by Rachel Rhys
‘You’ve overdone it. You must take it easy,’ says Edward, concerned.
He glances over at Ida.
‘We must leave her to rest,’ he tells her, and gets to his feet, giving Ida no alternative but to follow suit.
After they’ve gone, heading in separate directions, Lily drops her head into her hands. The conversation has churned things up inside her so she fears, briefly, that the sickness has returned. She cannot help it. She has tried to brick up her heart, but one mention has the wall crumbling to the ground.
‘Has she gone?’
Edward has reappeared at her side, approaching from the opposite direction to the one in which he went.
Lily nods, not trusting herself to speak, hoping he cannot tell from her face the surge of happiness that came over her at the sight of him.
‘Ida is not exactly the tonic you need when you’re recovering from a bout of illness,’ she says.
He lowers himself into the chair Ida has just vacated. ‘Think of me as your guard,’ he says. ‘While I’m here, no one else can bother you.’
For a moment or two Lily allows herself to indulge in this fantasy, closing her eyes and imagining him on permanent sentry duty, watching over her. But then she remembers Ida’s voice saying ‘Robert and Mags’ and her eyes snap open again.
‘Is there something troubling you, Lily?’ says Edward, leaning forward in his chair so she can smell the cigarette on his breath. ‘You look so worried.’
A flash of memory: Robert’s arms around her, the surprising solidity of him, blood on a carpet. Screams.
‘No, really, there’s nothing. I’m still feeling a little weak.’
Edward nods, and leans back again. They sit in silence, gazing out through the rails of the ship to where the sea stretches out towards the horizon, glossy and smooth.
‘Just think, this time tomorrow we will be arriving in Gibraltar,’ says Edward, rolling the name around on his tongue like a lozenge. ‘Do you know, I think this journey is going to be the most tremendous fun.’
And now Lily recognizes what is changed about him. For a moment there when he spoke he sounded just like Eliza Campbell.
6
3 August 1939
LILY HAS SEEN photographs, but nothing has prepared her for the first sight of that great slab of rock looming up like a grey iceberg from the blue glass of the Mediterranean Sea.
‘That’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw. But then I guess I haven’t seen much.’ Audrey, as ever, says whatever is foremost in her mind. The more Lily gets to know her, the fonder of her she becomes, although sometimes she longs to coat her in varnish, as someone might French-polish a wardrobe to protect it from dents and scratches. She has discovered she is only two years older than Audrey, but she sometimes feels as if she is from a different generation altogether.
As they draw closer to the harbour Lily can see what looks like a flotilla of small boats and wonders if they are fishermen. But when the ship drops anchor and the boats surround it she notices they are full of local people selling everything from fruit to lace – items which they send up to the passengers in brightly coloured baskets. They smile and gesticulate and call to the passengers and to each other in a language that is as foreign to her as the shrieks of the birds circling above.
A woman sitting with her back against the wooden prow of her boat and a baby on her lap wrapped in an embroidered shawl catches her eye. ‘Preeteemees!’ she shouts, waving a silk scarf around in the air. ‘Meespreetee!’
‘That must be the Spanish word for scarf,’ Lily says.
Helena Fletcher, who has just joined them, laughs; a low, musical sound that makes Lily realize how little she has heard it up till now.
‘She’s saying, “Pretty, miss.”’ Though whether she’s talking about the scarf or you, I have no idea.’
Despite the air of sorrow that wraps itself around her, there is something deeply calming about Helena. Her wide-set grey eyes, so different to her brother’s green ones, move slowly and deliberately from person to person and object to object, seemingly weighing each one up carefully and thoughtfully before going on to the next, giving each the full complement of her time, as if she is picking things up from a shelf and giving them equal appraisal. And she has a way of appearing to be both present and one step removed at the same time, both participant and witness. I should try to be more like that, Lily thinks. I should hold myself back. Yet she knows she does not possess that gift. Lily is one of life’s plungers-in.
