A Dangerous Crossing

by Rachel Rhys

  ‘Are you ready?’ asks Edward, squeezing her hand.

  But just as the world turns momentarily grey and Lily closes her eyes the better to will her wish into fruition a scream pierces the air, shattering into tiny pieces the scene she has just memorized. The scream is coming from below deck. Audrey, she thinks. And starts to run.

  As she flings open the door that leads down to the lower decks there is another scream, more anguished even than the first, which reverberates around the narrow metal staircase until her ears ring with it. Audrey. Audrey, Audrey, Audrey.

  By the time she arrives at their cabin she is crying. The door is closed, which she knows to be a bad sign. This is her punishment for that one, exquisite moment of happiness. This, too, will turn out to be her fault, just as what happened to Mags was her fault.

  But when she bursts inside she does not find Annie dissolved into a weeping puddle on the floor, or Ida pulling a sheet over Audrey’s face. She does not find that unforgettable smell of death that visits her sometimes in her dreams. What she finds is Annie, lying on the bottom bunk, chattering, and Ida rinsing out a towel in the washbasin, and Audrey, propped up against pillows, looking pale and exhausted but focusing, as if she is finally aware of who and where she is.

  ‘I thought,’ gasps Lily. ‘I thought …’

  Ida wants to know who is screaming.

  ‘Gives me a chill right through to my bones,’ she says.

  Edward, who arrives just now, goes to find out and returns, tight-lipped, to tell them the newborn baby down on the Italian deck has died.

  The news plunges them all into a dark mood. Edward goes to join Helena while Lily stays in the cabin to fetch glasses of cool water for Audrey, who is still weak and dehydrated and unsure what is happening to her. Lily is relieved that Audrey seems to have turned the corner but filled with irrational guilt that, somehow, by wishing so hard for Audrey to be saved, she has caused the baby to suffer the fate that was meant for her friend. It makes no sense, she knows that. Lily is not fanciful, nor even particularly religious, believing in a general rather than specific way in the existence of something greater than her. But the baby’s death has made her fearful. Must other people’s suffering always be the price of her own happiness?

  Later, Ida and Lily leave Audrey sleeping and go up on deck, gulping in the humid air as if it is the purest oxygen. Teatime has passed, but a sympathetic steward fetches them sandwiches, which they eat slumped on the sofas in the lounge. It’s that point of the evening when the sky is deepening from blue to indigo and the swollen, orange sun is dipping towards the horizon. Outside on the deck the passengers chat and play cards and write letters, while from first class there’s the sound of a string quartet playing, the searing violin vibrating on the breeze.

  Just a few moments later everything falls into a hush and an eerie silence descends, as if the sea itself is holding its breath.

  ‘The engine has stopped,’ says Lily, alarmed. ‘Has something gone wrong?’

  ‘It’s a funeral,’ explains the steward. ‘For the baby.’

  And, sure enough, now there comes the sound of crying and keening. Agitated voices talking in a foreign language at the far end of the deck.

  ‘So soon!’ Ida exclaims.

  The steward nods and stands up straighter, his expression grim.

  ‘It’s because of the heat,’ he says.

  ‘Can’t have bodies lying around,’ Ida agrees.

  Lily and Ida go out on to the deck to pay their respects. All the passengers are standing up, heads bent, facing the far end, where the Italian women and a handful of men, clad mostly in black, are swaying and weeping around the familiar figure of the ship’s chaplain. A steward, his white uniform contrasting with the sombre colours of the mourners, stands motionless by the railing, carrying a tiny dark box that makes Lily’s heart hurt to see it.

  She makes a shield of her hand and holds it up to her mouth to stop the cry that threatens to escape.

  The string quartet above resumes playing and now there’s a low hum as the first-class passengers launch into ‘Abide with Me’, their voices starting low and tentative but building in confidence and loudness until they are all but shouting the words across the vast, uncaring ocean. Further down the deck the steward turns to lift the box and a woman sinks to the floor like an airless rubber balloon.

  ‘Oh, that poor woman,’ says Lily.

  ‘Nothing to do but get on with it,’ says Ida.

