by Rachel Rhys
‘Helena is such a spoilsport,’ says Ian. ‘I was just preparing to show off my world-famous Aussie quickstep.’
‘I’m heartbroken to miss it,’ laughs Helena.
How young she looks in this silvery light with her eyes shining and her hair, for a change, tumbling down around her face in waves, as if she’s pin-curled it overnight.
Be happy, Lily urges her silently. Don’t let this slip away.
Now Eliza and Edward are also here, Edward’s hand still on Eliza’s arm from having steered her through the crowd. Eliza looks from Max to Lily and then back again, but doesn’t speak.
Edward goes to the bar and comes back with another bottle of champagne.
‘Edward!’ Helena tries to disguise her exclamation as mock-stern, but Lily can see the worry creeping back into her face.
‘It’s a party, Helena,’ says Edward. ‘We’re celebrating being here on this boat in the middle of the ocean far from home with our new friends. The world is so big, and we’re all just tiny little specks, but here we are still, all together. Don’t you think that’s worth raising a glass to?’
Lily has never seen Edward in this mood. She supposes he must be drunk, too. He has a kind of edge to him, hard and sharp and brittle as a brandy snap. They drink more and then Ian asks her to dance, prompted, she guesses, by Helena. Still, she is grateful to get away from Max and the little knot of people by the railings, the constricting tension that seems suddenly to have wound its way so tightly around them. The band are playing an up-tempo number and it feels good to let herself be lost in the music and the laughter of the woman behind her and the woody smell of cigar smoke coming from the group of men by the bar.
‘How come they’re always down here, your friends, Mr and Mrs Campbell?’ asks Ian in his usual forthright way.
‘They claim the people on the upper deck are too stuffy. But I think there might be other reasons.’
‘Such as?’
‘Oh, someone else from First told me they had been involved in some sort of society scandal back in London that they had to escape from.’
‘And now the other passengers are shunning them?’
Lily shrugs, regretting having spoken. Champagne has made her tongue loose.
‘You don’t like them much, do you?’ she asks Ian.
He chews his lip, as if considering.
‘It’s not that I don’t like them, I just think they’re damaged. And damaged people are dangerous people.’
Lily is surprised to hear the bluff Australian talk like this. She had not imagined him capable of such deep thoughts. Or rather, she hadn’t imagined him capable of expressing them.
‘So we are embarked on a dangerous crossing?’ she says, teasing.
Ian smiles, but he doesn’t reply.
After two dances they head back to the railing, to find the others standing in silence, looking out to sea.
‘Ah, here you are at last,’ says Eliza, snatching Lily’s hand and pulling her close. ‘I thought you’d abandoned me.’
‘No. Still here,’ says Lily dully, and immediately wishes she could be more like Eliza, with her easy, throwaway remarks.
Max is holding a tumbler full of Scotch. He must have gone to the bar in their absence. Even in the dim light she can see that his face is darker than normal, the alcohol causing his blood vessels to dilate.
Ian is talking about a bar he goes to in Sydney where one of his friends once bet another that he couldn’t sample every single drink behind the counter.
‘He was sick as a dog,’ he says.
Suddenly, Max drops his empty glass on to the floor, where it shatters into pieces.
‘Sorry, sorry.’
Some of the tiny fragments of glass have sprayed upwards across the bottom of Lily’s dress, catching on the fabric and winking like crystals where they reflect the light.
‘Sorry,’ Max repeats.
Ian goes to fetch a steward to clear up the glass while the rest of them move away from the scene of the accident. Max staggers as they walk and Lily sees Eliza roll her eyes.
‘My wife thinks I’m an embarrassment,’ Max announces as they arrive at the edge of the dancefloor.
‘Don’t be an ass.’
‘Then dance with me, my darling.’
Max lurches towards Eliza, who sidesteps him neatly. He shoots her a look of unveiled fury. ‘Don’t you dare play games with me, Eliza.’ For a seemingly endless moment they glare at one another. Then he turns, swaying towards Lily.
