A Stone's Throw (8 page)

‘You need to come with me,’ Appleby said again.

She was puzzled. They were on a lifeboat; there was nowhere to go.

‘Come with you where?’

‘We’ve been getting things organised. Supplies, blankets, and so forth. And it’s come to our attention that you’re the only …’ He hesitated. ‘You’re the only female on the boat.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well …’

There was something he’d rather not say. She waited, and after a moment he pressed on. ‘As such, as the only female, certain provision needs to be made.’

Meg could feel herself blush.

‘So we think, Lieutenant Williams and I, that you’d be more comfortable in the stern. We think it’s more suitable.’

Meg kept her eyes down as she followed Appleby but she knew the men were watching her, all of them but Mr Richardson and the dead soldier, laid out now on the boat floor.

‘Bad luck at sea,’ someone muttered, but loud enough for her to hear. When she looked up, every man but one averted his eyes. Every man but one. Meg stopped and stared.

‘Jim!’ she mouthed and the man she stared at put his finger to his lips.

She looked away, her heart banging in her chest. He was alive. How had she not seen him before? There he was in the middle of the boat, and when she ventured a second look, she saw that there was a makeshift bandage round his brow and that his uniform was sodden, clinging to him. He must have been one of those rescued from the water in the dark.

‘Are you all right?’ she mouthed, putting a hand to her head, and she caught his nod before Appleby turned around.

‘Miss? Is there a problem?’

She shook her head, and sat down at the back of the boat in her appointed place. Jim was here with her. She couldn’t speak to him, and she couldn’t touch him, but she could see him. Even out of the corner of her eye she could see him, his bandage like a flag.

The sun rose into a cloudless sky and the day grew warm. Lieutenant Williams gave an order for the men in wet clothes to strip off to vest and trousers and spread their things to dry. Only Mr Richardson refused to do so, and he sat at the end of the boat like a black crow. Meg pinched her eyes nearly shut, so that
all she could see were shadows. She used to do that when she was a child. She was one shadow, and her mother was another. Now Mr Richardson was just one shadow, and Jim another, and she was alone on this boat, just like she’d always been.

Crouched on the floor beside her the steward opened a large tin can. Dipping with his thumb and forefinger, he plucked out a peach half. Meg opened her eyes and watched him. His gesture was precise and delicate and small, in the middle of this lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, with a dead man on the floor only twenty yards away, and a huge ship sunk, and all these men soaked from the sea and injured, and all of them lost.

With his pocketknife the steward cut the half peach into half again and offered one piece to Meg.

‘Breakfast,’ he said.

She took it, and turned away so he wouldn’t see her tears.

The pieces of peach were passed, one by one, from palm to palm, down the boat. Meg watched and saw Mr Richardson fling his piece to the waves. She watched and saw her lover eat. Then the syrup in the tin can – first to Meg, then the wounded men, then the rest. Again Meg watched, and again she saw her lover drink.

‘Just a sip; just a sip,’ went like an echo down the boat.

After this there was a ship’s biscuit, hard as a brick, with a piece of sardine to wet it, and last of all the beaker of water. Each time the steward served Meg first, and each time she watched Jim eat and drink. She didn’t dare try to catch his eye; it was enough that she could see him. Enough that he was alive.

The can was passed back to the steward and Meg watched
him rinse it in the sea and give it to Lieutenant Williams. The lieutenant sat down beside Meg, jigging the peach tin on his knee. He was nervous, she could see that. After a long moment he set it on the floor and leaned in towards her.

‘The men are going to use the tin,’ he said, pointing to it. He was half-shouting and half-whispering, the wind doing battle with his efforts at discretion.

He paused and she could see that he wanted her to understand something.

‘But obviously we need to make separate arrangements for you. So we’ve earmarked a bucket,’ he said, pressing on, ‘and we’ll hold a piece of canvas around, for your privacy. Might not quite reach, but the men will be ordered to look away. I think you’ll find it’s fairly private.’

Too much had happened; she felt it in her chest. The journey to marry George, and meeting Jim, and the ship sinking, and seeing people die, and now here on this boat, and Jim and Mr Richardson, and being the only woman. She wished she could wrap herself up and hide, or wriggle down beneath the covers. She needed to be alone. And she didn’t know if she could go in that bucket. She just didn’t know if she could do it.

