by Fiona Shaw
‘Phew,’ he said.
That was all; that was it. The Richardsons had gone, and like fugitives who’ve evaded capture, a delirium rose in them that was irresistible and absolute. Their laughter exploded. It took them like a seventh wave, crashing through so that they collapsed to the floor, his hand finding her face, her arm across his chest. Limbs flailing and weak, they laughed in the darkness till they wept. They laughed in the darkness till Meg was faint and light, as if she’d just come out of a fever. She couldn’t move, or speak; she couldn’t think. She was suspended above her life: above the ship and the war, above George and her marriage, and the Richardsons and her mother. Then silently, ineluctably, hand to hand, mouth to mouth, moving by touch and gauge, they kissed, and kissed again. She felt his cheek, wet with tears, soft with fine stubble, and his mouth, and his chin and ears. His hands were on her face, and her shoulders; they were on her breasts.
There on the hard linoleum floor, they tumbled in the dark, urgent and exhilarated, tugging at buttons, pulling at rough khaki and smooth stockings. Meg’s heart was a drum and her blood rushed. She reached and pulled him down on to her, butting her head into his shoulder, wanting his weight, wanting the press of his hips. Then she felt with her fingers till she found him, so hard and full that she gasped, because she didn’t know men did this; and she drew him in to her, crying out because it hurt, even while she wanted it. Right now she wanted it more than anything else in the world. She held him and he moved inside her; she held him and cried out, and they became their own wave.
Afterwards, everything was very still. Slowly, reluctantly, she returned to herself, back into her cabin, and her body, back to what had just happened.
‘Oh God,’ she said quietly.
Her hand lay flat on the soldier’s chest and his heart beat against her fingers. After a time he lifted and kissed them, then he let go and she heard his boots creak.
‘I’ll put on the light,’ he said.
‘No!’ she cried, her voice panicked. ‘Don’t! Don’t go,’ and the words shocked her because they came from deep down, out of something much older than this sharp passion.
‘I have to,’ he said gently, and a moment later the cabin swam in dim light.
She stood and in the mirror she saw herself, and him behind her. His face was grave, and so was hers; next to the mirror was George in his frame, and he seemed to Meg like someone she had never seen before.
‘I don’t know your name,’ she said.
‘Are you all right?’ he said.
‘You have to go,’ she said, and she wanted it to be a question, but it was impossible.
‘Sergeant Jim Cooper,’ he said.
She turned around to face him.
‘I’ll be married a week from now.’
He nodded.
‘And I’ll be fighting, like as not.’
‘I don’t want you to go, Jim Cooper. We weren’t found, and then this happened.’
She stepped close and pulled his tunic straight and fastened the buttons. Picking his belt off the floor, she pulled it around his waist. He didn’t take his eyes from her face.
‘Just your hair now,’ she said and she watched as he bent to the mirror and with a lick to his fingers, smoothed it into place. Then he touched her cheek softly.
‘What should we say?’
She didn’t reply; only kissed him on the lips, unlocked the door and looked quickly each way to make sure it was clear. Then he was gone.
Afterwards Meg slept, for five minutes, or an hour, or three hours, she didn’t know, and when she woke, she was famished. It was imperative, like a child’s hunger. She must have food, and she remembered her mother’s cake, baked for Meg’s wedding. They’d eaten a piece each before Meg left, then her mother had divided the rest between them. She was to keep her chunk for her wedding day, but now she opened her trunk, unwrapped it and ate nearly all of it. It quelled the hunger though she still felt hollow. Hollow and tender. She touched herself between the legs and her fingers came away a little bloody. Alice said this always happened to you the first time. It was how your husband knew you’d kept yourself for him. But the man who had made her bloody was not the man she was to marry. The man who had made her bloody she would probably never see again. She looked at George’s photo and placed it face down on the dressing table.
She needed to tidy up, collect herself and go and show herself, before the Richardsons came back with a deputation. The bathroom was cold and in the mirror Meg saw a pale-faced girl who blushed when she caught her eye. She ran a basin of water and gently she wiped herself with a flannel, wincing a little with the salt. The blood coloured the basin water pink.
