by Rachel Rhys
But as they set off through the near-deserted streets Maria’s driver falls further and further behind and though Lily tries to call to her own to slow down, he either doesn’t hear or doesn’t understand. Every now and then they pass food stalls and the smell of something not altogether pleasant wafts briefly into Lily’s nostrils. Apart from the odd oil light flickering, it is completely dark. Shadowy figures loom into view on street corners, groups of men sitting around tables engaged in what looks like some sort of gambling game who pause mid-play as they go past and stare darkly at Lily until she has to look away.
She cranes around, peering into the darkness behind her, but Maria is nowhere to be seen.
Crossing a junction, Lily notices, fifty yards or so off to the left, a tall, run-down building with a lit-up façade and, emerging from it, the familiar broad figure of Max Campbell. So Eliza is right. He has been drinking the afternoon away in a hotel bar. As she watches he is joined by another figure, a woman, in traditional Sinhalese dress, her body swathed in a sari, who stands very close to him, but Lily has only the briefest glimpse before the rickshaw driver moves on and the hotel is hidden from view.
Once again, Lily is plunged into confusion. The Campbells’ behaviour leaves her both perplexed and unnerved. This is not the kind of marriage she understands, nor wants to understand. Was it like this, she wonders, before the death of their daughter, or is it grief that has distorted it, stretching it so horribly out of shape?
When they arrive at the ship there is further wrangling between the guide and the rickshaw drivers, who, it seems, are disputing the terms agreed by the man in charge of the queue. As they continue to argue, Lily peers into the darkness, watching uneasily for Maria’s rickshaw. When it finally hoves into view her whole body slumps with relief.
‘Thank goodness you’re safe,’ she says, reaching up to hand Maria out of the cart and give her a hug.
But Maria is silent, her features blanched by the moonlight, and when she takes Lily’s hand her fingers are trembling.
‘What happened, Maria? Did your driver do something to you?’
Maria shakes her head, but the look she shoots the man pulling her rickshaw is one of pure terror. He, in return, grins, his toothless mouth a gaping cavern of betel-nut viscera.
After they pay their young guide a shilling each – ‘You take me with you? To America?’ – the launch takes them to the ship. The onboard orchestra is playing up on the first-class deck, and the melody of ‘Clair de Lune’ wafts down to them as they approach across the moonlit ocean. Unsettled by Maria’s odd behaviour and Edward’s seeming indifference, Lily’s thoughts turn to the possibility of war. Is this the last time the world will be this beautiful? she asks herself. Life, it seems to her now, teeters always on the edge of an abyss, and happiness is so fragile it can break apart in the air for the wind to disperse.
21
21 August 1939
FOR DAYS NOW, the passengers have been converging by the railings at dusk each evening to witness the changes in the twilight skies as they near the equator. Gone are the long, languid sunsets of earlier in the voyage, where the sun would sink lazily into the horizon in a blaze of colour. Now there is only day, and then, as suddenly as if a light has been switched off, it is night. And what a night it is, with the constellations of the Southern Cross sparkling like diamonds above the black line of the horizon.
Now all the talk is of the Crossing of the Line ceremony to be held as the ship sails over the equator, followed by a fancy-dress ball in the evening. It is a ritual observed by all the large boats that make this voyage and rumours have been flying around the ship about what the ceremony will entail. One particularly persistent suggestion is that all those passengers who have not crossed the equator before will be thrown into the swimming pool by Father Neptune. Lily does not like the sound of this but is determined to go through with it, if it is all part of the experience. Not so Ida.
‘If anyone lays a hand on me I shall be reporting the matter to the police as soon as we land in Australia.’
‘No one would dare,’ whispers Audrey, who is now quite recovered from her terrifying bout of illness, and goes about the place with a fresh confidence born perhaps of having survived something she didn’t expect to.
Between Audrey and Ida there is a new closeness. No, not closeness, for prickly Ida will not welcome or allow that, but certainly a softening. When someone has seen you at your lowest you share something with them that is almost impossible to define and harder still to undo.
