A Quiet Life(7)

‘If you walk through the engine room, you come out on the first-class deck and no one’s going to stop you if you want to go have a look at those palatial surroundings …’ the man was saying.

‘Is that so? Will no one mind?’

‘They say girls do it all the time – though the stewards might not be so pleased about the boys drifting over.’

Laura had finished her coffee by this time, and just then the boat dipped alarmingly in the swell. She felt, to her horror, a heat rise through her stomach. ‘I’m going to lie down,’ she said.

‘You’re not feeling ill already, are you?’ The woman was looking at her with what seemed like real concern.

Laura shook her head. At not quite twenty, she still had all the awkwardness of adolescence. Although she didn’t want to be rude to these strangers with their interesting stories, equally she had no idea how to talk to them. She got up. To her surprise, the woman stood too, saying that she was going to go to her cabin.

‘I’m Florence Bell,’ she said, as they walked down the corridor. ‘You?’

‘Laura. Laura Leverett.’

‘I didn’t want to ask just then in front of him – seemed like he might be thinking of getting fresh – thought it would be better if he thought we knew each other.’

This statement, innocuous as it was, seemed to turn the woman suddenly from a stranger into an ally, so as Laura got to her cabin she turned to Florence. ‘Will you knock for me when you go up for dinner?’ The way the words came out, there was something needy about the request, and Laura braced herself for a dismissal, but Florence’s assent was so matter-of-fact it reassured her.

Alone in her cabin, Laura still felt self-conscious, almost as though she were being watched. She even found herself, as she put her purse on the bed and took off her coat, composing the first few lines of a letter to Ellen. In her mind, she presented the cabin as having a certain charm – ‘blue as the sea should be! With quite enough room to swing a cat!’ – although in reality it was small and ugly. The fact that all the furniture was bolted down and the room carpeted in a springy felt only added to its claustrophobic feel, and here, she noticed, the reverberations of the engine seemed exaggerated, thrumming through the soles of her feet. Looking for the lavatory, she opened a door in the side of the room. It revealed a tiny toilet and shower stall, which smelt reassuringly of disinfectant. She stripped and got under the shower. For a while it puzzled her that her lavender soap would not lather, until she realised that the water was salt.

After her shower she dressed, but then lay down, and the exhaustion engendered by all the strange new impressions pushed her into a half-sleep, so that when the rap on the door came and she heard the clear voice of her new acquaintance calling through it, she had to ask her to wait while she rebelted her dress. ‘I fell asleep,’ she said apologetically, opening the door, ‘can you wait a second?’

She was looking for her lipstick, clipping on her earrings. ‘Are you the only one in this cabin?’ asked Florence, stepping inside. ‘The boat isn’t even half full, is it?’

‘Actually we booked this whole room.’ Laura explained how she and her sister had been intending to travel together, but how Ellen’s sudden appendicitis had put paid to that plan. ‘Mother was going to call the whole thing off, but I managed to convince her I’d behave myself for three days on a ship …’ Laura paused, suddenly conscious that her mother’s protectiveness might sound ridiculous to this independent woman. ‘She still sees me as a child,’ she said weakly.

But Florence, who was looking at the magazine Laura had left on the bed, hardly seemed to have heard her. It was a magazine about Hollywood stars, and Florence flicked through it for a few seconds while Laura lipsticked her mouth and slid her feet into her patent shoes, and then she dropped it on the floor. ‘Come on, I’m hungry as a horse. Haven’t eaten all day.’

They were early, so that only a few of the tables were taken, but rather than pausing for the waiter to show them where to sit, Florence walked directly to the table she wanted, in the middle of the room.

‘Funny how your magazine puts that actress on the cover and doesn’t say a word about her politics,’ she said suddenly as they were sitting down and shaking out their napkins.

‘Her politics?’

‘She is committed, you know – signed a petition a few months ago for aid for Spain. I guess the studio doesn’t want anyone seeing her as a Red, but even so, they could mention it.’

‘Did you see her last film?’ Laura asked. Here, she would be on familiar ground, since she had seen it and had decided views on it, but Florence shook her head and started telling Laura about some other actors who supported aid for Spain.

When the waiter came up with the menus, Florence took them from him with a quick nod, hardly interrupting their conversation, and even when she knocked a fork to the floor as she opened it, she seemed unflustered. Watching her read the menu, Laura realised that she was one of the first women she had ever met who appeared to have no physical uncertainty. Her dress was shabby, her hair unwaved and her eyebrows unplucked, but her gestures were expansive and her voice determined. Laura had been brought up into the certain knowledge that a woman’s body and voice were always potential sources of shame, that only by intense scrutiny and control could one become acceptable. Hairy shins, stained skirt, smudged lipstick – anything could mark out one’s failure. Laura thought she was doing all right this evening, in her wool crepe dress with the bow at the neck and the navy belt, with her pearl earclips and her unladdered stockings. These had all been bought for this voyage, and allowed Laura to take her seat in the restaurant feeling reasonably confident that she would fit in. Florence, however, seemed to be unaware of such concerns. Planting her elbows on the table, even though one sleeve was actually torn at the wrist, as the restaurant filled up and the waiter hovered to take their order, she went on talking to Laura as if they were alone and no one was watching them.