Louise's Crossing Read online

  ‘How will you repair it?’ the master asked.

  ‘Sheet metal to cover it,’ the chief engineer said. ‘All tied together with metal straps and bolts. But there’s another thing.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘We’ll need to inspect the skin of the entire ship. Inside and out. There could be more.’

  ‘All right. Do it.’

  Tom appeared at the master’s side again. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘the commodore ship is sending a launch with the Evans’ executive officer to confer with you.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s on its way.’

  ‘Winch down the accommodation staircase and I’ll be right there.’

  During the pause that followed, I gathered the courage to speak to the master.

  ‘Sir,’ I said. The master turned around and seemed surprised to see Olive and me standing there.

  ‘You should be below,’ he said. ‘You’re in the way on deck.’

  ‘We’d like to help,’ Olive said. ‘With something. Something useful.’

  ‘Anything,’ I said. I’d felt useless watching the officers and seamen struggling to get the ship back in operation. I wasn’t used to standing around watching other people labor when there was plenty of work to go around.

  ‘You know,’ he said. ‘You can help. We’ve got several injured men. This is the pharmacist’s mate’s first cruise. I doubt he knows what to do.’

  ‘I’ll go get my medical bag,’ Olive said.

  ‘The injured men are in the first-aid room,’ the master said.

  ‘I know where it is,’ I said to Olive. ‘I’ll meet you there.’

  When I got to the first-aid room, I found several battered men outside in the hall waiting to be seen, including one with a horrendous black eye.

  ‘I hope you’re here to help us, ma’am,’ he said to me. ‘I don’t think that pharmacist’s mate knows what he’s doing. He’s really hurting the guy in there.’

  I heard a yelp from inside the first-aid room, just as Olive appeared in the corridor with her medical bag. The injured men seemed quite relieved to see her. She looked like one of the army nurses in a recruitment poster, radiating determination and confidence. She knocked on the door and went in without an answer. ‘I’ll get you an ice pack for that eye,’ I said to the seaman with the black eye. ‘It looks awful.’

  ‘It hurts like anything, ma’am,’ he said.

  Inside the first-aid room I found Olive reprimanding the pharmacist’s mate, whose surname was Isted. ‘You cannot treat a man with a burn that severe without a painkiller,’ she said. ‘It’s cruel.’

  The injured man’s wound was ghastly. I guessed it was second degree – bright red, swollen and already blistering. It covered a large part of his forearm and the palm of his hand.

  ‘But, ma’am,’ Isted said, ‘protocol is that I examine and clean the wound first.’

  ‘Nuts to that,’ she said. ‘Is there any morphine in the medicine chest?’

  Isted handed over the chest and Olive found a syringe and a vial of morphine. ‘Here we go; you’ll feel better in a few minutes,’ she said to the injured man. ‘What’s your name? How did this happen?’

  The man was a wiper from the engine room. He was soaked with sweat and oil. He and his fellow wipers and oilers had spent hours furiously working to keep the engine functioning during the gale. ‘I’m Ordinary Seaman Price,’ he said. ‘I tripped and fell on to the boiler. It hurts so much!’

  Olive expertly drew out morphine from the vial with the syringe and injected him. She turned to the pharmacist’s mate.

  ‘Isted,’ she said, ‘when a man is this pale and shaky, he is probably in shock. He needs to lie down and elevate his legs.’ The two of them helped the injured man recline while I located some pillows. ‘Would you please clean the oil away from the burn with alcohol,’ she asked the pharmacist’s mate. ‘Don’t touch the wound itself. We’ll wait until the morphine kicks in to dress it.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Isted said, ‘you just tell me what you want me to do and I will do it.’

  ‘Olive, I need an ice pack for a seaman with a black eye,’ I said.

  ‘Let me get it for you,’ Isted said, opening a cabinet and pulling out an ice pack and filling it with ice from a small freezer.

  ‘Make sure you wrap that in a cloth of some kind,’ Olive said to him. ‘Otherwise, it could be too cold and damage the tissue. Louise, can you triage the others in the hall, too?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  Isted gazed at Olive as though he was in the presence of a goddess. I figured his education was little more than a couple of weeks’ worth of basic first aid and he could see that Olive knew what she was doing.