  The sun is now streaking the sky with stripes of blood orange and flamingo pink, the world dressing up in its finest, brightest clothes to see the baby off. And Lily thinks, by contrast, of Mags’s funeral. Just her and Mags’s mum and dad. Her mum bent over almost to the ground by the weight of her grief and shame, and her dad stood straight as a lamp post, looking stonily ahead, as if he had come to the wrong place and was just having to make the best of it. And Lily herself, still dulled from the horror of that terrible taxi journey to the hospital, with Mags so weak Lily had almost had to carry her, bundled into a long overcoat to hide the blood, with blankets to sit on so she wouldn’t bleed into the seat. ‘Here’s the fare for the taxi,’ the abortionist had said to Mags, her face hard and fearful. ‘Remember to tell them you did this yourself. At home. And she’ – pointing at Lily – ‘found you like that. Or we’ll all end up in the cells.’ The doctors hadn’t believed it. But they’d seen it all before. And before long it was all over. Am I going to die, Lil?

  Right up to the funeral, Lily was washing her hands every chance she got to rid herself of the blood, though it was long since gone. The sky over the graveyard was slate grey and leaden, as if it were too heavy to stay up there and must soon come crashing down to the ground. And the young vicar, so nervous about what he could and couldn’t say, calling her ‘Margaret this’ and ‘Margaret that’, as if he were talking about someone else entirely. No Robert. Had she really expected he might come?

  The music stops, that last word, ‘me’, stretching out into the encroaching darkness. And with a low roar the ship’s engine comes back to life. ‘At least that little mite will be spared a war,’ Ida says, turning away to return to the cabin. Lily’s sadness is wrapping itself around her neck like the gold silk scarf Edward has yet to give back, but still she stands rooted to the spot, with her hands up to her face, gazing along the deck until at last the black figures are swallowed up by the night.

  20

  18 August 1939

  ‘WASHING! SUITS! WASHING! Suits!’

  The shouting wakes Lily from a dreamless sleep. Peering out of the porthole, she sees a launch full of dark-skinned people, all either talking excitedly among themselves or calling up towards the ship. Now she notices that the Orontes is in a harbour, still some distance from land, surrounded by other ships and smaller boats.

  Ceylon. Even the word sounds exotic, the way it stretches her mouth first in one direction then the opposite so there’s no chance of just trotting it out like some ordinary name.

  Audrey is sleeping. She looks better than yesterday, her colour less vivid, but there will be no chance of her getting off the ship today. Even if the doctor hadn’t forbidden it, Audrey is too weak. Luckily, Annie has volunteered to stay onboard with her. That still leaves Ida unaccounted for. Though Lily had found herself softening towards her spiky cabin mate over the previous difficult day, she has no desire for her company ashore. Ceylon is one of the places Lily has been most looking forward to visiting and she doesn’t want to risk Ida ruining the experience with her snippy asides and endless complaints.

  She hopes to be spending the day with Edward. Now that she has slept properly and is no longer feeling the after-effects of too much champagne, Lily has managed to put her feelings about yesterday’s events in perspective. The baby’s death was a tragedy but it wasn’t her fault, and it certainly has nothing to do with her and Edward. Now, when she thinks back to the deckchairs and the way Edward said, ‘I like you so much,’ she allows herself to feel a warm glow instead o
f guilt, and if there’s the slightest, slenderest thread of unease about the way he’d said, ‘I wish I could be the one to make you happy,’ she snaps it off before it can take hold.

  Ida is not in her bed. Her pattern is to use the bathroom early before the queues form, so Lily makes the most of her absence, quickly slipping on the lightweight green dress that she wore on the Cairo expedition.

  Eliza’s peach silk gown is still hanging from the end of the bunk, reproaching her. She ought to have returned it yesterday but, with everything that has happened, it slipped her mind. She runs her fingertips over the smooth perfection of it.

  After brushing her teeth at the washbasin, Lily slips out of the door, allaying her guilt by telling herself that Ida will find someone else to go sightseeing with. Up on deck she locates Helena and Ian waiting by the dining room. They chat a little about the sad events of the day before, and Lily resolves not to ask about Edward but almost instantly breaks that resolution, blurting out, ‘Is your brother not coming ashore?’