While glad of Helena’s presence for her own sake, Lily cannot help looking around, alert for a sight of Edward. Though they have not made any concrete plans to go ashore together, she has been hoping for just this kind of opportunity. She did not admit it, even to herself, but she dressed with particular care this morning. Her white linen dress is lined and has long sleeves, so is really too warm for the day, but she likes the way it fits her body. And she has her favourite tortoiseshell combs in her hair. Just as she is trying to think of a way of introducing Edward into the conversation, he appears at Helena’s shoulder.
‘Isn’t it splendid?’ he asks, gesturing to the Rock and the boats and the deep navy blue of the sea.
Her eyes follow the graceful movement of his hand. It is. Splendid.
The launches go from the ship to the shore every half an hour and on board the air of anticipation is thick enough to be sliced through with a knife. Lily has an image of herself as she might appear from the outside, laughing with her friends, the light breeze coming off the azure sea blowing back her hair. Young. Carefree. Someone at the start of something. Someone for whom anything might be possible.
Stepping on to the dock, Lily has the queerest sense that her feet are still seeking out the motion of the boat, and she stumbles, only to find Edward’s hand cupping her elbow, steadying her.
‘It’s always like that at the start,’ he says. ‘You’ll soon get used to it.’
The harbour itself is frantic with life. Theirs isn’t the only ship in the port, the launches come and go, plus the smaller boats of the hawkers, some of them looking scarcely more seaworthy than the old wooden crates that used to arrive at the Lyons Corner House packed with provisions. The ships are stocking up on fresh food and containers are being stacked up on the quayside ready to go onboard.
Lily already knew that, Gibraltar being a British colony, she wouldn’t need to have her passport stamped. But still it feels strange to be somewhere so foreign, where even the air around her has a different, citrusy smell, yet still be in what is considered an offshoot of home.
Audrey and Annie want to look around the market stalls, so Lily, Edward and Helena form a trio to explore. First they head to Government House. Lily has already read about it in the literature she was sent before embarking on the voyage and is keen to see it for herself. ‘It used to be a friary,’ she tells the others when they arrive at the rather forbidding red-brick building. It makes a change for her to feel that she is telling them something new, rather than the other way around. She starts to show off.
‘Apparently, it’s haunted by a ghost the locals call the Lady in Grey. The story is she fell in love with someone against her family’s wishes and when she tried to elope with him she was found and, as a punishment, was walled up alive in one of the rooms.’
Lily is so caught up in her own story she doesn’t notice Helena’s pained expression until it is too late.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, angry with herself for bringing up a story of lost love after what Helena has told her.
‘It’s fine,’ says Helena, recovering. ‘But can we please move on from here. There is something horribly sad about the place.’
They follow the road climbing upwards out of the town, winding around the Rock, in search of the famous monkeys. Lily tries to recapture that earlier exuberance, but something has been left behind at the stone portico of Government House. As the heat builds, reflecting white off the pale rock, so their steps become heavy and their conversat
ion more laboured. Lily has dreamed of ascending to the very top of the Rock and seeing Africa spread out across the horizon, the Dark Continent exerting its own magnetic pull, but soon she can think only of returning to the town and the bustle and the life, and the cooling sea breeze. An irritable silence falls over the little group. Lily can feel blisters forming on her feet from her leather shoes.
As Edward and Helena stride ahead, each lost in their own world, Lily sits down on one of the benches that line the route and slides off her left shoe, rubbing her sore foot. From the corner of her eye she sees a movement. Then another. Now something is touching her shoulder. She twists around to find herself staring into the clear green eyes of a tiny macaque. ‘Oh!’ she exclaims. She is about to call out to the Fletchers when another larger monkey appears, clambering on to the arm of the bench, and, without further ado, starts pawing at her hair. A third joins them and, before she knows it, the three monkeys are gathered behind her, pulling at her hair with their sharp little hands. She tries to stand up but, with one shoe off, she can’t balance. Panic overwhelms her.
‘Ow! Stop!’
She finds her footing and stumbles away from the bench, turning around just in time to see the monkeys disappearing back into the undergrowth, two of them clutching her precious tortoiseshell combs like trophies.
