Ship of Brides by Jojo Moyes Page B

should be nicer to Jean, especially since she had discovered she was only sixteen – but really! The girl was awfully trying.
    And Avice wasn’t convinced that she was entirely truthful either. There had been an exchange when Jean had chattered on at breakfast about her plans to get a job in a department store where her husband’s aunt held a managerial post. ‘How can you work? I thought you were expecting,’ Avice had said coldly.
    ‘Lost it,’ said Jean blithely. Avice gave her a hard, sceptical look. ‘It was very sad,’ Jean said. Then, after a pause: ‘Do you think they’ll let me have a second helping of bacon?’
    Jean, Avice noted as she walked briskly up the last flight of stairs, hardly ever mentioned her husband, Stanley. She herself would have mentioned Ian more often, but on the few occasions when she had Jean had tried to elicit from her some smutty confidence (‘Did you let him do it to you before your wedding night?’ And, even worse: ‘Did it give you a fright the first time you saw it . . . you know . . . sticking up?’). Finally Avice gave up trying to shake her off by movement. They were all due upstairs on the flight deck at eleven for the captain’s address. It should be simple enough to lose her among more than six hundred other women, shouldn’t it?
    ‘Do you fancy going to one of these lectures?’ Jean shouted, chewing gum as they made their way past the projection room. ‘There’s one on the strains of marrying a foreigner next week.’ Her voice, as it had all morning, carried over the noisy vibrations of the engines and the repeated piped calls, summoning Petty Officer Gardner or special sea dutymen to the commander’s office.
    Avice pretended not to hear her.
    ‘I quite fancy the one on common difficulties in the first year,’ Jean went on. ‘Except our first year has been dead easy so far. He wasn’t even there.’
    ‘The ship’s company of HMS Victoria will do their best to make your passage to the United Kingdom an enjoyable one . . . At the same time you must remember you are not in a liner, but are privileged to be a passenger in one of His Majesty’s ships. Life on board must be governed by service rules and customs.’
    Margaret stood on the flight deck, three deep in the rows of brides, some of whom were giggling with nerves as they listened to the captain. He moved, she thought, as if someone had sewn his sleeves to the body of his jacket.
    The sea, sparkling blue, was benign and calm, and the deck – the size of a two-acre field, hardly moved. Margaret cast surreptitious glances along its shining length, sniffing the salted air, feeling the breeze-blown sea mist on her skin, enjoying her first sense of space and freedom since they had slipped anchor the previous day. She had thought she might be a little frightened once they could no longer see land but instead she relished the sheer size of the ocean and wondered – with curiosity, not terror – what lay beneath the surface.
    At each end of the deck, reflected in shallow, prismed puddles of seawater and aircraft fuel, the aeroplanes stood tethered, their gleaming noses pointing upwards as if hankering for flight. Between them, at the base of the tower known as the ‘island’, groups of men in overalls stood watching.
    ‘Every person aboard one of His Majesty’s ships is subject to the Naval Discipline Act, which means no spirits, wine or beer, and that gambling in any form is forbidden. There is to be no smoking near the aircraft at any time. Most importantly, do not get in the way of or distract men who are on duty. You are allowed nearly everywhere on the ship except the men’s living spaces, but work must not be interrupted.’
    At this some of the girls glanced around and one of the ratings winked. A giggle rippled through the female ranks. Margaret shifted her weight to her other foot and sighed.
    Jean, one of the girls allocated to share her cabin, had nipped into the space in front of