What You've Got Within You

6: The Neptune 1956

6The Neptune 1956

The voyage from England to Australia took six weeks. During that time, James had very little to do. He was not much of a reader. He did not like the idea of spending most of the day in the miniscule cabin he shared with a Welshman and two English brothers, Gary and Greg Windsor. The Welshman, David Davies, was a whining oaf of a man. He spent most of the day complaining about how ill he felt and most of the night snoring, farting in his sleep, and falling out of his bunk (fortunately, a bottom bunk). The Windsor brothers were pleasant gasbags. Although their constant chatter kept James’s loneliness at bay, he nonetheless required respite from the noise for long periods during the day. He thus spent many hours walking the decks of the yawing liner.

As his feet steadied and his sea legs grew, James was able to make rapid progress along the length and breadth of the ship. He familiarised himself with each level and section. He came to know many of the passengers from his regular rounds. They recognised him. They looked forward to hearing the energetic Scotsman’s daily, warmly given “Hellos!” as he passed at a brisk walk or nimbly descended a ladder, one hand aloft in both greeting and farewell, disappearing as if drowning under the deck.

The passengers tended to stick to their own groups. Many came from the same town or region. Married couples congregated together. They were berthed on decks above the single males, like James. Single females, a rarity, were kept well away from the men in the interest of propriety. They were not, however, barricaded away from the men. There was potential for interaction. This was how, during his twice-daily constitutionals, James Henderson came to recognise the groups of single women and they him.

By the second week of the voyage, James often stopped to talk to some of the women. He introduced himself and, in turn, became acquainted with them. James Henderson was not a garrulous man. But he was not shy or lacking in self-confidence. He knew his limitations and was comfortable with them. He had learned to operate within those restrictions and not to rail against what God in his infinite wisdom had given him. This self-acceptance (or self-discipline) gave James Henderson an aura of calmness that others found alluring. His honesty and direct speech were real gifts. Although many made jibes about him as he skipped along on his walks, very few showed disrespect.

It was not long before James’s attention was increasingly attracted to one of the single women on deck C, Jenny Jenkins. He first noticed Jenny on the third morning of the third week when he stopped to chat with four of the single women on the leeward side of deck C midway between the bow and the stern. He had been pausing to talk to the women for a week. It was the first time Jenny Jenkins had joined the group. She had, until then, been indisposed (as was later explained to James). As a result, she stood out from the others. James thought Jenny would have shone like a beacon in any crowd.

She was the same age as James, twenty-one. Like him, both of her parents were dead, killed during a bomb raid during the Second World War. Again, like James, she was leaving the United Kingdom to start what she hoped was a happy, new life far from the claustrophobic skies she had lived under for so long but could never accept. Jenny Jenkins was a pretty, slight woman. A neat, well-contained beauty. She had blonde, almost white, shoulder-length hair, opalescent eyes and high cheek bones. Her lips were full, inviting; her jaw prominent and cervine. Although small, she moved with purpose and vigour. Her bust was modest, but she knew how to use it well, how to thrust it forward, temptingly. She spoke smoothly with a south English accent.

When James first met Jenny, each held the other’s gaze a fraction longer than would normally be considered decorous. It was the type of little linger that caused others to notice, to smile in recognition of its significance and, afterwards, to prompt knowing nods and playful prods. Romance.

Jenny Jenkins struggled to convince her friends that she had no interest in James Henderson. As he passed the group each day, or twice a day, and sometimes three or four times a day, Jenny’s friends goaded her with lascivious predictions. Her objections were feeble. The jibes were not malicious and Jenny, in fact, enjoyed them. She was unquestionably interested in James Henderson. Why else did she time her strolls on deck for fresh air at the precise times James required his? They were in many respects physically similar. They were from the same stock. The same aspirations, yearnings, hopes. They would get on well together.

At the end of the fourth week, the relationship, if it could be called that, blossomed to a new level, when James asked Jenny to walk with him to the upper decks. And that set off a louder round of laughter, jokes and interrogations.

James went up the steps first. He stood, concerned, helpful, looking down the laddered chute as Jenny ascended. Towards the top, she looked up at James crouched and ready. Her face was slightly red. She smiled up at James. He felt a warmth beaming into his heart. He realised it had never been there before. It thawed the ice that had been piling up inside ever since he could remember. As he took her hand and helped her onto the deck, he smiled as well. His face lit up. He felt as though he was on the verge of happiness. He had to control himself. He did not want to ruin things by letting his racing heart take over. If you let go of yourself, something bad might happen. You could lose your father or your mother or worse. Steady, he told himself.

