A Dangerous Crossing

by Rachel Rhys

  She is surprised to notice Ian also among the group, the oldest by far, and alone in not joining in the celebrations. She looks for Helena, wondering why Ian isn’t taking the opportunity to spend this last night with her, and finds her standing miserably next to Cleo Morgan. The young actress is wearing a lined cloak over her satin dress and clutches it tightly around her throat, as if at any moment someone might attempt to rip it from her. Her doe-like eyes dart around, on guard against imminent attack.

  Meanwhile, her husband is watching the raucous Australians with a look of aloof contempt, and Edward and Eliza are deep in intense conversation. Edward seems agitated, unable to keep his fingers from combing obsessively through his hair, and Eliza puts a hand on his arm as if to still him.

  But now Max is taking her champagne flute from her hand and leading her once again to the dancefloor and she is drunker than she has ever been in her life, but at the same time she is glad because she no longer has to think about George Price or Maria or the way Edward Fletcher has chipped away a little bit of her heart so she does not think it will ever be quite whole again. Nor does she have to think about Eliza and the sadness under the surface of her, like when you scratch off shiny gold leaf to reveal tin lurking beneath.

  The dancefloor is packed with people intent on sucking the last drop of pleasure out of their voyage. Tomorrow, anything might happen. They might be at war. But tonight they will dance and drink and laugh and tell each other confidences, secure in the knowledge that they will never see each other again.

  And in the midst of all this clamour and excitement and noise and movement Max Campbell holds Lily so tight she feels she cannot breathe, and yet she likes being held like that, likes being squeezed so hard she feels somehow outside of herself; someone else for a while. And he murmurs things in her ear with his hot, alcohol-soaked breath, and she wants him to keep doing it because she feels herself melting under the heat of him and that’s fine by her.

  They are out of sight of the others now, packed in by a scrum of bodies, and Max is pressing closer and closer to her, his moustache grazing her cheek. And now he is leading her through the crowd to the far end of the dancefloor, away from the others, and then they are through the bodies and out the other end, where the deck stretches away into the darkness.

  Lily shivers in the sudden cold and, instantly, Max’s arm is around her like a heavy coat she can warm herself inside. And he is still murmuring in her ear. ‘We are so good together, Lily. Let me make you happy. Just for this evening. Let me give you something to remember while you’re doing whatever ghastly job you get in Sydney. You’re so lovely, Lily. You deserve to feel good. Please let me make you feel good.’

  His words are like a warm bath she wants to submerge herself in.

  They are at the furthest end of the ship, where the lifeboats are – black shapes, hunkering in the darkness. Lily knows what goes on here, has seen couples emerging, clothing awry. Still, she doesn’t resist when he guides her to the furthest boat, laughing as they stumble over a coiled rope. And when he raises up the tarpaulin she steps inside the boat as if she’s just sitting down to dinner. She lets her body tell her what it wants – to let go, to feel enfolded, to feel desired and wanted and, just for this moment in time, loved.

  The tarpaulin is too low to allow sitting, so Max takes off his jacket and spreads it out on the floor of the boat and then, still giggling, he and Lily lie down, his arms around her, his words in her ear, and she feels that liberating sense of being free from thoughts and doubts and moral strictures. ‘Lovely Lily,’ he whispers. ‘You’re so good and so calming and kind, and you make me want to be better.’ And all the time his hands roving over her body, his kisses on her mouth, his moustache scratching her cheek.

  She thinks she hears a noise nearby but she ignores it. This is her chance. This and only this. To know what other people know, to do what other people do.

  Now his hand is under her dress, that cream silk that scandalized her mother when she saw it, and oh, now she has let Mam into her mind and she tries to get her out but she’s there in the very corner, in her best cloth hat. And Max’s hand has reached the top of her leg where her suspender belt meets her knickers and he is pushing his way past, yanking them aside, just as Robert tried to do. And now it’s not just Mam who’s in her head but Mags also. Little Mags with her heart-shaped face and her big, round handwriting so like a child’s.

  ‘If you won’t do it, I’ll find someone who will,’ Robert had told Lily after she shoved him away from her that last time. Mags didn’t stand a chance.

