by Rachel Rhys
‘You look like a princess from a storybook in that dress,’ says Edward softly after they leave their table to stand on the periphery of the dancefloor. He is wearing a black dinner jacket, against which his skin appears almost pearlescent in the dwindling light. As ever, his shock of dark hair escapes all attempts at control and springs up from his head in defiant curls.
Lily is glad of the darkness as she feels her cheeks burn.
Helena is wearing a floor-length dove-grey gown that looks expensive, except that it is creased and the stitching has come loose at one of the seams. Not for the first time, Lily wonders about the siblings’ background. Their clothes are well cut and they are paying full fare. Edward has told her he was training as a lawyer before he became ill. Yet here they are, travelling tourist class with her. She assumes their parents must be footing the bill for the voyage and for the initial costs of setting up in Sydney once they arrive. Yet neither has been forthcoming about their family back home. All Lily knows is that their father is something important in the civil service and their mother a housewife. ‘Will they be coming to Australia to join you?’ Lily had asked, and she hadn’t imagined the look that passed between them before Helena said, ‘We very much hope so, but Mother is not very strong so we will have to wait and see.’
When the band starts playing, Lily hopes Edward will ask her to dance. While she isn’t a particularly accomplished dancer, she loves the glamour of it, the feeling of her body giving in to a rhythm not her own, the warmth of a man’s hand resting gently on her waist as the lights and the music whirl around them. But Edward seems content to remain as they are, talking to Helena, and perhaps, Lily thinks, he does not want to leave his sister standing here alone.
‘Quick, hide me,’ she says, stepping behind the others as she spies Ida on the other side of the dining room in the brown dress she’d earlier fished out from her case. But when Ida eventually turns to walk off in the direction of the cabins, it’s remorse Lily feels rather than relief. What would it have cost me to be kind? she reprimands herself.
The deck is getting very crowded as the passengers spill out from the dining room and the lounge. There’s a noisy group by the bar which includes a woman with a loud, penetrating laugh that scrapes along each one of Lily’s vertebrae in turn.
‘That lot are down from First,’ says George Price, who has wandered over to join them. ‘Probably fed up with how stuffy it is up there – or just want to get a good look at how the rest of us live, I shouldn’t wonder. I’ve seen it happen before.’
George asks Lily to dance and she can’t think of a reason to say no. Up close, she can smell the alcohol on his breath.
‘Are you looking forward to the voyage?’ she asks, for something to say.
‘It’s a means to an end,’ he says. ‘It’s pleasant enough at the moment but wait till we get to Toulon and Naples and the Jews and the Ities get on, trying to get away from Hitler. Then we’ll all have to watch our backs.’
‘I’m surprised you’re off to New Zealand, when you’re clearly so wrapped up in the political situation here,’ Lily says tartly, not liking the direction the conversation is going. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to stay in Europe, with everything that’s going on?’
‘My uncle needs help running his farm,’ he says sullenly. His plump lips are wet and purple like raw liver. Now they are moving again, words coming out as if he can’t stop them.
‘Actually that’s not the real reason. My father thinks there will be a war, so he’s getting me out of the way.’
Lily is shocked. Not just because of what he’s said, but because he’s dared to voice it out loud. In her experience, people rarely talk openly of the probability of war, still less of how to avoid it. He stumbles now, as if also taken aback by his own admission, and she realizes how drunk he is.
When they go back on the deck Helena and Edward are nowhere to be seen. For a moment she thinks they have left her and, instantly, the joy drains from the evening. Then she spots them in the bar, queuing for drinks, and the scene springs once again to life.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ she says, once she has pushed through the throng of people to get to them. To her great relief, George doesn’t seem to have followed her.
‘We decided to buy wine, but it’s taking longer than we thought. Would you like a glass of something, Lily?’
It’s warm in the bar, and claustrophobic. The loud group they’d heard earlier is still here, the same woman with the grating laugh. Now they are close up, Lily decides they are definitely from first class. It’s in the cut of the women’s dresses and the rustling sound they make as they move, and the languid stance of the men. Finally, Edward is served and hands them their glasses but, as they are pushing through the crowd, suddenly a roar goes up from the group at the side and a man steps back into Lily, spilling her drink all over her.
‘I’m so sorry. How clumsy of me.’
Lily, who has been gazing down at her ruined dress, looks up with a jolt of recognition. It’s the man from the quayside. The big man with the moustache who’d been standing with the woman in the scarlet dress. And now that everyone is gathering around, she notices that she is here too. The woman. Not in red today but in a duck-egg-blue gown that plunges at the front and wraps snugly around her narrow waist and hips before falling to the floor. Her black hair tumbles in waves over her creamy shoulders and her full mouth is the colour of ripe plums.
‘Oh, Max, you are the most crashing idiot. Look what you’ve done. And such a lovely dress!’
Lily is astonished to hear that the woman is American. She had a few American customers at the Corner House, but somehow it doesn’t fit with the picture she has painted of the woman in her head. How frustrating life is sometimes, pasting its own version of events over the top of the one you have already created, like a fresh billboard poster.
