Page 32 of The Ship of Brides
1600hrs
Knitting Corner (4oz of pink or white wool and two pairs of needles per girl to be provided by the Red Cross)
1700hrs
Lecture: ‘Marriage and Family Life’, to be given by the Ship’s Chaplain
1830hrs
Bingo Party (Recreation Area, Main Deck)
1930hrs
Roman Catholic Mass
Of these, the Deck Games and the Bingo Party looked to be the most popular, and the lecture the least. The chaplain had an unfortunately forbidding manner, and at least one of the brides had remarked that they didn’t need a lecture on marriage from a man who looked like he wanted to wash himself whenever a woman happened to brush past him.
Meanwhile, the imaginatively titled newspaper, edited by one of the women’s officers with the help of two brides, also noted the birthdays of Mrs Josephine Darnforth, 19, and Mrs Alice Sutton, 22, and appealed to its readers to come forward with little snippets of gossip and good wishes that ‘might make the journey pass in a pleasant and congenial manner’.
‘Gossip, eh?’ mused Jean, to whom this piece had been read aloud. ‘Betcha by the end of the trip they’ll have enough to fill twenty bloody newspapers.’
Avice had left the dormitory early for Protestant Devotions. She suspected she might meet more her sort of people at church. She had felt a little perturbed when Margaret announced that she would be attending the Roman Catholic Mass. She had never met a papist before, as her mother called them, but she was careful not to let her pity show.
Jean, who had already announced her aversion to any kind of religion (an unfortunate experience with a Christian Brother) was making up, ready for Recorded Music. She suspected there might be dancing and pronounced herself as ‘itchy as a bare-arsed wallaby on a termite hill’ to escape the cabin and take to the floor.
Margaret was lying on her bed, a hand on the dog, reading one of Avice’s magazines. Occasionally she would snort derisively. ‘Says here you shouldn’t sleep on one side of your face too often in case it gives you wrinkles. How the hell else are you meant to sleep?’ Then she had recalled the sight of Avice the night before, lying flat on her back above Frances, despite the obvious discomfort of a headful of rollers, and made a mental note not to comment publicly again.
This left Frances free to disappear without comment and, dressed in pale khaki slacks and a short-sleeved shirt – the closest she could come to her old uniform – she had slipped out, nodding a brief greeting to the girls she passed, and made her way down the gangway.
She had had to knock twice before she got a response, and even then she drew back, checking and rechecking the name on the door.
‘Come in.’
She stepped into the infirmary, whose walls were lined from floor to ceiling with bottles and jars, secured on narrow shelves behind glass doors. The man behind the desk had short red hair, slicked close to his head like a protective shell, and was dressed in civilian clothes. His face was freckled, his eyes creased from years of what might have been squinting but, judging from his actions now, was probably smiling.
‘Come right in. You’re making the place look untidy.’
Frances flushed briefly, realised he had been joking, then took a few steps towards him.