  ‘I didn’t want to, Lil. I knew he’d broken your heart, but I didn’t know I was allowed to say no,’ she’d sobbed afterwards, when she came to Lily to tell her about the baby. ‘There was never a chance to say it. He never asked. Just did.’

  Max is groaning in her ear.

  ‘So beautiful,’ he murmurs, his fingers going deeper.

  It was Lily who’d asked around, made the arrangements. Robert had given her the money, on condition his name was never mentioned. There’d been that horrible last conversation with him where he had been unable to meet her eyes, but as he’d handed over the greasy-looking notes he’d tried to take her hand. ‘It was always you I wanted, Lil. She didn’t mean anything to me.’ That’s when Lily had finally seen him for who he was – a selfish opportunist with a hollow space at his core. And when Lily and Mags had gone to that woman’s house Lily had known, just by looking at the woman’s disappointment-hardened face, and the sickly green carpet and the unloved back room with no furniture, just a table in the middle. She’d known it could only end badly. And yet she’d let Mags lie down on the table. Let the woman do what she did. Now she questions her own motives. Could she have been wanting to punish Mags? She doesn’t believe it. Will not believe it. Always knew Mags to have been, if not coerced, then at least overwhelmed. So why hadn’t she stopped it?

  ‘Should there be so much blood?’ she’d asked the woman.

  ‘It’s what happens,’ the woman snapped. ‘Babies aren’t dollies – you girls need to learn that. They’re made from blood and tissue, just like you.’

  ‘Let me in,’ says Max, his voice thick with wanting, his fingers fumbling at his own clothes.

  But now Lily is back in that room and looking at all the blood, and even the woman has stopped saying it’s normal. And it’s everywhere. On the walls. On the carpet.

  ‘Fuck,’ the woman had said, which shocked Lily almost as much as the blood. ‘She’s haemorrhaging.’

  And Mags so small and scared on that table. Am I going to die, Lil? Looking only at Lily’s face, and Lily holding her hand and saying, ‘No, of course not,’ while all the time the blood kept on coming out, thick and visceral and sticky.

  ‘You’ll have to take her to the hospital,’ the woman said. ‘She can’t stay here.’ But it was too late. All too late.

  And still Max’s hand is grappling with his clothes.

  ‘No,’ Lily says, coming suddenly back into herself. But he is big. Immovable.

  ‘Hush, sweetheart, it’ll be fine. You’ll enjoy it.’

  ‘No, really.’ She is trying to push him aside. But it is like pushing aside a boulder, or the ship itself.

  Panic courses through her, but she knows she cannot change anything, knows it is going to happen and it is her fault, but just as she tenses herself, preparing for the assault, there is a rustling noise and then a man’s voice: ‘In here’; and then a different man, closer, saying, ‘Here? But why …’ And then the tarpaulin lifts and a bright light is shining into her eyes, blinding her.

  And behind the light is Edward.

  31

  SOMETHING ACIDIC RISES up into Lily’s mouth and she sits bolt upright, straightening her clothes, her heart hammering in her chest. Shock has turned her suddenly sober and she sees everything only too clearly – her and Max Campbell, a married man and a soon-to-be maid. How commonplace. How tawdry.

  The light is coming from a torch which
is being held by a second man, and only when he lowers it slightly to the ground so it is no longer so blinding does she recognize him as George Price.

  ‘Now do you see what she really is?’ George says wetly, as Lily scrambles out of the wretched boat. ‘I’ve done you a service.’

  And he marches off back down the deck, taking his torch with him.

  For a second no one speaks, and they listen to the thud of George’s footsteps receding down the deck, heading towards the far-off sound of the bandleader crooning ‘Heart and Soul’.

  Once Lily’s eyes have grown accustomed to the lack of light, she can make out Edward’s pale face, clammy in the moonlight, and his dark, staring eyes.

  ‘He told me you wanted to see me,’ he says to her, and his voice is hoarse and quite unlike normal. ‘He never said … I’d never have …’

  Behind her, she hears Max getting leisurely to his feet, smoothing down his clothes.

