by Jojo Moyes
‘Do you think we should take anything?’ Maude Gonne had leapt on to her lap and was trying to lick her face.
‘Take anything where?’
‘The stokers’ mess. A drink or something.’
‘I’m not going,’ Frances said.
‘You must! I can’t go by myself.’
Jean squinted. Her eyes were shadowed. ‘Go where?’ she murmured.
‘Bit of a do downstairs,’ said Margaret. ‘I’m promised a game of poker. I’m going to head down there once I’ve given Maudie a quick run. Come on, Frances, you can’t sit here all night. You’ll be miserable.’
‘It’s really not my thing,’ said Frances. But she sounded half-hearted.
‘Then I’ll teach you.’
‘You’re not leaving me here,’ said Jean, and swung her legs over the edge of the bunk.
‘Are you sure?’ said Margaret. ‘It’s pretty rough outside.’
‘Better than puking my guts up in the company of Miss Prim,’ she said, jerking a thumb at the sleeping figure of Avice in the bunk opposite. A long silk robe in shell pink hung from it. ‘I’ll come with you. I’m not missing out if there’s a party. It’ll be the closest thing I’ve had to a laugh since we set off.’
If Margaret had thought the brides’ cabins cramped, little had prepared her for the sheer numbers of men who could be crowded into a single mess area, not much bigger than a working-man’s parlour. The first indicator was the odour: the musk that had characterised her brothers’ rooms at home had been condensed, amplified, until it met them in an unsavoury blast even outside the door. It was the smell of male bodies in permanent too-close contact, washed and unwashed, of sweat and alcohol and cigarettes and unlaundered linen and things that neither Frances nor Margaret wanted to think about. It was little surprise: four floors down, bang on the waterline, it was unlikely the mess had ever enjoyed more than the faintest whisper of fresh air. Directly above the starboard engine room, it was also in a state of almost constant vibration, the noise juddering away below their feet with an awesome, leviathan constancy.
‘I think we should go back,’ said Frances. She had dragged her feet all the way there, had anticipated trouble at the end of every passageway. Margaret had ended up clutching her sleeve, determined that the girl was going to have a good time, just once, if it killed her.
‘Past the officers’ bathrooms, right? Do you think those are the bathrooms?’
‘I’m not looking to see,’ said Jean. In the minutes between sneaking out of their dormitory and coming down the stairs she had recovered her colour. Behind her, Frances stumbled, and tried to catch her balance as the ship pitched again.
‘Here it is,’ said Margaret. ‘Hello?’ she called, and knocked tentatively, unsure if she would be heard above the din. ‘Is Dennis there?’
There was the briefest silence, then an outburst of catcalling and whistling. A cry of ‘Chaffer up, lads, we’ve got visitors.’ Then, after several minutes, in which Margaret and Frances wondered whether to leave, and Jean attempted unsuccessfully to peep through the inch-wide illuminated gap, the door swung open. A sweet-smelling Dennis, wearing a pressed shirt and clutching a bottle of amber liquid, waved his arm in the manner of someone proposing a grand entry.
‘Ladies,’ he said, stooping to address them, ‘welcome to the real engine of the Victoria.’
Thirty-two men were billeted in the stokers’ mess, and even with only half of that number present, the women found themselves in a proximity to the opposite sex that in normal circumstances would have left them awaiting imminent betrothal. Frances spent the first half an hour pressed up against the only spare six inches of wall, apparently too terrified, faced with the presence of several semi-dressed males, to sit down. Jean was giggling and blushing, saying, ‘Saucy!’ in a scolding voice whenever she couldn’t think of anything sensible to say, which was often. Margaret was perhaps the least perturbed: her condition and her ease in the company of large numbers of men enabled them to treat her like an honorary sister. Within an hour, she had not only won several hands of cards, but had answered several queries about the best things to write in letters to sweethearts, how to handle interfering mothers-in-law and, on one occasion, which tie to wear for a civilian event. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, alcohol fumes and the occasional curse – followed by an apology, as a concession to the presence of ladies. In the far corner, a rake-thin man with slicked red hair played a trumpet quietly. He was ignored, which made Margaret think this was probably a nightly occurrence.
