by Janet Tanner
Then she went back to the cabin and to occupy herself, sorted through her papers as Gerald Brittain had suggested, making sure her passport was safely in her handbag with her other important documents. There was a photograph of Alex amongst them; tears ached in her throat as she looked at it, seeing wide grey eyes and a round, earnest face beneath a thatch of light, sandy hair, and remembering the day it had been taken, with Alex grizzling and uncooperative until the photographer had entertained him by balancing a toy monkey on his head.
The memory brought the waves of black depression again flooding in to swamp her.
Why did I leave him? Why? If he’s all right this time, I’ll never leave him again …
A tap at the cabin door arrested her. She stood for a moment undecided, unwilling to be caught with her defences down. But the tap came again, more impatient this time so, wiping her face with her fingers to remove any trace of tears, she opened it.
‘Oh, good. I was beginning to think you weren’t here.’
It was Gerald Brittain. She bristled – couldn’t the wretched man leave her alone?
‘Yes?’ she said shortly.
For just a moment the strangest expression crossed his face. It was there, then it was gone before she had time to analyse or even register it. Then he said with a shortness to almost equal her own, ‘If you want to go ashore, you can. See Lieutenant Hickson.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Oh! I thought you said …’
‘But I wouldn’t be too long about it. As I told you, the stop is for loading and unloading only.’
She was still almost speechless with surprise and he merely touched his forehead in mock salute, half smiled and turned away.
For a moment she stood looking after him. So she could go ashore. The relief was enormous, but her resentment almost equalled it. By telling her she could not, he had made her lose precious time when she could have been putting her call through. But at least he had the grace to come and admit his mistake – for that she should be grateful.
In haste now she tidied herself sufficiently to go ashore and went in search of Lieutenant Hickson. Older than many of the crew, he had served with the Stranraer as a merchant officer for most of his seagoing life; now, to the discipline of war, he had brought an easygoing manner which had in its time pleased countless fare-paying passengers and a lack of urgency which Elise found refreshing.
‘I would have asked earlier about going ashore, but Flight Lieutenant Brittain gave me to understand it wouldn’t be possible,’ she said breathlessly as he escorted her down the gangplank.
Raymond Hickson offered her his hand to help her from swaying gangplank to solid quayside.
‘If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be going ashore. He pleaded your case pretty forcefully, I can tell you.’
Beneath her feet the land felt less steady than the ship had done. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve got a little boy you’re worried about, haven’t you?’
‘That’s right. Alex. He’s been ill.’
‘Well, I reckon your Flight Lieutenant Brittain knew the Chief’s soft spot is kids. Anything else and he’s a hard man!’
‘It was true then, what he told me about not being allowed off the boat? I thought he must have made a mistake.’
‘No mistake.’ The naval officer touched her arm. ‘Right, if we go this way …’
Elise went with him, startled and slightly guilty. It had never occurred to her that Gerald Brittain actually might have pleaded her case. She had assumed only too readily that he was simply being big enough to admit his original mistake.
The port of Aden was hot and dusty and the bright, reflected sunlight was hurtful to the eyes. In the streets, black-robed Muslim women shuffled past, veiled against the eyes of the curious, their berry-brown children clutched in their arms.
In a square flat-roofed building Lt. Hickson exchanged a few words with an Arab boy and a bronzed Englishman and Elise found herself with a telephone in her hand.
Tense now with anticipation, she waited while the connections were made. If there were no lines now and she had to return to the ship without getting through, she thought the disappointment would be too much to bear.
But, unbelievably, the call went through.
She heard the distant ringing so clearly it could have been right here in Aden, in the shelter of the extinct volcano, instead of Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak; then Su Ming’s voice:
‘Hello? Who is this, please?’
‘Su Ming? It’s Mrs Sanderson.’
‘Who?’
‘Mrs Sanderson!’ Surely she could hear! I can hear her so clearly, thought Elise. ‘Is Mr Sanderson at home?’