  ‘No hard feelings, old chap,’ he says to Edward, who recoils as if he’s been struck. There’s something deeply unsettling about the way Edward stares at Max, his eyes black holes that seem to suck the air from around them until Lily is struggling to breathe.

  ‘No hard feelings?’ Edward’s voice, still broken and strange, vibrates in the darkness. ‘You dare to say that?’

  Something gives inside Lily as she recognizes the tremble of passion in his voice. He must really love her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her words stumbling over the sob that is caught, like a bone, in her throat. ‘Edward. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you felt anything for me, or I would never have … I wouldn’t …’

  Edward doesn’t look at her, and behind her Max seems only mildly inconvenienced.

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, there’s a good chap,’ he tells Edward now, and there is a hint of a smile in his voice. ‘You don’t want to end up in the loony bin again.’

  Lily gasps, unable to believe the casual cruelty of Max’s words. To make fun of Edward having been ill, to compare the sanatorium to an asylum.

  Edward’s head is held rigid. His wild eyes are fixed on Max as if caught there by some kind of force. She tries again:

  ‘Edward, I want you to know that nothing happened …’

  Edward turns to look at her, but instantly she wishes he hadn’t because it is a look filled with such anguish, such desolation, she cannot bear it. She puts out a hand to touch him but he jerks back, out of her reach, and then is gone, hurrying away from them along the deck, a lone figure briefly silhouetted against the stars.

  ‘Lily.’ Max puts his fingers on her neck and she slaps them away as if his touch burns.

  ‘Woah!’ He raises both hands in mock-surrender. ‘Don’t worry. Edward won’t tell anyone, and no one will believe a word the other fellow says. Anyway, your honour is still intact. More’s the pity.’

  He is smiling. As if it’s been a game and he’s inviting her to share in the joke.

  ‘I’m going back to my cabin,’ she says thickly.

  ‘Don’t be a dolt. If you disappear, everyone will know something has happened. We have to go back and act as if everything is normal. They probably haven’t even noticed we’re not there.’

  Lily doesn’t believe him, but neither can she face going to the cabin, probably to find Ida already in residence, knowing that the next time she opens the door they’ll be in Sydney, and all of this will be over, and there will be no chance to make it right, no chance to explain.

  It is agreed that Max will join the others straight away and Lily will go first to the ladies’ powder room before following on. When she arrives there and looks at herself in the mirror she sees she has a pink, raised rash by the side of her mouth where Max’s moustache rubbed against her skin, and she douses it angrily with water, trying to make it disappear.

  ‘Are you feeling better now?’ asks Helena when Lily finally rejoins the group. ‘Max said you had a dizzy spell. You do look a bit peaky.’

  ‘I’m much better now,’ Lily manages. ‘It was good of Max to stay with me.’

  ‘Oh, that’s Max all over,’ Eliza says. ‘Such a very, very good man.’ She gives Lily a long, appraising stare and Lily feels herself shrinking from it.

  Helena is agitated. She keeps darting glances over to where Ian stands, chatting with his clearly inebriated compatriots. Lily does not know what has passed between the two of them but she guesses Ian has asked if he can see her when they get to Sydney and, in deference to their tyrannical father, who, even from this distance, seems to wield a strange power, she has refused.

  ‘Have you seen Edward?’ Helena asks now, turning her hollow eyes to Lily. ‘I thought he was in the bar, but he has been gone so long.’

  Lily’s heart constricts at the mention of his name.

  Now Helena is staring at something behind Lily’s shoulder.

  ‘How very curious,’ she says, in a new, wondering tone. ‘I have the exact same winter suit that woman is wearing. And that brooch.’

  Lily turns to see an unfamiliar woman walking towards them from the direction of the staircase, wearing a dark green suit and a matching hat with a veil. She carries a green pocketbook and has on crisp, white gloves, as if she is going on a journey rather than attending a dance. Pinned to her chest is a brooch in the shape of a bird.

  Lily turns back to Helena to question her further but is silenced by the ghastly expression on her friend’s face.

