‘No. Thank you.’
‘You’d be great at it.’ She would. Her face was almost entirely impassive; her neat, slightly sharpened features revealed none of the discomfort that Margaret knew she felt. Several times now she had mentioned that Frances was a nurse, and several times Frances had rebuffed any attempt to get her to talk about her time in service. There was just enough grace in her manner to prevent the suggestion of rudeness. But only just.
‘Your mate all right?’ Dennis murmured to her.
‘I think she’s a little shy.’ Margaret had no other explanation. She had kept her head down, embarrassed to be claiming familiarity with a woman she had only recently met.
‘A liddle shoi,’ murmured the rating behind her.
‘Shut up, Jackson. So, who’s your man with, then?’
‘Navy,’ said Margaret. ‘Joseph O’Brien. He’s an engineer on the Alexandra.’
‘An engineer, eh? Hey, lads, Mags here’s one of us. An engineer’s wife. I knew you had taste, Mags, as soon as I laid eyes on you.’
‘And I bet you lay eyes on plenty of women.’ Margaret raised her eyebrows.
‘Very few with taste,’ said his mate.
They played four or five more hands, the game and the surroundings swiftly displacing the women’s sense of being strangers. Margaret knew she was a safe prospect to someone like Dennis: he was the kind of man who enjoyed female company if the possibility of sexual conquest was removed. She had feared her pregnancy might make things difficult on the voyage; now she saw it might make things easier.
Even better, paradoxically, was that these men didn’t define her by her belly. Almost every woman she had met so far on this ship had asked her how far gone she was, whether it was a ‘good’ baby (what, she thought, was a bad one?), whether she hoped for a boy or a girl. It was as if she had ceased to be Margaret at all but had become a walking incubator. Some wanted to touch it, and whispered unwanted confidences about how they longed for their own. Others, like Avice, eyed it with vague distaste, or failed to mention it at all, as if they were afraid it might be contagious in some way. Margaret rarely broached the subject: haunted by images of her father’s cows giving birth, she had still not reconciled herself to her biological fate.
They played two, three, several more hands. The room grew smokier. The man in the corner played two songs she didn’t recognise, then ‘The Green Green Grass of Home’, unusually fast, on his trumpet. The men had stopped the game to sing. Jean broke in with an unrepeatable ditty, and forgot the last few lines. She collapsed into squawks of laughter.
It grew late, or at least it felt late: without natural light or a clock it was impossible to tell whether time had stalled or sped on into the early hours. It became a matter of good or bad hands, of Jean’s giggling, the trumpet in the corner, and sounds that, with a little imagination, bore the faintest resemblance to home.
Margaret put down her hand, gave Dennis a second to register. ‘I think you owe me, Mr Tims.’
‘I’m all out,’ he said, in good-natured exasperation. ‘Settle for cigarette cards? Something to give the old man?’
‘Keep them,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling too sorry for you to take anything else off you.’
‘We’d better get back to the dorm. It’s getting late.’ Frances, the only one of them who was still stiff and formal, looked pointedly at her watch, and then at Jean, who, helpless with giggles, was lying on a hammock, looking at a young rating’s comic book.
It was a quarter to twelve. Margaret stood up heavily, sad to have to leave. ‘It’s been great, guys,’ she said, ‘but I suppose we should go while the going’s good.’
‘Don’t want to get sent home in a lifeboat.’
Frances’s face revealed that, for several seconds, she had taken this remark seriously.
‘Thanks ever so much for the hospitality.’
‘Hospidaliddy,’ murmured Jackson.
‘Our pleasure,’ said Dennis. ‘Want one of us to check the passageway’s clear for you?’ Then his voice hardened. ‘Oi, Plummer, have a little respect.’
The music stopped. All eyes turned towards Dennis’s line of sight. The owner of Jean’s comic book had rested a hand casually on the back of her thigh, which was now removed. It was unclear whether Jean was too drunk to have noticed it. Either way, there was a subtle shift in the atmosphere. For a second or two, nobody spoke.
Then Frances stepped forward. ‘Yes, come on, Jean.’ It was as if she had been galvanised into life. ‘Get up. We must get back.’
‘Spoilsports.’ Jean half slid, half fell off the hammock, blew a kiss to the rating, and allowed her arm to be linked by Frances’s rigid one. ‘’Bye, lads. Thanks for a lovely time.’ Her hair had fallen across her face, half concealing a beatific smile. ‘Got to shake a leg in the morning.’ She wiggled one of hers clumsily, and Frances reached forward to pull her skirt down to a demure level.
Margaret nodded to the men round the table, then made her way to the door, suddenly awkward, as if only just aware of the potential pitfalls of their position.
Dennis seemed to grasp this. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘It’s just the drink. No harm meant.’
‘None taken,’ said Margaret, raising a neutral smile.
He held out a hand. ‘Come again.’ He stooped forward and murmured, ‘I get sick of the sight of this lot.’
She knew what he was trying to say, and was grateful.
‘I’d appreciate another game,’ he added.
‘I’m sure we’ll be back,’ she said, as Frances dragged Jean out of the door.
Avice was awake when they sneaked into their cabin as silently as they could with Jean giggling and snorting between them.