  Out in the passageway the waiting men had slumped to the floor, their backs resting on the bulkhead. The man with the black eye looked the worst: the eye was swollen shut so that even his eyelashes weren’t visible and the bruising around it had darkened. I knelt next to him and held up two fingers in front of his face. ‘How many fingers do you see?’ I asked. The man squinted with his good eye.

  ‘I can’t really tell – they’re all blurry.’

  ‘You’re next.’ I handed him the ice pack, which he accepted gratefully, gingerly applying it to his eye.

  Another seaman had a deep cut on his thigh which he was holding together with the fingers of one hand and a tightly wound scarf.

  ‘You’re third,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ he answered. ‘It’s not bleeding much now.’

  ‘You’re going to need stitches,’ I said. ‘You can’t keep holding that wound together.’

  Back in the first-aid room, I found Olive spreading sulfadiazine ointment on the oiler’s wound with a tongue depressor.

  ‘But I can’t go to my bunk,’ he was saying to Olive. ‘I’m on watch.’

  Olive began to bandage the wound. ‘This is a severe burn. When the morphine wears off, it will be very painful again. You’ll need another shot in six hours; meet me back here and I’ll take care of it. As for working, you must avoid infection. That means no dirt and oil. Get clean and stay that way, for several days. If you get any grief from the chief engineer, just tell me and I’ll talk to him.’ My money was on Olive’s instructions being followed to the letter.

  After the wiper left, the man with the black eye slid on to the gurney which served as an examination table. Olive felt around his eye while he moaned. Then she pried his eyelid open to check his eye.

  ‘That’s as bad a shiner as I’ve ever seen,’ she said. ‘I think you may have an orbital fracture.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Isted asked.

  ‘The bone around his eye socket is cracked,’ she said. ‘But the eye looks OK.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ he asked.

  ‘Here – feel it,’ she said, guiding Isted’s fingers. ‘Feel the bone give?’

  The seaman yelped.

  ‘Yeah, I feel it.’

  ‘Am I going to go blind in that eye?’ the seaman asked, frightened.

  ‘Not if you do as I say. You need to rest for several days in case you have a concussion. Louise, can you walk him back to his bunk?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘Who else is waiting in the hall?’ she asked me.

  ‘A seaman who needs stitches and a few bumps and bruises.’

  ‘Do you know how to stitch up a cut?’ she asked Isted.

  ‘I’ve practiced on pigs’ feet, but I’ve not done a person yet.’

  ‘Now’s your chance,’ she said.

  As I guided the wiper out into the hall, I sent the seaman who needed stitches inside.

  ‘That woman is practically a doctor,’ the man with the shiner said to the seaman as I guided him past.

  I figured that ten years of nursing, much of it during wartime, could make a nurse practically a doctor. I was glad she was on our ship. We might need her again before we reached Liverpool.

  After lunch – another cold meal – we went up on d
eck. Being confined below, even in the wardroom, after the frightening twenty-four hours we’d spent in our bunks during the gale, was too much. We wanted to be out in the fresh air. And fresh and crisp it was – twelve degrees above zero! We split off in the usual groups. The Smit family watched a signalman work on the bow. His careful arm signals, moving in set patterns, communicated with the ships in our convoy without using the radio, which might alert submarines. A stack of flags, all with different patterns, were piled in a box at his feet. The signalman wore a Navy uniform, which meant that he was part of the Navy Armed Guard under Tom’s command. Another signalman worked at the stern. At lunch, Tom had told us one was ‘talking’ to the commodore ship and another broadcasting our coordinates to the visible ships in the convoy. Those in turn would signal to the ships they could see and so on. Tom said twenty ships were out of formation. It could take a couple of days to collect the convoy together again. He didn’t say so, but I knew we’d be vulnerable to attack while we waited.

  Gil and Ronan took up their usual spot at the ship’s rail, watching the launch from the commodore ship heading our way.

  For once, Blanche joined Olive and me. We walked the length of the ship and back, enjoying the exercise. We found the engineer’s mate driving the last rivet into the repair tear in the deck. The tear was completely covered with sheet metal, secured around the edges by what looked like enough ties, bolts and rivets to hold the entire ship together.

