The Ship of Brides

‘I can’t believe this,’ Jones-the-Welsh had said, as he dried himself in the mess. ‘I heard she was being put off. The next thing captain’s saying it’s all a bloody misunderstanding. It was not, I can tell you. You saw her, didn’t you, Duckworth? We both recognised her. Don’t understand it.’ He rubbed briskly under his arms.

‘I know why,’ said another marine. ‘She’s in there having a drink with the skipper.’

‘What?’

‘In his rooms. The old weather-guesser just took him in the long-range reports, and there she is, curled up with him on the settee having a drink.’

‘The sly old dog,’ Jones said.

‘She’s not silly, eh?’

‘Highfield? He couldn’t get a bag-off in a brothel with a fiver sticking out of his ear.’

‘It’s one rule for us and another for them, that’s for sure,’ said Duckworth, bitterly. ‘Can you imagine them letting us bring a brass back to the mess?’

‘You must be mistaken.’ Nicol had spoken before he realised what he was saying. The words hung heavy in the ensuing silence. ‘She wouldn’t be in the captain’s rooms.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I mean, there’s no reason for her to be there.’

‘Taylor knows what he saw. I can tell you something else. It’s not the first time, either. He reckons it’s the third time this week he’s seen her in there.’

‘Third time, eh? C’mon, Nicol, old boy. You know the reason as well as I do.’ Jones’s braying voice had exploded into laughter. ‘How’d you like that, boys? Sixty years old and our skipper’s finally discovered the joys of the flesh!’

Finally, he heard voices. As he stood back against the pipes, the captain’s lobby door opened. The air was punched silently from his lungs as he saw the slim figure step out lightly and turn to face the captain. He didn’t have to look long to confirm who it was: her image, every last detail, was now as deeply imprinted on his soul as if it had been etched there.

‘Thank you,’ Highfield was saying. ‘I don’t really know what else to say. I’m not usually given to . . .’

She shook her head, as if whatever she had bestowed upon him was nothing. Then she smoothed her hair. He found himself stepping back into the shadows. I’m not given to . . . to what? Nicol’s breath lodged in his chest and his mind went blank. This was not how he had felt when his wife had revealed her affair. This was worse.

They muttered something he couldn’t catch, and then her voice rose again. ‘Oh, Captain,’ she called, ‘I forgot to say . . . Sixteen.’

Nicol could just make out Highfield staring at her, his expression quizzical.

She began to make her way towards the main hangar. ‘Sixteen penicillin left in the big bottle. Seven in the smaller one. And ten sealed dressings in the white bag. At least, there should be.’

He could hear the captain’s laughter the whole way down the gangway.

20

The boredom of weeks at sea has to be experienced to be fully understood and the frustrations of such an existence were to many, in the long run, infinitely more damaging to the mind than the potential hazards of being blown up by the enemy . . . when we were not fighting the enemy, we were fighting amongst ourselves.

L. Troman, Wine, Women and War

Two days to Plymouth

In the absence of horses and a track, or of trainee pilots who could be guaranteed to end up in the soup occasionally, it should perhaps have been of little surprise that such fierce betting lay on the immaculately coiffed heads of the Queen of the Victoria contestants. It was possible that Mrs Ivy Tuttle and Mrs Jeanette Latham might have been a little demoralised to know that they were joint forty to one against or, indeed, that knowing she was five to two on might have put a swagger into Irene Carter’s already undulating step. But for days now it had been common knowledge that the real favourite, with a good proportion of the ship’s company putting a shilling or more on her blonde tresses, was Avice Radley.

‘Foster says there’s some fair-sized punts on her,’ yelled Plummer, the junior stoker.

‘There’s some fair-sized somethings,’ roared the departing watch.

‘He reckons if she comes in first he’s going to have to pay out half the money he won on the gee-gees at Bombay.’

Within hours they would have entered the cool, choppy waters of the Bay of Biscay, but more than a hundred feet below the flight deck, down in the engine pit, the temperatures were still at a shirt-drenching hundred or so degrees. Tims, n**ed to the waist, swung the polished wheels that sent the steam into the engine’s turbines while Plummer, who had been oiling the main engine, felt round the bearings for overheating, occasionally swearing as his skin met scalding metal.

Between them, the bridge telegraph dial relayed the orders from above to put the engines over to ‘make smoke’ or ‘full speed’ in an effort to get through the rough as soon as possible, and around them, above the incessant grinding and roaring of the engine, the tired old ship creaked and groaned in protest. Steam persisted in escaping through valves in little belches of effort; the rags that tried to quell them were damp and sodden with scalding water. In these emissions, the Victoria insisted on showing her age; her many dials and gauges looked out at them with the blank insouciance of a bloody-minded old woman.

Plummer finished tightening a bolt, secured his spanner in its wall-mounting, then turned to Tims. ‘You not had a few bob on one of them, then?’

‘What?’ Tims glowered.

He was a mean-looking man in a bad mood, but Plummer, who was used to him, rattled on: ‘The contest tonight.’ The noise of the engine was such that he used gesture to convey added meaning to his words. ‘There’s a lot of money riding on it.’

‘Load of rubbish,’ said Tims, dismissively.

‘Like to see them all lined up in their little swimsuits, though, eh?’ He drew curves in the air, and pulled a lascivious face. It sat almost comically on his adolescent features. ‘Get you in the mood for the missus.’

