A Quiet Life(8)

As she talked, Laura realised again that Florence was not the sort of girl she usually mixed with – not one of us, as Laura’s mother would put it. She had been working since she was fourteen; first, she explained, in her uncle’s glove-making business, and latterly in the offices of a large shipping company. But all the time her real work had been ‘organising’, as she called it. Organising. That could mean almost anything. But in Florence’s stories – she had told two or three stories by the time they had eaten their soup and their tough little chops – it was all about battles, of the powerless against the powerful. She told a story about how she had tried to insist on better conditions in her own uncle’s factory, which had led to her banishment from that side of the family. ‘But Father stuck by me. He is a Party member himself.’ Laura said nothing at that, too incredulous to speak.

Indeed, at first Laura’s role seemed to be only that of the listener. But after a while she began to ask questions, all of them positive, and at one point led Florence back to the story about the stowaway which had so flared in her imagination. After dinner both women felt too keyed up to go back to their rooms, and Laura agreed quickly when Florence suggested that they go up to the deck.

Out there, under the night sky, the wind came shockingly against the girls’ faces. They struggled over to the railings, where they stood looking down into the foam-patterned ocean. ‘You’re going all the way to France, then?’ Laura said, assuming that Florence would be trying to get as near to Spain as possible.

‘No – just England.’ There was a pause, and then she continued. ‘I was really keen on my last job, it was just office work, but I was organising the girls, the typists, the kind of thing that a lot of boys in the Party don’t really understand, but it’s – important, frankly. To get them to understand. But I got into real trouble—’ Then she stopped and looked at Laura. ‘Hell, I don’t know why I’m even thinking of telling you this.’

Laura was entranced. Was she going to be given a confidence already? Girls at school had rarely invited her into their circles of intimacy. Although she was trustworthy – as she saw it – there was something that put girls off giving her the linked arms and whispered secrets that they gave to others. Perhaps because she never shared confidences herself, being too scared that if she once let others scent the dismal smell of failure that hung around her own family, no one would like her, or perhaps because, as one girl once said to her, ‘You’re such a good girl, Laura, you wouldn’t understand.’ But here was this warmly energetic stranger, ready to entrust Laura with her inner life.

Laura had had an unaccustomed glass of wine over dinner, and it had made her movements more open than usual. She put out her hand and touched Florence’s, where it lay on the rail. It was an untypically expansive gesture from her, but Florence was not to know that.

And so Florence launched into another story, about how she had been onto such a good thing with the girls in the shipping company, and how they had taken their demands for job security and paid holiday to their boss, and how he had pretended to give in, and then sacked Florence and some of the others and taken back his promise. She had been so humiliated, she said, after all the girls had put their faith in her, and one night, fired up by fury after visiting one of the girls who had been sacked and who hadn’t eaten that day as she was so worried about how to pay her rent, she, Florence, had broken into the office and destroyed a whole lot of invoicing files. ‘It felt good,’ she said, obviously remembering with some pleasure and then catching herself up, ‘but – ugh, it was the wrong thing to do.’

In Laura’s mind, the action unfolded like a comic strip: the dastardly boss, the daring night raid. But Florence was now describing something much more real and complicated. ‘He obviously suspected me, and the police came to question me. Luckily I was out when they called – I moved to a friend’s apartment, but then I had to move again, and when I told someone in the Party, they called me in to discipline me. Very unhelpful for the revolution, they said. And when I went for other jobs the last few months I didn’t get anything, I felt people knew about it – it was all horrible. Well, this girl I met a couple of years ago, this English girl, has been writing me and encouraging me to come over to Europe. She was in Spain but she’s back in London now, working in a printers. I just thought that it was time to make a fresh start. My uncle, the one who cut me off ages ago, gave Father the money for my ticket. I think everyone thought I’d gone too far in New York.’ Her voice, which had been so strong and certain, seemed thin now, blown back in the wind.

‘It sounds like you did the right thing.’

‘No, no, the Party told me – I mustn’t make things personal like that. We have to organise for collective action, not go off on our own.’

Despite the darkness that surrounded them, Laura was intensely aware of Florence’s physical presence as she spoke, of her little sigh as she leaned backwards, her hands gripping the rail, and the scent of her – sweat, wine, laundry soap – which seemed so warm even in the chilly night air. She shivered.

‘I’m cold too,’ Florence said. ‘Let’s go down.’

‘Are you tired?’

Laura was disappointed at the thought of the evening already coming to an end, but Florence said immediately, ‘We can get a drink in that bar again.’