Sheltering Rain (19 page)

Arthur, unlike his sister, sat by himself in the shallow end, pushing a wooden boat backward and forward across the waves. He was the only other occupant of the pool, despite the heat, owing to the previous evening's ship's variety concert, which, if measured in hangovers, at least, had been quite a success.

The former troop ship, S.S.
Destiny
, had been at sea almost four weeks, and its jaded cargo of naval wives traveling to meet their officers, and officers traveling to new postings, had been desperate for something to divert them from the endless journey, and the now-relentless heat. The days had rolled by, pitching and yawing like the sea itself, punctuated only by the meals, snippets of gossip, and the slow but definite change in climate as they headed away from the port of Bombay toward Egypt. Joy often wondered how the troops would have coped, stuck all the way down below without even windows in their cabins. She would have liked to ask some of the Muslims in the engine room what it was like down in the noisy, oily, thrumming bowels of the ship. But somehow it had been made clear to her that her interest in such matters was not quite the done thing. And desperate for a change from the endless walks around deck, games of cards, or, when the weather was rougher, brandy and ginger ales to combat seasickness, she and the little group to whom she and Stella had found themselves curiously conjoined since their time on board had leaped on the opportunity to do something different.

There had been a lot of drinks. Even more than usual. One of the guests at the Captain's table had started things off with a robust version of “My Blue Heaven,” and then, after a few feeble protestations, it seemed to Joy that her fellow travelers had almost fought one another for the chance to sing, tell jokes, or embark upon some ill-advised public revelation. Stella, fueled by three gin and tonics, had stood and sung “Singing in the Rain,” making up for her tunelessness by charming everybody with her winsome expression, and she had been followed by Pieter, the burly, sun-kissed Dutchman who did “something in diamonds,” who had sung something exclamatory in Dutch, and then tried unsuccessfully and rather physically to persuade Stella to join him in a duet on the piano, clutching at her slim hands as if he could place them on the keyboard himself. Stella's genteel modesty in refusing was much admired at Joy's table, so Joy didn't let slip that the only thing Stella could play was “Chopsticks.”

The evening had degenerated after the stewards had brought round a bottle of rather fierce cognac. It degenerated a little further after Pieter accepted a bet to down the remaining third in one fiery gasp. It degenerated properly when Mr. Fairweather and his wife, having already silenced listeners with their reedy rendition of “I Get a Kick out of You,” had stood, held hands, and attempted the duet from the
Pearl Fishers
, the painful climax of which had prompted Georgina Lipscombe to snort her drink all over the mauve satin bodice of her dress, and Louis Baxter, one of the traveling officers, to start hurling bread rolls, so that the captain had to intervene and appeal good-naturedly for calm. He got it, eventually, but Mrs. Fairweather, pink with hurt, hadn't spoken to any of them for the rest of the evening, even when she was grabbed and, rigid-faced, forced between two stewards into a chaotic conga line that lurched its way around a circuit of the entire top deck. It was at that point that Joy had noticed Stella had gone missing again.

“You know it's taken me all day just to be able to see straight again,” said Georgina, sliding her sunglasses back up her nose. “I don't know how you girls manage to look so hale and hearty. Not being woken up at the crack of dawn by children, I suppose.”

“
Ugh
. I look a wreck,” said Stella agreeably, smoothing her unruffled hair.

You should do, thought Joy, silently, remembering how Stella had snuck back into the cabin a good hour after dawn had broken.

Now, as they lay on deck in their new two-piece costumes, Joy tried not to think too hard about Stella's increasingly frequent absences. She was pretty sure she loved Dick, the dashing pilot whom she had married shortly after Joy's own wedding (“I wouldn't be sailing halfway across the world to meet him, otherwise, would I?” Stella responded tartly to her tentative inquiries), but there was something about her increasingly flirtatious manner with the other officers, and especially her friendship with Pieter, that left Joy with an unbalanced feeling that could not be wholly ascribed to her lack of sea legs.

She had unwisely confided her concerns to Georgina Lipscombe, with whom they shared a cabin, one night after her children had gone to sleep, and Georgina had raised an eyebrow and suggested that if anything, it was Joy who was being naive.

