discharge their load all day were spitting against the windscreen. Murray started the truck, and reversed out slowly on to the dockside. Suddenly he hit the brake, sending Daniel shooting forward, his mouthful of sandwich spraying over the dashboard.
‘Hang on,’ he said, his face electrified with the memory of an empty basket and his daughter’s inexplicable hurry to get on board. ‘Where’s the bloody dog?’
5
An Australian bride missed sailing for England in HMS Victorious because at the last moment a charge, subsequently dismissed, was laid against her. Immediately she was released, she was rushed in a police car to No. 3 Wharf Woolloomooloo, but the brideship aircraft-carrier had sailed.
Sydney Morning Herald , 4 July 1946
One Day In
HMS Victoria was seven hundred and fifty feet long, and weighed twenty-three thousand tons, comprising nine floors below the flight deck and four decks above it up to the vertiginous heights of the bridge and island. Even without the brides’ specially created berths it would have housed in its gigantic belly some two hundred different rooms, stores and compartments, equalling the size, perhaps, of several department stores or upmarket apartment blocks. Or even, depending on where the brides had come from, several large barns. The hangars alone, where most of the brides were housed, fed and entertained, were nearly five hundred feet long and situated on the same floors as the canteens, bathrooms, the captain’s sleeping area and at least fourteen sizeable storerooms. They were linked by narrow passageways, which, if one confused the decks, were as likely to lead to an aircraft repair shop or engineers’ mess as a brides’ bathroom – a situation that had already caused several red faces. Someone had pinned a plan of the ship in the brides’ canteen, and Avice had found herself studying it several times, mulling bad-temperedly over Vegetable Stores, Parachute Packing Rooms and Pom-Pom Magazines that should, by rights, have been grand ballrooms and first-class cabins. It was a floating world of unintelligible rules and regulations, of ordered and as yet unrevealed routines, a labyrinthine rabbit warren of low-ceilinged rooms, corridors and lockers, the vast majority of which led to places where the women were not meant to be. It was vast yet cramped, noisy – especially for those billeted near the engine rooms – battered, and filled to bursting point with chattering girls and men trying, in some cases half-heartedly, to do their work. With the sheer numbers of people moving around and a general unfamiliarity with the placing of the different flights of stairs and gangways it frequently took the best part of half an hour simply to traverse one deck, alternately pushing past people or pressing against the pipe-laden walls to give way to others.
And still Avice could not lose Jean.
From the moment she discovered they had been allocated the same cabin (more than six hundred brides and they had lumped her with Jean!) the girl had decided to take on a new role: that of Avice’s Best Friend. Having conveniently forgotten the mutual antipathy that had characterised their meetings at the American Wives’ Club, she had spent the greater part of the last twenty-four hours trailing after her, interrupting whenever Avice struck up conversation with anyone else to stake her claim with a suggestion of a shared history in Sydney.
So it was that they were both on the early sitting for breakfast (‘Avice! Do you remember that girl who used to sew everything blanket stitch? Even her undies?’), walking the decks to try to get their bearings (‘Avice! Do you remember when we had to wear those necklaces made out of chicken rings? Have you still got yours?’) or sharing a packed queue for the bathroom (‘Avice! Did you wear those cami-knickers on your wedding night? They look a bit posh for every day . . . or are you trying to impress someone? Eh? Eh?’). She knew she
‘Hang on,’ he said, his face electrified with the memory of an empty basket and his daughter’s inexplicable hurry to get on board. ‘Where’s the bloody dog?’
5
An Australian bride missed sailing for England in HMS Victorious because at the last moment a charge, subsequently dismissed, was laid against her. Immediately she was released, she was rushed in a police car to No. 3 Wharf Woolloomooloo, but the brideship aircraft-carrier had sailed.
Sydney Morning Herald , 4 July 1946
One Day In
HMS Victoria was seven hundred and fifty feet long, and weighed twenty-three thousand tons, comprising nine floors below the flight deck and four decks above it up to the vertiginous heights of the bridge and island. Even without the brides’ specially created berths it would have housed in its gigantic belly some two hundred different rooms, stores and compartments, equalling the size, perhaps, of several department stores or upmarket apartment blocks. Or even, depending on where the brides had come from, several large barns. The hangars alone, where most of the brides were housed, fed and entertained, were nearly five hundred feet long and situated on the same floors as the canteens, bathrooms, the captain’s sleeping area and at least fourteen sizeable storerooms. They were linked by narrow passageways, which, if one confused the decks, were as likely to lead to an aircraft repair shop or engineers’ mess as a brides’ bathroom – a situation that had already caused several red faces. Someone had pinned a plan of the ship in the brides’ canteen, and Avice had found herself studying it several times, mulling bad-temperedly over Vegetable Stores, Parachute Packing Rooms and Pom-Pom Magazines that should, by rights, have been grand ballrooms and first-class cabins. It was a floating world of unintelligible rules and regulations, of ordered and as yet unrevealed routines, a labyrinthine rabbit warren of low-ceilinged rooms, corridors and lockers, the vast majority of which led to places where the women were not meant to be. It was vast yet cramped, noisy – especially for those billeted near the engine rooms – battered, and filled to bursting point with chattering girls and men trying, in some cases half-heartedly, to do their work. With the sheer numbers of people moving around and a general unfamiliarity with the placing of the different flights of stairs and gangways it frequently took the best part of half an hour simply to traverse one deck, alternately pushing past people or pressing against the pipe-laden walls to give way to others.
And still Avice could not lose Jean.
From the moment she discovered they had been allocated the same cabin (more than six hundred brides and they had lumped her with Jean!) the girl had decided to take on a new role: that of Avice’s Best Friend. Having conveniently forgotten the mutual antipathy that had characterised their meetings at the American Wives’ Club, she had spent the greater part of the last twenty-four hours trailing after her, interrupting whenever Avice struck up conversation with anyone else to stake her claim with a suggestion of a shared history in Sydney.
So it was that they were both on the early sitting for breakfast (‘Avice! Do you remember that girl who used to sew everything blanket stitch? Even her undies?’), walking the decks to try to get their bearings (‘Avice! Do you remember when we had to wear those necklaces made out of chicken rings? Have you still got yours?’) or sharing a packed queue for the bathroom (‘Avice! Did you wear those cami-knickers on your wedding night? They look a bit posh for every day . . . or are you trying to impress someone? Eh? Eh?’). She knew she
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