Our Time Is Gone (77 page)

‘To-night you had to have a happy mood, otherwise you wouldn't work.'

What did she mean? ‘I'm not unhappy—but I'm worried.'

‘You always say that,' Mrs. Gumbs said. ‘Well, if you're still feeling that way, Mrs., I strongly advise you not to go to work this night. It's the dirtiest ship that has ever sailed into the river. So I'm told. And not only that, but they're employing over sixty women to work on the cleaning of her. I don't know how they'd ever win their war, really I don't, if it wasn't for us. A dirty filthy hospital ship. You'll find more than a leg believe me, Mrs., and before you're back in your bed you'll be feeling ashamed of yourself for talking like you do. Sure, worrying won't help anybody—certainly not you.'

‘You don't know me, and you don't know my husband,' replied Mrs. Fury. ‘I'll go on worrying about Denny until I see him in that room below, standing before my eyes.'

‘Well, I confess I don't know you, Mrs., nor your husband, but if he worries as much as you do then—oh, come on. Let's get out into the air,' and she pushed her chair away, got up, put out the stove. ‘How d'you like this hat?' she asked. ‘I only got it this morning, and I only paid two shillings for it. I made it up myself, really.'

‘A very nice hat, just suits you.'

‘Well, that's something! I used to be told that I had a face that wouldn't suit any hat that was ever made.' She opened the door. ‘I thought we might walk slowly down, and go along the jetty for a bit. We could sit there till about a quarter to. I hate being in the house in such lovely weather. And my, you
will
want fresh air to-night!' she concluded, as Mrs. Fury passed out and she closed the door, and gave it a push to see it was securely locked.

They made their way slowly towards the docks, talked of German prisoners arrived at Gelton that day. Now and again Mrs. Gumbs stood to look at herself in a shop window.

‘I rather like this hat, you know. It
does
suit me.'

‘Well! Here we are! My! What a crowd of women going aboard. Never seen so many before,' remarked Mrs. Gumbs. ‘Now then,' she grasped her companion's arm. ‘No! Not down that gangway. Down this,' she said, and pulled Mrs. Fury after her, who was looking at some men being carried ashore on stretchers. Above their heads decks were being washed clean of blood.

‘They're probably sick members of the crew,' said Mrs. Fury as she walked down the gangway behind Mrs. Gumbs. They reached an alleyway.

‘Dead ones more likely,' replied Mrs. Gumbs. ‘I think we go this way.'

It was a long alleyway dimly lit. It was crowded with men. They pushed past each other, all seemed in a terrible hurry, they carried tools, buckets, bundles of blankets.

‘Keep to the bulkhead,' said a quartermaster.

‘Make passage there.'

Clouds of steam floated in the air, the air smelt strongly of carbolic, of disinfectants, of urination. An engineer smoked a pipe, leaning against the bulkhead, hands behind him, drumming upon it with his fingers. A long file of women passed him. He hardly noticed them, but other men working on a steam-pipe made a point of deliberately obstructing their passage. They had to force their way past them. Some rude remarks were passed, a woman who winked was pushed against the bulkhead. Down below rumbling sounds could be heard. Snatches of conversation rolled along the alleyway.

‘Dirtiest ship I ever seen. Might have cleaned her up a bit before she came in. Wouldn't care for these women's jobs. Muck everywhere.'

‘No time to clean her up. Lucky to get in at all. Chased in she was.'

‘For God's sake, woman,' exclaimed Mrs. Gumbs, ‘keep close to me, and take no notice of anybody. Watch me. I never take notice of what men say. And another thing, be careful when you come to the open hatch, or you won't have to do any worrying.'

They pushed on through the alleyway. It was crowded with life—crowded to suffocation. And still they came on, men, women, boys, through the half-light, along slippery decks, through the smells, the orgy of sounds that beat like great wings throughout the whole ship. Down on the lower decks men with squeegees and hoses were cleaning the top layers of accumulated filth. Nobody knew where the ship had come from. She stank. She breathed putrefaction.

One said she had sailed in from Hell. Another said: ‘Hell is cleaner,' and gathered into his hands and over his arms, so that the pile grew as high as his neck, pieces of bandages, dirty rags, blackened handkerchiefs, rotting socks, towels stiff as boards, belts, bundles of paper, gathered the whole festering mass and said: ‘Beats me where all the stuff comes from!' He filled a canvas sling with it.

