Page 108 of The Ship of Brides
Avice was lying motionless on her bunk, facing the wall, her knees drawn up to her stomach.
Margaret stared at her as the dog leapt down and scratched half-heartedly at the door. It was, she calculated, the fourth day that Avice had lain like this. On the few occasions that she had risen for food she had picked at whatever was on her plate, then excused herself. Seasickness, she had said, to enquiries. But the water hadn’t been choppy.
Margaret stepped forward and bent over the prostrate figure, as if she could glean some clue from her face. Once she had done this believing Avice to be asleep, and had felt a mixture of shock and embarrassment when her eyes were wide open. She had wondered whether to talk to Frances: perhaps Avice was suffering from some medical complaint. But given the bad blood between the two women, she didn’t feel it fair on either of them.
Besides, Frances was rarely here now. For reasons no one could explain, she had been helping out in the infirmary, Dr Duxbury having gleefully accepted the responsibility of organising the final of the Queen of theVictoriacontest. Otherwise she disappeared for several hours every day, and offered no explanation as to where she had been. Margaret supposed she should be glad to see her so much happier, but she missed her company. Alone, she had had altogether far too much time to think. And, as her dad was fond of saying, that was never a good thing.
‘Avice?’ she whispered. ‘Are you awake?’
She did not reply until the second prompt. ‘Yes,’ she said.
Margaret stood awkwardly in the centre of the little dormitory, her distended body briefly forgotten as she tried to work out what to do for the best. ‘Can I... can I get you anything?’
‘No.’
The silence expanded round her. Her mother would have known what to do, she thought. She would have marched up to Avice, taken her in her arms in that confident maternal way of hers, and said, ‘C’mon, now, what’s up?’ And faced with her degree of certainty, Avice would have confessed her anxieties, or her medical problems, or her homesickness or whatever was troubling her.
Except her mother wasn’t there. And Margaret was no more capable of taking Avice in her arms unprompted than she was of rowing this ship all the way to bloody England. ‘I could get you a cup of tea,’ she ventured.
Avice said nothing.
Margaret lay on her bed reading for almost an hour, not feeling able to leave either Avice or the dog, whom she did not trust to keep quiet.
Outside, the faint increase in movement of the ship told of the shift into cooler, rougher waters. Now, after weeks aboard, they were finely attuned to the vibrations of theVictoria, used to the ever-present hum of her engines, able to ignore the incessant piped commands that punctuated every quarter-hour.
She had begun a letter to her father, then discovered she had nothing to say about life on board that she had not already told him. The real events that had taken place she could not conceive of putting on paper, and the rest of it was just waiting. Like living in a corridor, waiting for her new life to begin.
She had written to Daniel instead: a series of questions about the mare, an urgent demand that he should skin as many darn rabbits as he could so that he could get over to England to see her. Daniel had written once, a letter she had received at Bombay. It comprised just a few lines and told her little, other than the state of the cows, the weather, and the plot of a movie he had seen in town, but her heart had eased. She had been forgiven, those few lines told her. If her father had threatened him with the belt to do it he would have put a blank sheet in an envelope rather than comply. There was a sharp rap on the door, and she leapt on her dog, cutting short her bark. Holding her, she broke into a fake coughing fit, trying to emulate the noise. ‘Hold on,’ she said, her broad hand clamped gently but firmly round Maude Gonne’s muzzle. ‘Just coming.’
‘Is Mrs A. Radley there?’
Margaret faced Avice’s bunk. Avice, blinking, sat. Her clothes were crumpled, her face pale and blank. She slid slowly to the floor, lifting a hand to her hair. ‘Avice Radley,’ she said, opening the door a little way.
A young rating stood before her.
‘You’ve had a wire. Come through the radio room this afternoon.’
Margaret dropped the dog behind her and stepped forward to take Avice’s arm. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said involuntarily.
The rating registered the two wide-eyed faces. Then he thrust the piece of paper into Avice’s hand. ‘Don’t look like that, missus – it’s good news.’
‘What?’ said Margaret.
He ignored her. He waited for Avice’s eyes to drop to the paper before he spoke again, his voice thick with mirth. ‘It’s family. Your folks are going to be in Plymouth to meet you off the ship.’
Avice had sobbed for almost twenty minutes, which had initially seemed excessive and had now become alarming. Margaret, her previous reticence forgotten, had climbed on to Avice’s bunk and now sat beside her, trying not to think about the way it creaked ominously under her weight. ‘It’s okay, Avice,’ she kept saying. ‘He’s all right. Ian’s all right. That bloody wire just gave you a bit of a fright.’
The captain wasn’t best pleased, the rating had said gleefully. Said he’d be using the radio room for taking down shopping lists next. But he’d allowed the message through.
Margaret tutted. ‘They shouldn’t have sent someone down here like that. They must have known it would scare you half to death. Specially someone in our condition, eh?’ She tried to get the girl to smile.
Avice failed to answer her. But eventually the sobbing subsided, until it was just a stuttering echo of itself, a breath that caught periodically in the back of her throat. Finally, when Margaret felt the worst was over, she stepped down.
‘There now,’ she said uselessly. ‘You get some rest. Calm yourself down a bit.’ She lay on her own bunk and began to chat about their plans for the last few days – the best lectures to attend, Avice’s preparations for the Queen of theVictoriafinal, anything to shake her out of her depression. ‘You’ve got to wear those green satin shoes again,’ she rattled on gamely. ‘You don’t know how many girls would give their eye teeth for them, Avice. That girl from 11F said she’d seen some just like them inAustralian Women’s Weekly.’
Avice’s eyes were raw and red-rimmed. You don’t understand, she thought, as she stared at the blank wall, not registering the endless stream of words that floated up from below. Just for a moment, I thought everything was going to be okay, that there was going to be a way out of this for me.
She lay very still, as if somehow she could turn herself to stone.