‘All right?’ His voice came to her from a distance and she nodded.

‘Will we be rescued?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said in the voice of a man who is used to being obeyed.

Meg looked out of the back of the boat while the men passed the tin around. She put her hand in the water. It was cold
and dark. She imagined her mother at the kitchen window and George in his desert – the two ends of her journey. Her mother would never get Meg’s letter now. And George? She would marry him, if they were rescued, and so she would be safe.

‘Miss?’ Lieutenant Williams spoke with an air of anticipation. He held out the bucket. ‘We’re ready for you.’

There was the steward holding the canvas, and all the men – it looked to Meg like every man – every one of them looking at her.

She saw Jim and his face was tender, and Mr Richardson, angry and glaring. She couldn’t do it.

‘I don’t need to,’ she said to the lieutenant. ‘I’m sorry. Not now,’ and she turned back to the water again.

She keeps her eyes wide open. Will says you see better in the dark if you keep your eyes wide open
.

Maybe if she goes to sleep, then in the morning he’ll be there on his side of the bed and tomorrow they’ll go to school and her ma will light the stove and she’ll play the morning game with her pa
.

‘
Come back now, Will,’ she says, ‘no more adventure,’ bunching her hands to fists and pushing them under his pillow
.

In the bed she lies with her stockings on. Her ma doesn’t let her wear them in bed, but there isn’t any warm brick and she’s cold, and her ma’s gone outside calling again. So she keeps the stockings on and puts her cardigan over her nightgown
.

If she reaches her hands back behind her, Meg can feel the big brass flower. There’s one on her side and one on Will’s. Her pa calls them
the bold as brass flowers; he sits on the edge of the bed and makes the mattress slope and Will shouts and she laughs because Will nearly falls out. Her pa tells about when he was a boy and how there were five of them in that same bed, nose to tail to nose to tail to nose
.

Will goes to bed after her because he’s bigger and sometimes she’s asleep, though she always tries to keep awake. If she does, then they lie on their backs under the flowers and their feet on the warm bricks and he tells her facts
.

‘
Facts are true things that you learn,’ he tells her. ‘Miss Parker says you can build on things with facts,’ and Meg imagines them like bricks around the bed, one fact on top of the next, and the two of them both safe inside
.

Maybe if she goes to sleep, then he’ll be there tomorrow like always
.

Meg sang:

‘Edward Four, Five, Dick the Bad,

Harrys twain and Ned the lad.

Mary, Lizzie, James the Vain,

Charlie, Charlie, James again.

With her face to the waves she sang and sang, holding her hands over her ears so that all she could hear was her own voice, and she couldn’t think about the lifeboat, or Will, or anything. And when the boat moved forward suddenly, its first thrust tipping Meg down towards the water, she only gripped the boat edge harder and carried on singing to herself. She was high up on her big bed, waiting for Will, waiting alone.

‘Get down, Miss!’

Appleby grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back on to her seat. The boat bucked again and Meg cried out, not because he had hurt her, but because for a moment she had forgotten where she was.

‘Nearly had you in the wet,’ he said, and she looked at him, not understanding.

‘Should make some good ground now,’ he said. ‘We’ve got teams organised, turn and turn about. And they’re strong lads. It’ll keep them fit for fighting.’

There were eight rowers, two on each oar, and with each pull she felt the boat shift.

‘We’ve taken careful bearings, and we reckon we’ll make land in seven days, if we aren’t picked up first,’ Appleby said.

Meg saw that Mr Richardson was sitting only a few feet away now, but when he lifted his head, she thought for a moment it was someone else in his overcoat and with his build, because his face was so changed, yet again, she could barely recognise him. She stared, and he looked right back at her, but she’d swear he didn’t see her. His eyes were wide, but he didn’t blink, and his mouth was open, as if he were about to shout. He had his arms wrapped about like a straight jacket, and when the boat jolted again, the rowers still finding their stride, he didn’t put a hand out to stop himself, but tipped sideways, falling into the soldier beside him.