‘Keep close,' Mrs. Gumbs said. ‘We're all mustering on B deck,' and still afraid that Mrs. Fury might possibly put a foot the wrong way, she hung on to her coat. Water streamed down the top decks, the scuppers became choked, and the dead water of the dock took the burden of the cleaning, of the scavenging of the filth of war.

On B deck the women lined up and one after another they were told off to their jobs.

Mrs. Gumbs leaned close to Mrs. Fury and said quietly: ‘Did I tell you I was going away on Saturday? Yes. Saturday to Sunday night. I'm going to Bristol. A great friend of mine, whom I haven't seen for years, is coming home on leave to Bristol to-morrow. I thought I'd told you,' she concluded.

‘No! I never knew,' Mrs. Fury said, and said no more, for the overseer came up to the line, grabbed coats, said: ‘You, you, you. Glory hole.'

Mrs. Fury had never heard this word before, and Mrs. Gumbs explained that they had to clean out the orderlies' quarters.

‘Come along,' she said. ‘We collect our cleaning things from the galley. What's supposed to be a galley,' and then she talked of Bristol.

‘I hope you have a nice journey,' Mrs. Fury said.

‘I'm sure I will. Here's your bucket, cloth, brush. Now we say good bye till one a.m.'

Without another word Mrs. Gumbs passed into the glory hole and down the ladder. Mrs. Fury went to her section.

‘Yes,' thought Mrs. Fury. ‘This is a dirty ship. Different to any of the others.'

First you scraped the blood and slime and waste. Then you applied water and sand and scrubbed. You washed this away, and used soap and scrubbed again. Then you sat back on your heels and rested your back.

‘The ship must sail on the morning's tide,' the voice said, ‘and she must be clean.'

The whole ship resounded to it, scraping, scrubbing, scrubbing, scraping. She thought of Mrs. Gumbs going off to Bristol. She felt she would like to go too. Mrs. Gumbs would see her friend there. She would be there till Sunday. No Sunday afternoon talk
this
week.

Draughts of air came down through the ventilators. Wire bunks creaked. The ship's siren blew. They were testing the whistle. From where she knelt the sounds of scraping and running water were loud in her ears. ‘Thank God Denny is not on a ship like this,' she said to herself, and continued her scrubbing. ‘He would be furious if he saw what I'm doing.' She swung her arm out from the shoulder, made a complete arc. The strong smell of the carbolic rose up from the deck.

‘Sometimes I wonder if after all I'm not a fool for doing this.' She squeezed water from the cloth. ‘I don't mind it. I'm used to this. I'll just give it all up when Denny gets home, and it will have done me no harm. But I wish Mrs. Gumbs wasn't going away.'

She scrubbed till half-past twelve.

Mrs. Gumbs called: ‘Mrs. Fury!'

There she was. Extraordinary woman Mrs. Gumbs. Never looked tired, never looked hot, or flustered. She couldn't help remarking upon it.

‘Well, I've done nothing else,' said Mrs. Gumbs. ‘What I mean to say is that I've done it so long I'm quite used to it, and it hasn't done me any harm. And I don't think it has you, either. You're a far different women to when I first saw you. All work's dirty, isn't it? Any kind of work, Mrs., and we all try to dodge it, but the fact is once you are working you're happy. I don't mean this kind, of course. This is a dirty ship. Never seen one like it. But it keeps your mind off things. Now let's get some hot water for tea,' she said.

‘I'll miss you,' Mrs. Fury said, as they went along to the galley.

‘Miss me? Ridiculous, woman! You won't miss me at all. That's the thing about you that I admire. Look at me. Suppose this friend didn't come to Bristol. Well, I have nothing else to do, to fall back on so to speak. But look at you. Your world's never empty, Mrs. Is it? All your family are away. You might say you had nothing. But you have, and I envy you for it, Mrs. It's wonderful. Look the way you go off to chapel of an evening. When my world's empty and I haven't a single thing to do, I feel in a way that you are well off. I wish I could believe like you. But you see I was brought up another way to you. I often watch you going out of an evening, and worry or no worry, hard life or soft life, you look happier than a sight of people I've seen. I wish sometimes I could be like you. I do, honestly. So you'll miss me just because I'm going away for two days, not two days really?'