  ‘Think it’s going to hold?’ Blanche asked.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘There’s been no further tearing. And a dozen seamen have rappelled down the hull of the ship to inspect the hull. It’s intact.’

  The launch arrived and was met by our master, Chief Popeye and Tom. The knowledge of military uniforms I’d acquired in DC wasn’t much help in identifying the contingent from the Evans, since they were all dressed in arctic foul-weather gear. I would guess that the officer who saluted and then shook hands with the master was the executive officer, as the commanding officer wouldn’t leave the ship. He was accompanied by two others with insignia on their caps that I didn’t recognize. After saluting and shaking hands, the group climbed to the bridge deck, where I could see them huddled together over the navigation map.

  ‘I wonder what’s going on?’ Olive asked.

  ‘They’re figuring out how to get the convoy together and on course again,’ Blanche said. ‘They can’t use the radio.’

  Every cargo ship on its own at sea was in terrible danger.

  After a few more minutes of wandering around the deck, the freezing weather defeated us and we turned and headed back amidships. Fewer seamen were now occupied with deck chores. Most of the mess caused by the storm had been cleaned up. I intended to spend the afternoon in my bunk by myself, reading or napping – I didn’t care much which one. When we approached the superstructure, I noticed the group on the bridge still huddled together, talking. The officers wouldn’t rest until all the convoy ships were in formation again, with the defensive warships guarding their perimeter. No naps for them.

  Blanche was gazing out across the deck. Olive and I followed her gaze and saw Tom calibrating the sight on one of the anti-aircraft guns. He saw us and waved. Blanche smiled, but she turned away, as if she didn’t want us to notice, tripping over one of the many coils of rope that littered the deck. She might have fallen hard on a nearby metal stanchion except a seaman passing by caught her. Oddly, it seemed to me that her savior tried to turn and walk away quickly. But Blanche grasped him by his arm – to thank him, I assumed.

  Instead, she screamed. And screamed again. The seaman, who was the red-headed man who’d joined the crew late while the passengers boarded back at the Navy Yard in DC, backed away. But Blanche kept her hold on him.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she shouted. ‘Why? Are you following me?’

  ‘Mrs Bryant,’ the seaman began in a British accent, ‘I didn’t mean to shock you. Really I didn’t!’

  Blanche turned to us while still hanging on to the seaman. ‘It’s Nigel!’ she shouted.

  ‘Who?’ I answered, puzzled.

  ‘Nigel Ramsey, my late husband’s orderly. He’s not a seaman! Why is he on this ship? He must be spying on me!’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Nigel said, ‘I had no other …’

  ‘Shut up!’ Blanche shouted. ‘You always thought I killed Eddie! Did his parents hire you to spy on me?’

  By this time a clutch of gawkers had gathered, enough that Tom had to push them aside to reach us. Olive and I had peeled Blanche’s hands off Nigel, trying to calm her down. Nigel rubbed his arm where she’d gripped him.

  ‘Blanche,’ Olive said, ‘we’ll get to the bottom of this. Let’s go down to my cabin and I’ll give you something for your nerves.’

  ‘Don’t try to placate me,’ Blanche said. ‘I want to know what’s going on!’

  ‘So do I,’ the master’s voice boomed. He and Popeye stood at my shoulder.

  ‘Mrs Bryant,’ the master said, controlling his voice with difficulty, ‘I’m trying to keep us from being shot out of the water. I don’t have time for your personal problems. You,’ he said, pointing at her and then at Nigel, ‘you get to my cabin and wait there for me. Mrs Pearlie, I’d like you to join us. Ensign Banks, I have no authority to command you to do anything, but I want you there, too. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I do.’

  The master’s cabin wasn’t a lot larger than my berth. He had his own tiny lavatory and a small desk in addition to the standard bunk, but the floor space was still tight. None of us dared to sit on his bunk or desk chair, so we leaned against the bulkheads and waited. The master leaned against the cabin door with his arms crossed as if preventing us from escaping. A vein in his forehead pulsated. He was angry, and most of his anger was directed at Blanche.

