by Rachel Rhys
‘Lily, wait!’
But she is gone. Striding down the deck. Tomorrow, she tells herself. Tomorrow they will arrive in Sydney and her new life will begin, and all this – the voyage, Edward, Maria, George, the Campbells – will be in the past. And when she thinks back to it, it will seem like a dream that cannot possibly have happened. She will work as a maid or a housekeeper and it will not seem credible that she could have kept company with lawyers and socialites and film actors and radio presenters. George Price was right about that, at least: she will go back to her world and they will go back to theirs and life will be once again divided into its correct boxes.
But first there is this last day to get through, culminating in another gala dinner-dance tonight. At first there was some talk of it being cancelled in the light of the news of the German invasion of Poland, but the captain decreed, perhaps with one eye towards his combustible mix of passenger nationalities, that as there had been no formal declaration of war everything should continue as planned.
It is the last thing Lily feels like doing at the moment – getting dressed up and celebrating. However, already preparations are under way. The stewards are busy decorating the dance area with flowers and bunting and all over the ship small farewell parties are being arranged. Most passengers have started packing, as the ship will be arriving in Sydney early the next morning, and there’s a bustle of people going back and forth between their cabins and the deck.
‘Don’t forget to check the laundry,’ she hears a woman’s voice call down the stairwell. ‘We wouldn’t want to leave anything behind.’
Outside the door of her cabin Lily takes a deep breath. She has been avoiding Ida for the last two days but now she cannot put her packing off any longer. She is hoping to find the place empty, or at least for Audrey to be there. But to her dismay, there is just Ida, sitting on her bunk, her back upright, so the top of her scraped-back hair brushes the woven slats of Audrey’s bed above. She has her suitcase open on the mattress next to her, a battered-looking affair, and in spite of herself, Lily can’t help feeling a wrench of pity when she sees how few clothes Ida has brought along for her new life.
Wordlessly, Lily slides her trunk out from under the unused bottom bunk and starts moving around the cabin, collecting her things. Who could have imagined she would have amassed so many? As well as her clothes, there are combs, lotions, little mementos of her visits ashore. Lily remembers now the gold silk scarf Max Campbell bought for her in Gibraltar and feels a surge of outrage against Edward. Why bother picking it up? It makes her embarrassed how pleased she had been to think of him keeping it hidden in his cabin, handling it every now and then to bury his nose in it, hoping to find some lingering essence of her scent. If Edward has ever felt that way about her, the sentiment is so hidden among his other conflicting thoughts and feelings that it might just as well not exist at all.
She opens a drawer and takes out a small stack of cardigans and begins refolding them in order to pack them into the trunk, conscious all the time of Ida’s eyes boring into her back. Twice, Ida clears her throat as if to speak, but says nothing. Finally:
‘I never wanted anything bad to happen to your friend.’
Lily says nothing, just carries on refolding the cardigans and placing them into the trunk.
‘It’s not easy,’ Ida tries again. ‘It’s not easy having nobody but yourself to rely on. No family. No husband. My John has been dead these past eleven years and I still think of him every day. I am not good at making friends. You are lucky you have that gift. I do not. I had thought … I had hoped … that we might … you and I …’
Behind Lily’s back she clears her throat again.
‘Then to have you favour her instead! That Miss Katz. It felt personal. I know it shouldn’t have but there you are, it did. But I never wanted any harm to come to her. It’s important that, whatever else you might think of me, you at least know that much.’
Now, at last, Lily turns to face her.
‘But you still won’t change your witness statement?’
Ida shakes her head.
‘What’s done is done. I can’t jeopardize my finding work. Anyway, that young man will be carted off by his family. There’s something not right about him, not right in the head. And now, with the news about Germany, the captain has other things to think about.’
Lily slowly turns back to her packing and after a few minutes she hears the cabin door open and then close again as Ida lets herself out.
Before she has time to reflect on what Ida said there is a knock and, without waiting for a response, Eliza barges in.