She would have changed her clothes, but it might have invited a comment from Mrs Richardson. So she only changed her underwear. She thought: I shouldn’t be doing this; I should be ashamed. George’s photo looked uncomfortable, set down like that, like a creature fallen over that couldn’t get to its legs, so she placed it upright again. Then she brushed her hair, powdered her face, did her lipstick, and dabbed a little perfume on her wrists in case she smelt of something. Tidying up the cabin, she set George’s photo glass down again. She didn’t feel ashamed; not one bit. But she didn’t need to rub his face in it.
The lounge was nearly empty, only two people at the far side. Meg sat down in the opposite corner and took out the letter to her mother:
We are six days out and any minute now we will be safe from U-boats. Mr Richardson says this is a fact. The Richardsons have been very kind and I take many of my meals with them. The weather is quite warm now. I have sat out on deck more. At the back of the ship there are deckchairs, all put in lines by a steward for the morning and higgledy-piggledy by lunch. I am getting nervous about meeting George and being married so quickly and wish you could be with me, and Alice as my maid-of-honour. Also I wish Pa and Will were there. But I am sure I will be fine when it comes to it, only a little sad to be on my own.
She wrote the names ‘Pa’ and ‘Will’ slowly, like a child who hasn’t been long at its letters. Her ma wouldn’t like reading them, and Meg would never have said such a thing if she were at home. She would never have dared. Pa and Will; Pa and Will: the names they never spoke; the names she had whispered to herself all those years.
The Yardleys is very nice and I am being careful, to make it last …
She sniffed her wrist. What was he doing now, Sergeant Jim Cooper? Was he thinking about her? She stared at the sea, the steepling waves; but she saw none of it and was lost in her thoughts when the Richardsons found her and, taking an armchair on each side, hemmed her in.
‘Meg, dear. We’ve been so worried, ever since lunch and …’
‘I’m fine,’ Meg said. ‘Look. Arms and legs.’
‘Don’t know what you have been playing at, but I saw people dead in the Blitz,’ Mr Richardson said. ‘They didn’t go to the shelter, didn’t play by the rules, so no one knew, next thing was …’ and he pulled a finger across his throat.
‘John, please.’
‘I’ve carried my life jacket everywhere,’ Meg said.
‘John’s being melodramatic,’ Mrs Richardson said. ‘But we came to find you. We knocked on your door.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’ Meg realised she’d been stupid not to work out her story earlier.
‘I was going to speak to the Captain,’ Mrs Richardson went on, ‘but Mr Richardson said there was no point in worrying everybody before we were sure you were missing.’
Meg looked down, studying the table’s polished surface. She felt a blush rise on her neck as she remembered Mr Richardson’s actual words. ‘I’m sorry you were so worried.’
‘Only you left the table in something of a …’ Mr Richardson said.
‘Would you mind,’ Meg said, breaking in, ‘if I spoke to Mrs Richardson privately?’
Meg caught a swift look of gratification on Mrs Richardson’s face. Her husband nodded shortly and walked over to the window. Meg leaned forward.
>
‘Margery?’ she said in a low voice. ‘Can I ask your advice?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s ladies’ trouble.’
‘That’s what happened over lunch?’
Meg nodded. ‘It was very sudden, and I’m not due for a week.’
‘Are you still?’ Mrs Richardson said.
Meg shook her head.
Mrs Richardson leaned over and patted Meg’s hand. ‘I expect it’s anxiety; about the marriage. It can have a strange effect.’
Meg nodded, trying to adopt a suitable expression.
‘We won’t say any more about it.’ Mrs Richardson gave Meg’s hand a second pat.
‘You’re very kind,’ Meg said.
With a wave to her husband, Mrs Richardson sat back in her chair.
‘Wind’s getting up,’ Mr Richardson said, taking his seat again. ‘I’d put it at 30 knots.’
‘There’s to be no more said,’ said Mrs Richardson.
‘Margaret’s decreed, has she?’ Mr Richardson raised his eyebrows. ‘I only hope you weren’t in your cabin after all, because we made the most frightful din.’
