A Stone's Throw Page 2

  On their fifth date George said he loved her, and she thought he did, in a way. He said that they must have been intended for each another. He told her what to put in her trunk for Africa and he told her what to leave behind. She left behind her mother and the village and her lost brother, though George didn’t tell her to. Anyway, she understood him because it wasn’t really love that had got her on this ship either.

  Back in her cabin she unpacked her things. She put her bible on the dressing table and stood the photograph of George next to it, beside the mirror. It had been taken in a studio before he left and he looked out solemnly with his brand-new shorts and his white knees and his highly-polished shoes. The silk camisole and knickers, still wrapped in tissue-paper, she stowed in the top drawer. Alice had given them to her as a parting gift, a little smile like a shadow.

  ‘For your wedding night,’ she’d said.

  The snapshot of her mother she put beneath her pillow. Along the corridor she found the bathroom. It was clean, though it smelt odd. She washed her face in warm, salty water and when she ran the water out of the sink, the sea seemed very close, as if it might rise up in there at any minute.

  ‘Don’t be foolish,’ she said to herself.

  She started the letter to her mother.

  Dear Ma,

  All is well with me. The train journey was a little long and I was glad of your bread. It kept me going. There were fresh eggs and butter in the guesthouse. I only got lost once, getting to the docks. Now I am on board the ship which is huge, you can’t imagine. There is plenty to eat, so you mustn’t worry on that score. Everybody is very polite. It is smart as a hotel, with stewards asking if you’d like more tea, and so forth, which is nice but a bit tiring.

  I am sure I will get used to it in two weeks. There are soldiers on board too, on their way to the war. I don’t imagine their quarters are like a hotel.

  It was getting dark by dinner time and a steward knocked on Meg’s door to ask her to cover the portholes properly. She took her lifejacket with her to dinner, as instructed. Standing in the doorway, she looked across the room. The tables were set with starched linen, silver cutlery and several glasses at each place. Meg had only eaten in a restaurant once before and that was with George, the evening he proposed to her.

  She was wondering where to sit, since most of the tables were full, when Mrs Richardson waved from the far side. George had advised her to mix on the ship because she might become acquainted with useful people, but it was only the first night and she was tired. If she sat with the Richardsons, she wouldn’t have to remember any more names.

  There was Chicken Chasseur with rice, more than she could eat. She hadn’t seen this much chicken for years. Mr Richardson leaned towards her with his knife and fork.

  ‘If you’re not finishing it?’ he said.

  She would write about Mr Richardson to her mother.

  ‘The thing about us journalists is we’ve always got a story to tell,’ he said. His cheek bulged with chicken. ‘Never short of a tale, so always in demand.’

  Meg didn’t like Mr Richardson’s manners, nor did she like Mrs Richardson’s kowtowing. But she knew they were what George called a certain sort of person and she could learn about serviettes and how to hold your knife. So she sat quietly and watched.

  The war had distilled the passengers eating dinner that night into a particular kind of group. There were no frivolous travellers, though nobody was talking very much about the dangers. But every passenger had at least one good reason to risk this journey: marriage, family, money. There were no children, few women and, apart from Mr Richardson and a clergyman, all the men were over a certain age. Although they were deemed too old to fight, many nevertheless wore their years with an air of apology, stooping more than they might usually; and they were quick, that first evening, to mention former injuries, especially those received in any kind of line of duty.

  ‘You arrived too late to see the soldiers,’ said Mrs Richardson. ‘They were quite a sight.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Hundreds and hundreds of them.’

  ‘Five platoons, and some. Five hundred and forty-eight of them,’ said Mr Richardson.

  Mrs Richardson shook her head. ‘I found it quite distressing. Funny, because I’ve seen enough parades in London. I think it was seeing them so close-up. They look so young and so unpractised.’

  ‘I’ve watched all the boys from my village leave,’ Meg said.

  ‘No one from your family?’

  ‘No. But I knew them all. Since we were children.’

