by Annie Murray
They spent a good half hour sharing engineers’ talk. They discussed the workings of the ship, its construction, the intricacies of the Parson’s turbine engine. James told Paul about his business with Kesler. He relaxed. Watching the young man’s pale profile, his serious expression as he spoke, he could not harbour dislike for him. He had intelligence, expertise. There was a sadness about him, as of so many of the remaining young men of his generation. It was when he talked of his trade, of the ship, that he became animated.
When they parted for the night James strolled back to first class feeling calmer, mellowed, ashamed of his earlier jealousy. Mercy had only spoken to him once after all. What did that signify? He was a pleasant young man. An odd mixture of charm and melancholy. And hard to place somehow – well-spoken, clearly educated, but travelling second class and without the kind of well-heeled assumptions of superiority James would have expected, which would have made him bridle. Bit of an oddball perhaps, he thought, but certainly a well-informed one. He mustn’t mind Mercy seeing the boy or whatever would she think of him? His display of temper at dinner had been bad enough. He was being a fool.
The door of his stateroom creaked as he opened it. Margaret was moving restlessly in the bed, her face white. Once in bed, against his expectation, he slept immediately.
The next day was one of cloud broken by occasional bursts of sunshine. Mercy spent the day chiefly with Stevie. They went to see Margaret but she was so sick they left her in peace. She took Stevie out on deck, well wrapped up, letting him run up and down on his sturdy legs, pointing and babbling. His red muffler streamed in the wind like a flag. He could say few words clearly as yet but compensated with a great many inquisitive and expressive sounds. He was very intrigued by a stack of folding deckchairs, not in use as it was too cold to sit out. Mercy had to put one up and down several times to show him, and herself for that matter, how it worked.
‘Come on, my lad,’ she said eventually. ‘That’s enough of that. Let’s go and see if we can find some toys, eh?’
She picked him up, both their cheeks cold and glowing.
He was on a rocking horse in the nursery, crowing with delight, when James Adair appeared. He stood at the door in his coat and hat, smiling.
‘Dadada!’ Stevie yelled, pointing. The nurse in charge smiled indulgently.
‘Just thought I’d have a look in.’ James came over to them. ‘Everything all right, Mercy?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ She smiled shyly. ‘Is Margaret any better?’
‘Not much, I’m afraid. And the motion of the ship’s not helping. She said she’d like to see you both later – just for a few minutes. She’s very fed up of course.’
‘I know.’ Margaret had been tearful when she went in earlier. ‘Poor thing – what a time to feel bad.’
‘I, er—’ – James pushed his hands into his pockets – ‘I met your friend last night.’
Mercy lurched over to support Stevie as he began to slide off the horse. ‘Who?’
‘Paul Louth.’
‘Oh – yes!’ she smiled. ‘He’s going to show me round later on!’
‘Good. That’ll be interesting.’ He spoke with determined enthusiasm. ‘You’ll have to tell me about it. He seems very nice. Quite put my foolish fears at ease!’ And he laughed, long and loud so that Mercy felt obliged to laugh a little with him.
She met Paul at a quarter to six. He had already washed and changed back into his too-large suit.
‘I’ll have him with me—’ – she indicated Stevie – ‘at least for another hour or so. Will it matter?’
‘’Course not!’ Paul squatted down. ‘Hello, Stevie. Are you going to come and have a look round with us?’ Looking up at Mercy he said, ‘Tell you what. If we take him down with us now we can have a quick look in the engine room. He won’t be frightened by the noise, will he?’ Mercy shook her head. ‘Then perhaps after dinner we could look at some of the less dramatic bits?’
‘That sounds lovely!’
‘Come on then.’ He stood up. ‘The tour begins here.’
She picked Stevie up and they moved down through the ship, through a warren of narrower, much more rudimentary corridors the passengers never normally saw. The throb of the ship grew louder each time they moved down a deck.
‘Are you s’posed to bring me down here?’ she asked, following Paul’s eager stride.
