The Daughter of Victory Lights

by Kerri Turner

  In the taxi, London blurred past the windows as a hot burn of injustice crawled over Evie’s skin. She couldn’t wait to get back on board the Victory. Humphrey had paid for a mooring—a Christmas tradition to allow cast and crew to come and go as they pleased over the holiday break—and most of the other inhabitants had taken the opportunity to visit stores, bars and restaurants, or family who weren’t so dismissive as Evie’s. But Bee would be on board, for she avoided going ashore in British cities whenever possible. Evie looked forward to her company. With her blunt yet comforting words, Bee would make everything seem better.

  Evie paid the taxi driver—thinking, as she handed it over, how that money had been planned for Christmas presents for her family—and dragged herself back onto the boat. She’d intended buying Spencer a little toy boat, to remind him of her while she was gone. Just the thought of that turned her anger to tears. She tried to tell herself the emotion was an effect of the pregnancy, but in her heart she knew that wasn’t true.

  ‘Here,’ said a voice. Flynn’s.

  Evie pressed her fingertips to the inner corners of her eyes. She didn’t want the one person who could dampen an already bleak day to see the tears that had gathered there.

  Flynn’s hand landed on her elbow, the other gently touching her back as he helped her down the stairs. Evie wanted to tell him not to bother, that the rubber lining would stop her from slipping, but she was too tired.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes, perfectly fine, just look at me,’ Evie snapped, irritation breaking through her fatigue. ‘You have interesting timing. You never thought to ask before, did you?’

  They reached the bottom step and Flynn looked away, although his hand still supported her. Evie felt it tremble, and her anger faded. She had thought Flynn would say something about her pregnancy, but since the moment he’d heard of it he’d barely even looked at her. Evie looked at him though; he’d become ragged, his handsome face sagging with the weight of something unexpressed. She wondered if it was her and their baby that had caused it, but refused to ask. She had spent too many years witnessing Charles and Cynthia’s relationship: her persistent attempts to make him into the man he refused to be; his anger at her for not simply turning a blind eye to his failings. Evie hadn’t come all this way, disrupted her entire life, to turn out just like them.

  ‘Please let go of my arm,’ she whispered. He dropped it like it was a hot coal, and she wrapped her arms around her stomach, protective and cradling. ‘Your help isn’t needed here. Just for future reference.’

  She half expected him to apologise, or at least hang his head in shame. But she didn’t wait around to see.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  1952: Lisbon, Portugal

  By the time the Victory began enjoying warm months again, everyone on board knew Evie was pregnant. It had become immediately obvious once she stopped wearing her siren suit and replaced it with the clothing Bee had given her. To her surprise there were no questions, only eager hands on her belly and warm congratulations. Evie didn’t know if Bee had said something to them all, but either way the response reminded her of why and how much she loved the Victory.

  Working in Bee’s cast-offs, however, wasn’t as practical as the siren suit had been. She tied the dresses in knots around her knees to give greater freedom of movement, but had to give up climbing the masts. That job she traded to a silent Flynn, while she took over manning the junior switchboard.

  Humphrey took them to Portugal, where he granted them a rare holiday. Evie sat on a blue and white striped deckchair, digging her bare toes into the sand. The sun warmed the back of her neck. Children’s voices were raised in excitement as they played at the water’s edge, and somewhere nearby she could make out the sound of a wireless calling sports scores in Portuguese. Down the far end of the beach men in flat black hats were mending fishing nets. Behind her stood a palm tree topped with a spray of dark green leaves, and beyond that tightly clustered white buildings with terracotta roofs meandered up the high slopes of Lisbon.

  The soothing lap lap lap of the waves was making Evie sleepy. She reached for the bottle of baby oil she’d propped in the sand next to her and, with some difficulty thanks to her ever-expanding stomach, lathered some more on her calves and shins. Humphrey had wanted some quiet on the boat while planning new stunts. He’d been pushing their performances to new and more dangerous heights lately.

