by Rachel Rhys
Mags used to shake her head when she woke up in the night and saw Lily’s lamp still on and her nose bent over the pages, eyes straining to read the print. ‘What do you see in it?’ she’d ask. ‘Just a load of old words, one after the other.’ Her heart-shaped face peeping up from under her blankets, fair hair all tangled from sleep.
Enough.
She settles herself into a deckchair outside the library with her chosen book, a recent Agatha Christie called Appointment with Death. She is not a big fan of mysteries, but she is intrigued enough by the fact the book is set in the Middle East and thinks it might be suitable to read in the heat of the Mediterranean sun. She uses as a bookmark the letter from her mother she found lying on her pillow after the ship had pulled away from Gibraltar. The letter does not say much, a few lines about their journey back home from Tilbury Docks, a bit about Frank getting a promotion at Huntley & Palmers, the huge biscuit factory by the river in Reading where he’s been grudgingly working for eighteen months. The real meaning of the letter is in the writing itself, the uneven, blue, slanting words that climb unsteadily up to the right of the page, the effort Lily knows it costs her barely educated mother to form them.
The sea is perfectly still. Above it, sounds are suspended in the unmoving air: the squeals of childish excitement from the swimming pool on the upper deck, the tick-ticking of a tea trolley as a steward does his rounds. Time washes pleasantly over her like a warm bath until, looking up from her book, she sees Ida further up the deck, heading for the lounge. Before she can duck her head Ida spots her and changes direction, failing to notice the wooden leg of a low-slung canvas chair protruding where it has been moved forward, out of line with the others. Oh. Lily makes a noise that is louder than an exclamation but falls just short of a warning as Ida launches full length through the air, landing with a sickening crash as her head hits one of the pillars that hold up the ship’s awning, her skirts and petticoat lifted, pipe-cleaner legs in yellowing wrinkled stockings shamefully on display.
Lily’s mind urges her forward to help pick Ida up, even while her feet remain fixed to the ground as if stuck there by glue. She knows how much Ida, with all her straight-backed pride, will hate being brought down like this in public. Eventually she forces herself to move but finds someone else has got there before her. A woman has jumped up from one of the chairs close by and is kneeling on the grubby deck next to Ida’s prone body.
‘Please allow me to help you,’ she is saying, in a strange, thick accent. ‘You know, I did just the same thing myself only yesterday, and I didn’t fall nearly as gracefully as you.’
Lily can tell she is trying to lessen Ida’s embarrassment, but Ida is having none of it.
‘I shall be quite all right, thank you very much.’
Ida deliberately ignores the woman’s outstretched hand as she pulls herself to her feet, using the pillar as support. Lily sees how humiliation has set her narrow face hard and wishes she could warn the woman to step back. Yet she persists.
‘Are you sure you’re not hurt? You took quite a fall.’
‘I am completely fine, I assure you.’ Ida’s mouth snaps shut like a trap.
‘Shall we sit down here while you recover?’ Lily finds her tongue at last. But if anything, Ida looks only more affronted at Lily’s interjection.
‘What would I need to sit down for? I was on my way to my cabin. I have several chores to complete.’
It is a lie. But, still, as Ida rushes off, Lily feels light-headed with relief.
She sinks down heavily into the nearest chair and the woman who’d tried to help Ida reclaims her own seat next to it. They exchange a glance which seems to encompass all the complexities of the scene that has just passed. Now Lily has a chance to look at her companion properly she sees that she has a long face, with long, thin features to match. Her close-set eyes look out through a pair of round tortoiseshell spectacles and her thick black hair is piled on top of her head like a cloud of cushion stuffing. Yet somehow the overall effect is pleasing rather than off-putting, the various odd-shaped components slotting perfectly together like a particularly satisfying jigsaw.
