The Daughter of Victory Lights

by Kerri Turner

She sighed, her palm resting on the painted wood. Was that movement inside the room? She held her breath, but nothing else came.

  ‘Please make sure Spencer always knows how much I love him,’ she said finally, then picked up her bags and left her family. Swapping comfort and security for an unknown life.

  Humphrey Walsh had told Evelyn that someone would pick her up on the shore at Battersea. It turned out to be Flynn, the dark-haired American who worked the sound equipment as well as the lights.

  Evelyn was afraid he would be put out at having to share his job, but instead found him enthusiastic to share the burden. His knowledge of stage lights seemed even less than hers.

  ‘Would you like to see the junior switchboard?’ he asked as soon as they’d clambered on board.

  Evelyn still had her bags in her hands but didn’t point this out. She’d never seen a switchboard in person before and was excited at the prospect. It was tucked at the base of a mast and looked something like a tall radiator.

  ‘It’s a portable,’ Flynn explained, ‘so we can move it out of the reach of bad weather and salty sea air between shows.’

  Evelyn marvelled over the dials and switches that controlled many, although not all, of the lights they had on board. She desperately wanted to try out the four slider dimmers on the lower half of the unit. She’d read about them; and on questioning, Flynn admitted they weren’t used as much as they should or could be. By the uninterested tone of his voice it seemed he didn’t have the same passion for lights as Evelyn did. She wondered why he had chosen this life and this work if he didn’t love it. As a man, and one who seemed untouched by the war, he could have had just about any job he wanted. It wasn’t her position to ask though, so Evelyn kept her lips together as she poked around the switchboard.

  Eventually, Humphrey Walsh appeared before them wearing a gold lace eyepatch. ‘I admire your enthusiasm, Evie, but I think we should get you settled in your new quarters before you get lost among the lights.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and turned to Flynn. ‘Thank you. I suppose I’ll be seeing you again shortly … I mean, if we’re both going to be working on the lights?’

  He just shrugged, and jammed his hands in his trouser pockets as he walked away.

  Evelyn glanced at Humphrey Walsh, who didn’t seem to find anything odd in the other man’s silent departure. He simply said, ‘Come on now, below deck.’

  She was given a tiny cabin to herself. She thought it might have once been a storage cupboard of some sort, but was glad of its privacy. She was spreading the pink and green tartan counterpane she’d brought on the bed—trying to ignore the strange sensation of seeing her old home and her new one overlap—when a whirlwind of performers and crew jammed into the small space.

  A series of names went along with the handshakes and occasional air kisses—an overwhelming blur of noise and colour that only stopped when they crowded out in the hall around her doorway, grinning as though waiting for something.

  The boat began to thrum, readying to move down the Thames and away from London. Evelyn experienced a moment’s panic. Could she do this? Could she really leave everyone she knew and loved?

  Displaying the perfect timing of his act, Alvin appeared, holding out a parcel wrapped in brown paper to distract her.

  ‘A welcome gift for you,’ he said. ‘From all of us.’

  ‘Open it,’ other voices cried.

  By their amused tones Evelyn was afraid she was about to become the victim of some kind of practical joke, but she tore away the brown paper anyway.

  ‘Why, what is this?’ she asked.

  Folded inside the paper was dark, thick fabric. When she held it up, it unravelled to reveal a siren suit—the kind worn by women who’d worked in factories during the war. This one, however, bore a smattering of sequins across the shoulders.

  ‘For working in,’ Alvin said. ‘Some of the girls decorated it so you’ll match the performers. Now you’ll really be one of us.’

  A cheer went up, and Evelyn was embarrassed to feel her eyes misting. She held the siren suit close to her chest, the sturdy fabric reminding her of her 93rd Searchlight Regiment uniform. Memories flooded back with such clarity she could have sworn she’d somehow travelled back in time. She could smell the nervous sweat of unwashed bodies—a rarity in women’s worlds before and after the war; feel the weight of the pickaxe handle in her hand; taste the enamel of the army-issued mug. She tried to swallow the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat.

  ‘Okay, folks, let’s let the lady settle in,’ Alvin said. ‘Where’s Flynn got to? He owes me a game of poker.’

