‘Are you my daddy?’
‘I don’t think so, Gingernut. Not unless there was a big mistake made.’
He and his pal winked.
‘We’ll call your mum over the tannoy. What’s your name?’
‘What’s yours anyway, mister?’
‘Cheeky. Yours first.’
‘Nia Josephine Roberts.’
‘Comical little miss, aren’t you? Best get them to call for Mrs Roberts.’
But Ailsa was here already. Fierce, protective Ailsa, who snatched her lamb from the arms of the military, and then remembered to be grateful to the friendly-eyed private, who said, ‘There you are, Mrs Roberts. No harm done. Gave you a dickens of a turn, I should think.’
Ailsa felt fit to faint in the uproar, and Nia, clamped to her with arms and legs, chin hooked over her shoulder, suddenly weighed like lead, causing her mother to stagger. The band music drifted away, leaving only the frail filament of the women’s singing, until they too gave up and watched in silence as their ship drew out.
‘Saw my dada,’ Nia told her mother, speaking around the thumb she had wedged between her lips.
‘You can’t have. He’s in Egypt. Waiting for us.’
‘Did so see him.’
‘There you are – get down now. You’re too big for Mami to carry.’
Ailsa crouched to straighten the green velvet coat that Nia wore with matching leggings and a darker green bonnet that made her look like a miniature Robin Hood. From the bonnet, excitable tendrils of ginger hair curled.
Now the tugs had led them out into the centre of the harbour. The wives turned away from the rails, drying their eyes, blowing their noses. It was an adventure, after all, leaving behind the stint and dreariness and fog. Something new. No rationing in Egypt: cans of peaches in the NAAFI, as many as you could eat. Sunshine and beaches: almost a holiday camp, they’d been assured. Ailsa winced at the jolly bellowing that passed for conversation as these sensible souls girded up their loins and began to knit the bondings that would make life livable on the Empire Glory. She held Nia to her side, watching another troopship, the Empire Sunderland, move into port. The troops were all on deck, sailing home from the Far East, cheering themselves into harbour and home.
The women of the Empire Glory waved to the men of the Sunderland. Five hundred raw conscripts and regulars kept segregated on a forward deck of the Empire Glory called out to the tanned and euphoric homeward-bound men, who taunted them about their pale and pasty skin. White knees! White knees! they bawled, among other catcalls, more obscene. The ships slid past one another so closely that Ailsa made out individual boyish faces. If they were returning from tours of duty in the Far East, they would have come through the Suez Canal, from the panting humidity of Singapore or Malaya, postings Joe dreaded. No place for kiddies, he’d said. I couldn’t have my Nia exposed to that.
Nia stared. The world was too big. Too grey, the sea and the cloud. Her brain swelled, trying to take it in. On the bus the conductor would dingdong the bell and let you off at your stop. Trains, smelling tastily of egg-sandwich, opened friendly doors at stations. In silence Nia laid hold on Mami’s body and wrapped her arms round its solidity.
The womenfolk drifted down to nest in their cabins; the troops were tannoyed to their muster. When a white-coated official reminded Ailsa that the time had come to go below decks, she nodded but lingered, taking deep lungfuls of salty air. The ship’s engine throbbed up through the one creature that she and Nia made together. The coarse camaraderie of her fellow wives in the bowels of the troopship held no appeal. But they were all right: good sorts. What a frightful snob I’ve become since my marriage, Ailsa thought, and quailed. Folk who wouldn’t read a book to save their lives: what did she have to say to them or they to her? The irony was that it had been because Ailsa had read books that she’d disdained the petty and artificial distinctions of class that made Britain what it was – and voted Labour, what’s more, in the first election of her life.
Not quite got round to telling Joe yet, she thought, and smiled. Buck up, she told herself. Only a fortnight and you’ll be with him. You’ll see the Pyramids and other wonders beyond your wildest dreams. ‘Go down now, Mami,’ Nia moaned.
Only two bunks were left: upper and lower beds next to the rasping air conditioning. And when the queasiness came over her, Ailsa was forced to swap with her daughter to take the lower bunk, throwing Nia into hysterics until a Nice Lady in uniform came in and forced another woman to swap her coveted bed with a porthole.
