Violets, page 4
No, she didn’t miss it. Land.
Violet lay quietly in her bunk. She tried to concentrate on the motion and read her body’s response. Nothing so far. She hadn’t been sick at all since she’d been on board.
All those times at the factory, kneeling on the concrete floor of the lav. Then during training when they were out on hikes in the moors, her throat burning with bile, dog-tired and hungry all the time.
And she thought of all the miles she had travelled since then. Just her and a tiny shell of a child. If it was real, if it was still there. In the sea and the swell. As the ship rose and fell.
Her departure had not gone down well. Her mother responded with silence and wounded pride. They didn’t speak for a few days and when they did, her main concern was the shop and how she would cope.
Violet had already thought of that. She suggested they ask her cousin Aggie to come and stay. She could lend a hand for full board and half pay. She was fourteen and full of fluff but pretty and eager to please.
She’ll be much better with the customers than me, Violet said.
Her mother scoffed loudly and shook her head but a few days later, Aggie arrived. She beamed like a bride, was full of questions about ribbon, wool and silk embroidery threads.
Violet’s mother stopped her in her tracks. There wasn’t much of that, she said. Just blackout cloth and flannelette.
With everyone else who asked though, she was gracious and contained. The butcher, the priest, the women who came into the shop as news got round.
Violet would be standing out back and hear the bell tinkle them in.
It isn’t what you deserve, Anne, they would say.
As if Violet was going out there on purpose to be killed, or was already dead. Like poor old Edwyn Lyle, shot in the neck.
All that grief had gone to their heads.
And Violet’s mother was an expert in that, long before the war. A grimly determined widow, she was reserved and quiet. It was part of the dignity all her friends admired.
Violet would breeze through, then. Wilfully cheerful, bright.
Morning Mrs Owen.
Morning, Vi.
And they would watch her carefully and after a while say they’d heard the news about her going away. Then add, You’re brave! As if it was a new phase or fad. As if you wouldn’t catch their daughters doing something like that. Then they would all smile and nod, and later probably remark on how they found her a bit odd.
~
Violet woke to hull creak and sick smells.
Peggy had started first, groaning out pale lumps into her lap. Then May was caught by the clamour and sat up, her vomit trickling down the wall from above.
Violet turned on the light.
Maggie wasn’t there.
Look, Pram Boy,
see the mermaid brushing her long dark hair?
Silvery tail, snatches of song,
now gone!
Peggy was down from her bunk, stumbling each time the ship lurched. Violet stood further down holding on to the rail.
Then Peggy fell, grabbed on.
Violet pulled on her tunic then managed her shoes. She glanced back as she opened the door.
Sorry girls.
The passageways were slippy and foul. Violet was thrown in a zig-zag path, groping along the walls.
Out she crawls, Pram Boy
drawn by glimmers on the rocks
up, up
Feel her tossed this way and that,
now frothed at in the foam.
She is a ship, wrecked,
far from home.
It wasn’t much better further up. A few men who weren’t sick had come up to congregate in small groups. They stood around the grand staircase holding on, or crouched in corners attempting to play cards. Others came rushing through and scrambled to get out on deck, some of them helped by friends holding on to their clothes.
Violet groped her way along holding on to the bulkhead ropes. A soldier stepped away to let her pass, offering his hip flask as a joke.
She found a quiet place near the hull and sat on the floor with her knees up, feet planted down. She felt her pockets with one hand.
Matches but no cigarettes.
She tried to catch a soldier’s eye and watched him weave across the parquet floor, but he squeezed himself behind a beam, rolled up his tunic as a pillow and went to sleep.
Violet grasped up at the rope with her hand. All her muscles strained to stay upright as the ship lunged. She was alert like a cat.
Violet!
Maggie was walking towards her, smiling as the motion sent her stumbling like a drunk.
There you are!
She was wearing her pyjamas with a man’s tunic that was far too large. Her feet were bare. Violet looked at her in slight alarm.
Don’t be ridiculous Violet, they’re sick as hell up there.
They had to shout above the squall. Maggie sat down next to her on the floor.
It’s best to keep your eyes on the horizon, she said.
Violet gave a derisive snort.
They were quiet for a while. Violet knew where Maggie had been. In the preening arms of Captain Stokes, or another one like him. They all seemed the same to her. Nodded politely to all the girls, asked your name and where you were from, claimed to know someone from there, or somewhere near.
Officer class. Each one more dreary and accomplished than the last.
Violet yawned. Every so often a door flew open and a soldier crawled back in. The storm was subsiding. Maggie leaned her head against Violet’s arm.
They sat there, supporting one another’s weight.
Maggie?
Yes.
Where have you sailed to? Violet asked.
And Maggie began to tell her. After her schooling, Venice, Florence, Sienna, Rome. Then Greece and the Levant. Some of the war she’d spent in Egypt, then in France.
Violet was further than she’d ever been from home. And the war would soon be over, someone said.
