‘Make sure you stay well away from D Deck. There’s inspections going on and all sorts.’ He glanced behind him, as if to make sure no one else was around. ‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ he said. ‘It didn’t seem right.’
‘It wasn’t,’ she said. ‘None of it was her fault. She’s only a child.’
‘Well, the Navy can be an unforgiving host.’ He reached out and touched her arm lightly. ‘You okay, though?’ She blushed again, and he tried to correct himself. ‘I mean the rest of you? You’re all right?’
‘Oh, we’re fine,’ she said.
‘You don’t need anything? Extra drinking water? More crackers?’
There were three lines at the corners of his eyes. When he spoke, they deepened, testament to years of salt air, perhaps, or of squinting at the sky.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ she asked, pointing to his bag. Anything to stop herself staring at him.
‘Me? No . . . It’s just my good uniform.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m off again tonight,’ he said. He smiled at her, as if this were something good. ‘For the dance?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You haven’t heard? There’s a dance on the flight deck tonight. Captain’s orders.’
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, more loudly than she’d intended. ‘Oh! Good!’
‘I hope they turn the water on for a bit first.’ He grinned. ‘You girls will all run a mile faced with the scent of a thousand sweaty matelots.’
She glanced down at her creased trousers, but his attention had switched to a distant figure.
‘I’ll see you up there,’ he said, his marine mask back in place. With a nod that could almost have been a salute, he was gone.
The Royal Marines Band sat on their makeshift pedestal outside the deck canteen, a little way distant of the ship’s island, and struck up with ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’. The Victoria’s engines were shut down for repairs and she floated serene and immobile in the placid waters. On the deck, several hundred brides in their finest dresses – at least, the finest to which they had been allowed access – were whirling around, some with the men and others, giggling, with each other. Around the island, tables and chairs had been brought up from the dining area, and were occupied by those unable or unwilling to keep dancing. Above them, in the Indian sky, the stars glittered like ballroom lights, bathing the seas with silver.
It could have been – if one bent one’s imagination a little and ignored the presence of the guns, the scarred deck, the rickety tables and chairs – any of the grand ballrooms of Europe. The captain had felt an unlikely joy in the spectacle, feeling it (sentimentally, he had to admit) no less than the old girl deserved in her final voyage. A bit of pomp and finery. A bit of a do.
The men, in their best drill uniform, were looking more cheerful than they had done for days, while the brides – mutinous after the temporary closure of the hair salon – had also perked up considerably, thanks to the introduction of emergency salt-water showers. It had been good for them all to have an excuse to dress up a bit, he thought. Even the men liked parading in their good tropical kit.
They sat in now well-established huddles or chatted in groups, the men temporarily unconcerned by the lack of defining rank structure. What the hell? Highfield had thought, when he was asked by one of the women’s service officers if he wanted to enforce ‘proper’ separation. This voyage was already something extraordinary.
‘How long does the Victoria take to refuel, Captain Highfield?’
Beside him sat one of the passengers, a little Wren to whom Dobson had introduced him half an hour earlier. She was small, dark and intensely serious, and had quizzed him so lengthily about the specifications of his ship that he had been tempted to ask her if she was spying for the Japanese. But he hadn’t. Somehow she hadn’t looked the type to have a sense of humour.
‘Do you know? I don’t think I could tell you offhand,’ he lied.
‘A little longer than your boys do,’ muttered Dr Duxbury, and laughed.
In thanks for their fortitude over the water situation, Captain Highfield had promised everyone extra ‘sippers’ of rum. Just to warm up the evening a little, he had announced, to cheers. He suspected, however, that Dr Duxbury had somehow obtained more than his allotted share.
What the hell? he thought again. The man would be gone soon. His leg was painful enough tonight for him to consider taking extra sippers himself. If the water situation had been different he would have placed it in a bath of cold water – which seemed to ease it a little – but instead he was in for another near sleepless night.
‘Did you serve alongside many of the US carriers?’ the little Wren asked. ‘We came up alongside the USS Indiana in the Persian Gulf, and I must say those American ships do seem far superior to ours.’
‘Know much about ships, do you?’ said Dr Duxbury.
‘I should hope so,’ she said. ‘I’ve been a Wren for four years.’
Dr Duxbury didn’t appear to have heard. ‘You have a look of Judy Garland about you. Has anyone ever told you that? Did you ever see her in Me and My Girl?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Here we go, thought Captain Highfield. He had already endured several dinners with his proxy medic, at least half of which had culminated in the man singing his terrible ditties. He talked of music so much and medicine so little that Highfield wondered if the Navy should have checked his credentials more carefully before taking him on. Despite his misgivings, he had not requested a second doctor, as he might have on previous voyages. He realised, with a twinge of conscience, that Duxbury’s distraction suited him: he did not want an efficient sort asking too many questions about his leg.
He took a last look at the merriment in front of him; the band had struck up a reel and the girls were whooping and spinning, faces flushed and feet light. Then he looked at Dobson and the marine captain, who were talking to a flight captain over by the lifeboats. His work was done. They could take over from here. He had never been a great one for parties anyway.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, pushing himself upright painfully, ‘I’ve got to attend to a little matter,’ and with that he went back inside.