The soldier pushed him upright, gave him a pat on the back; then Mr Richardson shouted something, his face contorted, and the soldier half-rose and turned, angry-faced,
before checking himself and sitting down again.

‘Lost his wife last night, poor man,’ the officer said.

‘Yes,’ she said, and she saw Mrs Richardson standing in the lifeboat and she saw the boat go down.

Meg watched the rowers for a moment, their back and forth – because they had found their stride – a lovely, definite movement in the middle of this endless sea. She envied them their sense of purpose. Also she was cold, despite the sun.

‘Could I row?’ she said.

Appleby looked at her surprised.

‘You’d like to?’

She nodded.

‘All right. It’s a half hour stretch. We’ll put you with Seaman Merrick in the next team,’ he said. ‘Strongest man on the boat. It’ll compensate.’

As she took her place twenty minutes later, she caught Jim’s eye; she’d have smiled at him, except that Mr Richardson was staring at her. Though if he knew who she was, he gave no sign of it.

She put her hands on the oar: the wood was smooth, and still warm from the last man. The other seven rowers sat ready, Seaman Merrick beside her, and when the officer gave the order, she pulled with them.

Keeping her eyes on the oar, she paced herself with her neighbour, leaning forward into the motion as he did, then pulling back. At first it was difficult. She got the timing wrong, and the oar jarred against her. But the seaman was steady as a rock and after a few minutes she got the hang of it. Her heart
beat harder and she felt the tug in her muscles and the warmth in her hands. They would get there, get there, get there, and George in his desert would be waiting for her; and she would marry him, marry him, marry him and he would put the ring on her finger, and her food on the table, and her babies in her belly, and Will, and Will, and Will …

Lean and pull, lean and pull: don’t think, don’t wish, don’t cry.

‘Nicely,’ she heard the seaman say. ‘Nicely for a lady.’

By the time their stint was up Meg was exhausted. Though she was well-used to physical work, her shoulders, back and arms ached, and she’d raised blisters on the palms of her hands. The waves roiled beneath the boat and as she stood, her legs felt unsteady. The next group of rowers was ready and she followed Seaman Merrick off the bench. She noticed Mr Richardson moving forward to take his place and she thought him very brave.

‘Well done,’ someone said to her, and some of the men applauded. When she caught Jim’s eye, he winked at her and she couldn’t stop a small smile. Already the next men were seated at their oars and she turned to clamber her way back.

The blow laid Meg to the floor, a fist punched in between her shoulder blades, robbing her of air, crunching her ribs. She fell and a voice followed her down, spitting words like shrapnel.

‘Bitch! Whore! I saw you making eyes. You should be dead.’

He was on top of her, his hands at her throat, and she was choking, she couldn’t breathe, her head pressed against the
floor. There were shouts and the boards shifted and creaked, but the voice went on like poison in her ear.

‘My wife dead! It should be you. You in that boat. You drowned!’

Then someone else was shouting, and the lifeboat rocked, catching the waves broadside with a hard slap sound that banged through her head. But he was doing more than shouting; he was roaring and Meg knew his voice because she had heard it raised once before. Only now Jim roared with rage.

She felt Mr Richardson’s fingers pulled away from her neck and his weight yanked off her. And when she opened her eyes there was Jim with his fist raised.

‘Don’t,’ she said, and all her fear was carried in the cry. Fear for her life in this war, in this lifeboat; fear because she desired the man she couldn’t marry, and she would marry the man she didn’t desire.

He looked at her, wild-eyed, as mad to see as Mr Richardson.

‘No!’ she shouted.

She shook her head. She was so weary. There was too much to hold in and she couldn’t do it any more.

Slowly Jim lowered his fist. Meg closed her eyes and imagined herself at home and alone in her bed. She was small again and the bed was her castle. She imagined the covers pulled high and tucked in, and sleeping beside her, turned away into the crook of his dream, was Will. He was there, and just for a moment she let go, and it felt so good, so warm and reassuring.

It was no more than a few seconds, no more than that.
Nothing had changed when she opened her eyes. Jim still stood over Mr Richardson, and the rowers still watched. But she felt the warmth between her legs, and the wetness.