‘I’ll tell Aunt M in the morning. We’ll have docked, but there’ll be plenty of time to speak to Lagrande. And we must visit some shops in Southampton, I’m dying for some new stockings.’
‘Oh,’ Fen suddenly realised that her wardrobe was in need of more than just new stockings to make it shipshape for the grandeur of the voyage. ‘Room for one more on that trip?’
‘Oh yes, a thousand times yes!’ Eloise clasped her hand again in genuine excitement. ‘Please let me treat you to something, anything.’
‘Not on your nelly, your family will be spending enough on me, if you’re sure your aunt will pay for my passage?’ Fen noticed James was grinning. He knew how little she liked being beholden to people.
‘As you wish, Fen, dear. I’m so pleased you’ll be with me.’ Eloise let her go and did a twirl on the deck. She reminded Fen of Genie, and not just because that night they’d both shown such natural exuberance. Fen realised how similar they looked too, especially now Eloise wasn’t under the strict and watchful eye of her etiquette-obsessed aunt.
‘Well,’ Fen said, her breath returning to normal and the heat she’d built up from all that running quickly being replaced by the chill of the cold deck. ‘After that ambush, I think I’d better head off to bed. Night, you two, see you in the morning.’
‘Me too,’ Eloise said, stifling a yawn. She had finally run out of puff, too.
‘Let me walk you both back to the stairwell at least,’ James said, and then, when they parted ways a short time later, bowed his head to the two women.
Once final goodnights and goodbyes were said, Fen finally headed down the narrow corridor towards her cabin. Whether it was from the emotions brought up from the release of energy as she’d run around the deck, or the few too many sherries she might have had in the saloon before and after dinner, Fen was exhausted and wanted nothing more at this moment than the comfort of her bed and the warmth of the eiderdown on top of it. Sleep didn’t come all that easily though, and Fen put it down to her brain spinning just as much as the great propellers on the De Grasse. Who’d have thought, when they’d set off tonight, that she would be staying on until America? She finally dropped off in the small hours, the skyscrapers and movie scenes she’d imagined as she lay curled up under her eiderdown following her into her dreams.
14
When Fen awoke the next morning, the ship felt like a very different place. Gone was the constant thrum of the engines and motion of the sea and instead all was still and quiet, excepting the noises of port-side industry around it. Far off, chains clanked and voices echoed, the sound conducted through the steel of the great ship like electricity through a wire.
Fen’s cabin seemed different too, due to the clear morning light peeping through the chintzy curtains, or perhaps it was because she now looked at it as somewhere she’d be staying for more than just the one night. In the cool light of day, she wasn’t entirely sure if she had done the right thing in agreeing to travel all the way to New York as a companion for Eloise.
She thought back to James’s admission last night that he had always planned to stay on until the Big Apple, as those jazz singers Arthur used to like called it. The Big Apple… it had been an answer to a clue in a crossword she and Arthur had solved together… the last crossword they’d solved together. Newton’s fruit on American turf – a large one reportedly! And now she was to go there and see it for herself. Arthur would have loved that…
‘I must write to Kitty,’ Fen muttered to herself as she got out of the narrow bed and washed her face in the basin next to it. The idea of letting down her friend, who had been waiting for her to come home for almost two months, didn’t sit well with Fen, and it was tempering her excitement about seeing New York, somewhat. She wondered, as the cold water helped to wake her up, if James had had similar reservations about lying to her. Apart from a quick trip to Mrs B’s, they’d made no solid plans together but she had rather assumed that their friendship meant as much to him as it did to her.
And it wasn’t only because he was her one living link to Arthur. Fen had truly come to value James as a friend and a safe pair of hands when the going got ropey. Staying on board the De Grasse with him, and him seemingly happy for her to do so, did something to balance out how bad she felt for Kitty.
Washed and dressed, Fen sat down at the small Formica table in her cabin and penned her letter.
The SS De Grasse, Southampton Docks
November 1945
Dearest Kitty,
You might think it odd that I’m writing from the ship in Southampton – all but a few hours travel from you at Mrs B’s – and, in truth, I really did think that I would be knocking on the farmhouse door before this letter gets to you.
I’m really very sorry, but something has ‘come up’, as they say, and I’m now booked to stay on the ship all the way to New York!
Fen paused and sucked the end of the pen. There wasn’t really a good reason as to why she was staying on, and she wasn’t quite sure how to phrase ‘someone I barely know has asked me to stay with her, so I won’t be coming home to you, dear chum’ without it sounding as inane as it did.
Her mind leapt to how her parents would feel too and she was about to crumple up
