Page 96 of The Ship of Brides
Despite himself Nicol smiled at the older man’s description of him.
‘Still... still. Better times ahead.’ He drew hard on his cigarette, then dropped it into the water. ‘I’m surprised old Highfield let ’em in. Would have thought the sight of all that female flesh’d be too much for him.’
The afternoon was set fair, as it had been for days. Below them, in the glassy waters, two women writhed and squealed their way on to one of the lifeboats, while others leant over the ship’s rail shouting encouragement. Another shrieked hysterically as her friend splashed her.
The man gazed at them in benign appreciation. ‘Cold fish, that Highfield. Always thought it. You got to wonder about a man always wants to be by himself.’
Nicol said nothing.
‘Time was, I would have argued the toss with anyone said he was a bad skipper. Got to admit, when we was on the convoys he did us proud. But you can tell he’s lost it now. Confidence shot, isn’t it, sinceIndomitable?’
The older man was breaking an unspoken convention among the men not to talk about what had happened on that night, let alone who might be to blame. Nicol did not respond, except to shake his head.
‘Couldn’t hand down orders. Not when it counted. I’ve seen it before – them that want to do everything their bloody selves. I reckon if he’d had his head screwed on proper that night he could have handed down orders and we would have saved a lot of men. He just got stuck in his bloody self. Didn’t look at the big picture. That’s what you need in a skipper – an ability to see the bigger picture.’
If he had had a shilling for every armchair strategist he’d met in his years of service, Nicol observed, he’d have been a rich man.
‘I allus thought it was a bit of a joke on the top brass’s part, giving him her sister ship to bring home... No... I don’t think you know a man till you seen him around his nearest and dearest. I’ve served under him five year and I’ve not heard a single person speak up for him.’
They stood in silence for some time. Finally, perhaps recognising that their exchange had been rather one-sided, the man asked, ‘You’ll be glad to see your family again, eh?’
Nicol lit another cigarette.
She was not there. He hadn’t thought she would be.
He had lain awake for the rest of that night, Jones’s words haunting him almost as much as his own sense of betrayal. Slowly, as the night gave way to day, his own disbelief had evaporated, steadily replaced by the putting together of odd clues, inconsistencies in her behaviour. Standing in the bowels of the ship, he had wanted her to deny it indignantly; wanted to hear her outrage at the slur. None had been forthcoming. Now he wanted her to explain herself – as if, in some way, she had tricked him.
He hadn’t needed to ask any further questions to clarify what he had been told; not of her, anyway. When he returned to the mess she had still been the talk of the men. Wide-eyed little thing she had been, Jones-the-Welsh said, leaning out of his hammock for a cigarette. A ton of makeup on her, almost like the others had done it to her for a joke.
Nicol had paused in the hatch, wondering whether he should turn round. He wasn’t sure what made him stay.
Jones himself had apparently been presented with her but declined. She stuck out because of her shape: ‘Thin as a whippet,’ he said, ‘with no tits to speak of.’ And because she was drunk, he said. He curled his lip, as if he had been offered something distasteful.
The manager had sent her upstairs with one of his mates and she’d fallen up the steps. They had all laughed: there was something comical about the skinny girl with all the makeup, drunk as a skunk, her legs all over the place. Actually, he said, more seriously, ‘I thought she was under age, you know what I’m saying? Didn’t fancy having my collar felt.’
Duckworth, an apparent connoisseur of such things, had agreed.
‘Bloody hell, though. You’d never know now, would you? Looks like butter wouldn’t melt.’
No, Duckworth had observed. But for them recognising her, no one would have known.
Nicol had begun to pull down his hammock. He had thought he might try for some sleep before his next watch.
‘Now now, Nicol,’ came Jones’s voice from behind him. ‘Hope you’re not thinking about slipping in there for a quickie later. Need to save your money for that missus of yours.’ He had guffawed. ‘Besides, she’s a bit better-looking now. Bit more polish. She’d probably charge you a fortune.’
He had thought he might hit him. Some irrational part of him had wanted to do the same to her. Instead he had pasted a wry smile on his face, feeling even as he did that he was engaged in some sort of betrayal, and disappeared into the wash cubicle.
Night had fallen.Victoriapushed forward in the black waters, oblivious to the time or season, to the moods and vagaries of her inhabitants, her vast engines powering obediently beneath her. Frances lay in her bunk, listening for the now familiar sounds, the last pipes, muttered conversations and faltering footsteps that spoke of the steady settling of the ship’s passengers to sleep, the sniffs and grunts, the slowing of breath that told the same story of the two other women in her cabin. The sounds of silence, of solitude, the sounds that told her she was free once again to breathe. The sounds she seemed to have spent a good portion of her life waiting for.
And outside, just audible to the trained ear, the sound of two feet shifting on the corridor floor.
He arrived at four a.m. She heard him murmuring something to the other marine as they changed guard, the muffled echo of the other man’s steps as he went to some mess, or to sleep. She listened to the man outside as she had for what felt like hundreds of nights before.
Finally, when she could bear it no longer, she rose from her bunk. Unseen by the two sleeping women on each side of her, she tiptoed towards the steel door, her footsteps sure and silent in the dark. Just before she reached it, she stood still, eyes closed as if she were in pain.
Then she stepped forward, and quietly, carefully, laid her face against it. Slowly she rested her entire length, her thighs, her stomach, her chest against it, palms pressed flat on each side of her head, feeling the cool metal through her thin nightgown, its immovable solidity.
If she turned her head, kept her ear pressed against the door, she could almost hear him breathing.
