But who could feel at home anyway, perched there on a ship that was just a dot on hundreds of miles of water? Day after day, now, that was all they saw—just the sea. And you thought about the depth of it—a mile down to the bottom, she’d heard someone say. Sometimes there were porpoises—sleek black shapes dashing along beside the ship—and everyone rushed to the rails to watch. And flying fish, skimming along the surface. They said there were sharks, plenty of those. And once one of the ship’s officers spotted a great turtle, and people took it in turns to have a look through his binoculars.
The second night out they ran into a storm. The ship was pitching about, everything slid off the washstand, Jean was starting to feel sick and so was Jamie Clavering, Nanny Clavering was yammering away about how what you had to do was lie absolutely flat and look at the ceiling, or drink Epsom salts, or suck barley sugar. Or shut up, thought Shirley. Then Jamie was sick all over his bunk and after that there was no sleep for anyone until at last around dawn it began to calm down and by breakfast there was just a bit of a heave still, not that many wanted anything to eat—the dining room was half empty. In fact, Shirley felt fine; she’d always had good sea legs. Mrs. Leech was prostrated, of course, laid up in her cabin with the Purser bringing her lime juice.
It was cooler that day, after the storm, really nice up on deck. People were talking about how there would be a crossing-the-line ceremony when they got to the equator—not a full-scale do, the officers said, seeing as it’s wartime, just a bit of fun for the children. One of them would dress up as Neptune, apparently. They would need a costume. “You’ll have to get Film Star on to that,” someone said. “She’s the dressmaker.”
He must have heard. Alan. Alan Baker. Later, he came over to her again, made a paper airplane for Jean, asked how they’d been in the storm. Then he said, “Why do they call you that? Film Star?”
She felt herself blushing. A great rich red blush. Thank goodness she was leaning over the rail, and no one else very near. “Well . . .”
He laughed. “I can guess. Quite right, too. Except that a Hollywood type would be all covered with makeup, and you’re not, so you’re prettier by far.”
She didn’t know where to look. Was he being cheeky? Should she make an excuse and move away? You met soldiers sometimes in the YW who tried it on, and she knew how to give them the brush-off when they were getting a bit too fresh, she didn’t stand any nonsense. But he wasn’t that sort. She knew he wasn’t. And what he’d said was said perfectly nicely—straightforward, an opinion, and that was that.
She said, “Well, thank you.”
And then Jean came running up, wanting him to make another airplane, which he did, and now the other children were wanting them too, so he was kept busy. He was good with children—one of those people who are naturally at ease with them.
Shirley had been that way too, right from when she was not much more than a child herself. She used to be asked in to mind the little ones while their mums went shopping, up and down their street. So when she left school, it seemed the obvious thing to train as a nursery nurse. Her mother was all for it; a nicer sort of job than working in a shop, or office work, even if it did mean living in other people’s houses, but if you had good qualifications you could pick and choose, by all accounts. Some of Shirley’s schoolfriends weren’t so enthusiastic: “Like a servant,” they said. “Catch me . . .” Which really made Shirley see red. She’d never thought of it like that; the whole point was working with children, doing what you were good at.
Nowadays, she wasn’t so sure, sometimes. It wasn’t that she’d gone off children—goodness no. She loved Jean, and she was proud of her. But there was a sense in which she had come to feel that she belonged nowhere now. She lived in the world of the Leeches and their friends, but it wasn’t really her world; when she visited her parents, before the war, she walked down their familiar street like a stranger, seeing and hearing things she had never noticed back when she was younger. The milk bottles on the doorsteps, the net curtains at the windows, chiming doorbells, wireless music spilling from kitchen windows. She thought of the way Mrs. Leech said “suburban,” which made it a different word from the one she had always known, that was simply to do with railways: London and Suburban. She was conscious of her parents’ speech, of the way they pronounced words; what had been entirely known and usual had become discomforting.
Sure enough, she got dragged into this crossing-the-line business. Apparently it involved a silly ceremony in which people who hadn’t crossed the equator before had to appear before the court of Neptune, and were made to drink some horrible mixture, and were shaved with wooden razors, and then ducked in water. So there would be someone done up as Neptune and someone else as his daughter, and heralds and trumpeters, and some bears to do the ducking in the children’s canvas pool. They would need various costumes, so it was “Please, Nanny, you’re said to be such a genius with a needle. . . .” It all sounded too daft for words, but she wasn’t going to be a spoilsport, so she set to and managed to rustle up some old sheets, and sacking, and rope, and this and that. Helpers were to hand, everyone had suggestions, and one way and another there was some pretty successful costume making. Neptune’s long flowing hair and beard were made of frayed rope, the crowns were done with silver foil from cigarette packets, with jujubes for jewels, the bears wore sacking suits and navy socks on their heads. Mrs. Clavering was Neptune’s daughter, wearing her bathing suit and a crown and a lot of crêpe paper as seaweed. There’d been a bit of friction between her and Mrs. Leech about who was going to get the part; Mrs. Clavering won because her bathing suit was a sort of shimmery green and would look right. They weren’t quite so pally for a while after that.
