by Rachel Rhys
They meet up once again with the Neumanns, who have had no luck searching down below, although one of the Italian women told them they had seen a woman matching Maria’s description at the far end of the deck earlier on.
‘She was standing alone, looking.’ Here, Mr Neumann puts a hand to his forehead and turns his head this way and that way, miming how one might search. ‘The Italian said she was waiting for someone.’
And now the ache becomes a pain, sharp and intense. Edward volunteers to look up on the first-class deck, although no one can imagine why she would be up there. When he returns ten minutes later Lily closes her eyes so she can’t see the furrow above the bridge of his nose.
By now it is pitch black out on the furthest reaches of the deck away from the lights of the lounge and the dining room. Helena and Ian, who have joined them, insist it is time to involve the ship’s company and Ian goes to find the captain, who grudgingly orders a search.
‘He made it clear he didn’t really want to,’ Ian reports later. ‘Suggested that, judging by her past history, she would most likely be hiding somewhere enjoying the drama.’
Word spreads around the ship and soon the other passengers also join the search, scouring the deck with oil lamps and torches, poking in dark corners and raising tarpaulins on the lifeboats, to the embarrassment of more than one courting couple.
A shout goes up from the end of the deck where Lily met Maria earlier in the day. Something has been found by the railings there. The item is brought to the lounge, where Lily and Edward are talking to the captain. Lily gasps as she recognizes Maria’s tortoiseshell spectacles, one lens cracked.
By eleven o’clock there isn’t one inch of the ship that hasn’t been searched. The captain and the purser take Lily and Edward and the Neumanns into the Purser’s Office to file an official missing-persons report. He asks for details of when they last saw or spoke to Maria Katz, and when they realized she was missing. When the Neumanns talk their English is more broken than usual, perhaps because of their distress, or because they are nervous speaking in such a formal situation. Belatedly, Lily becomes aware of the uniform worn by the captain and the purser and wonders how much that is responsible for the way the Neumanns’ accents have become thicker and more impenetrable and they cast around for words that previously appeared to come more easily.
When it is her turn she describes how Maria seemed earlier in the day – the rash on her face, her alarming weight loss. She leaves out the arrangement they had made to meet at five. The words form in her mind, only to burst like bubbles in her mouth. That she left Maria to wait for her in vain while she played cards and drank tea up on the first-class deck. That Maria’s need repelled her, that she worried the other passengers would think her somehow less because of their association.
So she stays silent. And Edward, too, stays silent. And their silence is a balloon that swells painfully inside her and leaves her gasping for breath. Whisky is produced in a crystal decanter retrieved from a mahogany cupboard.
‘You’ve had a shock,’ says Edward, anxiously watching her drink. ‘No wonder you’re upset.’
‘What will happen now?’ she asks eventually, unable to bear the feeling of so many eyes upon her.
‘We will radio on ahead to the police in Adelaide,’ says the captain kindly. ‘They will want to talk to you. All of you.’
‘And Maria?’
‘I’m afraid, given the evidence, we will have to report Miss Katz as missing at sea.’
Lily sways in her seat and Edward puts his arm around her shoulders.
‘Do you think it’s possible someone could have pushed her?’ he asks, voicing Lily’s thoughts out loud. ‘The broken glasses might indicate some sort of struggle. No?’
The captain exchanges a sideways look with the purser.
‘We will, of course, report any concerns to the police. However, you must remember that Miss Katz was, by all accounts, a woman of a nervous disposition with a history of imagined assaults.’
The Neumanns have been trying to follow the conversation, and it takes them a few seconds for the captain’s meaning to sink in. Now Mr Neumann becomes agitated.
‘She would not jump from the ship. She was not that sort of person. She was good person. Intelligent.’
‘I’m afraid I have seen this happen before,’ says the captain. ‘There are some people who cope very badly with being at sea in such a confined environment for any length of time. They start to experience delusions. Sometimes they want to do harm to themselves or to other people.’