  Mr Richardson laughed. ‘One of them could be on this ship … I could probably find out … My sources.’ Meg shook her head. This was too near the bone. ‘They’re all fighting already. But are you writing an article?’

  Mr Richardson sat back, his hands across his stomach. ‘I’m planning a piece about the ship. Our heroic lads, some statistics, what the ship was in peacetime. A few personal stories, like the girl willing to risk the U-boats to join her betrothed.’

  He winked at Meg – ‘Need a whisky’ – and left the table.

  ‘I don’t want to be in a newspaper,’ Meg said. ‘And I’m sure George wouldn’t like it,’ though in truth she thought George might be delighted.

  ‘Do your parents approve?’ Mrs Richardson said.

  Meg wasn’t sure what she meant.

  ‘My father is dead,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Meg said. But perhaps her face had given something away, because it was true that the shock of feeling still took her by surprise; grief and guilt, such old guilt, because maybe it was her fault he was gone; because how could she miss the man who’d made her mother so unhappy? Who’d taken her brother? And the tug she still felt in her body, not her mind: the longing for a solid feeling and a smell that was pipe smoke and shaving soap and something else she couldn’t describe but that she knew was her father.

  ‘It’s very romantic. Quite an adventure,’ Mrs Richardson said.

  But her pa doesn’t want her to go on the adventure too. He doesn’t want her to go out with Will. He shouts at her, and her ma shouts at her pa because Will hasn’t had any breakfast.

  Her ma is crying, so Meg says shush to her. She says it in her ma’s shush voice. ‘Shush, ma; shush now. It’s only an adventure. I’ll kiss it better.’

  Her ma holds something in her hand, she cries on it and she doesn’t listen. So Meg goes out of the room and up the steep stairs. She climbs onto the bed and reaches with her arm under the covers. It’s still warm where Will’s body and hers have been. She takes off her shoes, pushes her legs back under and lies still. Her pinafore skirt is runkled and her cardigan is bunched under her back. She moves her legs this way and that, to keep all the warmth, but just her legs aren’t enough, so she gets out again.

  ‘My mother is very fond of George,’ Meg said. ‘She thinks him very steady.’

  ‘Brothers and sisters?’ Mrs Richardson said.

  Meg had thought about this question; she had practised saying no, she didn’t have any; no, she was an only child. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  She saw Mrs Richardson’s raised eyebrows, and behind her, Mr Richardson returning from the bar, and she stood up. ‘I’m tired, and a bit chilly,’ she said. ‘Will you excuse me?’

  Careful not to lose her way, Meg walked to her cabin. She wanted to be left alone; she had dreamed of it, coming on this ship. That was something she liked about George – he didn’t ask her about her family because she was to leave it all behind in marrying him.

  Everything in the cabin was as she had left it. Nothing had been picked up and put down; nothing had been wept over. She was so glad to be by herself. She lay down to sleep and prayed she would not dream.

  Over breakfast, Meg continued with her letter:

  I am still waking at 5.30, but no cows to milk here. Just now I am eating fresh grapefruit, with bacon and egg to follow. You wouldn’t bel
ieve there was a war on, for all the food. I am making up for lost time. I hope the soldiers are getting some of it too.

  Through the window I can see first of all the sea, which is a bit rough, and then in the distance the next ship in the convoy. It is a comfort to see it, just in case we run into any problems. Though by the time you read this, any such problems will be over with.

  I have met a nice couple called the Richardsons. She is nice, anyway, and Mr Richardson is quite important. He writes for the newspapers. He tells us it is to be a quick passage. Eighteen days more, all being well.

  Could you send my best regards to Mrs Williamson and to the Tierneys? I didn’t have time to say goodbye to them. I slept soundly and I didn’t have any nightmares …

  She paused, wondering how her mother would manage; who she would find to listen to her, comfort her.