The woman introduces herself as Maria Katz. ‘I hope I didn’t offend your friend,’ she says. ‘Not friend,’ says Lily, and is embarrassed by her own sharpness. Maria has a novel open on the table next to her, the new Daphne du Maurier, which Lily has already read, and soon they are deep in discussion. Lily is astonished at the number of books Maria has read and how engagingly she talks about them, as if they are old friends rather than inanimate objects, until Maria reveals that she grew up in Vienna in an apartment with ‘a library as big as a ballroom’.
After this revelation she grows quieter, her thin lips pressing together as if to stop words from coming out.
‘My father does not want to leave his books behind,’ she says softly. ‘That’s why they are still there.’
Now she explains to Lily that her family is Jewish. Lily has heard whispers of worrying things happening to the Jews in Germany and Austria and now Czechoslovakia, but it has never seemed real to her; it’s been something quite removed. Listening to Maria describe how she and her sister and her sister’s family fled first to Prague and then, when that too fell under Nazi control, to London, leaving behind their beloved parents and their home, Lily is ashamed of her ignorance. No, not ignorance, because that would imply she had never been presented with the truth rather than her choosing not to see it. She is ashamed of her own lack of curiosity.
‘I have not heard from my parents for more than two months now,’ says Maria. ‘The not knowing is very hard. I have nightmares sometimes, where I hear footsteps behind me. Chasing. Always chasing.’
Maria’s sister is staying behind in East London. Her little nephews have started school. They are becoming settled there. They have a small apartment. Even a piano. But Maria, like Lily, has a thirst for adventure.
‘When you have to give up everything that is important to you, it is awful, obviously. But in a way it is also liberating. In Austria we had a great many things. Beautiful things. Paintings, books, furniture, clothes. I had a dog, too, an ugly little creature with a face like this.’
She uses a finger to push the tip of her nose up like a snout and goggles her eyes comically, making Lily burst out giggling despite herself. Then she resumes:
‘Those things – the books, the ugly dog – kept us rooted in our home, so much so that my parents could not leave. Even though …’
Maria stops. Inhales deeply. Releases.
‘Now I have nothing. But I am free.’
A cousin of Maria’s has started up a small publishing company in Melbourne and sent her money to join him there as his assistant. Maria flushes when she tells Lily of her hopes that one day she might write a book. ‘How else to make sense of this strange, changing world, if not to write about it?’ she says. For a moment Lily thinks of confiding her own writing ambitions but at the last minute she stops, afraid of putting into words something she has never told anybody. Instead Lily tells her about the assisted-passage scheme and the domestic work that awaits her in Sydney. ‘I hope not to do it for long,’ she can’t help adding. ‘Just while I’m settling.’
Maria smiles.
‘New starts for us both,’ she says. ‘And in the meantime we sit in the sunshine and eat lovely food and listen to music and read books. It’s not such a bad life.’
‘I feel very frivolous,’ Lily tells her, honesty compelling her to speak, although she regrets her choice of word. ‘My reasons for leaving home are so selfish compared to yours.’
Maria fixes Lily with her eyes from behind her spectacles and Lily can see they are rich brown like treacle.
‘On a boat like this,’ she says, ‘everyone is running away from something.’
At lunch Lily tells Helena and Edward about her encounter. George Price listens with an expression of growing disgust.
‘The Jews have brought it on themselves,’ he says. ‘Growing richer while eve
ryone else starved. Hoarding their money and their art without loyalty to the countries they live in. This ship is crawling with Jews. I never expected they would be here, in the same class as all of us.’
Lily wants desperately to respond but does not know how. She wishes now that she was better informed so she could knock George’s remarks straight back at him. Her ‘Well, she seemed very nice to me’ sounds shallow and weak.
George follows her out on to the deck after lunch. She had been hoping for a chat with Edward and Helena but instead she finds herself stranded by the railings with George blocking her route back.
‘I can see you’re a well-meaning sort of girl,’ George tells her, ‘but you haven’t seen much of the world. You don’t know the history of these things. I would hate to see you being taken advantage of. So I’m advising you to stick with your own kind. I’m happy to show you the ropes, if you like.’
Lily thinks of the way Maria’s face looked when she talked about her parents still in Vienna, and her dog and her books.