‘It’s not common,’ says the purser, ‘but it does happen.’
Lily sees once again Maria’s frightened face, that horrible rash, the wild look in her eyes. Oh. But. Lily has let her down. Just as she’d let Mags down. Am I going to die, Lil? Blood on the walls. Blood on the carpet. Blood even in Lily’s hair so that when she washed it out at home over the bath the water ran pink.
‘It’s my fault,’ she says to Edward as he walks her back to her cabin at the end of that terrible, nightmarish evening. ‘I was not a good friend to her. And now she’s gone and I won’t ever be able to say sorry to her. I don’t think I can bear it.’
At the bottom of the cramped stairwell Edward takes her into his arms and holds her so close that she can’t tell whose heartbeat it is she is feeling – his or her own. And when, finally, he tries to pull away, Lily clutches on to him more tightly because she knows that when he lets go she will be left alone with herself, and she’s the very last person she wishes to be with.
26
31 August 1939
BY THE TIME Lily wakes the next morning, groggy from the whisky, they are already docked in Adelaide. There is a brief moment of excitement, then she remembers Maria and is hit by a crushing wave of horror.
‘Are you feeling all right, Lily?’ Audrey is solicitous but nervous, as if Lily’s proximity to tragedy has elevated her to a different social plane.
Even Ida seems affected, shooting anxious glances at Lily as she gets dressed.
‘It’s a terrible thing,’ she says. And for once there’s no undercurrent of disapproval in her voice.
Now Lily remembers something.
‘Why didn’t you tell me it was you who was the witness that night up on the deck?’
Lily has never before seen Ida look guilty, but now the sallow skin which is stretched tightly over the bones of her face is stained dark red.
‘It was supposed to be confidential. They shouldn’t have said.’
‘I still don’t understand why …’
But Ida is gone. Out through the cabin door in a rustle of petticoats and a waft of sour air.
And soon her cabin mate’s strange behaviour is forgotten as Lily arrives up on deck and finds that, overnight, the world has changed. Gone is the sultry heat of just a few days ago. Now, despite the sharp sunshine, there is a definite chill in the air and Lily wraps her white cardigan around her.
‘Lily, the Adelaide police would like to interview you.’
Edward has rushed to her side, as if he has been waiting for her. His solemn expression extinguishes Lily’s last, secret hope that Maria might have materialized during the night, perhaps nursing a lump on her head where she fell and knocked herself out somewhere so hidden that no one could find her.
‘They’re here already?’
Her mouth feels dry as dust and, as Edward leads her up the stairs to the upper deck, her legs are almost too heavy to lift.
The police are waiting in the captain’s private office, a large, square room with several upright leather armchairs on one side and an imposing oval table on the other. The Neumanns are seated at the far end of the table, appearing dwarfed by the heavy furniture, like the little figurines Lily used to have in her dolls’ house when she was young. The thought almost makes her laugh out loud and she claps a hand to her mouth to stop herself. She is losing control.
‘Ah, Miss Shepherd.’ The captain’s voice is grave and Lily imagines him selecti
ng it that morning from a hanging rail of voices as if he were choosing a shirt, and again she wants to laugh. ‘This is a tragic business. I hope you managed to sleep.’
The two policemen are introduced, one in his late thirties with blue eyes set so close together he appears to be all the time gazing at his own nose, the other young enough still to have a spray of pebbledash acne across the lower part of his face. Lily remembers Maria’s rash and a sound escapes her that is like a low moan and she covers it up with a cough.
The facts are gone over, Maria’s last known movements described. This time Lily admits to the arrangement she made with Maria and failed to keep.
‘You made no mention of this last night,’ says the purser. His handsome, leonine features look momentarily sorrowful.
‘I was ashamed,’ says Lily.
‘Why didn’t you go?’ asks the older policeman. ‘You said she didn’t appear to be quite herself. Why didn’t you go to make sure she was all right?’