‘Oh, Mrs Sanderson. No, sorry he is not.’
She could feel her heart pumping the blood around her body at twice the normal rate.
‘Su Ming, how is Alex?’
‘Alex?’
‘Yes.’ Was it the line – or was the girl being deliberately obtuse?’ He’s been ill, hasn’t he?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘So how is he?’ The tension was constricting her breath.
‘Oh, he is OK.’
‘Really? He’s better?’
‘Yes. It must have been a chill, Dr Cromer said …’
She was trembling now and beneath her hands the receiver was moist with her perspiration. Alex was all right, he wasn’t dead or going to die. He was better.
‘Is he there, Su Ming?’
‘Yes. Do you want to speak to him?’
‘Yes, please.’
A pause. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t let that tension go. Not yet.
‘Hello, Mummy.’ Alex’s voice was more boyish than ever.
‘Hello, darling! Are you feeling better?’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’
‘What do you mean you suppose so?’
‘Su Ming won’t let me go out to play yet. I’m bored.’ The first chuckle came. Bored. Oh, he was better, all right!
‘Oh Alex, you gave me such a fright!’
‘What for?’
She swallowed. ‘Listen, darling, I’m on my way home!’
‘Are you?’ He brightened and it warmed her heart. Then: ‘Have you got something for me?’
Another chuckle, which she suppressed with her fingers. Children! One minute you thought they were dying, the next they were asking you if you had something for them as though nothing else in the world mattered.
‘Yes, I’ve a few things, darling. Now listen, take care of yourself and I’ll see you soon. Love to Daddy.’
‘Yes. Mummy, listen …’
‘Time up, caller.’
‘I’ll have to go, Alex. Goodbye darling.’
‘Goodbye, Mummy.’
She replaced the receiver and stood for a second with her hands pressed over her face.
Oh, Alex! He was all right. Thank God! In that moment she could have floated, flown …
‘Mrs Sanderson, we ought to be getting back.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Aden looked different now, bright and shining, no longer the oppressive place it had seemed a short time ago.
‘Thank you so much for bringing me ashore,’ she said.
‘Like I told you, don’t thank me! Thank Flight Lieutenant Brittain.’
She could still hardly believe it, that in spite of what he had said it was Gerald Brittain she had to thank for this. It was incredible that someone so arrogant, so totally without feelings, should have arranged things for her not once, but twice.
She had always felt he had fixed the passage partly because the Comtesse had asked it of him, partly because he wanted to prove it could be done.
But this … this had been done quickly and quietly. When he had told her she could go ashore, he had given not the slightest indication that it was his doing – she felt ashamed when she thought how coldly she had received him, blaming him for misleading her instead of thanking him.
‘It’s such a relief to know that Alex is a
ll right, I could kiss everyone in sight,’ Elise said, and Lt. Hickson smiled at her obvious happiness.
‘For something so totally out of line with regulations, I should keep quiet about it if I were you,’ he warned.
Back aboard the Stranraer, Elise soon learned the sense behind his warning.
As she went into her cabin conversation stopped and the sharp voice of the red-haired Wren reached her.
‘It must be nice to be rich, mustn’t it, girls? Swan around whenever you want, escorted by officers, instead of having to stay on board a steamy troop carrier all day.’
‘Funny, isn’t it? You start to wonder if she’s human.’ That was the pug-nosed girl – Ruth Marshall. Although Joyce Lindsell, the red-haired Wren, appeared to be the unofficial leader of the hate campaign, it was usually Ruth who could be relied upon to come out with the most tasteless remarks.
‘I should have liked to have gone ashore myself,’ put in Linda Preece, the third girl. ‘Join the Navy and see the world, they say. All I’ve seen so far is the inside of this damned cabin!’
Sometimes Elise simply let them go on until their jibes burnt themselves out. Today, emboldened by knowing Alex was all right, she tried to explain.