With Lily, however, Ida is markedly cool. When Lily asked her, guiltily, how she had spent the day in Colombo, Ida had merely remarked that she’d gone into the town but hadn’t much liked the look of it, or more particularly the smell of it, so had come straight back.
‘All that red stuff spat in the street, and the stink of fish. Don’t know how you had the stomach for it. I certainly didn’t.’
Ida makes it sound as if Lily is lacking in discernment. Lily tries not to think of how quiet the ship would have been with everybody gone, how much time Ida would have had to hone her resentment.
The ship is due to cross the line in the early afternoon, and the entire ship, passengers and staff alike, are invited up to the first-class swimming pool to observe the moment. The impressive pool is festooned with flags and bunting. To Lily’s relief, it turns out that the only people being thrown into the pool are those who volunteer for the task. The captain is dressed up as Father Neptune, complete with trident, and arrives at the pool clambering over the rails, as if he is freshly risen from the sea.
Two of the stewards have dressed as mermaids and lie on pillows arranged on the deck, flapping their green tails in a desultory manner while various members of staff play-act being pushed or thrown into the pool on a variety of comical pretexts.
As the laughter rings out around the deck Lily scans the crowd, looking for that shock of dark curls that has now become so dear to her. Instead she finds her gaze snagged by a familiar pair of ice-blue eyes.
Max Campbell, a head taller than the woman in front of him, raises one hand in salute. The thumb and forefinger of the other hand comb his moustache top to bottom in an inverted ‘V’ shape. Next to him, Eliza, wearing her sunglasses so her eyes are completely hidden, turns her head to see who he is waving to. Seeing Lily, she makes a face as if to say, What is this nonsense we’re watching? Lily scours the faces around her, but Anthony Hewitt is nowhere in sight.
She has been trying not to think about Hewitt’s hand slipping down to Eliza’s buttocks, or the glimpse of Max coming out of a hotel with a woman not his wife. She can imagine what her mother would say, something about it not mattering how much money you have, if you haven’t got morals, you haven’t got anything. There was a letter from home waiting for her after they docked in Colombo, and now she has Mam’s voice stuck in her head, giving a running commentary on the ship and the people in it.
Mam is still insisting there will not be a war, yet she says she can’t help wishing Frank was on the ship with Lily, safely away, just in case.
At the poolside a wooden plank has been balanced over the water on a fulcrum like a seesaw, with a seat at one end where the volunteers take turns to sit and get slathered in foam and then mock-shaved with a huge wooden razor, before being flung into the water. They are then presented with a souvenir scroll to mark their first crossing of the line, while Lily and the other non-participating passengers receive a certificate.
Afterwards they all head back towards the staircase that leads down to the lower deck. Lily can see Eliza coming in her direction and quickly dives to hide herself in the crush of people. She is not in the mood for the Campbells and all their complications. However, Eliza is not to be put off.
‘Lily Shepherd!’ she calls in a piercing voice, either not noticing or not caring that half the ship’s passengers turn to stare.
‘Lily Shepherd, stop this minute. I need to talk to you about a matter of the utmost importance.’
Lily thinks about ignoring her and pushing on through, but she is conditioned to obey a summons and, besides, Mam is still occupying her thoughts and Lily’s mother would never duck an obligation or an encounter.
‘What are you planning on wearing to the fancy-dress ball? You must tell me. My imagination has totally deserted me. I’m thinking of going all in black with a sign hanging round my neck saying, “The death of Eliza Campbell’s imagination”. Would that work?’
She has the same hard brightness of three days ago in the bazaar in Colombo. Lily doesn’t like the way she is reflected back to herself in the black lenses of Eliza’s glasses, as if she is floating there in space.
‘I haven’t really thought about it. I haven’t got anything suitable, I don’t think.’
‘Well, you shall come with me and we shall find something. It’s a competition, don’t forget. Don’t you want to win? Besides, what else are we going to do to amuse ourselves all afternoon? This voyage seems to be going on and on and I am fast losing the will to live. I feel like we’ve already been at sea for decades. By the time we reach Sydney I shall be a hundred and ten.’