After she had climbed onto the deck, Jenny held her hand in James’s grip. His grasp was tight, but not desperate. She gave his hand a transitory squeeze, which he reciprocated. The train in his chest slowed. He looked at the hair swept from her cheeks. The bright eyes. They then proceeded on their promenade into the salty wind gusting around and over the lifeboats, halyards and metal skeleton of the ship.

There was an immediate understanding between them. A bond that avoided the need for idle talk. An intangible thing that permitted rapturous emotions to fill the distance between them on the ship and to suffuse over them like the heat from a fire when you come into a room from the cold.

During their walk, James told Jenny about his family, his previous life working in Glasgow, the loss of his parents. Jenny told James about her grief at the loss of her mother and father, seeing their crumpled, lifeless bodies under the rubble of their home. She spoke of her schooling and her training as a nurse. James was happy to tell her that his mother and sisters were also nurses. The ties between them were tightened.

“Where are you heading?” James asked.

“I’m not sure. For the moment, I guess I am going to Perth to work in a hospital. After that, I don’t know. What about you?”

“They have organised a job for me in an asbestos mine right up in the north of Western Australia called Disaster Gorge. I don’t know what it will be like. Anything would be better than where I’ve come from.”

“How far away from Perth is the mine?”

“Quite a way, I gather, but I don’t really know. Australia is so much bigger than back home. I have to work there for a year as part of the agreement with the Australian government. I’m sure the time will fly by. It will be warm and sunny. As far as I know, it doesn’t rain much up there. Just sunshine. Can you believe that, Jenny? A place where there will be light. A place where you don’t have to shiver all the time because of the cold.”

“Yes, it sounds almost too good to be true. I’m looking forward to Perth as well. People tell me it is a beautiful town. Near the ocean. Plenty of sunshine as well.”

“I’m sure we’re going to enjoy it.” He paused, looking at her. “It’s like being part of an adventure, don’t you think?”

James gave Jenny’s hand a reassuring squeeze. She moved into his body a fraction more, as they continued on their walk. She smelled so clean, comforting.

By the sixth week of the voyage, the passengers could feel the increase in the outside temperature. The sky was forever blue. Jenny forsook her shawl, and James his coat, for the walks around the ship. A sense of anticipation percolated through the cabins. They would soon reach Australia. Their lives would soon change for good.

Jenny and James also felt the agitation of uncertainty as their long journey’s end approached. For them arrival in Australia had different connotations from the majority of the passengers. It meant that their time together was drawing to a close. Each could sense the sadness in the other. A pall hung over them like the melancholy clouds of Britain. They thought they had escaped it.

Perhaps, it was the fear of again losing something good that drove James to venture forward to embrace Jenny. It may have been the red, orange glow of the sunset that rose up from the sinking sun above the placid, deep-green wall of water on the horizon. It could have been simply that James loved Jenny, and he knew that she felt the same way about him. He put his thin, strong arm around her, drew her into him, and kissed her. Kissed her for all the world to see, at the prow of the ship, easing its way through the sea in a prism of flame.

Jenny and James held each other close as the light faded, and the first stars twinkled low in the twilight. Resting their heads together, they spoke of their fear of being parted, and their anxiety that they would never see each other when they walked down the gangplank in a few days. The loss would be too hard to bear. Now that they had found each other on a journey into a vast unknown. When they had gone through so much individually to get to this place together.

“I don’t want to lose you, James. I don’t want you to go to Disaster Gorge. I know nothing about it, but it sounds like a bad place. How can anything good come out of a place with that name?”

“Don’t worry, Jenny. I’ll be fine. I have to go. You know that. I have an agreement with the Australian Government. It won’t be forever. It is only for twelve months. Maybe, you can come up and visit me. I may be able to take time off to come down to Perth to visit you. I’m not great with words, but I will write. I hope you will send me a few letters too. I’d love that, Jenny.”

“Of course, I will. I love you.”

There, she had said it. He turned to her, a quaking uneasiness rising, making him jittery, giving him a sensation of losing himself, drifting away up into the air. As if all his past life had been rested from him, leaving him floating here with this beautiful woman, unmoored.

He looked at her and said, “I love you. I love you, Jenny, with all my heart.” And as he said it, the feeling of being lost, floating away, vanished. He knew that he had a life with Jenny Jenkins. He could build a life with her. He hugged her to him, relieved.

“As soon as I have finished my year at Disaster Gorge, I will come and get you, Jenny, I promise.” He hoped he did not sound too anxious.

