The Ship of Brides(24)
Author: Jojo Moyes

Mum would have been able to explain it, thought Margaret. She would have been able to speak their language, translate it, and afterwards would have defused its power with a few pithy remarks. If I’d known she was going, she thought, I would have listened harder. I would have treated it all with a little more respect, rather than spending my life trying to live up to the boys. They never told you it wasn’t just a gaping hole of grief but that it went on and on, myriad questions that wouldn’t be answered.

She glanced at her watch. They would be out now, perhaps on the tractor, clearing the saplings at the bottom of the steers’ field, as they had been meaning to do all summer. Colm had joked that spending all these weeks surrounded by women would drive her mad. Dad had said it might teach her a few things. Margaret gazed surreptitiously at the feminine trappings around her, of silk, nylon and floral patterns, of face creams and manicure sets. She hadn’t anticipated that it might leave her feeling alien.

‘You want my pillow?’ Frances had emerged from her novel. She was gesturing towards Margaret’s stomach.

‘No. Thanks.’

‘Go on – you can’t be comfortable.’

It had been the longest sentence she had uttered since introducing herself. Margaret hesitated, then accepted the pillow with thanks and wedged it under her thigh. It was true: the bunks offered all the width and comfort of an ironing-board.

‘When’s it due?’

‘Not for a couple of months or so.’ Margaret sniffed, pushed tentatively at her mattress. ‘It could have been worse, I suppose. They might have given us hammocks.’

The other girl’s smile faltered, as if, having opened the conversation, she was now unsure what else to say. She returned to her book.

Maude Gonne shifted and whined in sleep, her paws scrabbling against Margaret’s back. The noise was disguised by the thrum of the engines and the chatter of girls passing outside the half-open door. But she would have to do something. Maude Gonne couldn’t stay in here for the whole six weeks. Even if she only left to go to the bathroom there were bound to be occasions when the other girls were here. How would she keep her quiet then?

Bugger it, she thought, shifting her belly again. What with the baby moving constantly, and all these women around, night, day and every single minute in between, it was impossible to think straight.

The cabin door was open and Avice stepped in, remembering to duck – she had no intention of meeting Ian with a bruised forehead – and raised a smile for the two girls lying on the bottom bunks. Made of a naval-issue bedroll lying in a raised platform of webbing, they were less than five feet apart, and the women’s small cases, containing the minimum of their belongings, were stacked securely against the temporary sheet-metal wall that divided them from the next cabin.

The entire space was rather smaller than her bathroom at home. There was no concession to the femininity of the passengers: the fabrics were utilitarian at best, the floor uncarpeted, the colour a uniform battleship grey. The only mirrors were in the steamy confines of the shower rooms. Their larger cases, with the main part of their clothes and belongings, were stored in the quarterdeck lockers, which smelt of aircraft fuel and to which they had to beg access from a spectacularly sour WSO, who had already reminded Avice twice – with what Avice felt was obvious envy – that life on board was not a fashion parade.

Avice was desperately disappointed in her travelling companions. Almost everywhere she had been this morning she had seen girls in smarter clothes, with the right sort of look, the kind that spoke to Avice of a social standing not dissimilar to her own. She might have found consolation in their company for the awfulness of the ship. But instead she had been landed with a pregnant farm girl and a surly nurse. (She did so hope she wasn’t going to be one of those superior types, as if the terrible things she had supposedly witnessed made the rest of them shallow for trying to enjoy themselves.) And, of course, there was Jean.

‘Hey there, shipmates.’ Jean scrambled on to the bunk above Margaret, her thin bare limbs like a monkey’s, and lit a cigarette. ‘Avice and me have been checking out the action on board. There’s a cinema up near the bow, on the lower gallery. Anyone fancy coming to the pictures later?’

‘No. Thanks anyway,’ said Frances.

‘Actually, I think I’ll stay here and write some letters.’ Avice had made her way on to her top bunk, holding her skirt down over her thighs with one hand. It took some effort. ‘I’m feeling a little weary.’

‘How ’bout you, Maggie?’ Jean leant over the side of her bunk.

Her head heaving suddenly into view made Margaret jump and contort into a peculiar shape. Avice wondered if this travelling companion was going to prove even odder than she had suspected. Margaret seemed to sense that her reaction had been a little strange: she reached behind her, picked up a magazine and flicked it open with studied nonchalance. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you. I – I should probably rest.’

‘Yeah. You do that,’ said Jean, hauling herself back into her bunk and taking a long drag on her cigarette. ‘The last thing we want is you dropping it in here.’

Avice was searching for her hairbrush. She had been through her vanity case several times, and climbed down from her bunk to gaze at the others. Now that the excitement of the slipping off had dissipated, and the circumstances in which she was going to have to spend the next six weeks had come into focus, her mood had darkened. She was finding it difficult to keep smiling through. ‘I’m sorry to bother you all, but has anyone seen my brush?’ She thought it rather noble of her not to direct this at Jean.

‘What’s it look like?’

‘Silver. It has my initials on the back. My married ones – AR.’

‘Not up here,’ said Jean. ‘A few things spilt out of our cases when the engines did that juddery thing earlier. Have you looked on the floor?’

Avice knelt down, cursing the inadequate light from the one unshaded overhead bulb. If they’d had a window, she would have been able to see better. In fact, everything would have been more pleasant with a sea view. She was sure some of the girls had got windows. She couldn’t understand why her father hadn’t made it a requirement. She was just stretching her arm under Frances’s bunk when she felt a cold wet touch high on the inside of her thigh. She shrieked and jumped up, smacking the back of her head on Frances’s bunk.

‘What, in heaven’s name—’