Before Lily has a chance to object they are back in Eliza’s cabin, where Max is sprawled on the bed, reading, wearing a pair of black spectacles that Lily has never seen him in before. When he looks up those blue eyes are alarmingly magnified and Lily instinctively looks away.
‘I’ve brought company, darling,’ says Eliza unnecessarily. ‘Isn’t that fun?’
She turns to Lily. ‘We always get on so much better when there’s someone else around.’
‘I’m glad to see you, Lily. We looked for you in Colombo. My poor wife even had to find a new friend to go around with, didn’t you, Eliza? And I was forced to spend the afternoon drinking all alone in a hotel bar. There, don’t you feel guilty now?’
Lily doesn’t feel guilty so much as deeply uncomfortable. The image of Max emerging from the hotel with a woman is all too fresh in her mind.
‘Any ideas on costumes?’
Her clumsy attempt at changing the subject sounds false to her ears, as if she is imitating one of those women she used to serve in the house in London who’d come in groups of three or four and talk at each other back and forth in bright, breezy voices, as if they were batting around a tennis ball.
‘I think I shall wear the sari I bought in Colombo,’ says Eliza. ‘It’s a bit of a dull choice, but where else will I wear it? Now, let’s have a look in my dressing room and see what we can find for you.’
She flings open the wardrobe door and starts riffling through the dresses on the rail, frowning as she pauses at first one and then another. Getting to the end, she stands still, thinking. Then:
‘Got it!’
Eliza is grabbing something from one of the hangers. It is the fox-fur stole that Lily picked up off the floor the last time she was here.
‘Here.’ Eliza loops the stole around Lily’s neck. It is heavier than she imagined, lined on the underside with satin and weighted down at the nose.
‘Quite hideous in a way, isn’t it?’ Eliza whispers, pausing to consider the dead creature. ‘Max bought it for me so I have to pretend to like it.
‘And now this.’ Eliza has found a turban in a matching russet colour to the fox and places it carefully over Lily’s hair. ‘Finally, for the pièce de résistance …’
A long silver cigarette holder is placed in Lily’s hand, and she is propelled back into the cabin.
‘What do you think, Max? Guess who she is? Imagine dramatic make-up, eyebrows higher, lipstick, a plain black dress. Come on, it’s obvious.’
Max doesn’t appear to find it obvious, so Eliza elaborates.
‘Film star. You know. Swedish!’
‘Greta Garbo,’ say Lily and Max at the same time.
Lily looks in the mirror. It’s ridiculous, of course. And yet, there is something about her eyes, the way her hair curls out of the bottom of the turban.
‘It’s perfect,’ Eliza declares. ‘By the time I finish your make-up, even you won’t be able to tell yourself apart from the real thing.’
‘What about me?’ Max asks. ‘If you’re both getting dressed up, I don’t want to be left out.’
Now it is Max’s wardrobe that is impatiently picked through, and then picked through again, without Eliza finding anything that suits. How impossible it is to come up with something creative, here on the ship, when one’s resources are limited to the contents of three large trunks.
At last inspiration arrives.
‘You shall wear my robe.’
Eliza removes a floral satin dressing gown from a hook on the back of the dressing-room door. Ignoring Max’s dubious expression, she presses on.
‘Oh, this is too good. See how I have these three hats that are virtually the same?’
She produces three almost identical pillbox hats, in black, blue and a deep green, two with veils, one without.
‘You and Edward and – oh, what’s the name of that Aussie chap Helena seems so smitten with?’
‘Ian?’
‘Exactly so. You and Edward and Ian will wear silk robes, belted to look like dresses, and these hats, and we will make black wigs out of something – I have an old black shawl that will do – and put on plenty of make-up, and you will go as the Boswell Sisters.’
Lily smiles. With Edward, there might be a chance, but it’s almost impossible to imagine big, broad Max Campbell or ex-outback farmer Ian Jones passing themselves off as members of the celebrated American trio of singing sisters. Still, she has to admit the idea is a comic one, if they can get Edward and Ian to agree. Not that she has any influence at all over Edward, who increasingly appears to Lily to be as slippery as mercury, sliding through her fingers every time she thinks she has hold of him.