‘I wasn’t sightseeing. I was very worried about my little boy – I went to make a phone call to see how he was.’
There was a moment’s stunned silence, then Joyce said harshly, ‘See what I mean, girls, one law for the rich and another for the poor?’
The venom in her voice took Elise’s breath away. She looked up, puzzled, as Ruth Marshall snorted, ‘You don’t know what she’s talking about, do you? In your cosy world, it wouldn’t occur to you that we can have our problems too. You think you’re the only one with the right to be worried, I suppose. Well – Joyce’s boy friend has got polio as a result of being torpedoed in the Atlantic – he was in the water for forty-eight hours before they found him. She’s waiting to find out if he’s going to live or die – and if he lives, whether he’s ever going to be any good for anything again.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know …’ Elise’s awkwardness returned with a rush.
‘That’s right, you didn’t know – and little would you care. They were going to get married next leave – now, even if he lives, he might be paralysed from the waist down. And that wouldn’t only mean he couldn’t walk. It would mean he couldn’t do any of the other things a normal bloke does, like making love and having kids, for instance. Not, I suppose, that that would worry someone like you!’
‘I’m sorry – I’m really sorry …’ Elise said again, but the girls only snorted, glared and continued talking amongst themselves.
Their resentment was oppressive – something she could feel in the air – and as soon as she could Elise left the cabin and went back on deck.
Her own anxiety relieved, she wished she could do the same for Joyce, but she knew this was impossible. The ship was making ready to sail again and in any case she imagined Joyce was firmly bound by naval regulations; if she were to be allowed ashore, request upon request would obviously follow. With the war encompassing so much of the globe, it was possible that most of the ship’s company had some loved one to worry about.
‘No wonder they don’t like me,’ Elise thought, understanding their resentment for the first time. She had thought she wanted to be one of them, accepted into their circle as just another young woman. But the moment she was subjected to the same regulations, she had kicked and something had been done about it.
‘One law for the rich, another for the poor,’ Joyce had said and the words had been hurtful. But Elise had to admit, if she was strictly honest, that it was probably true.
The thought was chastening and as the Stranraer moved slowly away from the sandy isthmus that was Aden, Elise felt that it was a lesson she would not forget in a hurry.
Chapter Nine
As Gerald Brittain had predicted, life aboard the Stranraer changed the moment they left the safety of the Red Sea for the open waters of the Indian Ocean.
Each night when darkness fell the portholes were battened down and although Elise appreciated that this was to ensure that no light was shown to an enemy ship, she hated the claustrophobic feeling it gave her.
In addition to keeping in the light, the blackout also kept in the noise – it reverberated every evening from the mess rooms; raucous voices were raised in the popular tunes of the day, to the accompaniment of a honky-tonk piano and a saxophone that one of the soldiers had brought aboard, and hearty laughter followed the recitation of lewd jokes. The cabin she shared with the Wrens was right above one of the mess rooms and to escape the racket she spent most of the first two evenings on deck.
There was someone it seemed impossible to escape, however: Captain John Grimly.
It would have been easier, Elise thought, if she had not felt indebted to him for his friendliness on the night they sailed. She had been glad enough of his company then; it seemed unkind to shun him now. But after a while his boyish enthusiasm and rather fatuous conversation tended to become so tiresome that her patience was stretched to its limits; on the second night out of Aden, she managed to slip away from the dinner table while he was engaged in a tactical discussion with one of the other officers, and tuck herself away in one of the darkest corners of the deck, hidden from the companion way by the poop.
Surely anyone with a grain of sensitivity would realise she wanted to be on her own, she thought. But John Grimly seemed to lack even that. After just a few minutes’ peace, or so it seemed to her, she heard his voice – hearty and playful – and her heart sank.
‘Ah, so this is where you’re hiding, Madam! You will keep running away from me, won’t you?’