  … I hope you have not had any either. I hope that Mrs Gray is looking in each day like she promised …

  She put down her pen and looked at the strangers eating breakfast nearby at the other tables: a middle-aged couple, two elderly gentlemen, a clergyman and a woman who was surely his sister, not his wife, a couple of men in smart suits. None of them needed her; when she got up, nobody would ask her where she was going; or how long she would be; or whether they could join her in her bed that night if sleep was hard. She could do as she chose. She was no longer the one who remained. She would have preferred not to be travelling during a war, but just now she would rather be here, in a convoy, hoping a U-boat didn’t find them, than back at home with her mother. She smiled, thinking this. It was something she could never explain, not even to George. Especially not to George.

  After breakfast, the siren rang for the lifeboat drill. Meg went to the day lounge, which was her muster station. She wore her new winter coat beneath the lifejacket. The life-jacket, with four big cubes of cork around the neck, made it difficult to move easily. But she had been told to put it on, as she would if there were a real emergency. The lounge was full. Women carried their handbags, like pantomime penguins in their cork jackets, and men smoked pipes or cigarettes. Mr Richardson made notes in a small notebook. A group of four still played bridge at one end. Somebody picked out a tune on the piano. Everybody had to attend the drill, unless they were ill. Meg’s lifeboat was Number Six, port side. The Richardsons were to go to Number Eight.

  ‘Coffee together afterwards,’ Mrs Richardson said.

  Meg went out onto the promenade deck with the other Number Six passengers. The officer in charge explained that if they had to evacuate the ship, each lifeboat would have a number of sailors and a number of passengers. Further down the deck was another group of passengers beneath another lifeboat, and beyond them she glimpsed some soldiers. Number Six lifeboat hung ten feet or more above them, level with the boat deck. She looked up at it while an officer went through the drill: how it would be lowered on its davits till it was level and they would get in. Then the designated lifeboat crew would lower it to the water, shimmy down the falls – those were the ropes – before unclipping them; how it contained food and water, first-aid equipment, eight oars to row with – best leave them to the sailors – and flares for getting rescued. How they were to follow instructions from the duty officer, which would probably be him. It was all very organised. Meg looked around at the other passengers. They were listening attentively; she supposed they felt their lives might depend on it.

  There was something homely about the lifeboat, she thought, with its white overlapping planking, solid and fresh-painted. It was like a garden shed hung up there. But she couldn’t imagine sitting in it; not out here in the middle of the ocean. It looked far too small to stay above the water.

  Each morning there was lifeboat drill and Meg grew accustomed to the idea of launching into the ocean in something so small. The Captain had explained on the first night that it would take five days’ journey to sail beyond range of the U-boats. When they reached that point, their destroyer escorts would turn back and they would go on their merry way to South Africa. As the first calm day gave way to the next, and that to the next again, as those passengers who suffered seasickness recovered and the privations and pressures of wartime England receded, a holiday spirit began to spread among the passengers. They were so nearly out of danger, Meg thought, and it became harder each day to imagine something coming upon them out of the blue and blowing it all apart. Even the news from home seemed inflected by their mood, as though the RAF had them, chugging their way across the Atlantic, to thank for recent triumphs in the skies over London.

  The days passed, the sea stayed calm and the lifeboats with their shiny white hulls stayed suspended. Meg had settled in to life on the ship with surprising ease. But though each day might be a day closer to safety, it was also a day closer to her marriage; and she knew, as well as she allowed herself to, that she didn’t love George.

  On the third day Meg took coffee with Mrs Richardson, as her habit now was, after the lifeboat drill. They sat outside, just warm enough. Meg turned her face to the sun for its bit of heat.

  ‘I was thirteen when I saw the sea for the first time,’ Meg said. She made her voice bright because she was telling a story. They sat in deck chairs and sipped coffee. Mrs Richardson had her hair caught up in a bandana and a silk wrap draped around her shoulders. She wore red slacks, and a grey sweater belonging to Mr Richardson. Meg thought she looked very sophisticated.

  ‘The vicar’s wife organised a day trip for the village children,’ she said.