On the day, most people were up on deck. This was supposed to be a bit of fun for the children, but the grown-ups weren’t holding back. One of the ship’s officers was Neptune—the good-looking one who was always life and soul of the party in the bar—and some of the others were the bears, crouched down by the pool ready to duck people, and of course that was going to be an excuse for lots of jiggery-pokery. The younger children were a bit scared, and even more so once things got going and the Purser was made to be the first victim, and had to drink something out of a jug (just rum punch, apparently), and got flour and water slapped all over his face as shaving cream, and then was pushed into the pool for the bears to shove him under. Screams of laughter. Only the bigger boys wanted to join in; the younger children wouldn’t have anything to do with it, so in the end it was mostly grown-ups getting ducked. Mrs. Leech had her bathing suit on; she wasn’t going to let herself be outdone entirely by Mrs. Clavering, and when it was her turn there was plenty of giggling and shrieking when the bears got her.
Jean didn’t like it. At first, she had thought it was all quite funny, but when she saw her mother up there in front of Neptune and then being bundled about in the pool she got hysterical: “What are they doing to my mummy?” Well, nothing that Mrs. Leech wasn’t thoroughly enjoying, as it happened, but the child saw it differently: “Why are the grown-ups being like this? Why?”
She might well ask. It was all too silly for words, in Shirley’s view, and some people were making fools of themselves. She was glad to see that Alan Baker hadn’t joined in, though she caught sight of him watching, with some of the hospital case soldiers. Later, when it was over and the lascars were scrubbing down the deck, which was in a right mess with all the flour and water that had been thrown around, he came up and congratulated Shirley on the costumes. Jean was still very down in the mouth, and Shirley told him she hadn’t reckoned much with it—grown-ups fooling around like that.
He smiled. “She’s got a point, hasn’t she?” He bent down and said to Jean, “It’s something that’s always been done, the sailors told me. Because the sea’s a dangerous place and you’ve got to keep it sweet. You’ve got to give a person to Neptune so he’ll leave you alone.”
When Jean had gone off to play with the other children, he turned
to Shirley: “Fancy a turn on the upper deck this evening, after dinner?”
She had to look away; she could feel herself getting all hot and bothered. But pleased—oh, yes, pleased.
“All right,” she said. And then Mrs. Leech appeared, and Alan Baker went off to see to his soldiers, and that was that, but all day she hugged to herself this sensation of surprise, of interest. And she kept seeing his face.
At first, she couldn’t spot him, up on deck. Hardly surprising, in the dark. She wandered about, and nearly fell over a pile of rope and suddenly there he was—laughing and putting a hand under her arm to steady her. They went to the stern, where there was no one else around, and leaned over the rail. It was a lovely night, not hot, the sea almost still, with a shimmer of silvery phosphorescence. She said that she didn’t understand how that happened, and Alan Baker said that neither did he, and he’d find out from the sailors.
They talked about before the war. He described the village he came from where his dad was a postman and his mum worked in the shop; his work, driving an ambulance around Exeter, and some of the dramas—he’d delivered babies a couple of times, and once he’d help fish some lads out of a reservoir. “Silly little beggars went fishing and couldn’t swim—oh yes, they were fine.” She told him about her family and her home—her once-home.
“Town and country, you and me,” he said. “Opposites.” He smiled—a close, direct smile that made her feel quite odd. “I hope not,” he added.
They were side by side, almost touching, the rail cool against her arms, the water rushing by below and foaming away behind, the deck throbbing under their feet. It occurred to her that she’d seen something like this in a film once, only the people were in evening dress, the man and the woman, and it was all romantic, with smoochy music in the background.
He asked her how she’d got into nannying. She talked about that and he was quiet for a few moments. He offered her a cigarette; she shook her head and he lit up.
“You should have kids of your own.”
She was startled, didn’t know how to take this. She said, “Why do you think that?”
“Well, you’re a natural mother, aren’t you? Sticks out a mile.”
That threw her. She was silent.
“I like that in a girl,” he said, after a moment. “I’d like kids myself, come to that. One day. When all this is over.”
She’d never had a conversation like this before. Not with a man. Part of her was embarrassed; another part was excited, all keyed up. It was as though she’d stepped aside from her ordinary, everyday self and become someone else.
He said he was probably getting a transfer, when he got back to Cairo. He’d be leaving the big base hospital and moving up to one of the frontline field hospitals, in the desert, with a driving job. He wanted that; you felt out of the action, stuck in the Delta. And there was going to be action, no question about that. Rommel was on the move; he’d got to be stopped.
“The Germans aren’t going to get to Cairo, are they?” Almost for the first time, it came to her that this might happen. She thought of Mr. Leech, of the other fathers, of the big house in Zamalek with all their things in it—and Sambo the dog and the nursery canary in its cage.
He said, “Probably not. But we’ll have to clobber them. It’ll be rough.”
And then he did this thing. He put his hand over hers. He wrapped it round hers, so that she felt the warm size of it, and her own fist curled beneath. The warmth seemed to rush through her whole body; she’d never felt anything like this, she didn’t know what it was that she was feeling. It was as though she had discovered another sense, one of which she had known nothing. She saw the hairs on his wrist, dark against the brown skin, she saw the shape of his knuckles; the sight was somehow so intimate that she was amazed.