They had seen only two others: wary girls, who had shared with them the briefest complicit grin before vanishing into a shadowy doorway. Margaret, however, had seen spectral monitors everywhere: her ears had burned with anticipated cries of ‘Hey! You! What do you think you’re doing?’ She knew from Frances’s serious face that she felt the same. Meanwhile, Jean had been sick twice, thankfully in the officers’ bathroom, which had been empty at the time, but was now giggling as she tried to relate to them the story she had been reading. ‘It was awful funny. Every time this girl does anything. Anything.’ Her face opened in exaggerated amazement. ‘All her clothes fall off.’
‘Hilarious,’ muttered Margaret. She was a strong girl (‘a bit of a heifer’, her brothers used to say), but the baby, combined with Jean’s almost dead weight and the incessant lurching of the ship, had caused her to grunt and sweat along the passageway. Frances had taken most of Jean’s weight and hauled her along silently, one hand gripping at pipes and rails, her face set with the effort.
‘Most times it’s down to her undies and whatnot. But there were at least two pictures where she had nothing on at all. Nothing. She had to do this with her hands.’ Jean wrestled herself out of their grasp – she was surprisingly strong for such a small girl – and made as if to cover her bosom and groin, her face an exaggerated ooh! of surprise.
‘Oh, come on, Jean.’
Margaret had peeped round the corner to where their dormitory was, and saw thankfully that the marines were not on duty. ‘Quick! We might only have a minute.’
It was then that the woman had stepped out of the darkness.
‘Oh!’ Frances gasped.
Margaret felt herself flush.
‘What’s going on, ladies?’
The officer came towards them at a trot, her bosom arriving shortly before she did. She was one of the WSOs, a short, auburn-haired woman who had directed them earlier to the laundry. There was something almost indecent in her haste, as if she had been waiting for some misdemeanour to take place. ‘What’s going on? You know brides are not allowed out of their dormitories at this time of night.’
Margaret felt her tongue swell to fill her mouth.
‘Our friend is ill,’ said Frances, coolly. ‘She needed to go to the bathroom, and we weren’t sure she would manage by herself.’
As if in corroboration, the deck lifted under them, sending all four staggering against the wall. As she slipped to her knees Jean swore, then belched.
‘Seasickness, is it?’
‘Terrible,’ said Margaret, heaving Jean up.
‘Well, I’m not sure—’
‘I’m a nurse,’ interrupted Frances. That thin little voice could hold a surprising amount of authority, Margaret thought. ‘I decided it would be more hygienic if she was ill away from the bunks. We’ve got another inside,’ she said, pointing towards their door.
The woman stared at Jean, whose head was hanging down. ‘Are you sure it’s just seasickness?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Frances. ‘I’ve examined her and she’s fine otherwise.’
The woman’s expression was guarded.
‘I’ve seen it before,’ said Frances, ‘when I was serving on the hospital ship Ariadne.’ She had emphasised ‘serving’. She held out a hand. ‘Sister Frances Mackenzie.’
The woman had been outmanoeuvred. She was bothered by it, Margaret could tell, not least because she was not sure how it had happened.
‘Yes. Well . . .’ she said. She did not take Frances’s hand, but left it in mid-air. The apparent ease with which Frances eventually lowered hers made Margaret wonder briefly how many times the gesture had been refused.
‘Well, I’ll ask you to return to your bunks, ladies, and not to come out again unless it’s an emergency. You know we don’t have our marine guard tonight, and there’s meant to be a strict curfew in place.’
‘I’m sure we’ll be fine now,’ said Frances.
‘Orders, you know,’ said the officer.
‘Yes, we know,’ replied Frances.
Margaret made as if to move, but Frances was waiting for the woman to go.
Of course, Margaret thought. The dog.
The woman broke. She walked on, casting one brief, uneasy backwards look at them as she headed unsteadily towards the canteen.
9
Rounds of all weather decks, galleries and gun positions were carried out frequently, and at irregular periods after dark. All women had to be in their bunks by 11p.m. and the duty woman officer went round to see that no women were missing . . . These measures were the best that could be devised and although by no means perfect, at any rate, acted as a deterrent to bad behaviour and broke up many petting parties before their logical conclusion.
Captain John Campbell Annesley, quoted in
HMS Victorious, Neil McCart
Seven days
The sound of the bugle echoed tinnily through the Tannoy, and bounced down the walls of B Deck. Beneath it several men grimaced, and at least one put his hands over his ears – delayed, tentative movements, which were testament to eight unofficial ‘parties’ alleged to have taken place during the previous nights. Of the fifteen men lined up outside the Captain’s office, eleven awaited summary trial for some related misdemeanor and the remainder were up for offences dating back to the last shore leave. Normally such disciplinary matters would take place when the ship was not a day or two out of dock, but the extraordinary nature of its cargo, and the unusual level of offences meant that, to some extent at least, normal service on board HMS Victoria had not yet been resumed.
The master-at-arms stood squarely in front of one of the younger boys who was being supported under each arm by two pustulent mates. He shot out a broad, pudgy finger, and chucked the offender under the chin, frowning as he caught a whiff of his breath. ‘I don’t know what your mother would say to you, my old flower, if she could see you in this state, but I’ve got a good idea.’ He turned to the boys. ‘He your mate?’