The rest of the afternoon is spent in a fervour of excited preparations. Ian and Edward are tracked down and made to agree, with varying degrees of reluctance. Helena is once again in bed, unwell, but Eliza fusses around Lily as if she were her own special creation, a piece of pottery or a painting of which she is most particularly proud.
By the time the ball begins even Lily has to admit she bears a passing resemblance to Greta Garbo. Eliza has shaped her mouth with a special pencil so that the upper lip dips down deeply in the middle, like a filled-in letter ‘M’, while the bottom is full and perfectly semicircular. Her eyebrows have been painted into two perfect high arches and her cheeks have been shaded in, emphasizing the bone structure. The combination of the turban and that fox stole with the cigarette holder give her a sophisticated, film-star glamour, and Eliza has added a pair of long diamond earrings to complete the look. Lily insisted on wearing her own dress, at least, a plain black woollen one she keeps for formal occasions. It’s fully lined and she knows she will be sweltering before the night has even begun, but she feels it is important not to be dressed from head to toe in Eliza’s clothes. Eliza won’t be denied when it comes to footwear, though, lending Lily a pair of high-heeled black mules, which, being backless, get around the problem of Lily’s feet being a full size smaller than Eliza’s own.
Eliza herself is wearing the pink sari they’d seen her trying on in Colombo. (‘Utterly divine,’ Anthony Hewitt had said.) She has the pink flower wound into her black hair and she has put a pink teardrop-shaped mark over the bridge of her nose, as Lily has seen Indian women wear in books.
When they are quite happy with their outfits they summon the men, who have been lurking around outside Max and Eliza’s cabin, smoking, from the smell of it. Much is made of Lily’s transformation. ‘You’re the very spit of Garbo,’ Ian declares, while Edward takes the opportunity, when no one else is listening, to whisper, ‘How beautiful you look tonight.’ He is in that strange mood she has noticed before when he is around Eliza, taciturn but also tense, as if on the alert for some kind of sign.
In general, though, there is an atmosphere of almost feverish anticipation, as happens in situations where people are forced in
to each other’s company for extended lengths of time and will seize on any diversion on offer.
Now it is the men’s turn.
Lily has lent her robe to the enterprise and is secretly thrilled when Eliza decrees Edward should wear it, being the slightest of the three. Ian will wear Helena’s, spirited away by Edward while his sister was sleeping, and Max has on Eliza’s, stretched almost to splitting point over his shoulders and arms and ending well above his knee.
Eliza and Lily have cut up the shawl (although Lily almost cried to do it; such a lovely thing, with nothing at all wrong with it) and made makeshift wigs which are held in place by a combination of hairpins and the hats. Then Lily and Eliza get to work on the make-up. Lily is half relieved, half disappointed when Eliza says she will start with Edward. It is such an intimate thing, this painting on of lips and eyes and cheeks. She does not know how she would have been able to do it without giving herself away.
How funny they look, the three men, in their ridiculous wigs and clothes. A camera is produced and photographs taken, first of the men, then of Lily gazing enigmatically to the side in typical Garbo style.
Max, who is taking the photograph, murmurs, ‘Ravishing,’ and Eliza shoots Lily a tight-lipped look which could be either proud or annoyed, it’s impossible to tell.
Outside on deck, the passengers mill around, exchanging compliments and laughter. There are a good few Julius Caesars, wearing sheets purloined from the ship’s laundry and draped over one shoulder. A group of Aussies have blackened their faces and come as Aboriginals, while some New Zealanders have made grass skirts from raffia and are performing their version of a Maori war dance.
There is food and music and a night sky that is studded with stars that seem so much nearer from up here on the first-class deck, so that Lily feels as if she should be able to reach up and pluck them like silver apples. Best of all, Edward stays by her side as if he has been glued there, even when Max complains he is ruining their fancy dress by keeping himself so separate from his ‘sisters’.