The English Wife. Adrienne Chinn
almost without soil, like a strange thing from the bottom of the great deep, lifted up, suddenly, into sunshine and storm, but belonging to the watery darkness out of which it has been reared; the eye, accustomed to richer and softer scenes, finds something of a strange and almost startling beauty in its bold, hard outlines, cut out on every side, against the sky.’
– Robert Traill Spence Lowell, nineteenth-century American missionary
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Please be advised this book features the following content warnings: bereavement, suicide, descriptions of war.
The grey bulk of the RMS Mauritania sits like a warehouse alongside the Liverpool dock. Black smoke belches from its two large funnels. Ellie bounces Emmett, swaddled in a thick wool blanket and the garments she’d spent the winter knitting by the fireplace, and coos into his shell-like ear. He fixes her with his impassive blue/brown gaze. Such an odd little man with his one blue eye and his one brown eye, and the fine blond eyebrows he’d taken to arching when unimpressed. The ship melds with the lowering clouds and the rumbling sea, but, at least for now, the incessant rain has let up, though Ellie’s face is damp with the humid threat of an imminent deluge.
‘It would take a huge iceberg to sink that thing,’ Ellie’s sister, Dottie, says, blowing into her mitts. ‘There’s lots of icebergs around Newfoundland. I read about it in the library.’
‘Thanks, Dottie. You’re a harbinger of doom, as always.’
Henry Burgess lifts his glasses and squints at the ship. ‘I shouldn’t worry, Ellie Mae. I’ve been reading about the Mauritania. She’s been doing runs all over the world since the war began. She’s a tough old thing.’
Ellie scans the pier, crowded with thousands of young women, many with infants and toddlers, with faces as blank and terrified as her own. ‘There are so many of us.’ She looks at her father. ‘What are we all doing, Poppy?’ She bites down on her lip and blinks back the tears that salt her eyes. ‘I can’t even remember what Thomas looks like.’
Henry lifts a gloved hand as if to pet Ellie’s arm, but hesitates and shoves it into his coat pocket. ‘I don’t expect he’s changed all that much.’
‘I never even knew about the prisoner exchange until I received the telegram from Canada. I still can’t believe he was in hospital in London for four months and I didn’t even know. He was too sick to get a message to me.’
‘Quite. But he’s recovered now, I understand. Didn’t you say he’s back fishing with his father?’
‘That’s what he said in his letter. In a place called Tippy’s Tickle on the north coast of Newfoundland. I couldn’t find it on the map in the school library.’
Dottie shifts Ellie’s suitcase from one hand to the other with a grunt. ‘You’ll be off feasting on bananas and white bread instead of having to eat Woolton pie and that horrible National Loaf that everyone knows they put cinema sweepings into.’ Dottie pouts, her lips reddened with what Ellie suspects to be one of her stolen lipsticks. ‘You’ll forget all about me and Poppy once you’re over in Canada, just like you forgot about George.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re family, though I don’t know what happened to the lovely little girl you used to be. Hopefully, by the time I see you again, you’ll have matured.’
‘I’m mature. I’m sixteen. I’m not a child, Ellie. Just ask George.’
‘It’s not Canada, pet,’ Henry corrects Dottie. ‘It’s Newfoundland. Newfoundland is a British dominion, similar to Canada and Australia.’
‘What do you mean, just ask George?’
The ship’s horn blows out an ear-splitting bellow. The crowd surges forward like a wave, knocking Ellie off balance. Henry grabs her arm. ‘You should be going, pet.’ He removes a ticket from his coat pocket and places it in her gloved hand. ‘I’ve paid a porter to take your trunk to your room. It’s first class, so you and Emmett should have some privacy.’
Ellie’s eyes widen. ‘First class? Poppy! You didn’t have to do that. It’s far too dear.’
‘It’s the least I can do, pet.’ He tweaks Emmett’s chubby cheek. ‘Take care, Ellie Mae. He kisses her awkwardly on her cheek. ‘You know you can always come home if things …’ His voice catches and he clears his throat. ‘Right, Dottie, we’d best be off before it starts raining again. They’re threatening gales from Iceland and we’ve got a long journey home.’
Dottie kisses the baby on his cheek. ‘Bye, little one.’ She holds out the suitcase. ‘Goodbye, Ellie.’
‘That’s no way to say goodbye, Dottie. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.’
Dottie stares at Ellie. ‘What do you expect? You’re off to a big new country where everything will be lovely and easy. They weren’t bombed, were they? They don’t have rationing, do they? Thousands of people weren’t killed there, were they? I think you married Thomas just to get away from this horrible place. To get away from Poppy and me.’
‘Dottie, how can you say that? I’ve been crying every night wondering when I’ll see you and Poppy again. It’s crushing me to leave you, and Norwich, and … and everything. You have no idea. It’s my home. I’m going to miss you and Poppy awfully.’
‘If you really cared about us, you’d stay. You promised you’d stay. You promised! You’re a liar, Ellie!’
‘Now, pet, you don’t really mean that. Ellie’s your sister. Blood is thicker than water and all that.’
Dottie tucks her hand around her father’s elbow. ‘Let’s go, Poppy. It’s cold, and I’m hungry. Let’s get some fish and chips. Just the two of us. I saw a place just around the corner.’
***
Ellie stumbles into her cabin with Emmett and the suitcase. Four double bunk beds crowd the floor space and someone has deposited her trunk behind the door. A young woman in an ill-fitting suit leans up on her elbow from the top of one of the beds. ‘Bloody ’ell. A baby? It isn’t a crier, is it?’
Ellie looks down at her ticket and back at the young woman. ‘I’m sorry. I think I’m in the wrong room. I’m meant to be in first class.’
A whoop of laugher. ‘This is it, angel.’ The young woman rises and swings her legs over the side of the bunk, the skin stained with gravy browning to look like tights. Thank goodness for Thomas and his ‘in’ with the American GIs. She’d never been short of nylons.
Ellie takes a deep breath and sets the suitcase down beside the bunk by the small porthole window. ‘Is there anyone here?’
‘Be my guest.’ The rasping of a match against grit. ‘I’m Mona. Had to haul my ass all the way up ’ere from Lewisham. Bloody nightmare.’ She holds the match against a cigarette and inhales until the tip glows red. She blows on the match and drops it on the linoleum floor. ‘Still, I’m off to Toronto. Can’t be worse than Lewisham. They bombed the shit outta that place.’ She sucks on the cigarette as she watches Ellie set Emmett on a bed and free him of the blanket and knitted cap and mitts. ‘Where you off to, luv?’
‘Newfoundland.’