Evie stood on the deck, running her fingers through the curls she’d just released from their night-time pins. She must have seen hundreds of sunrises in her years with the 93rd Searchlight Regiment, but none like this. It was as though someone had spilled watercolour paints across the sky—all smudgy lavender and soft apricot and pink the exact colour of Spencer’s toes when he was born.
No one else was up yet aside from herself and Humphrey, who had already pulled the net full of bottles from the water and laid it on the deck in preparation for setting sail. Cast and crew often slept late after a show but Evie hadn’t wanted to miss her last glimpse of Saint-Malo. The boat thrummed underneath the soles of her loafers; they would be moving off soon.
Evie wrapped her hands around the cool metal rail and leaned forward. As the Victory began to make ripples, impulse took her and she lifted one arm and waved it in farewell.
‘Leaving someone you know?’
The voice made her jump. Flushing, she turned to see Alvin, who’d emerged from below deck and was stretching his arms high above his head as he yawned.
‘No, just taken by a silly fancy,’ she said, trying to laugh off her embarrassment.
Alvin joined her at the railing, leaning his elbows on it. ‘Nothing silly about fancies. Without them we probably wouldn’t have jobs.’
They stood in silence, watching as Saint-Malo retreated into the new day. The Victory wasn’t heading for too-deep water—they’d be tracing the Brittany coast, making stops at port cities and large towns to perform—but Evie didn’t know when they’d have shore leave again.
Humming a tune from the show, she turned her back and slid down until she was seated, knees bent at a sharp angle. She pulled a red scarf out of the pocket of her siren suit and tied it around her head. The breeze skimming the boards lifted the flyaway hairs around her face, and she closed her eyes, tilting her head back to enjoy the sensation.
‘Not seasick again, are you?’
Evie opened her eyes to see Alvin squinting down at her. She smiled. ‘No, thank heavens. Just enjoying a rare break.’
Alvin hitched his trousers and sat next to her. She could smell the fresh scent of soap on him.
‘What are you doing up so early?’ she asked. ‘Not usual for you performers.’
‘I often don’t sleep well. Not since the war.’
Evie understood. Even now, these years later, she was still sometimes visited by nightmares of the things she’d seen.
‘How did you end up on the Victory, Alvin? I take it you served during the war.’
‘Yes. I was a member of the Victory first though, in the years before fighting broke out. My mother and father were with the Hicks and Sawyer Minstrels so I grew up knowing and loving the life of a performer. By the time I was on my own, vaudeville was popular, but it was hard for a black man. I did the best I could anyway, but then America became all about cinema. So I came here to see what I could make of myself. Got a job at the Windmill Theatre in London. You know it?’
‘Only by reputation. There were articles in the papers about how they stayed open right through the war.’
‘So I heard. I was on board the Victory by then, though. Humphrey was exempt from conscription because of his eye and took her over to safer waters in North America. While back home I took the opportunity to enlist. That’s how I met Flynn—our companies crossed paths during the war and we became friendly. I introduced him to the boat after we left the services.’
The Victory caught the swell of a wave, lifting Evie and Alvin high enough to see over the railing on the far starboard side. It was almost impossible to pinpoint where sea met sky. Evie waited for the boat to dip back down to a level position before continuing.
‘So how did you go from the Windmill to the Victory?’
‘Humphrey worked at the Windmill, cleaning the place and selling tickets. He was just a kid, fresh from dropping out of school, but after he gave the theatre manager an idea that proved profitable, Mr Van Damm allowed him to audition for Revudeville.’
‘What was the idea?’
‘You’ve heard of tableaux vivants? They’re a sort of living photograph. Only at the Windmill, ours were done nude. Mr Van Damm had flair for creating scenes, but even his creativity was tested by the censorship laws that meant the girls could be naked so long as they didn’t move. Humphrey’s idea was to have girls spinning on a rope, or pushed in a cart by a clothed person. They technically weren’t moving but being moved, you see? Kept us out of trouble and proved mighty popular with the patrons too. Your newspaper articles say anything about the Windmill steeplechase?’
Evie shook her head.
‘As soon as a show ended, men would rush for the front seats. You’ve never seen anything like it—they’d be crawling over the backs of chairs, getting bloody noses from flying elbows and fists. It was a kind of madness. Made Humphrey realise how much effort men would go to when they wanted to see a show badly enough. I took him to a burlesque club so he could see how wild they got over shows which dared to do the illegal. That same night it got raided by the police. We ran, but some of the dancers were locked up for the night, along with a bunch of men from the audience. Humphrey began to imagine ways of holding a show out of the reach of police. Or at least difficult enough to get to that they wouldn’t bother, but paying audiences would.’
‘So he came up with a boat.’ Evie shook her head, marvelling at the ingenuity.
‘It cost him though.’ The clouds above shifted, casting a shadow over Alvin’s face. ‘He was in love with Betti Talbot, one of the Windmill girls. She was Mr Van Damm’s daughter—she changed her name so no one would judge her father for her participation in the nude shows. She was a nice girl, and warm towards Humphrey, I believe, but when he asked her to marry him and perform on his boat she refused. Said she couldn’t leave her father. Humphrey offered for them both to join the Victory, but Mr Van Damm was loyal to the Windmill’s owner and wouldn’t go.’
‘Humphrey didn’t stay for the girl?’
‘He’d already bought the boat. It was all chipped paint and dry decking back then—the early years she doubled as a tramp steamer, carrying firewood and building supplies to pay for her improvements—but he thought it was a grand, romantic gesture. Instead, he said the boat became his biggest magic trick: making an entire future disappear.’