‘We shall see the flying fishes, dearie,’ the Nice Lady told Nia, as Ailsa lay languishing.
Nia glanced away from the powdered, fragrant face to the porthole. In her mind, goldfish swam across the sky.
‘Yes, and you shall see the porpoises! What do you think of that? Nice pretty porpoises playing in the blue, blue Mediterranean Sea!’
The Nice Lady was clearly finding the sceptical Nia hard going. She straightened up, to Nia’s relief, for the heavy bosom and the perfume-waft filled her with inexplicable gloom. The Nice Lady asked the time but no one in the cabin owned a watch.
‘Well, never mind. The natives will trade you one for a few ciggies. Don’t let them swindle you.’
‘What else?’ asked Nia.
‘Pardon me?’
‘What else will we be seeing?’
‘Oh – well – let’s see. We shall see the apes on the Rock. At Gib, of course. Jolly old Gib.’
‘That’s a posting I would really like,’ said one of the women sharing the cabin, and sighed. ‘Brean,’ she added.
‘Babs. Bound for Fanara.’
‘And talking of rocks …’
The Nice Lady mentioned rock buns for tea, at which Ailsa retched.
‘I’m hardly ever icky,’ said Babs. ‘Seasoned vets us.’
Whereupon the ship gave an ironic lurch which had them all except Nia heaving over buckets. She pinched her nose between thumb and finger and wished for a peg. It frightened her to see Ailsa, grey and limp, float off beyond the power of tantrums to control her.
‘What’s to be done with Tiddler?’ asked Babs. ‘Aren’t you feeling umpty at all, dear?’ She spoke as if seasickness would be a convenient playpen into which Nia could be deposited for safekeeping.
The Nice Lady said there was no help for it, she’d take Nia with her and keep her occupied. She reassured the mother that she’d soon get her sea legs, in a tone that told Ailsa, Buck up, we’re not even in the Bay of Biscay yet, you’ll wish yourself back in the English Channel before too long, my lass.
*
Going to eat rock-buns, they were, up there somewhere. Well, let them go then and leave Ailsa to die in peace.
The next time Ailsa opened her eyes, Nia was bustling out with her golly under her arm, without a backward glance. She’s punishing me, thought Ailsa, oh well. Once assured of quiet and privacy, she felt more herself and propped herself on a couple of pillows, taking sips of water.
But then the door opened again. The officious woman with the chins was back.
‘What language does she speak, Mrs Roberts?’
‘Well – English.’
‘What, all the time?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Just checking. Funny little character. Cheerio.’
Ailsa knew what she meant. Nia’s carroty hair and grey-green eyes gave her a fey look. Her eyebrows and lashes were so fair that they hardly showed except when she blushed. Blushes were explosions of blood into Nia’s pearl-pale face. She looked like an albino and talked back in a mixture of English and Welsh that sounded plain daft. Comical at her age, but Joe set great store by what he called ‘well-spokenness’. Even so, Ailsa took umbrage at the woman’s saying like that, ‘Funny little character’, inwardly denying that Nia was a pickle.
From the first Ailsa had melted at the intensities of Joe’s Valleys lilt. His first language was Welsh, a fact he seemed ashamed of. But you’re bilingual, Joe! Oh no, he’d said, blushing, Welsh doesn�
��t count, it’s low. She’d made him teach her intimate words to share as the little language of their love. Ti’n werth y byd, cariad carried more emotion than ‘You’re the world to me.’ But in Joe’s mind his tongue betrayed the threadbare poverty in which he’d grown up and the use of the same tea leaves twice over.
They seemed to be entering, if not calmer waters, a more steady unease. Ailsa fished out Joe’s photograph and looked into the wartime face of Joe as he had been in the Western Desert, muscular arms folded, eyes crinkling, his funny buck teeth in that small mouth, a soft mop of hair that was licensed because they had no Brylcreme in the Western Desert.
Whatever was that black thing on the sheet? A dead spider? Ailsa flicked at it with her nails. No, it was not alive: just something embroidered on to the sheets, to stop you filching them presumably, as if you would want to go off with such linen – linen that carried ancient stains neither boiling nor bleach had been able to remove.
