Our Time Is Gone (53 page)

‘I generally do have a match on me. You want them on this job. Here we are. I only want to find the way to the next deck. There's bound to be a light there. Got to have them by law. Did I tell you this was a troopship, Mrs.? Well, it is. And it's just got back. Where from, nobody knows, and nobody cares really. It's this war and their business. Nearly every ship you step on these days has carried soldiers—alive and dead! There!'

She struck the match and held it aloft, and it remained alight in the damp air, just long enough for her to see the way.

‘Right,' she exclaimed in a very business-like manner. ‘Hang on to me.'

Mrs. Fury walked behind as though in a dream. This world was strange to her. What on earth was she doing down here? In
this
place. It was foolish! What would they think? Denny, Anthony! Working down here. Well, it just didn't matter what anybody thought. She was alone. She was
left
alone. She was away from everybody. She was hiding, she was glad to hide. Stink! What did that matter? No worse than the bone-yard at the back of Hatfields. The women! What about them? She had seen them before! The work! Well, she was used to that, too. The language, the jokes? Well, one just turned a deaf ear to all that. The same ear that closed itself to Denny's ‘bloodys' and ‘Christs.' It wasn't the smell, work, or women. Just the darkness. She wasn't
quite
used to that! Nor rats. And she gave a violent shudder.

‘Careful now! Careful,' said Mrs. Gumbs, for that shudder had found its way to her. She took Mrs. Fury's hand. ‘Here we are now. You know, Mrs., a couple of weeks on this job and you'll have eyes like a cat's, to say nothing of a bent back. But don't say I didn't warn you.'

‘I can see the ladder,' said Mrs. Fury. ‘Do we go up that one then?'

‘We do. And I think you'd better go first. Best for me to be behind you, I can tell you're a bit scared. Now very carefully. That's it,' and she took Mrs. Fury's weight, piloted one foot on to the ladder, said quietly: ‘Hold tight, and
don't
be afraid. It'll make you——' But she didn't finish saying it. Just the very thing to make the woman dizzy. ‘Climb three and hang on. I'm coming,' she concluded, and dragging herself round to the ladder she reached the rungs.

‘Up you go,' she said.

Mrs. Gumbs trembled, not for herself, but for the woman above her, and as they slowly ascended they could not help but hear, against the extraordinary silence, the minute drip of water far below them, which rose and swelled its sound, the scuffles in the dark corners they could not see. Once Mrs. Gumbs dropped back her head and looked up at the sky; columns of air blew down the ventilators and from the bilges there rose, in periodic belches, the smell of dead water and rottenness.

‘Up! Up!' she was saying to herself. ‘Up, up, and God be kind to her.'

‘Stop!' she said suddenly. ‘Stop! You've reached the top. Can you climb over?'

There was no answer. Mrs. Fury seemed to have vanished. Mrs. Gumbs climbed the remaining length of ladder at alarming speed, and then discovered that Mrs. Fury was actually on deck, though in a curious position, lost amidst the hangings, falls, chains and hatch-covers. She was just picking herself up as Mrs. Gumbs's head appeared over the hatch-top.

‘Ah! There you are,' she exclaimed with a burst. ‘Thought something had happened to you! Now would you like to sit a minute to get your breath? Listen! Give me your food. I'll go and make tea! Then when it's ready I'll come for you. Here, sit on the bitts there and rest yourself. You're not
quite
used to it yet, but don't worry. You soon will be.' Saying this, she left, and went for'ard to arrange about the tea.

Mrs. Fury went and sat on the bitts. For a few minutes she was quite deafened by the din that was going on about her. She felt she had been down in that ‘tween-deck for a year, and the light hurt her eyes for some time. She looked at her surroundings. The ship was alive with men. But none gave her more than a passing glance. She was just ‘one of those women.' To the men they didn't count, didn't mean anything. But the woman felt
their
presence, was very conscious of it, and fidgeted about on the bitts. She kept looking at the hatch from which she had just emerged, and then at a group of men carrying hammers, passing along the main deck.

Sometimes she looked out over the river at the passing craft, the ferry. Dock and barges, the tugs, the ships with cable down. It was the first time she had ever been
in
the world. That other one was so private, so sacred and aloof from all this noise and action, this rushing and stamping, this steaming violent world. The house at Hatfields a monastery compared with this.

