by Rachel Rhys
‘I must find Eliza,’ Lily tells Audrey, and from the way Audrey looks at Annie she can tell they have talked about last night’s events between them and agreed not to mention them.
Lily pushes past the passengers behind them and makes her way up to the first-class deck. With most people’s attention firmly fixed on the shoreline, she manages to slip down to the cabin level unnoticed. Outside Eliza’s cabin, she hesitates, her nerve failing her.
‘Yes?’
Lily is so surprised when Eliza answers her tentative knock that she takes a second to respond.
‘It’s me. Lily.’
When Lily pushes open the door the cabin is in semi-darkness with the blind pulled down over the window and the sun reduced to a hazy glow behind it. Lily blinks in the sudden gloom. As her eyes adjust she sees that Eliza is lying on the bed, wearing a silk dressing gown tightly belted around her waist. Her hair is loose and she has wiped off her make-up but, even in the dim light, Lily can see a streak of dark, dried blood she has missed up near her hairline.
Drawing closer, she notices an open bottle of pills on the bedside table.
‘The doctor has given me something to sedate me,’ says Eliza in a slow, flat voice.
Lily’s mouth feels dry as sandpaper.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, but to her own ears her voice sounds like an actor reciting a line.
‘People will think me very careless,’ Eliza says. ‘First I lose a daughter and now a husband.’
Lily doesn’t want to look at the dark smudge on Eliza’s forehead, so her eyes scan the room, alighting on a jacket hanging on the back of the cabin door that she recognizes as Max’s.
Lily starts to cry, at the knowledge that he will never again wear that jacket, or use that comb on his dressing table, or light a cigarette from that silver case on the bedside table.
Max is dead. And so is Maria. Both of them reduced to nothing, while she carries on. Lily’s mind cannot accept it.
‘I need to tell you what I did,’ she says. ‘You see, it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t gone with Max –’
‘Enough.’
Eliza has raised her hands to her ears.
‘I don’t want to hear. Max made his own choices, Lily. At least allow him that.’
They are silent, thinking of where Max’s choices have led.
‘What will you do now?’ Lily asks eventually. ‘Will you go home to London, or perhaps America?’
‘Home?’ For the first time, Eliza looks almost animated. ‘Haven’t you heard? Chamberlain has officially declared war. None of us will be going home. I’m afraid we’re rather stuck here.’
‘Oh!’
Lily claps her hand to her mouth. Though it’s not unexpected, the news is nevertheless shocking. Poor Frank. And her poor parents. She thinks of the thousands of miles of ocean that separate her from her family.
Eliza closes her eyes, looking at once both younger than usual and, paradoxically, much older. Still reeling from the shocking news of war, Lily stands for a while, looking down at her in silence.
‘You’re tired,’ she says eventually. ‘I’ll leave you.’
But as she is about to turn to go Eliza’s eyes flutter open again. Such a strange colour they are, even in this half-light.
‘You will be fine, Lily. Look at you. You are young and strong-willed and you’ve already worked out that you make your own luck in this world. Don’t let this – what happened – hold you back.
‘I wish I had a quarter of your strength. But I don’t. I expect I will have to marry again quickly. Don’t look so shocked. I loved Max. My poor Max. But I am not good at being alone.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Lily tries again, but Eliza has already closed her eyes. She wafts her hand in a vague gesture, though whether of acknowledgement or dismissal Lily will never fully work out.
‘Goodbye, Eliza,’ she says finally. ‘I wish you well.’
As she opens the cabin door Max’s jacket swings on its clothes hanger, as if waving farewell.
Mrs Collins is waiting for her in her cabin when she gets back.
‘Ah, here you are, dear. I’m glad to see you up and about. That’s the spirit. Let’s put this tragic business of last night behind us. I’ve come to refund you the three pounds of your original passage that we kept back for safekeeping. You’ll need some of that to pay for your room at the YWCA.’