  ‘No!’ Helena cries out as if she has been hurt, and Lily reaches out just in time to catch her as she staggers.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  But she might as well not have spoken, for the entire focus of Helena’s attention is on the strange woman, who is close enough now for Lily to see something of her features under that veil.

  As her brain struggles to process what she is seeing, there comes a sharp intake of breath from either Max or Eliza, who are clearly one step ahead of her.

  The woman is Edward.

  ‘Hello,’ he says, joining their group, as if it is the most natural thing in the world. His mouth is mapped out with deep plum lipstick, and his normally unruly dark hair is pinned neatly back beneath the hat, which Lily now recognizes as the one Edward borrowed from Eliza the evening of the fancy-dress ball. Looking down, she sees his feet are crammed into a pair of green shoes she remembers Helena wearing earlier in the voyage.

  ‘I think you misunderstood the dress code,’ Eliza says smoothly. ‘Fancy dress was last week.’

  ‘Yes, run along and get changed, there’s a good chap,’ says Max, and it seems to Lily that, though his smile has grown wider, the rest of him has become exceedingly tight. Tense. The hand that holds his Scotch trembles so the ice makes a clinking sound against the glass.

  Edward fixes Max with heavily kohled eyes.

  ‘Don’t you like it, Max? Don’t you like me like this? Funny how you liked it well enough when we were in Cairo, and at the hotel in Colombo. Remember that?’

  Now Lily remembers what she saw from the rickshaw. A pool of light from a hotel sign. Max standing with a woman in native costume. Nausea builds, horribly, from somewhere deep inside her.

  ‘I think you’ve had too much to drink,’ Max hisses, and Lily sees that the people around them, who hadn’t seemed to notice Edward first arriving, are turning to see what the fuss is about.

  ‘I thought you felt something,’ Edward says to him, impassioned now. ‘For me.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, grow up, will you!’ Max has lost patience. ‘You must stop mistaking appetite for desire and desire for love. A starving man doesn’t care what he eats. I love my wife. And if I can’t have her, I’ll take whatever is there. That was always the deal.’

  In the part of her that isn’t desperately trying to make sense of what is happening, Lily registers those words – ‘I’ll take whatever is there’ – and she thinks she is going to be sick.

  Eliza, whose eyes have been fixed on Edward all this while, as if they might burn tiny holes right through hi
s skin, now turns to her husband.

  ‘What have you done this time?’ she hisses. Her voice is hard as bone.

  But now something else is happening, something that causes Lily to push aside all thoughts of Eliza and of what happened between her and Max in the lifeboat and everything else that has gone before. Edward has opened the green pocketbook and taken out something long and slim that glints where the light catches it.

  The pocketbook drops to the floor and Edward stands perfectly still, holding the paper knife he bought in Aden against his wrist, pushing down the top of the white glove so that the blade presses directly against his skin. A gasp goes up from the onlookers.

  ‘What are you doing?’ screams Helena. ‘Edward, please. Help, someone. Stop him!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he tells her, switching his gaze towards his sister and away from Max Campbell. His shaking hand still holds the knife to his wrist but his voice is strangely calm. ‘I’ve brought you only trouble. Maybe this way you can be free to lead your own life. But you know, Hels, I’m glad to have shown you, finally, who I am. And, after all, it’s just me, isn’t it? And these are just clothes. Not so dreadful, you see?’

  Ian has rushed to Helena’s side. ‘Put the knife down,’ he urges Edward in a low, controlled voice. ‘Whatever has happened, it will all be forgotten. We’re in Australia now. Everything is different.’

  ‘Forgotten?’ echoes Edward. ‘My father will never forget.’

  ‘But he’s thousands of miles away. The other side of the world,’ Ian continues. ‘No one here knows you. Whatever you’ve done is behind you.’

  Edward wavers, and Lily sees his eyes fill with tears, as if considering for the first time this possibility.

  Helena joins in.

  ‘Ian’s right. No one knows us here. Life can begin again. We can put it all behind us – what happened in England, whatever happened on this voyage. Everything left behind.’

  Edward moves the knife fractionally away from his wrist.