The Ship of Brides(93)
Author: Jojo Moyes

Richard Woodman, Arctic Convoys 1941–45

Thirty-five days (one week to Plymouth)

In the anonymous space at the back of the lecture room, Joe Junior shifted restlessly, perhaps feeling unfairly confined by the limitations of his environment. Margaret, looking down on the dome of her stomach, watching her tattered notebook ride the seismic wave of his movement, like a little craft on water, thought she knew how he felt. For weeks, time on this ship had seemed to stall. She had felt a desperate need to see Joe, and a deepening frustration with the way the days crawled by. Now that they were in European waters, time was speeding past, leaving her in turmoil.

She was grotesque, she thought. Her belly was hugely swollen, the pale skin traversed by purple tributaries. She could squeeze her feet into only a stretched, gritty pair of sandals. Her face, never slender, now peered back at her from the mirror in the communal bathroom as a perfect moon. How could Joe still want me? she asked herself. He married a lithe, active girl who could run as fast as him, who could race him on horseback across the endless green acres of the station. A girl whose firm, taut body, unclothed, had moved him to a point beyond speech.

Now he would find himself tethered to a fat, lumpen, heavy-footed sow, who sat down breathless after the shortest flight of stairs. Whose br**sts, pale and veiny, flopped and leaked milk. A sow who disgusted even herself. She was no longer reassured by the easy affection of their conversation a few weeks ago – how could she be? He hadn’t seen her new appearance.

She shifted on the little wooden seat and breathed out a silent ‘oh’ of discomfort. Today’s lecture had been entitled ‘Things Your Men May Have Seen’. Despite the title, it contained only repeated references to ‘unmentionable horrors’, which the speaker had evidently considered too unmentionable to describe. What was important, the welfare officer said, was not to press your husband on what had happened to him. Most men, history had shown, were better off not dwelling on things but simply Getting On With It. They didn’t want some woman haranguing them to tell her everything. What men needed was someone to distract them with gaiety, who could remind them of the joys of what they had been fighting for.

The way this man talked made Margaret feel for the first time that she and Joe were not partners, as she had assumed, but that there was, by dint of her sex and his experiences, a huge abyss between them. Joe had only once hinted at his personal canon of horrors: his friend Adie had been killed in the Pacific while he was standing just feet away from Joe on deck, and she had seen him blink furiously at the fine tide that rose in his eyes. She had not pushed him for details, not because she had felt this was something he should endure in private but because she was Australian. Of good farming stock. And the sight of a man’s eyes filled with tears, even an Irishman’s (and they all knew how emotional they could get), made her feel a little peculiar.

There would be added strains, the welfare officer had said, with them having come from very different continents. There was little doubt that that would be an extra pressure on them, no matter how warm the welcome they received from their British in-laws. He suggested the girls find themselves a friend within the family. Or perhaps exchange addresses with some of their new friends on board so that they had someone to talk to if they were particularly concerned.

But they might find, for a few months, that their husband became a little short-tempered, snappy, at times. ‘Before you censure him, perhaps take a moment to consider that there may be other reasons for his outburst. That he may have remembered something he doesn’t want to burden you with. And perhaps before you loose your tongue in response, you might consider what your husband has done in the service of his country, and of yourselves. We have an expression in England.’ Here the welfare officer paused, and let his gaze span the little room. ‘“Stiff upper lip”. It’s what has kept our Empire strong these last years. I’d advocate that you use it often.’

The marine officer’s attendant had motioned to him twice now to help clear the wardroom. It took Jones’s urgent ‘C’mon, man, shake a leg,’ to rouse Nicol from his reverie.

Around him the officers had finished their meal and were retiring to smoke pipes and read letters or old newspapers. There had been a long-running joke throughout lunch about the state of Victoria’s engines, and an open book on whether they were going to last until Plymouth. Another parallel joke, the subject of much ribald discussion, concerned three ratings who had been informed that they were to appear before the Admiralty Interview Board to try to become officers, and the possible answers that one would give, a young man widely considered to have the intelligence and demeanour of a mule.

‘You half asleep, man?’ Jones virtually shoved him through into the wardroom annexe. ‘The XO had his eye on you through the toasts – you were standing there like a sack of spuds. At one stage I thought you were going to stick your hands in your bloody pockets.’

Nicol was unable to answer. Standing to attention during the toasts would normally have been reflexive to him. Like polishing his boots, or offering to go extra rounds. But strange things had happened to his sense of responsibility.

He had been imagining her put off, and him following. During lunch he had allowed himself the daydream that her husband might send her a Not Wanted Don’t Come, then cursed himself for wishing that shame upon her.

But he couldn’t help it. When he closed his eyes, he saw her watchful face. The brief, bright smile she had bestowed on him when they had danced. The feel of her waist, her hands resting lightly on him.

Who had she married? Had she told him of her past? Worse, had the man been part of it? There seemed no way to ask her without implying that he, like the rest of them, was entitled to some sort of opinion on her life. What right had he to ask any of it?

These thoughts made his eyes screw shut against images he didn’t want to own. In his mess the men, familiar with temporary visitations from war demons, allowed him a wide berth. They came back to haunt a man occasionally, buzzing low, divebombing his mind and scorching it black. Perhaps I could tell her, he thought. I could explain a little of what I feel. Saying it might act like a pressure valve. She wouldn’t have to do anything about it.

But even as the words formed in his mind, he knew he could not speak out. She had created a future for herself, found some stability. He had no right to say or do anything that might interfere with it.

Last night he had stared up at the constellations that had once intrigued him, now cursing the conjunction of planets that had caused their paths to veer past each other at a point that might have redeemed them both. I could have made her happy, he thought. How could the unknown husband say the same? Or perhaps some selfish part of him just wanted to atone and diminish his own sense of guilt by being her saviour.