‘I will nevertheless. Even when you're up in your room it's nice knowing you are there, Mrs. Gumbs. You're the one friend I've got now, and I mean that.'

‘Well, it's nice of you to say it. Here, give me that can. That's it.'

She went into the galley and made tea. They went along the lower decks, sat down on some dunnage and had their early morning meal.

‘I thought I'd be sick to-night,' said Mrs. Fury. ‘It
is
a dirty ship.'

‘Nonsense! I've seen worse. Just think of what we don't see! That's what I say, Mrs. It's what we don't see in this awful war, isn't it? We're jolly lucky. No doubt this ship was full of nice young lads all gone off to fight, or it carried hundreds of them lying flat on their backs. Yes. Think of that. What you don't see. It keeps you from being sorry for yourself. And you can be sorry for yourself, Mrs. I've seen it. I
do
hate self-pitying people, don't you?'

But Mrs. Fury did not reply. It was difficult to know how to answer it. ‘What makes you think I pity myself?' she asked.

Mrs. Gumbs shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, nothing,' she said brusquely. ‘But I didn't mean anything personal, Mrs. Lord no! And I certainly never meant to hurt your feelings. It's my way of speaking. For heaven's sake don't mind me. All the same I have come across people like that and they make me sick.' She took a very audible gulp at her tea.

‘I've never had the time for pitying myself,' replied Mrs. Fury, and it was at once obvious to Mrs. Gumbs that she had talked too much. ‘I don't think you understand everybody, Mrs. Gumbs, in spite of what you say. You don't understand me, I'm sure. If I'd pitied myself I would have been in the grave years ago. And I had reason many a time. But you see I've always been able to turn the right way. I've lost nothing and regret nothing. I've always believed in God, and in His goodness, and goodness in people is something different altogether. When you have faith, Mrs. Gumbs, you have everything.
You
maybe don't believe that, because you're not a Catholic. But I
do
, and that's the difference between you and me.'

‘And I admire you for it. Sometimes I've asked myself if what you're doing wasn't just some sort of penance or something, or just show, and I've thought: “Well, it's pretty nonsensical coming down here scrubbing ships at your age. On the other hand, of course, you may want the money. Poor people are always wanting it.”' She threw away the remains of her tea.

‘I'm simply an independent woman, and I've always been. It isn't the first time I've gone out to work. And I don't scrub here just for nothing. It means something to me. When I was a young girl my husband brought me over to England, I was no more than seventeen at the time, and I've spent all my life in it, and not once have I been back to my home. Well, I often think of my home and my great wish now is to go back there, and all I'm waiting for, is for this war to be over, and my husband off the blessed sea. He's been forty-five to forty-six years on the sea, and that's a long time, now isn't it?'

‘It is a long time, Mrs. I have a habit of saying things sometimes because before I came to work on these ships I lived amongst people who listened to what I said, and never answered me back. But you have, and now I see the difference between us. Well! There's the whistle. We must start again. Before you know where you are it'll be daylight.'

She disappeared behind a pile of packing-cases and was back at her job long before Mrs. Fury had moved away from the dunnage pile.

She began to scrub again. But the deck was no longer of wood. When she looked at it it had turned itself into a green carpet, and Denny and she were walking across it, arm in arm, and a woman with a black blouse and a milk-white apron was calling to them from a cottage door. The grass was like a big pile carpet.

In the distance there was a house with a blue door and the brass latch shone in the sunlight. Denny and she came to this door, and her grandfather opened it for them. They sat down to tea in the cottage with the blue door
. ‘
What a cool place,' Denny said. She looked out through the door, watching two children carrying wooden buckets to the spring near by. A cow passed, a man behind it. A bell rang in the distance, and then an open carriage passed the door, and a very old man wearing a panama hat raised it as she called out:
‘
Good afternoon, Mr. Lynch. A glorious day.
'

‘Glorious!' That was it. Glorious! That was the very word. Glorious.

The woman's arm made circles with the scrubbing-brush.

‘Glorious!' she said. ‘That's the word. The land was glorious.'

And round and round the scrubbing-brush went, and behind her, men hammered, men sang, one laughed. And above, the deck was clean and the ship almost ready for the next voyage to a far place that was unknown.