‘All right, girl,’ he said. ‘All right now. All right.’ As his mate pulled the man away from her, he closed his broad forearms around Frances’s collarbone and pulled her back, until the spanner was waving futilely in the air.
Tims’s mate released the man who, too shocked or perhaps too inebriated to react, fell like a stone. The noise of the engines was deafening, a never-ending timpani of thumping and grinding, yet even over this the sound his head made was a sick, echoing thud, like that of a watermelon when it is dropped to the floor.
Irene shrieked.
Tims let go of Frances and shoved the man on to his side, at first, one might have suspected, to inflict further damage. But he was roughly checking the head wound, muttering something unintelligible under his breath.
Two of the girls who, until then, had been whispering together ran off, hands pressed to their faces.
Avice was shaking. Tims was on his knees, shouting at the man to get up, get up, damn him.
Margaret, behind the men, had begun to haul Jean away.
Frances was standing, legs hip-width apart, the spanner loose in her fingers, shaking convulsively. She was possibly unaware that she was weeping.
‘We should call someone,’ said Avice to Irene. There was a terrible energy in the air. Her breath emerged in short bursts, as if, even as an observer, she had been overfilled with adrenaline.
‘I don’t . . . I . . .’
It was then that they caught sight of the women’s officer running towards them, her feet echoing on the metal floor. ‘What is going on here?’ Scraped-back dark hair, large bosom. She was still twenty feet from them.
Tims stopped, a fist raised. One of his mates said something to him, put a hand to his elbow, then the man melted into the darkness. Tims straightened, ran a hand through his short, straw-coloured hair. He looked at Margaret, as if he had only just noticed she was there, his eyes wide and strained, his hand still moving involuntarily. He shook his head, as if to say something, to apologise perhaps. And then she was there, in front of them all, her eyes darting between them, a regulatory air emanating from her like a bad perfume.
‘What is going on here?’
At first she didn’t seem to see Jean on the floor, Margaret still trying to make her decent. Her stockings, Avice saw were looped round her knees.
‘Bit of an accident,’ said Tims, wiping bloodied hands on his trousers. He did not look at the woman. ‘We’ve just been sorting it out.’ He mouthed the words as much as spoke them.
The officer looked from his hands to Avice, to Margaret, was briefly distracted by Margaret’s belly. ‘What are you girls doing down here?’
She waited for an answer. No one spoke. Beside her, Avice realised, Irene’s hand was pressed to her chest, clutching a handkerchief, in the manner of a consumptive he**ine. Her social assurance and confidence had deserted her and her mouth hung a little open.
When she turned back Tims had disappeared. The injured man now sat lopsidedly on the floor, his knees drawn up to his chest.
‘You do know there are grave penalties for being in the men’s area?’
There was a heavy silence. The officer bent down, took in the state of the man, the fact that the other had vanished. Then she saw Jean. ‘Oh, my goodness. Please don’t tell me this is what I think it is.’
‘It’s not,’ said Margaret.
The woman’s eyes moved to her. ‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said again. ‘The captain will have to be informed.’
‘Why? It wasn’t us.’ Avice had yelled to be heard over the engines. ‘We only came to get Jean.’
‘Avice!’ Frances was scrambling to her feet. She stood between the woman and Jean’s prostrate form. ‘Leave it to us. We’ll get her back to her room.’
‘I can’t do that. I’ve been told to report any parties, any drinking, any . . . misdemeanours. I’ll need all your names.’
‘But it wasn’t us!’ said Avice, with a glance at Irene. ‘It’s only Jean who’s disgraced herself!’
‘Jean?’
‘Jean Castleforth,’ said Avice, desperately. ‘We really are nothing to do with it. We just came down because we heard she was in trouble.’
‘Jean Castleforth,’ said the woman. ‘And yours?’
‘But I haven’t so much as looked at another man! I don’t even like alcohol!’
‘I said we’ll take her home,’ said Frances. ‘I’m a nurse. I’ll look after her.’
‘You’re not suggesting I ignore this? Look at her!’
‘She’s just—’
‘She’s no better than a brass, is what she is!’
‘How dare you?’ Frances was surprisingly tall when she stood straight. Her features had sharpened. Her fists, Avice noted, were balled. ‘How dare you?’
‘Are you telling me they forced her to come down here?’ The woman wrinkled her nostrils against the smell of alcohol on Jean’s breath.
‘Why don’t we all just—’
Quivering with rage, Frances turned on Avice. ‘Get out of here! Just get away from me. And listen, you – you women’s officer, or whatever you are – you can’t report her for this, you hear? It wasn’t her fault.’
‘My orders are to report any misdemeanours.’
‘She’s sixteen years old. They’ve obviously got her drunk and . . . abused her. She’s sixteen!’
‘Old enough to know what she’s doing. She shouldn’t be down here. None of you should be.’
‘They got her drunk! Look at her! She’s virtually unconscious! You think she should lose her reputation, possibly her husband, because of this?’
‘I don’t—’
‘You can’t ruin the girl’s whole life because of one drunken moment!’ Frances was standing over the woman now, some sense of barely concealed – what was it?