‘You ladies want a drink?’ said Dennis, leaning over them with a couple of tumblers. They had quickly established that he did not operate by the normal rules of the ship. Alcohol, smokes, a sub till payday – all of these flowed either to or from him like water. Frances, who had been persuaded to sit down beside Margaret, shook her head. She was apparently immune to the men’s admiring looks, and had spent so much time staring at her shoes that Margaret felt guilty for having insisted she come. Jean, meanwhile, had drunk two tumblers already and was getting sillier by the second.
‘Steady now, Jean,’ Margaret whispered. ‘Remember how sick you were earlier.’
‘Davy here says it will settle my stomach,’ said Jean, prodding the man beside her.
‘Sittle yer stummick?’ One of the ratings, Jackson, had found their accents fascinating, and had made a point of parroting whatever they said.
‘You don’t want to believe anything this lot tell you,’ said Margaret, raising her eyebrows. ‘Settle your stomach, indeed.’
‘That what your Joe told you, was it?’ said Dennis, pointing at hers, to the sound of ribald laughter.
There were bars on the walls to support the hammocks, and rows of lockers, their owners identified by postcards or hand-drawn lettering. On what little wall space remained, pictures of scantily clad starlets jostled for elbow room with grainy, less glamorous shots of wives and girlfriends, beaming children, a nicotine-stained reminder of other, wider worlds far from here. Around them, those men not playing cards at the wooden tables lay in their hammocks, writing letters, sleeping, smoking, reading or just watching – simply enjoying the presence of women. Most had covered themselves, out of deference, and many had proffered boiled sweets, cigarettes, or even photographs of their sweethearts for admiration. Despite the close confines, there was no undercurrent of threat as there had been in the days when Dad brought all those blokes back from the pub. The men were hospitable, friendly and only mildly flirtatious. Margaret thought she understood; having spent months away from those they loved, just having someone there as a reminder of world away from war and men and fighting was enough. She had felt it herself when she had seen men in the same uniform that Joe wore.
‘Frances? You sure you won’t play a hand?’ Margaret had won again. Dennis had whistled and thrown down his cards, threatening dire revenge on the next occasion they met. There seemed no doubt in his mind that there would be another.
‘No. Thank you.’
‘You’d be great at it.’ She would. Her face was almost entirely impassive; her neat, slightly sharpened features revealed none of the discomfort that Margaret knew she felt. Several times now she had mentioned that Frances was a nurse, and several times Frances had rebuffed any attempt to get her to talk about her time in service. There was just enough grace in her manner to prevent the suggestion of rudeness. But only just.
‘Your mate all right?’ Dennis murmured to her.
‘I think she’s a little shy.’ Margaret had no other explanation. She had kept her head down, embarrassed to be claiming familiarity with a woman she had only recently met.
‘A liddle shoi,’ murmured the rating behind her.
‘Shut up, Jackson. So, who’s your man with, then?’
‘Navy,’ said Margaret. ‘Joseph O’Brien. He’s an engineer on the Alexandra.’
‘An engineer, eh? Hey, lads, Mags here’s one of us. An engineer’s wife. I knew you had taste, Mags, as soon as I laid eyes on
you.’
‘And I bet you lay eyes on plenty of women.’ Margaret raised her eyebrows.
‘Very few with taste,’ said his mate.
They played four or five more hands, the game and the surroundings swiftly displacing the women’s sense of being strangers. Margaret knew she was a safe prospect to someone like Dennis: he was the kind of man who enjoyed female company if the possibility of sexual conquest was removed. She had feared her pregnancy might make things difficult on the voyage; now she saw it might make things easier.
Even better, paradoxically, was that these men didn’t define her by her belly. Almost every woman she had met so far on this ship had asked her how far gone she was, whether it was a ‘good’ baby (what, she thought, was a bad one?), whether she hoped for a boy or a girl. It was as if she had ceased to be Margaret at all but had become a walking incubator. Some wanted to touch it, and whispered unwanted confidences about how they longed for their own. Others, like Avice, eyed it with vague distaste, or failed to mention it at all, as if they were afraid it might be contagious in some way. Margaret rarely broached the subject: haunted by images of her father’s cows giving birth, she had still not reconciled herself to her biological fate.