‘Jean would have loved this,’ said Margaret. Seated in a comfortable chair that Dennis Tims had brought up from the officers’ lounge, a light shawl round her shoulders, she was beaming. A good sleep and Maude Gonne’s recovery had significantly lifted her mood.
‘Poor Jean,’ said Frances. ‘I wonder what she’s doing.’
Avice, a short distance away, was dancing with one of the white-clad officers. Her hair, carefully set in the salon, gleamed honey under the arc-lights, while her neat waist and elaborate gathered skirt betrayed nothing of her condition.
‘I don’t think your woman there is worrying too much, do you?’ Margaret nodded.
Not two hours after Jean had gone, Avice had appropriated her bunk for storage of the clothes and shoes she wanted brought up from her trunk.
Frances had been so enraged that she had had to fight the compulsion to dump them all on the floor. ‘What’s the matter?’ Avice had protested. ‘It’s not like she needs it now.’
She was still celebrating having won that afternoon’s cleverest-use-of-craft-materials competition with her decorated evening bag. Not, she told the girls afterwards, that she would have had it within six feet of her on a night out. The important thing had been beating Irene Carter. She was now two points ahead of her for the Queen of the Victoria title.
‘I don’t think she worries about anything—’ Frances stopped herself.
‘Let’s not think about it tonight, eh? Nothing we can do now.’
‘No,’ said Frances.
She had never been particularly interested in clothes, had fallen with relief into her uniform for almost as long as she could remember. She had never wanted to draw attention to herself. Now she smoothed her skirt: in comparison with the peacock finery of the other women, the dress she had once considered smart now looked dowdy. On a whim, she had released her hair from its tight knot at the back of her head, staring at herself in the little mirror, seeing how, as it hung loose on her shoulders, it softened her face. Now, with all the carefully set styles around her, the product of hours spent with rollers and setting lotion, she felt unsophisticated, unfinished, and wished for the reassurance of her hairpins. She wondered if she could voice her fears to Margaret, seek reassurance. But the sight of her friend’s perspiring face and swollen frame, squeezed into the same gingham dress she had worn for the last four days, stopped the question on her lips. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she said instead.
‘You beauty! Thought you’d never ask,’ Margaret said companionably. ‘I’d fetch them myself, but it’d take a crane to hoist me out of this chair.’
‘I’ll get you some soda.’
‘Bless you! Do you not want to dance?’
Frances stopped. ‘What?’
‘You don’t have to stay with me, you know. I’m a big girl. Go and enjoy yourself.’
Frances wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m happier at the edge of things.’
Margaret nodded, lifted a hand.
It wasn’t strictly true. Tonight, protected by the semi-darkness, by the sweetened atmosphere and lack of attention afforded her by the music, Frances had felt a creeping longing to be one of those girls whirling around on the dance floor. No one would judge her for it. No one would pay her any attention. They all seemed to accept it for what it was: an innocent diversion, a simple pleasure stolen under the moonlight.
She collected two glasses of soda and returned to Margaret, who was watching the dancers.
‘I never was one for dancing,’ said Margaret, ‘yet looking at that lot right now I’d give anything to be up there.’
Frances nodded towards Margaret’s belly. ‘Not long,’ she said. ‘Then you can foxtrot half-way across England.’
She had told herself it didn’t matter, not seeing him. That, looking like she did, she might even prefer it. He was probably lost in that dark crowd, dancing with some pretty girl in a brightly coloured dress and satin shoes. Anyway, she had become so used to pushing men away that she wouldn’t have known how to behave otherwise.
The only dances she had been to in her adult life had been in hospital wards; those had been easy. She had either danced with her colleagues, who were generally old friends and kept a respectful distance, or with patients, to whom she felt vaguely maternal, and who generally retained an air of deference for anyone ‘medical’. She would often find herself murmuring to them to ‘watch that leg’, or checking whether they were still comfortable as they crossed the floor. The matron, Audrey Marshall, had joked that it was as if she was taking them for a medicinal promenade. She wouldn’t have known how to behave, faced with these laughing, cocky men, some so handsome in their dress uniforms that her breath caught in her throat. She wouldn’t have known how to make small-talk, or flirt without intent. She would have felt too self-conscious in her dull pale blue dress beside everyone else’s glorious gowns.
‘Hello there,’ he said, seating himself beside her. ‘I wondered where I might find you.’
She could barely speak. His dark eyes looked steadily out at her from a face softened by the night. She could detect the faint scent of carbolic on his skin, the characteristic smell of the fabric of his uniform. His hand lay on the table in front of her and she fought an irrational urge to touch it.
‘I wondered if you’d like to dance,’ he said.
She stared at that hand, faced with the prospect of it resting on her waist, of his body close to hers, and felt a swell of panic. ‘No,’ she said abruptly. ‘Actually, I – I was just leaving.’