‘You’ll dance with me, won’t you?’
But she is already backing away, holding up her hands, shaking her head.
‘I’m not in the mood for dancing tonight.’
Really, she is not in the mood for Max. There was a moment, back there by the railings, where she’d finally felt she was seeing the real Max Campbell, stripped of his bombastic posturing and his too-wide smile. When he talked about his daughter his sorrow had been genuine and awful and it had seemed to come from a place buried as deep inside him as the King’s Chamber in the Pyramid of Giza. And all that makes this Max, with his over-loud voice and his drunken arrogance all the harder to tolerate. Besides, he doesn’t look capable of dancing. It’s hard to see how he is even managing to stand.
Helena, as if sensing that she will be next to be asked, calls out to Ian, who is showing the steward the location of the broken glass.
‘Come and join us.’
And he, reading the unspoken message hidden within her plea, comes to stand by her side.
Now Max is looking angry. His nostrils flare. He wants a turn on the dancefloor. He won’t be denied.
‘Well, if the ladies won’t oblige, I shall have to look elsewhere.’
For a ghastly minute Lily thinks he means to proposition the other women around them, all of whom have been giving their party a very wide berth. But instead he lunges towards Edward, who, also perceptibly drunk, has been standing aloof from the rest of the party.
‘Come, Edward, you’ll dance with me.’
At first Lily thinks it is a joke. A poor one at that, but a joke nonetheless. And indeed, Max is smiling. That wolf smile back again. But when he grabs Edward’s arm and propels him, too startled to resist, on to the dancefloor, she realizes he actually means it.
A gasp goes up from the onlookers as Max roughly pulls Edward towards him, with one hand around his waist and the other held up to the side, crushing Edward’s fingers in his.
Lily expects Edward to laugh and push Max aside, but he seems to be in shock, his feet stumbling to keep up with Max’s, his eyes wide and staring.
‘A disgrace,’ mutters an elderly man next to Lily as Max steers Edward in a clumsy foxtrot, barging into the couples around them. A young girl on the far side of the dancefloor giggles.
Max is being unnecessarily brutal with Edward, Lily thinks, observing how Max’s fingers dig into the fabric of Edward’s jacket and how he first pushes, then drags his partner around, as if he is a carcass of meat. Still Edward seems unresisting, almost in a trance.
Lily feels something brushing past her as Helena launches herself on to the dancefloor. Gone is the youthful-looking girl of earlier. In her place, a grim-faced, stiff-limbed woman reaches out to pull her brother free from Max Campbell’s grasp.
‘Come now, Edward! You can’t do this. You can’t.’
It’s the kind of hissed whisper that carries. Edward is wrenched away and Helena hurries him off the floor. Lily expects them to stop, perhaps to laugh about it now the drama is over, but instead they push on past Lily, past Eliza and Ian, and on towards the door that leads down to their cabin, but not before Lily sees how Helena is trembling.
It was a joke, she thinks. Just a stupid joke.
Abandoned on the dancefloor, Max looks forlorn, as if unable to understand how it has come to this. For a moment or two he stumbles on by himself, like a chicken with its head cut freshly off. Then he starts to sag. Instantly, Ian is there, supporting his weight.
; When they get to the edge of the dancefloor Lily expects there to be some kind of altercation between husband and wife, is braced for it. Instead, as Eliza looks at Max, her expression seems to soften from its usual detached amusement into something else. Pity, perhaps. Affection, even.
‘Come on, old chap,’ she says softly, in a mock-English accent Lily has not heard her use before. ‘Let’s get you back upstairs.’
She turns to Lily and smiles a regretful little smile, although what she might be regretful about, Lily cannot tell. Then, with Eliza on one side and Ian on the other, they half-carry, half-drag Max away. A shaken Lily watches as their dark figures, silhouetted against the moonlight, grow smaller and smaller until they merge with the shadows at the end of the deck.
19
17 August 1939
THAT NIGHT, IN her alcohol-fuddled sleep, Lily once again dreams of Mags.