They played two, three, several more hands. The room grew smokier. The man in the corner played two songs she didn’t recognise, then ‘The Green Green Grass of Home’, unusually fast, on his trumpet. The men had stopped the game to sing. Jean broke in with an unrepeatable ditty, and forgot the last few lines. She collapsed into squawks of laughter.
It grew late, or at least it felt late: without natural light or a clock it was impossible to tell whether time had stalled or sped on into the early hours. It became a matter of good or bad hands, of Jean’s giggling, the trumpet in the corner, and sounds that, with a little imagination, bore the faintest resemblance to home.
Margaret put down her hand, gave Dennis a second to register. ‘I think you owe me, Mr Tims.’
‘I’m all out,’ he said, in good-natured exasperation. ‘Settle for cigarette cards? Something to give the old man?’
‘Keep them,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling too sorry for you to take anything else off you.’
‘We’d better get back to the dorm. It’s getting late.’ Frances, the only one of them who was still stiff and formal, looked pointedly at her watch, and then at Jean, who, helpless with giggles, was lying on a hammock, looking at a young rating’s comic book.
It was a quarter to twelve. Margaret stood up heavily, sad to have to leave. ‘It’s been great, guys,’ she said, ‘but I suppose we should go while the going’s good.’
‘Don’t want to get sent home in a lifeboat.’
Frances’s face revealed that, for several seconds, she had taken this remark seriously.
‘Thanks ever so much for the hospitality.’
‘Hospidaliddy,’ murmured Jackson.
‘Our pleasure,’ said Dennis. ‘Want one of us to check the passageway’s clear for you?’ Then his voice hardened. ‘Oi, Plummer, have a little respect.’
The music stopped. All eyes turned towards Dennis’s line of sight. The owner of Jean’s comic book had rested a hand casually on the back of her thigh, which was now removed. It was unclear whether Jean was too drunk to have noticed it. Either way, there was a subtle shift in the atmosphere. For a second or two, nobody spoke.
Then Frances stepped forward. ‘Yes, come on, Jean.’ It was as if she had been galvanised into life. ‘Get up. We must get back.’
‘Spoilsports.’ Jean half slid, half fell off the hammock, blew a kiss to the rating, and allowed her arm to be linked by Frances’s rigid one. ‘’Bye, lads. Thanks for a lovely time.’ Her hair had fallen across her face, half concealing a beatific smile. ‘Got to shake a leg in the morning.’ She wiggled one of hers clumsily, and Frances reached forward to pull her skirt down to a demure level.
Margaret nodded to the men round the table, then made her way to the door, suddenly awkward, as if only just aware of the potential pitfalls of their position.
Dennis seemed to grasp this. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘It’s just the drink. No harm meant.’
‘None taken,’ said Margaret, raising a neutral smile.
He held out a hand. ‘Come again.’ He stooped forward and murmured, ‘I get sick of the sight of this lot.’
She knew what he was trying to say, and was grateful.
‘I’d appreciate another game,’ he added.
‘I’m sure we’ll be back,’ she said, as Frances dragged Jean out of the door.
Avice was awake when they sneaked into their cabin as silently as they could with Jean giggling and snorting between them.
They had seen only two others: wary girls, who had shared with them the briefest complicit grin before vanishing into a shadowy doorway. Margaret, however, had seen spectral monitors everywhere: her ears had burned with anticipated cries of ‘Hey! You! What do you think you’re doing?’ She knew from Frances’s serious face that she felt the same. Meanwhile, Jean had been sick twice, thankfully in the officers’ bathroom, which had been empty at the time, but was now giggling as she tried to relate to them the story she had been reading. ‘It was awful funny. Every time this girl does anything. Anything.’ Her face opened in exaggerated amazement. ‘All her clothes fall off.’
‘Hilarious,’ muttered Margaret. She was a strong girl (‘a bit of a heifer’, her brothers used to say), but the baby, combined with Jean’s almost dead weight and the incessant lurching of the ship, had caused her to grunt and sweat along the passageway. Frances had taken most of Jean’s weight and hauled her along silently, one hand gripping at pipes and rails, her face set with the effort.