‘Hide me, Lily! I am on the run from that odious couple.’
In spite of herself, Lily smiles as Eliza makes a poor show of trying to conceal herself behind Audrey’s dressing gown, still hanging on the back of the door.
‘Alan Morgan is rather too much,’ she agrees. ‘But Cleo is totally harmless, surely?’
Eliza tosses her head in a dismissive gesture.
‘I suppose so, but she makes me feel so anxious. I’m constantly worrying that a gust of wind will carry her off somewhere. I had to tell Max not to blow cigarette smoke around her in case it swept her overboard.’
Eliza’s gaze alights on Lily’s trunk.
‘How organized you are, doing your packing now. I shall wait until the last minute, as usual, or else get the cabin steward to do it. Oh, I’m so relieved this interminable journey is over, aren’t you?’
When Lily fails to respond, Eliza’s hand flies to her mouth.
‘Oh, I’m such an idiot. Ignore me. Of course you’re not looking forward to it finishing when you have to go to work in some dreary house for some dreary family. But you know, we’ll still see each other all the time. You’ll get days off, won’t you?’
Lily nods, although, of course, she knows as well as Eliza that it will never happen.
‘I suppose you have a full programme of social events once you get to Sydney?’ Lily asks, going back to her folding.
‘Yes. I think so.’ Eliza sighs. ‘Oh, but Lily, what if nothing changes?’
Her voice sounds suddenly flat as if it has had all the air taken out of it.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I keep thinking, The next party … The next city … The next love affair … Waiting for the one that changes everything. But what if this is all there is? What if I am all there is?’
Lily turns sharply to see Eliza slumped, dejected, on Ida’s bunk.
‘Anyway,’ says Eliza, sitting up straighter and back to her familiar amused drawl, ‘let’s not talk about that when we have more important things to discuss, like what you’re going to wear to the ball this evening. I hope you’re intending to wear the peach. It looks so divine on you.’
She is pointing to her peach silk dress, which Lily has left draped over the foot of her bed, ready to give back.
‘I don’t think so,’ says Lily. ‘I have a dress that will do just as well.’
‘I won’t hear of it. The peach was made for you.’
‘I said no.’
Lily’s words, uttered more vehemently than she’d intended, ricochet off the walls like gun pellets, taking them both by surprise.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. I just think it’s time for me to start remembering who I am.’
Eliza is gazing at her intently with those strange, violet eyes and Lily has the curious notion that she is seeing her for the very first time. Then she gets to her feet and gathers up the peach gown.
‘Of course. You’re perfectly right, as always. You shall wear what you see fit, and you will look a picture in it, whatever it is. Just one thing, Lily.’
She has headed towards the door and now has one hand on the handle, hesitating as if considering carefully what she is about to say.
‘Don’t pay too much attention to Max this evening, will you? I know he can be very charming when he chooses to be, but he collects vulnerable people like other men collect b
utterflies.’
She says ‘vulnerable people’, but Lily knows she means ‘vulnerable women’. Women like her.
‘But the thing you have to remember is,’ Eliza continues, ‘he doesn’t know how to stop being in love with me. That’s his tragedy.’ She pauses before adding softly: ‘And mine.’
30
WHEN LILY LOOKS into the bathroom mirror she cannot believe it is her own face looking back at her. In her head she feels as if she has aged ten years during the voyage, yet the woman in the mirror is fresh-faced, her golden skin matching perfectly her amber eyes and sun-lightened copper hair. How impossible it seems that the last five weeks have not been written somewhere upon her skin.
The young bathroom steward is loitering outside. Emboldened by the fact of it being the last full day, he says: ‘I’ll be glad to get ashore for a while, but I’ll be sorry not to see your face any more, miss.’
