Into Suez (5 page)

The women streamed up on deck wearing sun tops and straw hats; there were ice creams for the kiddies. A festive mood prevailed. Ailsa and Nia strolled, tasting the sweet air and so serene in one another’s company that they hardly needed to talk. Ailsa was lazily haunted by the thought of the
deutsche Kriegsmarine
sailing in this ship before them. Flaxen boys drilled on the sundeck;
culture-loving
Leutnants
read in its opulent library.

The barrier between the officers’ and lower ranks wives’ quarters turned out to be nothing but a faded red rope slung between two posts. Ailsa stepped over; Nia ducked under. On the officers’ deck, they made their way to Wing Commander Jacobs’s cabin. It was hardly a conscious decision.

Day by day Ailsa breached the red cord with a growing sense of entitlement. In turn, Mona sauntered into the lower world when she felt like it. Authority dozed in a deck chair, soaking up the sun. The
Empire Glory
became, with every passing hour, its own world. They forgot to look back or forward, moving deeper into warm sunshine over a lapidary sea of blue glass.

Nearing Gibraltar, the tannoy pointed out the Pillars of Hercules, either side of the straits, and behind you, ladies,
boys and girls, is Africa! Tugs led them into harbour; a layer of cloud burned away from the turquoise sky and the Rock rose up before them. Everyone cheered. Ailsa’s heart soared as the
Empire Glory
was coaxed through a huddle of rusted tankers to the landing stage. The Greek crew of the
Aphrodite
called to the women and waved their hats. Derricks were rigged; gangways swung out so that harbour officials and dock hands could board.

‘Restocking and refuelling,’ the tannoy informed them. ‘Military supplies to be landed and other material loaded for the Far East.’

Crates, barrels and boxes were swung out of the holds. The tannoy assured the wives of its confidence that their on-shore behaviour would do credit to King and country. Rollicking troops on their deck received their own
tannoy-lecture
from the Padre, who cautioned them to exercise
self-control
, bearing in mind that the body was the temple of the Holy Spirit. Wild cheers at this. Ailsa watched the lads swarm down the gangplank in their khaki tropical kit, clowning like boys let out of school, which in a sense they were. They seemed incompletely fashioned, as if the potter’s clay had not had time to dry. The ghost of a song lingered in their wake:
Roll me over in the clover, do it again!

‘Ladies, boys and girls, you may disembark!’

As Ailsa took her first steps on foreign soil, she felt her new life begin. No going back. She and Mona, Ben and Alex sat at the table of a pavement café, breathing in the scents of lemons, coffee and spices. They passed the dreamy, exotic afternoon like two couples who’d known each other forever. They were stared at, talked about, of course they were. But how could Ailsa have passed up this chance to live beyond her class? In another, less visited
part of her mind, she flinched at her own bravado. Saw Joe’s puzzled, kind, shocked face if he ever got to know.

Which he wouldn’t. It would all have to end, she was clear about that, when the
Empire Glory
docked. For the time being: why not?

Officers enjoyed luxurious comfort. Easy to make oneself at home in the peace and privacy of the Jacobs cabin. On the last morning before Malta, Ailsa let herself in. Mona, showering in the cubicle, was performing ‘Stella by Starlight’ at the top of her voice, a one-girl jazz band of improvisations, while she lathered furiously with the salt water soap that raised few bubbles and left you skinned over with a slimy layer when you towelled dry.

Her powder-blue nightie lay in a heap of silk. Ailsa folded the garment, tucking it under Mona’s pillow. An intimate action, sisterly.
I’ve fallen in friendship
, she thought.
And that’s that
. And there was a closeness with Ben: his open manner set Ailsa at ease in a way she wasn’t used to with men. Was that charm or was it sincerity?

Beside the bed stood a photo of the couple working with the UN refugee unit in Lübeck after the war, repatriating prisoners and slave labourers. In a drab uniform a size too small for her, bursting out all over the place like a schoolgirl, Mona stood unsmiling and workmanlike, sleeves rolled up, beside her husband. Ailsa thought of the two Jews finding their soul mates in those ruins. The marriage couldn’t be more than a couple of years old, younger than hers and Joe’s, which perhaps explained why there were no children yet. Ailsa was touched by the tenderness of husband and wife, showing their affection as the most natural thing in the world; flattered by their inclusion of her. By Mona’s confidences
and Ben’s gratitude, for he seemed to credit Ailsa with nothing less than restoring her music to Mona’s hands.

