felt so feverish, so incapable of efficiently gathering her thoughts. She bit down on her hand, trying to stop the bubble of hysteria rising in her chest and threatening to explode into God only knew what. She forced herself to breathe deeply, tried to restore the inner calm that had provided solace in the last six years.

It was just a dance. ‘A dance,’ she whispered to herself, pulling the sheet over her head. Why can’t you be grateful for that?

She heard footsteps, then men’s voices. Someone was talking to the marine outside the door, a young substitute with red hair and sleepy eyes. She lay, only half listening, wondering if it was time for the watch to change. Then she sat up.

It was him. She sat very still for a minute longer, checking that she was not mistaken, then slid out of her bunk, her heart hammering in her chest. She thought of Jean and grew cold. Perhaps she had been so blinded by her own attraction to him that she had not seen what was before her.

She placed her ear to the door.

‘What do you think?’ he was saying.

‘It’s been a good hour,’ the other marine replied, ‘but I don’t suppose you’ve got a choice.’

‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I don’t like doing it at all.’

She stepped back from the door, and as she did, the handle turned and it opened quietly. His face slid round it, an echo of its earlier self, and he had caught her there, shocked and pale in the illuminated sliver of the passage lights.

‘I heard voices,’ she said, conscious of her state of undress. She grappled behind her for her wrap, and flung it on, tying it tightly around her.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ his voice was low and urgent, ‘but there’s been an accident downstairs. I was wondering—Look, we need your help.’

The dance had ended in several unofficial gatherings in various parts of the ship. One had emigrated to the sweaty confines of the rear port-side engine room, where a stoker had been waltzing a bride along one of the walkways that flanked the main engine. The accounts he’d had so far were unclear, but they had fallen into the pit that contained the engine. The man was unconscious; the bride had a nasty cut on her face.

‘We can’t call the ship’s doctor for obvious reasons. But we need to get them out of there before the watch changes.’ He hesitated. ‘We thought . . . I thought you might help.’

She wrapped her arms round herself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t go down there. You’ll have to get someone else.’

‘I’ll be there. I’ll stay with you.’

‘It’s not that . . .’

‘You don’t need to worry, I promise. They know you’re a nurse.’

She had looked into his eyes, then, and understood what he thought he was saying.

‘There’s no one else who can help,’ he said, and glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve only got about twenty minutes. Please, Frances.’

He had never used her name before. She hadn’t been aware he knew it.

Margaret’s voice cut quietly through the darkness. ‘I’ll come with you. I’ll stay with you. If you’d feel better with a few of us around you.’

She was in an agony of indecision, thrown by his nearness.

‘Just have a look at them, please. If it’s really bad we’ll wake the doctor.’

‘I’ll get my kit,’ she said. She reached under her bunk for the tin box. Opposite, Margaret got up heavily and put on a dressing-gown that now barely stretched round her belly. She gave Frances’s arm a discreet squeeze.

‘Where are you going?’ said Avice, and pulled the light cord. She sat up, blinking sleepily as they were thrown into the light.

‘Just for a breath of fresh air,’ said Margaret.

‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘We’re going to help a couple of people who have been hurt downstairs,’ said Margaret. ‘Come with us, if you want.’

Avice looked at them, as if weighing up whether to go.

‘It’s the least you could do,’ said Margaret.

She slid off her bunk and into her peach silk robe, walked past the marine, who held the door back, a finger to his lips, and followed them as they went silently down the passageway towards the stairs.

Behind them, the red-headed marine shuffled back into place, guarding a cabin that was now empty but for a sleeping dog.

They heard the voices before they saw them: from deep in the belly of the ship, down what seemed to Margaret endless flights of stairs and narrow corridors until they reached the rear port-side engine room. The heat was intense; struggling to keep up with the others, she found herself short of breath and frequently had to wipe her brow with her sleeve. Her mouth tasted of oil. And then they heard a shrill weeping, punctuated by a hushed commotion of voices, male and female, some arguing, some cajoling, all underlaid by a momentous thumping and clanging, the sound of the great heart of the beast. Perhaps in response to the noise, Frances’s pace quickened and she half ran, with the marine, along the passageway.