Lily and Audrey are both booked into the YWCA in Sydney, while Ida and some of the other girls are staying with Mrs Collins in different lodgings.
‘Tonight you’ll be able to recover a little, and then tomorrow, bright and early, we have interviews set up with prospective employers. I understand there will be eleven or twelve ladies coming, so I’m sure you will have your pick of positions. And, luckily, the captain has kept your name out of any official reports into what happened to poor Mr Campbell. You’re down as a witness, of course, but any other associations have been left out.’
Lily feels herself growing hot. That word ‘associations’, so freighted with meaning.
‘Your trunk will be sent on to the YWCA, along with Audrey’s case, so you can wander around the city this afternoon quite light and unencumbered.’
‘I don’t feel very light,’ says Lily. ‘Have you heard the news from England, Mrs Collins?’
The older woman, who has been fussing around with forms and papers, now grows still and presses her lips together, as if preventing a sigh from escaping.
‘That we are at war? Yes, dear, I have heard. It seems so impossible to believe that another generation will have to endure what we went through.’
Lily remembers now that Mrs Collins is widowed and it occurs to her that she might have lost her husband during the last war. How unfeeling of me not even to have asked her, she berates herself. All these people, these passengers, each nursing their own private tragedies, and she has been oblivious to it all.
After Mrs Collins leaves Lily finishes packing the light bag she will take with her off the boat, carefully placing inside her stack of letters from home, tied up with a red ribbon, and the diary which contains all her impressions of the last few weeks, and takes one last look around the cabin. She remembers seeing it for the first time with Frank and her parents, and a sharp shard of homesickness pierces her heart.
Up on the deck, all is activity. Passengers shouting to each other, or to friends or family in the waiting crowd on the dock. Stewards bustling around on last-minute errands – a bag forgotten in an upper-class cabin, a bill that needs settling. The young bathroom steward sees Lily and waves, and she almost doesn’t recognize him in the full light of a Sydney day.
‘We’ve been told we can’t get off the ship yet,’ says Audrey, who is standing with Annie at the railing. ‘Not until the police have finished.’
Lily notices now, with a heavy feeling of dread, the police car parked on the far side of the quayside.
Oh, Edward.
Her heart feels as if it is swelling inside her, growing painfully full so it presses against the very bones of her.
Ida appears by her side, lays a hand on her arm.
‘I expect you’ve come to say, “I told you so,”’ Lily snaps.
Ida drops her hand as if she has been slapped, and once again Lily has the uncomfortable sense of having rebuffed a confidence. She half-expects Ida to stalk off, but she does not.
‘I only wanted to tell you that you will survive this, even though you might think that you cannot. You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.’
At first Lily is startled into silence, and by the time she formulates a ‘thank you’, Ida has already slipped away into the crowd. She thinks about going after her but, before she can move, she becomes aware of something happening further along the deck; a hush falling; people stopping still in the middle of whatever they are doing, just like those figures in Pompeii all that lifetime ago.
The crowd nearest to her parts and now Lily sees what has caught thei
r attention. Two policemen with ruddy faces and fixed expressions are making sedate progress along the deck. The older one is squat and sandy-haired and sweating profusely, while the younger is taller and more awkward.
In between them, his wrists shackled together, is Edward.
To Lily’s shock and consternation, he is still wearing the women’s clothing of last night – the green suit and hat, the heeled shoes and Eliza Campbell’s fox-fur stole. He stares straight ahead as he is led along, as if he cannot see the expressions of the passengers as he passes – the wide-eyed horror, the thrilled fascination. One man covers his wife’s eyes as they go by, as if the mere sight of Edward might somehow corrupt her.
And now the mismatched threesome have nearly reached where Lily is standing. So close are they that she can see the trembling of Edward’s hands in those white gloves and the patch of ginger bristles on the older man’s chin where he has missed a bit shaving. Her swollen heart feels as if it must burst.