Helena and Edward arrive at her side, alerted by her shouts and furious with themselves for going on ahead and not seeing the monkeys. Lily tries to explain how it felt, the monkeys’ rough hands scrabbling at her skull, but it sounds comical rather than sinister and they declare themselves even more annoyed to have missed it.
To her relief, they agree to head back. As they descend Lily attempts to dispel the agitation the monkeys have stirred up in her by finding out more about her new friends. She longs to be able to place Edward in a context, to learn a little about his childhood, his home, his parents; to weave together the threads of him. But though the Fletchers answer her questions politely, their answers are unsatisfying, never quite giving her the full picture she craves. They seem fond of their mother, and afraid of their father. That is normal. Lily knows she has been lucky like that.
She gathers, after some persistent questioning, that they have money enough from their parents to spend some time looking around when they get to Australia before deciding where to settle. There is an aunt in Melbourne, they tell her, and a couple of younger cousins. But when she asks if they will be stopping in to see them when the ship docks there they are vague. The family live a distance from the town, they tell her. There is unlikely to be enough time.
Helena talks of her plans to go back, eventually, to teaching. ‘The educational system might be different in Australia,’ she says, ‘but children are children in the end, don’t you think?’
Lily is glad when they get back to the base of the Rock, where the market-sellers are lined up at the side of the road under the welcoming shade of the trees. Still shaken by her encounter with the monkeys, and conscious of her wild, combless hair, she wanders into a shop to buy some colourful postcards and afterwards stops at a stall where a dapper little man in a faded blue shirt and a wide-brimmed straw hat is selling silk scarves in every conceivable shade from vibrant red to the palest grey.
‘This one very good for you,’ he says, holding up a beautiful gold scarf embroidered with tiny birds in shades of orange and rust.
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so.’
Lily has brought money but is well aware of how long her savings will need to last her and how much of the voyage still remains.
‘Yes. Good for eyes. Look!’ The man holds the scarf up to Lily’s face, as if even without a mirror she will be able to see how the gold picks out the amber in her eyes.
‘No, really, I don’t –’
‘She’ll take it,’ says a man’s voice over her shoulder.
Lily whirls around and is shocked to find herself looking into the very amused face of Max Campbell.
‘You can’t –’ Lily begins, but he cuts across her.
‘Oh, but I can, and after spoiling your lovely dress the other night it’s the least I can do. Anyway, he’s right. It is very good for eyes.’
He is looking so intently at her, as if he could stare right through her pupils and into her very mind, that Lily feels for a moment as if she cannot breathe. Certainly, she cannot swallow, for there is a lump in the back of her throat as large as the Rock in whose shadow they are standing.
The man in the straw hat is delighted.
‘Is good you buy for your beautiful wife.’
‘Oh, but I’m not –’
‘You’re quite right,’ says Max, turning the full heat of his smile on the market-seller. ‘My beautiful wife deserves beautiful things.’
He asks the price, and makes no attempt to bargain the man down, reaching into his pocket and handing coins over without seeming even to glance at them.
Lily feels her cheeks erupting with tiny jets of heat, like liquid wax from a sputtering candle. She keeps hearing Max say that phrase ‘my beautiful wife’, the laughter threatening to bubble right out of his voice.
‘You don’t mind, do you? Please tell me you don’t. You’re doing me the most awfully big favour if you take this because, otherwise, I shall just have to keep on thinking of other ways to repay my debt and it will keep weighing on me until the entire voyage is ruined.’
He is holding the scarf, which is now wrapped up in paper, out towards her and she has no choice now but to look into his broad, handsome face, which houses the most extravagant smile as if he knows there will always be more smiles where that came from – so much to smile about – and he can afford to be generous.
‘Thank you,’ she says at last, reaching out for the package. But when her fingers close around it he doesn’t let go, at least not immediately, so their hands touch, skin upon skin.
‘You’ve found Lily! How clever of you, darling!’