Margaret reached the engine room several seconds after everyone else. When she finally opened the hatch, the heat was such that she had to stand still for a moment to acclimatise.

She stepped on to the walkway inside and looked down, following the sound. Some fifteen feet below them, in a huge pit in the floor a little like a sunken boxing ring, a young seaman was half lying on the ground, his back to the wall, supported on one side by a weeping bride and on the other by a friend. A game of cards had apparently been abandoned on a crate in the corner and several upturned beakers lay on the floor. In the centre a huge engine – a labyrinthine organ of pipes and valves – pumped and ground a regular, deafening beat from its huge metal parts, its valves hissing steam periodically as if to some infernal tune. On the far side, tucked under the walkway, another bride held the side of her face and wept. ‘What’s he going to say, though? What will he think of me?’

Ahead, Frances was running towards the ladder that led down into the bowels of the engine, her feet silent on the ribbed metal floor. She pushed her way through the drunken crowd, fell to her knees and examined what lay beneath the blood-soaked dirty cloth wrapped round the man’s arm.

Margaret leant on the metal cable that acted as a safety rail to watch as one of the other girls peeled the injured woman’s hand off her head and dabbed a livid wound with a wet cloth. Several ratings hovered at the edge of the scene, still in their good uniforms, pulling away oversized oxygen canisters and bits of guard rail. Two smoked with the deep breaths of those in shock. Around the walls the engine’s pipes glowed in the dim light.

‘He went over and the canisters fell on him,’ one man was shouting. ‘I couldn’t tell you where they hit him. We’re lucky the whole lot didn’t go up.’

‘How long has he been unconscious?’ Frances’s voice was raised to be heard over the engine. ‘Who else is hurt?’ There was no caution in her demeanour now: she was galvanised.

Beside her, the marine, loosening his good bootneck collar, was following her instructions, searching out items in her medical kit. He called instructions to the remaining seamen, two of whom darted back up the ladder, apparently glad to be out of the way.

Avice was standing on the walkway with her back to the wall. The uneasy look on her face told Margaret that she had already decided this was not a place she wanted to be. She thought suddenly of Jean, and wondered, briefly, whether any of them was safe, given the punishment meted out to her. But then she glanced at Frances as she bent over the unconscious man, checking under his eyelids with one hand, rummaging in her medical kit with the other, and knew she couldn’t leave.

‘He’s coming round. Someone hold his head to the side, please. What’s his name? Kenneth? Kenneth,’ she called to him, ‘can you tell me where it hurts?’ She listened to him, then lifted his hand and pulled each finger. ‘Open that for me, please.’ The marine reached down to where she was pointing, and took out what looked like a sewing kit. Margaret turned away. Under her feet the walkway vibrated in time with the engine.

‘What time did they say the watch was changing?’ asked Avice, nervously.

‘Fourteen minutes,’ said Margaret. She wondered whether she should go down and remind them of the time, but it seemed pointless: their movements were filled with urgency.

It was as she turned away that a man drew her attention. He was seated on the floor in the corner, and Margaret realised that in several minutes he had not taken his eyes from Frances. The peculiar nature of his gaze made her wonder if perhaps Frances’s robe was too revealing. Now she saw that his attention was not quite salacious, but neither was it kindly. He looked, she thought, oddly knowing. She moved closer to Avice, feeling uncomfortable.

‘I think we should leave,’ Avice said.

‘She won’t be long,’ said Margaret. Secretly she agreed: it was a terrible place. A bit like one might imagine hell, if one were that way disposed. Yet Frances had never looked more at home.

‘Sorry to do this to you, Nicol. I couldn’t leave him. Not in the state he was in.’

Jones-the-Welsh pulled at his bootneck collar with a finger, then glanced down at the oil on his trousers. ‘Last time I let Duckworth talk me into a bit of after-hours entertainment. Bloody fool! My drill’s ruined.’ He lit a cigarette, eyeing the no-smoking signs on the walls. ‘Anyway, matey, I owe you.’

‘I think it’s someone else you owe,’ said Nicol. He looked down at his watch. ‘Christ! We’ve got eight minutes, Frances, before we have to get them out of here.’