“Happens on every ship, darling,” she had said, lighting up one of her omnipresent cigarettes. “Difficult for some girls to keep the faith when there are lots of lovely officers around. I'd say it was boredom, mostly. What else is there to do on board?”

Georgina's jaded speech, and the casual way in which she puffed out the last sentence, made Joy wonder if she really was being naive. She hadn't seen Georgina, who was married to a naval engineer, being special friends with anyone, but then there was always a good two hours between when she asked Joy and Stella to leave the cabin so she could read the children a story, and the time when she would actually emerge for dinner. And Joy knew for a fact that it was always the friendly Goanese steward who bathed and read to the two children, because he had told her so. Perhaps Georgina, too, was occasionally diverted by the “lovely officers.” Perhaps she was the only woman who wasn't. Joy thought of Louis Baxter, who had been terribly attentive the previous evening, and seemed to be making a point of seating himself next to her. But Louis's presence, agreeable as it was, struck Joy with no such uncertainties. For there was no one on board who could possibly compare to Edward.

As she often did, Joy thought back almost six months to the last time she had seen her husband. Or her husband of two whole days, as he had been then. They had married in Hong Kong, on his forty-eight–hour pass, with just close family in attendance, much to her mother's disappointment, and a reception of coronation chicken and Chablis specially shipped over by one of her father's colleagues, who knew a good man in wine.

Joy had worn a simple, close-fitting white satin dress, cut on the bias (“it'll make you look less lanky,” her mother had claimed), and Edward had worn a smile that lasted almost the entire forty-eight hours. Stella had outshone her in a midnight-blue dress with a plunging neckline and feathered hat that caused all the assembled ladies to tut and mutter at one another through the sides of their lipsticked mouths. Her Aunt Marcelle, who had traveled over specially from Australia, had trodden on her train, and then collapsed in an elaborate heap, complaining of the humidity. Her father had drunk too much, and cried, and tipped the French chef in the Peninsula Hotel so much money that her mother had been unable to speak for the last hour of the reception. But Joy didn't care. She was hardly aware of the trappings. She just kept clutching Edward's broad, freckled hand like someone clinging to a life raft, unable to believe that after almost a year of silent doubt (largely prompted by her mother's louder ones), Edward had actually returned to marry her.

It was not that Alice didn't want her to be happy, she had since decided. She was not a malicious woman. She just believed, like an anthropologist studying some strange tribe, that any contact closer than arm's length was bound to end in trouble. “On your wedding night,” she had said, gravely one evening, as they carefully packed Joy's trousseau into tissue paper. “You should try . . . well, try to look like you don't mind. Like you're enjoying it.” Alice gazed down at the shell-colored silk, trimmed with cream lace, as if struggling with her own memories. “They don't like it if you look like you're not enjoying it,” she said, finally. And that was the end of Alice's introduction to married life.

Joy had sat awkwardly beside her, aware that her mother had attempted to impart some kind of important maternal advice. So little had come her way untainted by some implied criticism, that she felt it only right to treat it with some sort of reverence. But, try as she might, she couldn't relate her mother's experience to her own with Edward. Her mother visibly flinched when her father, usually drunk, tried sloppily to embrace her. She swatted at his roaming hands like someone who had accidentally sat on a red ants' nest. Joy spent almost all her waking hours wishing that Edward would touch her.

So when the night had come, it hadn't occurred to her to be frightened. She was simply, by then, desperate to traverse the seemingly invisible divide between those women who
knew
and those, like herself, who didn't. And fueled by a lengthy absence, where she had had little to do but fill that vacuum of knowledge with her own smudged and inaccurate dreams, she had embraced him almost as hungrily as he had her.