At the sound of Eliza’s voice Lily snatches her hand back as if burned. Eliza is wearing a pair of cream linen wide-legged trousers and a loose white peasant-style blouse that comes very low on her shoulders. Her black hair is tied back from her face and she has her sunglasses on again, so Lily can’t see the expression in her eyes.
‘We’ve been hoping to come across you, haven’t we, darling? Everyone else in First is so horribly stuffy it’s like being cooped up with a whole load of dusty old library books.’
‘Surely there must be some young people? How about the group you were with in the bar the other night?’
Eliza makes a dismissive pah sound.
‘Debutantes and dolts. Library-books-in-waiting.’
Edward arrives, breathing heavily, as if he has rushed over.
‘Been shopping?’ he says, eyeing Lily’s package.
‘Just a scarf,’ she replies, looking at the ground.
‘Now we must all have that drink,’ says Eliza, hooking her arm through Edward’s as if they are the best of friends.
Lily is confused. It’s as if the wind has blown the pages of a book and she has jumped ahead of where she thought she was.
‘We played a game of cards with Eliza and Max when you were ill in bed,’ explains Helena, who has come to find them.
‘Which I won, and, as the winner, I demanded that we all go for a drink in Gibraltar,’ says Eliza. ‘Victor’s spoils.’
‘I warn you, Eliza is an awful card shark,’ says Max. ‘And she absolutely hates to lose.’
A look passes between them, which Eliza’s sunglasses render impossible to judge.
The five of them head towards a hotel which Lily had noticed earlier but dismissed as too grand. Eliza and Max and Edward are in high spirits, talking nineteen to the dozen. Walking behind with Helena, Lily sees how Edward has come alive suddenly, like a clockwork toy wound suddenly into action. He was so silent, up there on the Rock, she thinks. And now just look at him.
‘Poor Lily had an alarming encounter earlier on,’ says Edward, turning to her wi
th a smile, ‘with some monkeys.’
He is making a joke of it, to amuse his companions, yet to Lily it still does not feel like a joke. Tiny hands clawing at her head, yanking her hair.
‘Scotch is very good for shock,’ Max tells her. ‘We shall get you a double.’
He winks and smiles his overflowing smile.
‘Actually, I think I’ll head back to the ship,’ says Lily, stopping still. ‘I have postcards to write. If I’m quick, perhaps I can even get them posted while we’re here.’
There is a chorus of groans and ‘no’s.
‘Please come, we won’t stay long,’ says Helena. Lily wavers, and looks at Edward. If he asks her to stay, she will change her mind.
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ he says.
Lily makes her way back in the launch through the flotilla of little boats, and the shouts of the vendors: ‘Miss! Miss!’ Mees, Mees. She is glad of the breeze. And the solitude. She has been silly, she thinks, to become so attached so quickly.
Back on board, she goes straight to the lounge and sits herself at one of the little desks and writes to her parents and to Frank, before taking out her diary and filling the pages with everything that has happened. When Helena and Edward finally appear she bends her head over her desk and pretends she hasn’t seen them.
7
4 August 1939
THE FOLLOWING DAY dawns clear and bright and still, as if it is the first day in a world wiped clean. Lily is embarrassed by her sulk of the previous afternoon. After all, Edward and Helena are nothing to her really, just pleasant people she has only recently met. Strangers, almost. She resolves to expand her social horizons and be open to new people. She has been too much in the Fletchers’ pockets.
With her new silk scarf wound loosely around her throat and Eliza Campbell’s remark about the first-class passengers being like dusty old books ringing in her ears, she resolves to visit the ship’s small library. She might have left school at fourteen but she has never lost her appreciation for reading, has even nurtured a secret dream of writing something herself one day. When she was in domestic service she usually had a book by her bedside. Mrs Spencer had thought it an odd request when she asked if she could borrow something from the house’s well-stocked library but she had been happy to grant it, even turning it into a running joke with her friends: ‘I’m sure Lily will bake us one of her legendary apple cakes – if we can tear her away from her reading!’