The Ship of Brides(49)
Author: Jojo Moyes

‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘About being a bit sharp earlier.’

Frances kept her eyes on the screen.

‘I just find – I find being pregnant a bit difficult. It’s not really me. And sometimes . . . I say things without thinking.’ Margaret rested her hands on her belly, watching as they lifted with the baby’s squirms. ‘It’s because of my brothers. I’m used to being direct. And I don’t always think about how it comes across.’

Frances was looking down now and the screen was illuminated briefly by cinematic sunlight. It was the only sign by which she could tell that the other woman was listening. ‘Actually,’ she continued, the darkness and their solitude allowing her to say the things she had kept to herself for so long, ‘I hate it. I shouldn’t say that but I do. I hate being so big. I hate not being able to walk up two bloody stairs without puffing like an old codger. I hate the look of it, the idea that I can’t do a bloody thing – eat, drink, walk around in the sun – without having to think of the baby.’

She fiddled with her hem. She was heartily sick of this skirt and of wearing the same things day after day. She had hardly worn a skirt in her life until she had become pregnant. She smoothed it distractedly.

Eventually she spoke again. ‘You know, almost as soon as Joe and I got married he was gone and I was living with Dad and my brothers. Married in theory, I guess you could call it. It certainly didn’t feel like being married. But I didn’t complain because we were all in the same boat, right? None of us had our men with us. And then the war ended. And then I discovered . . . you know . . .’ She looked down. ‘And instead of finally getting my passage overseas and meeting Joe again and just being able to enjoy me and him being together, finally being together, which was all I really wanted, we’ve already got this thing to take into account. No honeymoon. No time to ourselves. By the time it’s born we’ll have been alone together for about four weeks of our married life.’

She rubbed her face, grateful that Frances couldn’t see it. ‘You probably think I’m awful for saying all this. You’ve probably seen all sorts of death and sickness and babies and are sitting there thinking I should be grateful. But I can’t be. I just can’t. I hate the thought that I’m meant to feel all these feminine, maternal things that I can’t make myself feel.’ Her voice caught. ‘Most of all, I hate the thought that once it’s born I’m never going to be free again . . .’

Her eyes had filled with tears. Awkwardly she tried to wipe her eyes with her left hand so that Frances would not know. This was what it was turning her into: a stupid, weeping girl. She blew her nose on a damp handkerchief. Tried to get comfortable again and flinched as the baby delivered another sharp kick to her ribs, as if in retribution. It was then that she felt a cool hand on her arm.

‘I suppose it’s to be expected,’ Frances said, ‘that we’ll get a bit tense with each other. I mean, living so close and all.’

Margaret sniffed again. ‘I didn’t mean to cause offence.’

It was then that Frances turned to her. Margaret could just discern her huge eyes. She swallowed, as if what she had to say required effort. ‘None taken.’ And, after the briefest of squeezes, she took her hand back into her lap and returned to the film.

Margaret and Frances walked back along the hangar deck, having joined the second shift, rather than their allotted one, for dinner, due to the late finish of the film. This request had prompted as much cheek-sucking and ill-tempered acquiescence among the women’s officers, Margaret said, as if they had asked to eat in the nude. ‘Lukewarm corned-beef pie as opposed to warm corned-beef pie. It hardly requires an international treaty, does it?’

Frances had smiled for the second time that evening; Margaret had noted it because each time her face had been transformed. That porcelain stillness, the melancholy air of withholding, had evaporated briefly and this sweetly beautiful stranger had broken through. She had been tempted to comment on it, but what little she knew of Frances had told her that any remark would bring down the shutters again. And Margaret was not a stickybeak.

Frances was talking about life on board a hospital ship. As her quiet, precise voice detailed the rounds, the injuries of a young marine she had treated outside the Solomon Islands, Margaret thought of that smile, then of Letty. Of the brief, blushing youthfulness of her, that strange almost-prettiness that beset her features when she had dared briefly to believe in a future with Murray Donleavy. She pushed away the memory, feeling darkly ashamed.

The temperature had not cooled as much as it had on previous evenings, and a balminess in the air reminded her of summer at home, of sitting out on the front porch, bare feet warm against the rough boards, the sound of the occasional slap as one of her brothers abruptly ended the night flight of some carnivorous insect. She tried to imagine what they would be doing that night. Perhaps Daniel would be sitting on the porch skinning rabbits with his penknife . . .

Suddenly she became aware of what Frances was telling her. She stopped. Got Frances to repeat herself. ‘Are you sure? He knows?’ she said.

Frances’s hands were thrust deep into her pockets. ‘That’s what he said. He asked whose she was.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘No.’

‘So what did you say?’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘What do you mean, you didn’t say anything?’

‘I didn’t say anything. I shut the door.’

They fell back against the pipe-lined wall as two officers walked past. One tipped his hat, and Margaret smiled politely. She waited until they were far down the gangway before she spoke again. ‘He told you he knew about the dog and you didn’t ask him whether he was going to tell on us? Or how long he had known? Nothing?’

‘Well, he hasn’t told on us yet, has he?’

‘But we don’t know what he’s going to do.’ Frances’s jaw, Margaret realised, was peculiarly set.

‘I just . . . I didn’t want to get into a discussion about it.’

‘Why not?’ Margaret asked incredulously.

‘I didn’t want him to get any ideas . . .’

‘Ideas? About what?’

Frances managed to look furious and defensive at once. ‘I didn’t want him to think he could use the dog as a bargaining ploy.’

There was a lengthy silence, Margaret frowning in incomprehension.