Lily tries to swallow but finds she cannot. She glances at Edward. Appealing.
‘We were playing cards,’ he says, coming to her rescue. ‘With some friends on the upper deck. We didn’t notice the time.’
It is a lie. And everyone knows it.
‘You will investigate,’ Mr Neumann says, addressing the policemen directly, ‘if someone has done something to hurt Miss Katz? Remember the assault in the night, the broken glasses. It could be possible.’
The policeman frowns and avoids looking at the captain or the purser.
‘We take all allegations seriously,’ he says, ‘but we must also look at the facts. Miss Katz had been behaving increasingly erratically. Sometimes the sea will do that to a person. And we mustn’t forget she had added anxiety about her family back in Austria. These are difficult days for many people. So much uncertainty. I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see a lot more of this sort of thing.’
After they leave that phrase goes round and round in Lily’s head. This sort of thing. As if Maria disappearing off the ship into thin air was part of a movement, or a fashion, like wearing shorter skirts or listening to jazz music.
‘I’m so sorry, Lily,’ Edward says as they make their way back down the stairs. ‘We should never have prevented you from going to meet Maria yesterday.’
By ‘we’, of course, he means Eliza and Max. Edward himself had not said a thing. But then maybe, Lily thinks, she and Edward were just as complicit in their silence, their inability to stand up for what was right.
She remembers now how, at the gala ball, Ian had warned her about the Campbells, saying, ‘They are damaged people. And damaged people are the most dangerous because they have nothing to lose.’
And now it turns out that it is she, Lily, who is the dangerous one.
They rejoin Helena and Ian, and Lily allows herself to be persuaded to go ashore.
‘The change of scenery will do you good,’ Helena tells her. ‘The boat is full of reminders.’
‘You can’t go ashore like that,’ says Ian, gesturing to Lily’s thin cardigan. ‘Don’t let the sunshine deceive you. It’s chilly onshore, especially after the temperatures we’ve been used to.’
‘I’ll fetch you some warmer things,’ Edward volunteers, and disappears below deck, reappearing some time later with Lily’s lightweight navy linen jacket and Eliza Campbell’s fox-fur stole.
Lily does not have the energy to protest and obediently puts her arms into the jacket sleeves and wraps the fur around her neck. As they file off the boat she sees the Neumanns watching from the end of the deck, their expressions impossible to read from this distance, faces pale ovals of blankness.
Later, when Lily looks back on this day out in Adelaide, she will view it like a montage of images in someone else’s slide show, not a place she once visited herself. She will see in her mind the train that took them the short distance from the dock to the town. Then Adelaide itself, clean and bright and whitewashed with wide streets and colonial-style buildings and trees covered in dazzling lilac flowers that Ian informs her are jacarandas. A neat shopping centre. A smart new art gallery. Women wearing cotton dresses in the gayest of colours, pinks and mint greens and pale blues, despite the cool wind, so that Lily, feeling overdressed and frumpy, takes off the fox fur and stuffs it into her bag.
Adelaide isn’t a huge city and they inevitably bump into other passengers at some of the more touristy spots. There’s George Price sitting at the window of a restaurant, head bent over his newspaper so that his nose is practically touching it. And the Campbells standing in the art gallery, gazing in amused bafflement at some Aboriginal paintings. We heard about your friend, Lily. How beastly for you. Come here. And finding herself suddenly in Max Campbell’s bear-like embrace, looking up after a while – seconds? minutes? – to see Eliza’s look of irritation and Edward’s expression snapping shut like a trap.
Lunch is eaten at a large modern fish-and-chips restaurant where, rather than ordering from a waitress, you’re expected to serve yourself, which, normally, Lily would have found intriguing, storing it up to describe in her next letter home. Today, however, it’s just one more detail that passes her by, even though the fish – bream, not cod or plaice – is delicious, as are the little scallop potatoes fried in batter. All the time, people are talking to her, and Lily is talking back to them in turn, although afterwards she will have no idea what they discussed.