Mrs. Gumbs returned. ‘Come on,' she said, and Mrs. Fury followed her.

There were only two women in the fo'c'sle when they got there. They were smoking cigarettes which the men aboard had given them. They looked like—they
were
men. Femininity was out of the question. That had passed away like smoke. They were Mrs. Gumbs's ‘poor creatures.' Bedraggled women, neither young nor old, who knew how to work and how to swear and how to smoke cigarettes. The fo'c'sle reeked with them.

The new arrivals sat down and started to eat their sandwiches. Mrs. Gumbs poured tea into two enamel cups. This was drunk very hot, without sugar or milk.

The smokers got up, glanced at Mrs. Fury. They went out.

‘Most of them prefer to stay below. Don't like the idea of the ladder. But we're not all mush, are we, Mrs.?' said Mrs. Gumbs. She gulped her tea. ‘Drink up,' she urged. ‘Before you know where you are the whistle blows. Think you'll stand up to the life? I wonder? You look tired already.'

‘I haven't been well lately,' Mrs. Fury said.

Mrs. Gumbs thought she talked too little. Mrs. Fury thought her companion talked too much, she who had talked about the wise mouth being the shut one. Though Mrs. Fury liked her, she still found her difficult to understand. Perhaps she herself had not opened out enough, not seen enough of life. Somehow it was the difference between two languages. The public one and the private one. Mrs. Gumbs was the great world. Mrs. Fury had not spoken public language. Her world was smaller.

‘I'll like it like everything else. I intend to! I've been tied down by a family too long.'

‘'Course you have! You'll be very happy on these ships soon as you get used to them. Get to know the women. You'll like them after a while. They're good people at heart. Never go by appearances. Ah! The whistle,' she said as she stuffed her mouth with bread and got up from the bench. ‘Here we are again,' she said. ‘Back to the work! Work! work! work! Best cure in the world. Better than doctors. As good as chloroform to some folk. This time you go first down the ladder, Mrs., just to get used to it,' and together they left the fo'c'sle.

The meal had lasted just fifteen minutes. Men looked at them as they passed. Two watched them descend the hatch. ‘As good as us,' one said. ‘Real men.'

‘But it's filthy work,' said another. ‘If I caught my missus on work like that I'd cut her head off. It's the last hope. Cleaning stinking ships!'

‘Just listen to that,' said another, and the sounds of singing came up from the hold. ‘Didn't know they'd find anything to sing about down there.'

‘Ah! I've seen these women many a time. Time of the Boer War. Seen them many a time. They'll do anything. Somehow they're neither men nor women, but I'm buggered if I could find the word to describe them.'

This man made a sudden dash to the hatch-combing and placing a hand on Mrs. Fury's arm—he felt it tremble—exclaimed: ‘Why don't you bloody old fools go by the proper ladder? Get yourselves killed, you will! Take the proper ladder through the house there.'

Mrs. Gumbs, who was on the ladder below Mrs. Fury, looked up and replied: ‘Sometimes there isn't another ladder. So we get used to this one, see?' And slowly, carefully, she found her way down, finally vanished from sight.

Mrs. Fury was afraid to look at the man. She was afraid to look at any human face except that of Mrs. Gumbs. This world was jungle to her. She didn't understand it. She was afraid of it; she wished Denny was by her side. This was hiding, but Denny should be by her. She reached the lower deck, where Mrs. Gumbs stretched out both arms and piloted her safely from the ladder.

‘This time,' she said, ‘we go to F deck. A very bad deck.'

Mrs. Fury said nothing. A very bad deck? What exactly did that mean? It created a kind of taste in the mouth just like ‘nasty, quite nasty,' did.

Mrs. Gumbs became expansive, generous with advice.

‘Through C, D and E decks, and look out where you're going. Anything happens to you, you're done, and nobody'll worry. Ship cleaners don't come under Compensation Acts. They're like the rats in the bilges, Mrs., splendid and free!'

Laughing, she set off for F deck. Sounds of raucous singing floated along to them, which seemed to pile up about them. ‘Well, somebody doesn't give a damn!' said Mrs. Gumbs.

They were in darkness again. Mrs. Gumbs stopped dead, half turned, a sudden desire to explain herself fully to the bewildered woman. She had done all the talking herself, whereas this companion, who was
no
companion really, had not spoken half a dozen words. Still thinking about her precious children, I suppose, she reflected. At this moment Mrs. Fury fell to the deck.