She leaned her head against Maggie’s, closed her eyes. She was so tired, her words came out slurred.
What about Naples? What’s it like?
I’ve heard it’s beautiful and bold and filthy and wrecked.
Violet opened her eyes, glanced down to the side. Maggie grinned.
You’ll love it, Vi.
14
It took two bus rides to get to the American base.
Flo and Edith were like excited schoolgirls on the top deck but Elizabeth sat quietly, her hands in her lap. She was wearing her green crêpe dress.
Flo was in red. She was so perfect and small. Violet had always been bigger-boned but Flo was light as a feather. It made men want to pick her up like a doll. Violet had seen her physically carried away before. Nights like this or New Year’s Eve, or after the local team had won a match.
Violet had opted for a skirt and blouse.
The dance was in a prefab hut with mint-green walls. She’d imagined high ceilings and banners and flags, but there was none of that. Soldiers were lined up at the bar passing drinks back over their heads. A few girls sat on chairs round the edge of the room, sucking on straws in bottles of pop.
The swing band started up. Violet thought she wouldn’t mind a dance. Someone had already asked Flo so Edith signalled and they pushed their way further into the room. Some of the men stepped aside and doffed their caps. Then Flo came back with her GI and he grinned and shook their hands, introduced his friends.
They were like that, the Americans.
One of the soldiers was talking to Elizabeth but she was distracted, scanning the room. Violet intervened. He was making jokes about how they ate biscuits with gravy, squash and okra and grits. She laughed at the names, noticed her voice change, become more English.
When she looked round, Elizabeth’s posture had changed.
There was a soldier pushing towards them through the crowd. It was as if they had turned off the lights, and only Elizabeth glowed.
His name was Antonio, Tony for short.
Italian, Elizabeth said. From New Jersey, which was near New York.
Edith came over to join them, intrigued. They made another round of hellos and the GI stood on his tiptoes and beckoned to someone at the bar to bring them some drinks.
Yes, Violet could see it now. They all had the same dark hair and skin. She looked around the room, there were groups of them here and there.
Well. Whatever they were, the Americans, they were always well-turned-out.
Violet tried to imagine Fred like that. And Tommy and Frank and Jack. Some of them were a bit rough, a bit brusque. But that didn’t stop them having a laugh. They worked hard. And Fred had his stripes.
The pace of the music had slowed and Tony pulled Elizabeth away to dance. There was a handsome GI with a girl who was surprisingly plain. Thick ankles, mousy hair. Kept looking down at the floor. Violet scanned the room, saw a glint of Elizabeth’s dress. Then they moved into view and she glanced over Tony’s shoulder, gave her a little wave.
15
It was early, Violet was out on deck. The sky was still tinged with pink. They had sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar a few days before and now the sun was gently warm on her face. She took off her tunic and rolled up her sleeves.
On land, back home, Violet would have been watching for spring. The valleys would be shaggy and soaked, like a drenched fur coat. But there would be primroses at the roadside by now, new lambs.
The sea stretched out before her as if there was nothing beyond, as if it would always be there.
She wished she could stay like that, with everything else washed out. She had tried to plan, to think ahead, to guess how much time she had left. Another month? Six weeks? Before she really began to show. Before there were rumours, or it was obvious. Before she declared herself and was sent home.
Would she be sent home?
Violet looked at her watch. It was nearly eight o’clock. Time for breakfast then roll call, inspection then drill. She rolled down her sleeves, put her tunic back on.
She took a deep breath, shaded her eyes from the sun.
And there it was. Land. Italy. Violet felt her stomach flutter. Hunger? No, that wasn’t it.
She paused. A kick.
There was a ripple, then gone. Now again, beneath her ribs.
A flip, a tail fin’s dip.
Like something slipping out of her grip.
There, Pram Boy, you are a disappearing fish
So lick your lips, sip her fluid,
suck your thumb.
Come, come.
Pram Boy, pill-boy, pearl of the sea
Feel your Mama touch her belly as she says,
Come with me.
With the light all pink
on gunmetal grey
Taking a turn about the deck,
a glance, a cigarette
Feel your Mama take a long, deep breath.
There.
Fret no more.
The end of a voyage at the end of a war.
Hush now, Pram Boy, you were carried after all.
PART THREE
16
Into the heat and stench of disorder, they disembarked.
A bang, a jeering,
a leer from a small boy grimed with sweat;
Port-surge, shit-smell, something slippy underfoot
(fruit-rot, cabbage leaf, gobs of spit).
Can you feel it, Pram Boy?
Can you march in time?
A change, a hardening,
the jarring of the solid ground as she treads,
gets her pockets picked.
There is the smell of diesel oil and fish.
And the women!
Faces flickering,
sent skittering like foals across the flags,
sweat-necked and whinnying in the crowd.
All those white girls,
the startled pale and bright girls,
snagged on the stares of balcony women dressed in black.
Quick! March!
And your Mama, Pram Boy,
yeasty in her private parts.