  It seemed the Victory was losing popularity, which was the reason Humphrey had given the performers such a long winter break instead of heading to the warmer southern hemisphere after Christmas. He’d done the calculations and hadn’t been able to guarantee they’d make enough to cover the cost of travelling there.

  Bee had whispered to Evie that it was the first time that had happened since the early years when Humphrey was still formulating the show and making improvements to the boat. Evie had asked if they should be concerned, but not even Bee had the answer to that.

  They’d performed in Bilbao, Spain, to lukewarm audiences, then made their way around the coast to Portugal. There was talk of going on to Valencia and Barcelona, perhaps even Marseille, Cannes and Monaco, as they had sometimes done in previous years. But Humphrey had warned that if things didn’t pick up, they would sail back to the beach towns of England, picking up a few shows in France on the way.

  A drop of sweat travelled down Evie’s spine, like someone running a finger along it. She knew the Victory was insured against accident, but there could be no insurance against loss of popularity. She’d heard how in years past barely anything had stopped audiences from showing up. Even in her own early weeks, there’d been a night when lightning had flashed in the sky above them and everyone was too scared to go up the masts, but the audience had shouted for the show to continue and they’d made do with an improvised version that kept the performers solely on the deck.

  Evie sighed. Humphrey said that was the nature of showbusiness: sometimes you went through patches of reduced interest, but things always came back around in the end. She hoped he was right.

  She wriggled a little in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position. She wished she could wear a swimming costume and splash in the water or throw around a bright beach ball with the others. She’d once jumped into the ocean in her siren suit, but that had been in the early days of her pregnancy and when no one other than the Victory’s cast and crew were around. It didn’t seem appropriate now. She pushed her newly acquired tortoiseshell-frame sunglasses further up her nose, then tried to adjust her deckchair to a deeper recline.

  ‘Need some help with that?’

  Evie lifted the wide brim of her hat to see Bee looking relaxed in a chevron one-piece swimming costume with a swing skirt, her bright curls also hidden beneath an oversized hat. In her hands was a boxy black and silver camera.

  ‘Here, hold this,’ she said, passing the camera to Evie, then fixed the deckchair so Evie was able to lean back and take the pressure off her stomach.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and gestured to her belly. ‘This just gets in the way of everything these days.’

  Bee took the camera back and wound the film on. ‘Not much longer to put up with it now. A few weeks at the most, I should think.’ She popped open the lens door, which released the viewfinder, and held the camera up. ‘This is a moment that should be remembered. The moment just before everything changed.’

  ‘Oh, Bee, don’t. I’m so fat and uncomfortable.’

  ‘Not fat. Pregnant, and glowing with it. Come on now, think of the baby you’ll soon be holding in your arms and throw us a smile.’

  Evie couldn’t help complying, and Bee gave her a wink after taking the photo. ‘That’ll be the pick of the bunch.’

  ‘Must be a poor bunch then,’ Evie said with a chuckle.

  Bee opened her mouth to respond, then snapped it shut and jerked her head, gesturing at something behind Evie.

  Evie turned. Flynn was standing there, holding a glass bottle filled with
bright orange liquid.

  ‘I thought you might like this,’ he said, thrusting the bottle at Evie.

  Its label was printed with the word Laranjada, and the glass was deliciously cool against Evie’s skin.

  ‘Want me to stay around for a bit?’ Bee asked.

  Evie flicked her gaze to Flynn, who had seated himself on the sand next to her deckchair. He wasn’t looking at either of them.

  ‘I think I’ll be fine. Thanks, Bee.’

  Bee nodded, then headed across the sand to where their co-workers were frolicking, throwing glances back over her shoulder.

  Flicking off the bottle cap Flynn had already released for her, Evie took a sip. The drink was sweet, fizzy and refreshing, and she had to admit she was glad to have something to wet her throat with.

  ‘Why don’t you go swimming with the others?’ she asked. Flynn’s quiet presence made her uncomfortable. ‘I know I’d be grateful for a dip if I could find a suit big enough.’

  She wondered if he would flinch, or say something at the mention of her size, but he just said, ‘I’ve never been one for swimming. I’m just as happy sitting here.’