Mags is coming towards her in her good brown skirt. The one she wore to church and for visits home. Except now the bottom half of it is black with blood. Her blue eyes gaze out, baffled, from her little heart-shaped face, at only eighteen still half child, her character still only half mapped out.
‘Help me.’ Mags has her hands stretched out imploringly, and they, too, are blood-slippery. ‘Lily, please help me.’
Lily awakes, hot and sticky with champagne and dread, to find it is Audrey, not Mags, who needs her help.
‘She’s burning up,’ says Ida, who is standing next to Audrey’s bunk, applying a damp towel to her forehead.
Lily is surprised by the tenderness with which Ida is discharging this duty, stroking the towel across Audrey’s brow so gently and rhythmically she could almost be getting a young child off to sleep.
‘This isn’t seasickness,’ Ida says.
‘How do you know? It’s not uncommon for people to get a second bout, even this late in the voyage.’
Ida shakes her head.
‘It’s something else. I lost two sisters to the Spanish influenza in 1918. I know the signs.’
Dread prickles at the back of Lily’s neck.
She hauls herself out of her bunk and down the ladder. When she gets closer to Audrey she doesn’t even need to touch her to feel the heat coming off her. Her fair hair is plastered to her head with sweat, and her skin is clammy, like cheese left out in the sun. Audrey opens her eyes and looks at Lily. ‘Mum?’ she says. ‘Close the window. It’s cold.’
The ship’s doctor is summoned, and informs them there is an outbreak of something onboard but he does not yet know what. An elderly passenger in First is affected, and one of the Italian newborns. He gives Ida tablets, with instructions on when to administer them, and tells them Audrey must be kept cool. Annie, who has been moping around the corridor all morning, comes to sit on the empty bunk, gazing at Audrey as if she might cure her through goodwill alone.
Towards lunchtime there is a knock on the door, even though it is anyway ajar, to let in whatever breeze there might be. Edward stands in the doorway, looking pale and sheepish.
‘I’ve come to find you. I hope you’re not trying to avoid me, although I wouldn’t blame you if you were.’
The cabin is hot and close, and Lily is conscious not only of the unpleasant smell of sweat and illness and stale air but also of Ida and Annie, both gazing at Edward.
‘Let’s go for a walk up on deck. I could do with the fresh air.’
Outside, the brightness feels hard and metallic after so long in the dim cabin. She blinks and stares out to sea, straining for some kind of new landmark. After all, it is not long before they are due to arrive in Ceylon. But it is still just the same as it was. A flat carpet of shifting, glinting lights stretching out in every direction.
Lily notices that some of the other passengers are staring at them, and a couple whisper as they pass. She hears the word ‘dance’ and then a giggle and isn’t surprised when Edward leads them to the far end of the deck, where there are fewer people.
‘Do you mind if we sit down?’ he asks, reaching for a pair of empty deckchairs, nicely tucked away in the shade. ‘I’m really not feeling terribly well.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ says Lily, then relents. ‘To be honest, I’m not either. And having to nursemaid poor Audrey all morning hasn’t helped either.’
‘Lily, I’m sorry about last night. There you were, looking so lovely, and I turned into a drunken boor and spoilt your evening.’
Lily turns away so he won’t see her pleasure at that word ‘lovely’.
‘I was far from sober myself, I can assure you. I’m sorry Max dragged you on to the dancefloor like that. You seemed to be almost in a state of shock.’
Now it’s Edward who looks away.
‘He was just horsing around. Helena is furious with me.’
‘Why?’
‘For not walking away. I embarrassed her.’
Lily is surprised that Helena should be so easily embarrassed, and even more so that her fury should linger beyond the night. Clearly, there is a lot she does not understand about the relationship between the siblings.
‘He’s an idiot, though.’
Edward blurts it out as if he hadn’t even been aware he was about to say it.
‘Who? Max Campbell?’
‘Yes. Why do they have to keep coming down here? Why don’t they stay upstairs, where they’d be more at home?’