They walk past, just feet from where she stands, so close that Lily is sure Edward must be able to hear the rushing of her blood in her ears. But if he does, he shows no sign, his eyes still fixed on a point up ahead.
Finally, before he is enveloped back into the crowd, she finds her voice.
‘Edward!’ Up ahead, he stops suddenly and turns, wrong-footing the younger policeman so he almost stumbles.
‘I’ll visit you!’ she calls.
And now his face breaks into that sad, sweet, familiar smile and, though the hat’s veil covers his eyes, Lily fancies she sees them shimmer with tears through the delicate green web.
‘Thank you, Lily,’ he says. ‘I shall look forward to that.’
Then he turns and sets off once again with his police escort, but Lily sees how his spine is straighter, his shoulders back and, despite catching sight of Mrs Collins’s disapproving expression, she is glad she has spoken.
Helena comes to join her, the skin stretched almost translucent over her bones.
‘Why didn’t they let him at least get changed?’ Lily blurts out, unable to help herself, after they have watched Edward and his escorts cross the quayside to be driven away in the back of a police car.
‘Oh, they tried,’ Helena says grimly. ‘They wanted him to – so much less embarrassing for them. But he refused. He said this is his last chance to be the person he really is.’
‘You spoke to him, then?’
‘Briefly. Oh, Lily. He loved him. Max Campbell. Can you imagine that? Poor Edward. Poor Max.’
‘Where will they take him now?’
‘To the police station. I will follow him there, as soon as we are allowed to leave the ship.’
‘Will you be all right, Helena?’
Ian, who has appeared by Helena’s side, answers for her. ‘Don’t worry, Lily. I will look after her.’
He has his arm around Helena’s shoulders, gripping them tightly. Helena leans her head to nestle safely under his chin.
‘Did you mean it?’ Helena asks Lily. ‘What you said about visiting Edward?’
‘Of course.’
Up until now, Lily hasn’t really considered the implications of what she said, but now she realizes that, whatever happens, Edward is still Edward and she cannot imagine a life without him in it.
‘Thank you,’ says Helena.
The order has now been given that disembarkation should commence, and the ship is once again full of hustle and bustle and excited chatter. Standing at the railing, Lily sees George Price already down on the dock and her mouth becomes instantly dry as she thinks of Maria and the part he might or might not have had in her disappearance. He is greeted by a tall, thin man dressed in a sombre black suit who Lily assumes to be his uncle. The two shake hands briefly and stiffly and, watching them head off in silence, Lily sees how living on a farm in the middle of the New Zealand countryside with just this man might turn out to be a kind of prison in itself, and she shivers with the thought of how his life might turn out if he cannot lay his demons to rest.
Clara Mills is on the quayside, too, standing nervously with her daughter, Peggy, her bag pressed to her chest, as if someone might try to snatch it from her. She is approached by a solid, dark-haired man in a grey suit who pecks both women perfunctorily on the cheek before swinging the bag over his shoulder and heading off the way he came, leaving wife and daughter to follow after.
And now it is time for Lily herself to leave. She can see Audrey and Annie already down on the dock waiting for her. She takes a last look at the ship that has been her home for more than five weeks, and all of a sudden it is too much and a tidal wave of grief washes over her.
For a moment she feels as if her knees might give way and she clings to the railing, convinced she cannot go on. Then she looks around at the cobalt-blue sky and the sun glinting off the majestic curved steel bridge, and the quayside teeming with life in all its messy, complicated forms, and she straightens up and steps on to the gangway. Fixing her eyes on a point in front, just as Edward had done, she puts one foot in front of the other and proceeds towards the dusty dock that forms the gateway to Australia. One step at a time.
