A young rating stood before her.
‘You’ve had a wire. Come through the radio room this afternoon.’
Margaret dropped the dog behind her and stepped forward to take Avice’s arm. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said involuntarily.
The rating registered the two wide-eyed faces. Then he thrust the piece of paper into Avice’s hand. ‘Don’t look like that, missus – it’s good news.’
‘What?’ said Margaret.
He ignored her. He waited for Avice’s eyes to drop to the paper before he spoke again, his voice thick with mirth. ‘It’s family. Your folks are going to be in Plymouth to meet you off the ship.’
Avice had sobbed for almost twenty minutes, which had initially seemed excessive and had now become alarming. Margaret, her previous reticence forgotten, had climbed on to Avice’s bunk and now sat beside her, trying not to think about the way it creaked ominously under her weight. ‘It’s okay, Avice,’ she kept saying. ‘He’s all right. Ian’s all right. That bloody wire just gave you a bit of a fright.’
The captain wasn’t best pleased, the rating had said gleefully. Said he’d be using the radio room for taking down shopping lists next. But he’d allowed the message through.
Margaret tutted. ‘They shouldn’t have sent someone down here like that. They must have known it would scare you half to death. Specially someone in our condition, eh?’ She tried to get the girl to smile.
Avice failed to answer her. But eventually the sobbing subsided, until it was just a stuttering echo of itself, a breath that caught periodically in the back of her throat. Finally, when Margaret felt the worst was over, she stepped down.
‘There now,’ she said uselessly. ‘You get some rest. Calm yourself down a bit.’ She lay on her own bunk and began to chat about their plans for the last few days – the best lectures to attend, Avice’s preparations for the Queen of the Victoria final, anything to shake her out of her depression. ‘You’ve got to wear those green satin shoes again,’ she rattled on gamely. ‘You don’t know how many girls would give their eye teeth for them, Avice. That girl from 11F said she’d seen some just like them in Australian Women’s Weekly.’
Avice’s eyes were raw and red-rimmed. You don’t understand, she thought, as she stared at the blank wall, not registering the endless stream of words that floated up from below. Just for a moment, I thought everything was going to be okay, that there was going to be a way out of this for me.
She lay very still, as if somehow she could turn herself to stone.
Just for a moment, I thought they had come to tell me he was dead.
‘So, anyway, there I was, dirty water up to my ears, pans sloshing up and down the galley, ship listing forty-five degrees to port, and the old boy wades in, looks me up and down, empties several pints of bilge water out of his cap and says, “I hope those aren’t odd socks you’re wearing, Highfield. I won’t have standards slipping on my ship.”’
The captain stretched out his leg. ‘Best bit about it was he was right. God only knows how he could tell under four foot of water, but he was right.’
Frances straightened up and smiled. ‘I’ve had matrons like that,’ she said. ‘I reckon they could tell you the number of pills in every bottle.’
She began to place the instruments back in the carrying case.
‘Ah,’ said Highfield. He cleared his throat. ‘Well, then. Forty-one torpedo heads, separated from cases, two empty cases, thirty-two bombs, most dismantled, four cases ammunition for 4.5 inch magazine, one case 4.5 inch HA/LA twin mounting, nine cases assorted armaments, small-arms magazine and pom-poms. Oh, and twenty-two rounds for several assorted handguns. Those currently locked in my personal stores.’
‘Something tells me,’ said Frances, ‘you’re not entirely ready for retirement.’
Outside, behind his left shoulder, the sun was setting. It sank towards the horizon at a gentler pace than it had in previous waters. The ocean stretched around them, its greyish hue the only clue to the cooler temperature. Now they were often pursued by gulls, scavenging after the gash, or rubbish, the ship’s cook threw overboard, or bits of biscuit the girls hurled at them for the fun of watching them catch scraps in mid-air.
Highfield leant forward: the scar tissue on his leg was like melted candlewax. ‘How’s it . . . ?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You must be able to feel it.’
‘I feel better,’ he said. Then, catching her eye, ‘It’s still a little sore, but much improved.’
‘Your temperature’s normal.’
‘I thought I’d got a touch of the tropical sweats.’
‘Probably had those too.’ She knew he felt better. It was in his demeanour; something in him was no longer quite so grimly contained. Now his eyes held a glint of something else, and his smile came readily. When he stood straight, it was with pride rather than the desperation to prove he still could.
He had embarked on another story; one about a missing torpedo case. She had finished, and allowed herself to sit neatly in the chair opposite him and listen. He had told her this story some days previously but she didn’t mind: she sensed that he was not a man who talked easily. A lonely man, she had concluded. She had often found those in charge to be the loneliest.
Besides, she had to admit, faced with the cold reception she still received from most of the brides, with Avice’s strange melancholy and the marine’s absence, she enjoyed his company.
‘. . . and the ruddy man was only using it to cook fish. “Couldn’t find anything else that looked like a fish kettle,” he said. I tell you, when we thought about it, we were only grateful he hadn’t used the warhead.’
Highfield’s laugh emerged from him like a bark, as if it surprised him, and she smiled again, keen not to reveal her familiarity with what he had said. He would glance at her after each joke, an infinitesimal movement, but one in which she recognised his awkwardness with women. He would not want to bore her. She would not allow him to think he had.