  ‘You’d never seen the sea before?’ Mrs Richardson said. ‘I can’t imagine.’

  ‘Everybody else ran straight down to the water. I stood up on the promenade. Mrs Rogers – the vicar’s wife – she had to persuade me. She said afterwards that I stood there with my mouth open.’

  She draws a circle on the glass where it’s misted. It’s going to be a mouth with eyes but it drips down to the sill and becomes a spider. Through the window she sees her dad and there is Will hop-skipping, down to the end of the road over the white snow; they go around the corner.

  She makes another spider on the window. It squeaks when she presses it with her finger tip. She watches the corner. A man goes past the window and then a woman. Jimmy Tullock and John Tullock go past. They run, because they are late for school, like always.

  She drags a chair to the coat hooks and pulls down her coat. In the kitchen her mother cries. It’s cold because the fire isn’t lit this morning. Her mother has the matches and she is lighting and burning them so they are black from tip to tail. One, and then another, and another.

  ‘You can save a sailor if you burn the whole match,’ her mother says in her normal voice, but there are still tears coming out of her eyes.

  ‘I saw the Tullocks, so I’m going to school now,’ Meg says.

  She strokes her mother’s lap; she can’t see where the hurt is. She goes and fetches the plaid rug off the old chair where her father always sits. Bits and crumbs fall on the floor. It’s heavy and it smells of tobacco.

  ‘This will make you better,’ she says.

  She pulls and heaps it on her mother’s lap.

  ‘There now,’ she says. ‘Bye bye.’

  Outside Meg walks beside her brother’s footprints until she reaches the road. Now there are lots and she doesn’t know which are his. The snow goes on and on, as far as she can see. It doesn’t have any edges.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ Mrs Richardson said again. ‘Your mother never took you? No seaside holidays?’

  ‘No.’ Meg sipped her coffee and looked out across the waves. It was odd, this talking to strangers. Back home she would never have done it. She would never have met Mrs Richardson back home, and once they were in Africa, they would probably never meet again.

  ‘Can you swim?’ she said.

  ‘Like a fish,’ Mrs Richardson said, ‘but makes no difference either way, as long as you’ve got your life jacket on. So our sailor always insists. So I tell Mr Richardson. He doesn’t want to carry his
life jacket around.’

  ‘I wish I could, even so,’ Meg said.

  Mrs Richardson stood up and excused herself. ‘Must go and see what my husband is up to.’

  Meg was getting cold, sitting so still. She wrapped her hands tight beneath her armpits. She had never had so much time and so little to do with it. She should be enjoying it, for all they were at sea and there was a war on.

  In eleven days they would arrive. George would meet her and soon after they would marry. He had bought Meg’s wedding ring already. It had cost £5 – he’d underlined the figure in his letter – and it was waiting for her in Africa. He was looking forward to putting it on her finger. He was looking forward to her being Mrs George Garrowby.

  She should write a bit more to her mother. She picked up her handbag and lifejacket and nodded to the other deckchairs. She should go inside, but she didn’t want to, and instead she set off towards the other end of the ship, ducking quickly under the rope cordon half way along.

  She was nearly there when she saw the soldiers. Along walkways, up ladders, down steep metal stairs, her shoe heels clanging. It shouldn’t have been such a shock.

  They had their backs to her, hundreds of them. She could have counted, rows by columns, multiplied them. They were doing a drill, lifting guns up and down, while an officer shouted from the far end. She’d seen plenty of men in uniform in the last year. Each of the boys from the village got his farewell down the main street. But she’d known them; been at school with most of them. These were strangers.

  She narrowed her eyes and stared. Two in the back row: they were the right build. She had to guess – she always had to guess – but she was sure he’d be about that height. Middling, her mother called it, like her. And one of them had the same kind of hair. It was darker, but his would be darker now, too. Her mother used to make a circle with her finger in his hair: ‘Crown fit for a king,’ she used to say.