‘Don’t know really.’ He turned to her, looking quite unconcerned. ‘They can hardly throw us off the ship, can they? I shan’t keep you down long. It’s pretty filthy lower down, and noisy. But it’ll give you a sense of what goes on below decks, what keeps it all ticking over . . . Would you like me to carry him for a while?’
‘No – I’m awright for now. He might not go to you anyway, as he doesn’t know you.’ But she was touched by his protectiveness.
The powerful, vibrating hum grew more insistent. She could feel it through her feet. The floors were metal now, clanked as they walked on them. There was no natural light down here. All the work was done under electric lamps. Stevie sat quite still in her arms now, head turning this way and that, a finger in his mouth.
‘Now – look in here,’ Paul said.
They stood at the threshold of the main engine room. Mercy looked up, up at the working puzzle of steel girders and plates, levers and tanks, dials and chains. So enormous and complicated, so much weight in all that throbbing, churning metal. She gave a gasp of awe and amazement.
Stevie’s eyes were like giant marbles. Mercy felt his tight grip on her shoulder.
‘It’s enormous!’ Mercy shouted. ‘Don’t know why – it reminds me of a church!’
She saw, rather than heard Paul laugh. ‘Quite right too!’ he shouted back. Suddenly he took her arm. She was warmed by the familiarity of it, as if they’d been friends for years.
‘You must see down here . . .’ He had to put his mouth close to her ear for her to hear him. ‘I’m afraid it’s pretty filthy . . . Coal gets in everything.’
‘Well I’m learning not to wear my best clothes when I see you!’ she yelled.
‘Oh dear – didn’t the oil come out?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, hoping it would eventually.
Holding her elbow he led her down another staircase, then stopped.
The floor was black with coal dust, the air stiflingly hot. All around she could hear the clang and rattle of metal, shovelling sounds, bangs and shouts and the trundle of wheels as the trimmers shifted loads of coal from the bunkers ready to be shovelled into the furnaces. There came the sound of a gong banging loudly amid all the other noise. From the stairs Mercy caught glimpses of men clad only in singlets above their trousers, their faces and muscular bodies black and shiny with coal and sweat so that they looked as if they were made of iron.
Mercy and Paul stood poised on the stairs. Mercy could feel the heat beating against her cheeks. She pressed Stevie’s head protectively close to her. The air smelt evil and was full of ash and dust, and within seconds the three of them were all coughing. It was like hell down here, Mercy thought, holding her hand as a shield to Stevie’s face. Those people in first class ought to see this, to make them realize what kept their luxurious saloons and dining rooms churning across the sea! The inside of her throat was burning.
‘Come away,’ Paul said, taking her arm.
They retreated very gratefully upstairs, longing for a drink of water.
‘D’you know,’ Paul said – there was no need to shout now – ‘each of those men shifts about five tons of coal a day.’
‘I couldn’t stand it even for five minutes,’ Mercy said. ‘How the hell do they put up with it?’
‘Beats me,’ Paul said. ‘But they do. Do it well too.’
They reached C-deck and stopped between his room and hers.
‘I’ll get this little’un to bed now,’ she said.
‘He’s been very good, hasn’t he? Not a murmur.’
‘Thanks ever such a lot, Paul.’ She hesitated, not sur
e if he’d still want to see her later.
‘Pleasure’s all mine.’ He hesitated. ‘Would you like to join me for dinner? Not quite like first class, I’m afraid, but it’d be good to have some company.’
‘I’ll eat with you,’ she said happily. ‘I’ll turn up your sleeves for you too if you want!’
Paul held his arms down straight at his sides. The cuffs dangled halfway down his hands. ‘I think I’m still supposed to be growing into it,’ he said ruefully. ‘If you would . . .’
‘Give it ’ere. No – wait. Let me get the door open first.’ Paul took her key and unlocked the door for her. She put Stevie down inside.
‘See you then?’ Paul handed her the jacket. ‘At seven?’
‘Better say seven-fifteen,’ she said. ‘What with the sewing.’