All over the ship there is the strangest sense of being in limbo between what is real and what isn’t, between the departure and the arrival, between the threat of war and whatever comes next. Perhaps that’s why Lily smiles and tells him, sincerely, that she is sorry too, knowing that in reality she is unlikely to think of him but if she does it will be with a fondness that far outstrips his role in her life. That’s just how it is on board now, little things magnified out of all proportion, huge things, like Maria’s disappearance, reduced to nothing, just a whisper on the breeze, the faint sigh of the sea.
She goes down to dinner wearing the cream silk dress that Max Campbell spilled wine over all those weeks ago and says a polite but distant hello to Edward, trying not to notice how handsome he looks in his black tails and white bow tie. I don’t love him, she reminds herself. But already her conviction is wavering. He orders a bottle of wine from the waiter and pours her a glass without asking. ‘Peace offering?’ he whispers as he pushes it towards her.
She can see he is trying to be casual and upbeat, but his hands are shaking as they pour the wine and, once, when he feels himself unobserved, he slumps forward in his chair with his eyes closed and his fingers splayed out on his forehead.
Clara Mills declares herself too nervous to eat. ‘I can’t sleep for worrying about what we are heading into,’ she tells Lily. ‘The Australians we have met have been such rough sorts. And Peggy and I will be so much alone.’
The prospect of being sequestered away with her mama seems to do little to improve the spirits of her daughter who pops another chunk of bread roll in her mouth and chews it in sulky silence. She has put on weight since the voyage began, Lily notices again, and feels a wave of sympathy. It’s not easy being fifteen and hauled away from everything you know.
She senses George Price’s arrival at the table but refuses to look up, not that he seems bothered by it. He has brought a book, some sort of political manifesto, it looks like, and proceeds to read it all the way through dinner, to the distress of Clara Mills, who confides in Lily that it presages the sort of boorish behaviour they can expect in Australia.
The dinner itself is much grander than usual and there are special menus for all the passengers, which are passed around to be signed and kept as souvenirs. Edward lingers for quite a while over signing hers, and Lily feels herself blush when she sees he has written, ‘Ever yours, Edward.’
Helena is wearing her dove-grey dress – the one that matches her eyes. Though she joins in with the flurry of excitement over the signing of the menus, she seems generally subdued and, later, when a young man at the next table gets to his feet to announce he has just proposed to the sweetheart he met on the first night of the voyage, and she has said yes, Helena’s cheeks stream with tears.
After the food is cleared away one of Ian’s Aussie mates sits down at the dining-room piano and all the Australians sing ‘Waltzing Matilda’, followed by ‘Along the Road to Gundagai’. Then one of the British passengers plays the opening chords for ‘In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree’ and Clara Mills is horrified when some young wag changes the second line to ‘There’s a hole in your drawers I can see.’
Then they go out on to the deck while the tables are stacked up to make an indoor dance area for those passengers who consider it too cold to be outside. All around, there are knots of people exchanging addresses and hugs and standing in stiff groups to have photographs taken.
‘I still have Eliza’s fox wrap,’ Helena tells Lily. ‘I must give it back to her later in the evening. Will she be coming downstairs?’
Lily shrugs in a Your guess is as good as mine way, but deep down she knows they have not seen the last of the Campbells and, when she thinks about yesterday and Max’s arms around her, she can’t help feeling glad about that.
Ian arrives with his Australian friends, who are brimming with excitement at being so near to home.
Though the temperature is cool, the night is relatively still and the sky reminds Lily suddenly of a black velvet handbag Robert’s mother used to have, studded with tiny silver beads. The sagging smile of a half-moon hangs heavy in the sky.
‘How are you finding your last night? I expect you’re anxious to arrive.’ George Price is standing too close to her in that way he has, and Lily automatically takes a step back.
‘I will be in New Zealand, as you know, but I don’t think it is that difficult to get from there to Sydney,’ he continues. ‘We could still see each other.’
Now George sees something in Lily’s face that even he, through his thick impenetrability, must recognize as disbelief because he changes tack.