  A look passes over Helena’s face, too fleetingly for Lily to identify it. Please let her be glad, she thinks. No matter what their parents might say, please let at least Helena approve.

  ‘He’s just gone to get more money from the Purser’s Office,’ Helena says, then gives an anxious half-smile. ‘Seems like we are getting through it so fast.’

  Lily feels a tug on her sleeve and turns to see Maria standing there, her dark hair pulled back unflatteringly tightly from her face, emphasizing those unusually long features. If anything, Maria is looking thinner even than when the voyage started, and Lily feels a twinge of unease when she remembers that Maria had been wanting to talk to her. When did she become the sort of person who forgets her friends?

  ‘Would you mind if I came along with you?’ Maria asks. ‘The friend that I was going to explore with is unwell and confined to her cabin and I should so hate to miss Ceylon.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Lily hates the treacherous part of her that wants to say no, to keep herself exclusively for Edward. She slips her hand through Maria’s arm and squeezes, noticing how the skin feels like it is papered directly on to the bone, with nothing in between.

  Edward arrives, and Lily hardly dares look at him. He greets her warmly, but no more so than he greets Maria, and instantly preoccupies himself with sorting through the notes in his wallet.

  They climb on to a launch alongside the boat filled with Sinhalese still shouting out, offering to do washing for the passengers or have suits made up.

  ‘Surely it’s not possible to make an entire suit in a day?’ says Lily.

  ‘Anything is possible, Lily, if you put your mind to it,’ Maria replies.

  First impressions of Ceylon are disappointing. Though it’s a clear, sparkling day, the harbour itself seems brown and drab, with the buildings of Colombo rising up behind it – no signs of the white, sandy, palm-fringed beaches Lily has been imagining.

  She cheers up instantly once they arrive in the town itself, with its colonial-style buildings and streets teeming with activity – rickshaws pulled by men with skin the colour of gravy, wearing only white cloths knotted around their waists like babies’ napkins, women in saris as bright as parrot feathers carrying water urns on their heads, groups of half-dressed children chattering and attaching themselves to first one Westerner then another, greeting both kindness and rebuff with the same broad smiles.

  ‘You want guide?’ asks a boy with round cheeks and a black mole on his forehead which Lily at first mistakes for a fly. ‘I take you bazaar. Very nice. I carry bag?’

  No matter how firmly Ian informs him that his services are not required, the boy still tags along.

  Away from the main streets, the atmosphere changes. The British influence is no longer obvious in the buildings and there’s a pungent smell of fish and rotting fruit coming from the street-market stalls.

  Lily, walking ahead, talking to Maria, slips on something. Looking down, she sees to her horror that she has trodden in a pool of blood, the soles of her white sandals now stained with red. She cries out, grabbing hold of the back of Maria’s brown dress, and Edward rushes to her side, only to burst into laughter.

  ‘Sorry, Lily,’ he says. ‘I don’t mean to laugh but that’s not blood, it’s betel-nut juice. The men here mix it with lime and spices and chew it until they’ve had enough of it then spit it out. That’s what we’ve been walking in. Haven’t you noticed?’

  And of course, now she’s been made aware, she notices for the first time the mouths of the Sinhalese men they pass, their teeth and lips stained red, as if they have been eating raw flesh.

  ‘I feel very foolish,’ she says to Maria as they turn around to head back to the centre. ‘I am going to keep completely quiet for the rest of the day.’

  After consulting the tourist information provided by the ship, the group decide to take a trip to Mount Lavinia. For five shillings each they get to take a drive in one of the ancient touring cars they’ve noticed around the town out to a Buddhist temple not far from Colombo. They are advised to take an English-speaking guide with them. ‘Take me, missy,’ pleads the boy with the mole. ‘Me best guide in Colombo.’

  To prove it, the boy claps his hand and summons a touring car. There is really only room for four in the back but the five of them somehow squash in, with the boy clinging on behind them. Lily is practically sitting on Edward’s lap, and holds herself stiffly upright, trying to make herself as slight as possible so as not to put pressure on the point where their bodies meet, which she feels to be scorching hot.

