Page 80 of The Ship of Brides
‘You can’t do it, Jones. They’re all married, for God’s sake.’
‘And I’m pretty sure some are already a little less married than they were when they set out. You heard about the episode on B Deck, didn’t you? And I was on middle watch outside 6E last night. That girl with the blonde hair’s a menace. Won’t bloody leave me alone. In and out, in and out... “Ooh, I’m just popping to the bathroom,” dressing-gown hanging open. I’m sure us men are the real victims in these things.’ He fluttered his eyelashes.
Nicol went back to his boots.
‘Ah, come on, Nicol. Don’t come over all married and judgemental on us. Just because you’re happy living by the rule book doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t enjoy ourselves a little.’
‘I think you should leave them alone,’ he said, closing his ears to the communal ‘woohoo!’ that met his words. There was a creeping lack of respect for the women, even among men he considered honourable, that made him uncomfortable.
‘And I thinkyoushould buck up a bit. Lidders here is coming, aren’t you, boy? And Brent and Farthing. Come with us – then you can see we’re behaving ourselves.’
‘I’m on duty.’
‘Of course you are. Pressed up to that dormitory door listening to those girls pant with longing.’ He cackled and jumped into his own hammock. ‘Oh, come on, Nicol. Marines are allowed a bit of fun too. Look... think of what we’re doing, right, as some kind of service. The entertainment of the Empire’s wives. For the benefit of the nation.’
With an extravagant salute, Jones leant back again. By the time Nicol had worked out an appropriately pithy response, Jones had fallen asleep, a lit Senior Service hanging loosely from his hand.
The men were boxing on the flight deck. Someone had set up a ring where the Corsairs had sat and in it Dennis Tims was battering several shades of something unrepeatable out of one of the seamen. His naked upper body a taut block of sinewy muscle, he moved without grace or rhythm around the ring. He was an automaton, a machine of destruction, his fists pounding bluntly until the darting, weaving young seaman succumbed and was hauled unconscious through the ropes and away. Four rounds in, there was such a terrible inevitability to his victories that the assembled men and brides were finding it hard to raise the enthusiasm to clap.
Frances, who had found it difficult to watch them, stood with her back to them. Tims, punching, was too close a reminder of the night of Jean’s ‘incident’. There was something in the power of his swing, in the brutal set of his jaw as he ploughed into the pale flesh presented to him that made her feel cold, even in this heat. She had wondered, when she and Jean had sat down, whether they should move away, for the younger girl’s sake. But Jean’s benign interest demonstrated that she had been too drunk to know what Tims had seen – or for that matter, what anyone else had done.
‘Hope they don’t get too hot and bothered,’ Jean said now, folding herself neatly into the spot beside Margaret. She seemed to find it difficult to sit still: she had spent the last hour wandering backwards and forwards between the ringside and their deck-chairs. ‘Have you heard? The water’s run out.’
Margaret looked at her. ‘What?’
‘Not drinking water, but the pump isn’t working properly and there’s no washing – not hair, clothes or anything – until they’ve mended it. Emergency rations only. Can you imagine? In this weather!’ She fanned herself with her hand. ‘I tell you there’s a bloody riot in the bathrooms. That Irene Carter might think she’s a right lady, but when her shower stopped you should have heard the language. Would have made old Dennis blush.’
Over the past week or so, Jean had recovered her good humour, so much so that her ceaseless and largely inconsequential chatter had taken on a new momentum. ‘You know Avice is taking Irene on for Queen of theVictoria? They’ve got the Miss Lovely Legs competition this afternoon. Avice has been down to the cases and persuaded the officer to let her get out her best pair of pumps. Four-inch heels in dark green satin to match her bathing suit.’
‘Oh.’
Tims followed an upper cut with a left hook. Then again. And again.
‘Are you all right, Maggie?’
Frances handed Margaret the ice-cream she had been proffering, unnoticed, for several seconds, exchanging a brief glance with Jean as she did so.
‘It – it’s not the baby, is it?’
Margaret turned to them. ‘No, I’m fine. Honest.’
She looked neither of them in the eye.
‘Oh, Dennis is in again. I’m going to see if anyone wants to have a wager with me. Mind you, I can’t see that anyone’s going to offer odds against him. Not at this rate.’ Jean got up, straightened her skirt, and skipped over to the other onlookers.
Margaret and Frances sat in silence with their ices. In the distance, a tanker moved across the horizon, and they followed its steady progress until it was no longer visible.
‘What’s that?’
Margaret looked at the letter in her hand, evidently having realised that the name of the addressee was showing.
Frances said nothing, but there was a question in her eyes. ‘Were you... going to throw it into the water?’
Margaret gazed out at the turquoise waves.
‘It... would be a nice thing to do. I had a patient once whose sweetheart got bombed, back in Germany. He wrote her a goodbye letter and we put it into a bottle and dropped it over the side of the hospital ship.’
‘I was going to post it,’ Margaret said.