  ‘What in the name of bloody hell do you think you are doing, screaming and squabbling on deck like that! You must be a moron not to understand the danger we’re in. We’re missing seventeen ships from this convoy, and we have to give them some time to find us, if they haven’t been blown out of the water already. And we’ve been ordered to tow a corvette with engine damage while it’s being repaired. So the entire convoy – or what’s left of it – will travel at three knots for two days. After that, the rest of the convoy will proceed at full speed ahead of us, whether we can join them or not. Right now, a rowboat could keep up with us! All hands have been on watch for twenty-four hours! And I have to leave the bridge to deal with this! If I had known that you’d booked on my ship again, I would have forbidden it. You caused enough trouble on our last voyage.’

  Blanche responded quietly. ‘I didn’t cause you any trouble, Master; my late husband did. He’s the one who rolled himself off the ship. You might recollect that the police, whom you felt had to be notified when we reached port, found no reason to suspect me of anything.’

  The master pressed his fingers against his forehead before answering. ‘All right, forget it. So what was your public screaming fit about?’

  Blanche pointed at Nigel. ‘This man. You might recognize him. He’s masquerading as a merchant seaman. He’s Nigel Ramsey, my late husband’s orderly. I think he must be spying on me, maybe for my husband’s family. They think I murdered him – thanks in part to you.’

  The master jerked forward and grabbed Nigel’s watch cap off his head, revealing his full head of red hair. ‘By God, it is you! What the hell are you doing here? Show me your seaman’s card.’

  Nigel pulled his identification card out of his shirt pocket and handed it over to the master, who read the name on it. ‘Alan Starkey,’ he said. ‘Where did you get this? Did you steal it?’

  ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘I found it.’

  ‘Sure you did. I should throw you in the brig! Is Mrs Bryant correct? Are you spying on her?’

  Nigel glanced at Blanche before he spoke to the master. ‘Master, I swear to you I had no idea that Mrs Bryant would be on this ship. I just wanted to get back to England. When M
r Bryant’s family fired me, they didn’t pay me! I couldn’t find a job because I didn’t have a reference from them. I slept in churches and ate at soup kitchens! When I found the seaman’s card, I got the idea to work my way back to England. It was just luck I wound up on the Amelia Earhart.’

  The master stared at Nigel, but he didn’t blink. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We need every man we have, and you seem to have done acceptable work. You get back to your station and don’t tell a soul about this conversation or I’ll keelhaul you. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Nigel said. He was out of the door in two seconds flat.

  ‘But, Master—’ Blanche began.

  He raised his hand to stop her. ‘It’s not against maritime law to send a woman to the brig,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hear a word from you, or about you, or about your late husband, again. Understand?’

  Blanche was white with fury, but she had the sense to know the conversation was over. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Mrs Pearlie, you are here because I want you to know what’s going on, so that you can talk sense into this woman when it’s required. Understand?’

  I nodded. I was appalled to be given the task of supervising Blanche, but I could see it was unavoidable.

  The master turned on Tom next. ‘Ensign Bates,’ he said, ‘you do realize there are strict regulations against fraternizing with the casual passengers aboard, do you not?’

  Tom opened his mouth, surprised. ‘Sir, I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘This ship is rife with rumors that you and Mrs Bryant are romancing each other while we are trying to get across miles of frozen ocean to the UK without getting our asses blown off by a torpedo finding its way to our hold full of munitions.’

  ‘That’s just ship gossip. I swear Mrs Bryant and I are only friends,’ Tom said.

  ‘I don’t give a damn what you swear,’ he said. ‘You focus on your job or I’ll see that you lose your commission.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Get out of my sight, all of you.’

  I got as far out of everyone’s sight as I could. I needed to be alone to think, and I didn’t want to be squashed in my tiny berth. Dressed in three layers of clothing, my peacoat and watch hat, I wandered the deck looking for a spot to be alone and think. I found myself standing next to the train locomotive traveling to Europe on the deck of the Amelia Earhart. It was so out of place at sea, even more so than the other vehicles, that it brought a smile to my face. So I climbed into it and sat right down at the controls. I’d ridden on plenty of trains, but never in the engine. The levers, dials and buttons meant nothing to me, but in that space I had the quiet I needed to think.