He told Ailsa more about Mona’s musical career. She’d been a pupil of the great Julie Brandt-Simon at the Brussels Conservatoire. Julie had been a second mother to her. When the Serafin family had come to London, the pianist on a visit to Britain attended a concert performance by the fourteen-year-old prodigy; she’d written to Mona’s mother:
Bring your daughter to me and leave her until she comes of age: there is still time for me to correct her errors
. That had ended in tragedy. After Mona had returned to Britain, her teacher was taken into custody by the Nazis. Mona’s gift deserted her. For Ailsa the thought of having somehow restored it was wonderful. But perhaps Mona had been nearly ready to play already; any catalyst would have done?

No, and he was writing a poem about it, Ben had said. When it was finished, she might like to have a copy?

‘Oh, I would. Nobody’s ever written me a poem before.’

Who wouldn’t have been awed, flattered? At home Ailsa’s collection of nineteen records contained three Brandt-Simon renderings of late Beethoven. The record sleeves showed a sharp-featured elderly woman, hair scraped into a grey bun: in her sixties a power house of a woman with pale, unsmiling eyes. You wouldn’t want to cross her.

Mona was now into ‘That Old Black Magic’. Ailsa shouted to her but she didn’t hear through the mad racket of her singing.

Whatever did Mona see in Ailsa, for all her leaven of learning? Nothing Ailsa said ever seemed banal to Mona.
Tell me it all
, she’d order.
Hold nothing back
. Ailsa would laugh: what could there be to hold back? Her life was
mundane. The post office, the farm, her war work, marriage and bringing Nia into the world. But she found herself confiding more intimately about Archie and Joe: out it all came, quite private things. As you might with a sister. It was not betrayal.

The singing got louder, then ceased, and the water was turned off. Mona came out of the shower naked, looking for her wrap, dripping all over the floor. Ailsa gasped, blushed, laughed, swerved her eyes.

Mona grabbed her and swept her round the cabin, singing ‘Night and Day’:
You, only you under the sun!
Mona smouldered and sashayed till Ailsa hurt with laughter.
I think of you, night and day
. She kissed Ailsa softly on the mouth and let her go. For several minutes the trace of the kiss lingered, tingling like peppermint.

In the Mediterranean lassitude the women collapsed on the sun deck like a colony of seals. Ailsa lay in shadow wearing her modest two-piece costume, while Nia played with the Brean girls, having been issued with a blanket caution against naughtiness. Closing her eyes, Ailsa tried to ignore a discussion of the alleged smell of Egypt, which the seasoned veterans told the new girls would hit them well before the
Empire Glory
so much as spied land at Port Said. The shittiest pong in the world, they said, and Ailsa felt Irene flinch.

Lying back, she gave her mind – and, in her daydream, her body – to Joe. She imagined herself stepping out of her clothes just as Mona did, chatting all the while.
Night and day, you are the one
. The dark triangle of pubic hair against the paleness of Mona’s generous body had
shocked her. From Mona’s soaking hair, little rivers had crept down her forehead and down the ripples of her spine. Her moistness had been absorbed into Ailsa’s cotton blouse, dancing her round the cabin, and when they’d moved apart, she’d carried the trace of Mona. Ailsa had drawn a sharp breath.

Nightly sensual dreams made her blush on waking. Was it Mona or was it Ben who aroused her? Or both? Against her will, Ailsa was kindled by the sensual heat that sprang between husband and wife; the experience they seemed to have of mysteries so far all but closed to the virginal Ailsa. Mona had said something about an open marriage. That if you loved someone, you wanted the fullest possible happiness for them. Didn’t you? Possessiveness was
bourgeois:
look at Sartre and de Beauvoir. Ailsa distrusted those two libertine Gallic philosophers. She shrank from such arrangements as likely to benefit the man rather than the woman, unless she was missing something important – which was always possible. Someone would be hurt, it stood to reason. Mona, feeling her draw back, had said no more on the subject. It wasn’t just prudishness on Ailsa’s part, no, she didn’t think so.

Turning away in momentary aversion, she’d seen the Jacobs as carriers of the germs of chaos. They were busily culturing it on a tray. She didn’t want to be infected.

And yet they were a picture of married tenderness. It was perhaps with herself that Ailsa quarrelled. Perpetually on tiptoe, she peered excitedly over a high wall. Always with her husband there had been a shy and numb uncertainty, kind and sensitive as he was.

She’d believed that was how sex was, nicer for men than for women, except for the sweet and heart-fluttering
moments that led up to the act itself. Always too short. A promise, not exactly broken, but never fulfilled.