  Evelyn couldn’t be sure if Alvin was hustling everyone off because he’d seen her tears, but she was grateful all the same.

  As the crowd dispersed she closed her cabin door and laid the siren suit out on her bed, admiring it for a moment. Then she rummaged in one of her bags until she found a crumpled handkerchief.

  She unfolded the white cotton and touched her fingertip to the 93rd Regiment grenade collar badge that sat within. It had stayed hidden in her bedside drawer for years, only ever being taken out in the dead of night when she was sure Cynthia wouldn’t catch her staring at it.

  Now, she pinned it to the siren suit, among the sequins. Here she didn’t have to hide the person she used to be—the person she longed to be again. Here, as Evie, she could be anyone she wanted to.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Humphrey Walsh kept Evie so busy her first few days aboard the Victory she barely had time to wonder what she’d done. He teamed her with Flynn in the boat’s overcrowded storage room—an area that had been divided off from the boat’s cargo hold when it was just another steamer—and they were cataloguing the existing lighting equipment; a job that required a great deal of time as the lights were scattered all over the place.

  It was only late at night, after the boat went quiet and dark and she was in her claustrophobic new living quarters, that Evie had time to think about the way things had been left with her sisters. She had been angry with Cynthia for not saying goodbye, but now, on the boat and not knowing when she would see her sisters again, all the petty arguments and the friction of their shared adult life faded, leaving behind memories of the older sister she’d idolised as a child.

  Maureen had come eight years after Evelyn; enough of a gap that Cynthia and Evelyn had felt a team of two. Cynthia had always been the one in charge. Back then, it had meant following in her wake when she stole a sweet or two from the grocer, and sniggering together at their parents’ insistence that the staid jazz musicians they listened to were daring rule breakers. Later, it meant muffled giggles as they whispered, beneath the cover of a counterpane in the night, about Cynthia’s first kiss.

  And then everything had changed. Looking back, it felt as though their closeness halted overnight, but Evie supposed it must have been gradual. Cynthia left school around the same time she began going steady with a young Charles Begley—a matter she took far more seriously than any of the outings she’d had with boys before. Charles came to the house to pick her up, meeting their parents with an overlong handshake; and Cynthia refused to giggle with Evelyn afterwards about his dreadfully solemn expression. In fact, she refused to tell her much of anything at all. The only thing she said was that she would die rather than end up having to advertise her name in the Matrimonial Post and Fashionable Marriage Advertiser.

  As war began to seem imminent, Cynthia and Charles, like so many others, hastened their marriage plans. They’d barely set up house before Charles went off to fight, and Evelyn was installed as a permanent fixture to keep the new bride company—and look after the child who was hopefully on the way. But there had been no baby until after the war and Charles’s return. During that time, Evelyn had hoped the camaraderie she and her sister had once shared might return, but it seemed the Cynthia of old was gone; her humour had dulled and her patience thinned to almost nothing. Still, Evelyn never quite gave up hope that somewhere beneath the duty and
determination to keep up appearances lay the Cynthia whose heart had once felt as if it were half of Evie’s own.

  Perhaps that was why Cynthia’s refusal to farewell her hurt so much. The rejection was a sore she couldn’t stop picking at, bringing the blood to the surface again and again.

  But even that didn’t hurt as much as thoughts of her nephew. Evie tortured herself wondering what kind of man Spencer would turn out to be without her there to lessen the sting of his parents’ bitter arguments. Would the sweet boy give way completely to the selfish child? Would he determine to forget everything she had taught him in an effort to punish her for leaving?

  Most nights she fell asleep with his cries of ‘I hate you!’ ringing in her ears, and tears cooling on her cheeks.

  The Victory travelled down the Thames and around the North Foreland, stopping every now and then to perform. Evie watched each show from behind the bridge, mentally taking notes about lighting cues that appeared to have come in late and how some of the lights might be mounted in the wrong positions. The show was entirely different from such a perspective. It wasn’t just glamour and showmanship and shining lights. There were hushed arguments about a dancer being in the wrong place; panic when a lightbulb suddenly blew and needed to be replaced; wet shivering women dashing around wrapped in towels that had been dyed black so they couldn’t be seen by the audience. An electric current of excitement and focus ran through everyone, and Evie felt as though she was being let into the secret language of shows. In some ways it was almost more exciting than sitting among the audience had been. She couldn’t wait to become part of it, to make a tiny piece of it her own.