‘Look, I’m sorry about all that bad business. But it’s over now and, obviously, the situation with Germany changes everything anyway. People like you and I must stick together, Miss Shepherd. Lily. We do not know for sure who else can be trusted. That’s why I’m willing to overlook the fact that you’ll be working in service.’ Before Lily can process what he means, he presses on: ‘My father won’t like it but I am prepared for that. I’m an adult, after all.’
Without warning he lunges forward and presses himself up against her.
‘How dare you!’ She recoils in disgust and her voice is shaking. ‘I want nothing to do with you. Nothing. I wouldn’t see you again if you were the last man on earth.’
Now he is staring at her, his eyes bulging, lips glistening in the moonlight.
‘Oh, I see. I see it perfectly now. You think you can do better for yourself than me. You’ve got your eye on one of the others, haven’t you? Edward Fletcher, or maybe Max Campbell. You really think either of those is going to look twice at you once we’re docked in Sydney? When Edward Fletcher qualifies as a lawyer, do you think he’s going to introduce you to society: “This is my wife, Lily. She’s a ladies’ maid”?’
Lily turns on her heel and makes her way back to her group, whose numbers have been swelled by the arrival of the Campbells. Still reeling from the scene with George, and only just fighting back tears, she is dismayed to see that Alan and Cleo Morgan are also here, looking around the tourist deck as if they are visitors in a zoo.
‘At last you’ve come,’ says Max. ‘Now the party can begin.’
He is louder than usual and Lily sees two empty bottles of champagne on the table next to him. He opens a new bottle and pours Lily a glass that, in spite of having already drunk wine at dinner, she downs in two or three gulps to calm her still-racing nerves. It is instantly replenished.
Eliza dazzles in a full-length silver dress with spiderweb-slender straps over her shoulders and a back that plunges deeply enough to reveal the two dimples at the base of her spine, just visible beneath the bottom edge of her white mink wrap. Her black hair is pulled back with silver combs, and diamonds sparkle at her earlobes. Now that Lily is viewing her through the eyes of a soon-to-be maid, Eliza looks as unreachable as one of the stars in the night sky behind her.
‘Why do they have to come here? Why can’t they let us have this one night on our own?’
Edward’s voice in her ear sounds strangled, as if he is choking on so
mething, and Lily looks at him sharply. He is always tense around the Campbells, but tonight he is clearly struggling to keep his feelings under control. Suddenly, Lily can bear it no longer.
‘Who will dance with me?’ she says, turning to face the group, made bold by the alcohol and the knowledge that, it being the last night, she has nothing more to lose. She sees Edward open his mouth, but before he can speak Max has stepped forward, as she knew – and hoped – he would.
‘What hot-blooded man could resist?’ he says, leading her away to the dancefloor, where the band has just started playing ‘Begin the Beguine’.
He seizes her right hand and pulls her to him, holding her far too close, but for once Lily does not care. Let them all stare. Let them disapprove. These are the same people who didn’t bother to get to know Maria, who hardly registered her death. The champagne has made her light-headed and giddy and it feels good to have Max Campbell’s arm around her waist, tight as a belt, holding her up.
‘Edward is looking cross,’ she says to Max, and giggles as she hears herself slurring the last word.
‘Poor Edward,’ he says, glancing over and then pulling her even more tightly towards him. ‘Poor, doomed Edward.’
She is just about to ask him to explain when the band launches into a jitterbug, and she and Max are soon helpless with shrill laughter trying to keep up. On the other side of the dancefloor she sees Eliza staring in their direction over Alan Morgan’s shoulder.
‘Your wife warned me about you,’ she says to Max, who seems to find this very amusing.
‘Then you only have yourself to blame,’ he says.
They dance some more and then stagger off to join the others. More champagne is bought. Nearby, a group of exuberant young Aussies are tossing multicoloured streamers into the air. Lily recognizes Ian’s two colleagues with their arms around each other’s shoulders, singing something which makes the others roar with laughter. They’re going home, she thinks. And the idea is somehow shocking, that this foreign, unknowable place must, to them, represent all that is familiar.