‘Do forgive me. Please forgive me. What can I do to help? I am most abjectly sorry.’
To Lily’s dismay, Max drops to his knees in front of her. A blonde woman with a long cigarette standing to his left lets out a distinctive shriek of laughter.
‘Are you all right, Lily?’ asks Helena, studying her face with her calm grey eyes.
‘Well, I shouldn’t think she is for a minute. Not with this great lummox splayed out on the floor in front of her,’ says the American woman. ‘Now, Lily. It is Lily, isn’t it? You’re not to worry about a thing. I’m going to take you to the powder room to get cleaned up and, in the meantime, my clumsy husband will buy you all another drink. Isn’t that so, Max?’
Lily has no time to object because the woman is already holding her under the elbow and steering her away.
‘She’ll be back before you know it,’ she calls over her shoulder to Helena and Edward in her strange, lazy, honeyed voice.
In the time it takes them to walk to the ladies’ toilets at the back of the dining room Lily learns her companion’s name is Eliza Campbell and that she and Max are travelling to Australia on a second honeymoon.
‘Our first was in Paris and we had such an argument on the third day that I left him there in the hotel and took the train to Switzerland. It was the first train I could get on, and I arrived in Zurich with very little money and no clue what to do. Have you ever been to Zurich? It’s quite the dullest place in the world, and he made me wait there three days before wiring me the money to get back!’
Eliza smells of late-summer roses and her ears sparkle with diamonds. Lily feels ungainly by comparison. Unrefined. The spoilt dress that had earlier seemed so sophisticated now looks cheap to her eyes, the colour insipid next to Eliza’s rich blue. She tries to think of something witty to say to match her tone to that of her new acquaintance, but everything sounds flat. In the Ladies Eliza wets a towel with hot water and dabs away at the discoloured silk until the worst of the stain is gone and re-pins Lily’s spray of silk roses so that it covers the rest.
‘Of course, you’ll send us the bill for the laundry,’ she says. When Lily tries
to protest she presses a cool finger gently to her lips and Lily is shocked at the intimacy of it. ‘If the next time I see you it’s looking good as new, I’ll know and you will be severely punished. You can’t get away with anything on a ship, you know. Someone always finds out.’
When they get back to the bar Max is deep in conversation with Helena and Edward, their heads bent together so they can hear each other speak.
‘Luckily Lily has been salvaged. I think you’re forgiven, darling,’ says Eliza, reaching up to kiss her husband’s rugged cheek.
Lily smiles her agreement but, as she turns towards her dinner-table companions, her smile freezes upon her lips. Edward is gazing at Eliza with an expression of naked greed, as if she were an oyster he could swallow down in one deep, hungry gulp.
4
31 July 1939
WHEN LILY AWAKES, she feels different, as if the movement of the boat has entered into her body and now the blood inside her veins is swishing from side to side with that same lurching rhythm. She struggles down the ladder but, as soon as she tries to stand up, she is overcome with nausea and has to rush to the toilet, where she vomits up what seems like every little thing she has eaten or drunk over the last two days.
When she at last risks exiting, feeling hollowed out like a gourd, the young bathroom attendant tries to give her a sympathetic smile but she is too wretched to meet his gaze.
Back in her bunk, the world seems to be all off-kilter. When her eyes are open, the ceiling moves in and out of focus alarmingly, but when she tries to close them everything spins.
Audrey, too, is feeling unwell. They have paper bags tucked under their pillows which the steward has given them, and Lily remembers how Peggy Mills scoffed when telling them about her sick mother.
‘I wish I’d never set foot on this boat,’ says Lily when she is feeling strong enough to speak.
‘And we have another five weeks or more of it!’ Audrey replies, turning her head to face the wall.
Throughout that day and the next, Lily drifts in and out of consciousness. Her head feels like it is burning up and she throws off her blankets, only to be shivering minutes later, exposed to the elements. Mrs Collins comes in to see them, reassuring them that they are not, after all, about to die, but will feel perfectly fine in a day or so, when they acquire their sea-legs. Once, Lily even imagines Ida is there, laying a cool, dry hand on her fevered forehead, though afterwards she cannot tell if this, too, was just a figment of her febrile wanderings.
Towards the end of the second day there’s a gentle knock on the door – well, more of a soft thud – and a young girl enters with the reddest hair Lily has ever seen and a face so crowded with freckles there hardly seems space for eyes and nose and mouth. She is wearing a yellow dress with tiny flowers on it that seems made for a much larger person and carries a small plate in one hand.
‘Annie,’ comes Audrey’s voice, sounding much improved from the last time Lily heard it.
‘I heard you’ve been poorly so I’ve brought you some dry biscuits to see if they might help. And for your friend, too, of course.’
She glances over at Lily’s bunk. Lily hasn’t the heart to tell her that the thought of putting anything in her mouth is enough to have her reaching for the paper bag.