‘Thank you, George,’ she says, ‘but I’m quite capable of choosing my own friends.’
And now George’s face is passing from red to purple, the blood flowing thick from his wounded pride. Robert was like this, she remembers suddenly. Not in the things he said, obviously. Or the person he was. But in the certainty of being right. And the dislike of being challenged.
‘Can I borrow Lily for a while? We need her to make up a four for cards.’
Edward has appeared at George’s shoulder. For a second George glares at him, as if minded to say no, but there is nothing about Edward’s mild demeanour or slight stature to allow purchase for his anger and he reluctantly steps away.
They have gone several yards before Lily allows herself to relax.
‘Thank you,’ she whispers. ‘I thought I should be stuck there for the rest of my life. It was a good ruse. The cards, I mean.’
‘Oh, no, that’s not an excuse. Well, what I mean is, it’s a very fortuitous excuse as I could tell you needed rescuing. Eliza and Max have asked us to join them upstairs for a game of cards. Helena is resting. She’s not feeling well, so we are missing a fourth player. You will come, won’t you?’
Lily hesitates, remembering Max’s wink from the day before, her own unease. Then she checks herself. Isn’t she here on this ship seeking adventure? The Campbells are so different from the kind of people she would normally mix with. This is an opportunity to open her mind.
Edward is still gazing at her uncertainly, and she sees suddenly how he might have looked as a child, wanting to be sure that everything is all right, that all is well.
‘Of course I’ll come.’
On the way up to the first-class deck she wishes she’d changed first, or at least brushed her hair, windswept from standing so long next to the railings. She regrets wearing the new gold silk scarf. What if Max Campbell reads some kind of message into it? She has on her midnight-blue dress with the white trim and worries it is too dowdy. As if he can sense her thoughts, Edward turns to her. ‘How well you look now your skin has caught the sun a little. Everything about you is the colour of honey.’
Lily knows that it is not uncommon for tourist-class passengers to be invited to the upper deck. Some people she has met have friends travelling in First and regularly join them for after-dinner coffee. Yet still, when they join Max and Eliza in the sumptuously appointed lounge, she cannot shake off the notion that everyone is watching them. It takes her back to being at school again, the looks that mean her clothes are wrong, the way her parents speak is wrong.
Eliza is in yellow today. A summer dress with a tight-fitting bodice and a skirt that flares out from the narrow waist. The dress has a square neckline under which the ridges of her collarbones protrude, smooth like ivory.
‘I’m so glad you came, Lily,’ she says, leaning forward to wrap one of her cool hands over Lily’s. ‘I was so worried we’d driven you away yesterday. My husband can be very overbearing sometimes. I hope you didn’t think he was going to hold you down and pour Scotch down your throat against your will!’
‘No, of course not.’
Eliza’s eyes are the most curious colour, by turns navy and then appearing almost violet, like a taffeta gown that changes shade according to the light.
Lily has been nervous about seeing Max again, but he is in a subdued humour and barely seems aware that she’s there. Ever observant, Edward notices the difference in him. ‘Are you well, Max?’ he asks.
‘Yes, fine.’ Max practically snaps the words out and Lily senses Edward stiffen on the sofa next to her. He will not like being rebuffed in front of Eliza, she thinks.
As they start playing cards the atmosphere lightens, although Lily is still painfully aware of the curious stares from the other passengers. Her hand goes to her hair, smoothing it down. She tightens the scarf around her throat.
‘It suits you,’ says Max. ‘I knew it would.’
He is sitting opposite her, smiling, and his eyes are like chips of blue glass from a broken vase. Lily can sense Eliza watching her and her mouth feels suddenly ash-dry.
Edward tells the Campbells about rescuing Lily from George Price, and then of course Lily has to explain about meeting Maria on the deck that morning.
‘A Jew?’ says Eliza. ‘Oh, we have those.’
