The Ship of Brides(71)
Author: Jojo Moyes

The room, set on three sides with windows, was much brighter than the narrow passageway and they blinked. Three people were silhouetted against one of the windows, and two faced them. Frances noted absently that the floor was carpeted, unlike anywhere else on the ship.

She saw with alarm that the chaplain was there, then recognised the women’s officer who had come across them that night in the engine area. The temperature seemed to drop and she shivered.

Jean’s eyes darted round the grim faces in front of her and she was shaking convulsively. ‘Something has happened to him, hasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Oh, God, you’re going to tell me something’s happened to him. Is he all right? Tell me, is he all right?’

The captain exchanged a brief look with the chaplain, then stepped forward and handed Jean a telegram.

‘I’m very sorry, my dear,’ he said.

Jean looked at the telegram, then up at the captain. ‘M . . . H . . . Is that an H?’ She traced the letters with her finger. ‘A? You read it for me,’ she said, and thrust it at Frances. Her hand shook so much that the paper made a rattling sound.

Frances took it in her left hand, keeping hold of Jean’s hand in the other. The girl’s grip was now so tight that the blood was pooling in her fingertips.

She took in the content of the telegram a second before she read it out. The words dropped from her mouth like stones. ‘“Have heard about behaviour on board. No future for us.”’ She swallowed. ‘“Not Wanted Don’t Come.”’

Jean stared at the telegram, then at Frances.

‘What?’ she said, into the silence. Then: ‘Read it again.’

Frances wished that in the telling of those words there was some way to soften their impact.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Jean.

‘News travels between ships,’ said the WSO, quietly. ‘Someone must have told one of the other carriers when we docked at Ceylon.’

‘But no one knew. Apart from you . . .’

‘When we spoke to your husband’s superiors to verify the telegram, they said he was rather disturbed by news of your pregnancy.’ She paused. ‘I understand that, according to your given dates, it would be impossible for him to be the father.’ The woman spoke cruelly, Frances thought, as if she were pleased to have found some other stick with which to beat Jean. As if the Not Wanted Don’t Come had not been sufficiently damaging.

Jean had gone white. ‘But I’m not pregnant – that was—’

‘I think in the circumstances, he probably feels that is irrelevant.’

‘But I haven’t had a chance to explain to him. I need to speak to him. He’s got it all wrong.’

Frances stepped in. ‘It wasn’t her fault. Really. It was a misunderstanding.’

The woman’s expression said she had heard this many times. The men just looked embarrassed.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the captain. ‘We have spoken to the Red Cross and arrangements will be put in place for your passage back to Australia. You will disembark at—’

Jean, with the ferocity of a whirlwind, launched herself at the women’s officer, fists in tight balls. ‘You bitch! You f**king old bitch!’ Before Frances dived in she had landed several flailing punches on the woman’s head. ‘You vindictive old whore! Just because you couldn’t find anyone!’ she screamed. She was heedless of the men trying to pull her away, to Frances’s entreaties. ‘I never did nothing!’ she shouted, tears streaming down her cheeks, as Frances and the chaplain held her back, faces flushed with effort. ‘I never did nothing! You’ve got to tell Stan!’

The air had been sucked from the room. Even the captain looked shocked. He had stepped back.

‘Shall I take them back, sir?’ The rating had entered the room, Frances saw.

Jean had subsided.

The captain nodded. ‘It would be best. I’ll have someone talk to you about the . . . arrangements . . . a little later. When things have . . . calmed down.’

‘Sir,’ said Frances, breathing hard, holding the shaking girl in her arms. ‘With respect, you have done her a great disservice.’ Her head whirled with the unfairness of it. ‘She was a victim in this.’

‘You’re a nurse, not a lawyer,’ hissed the women’s officer, one hand at her bleeding head. ‘I saw. Or have you forgotten?’

It was too late. As Frances led Jean out of the captain’s office, supported – or perhaps restrained – on the other side by the rating, she could just hear, over the noise of Jean’s sobbing, the woman officer: ‘I can’t say it surprises me,’ she was saying, her voice querulous, self-justifying. ‘I was told before we set out. Warned, I should say. Those Aussie girls are all the same.’

14

If you receive the personal kit of a relative or friend in the Forces, it does not mean that he is either killed or missing . . . Thousands of men, before going overseas, packed up most of their personal belongings and asked for them to be sent home. The official advice to you is: ‘Delivery of parcels is no cause for worry unless information is also sent by letter or telegram to next of kin from official sources.’

Daily Mail, Monday, 12 June 1944

Twenty-three days

Jean was taken off the ship during a brief, unscheduled stop at Cochin. No one else was allowed to disembark, but several brides watched as she climbed into the little boat, and, refusing to look at them, was motored towards the shore, an officer of the Red Cross beside her, her bag and trunk balanced at the other end. She didn’t wave.

Frances, who had held her that first evening through tears and hysteria, then sat with her as her mood gave way to something darker, had tried and failed to think of a way to right the situation. Margaret had gone as far as asking to see the captain. He had been very nice, she said afterwards, but if the husband didn’t want her any more, there wasn’t a lot he could do. He hadn’t actually said, ‘Orders are orders,’ but that was what he had meant. She had wanted to wring that bloody WSO’s neck, she said.

‘We could write to her husband,’ said Frances. But there was an awful lot to explain, not all of which they could do with any degree of accuracy. And how much to tell?

As Jean lay sleeping, the two women had composed a letter they felt was both truthful and diplomatic. They would send it at the next postal stop. Both knew, although neither said, that it was unlikely to make any difference. They could just, if they shielded their eyes from the sun, make out the boat as it came to a halt by the jetty. There were two figures waiting under what looked like an umbrella, one of whom took Jean’s cases, the other of whom helped her on to dry land. It was impossible, at this distance, to see any more than that.