The clouds shifted again, exposing them once more to the sun. Evie sighed. They all had things they’d given up to have this life. Had it proved worth it in the end for Humphrey? Had his love for his boat—so evident in the way he obsessed over every tiny detail of every performance—made up for the loss of the girl he’d also loved?
Alvin’s eyes met hers and understanding passed between them.
‘The Victory’s not for everyone,’ he said. ‘But for some of us, there’s nothing better.’
Evie was searching in the storage room for the red gelatine filter she’d somehow misplaced. She wanted to experiment with placing it over a blue one to make the puffs of smoke appear purple, for all were colours she hadn’t been able to source in Cinemoid. Instead she found Flynn, lying on the ground with his head cushioned on a pile of old costumes, his feet propped on a cardboard box, his eyes glued to the pages of a book. He was wearing a tight-fitting white vest, having taken off his usual button-up shirt, and in his free hand he held a lit cigarette—something Humphrey had strictly banned below deck.
Evie froze, her own hand raised to her mouth, holding half a Scotch egg she’d been snacking on. A normal person would have backed away quickly so as not to interrupt him. Or announced their presence by clearing their throat. But Evie just stood there, staring at the gleam of his pitch-dark hair.
He must have felt her presence, because he tilted the book down, his dark eyes showing no surprise to see her.
Evie popped the rest of the Scotch egg in her mouth, chewing as she stepped forward and wiped her hands on her siren suit. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just looking for the red filter.’ Trying to overcome her embarrassment at being caught watching him, she plucked the book out of his hands. ‘What’s this?’
Flynn made a swipe for it and his feet got tangled in the box they’d been resting on, sending him almost sprawling.
The book was titled Blonde on the Spot. The cover depicted a woman tied to a chair by her wrists and ankles. Her flimsy blue gown was torn to show her legs and an expanse of décolletage as she leaned back in trepidation.
‘Oh,’ Evie said.
‘It’s not smut,’ Flynn said defensively, getting to his feet and snatching the book back. He ran the hand that still held the cigarette through his hair.
‘I’m sure.’ Amusement tickled the back of Evie’s throat.
‘Well okay, maybe it is a bit. It’s just … since the war I’ve found it hard to relax, you know? The quiet gets to me. But when I read these it doesn’t seem so quiet any more.’
‘You don’t need to explain. Anything that helps.’
She shrugged one shoulder and saw relief flood his face. It was such a childlike expression that a rush of something similar to how she felt whenever she looked at Spencer enveloped her: an urge to banish what ailed him and soothe all worries away.
Flynn, unaware, ground his cigarette out on the steel wall. ‘You know, you could borrow some if you want,’ he said, slipping the spent butt back into the packet so there would be no evidence of his rule-breaking. ‘They’re not Shakespeare or whatever you’re probably used to, but they’re fun. You live an unconventional lifestyle now—might as well continue to broaden your horizons.’
His tone was teasing, the embarrassment of moments ago forgotten as he slid the paperback into one of the side pockets of her siren suit. The thought of his hand inside her clothing, even just a pocket, made Evie warm all over. She carefully avoided his eyes as he stepped back.
‘Just give it a shot. Let me know how you like it.’
He leaned down and picked up his discarded shirt. Evie was disappointed to see his bare arms disappear into the sleeves. She watched him leave the storage room, whistling, then she sank onto the cardboard box he’d been using as a footrest and slipped her hand into her pocket to caress the book he’d given her. The box broke beneath her and her backside hit the floor. She barely even noticed.
She pulled out the book, ran her fingers over the ghastly, lurid cover, and opened it. She was already three chapters deep before she remembered she was supposed to be working.
Evie went to the tiny wall-mounted mirror to wipe the cold cream from her face, then hesitated before turning out the light. She looked at Flynn’s book. She hadn’t had the chance to read any more all day, and the story was nagging at her, begging to be completed. Leaving the light on, she crawled beneath her kapok-stuffed counterpane and opened the cover.
The boat had gone quiet, only the muffled sounds of Doris Day’s ‘Again’ playing from behind someone’s closed door. In the quiet of her own cabin, Evie found herself school-girlishly amused by the melodramatic tale of murder and sex. As she finished the last chapter, she became aware of the tingling tracing her body. She got out of bed, turned the light off, then slipped back under the cover, her cheek pressed against the cool pillow.
Evie had gone out with men in her pre-war life and there’d been hand holding and light kisses, even the occasional hand roaming over her breasts and waist. But every time the warm desire in her began to build, the man would kiss her chastely on the cheek and leave. The closest she’d ever got to a naked man before Miroslaw was when a flasher had exposed himself to her; she’d been shocked, and unable to stop herself from giggling at the man’s big pink body, his thing pointing out at her accusingly from a tangle of tight dark hair.
There had been nothing funny about Miroslaw’s nudity though. It had been the gateway to a tenderness she’d never known before. Sometimes there’d been fierce hunger between them; other times an almost hopeless loss that this was all the joy they could find in the world. She longed for that kind of intimacy now.
She relived those moments with Miroslaw and her pulse began to race; then the memory of Miroslaw shaped into Flynn. The stomach flattened out, the torso lengthened, the colour of the skin deepened. And further below …
With a gasp, Evie pressed her hands to her eyes, trying to pretend she hadn’t just conjured an image of Flynn naked.