The Ship of Brides(76)
Author: Jojo Moyes

‘Where are you going?’ said Avice, and pulled the light cord. She sat up, blinking sleepily as they were thrown into the light.

‘Just for a breath of fresh air,’ said Margaret.

‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘We’re going to help a couple of people who have been hurt downstairs,’ said Margaret. ‘Come with us, if you want.’

Avice looked at them, as if weighing up whether to go.

‘It’s the least you could do,’ said Margaret.

She slid off her bunk and into her peach silk robe, walked past the marine, who held the door back, a finger to his lips, and followed them as they went silently down the passageway towards the stairs.

Behind them, the red-headed marine shuffled back into place, guarding a cabin that was now empty but for a sleeping dog.

They heard the voices before they saw them: from deep in the belly of the ship, down what seemed to Margaret endless flights of stairs and narrow corridors until they reached the rear port-side engine room. The heat was intense; struggling to keep up with the others, she found herself short of breath and frequently had to wipe her brow with her sleeve. Her mouth tasted of oil. And then they heard a shrill weeping, punctuated by a hushed commotion of voices, male and female, some arguing, some cajoling, all underlaid by a momentous thumping and clanging, the sound of the great heart of the beast. Perhaps in response to the noise, Frances’s pace quickened and she half ran, with the marine, along the passageway.

Margaret reached the engine room several seconds after everyone else. When she finally opened the hatch, the heat was such that she had to stand still for a moment to acclimatise.

She stepped on to the walkway inside and looked down, following the sound. Some fifteen feet below them, in a huge pit in the floor a little like a sunken boxing ring, a young seaman was half lying on the ground, his back to the wall, supported on one side by a weeping bride and on the other by a friend. A game of cards had apparently been abandoned on a crate in the corner and several upturned beakers lay on the floor. In the centre a huge engine – a labyrinthine organ of pipes and valves – pumped and ground a regular, deafening beat from its huge metal parts, its valves hissing steam periodically as if to some infernal tune. On the far side, tucked under the walkway, another bride held the side of her face and wept. ‘What’s he going to say, though? What will he think of me?’

Ahead, Frances was running towards the ladder that led down into the bowels of the engine, her feet silent on the ribbed metal floor. She pushed her way through the drunken crowd, fell to her knees and examined what lay beneath the blood-soaked dirty cloth wrapped round the man’s arm.

Margaret leant on the metal cable that acted as a safety rail to watch as one of the other girls peeled the injured woman’s hand off her head and dabbed a livid wound with a wet cloth. Several ratings hovered at the edge of the scene, still in their good uniforms, pulling away oversized oxygen canisters and bits of guard rail. Two smoked with the deep breaths of those in shock. Around the walls the engine’s pipes glowed in the dim light.

‘He went over and the canisters fell on him,’ one man was shouting. ‘I couldn’t tell you where they hit him. We’re lucky the whole lot didn’t go up.’

‘How long has he been unconscious?’ Frances’s voice was raised to be heard over the engine. ‘Who else is hurt?’ There was no caution in her demeanour now: she was galvanised.

Beside her, the marine, loosening his good bootneck collar, was following her instructions, searching out items in her medical kit. He called instructions to the remaining seamen, two of whom darted back up the ladder, apparently glad to be out of the way.

Avice was standing on the walkway with her back to the wall. The uneasy look on her face told Margaret that she had already decided this was not a place she wanted to be. She thought suddenly of Jean, and wondered, briefly, whether any of them was safe, given the punishment meted out to her. But then she glanced at Frances as she bent over the unconscious man, checking under his eyelids with one hand, rummaging in her medical kit with the other, and knew she couldn’t leave.

‘He’s coming round. Someone hold his head to the side, please. What’s his name? Kenneth? Kenneth,’ she called to him, ‘can you tell me where it hurts?’ She listened to him, then lifted his hand and pulled each finger. ‘Open that for me, please.’ The marine reached down to where she was pointing, and took out what looked like a sewing kit. Margaret turned away. Under her feet the walkway vibrated in time with the engine.

‘What time did they say the watch was changing?’ asked Avice, nervously.

‘Fourteen minutes,’ said Margaret. She wondered whether she should go down and remind them of the time, but it seemed pointless: their movements were filled with urgency.

It was as she turned away that a man drew her attention. He was seated on the floor in the corner, and Margaret realised that in several minutes he had not taken his eyes from Frances. The peculiar nature of his gaze made her wonder if perhaps Frances’s robe was too revealing. Now she saw that his attention was not quite salacious, but neither was it kindly. He looked, she thought, oddly knowing. She moved closer to Avice, feeling uncomfortable.

‘I think we should leave,’ Avice said.

‘She won’t be long,’ said Margaret. Secretly she agreed: it was a terrible place. A bit like one might imagine hell, if one were that way disposed. Yet Frances had never looked more at home.

‘Sorry to do this to you, Nicol. I couldn’t leave him. Not in the state he was in.’

Jones-the-Welsh pulled at his bootneck collar with a finger, then glanced down at the oil on his trousers. ‘Last time I let Duckworth talk me into a bit of after-hours entertainment. Bloody fool! My drill’s ruined.’ He lit a cigarette, eyeing the no-smoking signs on the walls. ‘Anyway, matey, I owe you.’

‘I think it’s someone else you owe,’ said Nicol. He looked down at his watch. ‘Christ! We’ve got eight minutes, Frances, before we have to get them out of here.’

Beside him, on the floor, Frances had finished cleaning the cut on the bride’s face. The girl had stopped weeping and was in a state of white-faced shock, exacerbated, Nicol suspected, by the amount of alcohol she appeared to have drunk. Frances’s hair, wet with sweat, hung lank round her face; her pale cotton robe, now stuck to her skin, was smudged with oil and grease.

‘Pass me the morphine, please,’ she said. He got the little brown bottle out of her box. She took it, and then his hand, which she placed on a pad of gauze on the girl’s face. ‘Keep hold of that,’ she told him. ‘Tight as you can. Someone check Kenneth, please. Make sure he doesn’t feel sick.’