Chapter Thirty-One
She saw him outside the dining room before he saw her. He was standing sideways on to her, his thinness more obvious without the jacket. He was looking into the dining room as if watching the diners there, but she sensed that his mind was far away, his expression one of deep melancholy. The sadness she saw in him almost stopped her in her tracks. Before, with her, he had appeared cheerful.
‘Oh hello!’ He saw her and the smile blazed across his face.
‘Here you go.’ She had speedily unpicked his cuffs while waiting for Stevie to fall asleep, and sewn them up almost an inch shorter. ‘I damped them down a bit, but they need pressing – I couldn’t do that in time as well.’
He slipped on the jacket and tried the length. ‘That’s marvellous – thank you! I’ll press them myself. I’m so grateful. So – are you ready for food? I’m absolutely ravenous.’
They settled themselves at a table beside the wall.
‘You look – very nice,’ Paul said stumblingly.
She smiled. ‘Thanks.’ She’d put on the dress with the blue flowers, plaited her hair simply. She’d wanted to look nice.
‘Sorry – I’m not used to much conversation. I don’t see many people who aren’t engineering students!’
They turned their minds to food.
‘Ooh, lovely – roast beef!’ Mercy brightened further. ‘They have all sorts of odd stuff up in first class, I can tell you.’
‘Yes – it’d be too rich for my palette, I must say. Especially several days in a row. Stanley – he’s the other student – has been full of praise for it all.’ Paul grimaced. It was obvious he was none too keen on Stanley.
They ordered food and then fell silent as if something in the air had shifted that prevented them talking. They each looked down at the table, looked up smiling, fiddled with the simple provision of cutlery. For a moment, in this silent, face-to-face awkwardness, Mercy was acutely aware of the difference in their class. He was obviously educated, better off, superior. What on earth were they going to talk about?
Paul, who seemed for the moment equally at a loss peered into his cuffs and said, ‘Thank you again. It’s a very neat job.’
‘Oh – not really. I’m not much good at sewing. It was . . .’ She was about to say Susan. Susan’s the one who can sew. But that was the past now. She didn’t feel like explaining. ‘Doesn’t your mom do that sort of thing for you?’
‘Oh no – my mother’s dead. She died before the War.’
‘Oh dear,’ Mercy said.
‘Yes. We miss her.’
‘Are you a big family?’
‘Only myself and my brother Peter. Two little dickie birds, we were, growing up together. He was three years older than me.’
He paused, sitting back and opening his napkin, spreading it on his lap. ‘He joined up as soon as he was old enough. Desperate to go. He was killed at Loos.’ Paul looked across the room. Mercy kept her eyes fixed on his face, willing him to keep talking.
‘My father stayed in Cambridge throughout the War – at the university. He’s a linguist – French and German. We were never close. Certainly aren’t now. The War somehow put paid to any sort of communication – it was precarious enough before. It was another life over there . . .’ He paused as if looking for words. ‘You brought it all home in your mind but you couldn’t talk about it.’
Paul stopped, obviously feeling he’d said too much, unsure what was right, to talk or not talk. He lit a cigarette, smoked in nervous little puffs. Once more he looked away across the room and Mercy could feel his unease. She thought of Tom and Johnny. Both of them before the War. Just ordinary lads. The sadness that bled eternally from those years of war.
‘So you left home?’ she asked hesitantly.
Her question seemed to put him at ease, to show him his talking wasn’t a burden and he was able to look at her again, if shyly, drawing on the cigarette.
‘I can’t abide being in the same house as my father. Don’t seem to fit in the way he wants me to. He’d have liked me to be an academic, a man of letters . . . He just has a housekeeper now.’ Paul shrugged. ‘Still, all you can do is go on.’
‘Yes.’ His simple statement hit home. Her own life: her mother, Tom, Susan . . . but she had to go on. ‘I s’pose so.
‘Are you close to your family?’
‘Me?’ Mercy gave a bitter laugh. ‘I ain’t – haven’t got a family.’ It was always a difficult admission.
‘What, no one?’ He sounded startled, and sorry.