‘Sister Mackenzie . . . can I offer you a drink? I often have a little tot at this time of day.’
‘Thank you, but I don’t drink.’
‘Sensible girl.’ She watched as he manoeuvred himself round his desk. It was beautiful, a deep walnut colour embossed with dark green leather. The captain’s private room could have sat happily in any well-off house, with its carpet, paintings and comfortable upholstered chairs. She thought of the sparse conditions of the men below, their hammocks, lockers and bleached tabletops. Nowhere but in the British Navy had she seen the blatant difference in the men’s living conditions, and it made her wonder about the country she was heading to. ‘How did you do it?’ she asked, as he poured his drink.
‘What?’
‘Your leg. You never said.’
He was standing with his back to her and for a moment it went still enough for her to understand that her question had not been as inconsequential as she had intended. ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.’
It was as if he had not heard her. He stoppered the decanter, then sat down again. He took a long slug of the amber liquid, and then he spoke. The Victoria, he said, was not his ship. ‘I served on her sister, Indomitable. From ’thirty-nine. Then shortly before VJ Day we came under attack. We had six Albacores, four Swordfish and God knows what else up there trying to cover us, men on all the guns, but nothing hit them. I knew from the start we were done.
‘My nephew was a pilot. Robert Hart. Twenty-six years old. My younger sister Molly’s boy . . . He was a . . . We were close. He was a good chap.’
They were briefly interrupted by a knock on the door. A flash of irritation briefly illuminated Highfield’s features. He rose and walked heavily across the floor. He opened the door, glanced at the papers that were handed to him and nodded at the young telegraphist. ‘Very good,’ he muttered.
Frances, still lost in the captain’s previous words, barely noticed.
The captain sat down again, dropping the papers beside him on the desk. There was a long silence.
‘Was he . . . shot down?’ she said.
‘No,’ he said, after another slug of his drink. ‘No. I think he would have preferred that. One of the bombs dropped into number-two hold and blew out several decks, from the officers’ berths to the centre engine room. I lost sixteen men in that first explosion.’
Frances could imagine the scene on board, her nose scenting the smoke and oil, the screams of trapped and burning men in her ears. ‘Including your nephew.’
‘No . . . no, that’s the problem. I was too late getting them out, you see? I’d been blown off my feet, and I was a bit dazed. I didn’t realise how close the explosion had been to the ammunition stores.
‘The fire cracked several of the internal pipes. It ran along the tiller flat, the steering-gear store and the admiral’s store and came up again under the ammunition conveyor. Fifteen minutes after the first, they caught and blew out half the innards of the ship.’ He shook his head. ‘It was deafening . . . deafening. I thought the heavens themselves had cracked open. I should have had more men down there, checking the hatches were closed, stopping the fire.’
‘You might have lost more.’
‘Fifty-eight, all told. My nephew had been on the control platform.’ He hesitated. ‘I couldn’t get to him.’
Frances sat very still. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘They made me get off,’ he said, his words coming thick and fast now as if they had waited too long. ‘She was going down, and I had my men – those who could still stand – in the boats. The seas were eerily calm, and I could see the boats all sitting there below me, almost still, like lily-pads on a pond, all smeared with blood and oil as the men hauled in the injured from the water. It was so hot. Those of us still aboard were spraying ourselves with the hoses, just to try to stay on the ship. And while we were trying to reach our injured men, while bits of the ship were cracking open and burning, the bloody Japanese kept circling. Not firing any more, just circling above us, like vultures, as if they were enjoying watching us suffer.’
He took a gulp of his drink.
‘I was still trying to find him when they ordered me off.’ He dropped his head. ‘Two destroyers came alongside to help us. Finally saw off the Japanese. I was ordered off. And all my men sat there and watched as I let the ship go down, knowing that there were probably men alive down there, injured men. Perhaps even Hart.’
He paused. ‘None of them said a word to me. They just . . . stared.’
Frances closed her eyes. She had heard similar stories, knew the scars they caused. There was nothing she could say to comfort him.
They listened to the Tannoy calling the ladies to a display of feltwork in the forward lounge. Frances noted, with surprise, that at some point it had become completely dark outside.
‘Not much of a way to end a career, is it?’
She heard the break in his voice. ‘Captain,’ she said, ‘the only people who still have all the answers are those who have never been faced with the questions.’
Outside his rooms the deck light stuttered into life, throwing a cold neon glow through the window. There was a brief burst of conversation as several men left the squadron office and a pipe called repetitively ‘stand by to receive gash barge alongside’.
Captain Highfield stared at his feet, then at her, digesting the truth of what she had said. He had a long slug of his drink, his eyes not leaving hers as he finished it. ‘Sister Mackenzie,’ he said, as he put his glass on the table, ‘tell me about your husband.’
Nicol had stood outside the cinema projection room for almost three-quarters of an hour. Had he been allowed in to view the film, he would have been unwilling to watch The Best Years of Our Lives, even with its happy endings for those servicemen returning home. His attention was focused on the other end of the corridor.