One more sip: that’s right, stay down. It did. She eased on to her left side and prepared to doze. The ventilator grid snored as if a fat man were sleeping there, some inveterate wife-waker; the ship’s engine thrummed through her entire body. Ailsa opened her eyes. Another black spot on the edge of the pillow. It could not be, but was, a swastika.
*
Nia, placed on a seat bolted to the floor and told to show good manners, picked up her bun and brought it down with a thump on the table. Soon a couple of big girls had joined in the din, whacking cakes on their plates. Nia slid down under the table and crawled to the end, face level with a line of red sandals and white ankle-socks. Her cot sheet was clamped between her teeth and her golly was stuffed down the waistband of her skirt.
Bolting down a corridor, Nia felt the thrill of escape polluted by the shock of isolation. Through the tannoy came a male voice instructing all Other Ranks wives and children to attend for life boat drill on the deck aft.
The deck aft?
Nia ran against a tide of women and children forcing their way up the narrow corridor. Pelting back the way she had come, she ran straight into the hands of the Nice Lady. Dragged up to the deck, Nia grizzled quietly and made her limbs go limp and her lips pouty, as the lady struggled to get her into a life jacket. Finally she was handed over to Mrs Brean, who was instructed to keep a firm hold on her, as she was a demon.
‘I won’t run away,’ Nia confided to Babs.
‘How do I know that?’
‘You’re not nasty.’ Nia, in a tender gesture her daddy often used, cupped Mrs Brean’s cheek in her palm, just softly, for a moment, so that the woman went still and gazed at the kiddie, surprised.
‘Ah, I expect you want your mum, darling, don’t you?’
‘I won’t be trouble.’ Nia shook her head emphatically.
‘Course you won’t, pet.’
The softened lady melted altogether as Nia raised her arms to allow the life jacket to be slipped off over her head. She held on to the back of Mrs Brean’s skirt as she turned to attend to her own brood, mentioning to a fellow wife the possibility of tombola later and something nice to – you know – when they’d got the kiddies to bed. Babs gestured with her hand, pouring a series of imaginary drinks into her mouth at top speed, to her companions’ amusement. She did not feel Nia let go and slip back towards the door leading, Nia thought, to the cabins. She ducked beneath a cordon marking off one area of the deck from another. Khaki men in rows further along were being barked at as they struggled into life belts.
Down some stairs, up more. Her sandal-soles drummed on metal as Nia beetled along one passageway and down another. Hand over hand up a ladder. Panic raced along behind but Nia would not allow it to catch up. She burst through a half open metal door that silently closed behind her.
High up Nia stood on an iron platform, with railings, suspended above a gigantic stench. It rose from a room vast as an aircraft hangar she’d visited with her daddy, where she’d marvelled as the entrance was rolled back like a curtain and from the oily guts of the dark building a plane had taxied out. Was there a plane in the ship? Her father loved the oily insides of an aeroplane. Taking Golly out of her waistband, she showed him the sight. He waggled his sticky-outy arms, eyes wide in disbelief.
There was no plane.
The hangar went on for dark, windowless miles as far as Nia could see, dimly lit by lights on the walls. A noise like thunder. Kitbags lay on a net, strung by swaying ropes from iron hooks attached to girders. Nia felt sorry for the kitbags. When her father undid the toggles, you could dig out his wash bag and unroll it, pulling out his comb, greasy from his lovely head. And his razor, flannel and nail clippers, each of which was interestingly dear to her. The kitbags hung above the midget men below. Everything hung from something. For the floor was awash with vileness. Men lay in hammocks, their heads hanging over the sides. Beside each was a bucket with a mop.
Nia pulled out her abhorred ribbon and held it out over the void. Then she dropped it into the dark stink, watching it fall on to a metal table with three enormous kettles on it, their spouts all pointing forward. She sent her kirby-grip after the ribbon and felt the relief that came when your hair stopped pulling tight. But where was the door? It had somehow become a wall. She panicked; pelted up and down on the platform. Even when she found the iron door, Nia was too puny to pull it open.
It opened from the other side. Nia clung to the man, sheltering under the peak of his cap. She would like such an important cap. His lah-de-dah voice marked him as an officer – even she knew that. Everything would be all right now. She rode in his arms away from the noise and foulness. His name was Alex, he said, and what was her name? Was it Monkey?
