The Ship of Brides(119)
Author: Jojo Moyes

She had recovered her old composure. Jennifer had watched it ease back over her, a clear shell, hardening with every mile that stretched between themselves and India. She had even managed to scold Jennifer several times, for mislaying her passport, for drinking beer before lunchtime. Jennifer had been amused and reassured. Because by the time they had got on to the flight she had said almost nothing in sixteen hours. She had been reduced somehow, more frail, despite the restorative comforts of the luxurious hotel and the first-class lounge in which the airline staff had allowed them to wait. Jennifer, holding her hand, touching the papery skin, had felt the guilt bear down on her with even more determination. You shouldn’t have brought her, it said. She’s too old. You dragged her across continents and kept her waiting in a hot car, like a dog.

Sanjay had whispered that they should call a doctor. Her grandmother had barked at him as if he had suggested something indecent.

And then, shortly after take-off, she had begun to talk.

Jennifer had ignored the stewardess offering drinks and peanuts. The old lady pushed herself a little upright and spoke as if they had spent the last hours not in terrible silence but deep in conversation.

‘I hadn’t thought of it as anything but a travel arrangement, you see?’ she said suddenly. ‘A means of getting from A to B, a hop across the seas.’

Jennifer had shifted uncomfortably, unsure how to respond. Or whether a response was even required. She let her thoughts drift briefly, wondered if she should have rung her parents. They would blame her, of course. They hadn’t wanted Gran to go. It was she who insisted that they go together. She had wanted to show her, she supposed. Widen her horizons. Show her how things had changed.

Her grandmother’s voice had dropped. She had turned to the window, as if she were speaking to the skies. ‘And there I was, feeling things I never expected to feel. And so exposed to all those people, knowing it was only a matter of time . . .’ She gazed out of the window, at the heavenly landscape, the rippled carpet of white clouds sitting serenely in space.

‘A matter of time . . . ?’

‘Till they found out.’

‘About what?’

There was an abrupt silence.

‘About what, Gran?’

Her grandmother’s eyes landed on Jennifer and widened, as if she was surprised to find her there. She frowned a little. Lifted her hands an inch or two from the armrests, as if reassuring herself that she could.

Her voice, when it came, was polite, unemotional. A coffee-morning voice. ‘Would you be kind enough to get me a drink of water, Jennifer dear? I’m rather thirsty.’

The girl waited a moment, then got up, found an obliging stewardess from whom she took a bottle of mineral water. She poured it into a glass, and her grandmother drank it in efficient gulps. Her hair had matted during the journey, and stood upright round her head like a dandelion halo. Its fragility made Jennifer want to weep.

‘What did they find out?’

Nothing.

‘You can tell me, Gran,’ she whispered, leaning forward. ‘What it was that upset you back there? Let it out. There’s nothing you could say that would shock me.’

The old woman smiled. Then she stared at her granddaughter with an intensity the young woman found almost unnerving. ‘You with your modern attitudes, Jenny. Your little arrangement with Sanjay and your therapeutic phrases and your “letting it all out” . . . I wonder just how modern your views really are.’

She didn’t know what to say to that. There was something almost aggressive in her grandmother’s tone. They had sat, watched the in-flight film and slept.

And then finally as she woke, her grandmother had told her the story of the marine.

He was waiting, as they had known he would be, by the arrivals barrier. Even in that crowd of people they would have recognised him anywhere: the erect bearing, the immaculately pressed suit. Despite his age, and failing eyesight, he saw them before they saw him and his hand was already signalling to them.

Jennifer stood back as her grandmother picked up speed, and then, dropping her cases on the floor, embraced him. They held on to each other for some time, her grandfather’s arms wrapped tightly round his wife, as if fearful that she would absent herself again.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he murmured into her grey hair. ‘Oh, my darling, I’ve missed you,’ so that Jennifer, kicking at the toes of her shoes, looked around at the other families, wondering if anyone had noticed. She felt somehow as if she was intruding. There was something pretty unsettling about passion in a pair of eighty-year-olds.

‘Next time, you come with me,’ her grandmother said.

‘You know I don’t like to go far,’ he said. ‘I’m quite happy at home.’

‘Then I’ll stay with you,’ she said.

In the car, their bags stowed behind them, her grandmother somehow rejuvenated, Jennifer had begun to tell her grandfather the story of the ship. She had just got to the part where they had discovered the broken vessel’s name when he turned off the ignition. As she tried to express her grandmother’s shock – in a way that did not reflect too badly on herself – she saw that he was staring at her with unexpected intensity. She broke off and he turned to his wife.

‘The same ship?’ he said. ‘It was really Victoria?’

The old lady nodded.

‘I thought I’d never see her again,’ she said. ‘It was . . . It gave me quite a turn, I can tell you.’

Her grandfather’s eyes didn’t leave his wife’s face. ‘Oh, Frances,’ he said. ‘When I think of how close we came . . .’

‘Hang on,’ Jennifer said. ‘Are you saying you were the marine?’

The two old people exchanged a glance.

‘You?’ She turned to her grandmother. ‘Grandpa? You never said! You never said Grandpa was the marine.’

Frances Nicol smiled. ‘You never asked.’

He had run, he told Jennifer, as they drove out of the sprawling mass of Heathrow, the equivalent of a mile and a half by the time he had searched the ship and worked out she had already gone. All the time he had been shouting her name. Frances! Frances! Frances! And then he had done the same on land, pushing his way through the throng of people on the dockside, running in circles, physically pushing people out of the way, his uniform crumpled and dirty, the sweat beading on his skin. The pitch of emotion around him was such that nobody paid him the slightest heed.

He had shouted until he was hoarse. Until his chest hurt from running. Then, as he despaired, chest heaving, hands thrust on to his knees, the crowds at the jetty had thinned, and by chance he had seen her. A tall, thin figure, standing with her package and suitcase, her back to the sea, staring at her adopted homeland.