  But as they moved into rougher waters, a challenge arose. Evie, unused to the constant motion of the boat, found her stomach rolling with it.

  When Flynn stopped work to get himself an American-style coffee from the galley, Evie ran up onto the deck and furiously gulped the fresh air. It didn’t help. She hurled herself to the rail, only just reaching it in time to lose the contents of her stomach overboard.

  Between retches, she thought she heard voices talking about her, but she was busy being sick and unaware of anything else until the heaving stopped. Her face was damp with sweat, and her stomach still moved uncomfortably.

  A hand was gently rubbing her back, and she realised it was Bee. ‘You’ll adjust soon enough,’ she murmured. ‘It affects most of us that way at first.’

  With shaking hands, Evie pushed herself upright, not entirely sure she wouldn’t be sick all over again. She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her siren suit, and tried to pat her hair back into place.

  Alvin was standing next to her, holding out a cup of sweet tea with a sympathetic smile. She tried to return it, but even her lips felt weak. His and Bee’s kindness lessened her embarrassment, but she knew this was going to be a problem. She wouldn’t be able to work during the performances if she was seasick. They couldn’t have her hurling the day’s meals all over their audience.

  The seasickness lasted, but Evie found it bothered her less when she was moving around the boat. She still wasn’t able to help control the lights during the show, but she insisted that Flynn let her take the portable lights to the storage room after each performance; and, if particularly bad weather was forecast, undo the bolts and brackets holding the rest of the lights in place so they too could be stored safely.

  Finally, Humphrey Walsh announced it was time for them to cross the English Channel. Evie realised the option to go running back to her sisters with her tail between her legs and beg their forgiveness would soon be gone—which made her stomach feel worse.

  She no longer cared about being sick in front of everyone. During the Channel crossing, she wrapped herself in a blanket and lay miserably on the deck, allowing the salt spray to dampen her face and tangle her hair. When she knew her stomach was definitely empty, she sat up and watched the white wash behind the boat which made it look as though the Victory was trying to tether herself to the places she’d been and would only reluctantly let go when it became impossible to stay.

  They reached French waters and anchored in an empty little cove surrounded by cliffs, where the performers could rehearse without being seen by customers who would later pay for the experience. Almost like magic, Evie’s sickness disappeared. She didn’t know if it was the sheltered nature of the cove, or whether her stomach had finally relented, knowing the motion was never going to completely stop. Either way, she was able to sponge herself clean, wash the clothes that smelled of sickness, and dress in a pair of trousers her sisters would have said were unseemly post-war.

  She took her wet clothes out to the main deck and hung them to dry over the rails. Her knickers she pegged to a taut rope she’d been told was called a ‘line’, so they wouldn’t fly off into the water. Not wanting to head back to the still air below deck, she climbed onto the railing next to her clothes. It was too thin to be comfortable, but she didn’t mind. She hooked her feet underneath the bottom rail, then, gripping a nearby steel cable, leaned as far back as she could, trying to take in as much of the one hundred and ten foot boat in one view as possible.

  At one end, on top of the bridge whose height Humphrey had had specially raised, stood a group of dancers. They wore bathing suits, shorts or tiny skirts, and had rubbed lard over their legs to keep them warm when they went in the water. Some had their hair tied up in scarves, while others wore bathing caps that made their heads look like little pots of flowers. They were running through a dance while Humphrey sat cross-legged before them, directing.

  The boat pitched, and Evie had to grab the cable with both hands. The dancers barely even stumbled, leaning almost as one to the side to compensate. She wondered how they did it.

  ‘They have pieces of rubber on their feet.’

  Evie gasped, almost tipping back into the water.

  Flynn grabbed her arm in a grip so tight it almost hurt, pulling her back upright. ‘Careful there.’

  ‘Sorry, you startled me. I must have been lost in my own world. What did you say?’

