Jojo Moyes - Ship of Brides

There was no sign of the baby yet. Avice had examined herself with some pride, the still-flat stomach but an attractive hint of fullness to her bosom. She wouldn’t be one of these flabby whales, like Margaret, who sat puffing and sweating in corners, ankles and feet as grotesquely swollen as an elephant’s. She would make sure she stayed trim and attractive until the end. When she was large she would retire into her home, make the nursery pretty and not reveal herself again until the baby came. That was a ladylike way to do it.

Now that she no longer felt nauseous, she was sure that pregnancy would positively agree with her: aided by the constant sunshine, her skin glowed, her blonde hair had new highlights. She drew attention wherever she went. She had wondered, now that her condition was public knowledge, whether she should cover up a little, whether it was advisable to be a little more modest. But there were so few days left before they entered European waters that it seemed a shame to waste them. Avice shed her sundress, and straightened up a little, just to make sure that she could be seen to her best advantage before she lay decoratively on the deck to sunbathe. Apart from that unfortunate business with Frances (and what a turn-up that had been for the books!), and what with her steady notching up of points for Queen of the Victoria , she thought she had probably made the voyage into rather a success.

A short distance away, on the forecastle, Nicol was propped against the wall. Normally he would not have smoked on deck, especially not on duty, but over the past days he had smoked steadily and with a kind of grim determination, as if the repetitive action could simplify his thoughts.

‘Going in later?’ One of the seamen, with whom he had often played Uckers, a kind of naval Ludo, appeared at his elbow. The men would be piped to bathe when the last of the women were out.

‘No.’ Nicol stubbed out his cigarette.

‘I am. Can’t wait.’

Nicol feigned polite interest.

The man jerked a thumb at the women. ‘That lot. Seeing them out having a good time. Reminds me of my girls at home.’

‘Oh.’

‘We got a river runs past the end of our garden. When my girls were small we’d take them in on sunny days – teach them to swim.’ He made a breaststroke motion, lost in his memories. ‘Living near water, see, they got to know how to stay afloat. Only safe, like.’

Nicol nodded in a way that might suggest assent.

‘Times I thought I’d not see them again. Many a time, if I’m honest. Not that you let yourself think like that too often, eh, boy?’

Despite himself Nicol smiled at the older man’s description of him.

‘Still . . . still. Better times ahead.’ He drew hard on his cigarette, then dropped it into the water. ‘I’m surprised old Highfield let ’em in. Would have thought the sight of all that female flesh’d be too much for him.’

The afternoon was set fair, as it had been for days. Below them, in the glassy waters, two women writhed and squealed their way on to one of the lifeboats, while others leant over the ship’s rail shouting encouragement. Another shrieked hysterically as her friend splashed her.

The man gazed at them in benign appreciation. ‘Cold fish, that Highfield. Always thought it. You got to wonder about a man always wants to be by himself.’

Nicol said nothing.

‘Time was, I would have argued the toss with anyone said he was a bad skipper. Got to admit, when we was on the convoys he did us proud. But you can tell he’s lost it now. Confidence shot, isn’t it, since Indomitable ?’

The older man was breaking an unspoken convention among the men not to talk about what had happened on that night, let alone who might be to blame. Nicol did not respond, except to shake his head.

‘Couldn’t hand down orders. Not when it counted. I’ve seen it before – them that want to do everything their bloody selves. I reckon if he’d had his head screwed on proper that night he could have handed down orders and we would have saved a lot of men. He just got stuck in his bloody self. Didn’t look at the big picture. That’s what you need in a skipper – an ability to see the bigger picture.’

If he had had a shilling for every armchair strategist he’d met in his years of service, Nicol observed, he’d have been a rich man.

‘I allus thought it was a bit of a joke on the top brass’s part, giving him her sister ship to bring home . . . No . . . I don’t think you know a man till you seen him around his nearest and dearest. I’ve served under him five year and I’ve not heard a single person speak up for him.’

They stood in silence for some time. Finally, perhaps recognising that their exchange had been rather one-sided, the man asked, ‘You’ll be glad to see your family again, eh?’

Nicol lit another cigarette.

She was not there. He hadn’t thought she would be.

He had lain awake for the rest of that night, Jones’s words haunting him almost as much as his own sense of betrayal. Slowly, as the night gave way to day, his own disbelief had evaporated, steadily replaced by the putting together of odd clues, inconsistencies in her behaviour. Standing in the bowels of the ship, he had wanted her to deny it indignantly; wanted to hear her outrage at the slur. None had been forthcoming. Now he wanted her to explain herself – as if, in some way, she had tricked him.

He hadn’t needed to ask any further questions to clarify what he had been told; not of her, anyway. When he returned to the mess she had still been the talk of the men. Wide-eyed little thing she had been, Jones-the-Welsh said, leaning out of his hammock for a cigarette. A ton of makeup on her, almost like the others had done it to her for a joke.

Nicol had paused in the hatch, wondering whether he should turn round. He wasn’t sure what made him stay.

Jones himself had apparently been presented with her but declined. She stuck out because of her shape: ‘Thin as a whippet,’ he said, ‘with no tits to speak of.’ And because she was drunk, he said. He curled his lip, as if he had been offered something distasteful.

The manager had sent her upstairs with one of his mates and she’d fallen up the steps. They had all laughed: there was something comical about the skinny girl with all the makeup, drunk as a skunk, her legs all over the place. Actually, he said, more seriously, ‘I thought she was under age, you know what I’m saying? Didn’t fancy having my collar felt.’

Duckworth, an apparent connoisseur of such things, had agreed.

‘Bloody hell, though. You’d never know now, would you? Looks like butter wouldn’t melt.’

No, Duckworth had observed. But for them recognising her, no one would have known.

Nicol had begun to pull down his hammock. He had thought he might try for some sleep before his next watch.

‘Now now, Nicol,’ came Jones’s voice from behind him. ‘Hope you’re not thinking about slipping in there for a quickie later. Need to save your money for that missus of yours.’ He had guffawed. ‘Besides, she’s a bit better-looking now. Bit more polish. She’d probably charge you a fortune.’

He had thought he might hit him. Some irrational part of him had wanted to do the same to her. Instead he had pasted a wry smile on his face, feeling even as he did that he was engaged in some sort of betrayal, and disappeared into the wash cubicle.

Night had fallen. Victoria pushed forward in the black waters, oblivious to the time or season, to the moods and vagaries of her inhabitants, her vast engines powering obediently beneath her. Frances lay in her bunk, listening for the now familiar sounds, the last pipes, muttered conversations and faltering footsteps that spoke of the steady settling of the ship’s passengers to sleep, the sniffs and grunts, the slowing of breath that told the same story of the two other women in her cabin. The sounds of silence, of solitude, the sounds that told her she was free once again to breathe. The sounds she seemed to have spent a good portion of her life waiting for.