Excerpt from ‘A Woman of Means’, the 2006 Sydney Morning Herald profile of Lilian Dent
‘All lines are blurred, all truth becomes, by the act of retelling it, a fiction.’ So says Rose Dixon, heroine of The Voyage, Lilian Dent’s first and still best-loved novel. And no lines are more blurred than those surrounding the inspiration for this book. The death of Max Campbell on board the ship on which Lily Shepherd, as she was then, was travelling to start a new life in Australia, caused a scandal at the time. While she refused, right up until her death in 2005, to comment on it, or her own involvement with the key players, it’s clear the events of 1939 had a huge and lasting influence on Dent’s writing and on the themes she would return to throughout her working life, as did the mysterious disappearance on the same voyage of an Austrian-Jewish refugee Dent had befriended named Maria Katz. The following documents were uncovered in the Lilian Dent archives by her biographer, Henrietta Lock, who was allowed unprecedented access after Dent’s death by the author’s notoriously protective children, Thomas and Frances, who are executors of her estate.
Document One is a letter from Arthur Price, uncle of George Price, enclosing a letter from his nephew. Biographical details of George Price are sketchy. We know he was the son of William Price, an official in the British Raj, and that he travelled on the Orontes to Sydney and then on to New Zealand, where he lived with Arthur, who owned an isolated farm. Price is now believed to have suffered from psychosis that went undiagnosed and untreated, and killed himself in 1965, prompting the letter from his uncle reproduced here. On the surface, the enclosed letter from George appears to be some sort of death-bed confession, with him claiming responsibility for the drowning at sea of Maria Katz. Price was known to have been a member of the fascist and avowedly anti-Semitic British Union before leaving for Australia, so this would not have been wholly out of character. However, given the apparently fragile state of George Price’s psychiatric state in the latter part of his life, such claims must be treated with a degree of caution.
The second document is a hugely significant find – a letter from Edward Fletcher, who was sentenced in 1940 to twenty-two years’ imprisonment for the second-degree murder of Max Campbell, and who many regard as the inspiration for Rupert Longbridge, the hero of The Voyage. While the letter does not touch on matters of any great importance, it clearly demonstrates the depth of the emotional bond between Dent and Fletcher, and indeed between Dent and Helena Fletcher, Edward’s sister, whose family became closely entwined with Dent’s own family. The themes of friendship and loyalty being tested were to be prevalent throughout Dent’s work.
Finally, Document Three is a brief telegram from Max Campbell’s widow, Eliza, who went on to marry Lord Henry Cullen. While it is hard to gauge much from a four-line message, it is telling both that Lady Cullen remained in contact with Dent some years after t
he fateful voyage on which her husband was killed, and that Dent chose to keep her telegram for so many years. What happened on board the Orontes clearly had a profound effect on the passengers, linking them together in fundamental ways that would endure for the remainder of their lives – and beyond.
Document One
Gully Tree Farm
Starvation Hill Road
Oxford, Waimakariri
New Zealand
6 July 1965
Dear Mrs Dent
I am the uncle of George Price, who you may remember as a fellow passenger on the Orontes back in 1939, when you were still Lily Shepherd. I regret to inform you that George died three months ago, in circumstances I would prefer to keep private. He left a letter for you, which I enclose with a heavy heart. I leave it up to you what you do with the information it contains.
Yours sincerely
Arthur Price
Dear Lily
I expect you will be surprised to hear from me after more than a quarter of a century and to know that I have followed your movements with such interest since reading a newspaper article about you when your first book, The Voyage, was published fourteen years ago. I am glad you have made a success of your life with your family and your books. I envy you. I never married. Living out here, you can imagine the opportunities were limited, and I think my blunt nature has done me few favours. Life has been hard and I will not be sorry to leave it behind.
However, before I do, I should like to unburden myself of something that has weighed on me heavily lately, something that happened on board the Orontes all those years ago. You will remember how things were then, on the brink of war. How there was no right and wrong and our fellow passengers became enemies overnight? I think the strangeness of that situation brought upon me a kind of temporary madness. Sometimes I look back on those events and wonder if they even happened at all.