This seemed to make Tims more bad-tempered. He wiped his shining forehead with a filthy rag, then reached down for a wrench. The choppier waters sent tools thumping and clanging across the floor, a hazard to shins and toes. ‘Don’t know what you’re getting so excited about,’ he growled. ‘You’re on duty all night.’

‘Two pounds I’ve got on that Radley girl,’ Plummer said. ‘Two pounds! I got my bet on when she was still three to one against so if she wins I’m bloody quids in. If not, I’m in the drink. I promised my old ma I’d pay for us all to go to Scarborough. But I’m an optimist by nature, see? I reckon I can’t lose.’

He was lost in appreciation of some imagined scene upstairs. ‘Looked bloody fantastic in her swimsuit for the Miss Lovely Legs, that girl. Great pair of pins on her. D’you think it’s something they give them in Australia? I’ve heard half the girls back home have got rickets.’

Tims, apparently oblivious, was staring at his watch.

Plummer rambled on: ‘All the officers get to see it, you know. How’s that fair, eh? Two more nights on board, and all the officers get to see the girls in their swimsuits and we’re stuck down here in bloody centre engine. You know the marines are switching shifts at nine so even they’ll catch some of it. One rule for one lot, another rule for us. Hardly fair, is it? Now the war’s over, they should take a look at all the injustices of the bloody Navy.’

Plummer checked a dial, swore, then glanced at Tims, who was staring at the wall. ‘Here, you all right, Tims? Something got on your wick, has it?’

‘Cover me for half an hour,’ Tims said, turning towards the exit hatch. ‘Something I need to do.’

Had he been able to see the opening stages of the Queen of the Victoria contest, young Plummer might have felt less confident about his trip to Scarborough. For Avice Radley, despite being widely considered a shoo-in for winner, was looking curiously lacklustre. Or in racing terms, as one of the seamen put it, not dissimilar to a three-legged donkey.

Perched on the makeshift stage alongside her fellow contestants, faced by the heaving tables that made up the women’s last formal supper, she looked pale and preoccupied, despite the glowing scarlet of the silk dress she wore, and the glossy wheat sheen of her blonde hair. As the other girls giggled and clutched each other, trying to keep their balance in high heels as the ship dipped under them, she stood alone and aside, smile fading, eyes shadowed with some distant concern.

Twice Dr Duxbury, the host for the evening’s proceedings, had taken her hand, tried to get her to elaborate on her plans for her new life, to recall her favourite moments of the voyage. She had seemed not to notice him, even when he broke into his third rendition of ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

That’ll be the morning sickness kicking in, at least one bride had observed. All mothers-to-be looked rotten for the first few months. It was only a matter of time. A few, less generous types suggested that perhaps without foundation garments and cosmetics Avice Radley had never been the beauty everyone had taken her for. And when you compared her to the glowing Irene Carter, resplendent in pale peach and blue, apparently heedless of the heaving waters, it was hard to disagree.

Dr Duxbury tailed off to polite, scattered applause. There were only so many times one could applaud the same song, and it was possible the surgeon was too well lubricated to be aware of his audience anyway.

At last he registered the frantically signalling lieutenant commander at the end of the stage and, after several attempts, pointed theatrically at the captain, raising his palms as if to suggest that no one had told him.

‘Ladies,’ said Highfield, standing quickly, perhaps before Duxbury could start singing again. He waited as the hangar gradually fell silent. ‘Ladies . . . As you know, this is our last night’s entertainment on Victoria. Tomorrow night we will dock at Plymouth, and you will spend the evening organising your belongings and double checking with the women’s service officers that you have someone to meet you and somewhere to go. Tomorrow morning I will discuss the arrangements more fully on the flight deck, but for now I just wanted to say a few words.’

The women, many of whom were fizzing with nervous anticipation, watched, nudging and whispering to each other. Around the edges, the men stood, their arms behind them, backs to the walls. Ratings, officers, marines, engineers: all in dress uniform in honour of the occasion. For some, Highfield realised, it would be the last time they wore it. He glanced down at his own, knowing it would not be long before he would say the same.

‘I can’t – I can’t pretend this has been the easiest cargo I have ever had to transport,’ he said. ‘I can’t pretend I even relished the prospect of it – although I know some of the men did. But I can tell you this, as a “lifer”, as some of us naval folk are known, it has been the most . . . educational.

‘Now I won’t bore you with a lengthy speech about the difficulties of the course you have chosen. I’m sure you’ve had quite enough of that.’ He nodded towards the welfare officer and heard a polite ripple of laughter. ‘But I will say that you, like all of us, will probably find the next twelve months the most challenging – and hopefully rewarding – of your lives. So what I wanted to tell you is this: you are not alone.’

He looked around at the hushed, expectant faces. Under the harsh lights of the hangar deck the gilt buttons of his uniform shone.

‘Those of us who have always served are going to have to find new ways of living. Those of us who have found ourselves profoundly changed by the experience of war will have to find new ways of dealing with those around us. Those who have suffered are going to have to find ways of forgiving. We are returning to a country that is likely to be unfamiliar to us. We, too, may find ourselves strangers in that land. So yes, brides, you face a great challenge. But I want to tell you that it has been both a pleasure and a privilege to be part of your journey. We are proud to claim you as our own. And I hope that when you look back, in happiness, to the early years of your time in Britain, you think of this as not simply the journey to your new life but the start of it.’