No, she said. I am Miss Nia Roberts.
Oh, I thought it was Monkey. Are you sure?
They joked and he jounced her up and down and tossed her in the air and caught her, and Nia laughed with a high pitched squeal, looking anxiously from side to side as they navigated the labyrinth.
The Nice Lady, when found, seemed obscurely more irked with the man in the peaked cap than with the stray child.
‘It is beyond a joke,’ she said.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’
When he went away with a wave of his hand, Nia dismissed and forgot him.
‘I hope you’re well pleased with yourself, madam,’ said the Nice Lady.
‘Yes, thank you.’ Somewhat quenched, Nia clung to the hand that grasped hers.
The Nice Lady looked down sharply, alert for insolence but uncertain of irony.
3
The cabin was empty but for a shadowy girl tugging back the sheets on the only unclaimed bunk. Ailsa passively observed the stranger’s movements as she dragged a comb through dark, tangled hair without bothering to look in a mirror, bobby pin between her teeth. Seeing that Ailsa was awake, she came over to crouch by her bunk.
‘Feeling rotten?’
‘A bit grim.’
‘I’ve got some salts you sniff. Somewhere. Hang on.’ She rummaged in her bag. ‘No idea why they work but they do seem to help.’
Ailsa breathed in peppermint balm. The stranger’s eyes were liquid and dark, iris melting into pupil, beneath the wings of her eyebrows. Terribly intense but arresting and oddly familiar. An ugly-beautiful face with a large mouth and perfect teeth; skin cinnamon-brown. I know you from somewhere. Joe would have called her a darkie: how odious of him, and Ailsa was cross with her husband and a bit ashamed, although he wasn’t there and would have kept quiet if he had been.
‘What I do is stay up on deck as long as I can and get the benefit of the air until I’ve got my sea-legs. Think you could make it if I gave you a hand?’
‘Honestly, I daren’t risk it. You go.’
‘I’m Mona, by the way. Jacobs.’
‘Ailsa Roberts.’
‘Now, what can I get you?’
Her voice was cultivated, every sound precisely pronounced. Toffs’ English. Ailsa lay back against the pillow and craved Lucozade. The girl was no sooner
gone than she was back with cherry Corona and ice cubes; ciggies such as Ailsa had never seen before, in a cylindrical tin with its own opener. The ice cubes brought relief. Ailsa’s stomach calmed and the ciggies did the rest. And they cost next to nothing, said Mona. Duty-free. Life will look up now!
‘Wherever did you get all this?’
Ah, so that was it. An officer’s renegade wife, Mona Jacobs was proud of being a misfit amongst those horrors up there and clearly ashamed of her husband’s rank. They were socialists, she and her old man, and they wouldn’t dream of living it up in a family cabin, knowing, as Ben said, looking at the lists, that there were pregnant women travelling who were packed in like bloody sardines. Can you believe that? So that’s it, Ailsa thought incredulously: you are slumming it with us hoi polloi. You think you’re an angel visiting us from heaven.
A prattling angel. This prohibition on fraternising between officers and ‘men’ was worse than the Montagues and the Capulets, but the visitor didn’t give a damn about small-minded idiots, why should she? Not every day you met someone you could talk to. Anyway they weren’t in the RAF, thank God, were they? They hadn’t joined up and signed their lives away like mugs, and just because she was some bod’s wife didn’t mean she answered to his name, rank and number. You do, you know, Ailsa thought, looking down, biting her lip so as not to laugh. How did the husband like being referred to as some bod or a mug? How old was Mona? Mid-twenties perhaps but adolescent in manner, wearing slacks, her loose way of carrying herself a slovenly protest against deportment. She gave Ailsa her full attention, with a close, gentle gaze that only reinforced a tickling sense of déjà vu. They stared at one another for a moment.
‘Got it! You’re the motor bike girl? Aren’t you?’
It all came rushing back. The cabin was full of the memory of mad girls in wartime flocking in and out of the flats at Brewers’ Green, the dawn chorus of their voices (on the razzle all night) echoing along the alley, their heels clicking (for their shoe leather was the best), the glossy tops of their heads gleaming in the sun. And all spied from above, through geranium blossom with its cool rainy scent.
Into Suez Page 3