  Evie frowned. What did he mean by that? Was he saying he was happy being with her? Or was he simply being polite out of a delayed sense of guilt? As always with him, it was impossible to tell.

  ‘Would you like me to get you an ice cream?’ he asked, still not looking at her. ‘There’s a number of parlours in Lisbon. I hear one even provides for European royalty.’

  ‘Thank you, but no. I’m large enough as it is.’

  ‘That’s not true. You’re beautiful.’

  Flynn’s head swivelled to Evie. There was a pulsing sensation at her temples as they looked at each other; really looked, in a way they hadn’t in many months.

  Flynn’s lips were open and moving a little, on the verge of saying something. Evie silently urged the words to come out. She didn’t know what they were going to be, but she wanted to hear them.

  His lips closed, shutting out a world of possibilities.

  He got up and brushed the sand off his seersucker trousers. ‘You know what, I think I might go for a splash after all.’

  And he walked off towards the water’s edge. Away from Evie and their child.

  Flynn ignored Alvin when he called out, ‘Come meet Rose, she’s a Brit just like you!’ He walked straight past his friend and the attractive young woman next to him and waded out until the water was waist-deep and buffeting him gently from side to side. He was getting strange looks for going in in his clothes, but he didn’t care.

  He needed to offer Evie more than an occasional hand down some stairs and a bought drink here and there. But anything else was just so damned hard. Gone was the certainty that he was needed; gone was the strength that had somehow seen him through unimaginable horrors. Flynn wasn’t sure he had anything else left.

  He let his legs fall out from underneath him, cursing that they would obey him now as opposed to when he’d needed them to. The salt water closed over his head as his backside hit the sand. Under the waves it would be peaceful. All outside sounds were blocked out, and his limbs had a weightless quality that allowed the current to twist them at its whims.

  But he could hear his blood pounding in his ears, and see the blurred outlines of the legs that had failed him. Suddenly he was back at Omaha Beach, in the water, feeling the men’s lifeless limbs bumping against him. The salt stung his eyes and his lungs began to burn, but he stayed there for as long as he could. Would this be the time when he joined the dead whose lives he’d neatly wrapped up, whose belongings he’d sent to the Quartermaster Depot in Kansas City to be cleaned and passed on to their next of kin?

  Finally, when black pinpricks spotted his vision, he propelled himself out of the waves and gasped air into his burning lungs. The world came crashing back to him in a whirl of sound and colour and inescapable truths that were brutal to behold.

  From the moment the first divers hit the water, everyone on board the Victory knew that night’s show was going to be different. The spray around each glistening, streamlined body lit up, electric blue. Evie gasped, her fingers stilling on the junior switchboard. It was phosphorescence, a phenomenon she would never be able to replicate with her lights.

  When the divers surfaced and kicked their feet through the dark waves, bright ripples surrounded them. Energised by the strangeness, the swimmers’ actions became wilder so the water, stirred by the motion, lit up again and again.

  Their energy was infectious, and those on the boat doubled their own efforts. It was going to be one of their best performances ever. Evie was jealous of Flynn up in the mast: what a view he must be having tonight.

  She had regained focus and was operating the plugging system on the junior switchboard when she heard it. A shout from out on the water. It was different to the cries of audience appreciation, and her hand stilled on the plug she’d been about to move.

  A second later, Alvin came running past her. She turned to see him climb the boat’s railing and dive overboard, the bright blue splash he made larger than those of the female divers.

  ‘Alvin!’ she gasped, taking a step away from the switchboard. Alvin never went in the water during a performance.

  A sound behind her made her jump. Turning, she saw that Flynn had scaled down the rope webbing adjacent to the mast and was now running to follow Alvin into the water.

  ‘What on earth’s going on?’ Evie cried.

  Bee too shot by, not answering Evie’s question. She stopped at the railing, leaning out as far as she could, blonde curls swinging as she gestured frantically.