‘It’s impossible to hide from you for long, John,’ she said, secure in the knowledge that it was also virtually impossible to snub him.
‘Yes, that’s me – should have been a bloodhound!’ he agreed amiably. ‘Fearful racket going on below, isn’t there? Singing ‘‘Yes, we have no bananas,’’ if you ever heard such rubbish. And ‘‘Run rabbit run’’ – just as if we would!’
Elise said nothing; from experience she was learning he needed no reply. After a moment he lifted his chin, sniffing appreciatively at the night air.
‘Bloody beautiful out here though, isn’t it? Makes one realise what we’re fighting for.’
She nodded agreement; it was beautiful. Above the calm dark sea the sky stretched from horizon to horizon, an ebony velvet dome studded by a million stars. Beneath the bows of the Stranraer a porpoise darted and the movement seemed to bring the water around it to shimmering phosphorescent life. The sight of it made her catch her breath. It was plankton, she knew, that caused the irradiation, but for all that in the blackness it seemed like a magical illusion.
‘Have you ever been in this part of the world before?’ she asked.
‘No, I’ve never been out here before and I must confess that I didn’t want to come. If I’d joined the Army in peacetime it would have been a different thing, I suppose; then I would have expected to do my stint in one of the outposts of the good old British Empire. But with this war on I must say I was hoping to do my bit towards kicking Hitler out of France and Belgium. My father was in France, you know. Led his men on the Somme in the last show. Lost a hand, shrapnel in his head, still a marvellous soldier. Adored by all his men. Well, I had rather hoped to follow in his footsteps. A bit conceited that, I suppose. But there it is – that’s what I had hoped.’
‘And what does he think about it?’ Elise asked.
‘Oh, he’s not with us any longer.’ He drew in breath sharply. ‘No – dead and gone these last five years – rest his soul. Poor old father – never quite recovered. But he used to talk about it till the end: tell us about his men and the times they had. Made one bloody proud, you know! I should like to think I could make him proud of me.’
‘Much as I should like to think otherwise, I’m afraid you have every chance of seeing active service out here,
’ Elise said.
‘Maybe.’ He sounded doubtful, disappointed even. ‘But if the Japs are rash enough to try anything, it would be too bloody onesided to make it worthwhile. They’re just not up to it, are they?’
‘I don’t think you should dismiss them so lightly.’ Against her better judgement Elise allowed herself to be drawn into the argument. She had heard the view expressed before that the Japs were a race of short-sighted, pot-bellied dwarfs who need not be taken seriously and she disagreed with it absolutely. ‘I’ve met a good few Japs in Hong Kong – barbers, shop-keepers, photographers – they’re everywhere. And they’re not fools, I assure you. They’re shrewd and they’re crafty and I personally don’t trust them an inch.’
‘You’re letting them worry you, Elise! You mustn’t let them worry you!’
His hand reached out to cover hers; she tried to move away, but too late. His palm was warm, smooth, like his face; his fingers stroked the back of her hand gently. For some reason the intimacy of the gesture made her shiver, but gaining courage he slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her towards him.
‘Cold?’ he asked.
‘No.’ She tried to pull away but his grasp was deceptively tight. There was no way she could pretend it was accidental, no opportunity to laugh it off. ‘John … Captain Grimly …’
‘The Japs will be no match for our men. Just leave it to us …’
She saw someone moving along the deck and – realising how it would appear to anyone coming upon them – she twisted sharply against his arm.
‘Let go of me, please!’
He jumped as though he had been shot and although it was dark his face and neck flamed scarlet. ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to …’
‘Look, Captain Grimly, I don’t want to be unkind, but I do think you ought to stop following me about. It’s causing me quite a lot of embarrassment.’
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was tight, hurt and oddly indignant. ‘ I was only trying to make a difficult voyage more bearable for you. I know how nervous you must be and as a soldier and a man of the world I wanted to reassure you …’