The Ship of Brides

‘Frances?’ He seated himself beside her on the grass. ‘Remember what you said to me, the night the planes went over the side? It’s over, Frances. It’s time to move on.’

She had turned to him slowly, her expression almost fearful, as if she could not trust herself to believe what he was saying.

‘This is the beauty in it, Frances. We’re allowed this. No, we’re entitled to it.’

Underlying the determination, there was a faint note of panic in his voice, as if she might somehow disallow herself the chance to be happy, as if he, too, might be one of the things for which she felt the need to atone.

‘We’re entitled, you hear me? Both of us.’

She had stared fiercely at her feet, and he had thought briefly that she was still closed to him. Unreachable. And then he had seen that she was hiccuping, as if her chest struggled to contain some huge, unbalancing emotion.

A faint sound escaped her, and he saw she was smiling and crying at the same time, her hand reaching clumsily across the ground for his.

They had stayed there for some unknown period of time, their hands entwined, pressed into the rough grass. Chattering families passed them on their way home, occasionally eyeing them knowingly but without curiosity, a marine and his sweetheart, reunited after a lifetime spent apart.

‘You are Nicol,’ she had told him, as she traced the still bruised lines of his face with her fingers. ‘The captain told me. Nicol. Your name is Nicol.’ The way she said it was joyful. It made it sound like treasure.

‘No,’ he said, with certainty, and as he spoke his voice sounded strange, unfamiliar even to himself, for it had been years since anyone had said this word. ‘I am Henry.’