It came back to Ailsa now: the night at Brewers’ Green when she’d awoken to an animal sound behind the partition, a throaty rasping, a
Go on, go on, don’t stop!
A woman’s voice that wound up and up like pain. Like birth.

She drifted off.

Half an hour later she was awoken by the sound of, was it, gunfire? Where was Nia? Ailsa sat up, distraught. There were no children at all on deck. Just the women basking, who reassured her that the kiddies had gone below for a game of hide-and-seek. Supervised, of course. The infantry on the mess deck were having some sort of drill. Firing blanks, Irene said,
don’t worry!

‘Did you see Nia go down?’

‘Oh yes. She was with my boys. She crouched down and kissed you before she went. Rather sweet actually. I always wanted a girl.’

No land for miles around. The sapphire sea, so tranquil and tranquillising. The engine beating up gently through the boards as the ship made for Malta.

Nia straddled her way over the red cord dividing off the men’s deck. A parade was going on towards the back of the ship: if she were seen, she’d be scooped up and returned to her mother. The lifeboats were a perfect place for a sunny nest. She
cwtch
ed down between the boats and the rails, drawing from her pocket a package of cake and several wine gums, wrapped in a paper napkin. She fed the dry cake to her golliwog and, humming to herself, put a wine gum in her mouth. Enjoying the sensation of
the humming against her palate and the back of her nose, she stood up and looked through the railing.

Porpoises.

The creatures were magical. In their speed and shiningness, rising and falling, the porpoises followed and sometimes led the way. She watched them dart through the green water to overtake the ship.

The soldiers at the front were stamping on caps for a laugh: that was her first thought. Wriggling through the gap between the lifeboat and the bulwark, Nia peered out at the rumps of khaki men in shorts. They were killing themselves laughing, as they shot rifles at, she supposed, invisible soldiers on other boats in the sea.

‘Got you!’ they shouted. ‘Get that one there!’

Perhaps there was a war – but why were the soldiers laughing? Were they playing Cowboys and Indians?

And now a fight had broken out amongst themselves. Nia rose slowly to her feet, sticking her thumb in her mouth through the cot sheet, staring in silence.

One soldier launched himself at another, roaring, wrenching him round by the arm. The grabbed soldier, a tall, lanky man, spun on the spot and his rifle slewed right round. He was shouting; the short man pulled at him; he lost his footing.

The gun was pointing straight at Nia.

It went off. Once, twice. The first shot went far wide. At the second crack, Nia fell.

‘A kiddie! There’s a kiddie!’

The women crowded to the rails, craning to look at the water.

Oh no!

What are they doing?

Target practice. Disgusting. Someone should tell them.

Ailsa rushed to the rail. The water was boiling with blood; they were ploughing through blood. What was it? Oh no, not the porpoises. The gun-happy infantry were using them for target practice. Ordered to do so, someone said. Uproar. Barbarians! Oh God, porpoises are only
fish
, get a grip! Don’t you eat fish and chips then? Hedwig protested in a high, hectic voice that actually she did not eat fish and chips, neither were porpoises fishes, as it happened, but warm-blooded mammals like ourselves, if anyone was interested; she was a vegetarian. And someone piped up in a loud whisper:
Oh yes, we know, so was dear old Adolf
.

Ailsa watched a wounded creature arch above the racing water. Dark blood poured from a gash like oil from a pipe. Its raised fin vanished. The
Empire Glory
powered on. There was shouting; the shooting stopped and the women turned from the rails. How could it be that we made a slaughterhouse even of the sea?

Now there was a diversion. A sister troopship, homeward bound. The women read the name: the
Empire Windrush
. They gathered at the side again, waving and calling.

A soldier came running: ‘Which of you is Mrs Roberts?’

An accident, the young Lieutenant told Ailsa. He looked about nineteen. Unfortunately, he went on, the little girl had been caught in the middle of it. But no, no, she was not injured, don’t be alarmed. Somehow or other she’d found her way on to the troop deck and hidden under a lifeboat. The men had been drilling, doing target practice. A conscript had seen red, one of these Cruelty to
Animals people, and tried to stop them shooting the porpoises. He’d caused a shot to fly wide, in the direction of the little girl – which luckily had ricocheted harmlessly off a bulkhead. The idiot who’d caused the accident was a trainee teacher in civilian life, destined for a desk job in the medical corps at Fayid. He’d got forty-eight hours in solitary.