The Ship of Brides(17)
Author: Jojo Moyes

The Bulletin, 10 July 1946

Embarkation

Afterwards, she realised she wasn’t sure what she had expected; perhaps some orderly queue of women, suitcases in hand, making their way past the captain. With a shake of his hand and some discreet, perhaps tearful goodbyes, they would walk up the gangplank on to their big white ship. She would wave until her family were out of sight, call a few last-minute instructions about the feeding of the mare, the whereabouts of Mum’s good boots for Letty, then finally her love and goodbyes, her voice echoing across the harbour as the ship slowly pulled out to sea. She would be brave, keep her eyes trained on what she was going to, not what she was leaving behind.

What she had not imagined was this: the traffic jams all the way to Sydney Harbour, cars snaking in bad-tempered queues, bumper to bumper under the grey city skies, the crowds of people thronging the entrance to the docks, yelling and waving greetings to people too far away or just too deafened by the noise to answer. The brass band, ice-cream sellers, lost children. The jostling of a million elbows and stumbling feet, all trying to force their way to the quayside. The hysteria of innumerable young women, clutching parents, bawling grief-stricken or giddy with excitement as they attempted to haul baggage and food parcels through the thick crowd towards the huge grey vessel. The air of nervous anticipation, hanging like sea mist over the docks.

‘Bloody hell! We’ll never make it at this rate.’ Murray Donleavy sat behind the wheel of the pickup truck, smoking yet another cigarette, his freckled face set.

‘Be fine, Dad.’ Margaret laid a hand on his arm.

‘Man’s driving like an idiot. Look, he’s so busy chinwagging he hasn’t even noticed they’re moving. Get up there.’ He slammed his hand on the horn, causing the car in front to judder and stall.

‘Dad, he’s not one of your cows, for God’s sake. Look, it’s fine. We’ll be fine. If it gets any worse I can always get out and walk.’

‘She can bat them out the way with her bloody stomach.’ Daniel, behind her, had been increasingly rude about her ‘lump’, as he called it.

‘I’ll bat you out of the way, if you don’t mind your language. With the back of my hand.’ Margaret leant forward to stroke the terrier that sat in the footwell between her feet. Every so often, Maude Gonne’s nose would twitch at the unfamiliar scents that came in through the window: sea salt, traffic fumes, popcorn and diesel. She was an old dog, half-blind, her nose speckled with salt-and-pepper flecks of grey, and had been Margaret’s tenth birthday gift from her mother because, unlike her brothers, she wasn’t going to get a gun.

She leant down and pulled her hand basket on to her knee, then checked for the fourteenth time that her papers were in order.

Her father glanced over. ‘Looks like you’ve got bugger all in that basket. I thought Letty put a few sandwiches in for you.’

‘I must have taken them out when I was fussing with it at home. Sorry – too much on my mind this morning.’

‘Let’s hope they feed you on board.’

‘Course they’ll feed us, Dad. Especially me.’

‘They’ll need another ship just to carry the food she needs.’

‘Daniel!’

‘Dad, it’s okay.’ Her brother’s fierce features were half hidden behind his overgrown fringe. He seemed to find it increasingly difficult to look at her. She thought about reaching out a hand to say she understood, that she wouldn’t hold this uncharacteristic meanness against him, but she suspected he would repel that too – and now that they were near to saying goodbye, she wasn’t sure that she was robust enough to take it.

Letty hadn’t wanted him to come, had seen the boy’s sullenness as a bad omen for the voyage. ‘You don’t want a face like that to be the last thing you see of your family,’ she said, as Daniel slammed the door for the umpteenth time.

‘He’s all right,’ Margaret had replied.

Letty had shaken her head and redoubled her efforts on the food parcel. Twenty-five pounds they were allowed; and Letty, afraid that Joe’s mother might not think her new Australian family hospitable enough, had weighed and reweighed until she had utilised every last bit of the allowance.

Margaret’s dowry thus contained, among other things, Letty’s best tinned fruitcake, a bottle of sherry, tinned salmon, beef and asparagus, and a box of jellied fancies that she’d put by with the coupons on a visit to Hordern Brothers. She had wanted to pack a dozen eggs, but Margaret had pointed out that even if they survived the car journey to Sydney, after six weeks on board ship they would be less a gift than a health hazard. ‘It’s not like the Poms are the only ones who’ve got rationing,’ Colm had complained. He was rather partial to Letty’s fruitcake.

‘The nicer we treat them, the better they’re likely to treat Maggie,’ Letty had said crossly. Then after staring into the middle distance, she had fled the kitchen, dabbing her eyes with a tea-towel.

She no longer bothered to set her hair.

‘Got your papers?’ They had reached the gates of Woolloomooloo wharf. In his new uniform the officer was stiff with the importance of the day. He leant through the window of the truck, and Margaret pulled her well-thumbed documents out of her basket and handed them to him.

His finger traced the line of names until, apparently satisfied, he waved them on. ‘All brides, Victoria. Number six berth. You’ll probably have to drop her by the post. There’s no space to stop.’

‘Can’t do that, mate. Look at her.’

The officer ducked down to her father’s window then glanced away, scanning the crowds. ‘You might be lucky and find a space over on the left. Follow the signs to the quayside, then head left by the blue pillar.’

‘Cheers, mate.’

The man banged twice on the roof of the truck. ‘Try not to run anyone over. It’s madness in there.’

‘Do me best.’ Murray shoved his hat further down on his head, and negotiated his way towards the quayside. ‘Can’t promise anything, mind.’

The truck growled and whined as Murray steered through the crowd, braking now and then as some stray person fell off the kerb into the road, or swerving round a weeping mother and daughter, clutching each other, oblivious to their surroundings. ‘Too right they’re not like cows,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Cows have more sense.’

He didn’t like crowds at the best of times. Despite Woodside’s relative proximity to the city, Margaret thought he had probably been to Sydney no more than a handful of times since she was born. Noisy, stinking place, full of sharks. He couldn’t walk a straight line, he would complain. All the people had him dodging about just to get from A to B. She didn’t much like them herself, but today she felt curiously detached, as if she were an observer, unable to take in the magnitude of what she was about to do.