Seeing Lily’s bafflement, she elaborates. ‘In the States, I mean. I befriended one once, mostly to scandalize my father. He was frightfully clever – the Jew, that is – but such a bore. Could never go out on a Friday night. I’d say, “Can’t you just take one Friday off and do your praying, or whatever it is you do, on a Monday or Tuesday to make up for it?”, but he never would.’
‘I don’t think it quite works like that,’ laughs Edward.
The afternoon passes, as such afternoons do. Groans when the cards are bad, exclamations of delight when a hand is won. When Eliza loses three hands in a row her interest ebbs.
‘Cards are so dull, aren’t they?’ she says, shaking out the skirt of her egg-yolk-yellow dress. ‘So many petty rules and regulations.’ And then, a few minutes later: ‘I’m so glad we’re stopping at Toulon tomorrow. These games are intolerable.’
Two hands later, when she loses again, she rounds on her husband.
‘Watch out for Max. He’s the most terrible cheat.’
The first-class lounge is much larger than the one on the lower deck. The sofas are soft and plump and thickly upholstered in velvet of a deep claret colour, and in addition there are chaises longues and armchairs. A string quartet plays in the far corner, the searing notes of the violin rising above the hum of chatter. Stewards walk around bearing silver trays on which balance drinks and teapots and cigarettes. Two small girls in identical dresses, their sunburnt faces betraying the reason they are in here and not splashing in the swimming pool with the rest of their peers, play pattercake on a sofa, their small hands slapping rhythmically together.
While they play cards, people come and go around them. First a young couple, she with a noticeably rounded belly, then three elderly women already hungry for their dinner, and still later a family who sit in silence, conversation either exhausted or unnecessary. Yet despite the montage of changing faces Lily cannot shake off the uncomfortable sense of being stared at. It is only after the game finishes and she and Edward take their leave that something makes her look back as they reach the exit to the deck – some need, perhaps, to commit the scene to memory so that she might describe it better in her letters home – and she makes a most perplexing discovery.
It isn’t, after all, she and Edward who are the objects of the other passengers’ relentless narrow-eyed scrutiny.
It is the Campbells themselves.
8
5 August 1939
LILY IS AWOKEN by the clinking sound of the cabin steward delivering tea. To her dismay, she realizes even before opening her eyes that the sickness is back, although this time it seems as if it is her head rather than her stomach that is at the c
entre of things.
She raises herself on to her elbows, hoping that the dizziness will right itself, but though she feels less queasy than before, her skin is clammy, her temperature lurching within the space of a minute from freezing to boiling and down again.
‘Just another hour or so and we’ll arrive at Toulon,’ says the steward, a perpetually cheerful man with a round face from which his two ears protrude on either side like the handles of a Toby jug. In addition to the tea cups that crowd his tray, there are also leaflets, which he distributes to Lily, Audrey and Ida, on which there is a map of the area and directions from the wharf to the town.
‘Will you be getting up, miss?’ he asks Lily, concerned. From her vantage point on the top bunk she can see he has a bald patch on the top of his head the size of one of the saucers he is handing out. ‘It might do you good to be on solid ground again. And we pull in right to the wharf so you only need to walk down the gangplank and you’re there.’
Audrey declares that she and Annie will look after Lily when they go ashore, which immediately prompts Ida to retort that Annie doesn’t look capable of looking after a goldfish and that Lily will be in much safer hands if Ida herself takes care of her. Ida has made no secret of her low opinion of Audrey’s new friend, who was late starting in paid work, having stayed at home to help take care of her younger siblings, and so has never progressed beyond kitchen maid.
Eventually, it is decided that the four of them will go ashore together. Lily is too weak to resist and only grateful that, by sticking with Audrey and the others, she won’t risk being swept up by the Campbells, but by the time she is dressed and making her way slowly down the steep gangplank, one hand clutching the rail and the other holding on to Audrey’s arm, Lily already knows it is a mistake. Though the sun is hidden by a bank of high grey cloud and there’s a persistent breeze that causes goosebumps to pop up like tiny bubbles on the skin of her arm, Lily’s forehead burns.