Back at the docks the police are still there, talking to a knot of stewards and kitchen staff. A couple of the Australian passengers who are disembarking at Adelaide are in tears saying their goodbyes to friends they have made onboard, while a band of Scottish musicians, complete with bagpipes, have gathered to see off a group of Scotsmen preparing to make the relatively short trip from Adelaide to Melbourne or Sydney aboard the Orontes.
Normally, Lily loves this aspect of the voyage – watching the greetings and the farewells, the tears and the joy, people baring their feelings as if a layer of skin has been stripped off, leaving them newly, briefly, vulnerable. Yet, today, she hardly notices.
Now there are suddenly more Aussies on board than Brits, or so it seems. The bar is bursting with Australian men intent on introducing the Poms to the delights of Australian beer. Edward has disappeared somewhere and she finds herself grateful for a break from the confusion being around him always brings. ‘Let me buy you a drink,’ Ian says. But Lily has seen the Neumanns standing in a huddle of similarly sombrely dressed people at the end of the deck, and she thinks that if she has any beer she might choke.
Lily excuses herself early, claiming exhaustion. She worries what she will say to Ida, dreading a confrontation with her when her own thoughts are so muddied, but the cabin is, mercifully, empty.
To her surprise, Lily finds she is, after all, truly exhausted and, despite the increasingly turbulent sea, she falls asleep the minute she has hauled herself up the ladder and lain down. But she sleeps fitfully, her dreams fevered and disjointed. In one, her mother is sitting at the kitchen table at home, except she isn’t really Lily’s mother, she is Maria’s sister, asking, ‘Where is she? What have you done with her?’ In another, the policeman with the close-together eyes is driving her somewhere, not speaking, and she knows in this dream that she has done something terrible. Finally, she has the dream she had before, that night up on the deck, where she and Maria are in a small boat drifting out to sea, except instead of Edward being there with them there is Mags, with her blood-soaked skirt. Just as before, Lily wakes up with a start and, for a split second, she is back there on the deck that night, emerging from that dream and seeing, just as she wakes, a shape crouching in the darkness next to Maria’s bed, hearing the scream, followed by the thrum of retreating footsteps.
‘It did happen,’ she says out loud in the dimness of the cabin to the shape in the bottom bunk that she knows to be Ida. ‘Just as she said.’
Somehow she manages to hold it in, this new clarity, hugging it to herself through the rest of that night while waves ro
ck the boat and, somewhere outside the window, the coastline of Australia keeps pace with their progress. When, at last, the new day arrives and Audrey slips out of the cabin to use the bathroom, Lily can keep it in check no longer.
‘You lied,’ she says to Ida, who is still just a mound in the bed.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You lied about there being no one out on deck that night. I remember now, there was someone. I saw him.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Ida is sitting up, her hairnet making it look, in this dim light, as if there is some sort of helmet framing her narrow pale face. Lily loses her temper, all the sadness and self-hatred of the last thirty-six hours rushing to the surface like bile.
‘Maria didn’t make it up. She was assaulted. It was you who lied, because you’re malicious and bitter.’
‘She thought she was better than me.’
‘What?’
‘Making a show of picking me up from the deck when I fell that time, so condescending. “Are you all right?”’ Ida simpers horribly. ‘Thinking I couldn’t see the smirk on her a mile wide. Then all those times it was the two of you, you and her, cosying up to each other, and when I’d come along, all at once you’d clam up, like it was me who was the unwelcome one, like she was better than me. Her. Who’s come from nowhere. Who’s got nothing.’
From waking up only a few moments ago Ida is already trembling with rage and Lily realizes suddenly that it’s because the rage is never far from the surface, like a lining she wears just under her skin. And now something else occurs to her.
‘She thought she was being watched. Followed. Was it you? Was it? Did you push her over the railing?’