It wasn't perfect, of course. She wasn't sure what perfect was even meant to be. But Joy simply relished the closeness of him; let herself be consumed by the simple pleasure of having his skin next to hers; strong, sinewy, male skin, its scent and textures such a welcome departure from the primped and powdered femininity that had guided her life until then. She liked the strangeness of him, the strength of their combined bodies, the way his size meant she didn't feel too big, the way his desire for her didn't make her feel like she was doing anything wrong. And the following day, joyous and unself-conscious in her newly awakened state, she had met her mother's questioning gaze with a broad, reassuring smile. But Alice, instead of looking relieved, as Joy had intended, had seemed to wince slightly, and then bustled off pretending she had something to see to in the kitchen.

Joy had etched almost every detail of that night onto her memory, to be replayed on the endless, humid nights she spent alone back in the child's bed of her youth. It was just as well that she could, as it was to be five months and fourteen days before she was to see him again, when she would arrive at Tilbury after her six-week voyage on the S.S.
Destiny
.

Stella was also meeting Dick, and both sets of parents had been reassured by the thought that the girls would travel together, although not enough to prevent a deluge of unwarranted advice for the weeks leading up to their departure. Alice was convinced that naval transport ships were “hotbeds of immorality”; Bei-Lin's cousin had worked as a cook on a troop ship during the war, and she had described with some relish an endless trail of bored naval wives traipsing backward and forward down the narrow staircases that led to the men's quarters. Joy wasn't sure which her mother was more shocked by, the idea of extramarital activity, or the fact that it was with men lower than officer class. Stella's mother, whose ever-present “nerves” seemed to jangle like wind chimes at the best of times, was more concerned about the recent sinking of the
Empire Windrush
, which had gone down in a storm off Malta. But Stella and Joy, free for the first time from the watchful eyes of their parents, had determined to make the most of their adventure.

Except that several weeks in, Stella's idea of what that meant had turned out to be somewhat different from Joy's.

“Right. I'm off for a quick stroll,” she said, unfolding her smooth, tanned limbs from the sun bed and nodding to Georgina Lipscombe.

Georgina gazed up at her. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking from behind her sunglasses.

“Anywhere nice?” she said.

Stella gestured vaguely toward the bow of the ship.

“Oh, just need to stretch my legs a bit,” she said casually. “See what any of the others are up to. Most chaps seem to have stayed in their cabins today.”

Joy stared at Stella, conscious of her friend's refusal to meet her eye.

“Have fun,” said Georgina. She smiled, her teeth even and white below her sunglasses.

Stella stood, and wrapping her bathing gown around her, walked briskly toward the bar. Joy, feeling suddenly aggrieved, fought the temptation to follow her.

There was a brief silence, during which Georgina accepted another drink from the Goanese waiter who had appeared beside her.

“Your little friend wants to watch herself, darling,” she said, still smiling inscrutably from behind her shades. “No faster way to get a name for oneself than to play around on the water.”

J
oy lay on her bunk, her stockinged feet stretched out in front of her, positioning herself between the window and open door to try to catch a breeze. In these last days of the journey, she spent many afternoons in this manner, unwilling to spend her entire day in the company of the other wives and their fractious, bored children, or the officers, who would congregate in the bars, reminiscing of battles past, and exclaiming over the foibles of mutual acquaintances. When they had set out, Joy had been almost breathless with excitement, desperate to start out on the first real adventure of her life. But since they had begun the long route from Bombay toward Suez, the days seemed to have slowed and stalled as the temperatures rose, their worlds narrowing to the familiar bases of bar, deck, and dining room, so that they had all begun to feel like fixtures on board, rarely even bothering to venture ashore at the ports of call. It gradually became harder to imagine real life existing elsewhere, and, consequently, some chose not to try, letting themselves be carried by the gentle rhythms of life on board, and swayed by the simmering heat, so that their previous pursuits—deck tennis, afternoon walks, swimming—had gradually become too much effort, and even speech itself had become more sparse. Increasingly, now, passengers were sleeping in the afternoon, or watching movies in the evening, only a few singing listlessly as they followed the bouncing ball on the screen. At night, they would gaze unseeing at unearthly iridescent sunsets, inured by repetition to their extraordinary beauty. Only those, like Georgina Lipscombe, who were forced out by the insistent requirements of their children, found themselves engaged in any kind of activity.