Emma’s fits of temper never lasted long. ‘It’s your dirty mind. His arm was nowhere near me.’
‘I’m not blind.’
‘I wish you were. But if you come up to me like that again and make me look such a fool I’ll jump overboard.’
‘You wouldn’t!’
‘I bloody well would.’
Clara laughed. ‘What fun!’
‘You think so?’
‘The ship would stop, and we’d throw you lifebelts. A jolly bosun would haul you aboard, and take you to the captain’s cabin.’
Everyone wondered why they were laughing.
‘I’d be clapped in irons,’ Emma screamed, ‘for the rest of the voyage.’
‘First-class irons, though,’ Clara shrieked. ‘Or maybe they’d put you in charge of that Chief Dragon Stewardess in the white overall, and the Lord knows what she’d do with you!’
‘Oh, shudder-shudder,’ Emma moaned. ‘I’d much rather have my little cock-o’-the-walk cook.’
‘Stop it. You must promise never to see him again, not someone like him. There are lots of men on board who don’t seem to be attached, so why do you have to get mixed up with a bad egg like that?’
‘Oh shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Let’s forget it. It’s absolutely nothing, you know.’
Clara thought that the fuss had indeed got out of hand. ‘If it’s so unimportant why can’t you say you’ll never see him again?’
‘Well, I can say it, but I may bump into him walking around the deck.’
‘He shouldn’t be where we can see him,’ Clara said. ‘I’ll complain to the captain.’
Emma turned pale. ‘He’ll lose his job.’
‘He’ll be clapped in irons. Or be made to walk the plank,’ Clara went on, ‘from the top of the funnel.’
Emma wanted no more of her humour. ‘Don’t do any such thing.’
‘Promise, then?’
Clara waited. Emma nodded. ‘But if I don’t see him again, I’ll never forgive you. It’s rotten of you to make all this fuss, just because you’re having your period.’
A tall thin middle-aged man with a row of medal ribbons on his lapel passed their table. He turned his face away quickly, and walked out of the door to get some fresh air.
‘You’re awful!’ Clara said.
Emma became despondent. ‘He must have heard such things before, and if he hasn’t, what a poor fish!’
When two people want to be together, nothing can be done to stop them meeting. ‘We fell in love,’ Emma said, on telling Clara that she was pregnant. Emma couldn’t be guarded every minute of the day and night. At the cinema one evening Emma complained, before the main film began, that the place was stuffy and made her feel sick because the ship was rocking. She would go to her cabin and rest.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Clara offered.
She pressed her sister’s hand and moved along the row. ‘No, don’t. I’ll be all right. I just want to lie down.’
‘And you haven’t seen him since leaving the ship?’
‘No.’
Clara snorted. ‘And you call that love?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re talking like a mill girl who’s been reading Red Letter magazine.’
‘I don’t care. It was marvellous.’
Clara had seen him standing on the quayside helping to unload while they were waiting to go ashore at Southampton. He was a pallid ginger-haired man of medium height, though too far away for her to see much else. He probably had a wife and children, the squalid little runt. On every voyage he had fun with someone or other. How dare he wave at us?
‘You must have an …’ Clara daren’t say the word.
‘It’s too late,’ Emma told her. ‘I never would, anyway. I want it to be like this. Life was getting too empty for me.’
‘I can’t think what it will do to father and mother. It will kill them.’
‘Do you know,’ Emma said, ‘I don’t care. Well, I do, but it’s my life, and my baby – not theirs. I have to choose my own way out, and nobody else’s. I can’t be doing what other people want from me all the time.’
‘Father and mother aren’t other people.’
‘But they will be if they turn against me for a thing like this.’ Emma peered closer and saw her sister’s tears, wondering why Clara seemed to think that she had committed an act of treachery against her personally. Such sister-love must come to an end sooner or later. Let it go. She couldn’t bear Clara’s overweening concern, nor her parents’, which was really their concern for themselves and not for her. Yet it was the only love they had, and would never diminish.
‘We love you more than we love ourselves,’ Clara told her.
‘Please leave me alone.’
‘Of course, it won’t kill them. Silly of me to say that. Times have changed. You can always have it adopted, or something.’
Emma spoke firmly. ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.’
‘Is everything I say wrong?’ Clara was alarmed at the fact that it might well be.
‘I’ve made up my mind to go to Cambridge.’ Emma sat wearily on the bed. ‘I can live there with friends till I get a flat or house of my own. Mother and father needn’t know what’s happened till the baby is born. I refuse to let anybody ruin my life.’
Clara was beginning to wonder whether their lives hadn’t been smashed before they were born, but knew she must stay with her sister in the hope that she could at least prevent her destroying another one – or two. ‘Just tell me what I can do to help.’
‘Stay with me,’ Emma said. ‘If I sleep alone tonight I shall never wake up.’
6
The taxi-cab to Liverpool Street was laden with trunks and cases. Emma took three pound notes from her purse to pay the train fares, and got thirteen-and-fourpence change. Their luggage went before them on a porter’s barrow. Emma read Strand Magazine as the train steamed lustily out of London. She seemed, while rain washed down the windows, as if she had nothing in the whole wide world to worry about.
In the booking hall at Cambridge she confessed that she knew no one there, and couldn’t think why she had suggested coming except that they had been at Newnham. For all she cared, they could just as well turn round and go back home. She didn’t want to, however, because nobody could go back, no matter where that magical locality might be. She didn’t wish to run anywhere else, either, so supposed she ought to kill herself, and certainly would if she weren’t pregnant, and if she were on her own.
Her face was so dry, eyes so laden with self-reproach that Clara thought even tears would be a blessing. A fit, like a thunderstorm, would clear the air, at least for a while. She felt there was a barrier in Emma’s perceptions that held back notions of self-preservation. Such mending thoughts were not sufficiently plain to her. It was torment. Clara found irresponsibility the worst of sins. Emma’s apprehensions were merely somewhat distant, though being faintly sensed by her did not mean that she was mistaken as to their presence. The fact that she perceived them at all increased her trouble – and Clara did not know whether Emma would rather that they had not been there. As it was, they only sent enough indication of menace to confuse her decisions.
Their sisterly connection was firm – always had been – almost as if they were twins. Clara was appalled at the situation, but knew she must make an effort. Rain teemed outside. It would be better to do anything rather than nothing, so she telephoned the University Arms, asking for their best double room and bath for herself and her sister.
She swung jauntily out of the telephone box. ‘Come on, my love, cheer up. I’ve got us a big cosy bolt-hole looking over Parkers Piece. We’ll have a long soak in the tub, then go down for a ten-bob dinner.’ She called: ‘Hey, porter, get us a taxi.’ Turning again to Emma: ‘We’ll leave our trunks in the left-luggage, then talk about what we’re going to do when we get to our den. Or we won’t, if we don’t feel like it. We’ll do just as we like!’