  They travel at leisurely speed through the old part of town, the driver honking his horn at natives who get in their way, either on foot or on bicycles. Meanwhile, their guide keeps up an eccentric stream of running commentary. ‘In that house very bad man live,’ he says, pointing out a shabby, one-storey hovel with a tattered curtain over the doorway. A modern white building a few hundred yards further on, on the other hand, earns the boy’s approval: ‘This good place British hospital.’

  They pass monks in saffron robes and huts with roofs made from the branches of coconut palms outside which squatting figures cook on braziers on the ground. As they drive out of the town, the sights change – peasants, men and women, working in the fields, their heads wrapped in cloth to keep off the sun, carts full of logs pulled by water buffalo.

  The temple comes into view, a colourful building set back from the dusty road in the middle of a grove of banana trees. As they walk towards it from the car, they hear raised voices. Turning the corner, Lily’s heart sinks to see a puce-faced George Price arguing with a monk, who is pointing agitatedly at a bench next to the entrance. In front of the bench is a small carpet on which are arranged several pairs of shoes.

  ‘The idiot is refusing to take his shoes off,’ says Ian. ‘Well, I hope he likes waiting around in the sun because they won’t let him in if he doesn’t.’

  George greets them curtly, his eyes skimming over Lily and Maria as if they are made of air. He looks unkempt, Lily thinks, his shirt crumpled, as if he has slept in it.

  ‘These people are trying to tell me I have to take off my shoes,’ he complains loudly. ‘I’m not walking around in my bare feet. I’m not a savage.’

  ‘That’s completely your right,’ says Edward sweetly, sitting on the bench to remove his shoes and socks, ‘but it seems like a bit of a wasted journey for you. Good job there’s this handy bench here with a lovely view of the road.’

  Lily bends down, pretending to be engrossed in unbuckling her sandals so George won’t see her smile. When she looks up again George is sitting on the bench sullenly taking off his shoes. On a closer look, his eyes seem swollen, the whites angry and shot with red.

  ‘Better say goodbye to these,’ he says as he lines up his highly polished brown leather Oxfords on the carpet with the rest of the shoes. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll still be here when we get out.’

  The monk who was remonstrating with George
when they arrived turns to Helena and Ian. ‘Your guide very good boy. He look after shoes. No thieves at Buddhist temple.’

  ‘Think you offended him, mate,’ says Ian to George as they enter.

  George stares straight ahead, flint-faced and silent, but Lily sees a livid purple stain creeping up from the collar of his shirt.

  The monk leads them inside the temple, which is made up of a number of small chambers painted in bright, jewel colours. There are several images of Buddha and even an imprint of Buddha’s foot. From one of the chambers comes a sweet, almost overpowering scent. When they arrive they find it carpeted with aromatic frangipani, like a huge, colourful quilt. The monk explains that the flowers have been arranged by the young unmarried girls from the surrounding villages who are celebrating their special festival on this day.

  Lily is entranced by the flowers and by the colourful frescos of Buddha on the wall, but behind her she can hear George muttering about how the ‘heathen religions’ ought to visit a proper British church to see how a place of worship should look.

  Back outside, the boy with the mole is taking his shoe-guarding duties very seriously and even insists on helping them put theirs on, making Maria laugh when he lines her shoes up the wrong way around.

  ‘There’s not much point in you all squashing into that car. Two of you might as well come with me,’ says George gruffly, when they are all once more shod and walking back towards the road. It is a command rather than an invitation.

  Lily’s chest feels tight and she keeps her face bent towards the ground lest she should meet George’s eye and find herself compelled by misplaced politeness to go with him. Next to her, Maria shoots her a wide-eyed glance that is all too easy to interpret. No. Not me. There’s a silence that seems to grow out of the dust kicked up by their feet as they keep walking, the swish swish swish of their clothes sounding suddenly thunderous in the stillness of the midday heat.

  Though she does not look at him, Lily can picture how George’s face will be darkening from dusky pink to the colour of undercooked beef.