  Evie wanted to go to her to find out what was happening, but a lone performer was still in the spotlight, turning somersaults in a spangled bodysuit, and Evie would have to cross through the light to reach Bee. Bee obviously hadn’t minded causing such an interruption, but she was dressed in costume. It would be a different matter if a heavily pregnant woman in a dress knotted around her knees wandered through the show.

  Evie turned back to the switchboard, belatedly inserting the plug. She heard more motion behind her and looked back to see Bee reaching out to grab hold of something.

  ‘Careful with her,’ Bee said, as Alvin’s head appeared, then his body holding the upper half of a sodden, prostrate woman.

  Flynn followed, holding the woman’s feet, which were clad in the little rubber and elastic pads the dancers wore. They laid her on the deck, the water that had lit so beautifully puddling around her limp, still form.

  ‘Oh my god,’ Evie whispered.

  Humphrey had warned the performers that the Victory was anchored in water shallower than they were used to. The tide was low but he hadn’t wanted audiences to be deterred by a long trek out to them if he’d anchored the Victory in deeper water. Now it appeared one of the dancers had injured herself diving into it.

  Evie ran forward to help, no longer caring if she was seen. The girl’s skin was impossibly pale in her glittering suit, and there seemed to be little any of them could do. Bee had checked she was still breathing, but they were afraid to do anything more. If she had injured her neck or spine in her dive they might make it worse by moving her.

  ‘Evie, shut off the lights. Now!’ Humphrey shouted, appearing from nowhere.

  She hurried to comply. They didn’t have a master dimmer and she swore as she pulled the plugs and slammed all four slider dimmers off. The boat plunged into almost-darkness, the only light now coming from the mounted junior floods and baby mirror spots which weren’t connected to the switchboard.

  Shouts of confusion came from the boats watching from the water, but no one on the Victory paid them any mind. The show was over.

  The unconscious woman was starting to come around, and Humphrey was on his knees next to her, draping a black towel over her to keep her warm. For a second, the sight of her movement gave all of them some relief; then she began to moan. Her voice rose and fell in a series of wails that reminded Evie of the people sh
e had pulled from the rubble during the Blitz. A sharp pang twisted her stomach.

  Someone procured some painkillers, and Alvin held the girl’s head back while Humphrey made her swallow. It took some time, but eventually whatever was in the pills sent her to sleep. The men, as gently as they could, carried her into Humphrey’s cabin. He gave strict instructions for the rest of the cast and crew to go to bed, for they’d be sailing to the nearest mooring early the next morning to send for a doctor.

  Evie changed into her nightdress with trembling hands. The cat, who had somehow got herself pregnant—although Evie was hardly one to judge—had taken to sleeping on Evie’s bed, and she gave her a pat as she climbed under her covers and lay staring up at the ceiling. She couldn’t stop hearing the woman’s moans of pain, or seeing the lifeless weight of her body as she was pulled over the railing. Evie had thought she was seeing a corpse again, long after she’d imagined she’d seen her last.

  She turned and turned again, but no matter which way she tried to lie she was uncomfortable. On her side, her hips ached and her underneath leg went numb. Lying on her back seemed to encourage the baby to squeeze into the space her bladder should be taking up.

  Evie sighed, then swung her swollen feet to the floor and wriggled them into her now-tight velvet slippers. The cat jumped off the bed, hovering at the door. The hallway outside was dark. Snatching up her dressing gown, Evie shuffled towards the stairs.

  On the deck, a breeze seemed to pick her up and carry her along. She walked half a dozen steps, then leaned against the thin railing, the cool painted metal soothing the tight skin of her hands. She faced one of Lisbon’s beaches, where she could see thin blue lines appearing and disappearing as the phosphorescent waves broke on the shore.

  Evie closed her eyes. The blue lines still glowed against her eyelids, taking their time to fade. Her hands, almost of their own accord, ran over her stomach; the silk of one of Bee’s old nightdresses was slippery underneath her palms. In only a few weeks her baby would be here. A fierce protectiveness swept over her, so strong it was almost frightening. She imagined her baby could feel her hands cupping it; mother’s hands that would always be there to pick it up, comfort it, soothe it in sickness, give it strength when needed.