The Ship of Brides(60)
Author: Jojo Moyes

At night, alone, she could shrug off, temporarily, both past and future. She could just sit and be, comforted by the fact that here she was just Frances – a tiny, meaningless nothing amid the sky, the sea and the stars.

‘So, how’s your ship of brides?’

The warship Alexandra was the first British vessel the Victoria had passed within radio distance since they had left Sydney. But Highfield had taken Captain Edward Baxter’s call with less enthusiasm than he might have done in other circumstances, having something of an inkling as to how the exchange would run.

‘And how’s sports day? Dobson tells me you’re letting the girls out for a bit of a hop, skip and jump. Or am I thinking of something else?’

Highfield closed his eyes, listening to the distant rattle of laughter.

In spite of everyone’s best efforts, sports day, it was widely agreed afterwards, could not be described as an unequivocal success. Despite the mirror-flat sea, whose surface the Victoria glided across so smoothly that you could have balanced a penny upright on her bow half-way back to Trincomalee, the deck hockey had had to be abandoned after the pucks, in three successive matches, sailed overboard. The same went for the baton during the relay race, prompting one bride to burst into tears at the booing and jeering that greeted her mistake. Another suffered burns to her legs when she braked too late and skidded along the deck dangerously until she was hauled back from the edge. Girls, the officers observed, were not used to the specialist skills required to play sports in the confines of a ship, even one as large as Victoria.

The women’s officers, growing impatient in the heat, tried to extend the games area as far as the aircraft. But it had proven impossible to run the wheelbarrow and sack races safely around the planes, and even when they were moved, hoisted around by the gantry or pushed by whistling deck hands, the women, unused to their shape, would repeatedly bang themselves on wings or knock into propellers. The absence of the liftwells meant that it was impossible to place them anywhere else. Meanwhile, as the ship maintained its course across the Indian Ocean it had found itself in the midst of a heatwave, the vast flight deck absorbing the heat of the sun, so that feet blistered on the decks, and many found it too hot to run, the drinking fountains sent up warm water and throughout the afternoon the competitors drifted away, pleading exhaustion, sunburn, or headache. The sweltering temperatures in the cabins meant they were all fractious with lack of sleep. In the midst of this, two brides (one, rather unfortunately, the founder of the Brides’ Bible Club) had helped carry a friend with a sprained ankle to the infirmary. There, Dr Duxbury was reeking of alcohol and engrossed in reading matter that, had he been in a condition to do so, he might have defended at best as ‘medically informative’. The ankle forgotten, the shaken brides had sprinted to the head of the ship’s Red Cross to make a formal complaint.

‘I thought it was important for me to be fully conversant with all aspects of female anatomy,’ Dr Duxbury told Captain Highfield.

‘I’m not sure that Hollywood Starlets was quite the biological textbook our passengers had in mind,’ the captain replied. And decided that, unorthodox as it was, it might be best if he hung on to the infirmary keys for the foreseeable future.

It was then that two brides fell into fisticuffs over the egg and spoon. (Pointless, really, as all the eggs were wooden.) The ‘Carry the Maiden’ race had culminated in an argument when a girl accused a rating of hoisting up her skirt. Sports day had officially ended.

‘I think the question all the chaps want to know is how’s your water consumption?’

‘Fine,’ said Highfield, thinking back to that morning’s report. They had had some trouble with one of the desalination units, but the chief engineer had told him they were now running as normal.

Baxter was talking too loudly, as if conscious that he was listened to by other people at his end. ‘It’s just that we hear on the grapevine you’ve set up a hair salon, and we were wondering how you looked after a shampoo and set . . .’ He guffawed heartily, and Highfield thought he heard an echoing laugh behind him.

He was alone in the meteorological office, high above the shimmering deck and his leg had throbbed steadily all day. He had felt a vague sense of betrayal when it started; for days it had given him hardly any trouble, to the point at which he had convinced himself that it was healing without the need for medical intervention.

‘I spoke to Dobson before they put me through to you. He says those Aussie girls are giving you all a run for your money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Causing the odd upset. Getting the men a bit agitated. Can’t say I envy you, old man. Load of women littering up the place with their washing and nail varnish and frillies and what-have-you. Wandering around in their next-to-nothings, distracting the men from their work. My boys here have opened a book on how many little Victors and Victorias will be running around in nine months’ time.’

There had been a noticeable lightening in the way senior naval personnel talked to each other since the end of the war. Now they were determined to poke fun, make jokes. Highfield, not for the first time, found himself hankering after the old ways. He tried to keep the affront from his voice. ‘My men are conducting themselves properly.’

‘It’s not the men’s behaviour I’m thinking of, George. I’ve heard about these colonial girls. Not quite the same reserve as their British sisters, if what I’ve heard about the nocturnal activities in Sydney are anything to go by . . .’

‘These girls are fine. Everything’s under control.’ He thought uncomfortably of the incident the women’s service officer had reported the previous week. Baxter and his like would know soon enough.

‘Yes. Well. My advice would be to keep ’em locked up as much as you can. We’ve had all sorts of trouble with our younger lads and women passengers. And that’s just the odd Wren or two. Dread to think what it must be like with more than six hundred. I think some of them have lost their heads now they know they’re heading home.’

In Highfield’s answering silence, he seemed finally to acknowledge that he was not going to get the response he desired. Highfield, meanwhile, had pulled up his trouser leg. It might have been his imagination, but the colour of the skin surrounding the wound was angrier than it had been when he last examined it. He dropped the fabric, clenching his jaw, as if he could make the damn thing better by a sheer act of will.