And he smiled a dangerous smile. But Meg had something to guard and she had discovered that she could be steely too; so she only smiled in return.
She’s got her nose against the window but all there is, is black.
‘Dark as the dead,’ she says, like Aunt Ada.
The window is so cold, it makes her sneeze. Somebody knocks on the back door. Meg listens for her ma pushing her chair back and going to open it. They knock again, but her ma makes no noise. She doesn’t move her chair back to stand and she doesn’t open the door.
‘There’s someone knocking,’ Meg says.
She knows it isn’t Will, or her pa, because they wouldn’t knock. But it might be Mrs Gray or Mrs Gilmer and maybe they might have seen Will or maybe they might have a bun or a biscuit, because sometimes they did have.
‘I’m hungry,’ Meg says.
She slides off the chair and runs into the kitchen.
‘I’m hungry,’ she says again.
Her ma still sits and she doesn’t answer. There is nothing on the table except her ma’s hands. Meg pulls at the door curtain and climbs around it and bangs back on the door with her fist.
‘I’m here,’ she calls out. ‘I’m here.’
But they must have gone, because nobody answers.
‘They won’t be back,’ her ma says.
Meg turns but her ma’s face still doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t smile or frown, and it doesn’t look at Meg.
‘It’s tea time,’ Meg says, ‘and it’s dark outside; that’s when my pa comes home from making his tables and chairs. And he’s got Will too. You know he has.’
She gets out cutlery and puts it on the kitchen table, knives and forks in their places and a spoon extra for her. Will teases her because she gets them the wrong way about, but she won’t mind him teasing her today when he is back from the adventure. Then cups and saucers and last of all the salt cellar. Where her ma’s arms are, she puts the fork and knife each side. The table is ready. She waits a moment in case they come back home just then, before going upstairs.
The bedroom is very cold, and so is the bed. She pulls Will’s pyjamas from under the pillow and puts them on the counterpane, a pile of arms and legs. There’s a noise downstairs and she stops; but there aren’t any voices, she doesn’t hear Will’s shout. They might be back any time because it’s dark now, so the adventure must be over. She hopes it will be soon because she is very hungry. She makes Will’s pyjamas into a boy shape, ready and waiting, and pulling the counterpane over her, curls up beside them and closes her eyes.
The rest of that day, and the next, and the one after that, as the sea remained calm and the weather grew warmer, as the convoy steamed closer to Africa, and George, and for all those soldiers buried deep in the bows, closer to the war, Meg waited to meet Jim Cooper again. She was sure she would; it was a conviction, lodged deep in her gut and she stayed prepared. How carefully she dressed, in the blouse with the decorated mother-of-pearl buttons; in stockings that she rinsed every night; in the pretty knickers Alice had given her with a giggle for her wedding day. She rinsed those, too, each night, and pulled them on, still damp in the seams, in the morning.
‘Smells like a tart’s boudoir,’ Mr Richardson said when she came to breakfast the day after.
‘John!’ Mrs Richardson said. ‘It’s only Yardleys.’
But Meg didn’t care. Because eating, chatting to other passengers, even sleeping, she was ready. Several times a day she ran a basin of salt water, and gently she washed. She’d never been so tender with herself before. She dressed from her meagre wardrobe with Jim Cooper in her mind, as if he would find her again and notice the pattern on her pearl buttons or that she had her hair in braids.
She imagined him everywhere. Imagined him appearing, as if from nowhere: there in the dining room as she buttered her toast; his head around the bathroom door smiling at her naked in the bath; or bent over her while she slept, waking her with a kiss. When she was little, she’d thought God was like a Mr Punch who could see you whatever you were doing and who might pop up anywhere, just when you weren’t ready. Now Jim Cooper had become her God and she dreamed and dreamed of him catching her unawares.
But it was Mr Richardson she had to look out for. He was like a wolf and he knew she was hiding something. If she wasn’t careful, he’d have her by the scruff and shake her till she dropped it. So she cultivated other acquaintances, sitting beside Reverend Lindsell while he taught her gin rummy, and listening to Miss Lindsell’s stories of adventures in the Holy Lands, travelling with her brother.