  ‘The dancers.’ Flynn tipped his head towards them.

  Evie’s pegged-out knickers almost brushed his cheek, and her breath caught in her chest, mortification making her ears burn. Flynn didn’t appear to have noticed, but she was sure it was just a studied avoidance of the obvious.

  ‘They have pieces of rubber cut to the size of their soles, and they sew elastic on to hold them to their feet,’ he said. ‘It helps their grip on the roof of the bridge so they don’t slip off.’

  ‘How did you know I was wondering that?’

  Flynn shrugged one shoulder. ‘Wouldn’t anyone?’

  He pulled a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his front shirt pocket and held it out to her. As he leaned forward, Evie’s knickers landed on his cheek, their wet fabric sticking there. His cheeks slowly went the colour of just-ripe tomatoes.

  Evie politely declined the cigarette—she wasn’t sure she could hold on to the cable and a cigarette at the same time—and tried not to notice as he peeled her knickers away from his skin. She wished she had stayed below deck in her cabin.

  In desperation, she asked, ‘Do they never fall off then?’

  Flynn looked startled and glanced at her knickers.

  ‘The dancers,’ Evie said, wanting to die. This was more painful than her seasickness had been. ‘Because of the rubber soles?’

  Flynn made a sound that was half-snort, half-laugh, then tried to cover it by lighting his cigarette and popping it in his mouth. ‘Course they do. But Humphrey’s taught them to fall elegantly. So when it happens you don’t realise it’s not a part of the show.’

  ‘Falling elegantly? Is that even possible?’

  ‘If you keep watching, you’ll see them practise it. The really impressive part is when they fall but manage to catch themselves on the edge of the bridge. Those girls have got strong arms and can pull themselves back up in the blink of an eye, always with a smile on their face.’

  ‘Goodn
ess.’ Despite her embarrassment, Evie was in awe. Everyone on this boat was so highly skilled in one way or another. It made her feel something of an imposter.

  ‘You know we’re getting shore leave in a week or two?’ Flynn said. ‘Saint-Malo. We’ve never performed there before.’

  Evie’s thoughts had been so caught up with life on the boat, she’d never even considered that they might leave it when they reached new shores. The idea gave her a tickle of anticipation; this was the variety and unexpectedness she had hoped for from her new life.

  ‘Here.’ Flynn rummaged in his pockets, then produced a small banana, its skin speckled brown.

  Evie couldn’t stop a gasp slipping from her mouth. ‘Where did you get that?’ She took the fruit from him and turned it over in her hands like a priceless jewel.

  ‘Found it in the galley, unclaimed. Now your stomach’s better I thought you might want to tempt it with something special. I hear England still has pretty bad rationing.’

  Evie carefully peeled the rubbery skin away, the overripe smell making her giddy. Flynn was right: she hadn’t wanted to eat for days, although she’d forced down dry toast when she could, but now her stomach rumbled. And then her mouth was full of the soft, sweet flesh.

  Flynn flicked his cigarette overboard, nodded at Evie, then disappeared back into the depths of the boat before she had the chance to thank him.

  Flynn strolled away, hands deep in his pockets. He didn’t know quite what to make of the new girl, nor the feelings she stirred in him.

  Eighteen months after VE Day Flynn had returned to America and been released from his service. He’d followed Alvin to London and the Windmill Theatre, where his friend had tearfully hugged a man called Vivian Van Damm, remarking, ‘You never closed.’ The purpose of their visit was for Alvin to ask his former employer if he knew the whereabouts of Humphrey Walsh and his boat, but Flynn had been distracted by the rehearsing girls on the stage. They’d dropped their satin robes in watercolour pools at their feet and were standing in nude poses. Flynn’s contact with women during the war years had been patchy at best, and almost non-existent once he’d reached Europe; he stared at the curves of pink flesh, the dark shadows of pubic hair, and felt something inside him stir. It was a memory of the man he’d been before the war, the tiniest hint that something inside him hadn’t died. From that moment he’d chased the pleasure of an agreeable and willing woman with the same determination he’d used to hunt down the remains of American men in the battlefields of Europe.