She shook her head, took a sip of water from her tumbler, not like the elegant cut glass upstairs, then looked up into his eyes.
‘My mom, whoever she was, left me on the steps of the workhouse – well, orphanage – when I was just a few hours old. All she left with me was a little hanky with my name embroidered on it – least, that’s the name they gave me. Hanley came from the name of the home – the benefactor was a Joseph Hanley. But I’ve looked at that hanky so many times and wondered whose fingers stitched my name; why she couldn’t keep me . . .’
‘Poor woman,’ Paul said. ‘How terrible.’
‘Yes, I know, but . . .’ Mercy felt her emotion boiling to the surface, the hurt and anger. ‘But to just throw away your own child as if she were a bag of rubbish!’ Tears stung her eyes and she wiped them away furiously, hanging her head.
‘Oh dear,’ Paul said wretchedly. ‘I’m sorry. The last thing I want is to upset you.’
When she looked up his eyes were full of concern. She tried to smile.
‘No – it’s all right. I’m glad I told you. I don’t know why it is, it always feels like summat to be ashamed of. I’ve tried so many times to think what it must’ve been like for her. I don’t know whether she was too poor to keep me. She might’ve had a whole host of other kids. She might be dead . . . I just wish I knew who she was, that’s all.’
The soup arrived, leek and potato, plentiful and tasty. Paul put out his cigarette. For a time they chatted more lightly, about the ship, the voyage.
‘We’re not up to speed, you know,’ Paul told her. ‘Barely managing twenty knots. She used to be able to average twenty-six before the War – more sometimes.’
‘Does that mean the journey’ll take longer?’ She’d been told they’d be five days on board.
‘A few extra hours at least.’
‘Oh well – I won’t complain about that,’ she smiled. ‘I’m enjoying it all too much to want to hurry.’
The dishes were cleared, and plates arrived arranged with slices of well-cooked meat and generous servings of potato, carrots and greens.
‘This is the nicest beef I’ve ever had,’ Mercy said.
‘It is good.’ Paul spooned horseradish. ‘Makes you appreciate good food when you’ve done without it, doesn’t it? In the army we were all obsessed with the food – well, when nothing much was happening. Food and dry boots!’
‘Where were you, Paul?’
‘The Somme area. I joined up towards the end. I was there five months – not that long really but it felt like a whole lifetime. Ended up near le Cateau. I went in with two friends – with the Lincolns.’
She waited, seeing he had mo
re to say.
‘Neither of them came back. John went first, early on. Eric and I – well, he said I had a charmed life and I suppose it turned out to be true. He was shot. I don’t know how exactly, or where. I found out afterwards. And I—’
‘You got through without a scratch?’
‘Well, no, I didn’t as a matter of fact. That was the extraordinary thing. I was hit twice. The first time it came from a long way away – the bullet caught the rim of my helmet. Must have been that far from my eyes.’ He held out his finger and thumb. ‘The second time I was holding my rifle, like this, elbows out. A bullet zipped straight through here, under my left arm and out the other side. Burned a lump out of my arm as it went. I remember looking down and my uniform was smoking – there was a whopping hole in it. The arm bled like anything, but in fact there was no serious damage. Again, a few inches further across and it would have killed me.’
‘What fantastic good luck!’
‘Yes, but the worst of it is, it makes you feel responsible. I don’t know what for exactly. But hundreds, thousands of men had the same luck in reverse. It didn’t miss. And you start thinking, why me? What’s so bloody special about me? Oh, look – I’d better not get going on this.’
‘I don’t mind. I’d like to know.’
He couldn’t look at her and she could sense in him a shame which matched her own.
‘What about other friends?’ she asked.
‘I don’t seem to have too many now. Everything’s different . . .’ He gave a hugely weary sigh. ‘Look, let’s not go into that. Go forward from every day, that’s my motto. Tell me some more about yourself.’
‘I can’t think of anything much. I’m not very educated or anything. Just ordinary, you know. I mean I’m not . . .’ She stumbled to a halt.