‘Good heavens! Up you come, Mrs. Hurt yourself? I told you to be careful.'

‘I was—I bumped—I thought I felt something—I'm not hurt—I——' her tone was almost apologetic.

Mrs. Gumbs hated that and said so. ‘For God's sake, woman, don't apologize to me. I'm not God Almighty.'

And then she realized what she had said, that she should never have said it. She felt suddenly ashamed. The poor woman was all of a tremble! Had been the whole morning. And it had got on her nerves. She couldn't help it. She put an arm through Mrs. Fury's.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘Didn't mean that! The word just slipped out of my mouth. To tell you the truth, I'm nervy myself. Don't mind things I say, will you?'

Mrs. Fury laughed. ‘What nonsense, Mrs. Gumbs,' she said. ‘I hardly heard you.'

I am
not
a clever woman at all, not even an independent one, thought Mrs. Gumbs. No! Hardly! And the words re-echoed in her ears. ‘Hardly heard you.' Not clever! Simply defeated. And by this strange woman who thought her family was the rising sun and moon—the Holy Family as well.

‘I think you're an honest woman, Mrs.,' she said. ‘A very honest woman.'

They reached E deck.

‘H'm! This smells better than when we first came down, now, doesn't it? Wonderful what elbow grease and a bit of soap will do! There's an idea for you, Mrs.! An army of us could clean down this world, and give it a thorough good cleaning too. It wants it badly. Mind these chains. Just imagine scrubbing the world's dirty face, eh?' and she laughed to herself. It
was
a funny idea to come into her head. ‘Careful! Stanchion right in front of you! Careful! Chain there! Remember where you left your bucket?' Pause. ‘Oh! What a smell! What a smell!'

They had reached F deck. The light from half a dozen tallow candles revealed hammocks roped up and swinging from the deck-head. Mrs. Gumbs stood stock-still, hands clasped, looking round.

Mrs. Fury looked at the burning candles. What a place to have candles! Candles should burn in churches, upon altars, under God.

‘My!' exclaimed Mrs. Gumbs. ‘Even Saint Francis would complain of this,' and she swung an arm out, pointing a finger at the deck, at the swung hammocks, at the piles of rubbish lying in the corners. ‘You'd hardly credit it, Mrs.,' she was saying, ‘and it's a fact, that only five days ago this place was full of wounded men.' Her hand returned to its other, clasped again.

‘
Wounded
men?' said Mrs. Fury. The world below had not lost its strangeness, its jungle-like quality, its damp horror. ‘
Wounded
men, Mrs. Gumbs?'

‘Aye! And dead ones too—by the smell!' replied Mrs. Gumbs. ‘Well, now you know! You know what real work is, and on the quiet, you find out things that don't get into the papers. What the war's like, Mrs.!'

‘The war! Oh, of course! It's a hospital ship. I thought it was a troopship.'

‘Makes not a ha'porth of difference. One's the same as another. Anyhow, we've got to begin work. My! I'll bet you'll sleep to-night.'

They separated then to get their buckets, which they had hidden at the end of E deck. Later they filled them with hot water from the troops' galley, a rough jerry-built wooden erection, containing a counter, large urns, many meat hooks. The deck-head was pock-marked by large grease spots.

‘We can work side by side,' said Mrs. Gumbs. ‘We've got this deck all to ourselves.' Straightway she knelt down and began to scrub. ‘We ought to shift that rubbish. But we'll do that afterwards. Throw it out of the port-hole if I can unscrew that dead-light. Awful things to unscrew.'

The two women commenced work. They worked in silence. Beyond this deck others were scrubbing. By nightfall the whole ship would be ready for its next cargo. Their hands as they made circling movements with the scrubbing brushes, looked like large insects squirming about under the candle-light.

‘I suppose they hated to put a proper light on this deck,' said Mrs. Fury. ‘A strong smell of lint and ammonia about.'

Suddenly the brushes stopped. Somebody on the next deck was shouting.

‘I've found a leg! Look! I've found a leg!'

Mrs. Gumbs got to her feet. ‘D'you hear that?' she said excitedly.

Mrs. Fury got up. Together they went to the end of F deck. The voice was more clear.

‘I've found a bloody man's leg! Just look?'