‘Most times it’s down to her undies and whatnot. But there were at least two pictures where she had nothing on at all. Nothing. She had to do this with her hands.’ Jean wrestled herself out of their grasp – she was surprisingly strong for such a small girl – and made as if to cover her bosom and groin, her face an exaggerated ooh! of surprise.
‘Oh, come on, Jean.’
Margaret had peeped round the corner to where their dormitory was, and saw thankfully that the marines were not on duty. ‘Quick! We might only have a minute.’
It was then that the woman had stepped out of the darkness.
‘Oh!’ Frances gasped.
Margaret felt herself flush.
‘What’s going on, ladies?’
The officer came towards them at a trot, her bosom arriving shortly before she did. She was one of the WSOs, a short, auburn-haired woman who had directed them earlier to the laundry. There was something almost indecent in her haste, as if she had been waiting for some misdemeanour to take place. ‘What’s going on? You know brides are not allowed out of their dormitories at this time of night.’
Margaret felt her tongue swell to fill her mouth.
‘Our friend is ill,’ said Frances, coolly. ‘She needed to go to the bathroom, and we weren’t sure she would manage by herself.’
As if in corroboration, the deck lifted under them, sending all four staggering against the wall. As she slipped to her knees Jean swore, then belched.
‘Seasickness, is it?’
‘Terrible,’ said Margaret, heaving Jean up.
‘Well, I’m not sure—’
‘I’m a nurse,’ interrupted Frances. That thin little voice could hold a surprising amount of authority, Margaret thought. ‘I decided it would be more hygienic if she was ill away from the bunks. We’ve got another inside,’ she said, pointing towards their door.
The woman stared at Jean, whose head was hanging down. ‘Are you sure it’s just seasickness?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Frances. ‘I’ve examined her and she’s fine otherwise.’
The woman’s expression was guarded.
‘I’ve seen it before,’ said Frances, ‘when I was serving on the hospital ship Ariadne.’ She had emphasised ‘serving’. She held out a hand. ‘Sister Frances Mackenzie.’
The w
oman had been outmanoeuvred. She was bothered by it, Margaret could tell, not least because she was not sure how it had happened.
‘Yes. Well . . .’ she said. She did not take Frances’s hand, but left it in mid-air. The apparent ease with which Frances eventually lowered hers made Margaret wonder briefly how many times the gesture had been refused.
‘Well, I’ll ask you to return to your bunks, ladies, and not to come out again unless it’s an emergency. You know we don’t have our marine guard tonight, and there’s meant to be a strict curfew in place.’
‘I’m sure we’ll be fine now,’ said Frances.
‘Orders, you know,’ said the officer.
‘Yes, we know,’ replied Frances.
Margaret made as if to move, but Frances was waiting for the woman to go.
Of course, Margaret thought. The dog.
The woman broke. She walked on, casting one brief, uneasy backwards look at them as she headed unsteadily towards the canteen.
9
Rounds of all weather decks, galleries and gun positions were carried out frequently, and at irregular periods after dark. All women had to be in their bunks by 11p.m. and the duty woman officer went round to see that no women were missing . . . These measures were the best that could be devised and although by no means perfect, at any rate, acted as a deterrent to bad behaviour and broke up many petting parties before their logical conclusion.
Captain John Campbell Annesley, quoted in
HMS Victorious, Neil McCart
Seven days
The sound of the bugle echoed tinnily through the Tannoy, and bounced down the walls of B Deck. Beneath it several men grimaced, and at least one put his hands over his ears – delayed, tentative movements, which were testament to eight unofficial ‘parties’ alleged to have taken place during the previous nights. Of the fifteen men lined up outside the Captain’s office, eleven awaited summary trial for some related misdemeanor and the remainder were up for offences dating back to the last shore leave. Normally such disciplinary matters would take place when the ship was not a day or two out of dock, but the extraordinary nature of its cargo, and the unusual level of offences meant that, to some extent at least, normal service on board HMS Victoria had not yet been resumed.