‘You’re so lucky to be engaged,’ Miss Lindsell said. She knitted, as she spoke, with great application.
‘Mrs Gilmer used to say that knitting calmed the soul,’ Meg said.
Miss Lindsell nodded. ‘Very wise, and true for those of us who need to calm our souls. Old maids like me. But you’ll be wed in a week. There’s time enough for you to knit later.’
Meg looked at her lap. George would be so at ease in here, with the cigars and the taking of tea. She should school herself to it because very soon she would marry him, and she’d be willing to bet that she’d learn to knit sooner than Miss Lindsell thought. She’d bear his children and keep his house, and her life would be ordered and safe. No one would rush from the table in horror, or leave the house with no breakfast, or get lost.
But her new, fledgling self, the one that had wrestled with Jim Cooper on the cabin floor, didn’t care a fig about knitting, or safety. That new Meg wanted to stand in the middle of the lounge and laugh out loud.
On the eighth day Meg came to lunch to find a small crowd gathered around the Richardsons’ table and Mr Richardson holding forth.
‘It’ll be given out later today; we’re out of U-boat range,’ Mr Richardson was saying, clipped and sure.
‘How do you know?’ Miss Lindsell said.
‘Right place at the right time,’ Mr Richardson said. ‘I heard it from the horse’s mouth.’
There was a flurry of clapping and he went on. ‘We are beyond reach. Beyond their fuelling range. If you don’t believe me, look out of the window. Our escort has turned back and we are now officially on a pleasure cruise.’
People looked out of the window and there was laughter and more clapping. Meg watched Mrs Richardson lean across and kiss her husband. The stewards brought in trays of champagne.
‘Listening at other people’s doors,’ Meg muttered.
‘We don’t have to carry our lifejackets with us any longer,’ Miss Lindsell said, handing Meg a glass. ‘Champagne, courtesy of the Richardsons.’
‘You wouldn’t know there was a war, on this ship, except for all those soldiers up in the front,’ Meg said.
‘Your fiancé will be anxious, waiting for you. A shame you can’t let him know you’re safe,’ said Miss Lindsell.
‘Yes,’ Meg said. ‘
It’s a shame.’
She saw George ahead of her, pacing to and fro in the desert and checking on his watch – he was always checking on his watch – and a man on a horse galloping towards him with a note in his hand.
‘If we are still in Cape Town, might I come to the wedding?’
‘Yes,’ Meg said. ‘Of course.’
There was a party atmosphere on the ship that evening. A toast was made to the captain and officers and someone sang a ditty about devils and deep blue seas. Meg sat at the Richardsons’ table once again. She had little appetite for the jollity, but she smiled and laughed nevertheless. Mr Richardson was the life and soul. He behaved as though he were somehow responsible for the ship’s newfound safety. Meg caught him watching her now and then, but she had put on her plainest dress and forsworn the Yardleys. He had nothing to fault her with.
‘You seem better,’ Mrs Richardson said. She nodded towards her husband. ‘He does mean well. He’s just protective.’
Meg nodded too, then frowned. ‘I don’t need his protection,’ she said, but she caught Mrs Richardson’s expression and checked herself from saying more.
Later Meg walked alone outside. The moon was full and when the clouds parted, the ship was bathed in silver. The air had a foreign warmth and she took off her cardigan to feel the wind on her arms. She leaned against the rail and looked out to the horizon. The ship seemed so still in the sea, as though it too was suspended between one life and another. She wanted someone else to stand here with her; someone else to drink the air and wonder. She shut her eyes and though she knew he wouldn’t be there, she couldn’t stop a tiny hope.
‘Jim Cooper,’ she said to herself and again, louder: ‘Jim Cooper.’
But soon she would be safe and married, and he would be gone.
10.30 pm.
Dear Ma,
There’s been a party tonight because we’re safe at last. Mr R tells us it’s definite because we’re beyond the 600-mile point. He overheard the captain say so. He says the U-boats can’t get this far, because they haven’t got enough fuel.