She looked into his eyes and replied, “I will be waiting for you.”

They held each other until all light was gone. The night was balmy. The usual evening chill had been warned off by the approaching continent. It would stay away from them for years. They kissed, discussed their plans for the next year, and then went their separate ways to their cabins.

James opened his cabin door, still rubescent with emotion, lost in romantic thought.

“That tea was cold and the meat was off. I’ve had better meals in boarding school,” Davies moaned. Then, turning to James, “I’d steer clear of the dining room tonight, Henderson. They’re serving up some God-awful slop. Full of watery cabbage and horsemeat.” He let rip with a thunderous, almost musical fart, from the depths of his fat, Welsh arse. “See what I mean. It’s gone right through me like a dose of salts. Awful stuff, Henderson, awful, b****y stuff.”

James looked at the supine Welshman and went back out the door.

Over the next few days, James tried to spend most of the time with Jenny. It was difficult. They did not want the tongues wagging too much. But the times he managed to share with Jenny were the happiest he could recall in his life. When land was sighted and the buzz of excitement spread through the ship, James began to grieve his imminent loss. Jenny became sombre, quiet. Twelve months seemed an eternity.

The next morning, the passengers awoke to a still ship. The Neptune was berthed in the Port of Fremantle. The ship’s officers went about broadcasting the news and insisting that all persons be ready for disembarkation later that morning. James, like the majority of the passengers, had few possessions. Packing his belongings took all of one minute. He sat on the edge of his bunk alongside one of the Windsors, waiting for the call, his compact, cardboard suitcase resting on his knees.

James waited silently for almost two hours. He lost himself in a well of thoughts about Jenny, occasionally looking up through the porthole to see the patch of vibrant blue sky waiting aloft for him to come. He was oblivious to the ugly cant of the Englishmen and the incessant whine of the Welsh git. They soon gave up on the idea of engaging James in their conversation. They left him sitting there, staring into space, immersed in his awful longing.

Finally, at 11.00am, there was a rap on the wall outside the cabin and an officer told them to file out and onto the deck. James was first up and out. He was anxious to see Jenny and say goodbye.

The hallway was thrumming with the throng edging its way forward and out into the sun. When James emerged into light, he felt disoriented. The men were being herded along the deck and down a walkway to the quay. A crowd of staring, hatted heads, were crunched down on the dock. Behind it, numerous buses and trucks trembled as their engines idled. James could see a similar walkway further forward of the one he was moving towards. There was a third towards the ship’s stern.

As he walked slowly to the ramp, James turned anxiously left and right, searching for Jenny. He could not see her. He followed the man in front, down the gangplank. Short, timber crosspieces had been nailed to the ramp at regular intervals to stop passengers slipping. James had to watch his feet carefully as he disembarked, but he still managed a questing gaze onto the quay, every second step. He could not see Jenny. Had the women already gone?

James at last stepped onto Australian soil or, at least, bitumen. He swayed a little as his inner ears adjusted to motionless earth. He looked around. Faces, burnished by a fierce, southern sun, stared at him. He walked on behind the line of men. He could see they were being directed into a large, timber building. To one side of the building, a column of men was exiting, and entering a bus. Dirty fumes occasionally billowed out of the bus’s exhaust pipe.

James lifted himself onto his tiptoes, peering out through the crowd. “Come on, Henderson, get a wriggle on,” he heard Davies say behind him, “I’ve had a gutful of this crowd. If I had known that they would be …”

Then he saw her. He could see a blonde cascade falling from under a summer bonnet. Her face was moving from side to side. He could see her frowning, anxious, expression. He tiptoed along, looking at her, hoping for contact. He yelled out, “Jenny!” He waved at her. There were too many people. Too much noise. He could not get to her. The crowd was too dense. He was being jostled towards the door. He would never see her again. Davies was pushing from behind.

And then she saw him. Her green-blue eyes locked onto his. They stood transfixed, looking at each other. Silence descended. The concentrated union of their gaze deadening the white noise of the world around them. Time stopped. She smiled at him. It was a nervous, uncertain movement of her mouth. He smiled back. He hoped his face expressed the comfort he wished to give her. She lifted her gloved hand. Not high, but about as high as her cheek. She gave a brisk, earnest wave. Her smile broadened. James began raising his own arm. She briefly tilted her head down to watch where she was going, her hand still elevated. She looked back, but he was gone. Her smile melted from her face. Her hand remained up, the fingers curling downwards to the palm, holding vainly onto the warm, bubbling Australian air for support. The chugging roar of engines returned.