Lily bites back the urge to point out that he hadn’t seemed that unhappy about the arrangement when he was dancing all that time with Eliza. And now that reminds her of what Max was saying to her while the others were dancing, and once more she has to turn her head for fear of what her face will give away.
‘They were involved in some scandal, I think. Back in London. That’s what they’re running away from, and that’s why I think they’re not made terribly welcome upstairs. Also …’ She pauses, unsure whether to go on.
‘The fact is, they had a baby daughter who died in rather horrible circumstances. I think they blame themselves. And each other. And maybe they think that, down here, no one will know and they won’t have to talk about it.’
Edward has his hand to his mouth, and his eyes are round with horror.
‘Oh, no wonder,’ he says. And, ‘Oh, how ghastly.’
They sit for a moment, contemplating the sea and the sky and the world, and the nasty, unpalatable reality of death.
‘Poor Max,’ Edward says softly. ‘Poor Eliza.’
He closes his eyes and Lily begins to think he might have fallen asleep, but then he snaps them open and gives himself a shake, as if arriving at some moment of decision. Then he turns to her. How green his eyes are in this light. Like moss, or the smooth green glass one sometimes finds washed up on the beach. From the dining room comes the noise of cutlery clattering on to plates and people talking excitedly. The first lunch sitting must be starting. A woman shrieks with laughter and the sound seems to bounce off the metal railing in front of them and the white walls of the lounge. Still Edward looks at her, and it is a moment suspended in time.
‘I like you so much,’ he says, and she finds she cannot swallow for the lump that blocks up her throat. ‘I wish I could be the one to make you happy.’
‘Couldn’t you be?’ she whispers.
He studies her face. Here I am, she thinks. If you’d only see me.
‘Maybe I could. I think I would like to try.’
He takes her hand and his fingers feel almost weightless around hers, so light is his touch. She leans in towards him, her body leading so her mind has no option but to follow on, and when their lips meet it’s so familiar, as if this kiss is something she’s always known, a part of herself.
Lily is the first to pull away as something occurs to her.
‘Your parents would be horrified. I’m going into service, don’t forget.’
Edward smiles.
‘They’re thousands of miles away. And besides, they’d be delighted with you. Who wouldn’t be?’
They stay together on the chairs in a s
hrunken world that encompasses only the two of them, until Lily remembers Audrey and Ida and Annie, and tears herself away, using every ounce of willpower to haul herself to her feet.
She imagines Edward will drop her hand when they walk into the busier part of the deck, but to her surprise he clasps it even more tightly. Most of the other passengers don’t notice, so used are they to seeing them together, but there are a few eyebrows raised, the odd elbow digging into a neighbour’s ribs.
They pass Maria, walking out from lunch.
‘Lily, I’ve been hoping to talk to you. Oh!’
Maria notices their conjoined hands, and Lily tries to detach herself, but Edward resists.
‘Never mind. It can wait.’
Maria is smiling, but there’s a hesitation there that Lily finds troubling. And now, to add to her discomfort, here comes George Price. Edward hasn’t spotted him, so only Lily sees the startled look on his face when he notices her that turns so quickly to narrow-eyed spite when he takes in Maria and Edward and darkens to something else entirely when he sees Edward’s hand in hers.
Before they go down to the cabin they stand by the railing one more time.
‘You see that cloud?’ says Edward, pointing to the one single white spot in the endless expanse of blue above them. ‘That’s now our cloud and, when it passes in front of the sun, we can both make a wish, and whatever we wish will come true.’
Waiting for the cloud to drift closer to the sun, George is forgotten and Maria and, God forgive her, poor Audrey, and Lily takes a note of exactly what she can see, and hear – of the warmth of the sun on her cheeks and how the smell of the salt coming up from the sea mingles with the stodgy, yeasty scent of the sponge they must have served up for pudding – trying to commit it all to memory so that in the future she can look back and think: Here, I was happy.
The cloud is inches away from the sun.