Afterward, she had no idea how long they had stood like that, not speaking, looking out at the sea. At last she had said that she ought to get down to the cabin, and check on Jean. He lifted his hand, and trailed his fingers for an instant along her arm.
“I’ll be seeing you, won’t I?” he said.
They were out in the Indian Ocean now, heading for Mombasa, where the ship would berth for a day or two and passengers would be allowed ashore again. It was much cooler, and quite rough sometimes. The routine was to get the children up on deck soon after breakfast; Shirley found that all the time she was watching to see if Alan Baker came. Sometimes another orderly would bring up the invalid soldiers, and then she would feel a dull creep of disappointment. When she did see him, she quickened with pleasure. And then, at some point, he would come over, play with the children, have a few words. She was wary now of being seen talking to him for too long—the other nannies would soon start making remarks. Maybe he also had thought of this; he just chatted for a minute or two, and moved away, but she felt his eyes on her. Then, a day or two on, he said quietly, “That phosphorescence—it’s because of little creatures in the sea. Plankton.”
“Oh . . .”
“Be nice to take another look at it, now that we know. Tonight?”
“Yes,” she said.
There was that night, and then another. As she waited for those times, for the moment of going up alone to the dark deck, she knew that she had never known anticipation of this kind in all her life. He seemed no longer a stranger, but someone who was urgently her concern—some intense and startling connection that she could neither understand nor challenge. Her feelings amazed and embarrassed her; she knew about being in love, but if that was what was going on, then she had had no idea that it was like this. That you felt it—well, in your body. At times she scolded herself: you’re being daft—stop it.
He talked mostly about England, about his life before the war. Listening, she experienced a nostalgia, but it was a yearning for a world that she hadn’t known since she was a schoolgirl—the comfortable community of Pinner, which was not like his village but nevertheless bore some eerie likeness. A place in which everyone knew their neighbors, in which people did not talk up or down to anyone else. She had for so long been a subordinate, an accessory to families not her own, that she had forgotten the easy equality elsewhere. There floated into her mind the notion that she would not want to go on like this for always, perhaps only until Jean no longer needed her. After the war, perhaps she would think about some other kind of work.
Once, they saw a school of porpoises—swift shapes breaking up the silvery sheen of the water. She cried out in delight, and he put his arm round her.
“Listen,” he said. “In Cape Town there’s wonderful beaches, the lads say. You’ll get some days off, won’t you? I’ll take you swimming.”
That was when he kissed her. At the time, she could barely believe that this was happening. Only later, reliving it, did she realize that she had not known at all what a kiss was like—that it was warm and wet, that you felt his tongue push between your lips, that you opened your mouth, that a thrill rushed down your body. What you saw people doing in films bore no resemblance.
She felt these days as though she were two people; there was this new self, who lived differently, for whom each morning was a rich, fresh realization, and there was the old Shirley, who knew nothing of this, who walked in a kind of innocence. She knew too that, whatever came of all this, nothing would be the same again. She could not go back to that former self.
They arrived at Mombasa. There was a long quayside with ships tied up; they disembarked in the afternoon and went to the old town, where there were little narrow streets with verandas that jutted out from the houses, and markets with toppling heaps of fruit, and stalls selling colored baskets, and others with bales of bright materials. Mrs. Leech bought a length for a dress—“There’s bound to be some wonderful little dressmaker when we get to Cape Town”—and another for Jean, and piled a basket high with fruit to take on board. Then they walked around the harbor and looked at the dhows until it was time to go back to the ship. There were crowds of people—Arabs, Africans, lascar seamen—and
Shirley had to keep a tight hold of Jean. They kept running into others from the ship; one of Mrs. Leech’s officer friends joined up with them. Shirley looked for Alan Baker, but probably he had stayed on board with the soldiers. Just thinking of him made her buoyant; she seemed to float through this place with its vibrant people, the exotic smells and sounds. Soon, she would see him again.
They sailed the next morning; now there would be the long plunge down past the rest of Africa, through the Mozambique Channel and on to the next stop, Cape Town. The last stop. Back at the start, she had thought that two weeks on this ship would be unbearable; now, she wanted this time to go on and on.
The days were long; the sun swung slowly across the sky and the hours crept toward evening. They could not always meet. Once there was a concert arranged for the soldiers and another day Jean was running a temperature and Shirley didn’t like to leave her. But each time she was with him seemed to mark some unstated confirmation of what was between them. When she had left him, she would catch the now familiar smell of him on her own skin—that male smell of sweat and cigarettes. It was intimate and disturbing.
He was by way of talking a lot to the sailors and so knew about the ship’s course. He told her that they had now entered the Mozambique Channel; there was land on either side, but miles and miles away so you’d never know it, with nothing but sea to be seen, as always. And it was not that long now till they would reach Cape Town. Once there, he had to get the soldiers to their hospitals and convalescent homes, and then he could start his leave: “Where will you be? How will I find you?”