Audrey, however, manages to eat a biscuit and subsequently declares herself to be feeling cautiously optimistic about the possibility of getting up.
‘Are you sure you won’t come with us, Lily? We can sit up on the deck under a blanket like a couple of grandmas. The fresh air might help.’
But Lily can no more imagine getting down from her bunk and making the journey upstairs than she can picture herself flying up to the moon. All through that evening and the long night that follows she lies in her bed while the air around her grows stale and her breath comes out hot and yeasty. People appear and she can no longer tell if they are real. Her parents are there, her father crying a torrent of silent tears. And now Edward is here also, his green eyes filled with so much kindness it makes her want to cry herself. She is visited by Robert and Mags, and by Eliza, who looks at her with amused pity and says, ‘We must pay for you to get better. I insist.’
At one point Mrs Collins comes in to see her – although in Lily’s fevered mind she might well be as much of a figment as the others. She brings with her the ship’s doctor, who feels Lily’s head, asks her some questions that she will later have no memory of, and gives her two tablets, which she washes down with water.
Finally, she sleeps. And when she next opens her eyes the world feels righted again, like a picture that has been hanging crooked but is now set straight.
5
2 August 1939
WEAK AFTER HER illness, she makes her way slowly up to the deck. Stepping outside, she is struck immediately by how much warmer the air is, as if someone is holding a hairdryer trained on the ship. The sun reflects off the white walls of the ship, dazzling after so long in the semi-darkness down below. She remembers the sunglasses Eliza was wearing the day they set sail and for the first time she understands what they might be for.
Canvas deckchairs have been set up the length of the deck, many of them occupied by people looking to be in much the same state as her. Some are wrapped in blankets, despite the heat, their greenish complexions and readily accessible stash of paper bags further giving their condition away.
Lily sinks gratefully into a chair, full of relief for the way the floor has stayed firm under her feet and her blood is no longer sloshing around inside her body like an overfilled bucket. She closes her eyes, enjoying the sun on her eyelids and the clean, sharp smell of the sea.
‘Here you are at last!’
When Lily opens her eyes to find Edward sitting on the floor next to her chair, gazing at her with a mixture of happiness and concern, she wonders at first if this might be yet another hallucination. However, the touch of his fingertips on her forehead, checking for remnants of a fever, convinces her that he is real.
Though only two days have passed since she last saw him, he is looking noticeably healthier. His skin has lost its translucent appearance and no longer looks like it would tear if you touched it, and his cheekbones are less pronounced. Even his hair seems to have grown, though she quickly realizes that’s because he has given up on trying to tame it so it falls naturally around his ears. He holds a cigarette in his hand, smoked almost to the end, and she thinks about his tuberculosis and wonders with a prick of anxiety if it’s right for him to be smoking.
‘I’m glad to see you. Mealtimes have been so dull without you.’
There’s something new in his voice, something jarring, but she can’t put her finger on it.
‘Have I missed anything?’
Edward pretends to consider her question.
‘Well, Mrs Mills reappeared for lunch yesterday, but she’d obviously been a little ambitious, and halfway through the salmon she had to bolt from the room with her napkin over her mouth. So then we had to babysit Peggy, and old George got into a dreadful sulk because she kept going on about how she should be sorry to miss a war if there was going to be one because she should like to see Hitler get what’s coming to him. I don’t know who she’d been listening to, but she had very certain opinions on it all, and because she’s a child George had no option but to sit and listen. I must say, it was very satisfying.’
A shadow falls across Lily’s face and she looks up, shielding her eyes with her hand.
‘Well! Nice to see you up and about. I was starting to think you might be there for the duration!’
Today Ida has on a black hat with a large brim so her face remains shaded from the sun. Despite her thick black dress and stockings, she has the look of someone not quite warm enough. Cold-blooded, Lily thinks.
Lily has no option but to introduce Ida to Edward, and Ida takes this as an invitation to join them, pulling up an adjacent deckchair so close their knees are almost touching. She thinks we are friends now, Lily supposes, and the thought makes her
feel cold.
‘You were tossing and turning all night long,’ Ida tells Lily, as though she might have done it on purpose. ‘And the talking! Every time I went off to sleep you’d start shouting about something or other and wake me right back up again.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Lily, helpless to know how else to respond.
‘What was she saying?’ Edward wants to know. ‘Anything Mr Freud might be interested in?’
Again, she has the fleeting impression there is something different in his speech, but it’s gone before Lily has a chance to analyse it. Besides, she has other things to think about because Ida is fixing her with her crafty smile and, before she even opens her mouth to speak, Lily knows what she’s going to say.
‘Who’s Robert?’
‘Pardon?’
Lily knows she should just make up a story, but she’s so shocked to hear that name on someone else’s lips that all thoughts go from her head, her mind washed as clean and smooth as a bar of soap.
‘Robert. You talked about him a lot. And someone called Mags.’
It is insupportable. To hear Ida, of all people, tossing those names out as if they were apple pips. Lily puts a hand to her head.
‘I’m not feeling so well.’