Avice, shocked by this unrecognisable Frances, found herself instinctively stepping backwards.
The officer could see it too: she had squared up a little, in a manner that suggested some defensive strategy. ‘As I said, my orders are to—’
‘Oh, shut up about your bloody orders, you officious—’
It was impossible to say why Frances, flushed and electric, had lifted her arm but Margaret was already pulling her backwards. ‘Frances,’ she was murmuring, ‘calm down, okay? It’s okay.’
It was a few moments before Frances appeared to hear her. She was rigid, filled with tension. ‘No, it’s not okay. You’ve got to tell her,’ she said, her eyes glittering.
‘But you’re not helping her,’ said Margaret. ‘You hear me? You’ve got to back off.’
Something in Margaret’s eyes stayed Frances. She blinked several times, then let out a deep, shuddering breath.
Irene’s hand – she was still clutching the handkerchief – was shaking. As Avice looked away from it, the officer had turned and, as if grateful for the means of escape, was walking briskly, with purpose, down the passageway.
‘She’s just a kid!’ Frances yelled. But the woman was gone.
11
Congratulations to Mrs H. Skinner and Mrs H. Dill who both have wedding anniversaries this week. Mrs Skinner has been married two years and Mrs Dill a year and although this happy occasion may find them separated from their husbands we sincerely hope that this will be the last anniversary they will spend apart and wish them every happiness in their future life.
‘Celebration Time’, Daily Ship News,
from the papers of Avice R. Wilson, war bride,
Imperial War Museum
Eighteen days
At sea, it was impossible to say at what time dawn broke, not because it varied from day to day, or continent to continent, but because across the flattened arc of a marine horizon the glowing crack that sheared into the darkness could be seen hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away, long before it might be visible on land, long before it meant a new day. And, more importantly, because below decks, in a narrow passageway without windows or doors, without anything but artificial light, it was impossible to tell whether it had happened at all.
This was one, but not the only, reason Henry Nicol did not like the hour between five and six in the morning. Once he had enjoyed the early watch, when the seas had been new and magical to him, when, unused to living in such close quarters with other men, he had relished the quietest time aboard ship: those last dark minutes before the ship segued into the mechanics of its day and woke, by degrees, around him. The one time he could imagine himself the only person in the world.
Later, when he had been home on leave and the children were babies, one or both would inevitably wake at this time, and he would hear his wife slide heavily out of bed, half seeing, if he chose to open an eye, her hand reaching unconsciously to her pin curls, the other reaching for her dressing-gown as she whispered, ‘Hold on, Mother’s coming.’ He would turn over, pinned to his pillow by the familiar mix of guilt and impatience, aware even in half-sleep of his own failure to feel what he should for the woman padding across the linoleum: gratitude, desire, even love.
For some time now 0500 had become not the herald of a new dawn but a bald figure of timing for conversion: in America, it would be five o’clock the previous evening. And in America, his 1900 hours would be waking-up time for his boys. But this time the distance in geography would be only half of it: their whole lives would be running on different time lines. He had often wondered how they would remember him, if they could not imagine him existing half a day, even a whole day ahead. Now there would be no more thinking of them in the present tense, imagining, as he sometimes did, They’ll be having breakfast now. They’ll be brushing their teeth. They might be outside, playing with a ball, a car, the wagon I made for them from bits of wood. Now he would think of them historically.
Some other man’s hands throwing the ball.
On the other side of the steel door a woman murmured in sleep, her voice rising as if in a question. Then silence.
Nicol stared at his watch, adjusted the previous day as they entered another time zone. My hours are speeding towards nothing, he thought. No home, no sons, no heroic return. I have given up my best years and watched my friends freeze, drown and burn. I have given up my innocence, my friends their lives, so that I might grieve for what I was never sure I even wanted. At least, until it was too late.
Nicol leant back, hardened his mind against the familiar thoughts, trying to dislodge the huge weight that had settled upon him, that pulled on his heart and lungs. Willing the last hour to pass faster. Willing the dawn to come.
‘Off caps!’
The paymaster failed to look up as the seaman stepped forward, swivelled his cap from his head and laid it on the table before him. The two men at his side were flicking through drawers of banknotes, passing each other handwritten slips.
‘Andrews, sir. Air mechanic, first class. Seven two two one nine seven two. Sir.’
As the younger man stood expectantly before him, the paymaster flipped pages, then ran his finger swiftly down his accounts book. ‘Three pounds twelve shillings.’
‘Three pounds twelve shillings,’ repeated the paymaster’s assistant, beside him.
The mechanic cleared his throat. ‘Sir – with respect, sir – that’s less than we were getting before Australia, sir.’
The paymaster wore the expression of one who had heard every complaint, every financial try-on not once but several thousand times. ‘We were serving in the Pacific, Andrews. You were getting extra pay for operating in a war zone. Would you like us to organise a couple of kamikaze guests to warrant your extra two shillings?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No . . . Don’t spend it all ashore. And steer clear of those women. Don’t want a queue outside the sick bay in two days’ time, do we, lads?’