The Staff Sergeant was ahead. She had ordered them into a column of twos. She was red in the face, gesturing sternly to hold the line. Someone pushed past and Violet nearly fell into the girl behind.
The port was a murmur, a mass. Men surged forward, they were grabbed at and passed along by a human tide; men acrid and close, wearing clothes from twenty years ago, clothes that had soaked up sweat that dried in rings.
The nurses had been ordered to fall in with the ATS. They were up ahead. Violet watched as they were jostled and shoved. A man sniffed close to the pretty one’s face, laughed, groped at her chest.
Finally they reached an open space. The Staff Sergeant signalled for them to stop, regroup.
Breathless, nobody moved or spoke. Violet blinked, wiped her upper lip. They were in battledress and the canvas was hot and stiff. Maggie was directly in front but hadn’t turned round. There were strands of hair stuck to the nape of her neck. They looked like someone had licked them there, wet.
Mags!
She turned.
This is stupid, Maggie rasped. Why couldn’t they send transport to pick us up?
Violet shrugged.
They started up again and fell into step. They marched past warehouses and huts. Women with fish guts wiped on their thighs laughed and pointed with their knives. Violet’s ankle went over for the second time.
They began to climb up a series of narrow streets. Clothes and yellowing bed sheets hung between the houses up above. The shade was cooler but the air was stagnant, thick. They passed doorways and women standing with babies in their arms, braless in scant clothes, or else older and squat. A boy came down the hill on a bicycle and gestured crudely as he passed.
When they emerged it was onto an avenue with motor cars and Army personnel. The sun was high, the buildings were bright in stone that shot it back, white pillars crumbling and pocked. They marched for a while in the shade of a promenade. More women in doorways, heavily made-up. There were shut-up shops, then men with wagons full of fruit and veg. The girl next to Violet tripped up and Violet caught her by the elbow but kept looking ahead.
The ATS officer led them to a white palazzo with a courtyard in a circular sweep. All the palm trees had ragged leaves.
At ease, ladies. Bravo.
She turned and saluted the soldiers standing to attention at the gate, then disappeared through a tall arch. The soldiers relaxed. The column of women collapsed.
~
The boarding house was on the next street. An old woman let them into a small courtyard with a well, took up a broom and started conspicuously to sweep. There were a few old bicycles leaned up against a wall, a washing line with underwear hanging limp and drab.
Maggie looked askance, Violet caught her eye and laughed.
Cracked plaster walls, tiled floor. There were mosquito nets knotted above each bed tied to wooden beams overhead.
The billet was all ATS. The nurses had been ordered to wait behind, they would join units heading north. They were tearful, made a round of little goodbyes.
Some of the other bunks were already made up. There were photographs tacked onto the wall around each one. Maggie peered closely at them all, looked under pillows, opened drawers.
Violet unrolled her cot as swiftly as she could. She unpacked her kit and laid her khaki drills out flat. She’d been issued them at camp in York, weeks back. A sergeant had come with a list and watched them file through the quartermaster’s stores. As each woman approached he’d shout whether they should be large, medium or small. Violet was large, on account of her height. Now she looked at the pale sand-coloured cotton, the flaps of the pockets square and stiff.
Yes. They would still fit.
Maggie had chosen a bed by the door and sat stripped down to her underwear. She had her chin on her chest rubbing her back and neck, then crossed her legs to knead her calf. She looked like a dancer off the stage.
Perhaps she was, Violet thought. Maggie could have been anyone before so how would she ever know? It was difficult to tell what was real and what was for show.
Maggie exhaled loudly and flopped back, her limbs spread out in a star.
Violet! I’m fagged.
She closed her eyes. Violet watched as her chest rose and fell. You could see the shape of her ribs and the concave dip of her stomach between her hips.
She thought of the ship, the cabin, the fug of their shared body heat.
There were four washstands with a jug and bowl at each. Violet unbuttoned the stiff cloth down to her waist and shrugged out of the sleeves. She splashed her face and stood for a moment to feel the water evaporate into the air.
Her skin cooled down, and Violet sensed herself contract almost, retreat.
What had she done? Coming so far from home.
She thought of the soldier. She used to touch the creases around his eyes. He would sweep her hair to the side with his delicate hands.
But that was all gone. He was back in Aberdeen.
Violet looked around the room. Maggie was asleep.
17
Violet sat in her mother’s kitchen chopping rhubarb for a pie.
She scattered the pieces into the dish and sprinkled sugar over the top, licking it off her fingers as she went.
She had been thinking about Elizabeth’s new coat.
It was the same colour as the rhubarb in the dish. Impossible to miss.
Violet left the kitchen and went upstairs to the bedroom they used to share. The coat was on the back of the door. It was made from a thick gabardine but was light enough for spring. The lining was a paler pink. Violet took it down and put it on.
No. No good.
The coat was too small. Elizabeth it transformed, she seemed to glide around in its embrace.
