The Ocean Liner

Southampton

The SS Manhattan steamed up the silver Solent with black clouds trailing from her stacks and spreading into the leaden morning sky. The overnight crossing had been rough, but not unbearably so, and scores of passengers had turned out of their bunks early to be on deck for the arrival at Southampton. They were visible from shore, crowding the rails in groups, muffled against the cold.

The sky over the docks was filled with hundreds of elephantine barrage balloons. The docks themselves bristled with anti-aircraft batteries. Anxious Tommies with Lewis guns peered from little molehills of sandbags. Along the wharf, dozens of troop transports were moored, steady tides of khaki cannon fodder trudging on to each one. A quarter of a million men were bound for France.

In her hotel smoking room, poised against a view of the harbour, Fanny Ward, the Eternal Beauty, was entertaining the Press.

‘Miss Ward, are you afraid of bombing?’

Miss Ward bridled. ‘I’m not running away, if that’s what you mean. I’m returning to New York to fill several stage and radio engagements.’

Nobody was so ungentlemanly as to ask what those engagements might be, or to point out that she was leaving behind her beautiful Berkeley Square apartment, with its antiques gathered over a long career in silent films and vaudeville.

‘As a friend of England, what do you think of America’s Neutrality Act?’

‘Oh, I can’t say anything about that.’ At her age, Fanny Ward had to be careful with lighting. She had put herself with her back to the window. A lace veil bobbed over her eyes, where time had wreaked most havoc. Once a sexually alluring beauty with a bee-stung mouth, she knew that the best that could be said about her now was that she was a pretty old woman. As for her once-voluptuous figure, although she still affected flapperish clothes, it was a flapper in winter that she presented now, wrapped to the throat, trimmed in furs, with kid gloves on her hands and a cloche hat pulled down over her dancing curls.

‘Do you think this war will last as long as the Great War?’

‘My goodness, I’m far too young to remember that,’ she replied indignantly. This drew laughter. They all knew that Miss Ward’s agelessness had by now become an act in itself, carried out with the conspiratorial wink of a pleated eyelid.

‘Are you worried about your salon in Paris, Miss Ward?’

She had opened a beauty shop in Paris in the 1920s, called The Fountain of Youth, which had added considerably to her mystique. ‘Not at all,’ she cried gaily. She forbore to mention that she had already sold it.

‘Are you going to miss your friends in London, Fanny?’

The question was a pointed one. Miss Ward counted among her friendships a warm attachment to Elizabeth, the former Duchess of York, catapulted on to the throne of England by the abdication of the King, her brother-in-law, three years earlier. To be the confidante of the Queen of England was no small thing.

‘Oh, I’m not going for more than a month or two,’ she said gaily. ‘My friends will survive without me for that long, I am sure.’ She wagged a gloved finger at the cameras. ‘Didn’t I say no flashbulbs?’

‘So you’re optimistic about the war?’

‘Oh, very. But gentlemen, you must have mercy on a girl. I have to prepare for the voyage.’

‘Miss Ward, can we have just a few more poses?’

‘Naughty, naughty boys.’

She obligingly threw some kittenish poses, redolent of the Edwardian era, lifting one foot prettily behind her, pulling out her spectacular pearls (frankly envied by her friend Queen Elizabeth) and tilting her head back. The flashbulbs sizzled, despite her admonishment. Her movements dislodged a cloud of face powder, momentarily bright against her silhouette, as though she were literally crumbling into dust before their eyes.

‘Miss Ward. Miss Ward!’

But Fanny was making her bow and heading for the exit.

Mrs Kennedy was waiting to be connected to her husband. The telephone lines were maddeningly congested as a result of the war. And quite possibly, she thought, he would be occupied with his bouncy new secretary (whose smirking presence she’d had to put up with for the past few weeks) and too busy to talk to his wife. Rosemary was sobbing on the bed.

‘I can’t stand this much longer,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘Can’t you shut her up, Patricia?’

‘I’m scared of her.’ At fifteen, Pat was no match for Rosemary when she was like this. Her sister was capable of lashing out at anyone who approached. Rosemary was the eldest sister, bigger and more robust than Pat in every way. Only Eunice among the girls, and Jack and Joe among the boys, could deal with her tantrums. Even Mother didn’t seem able to do anything any more.

‘Don’t be a goose,’ Mrs Kennedy said tersely. ‘Try and distract her.’

Pat twisted her hands together, shaking her head. ‘Mother, please don’t make me.’

Joe was finally on the line, his voice impatient. ‘Hello? Hello?’

‘It’s me. I can’t cope with this any longer, Joe.’

‘Cope with what?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Rosemary is becoming impossible. She’s throwing one of her tantrums as we speak. Luella’s not here. I just have Pat to help me, and the poor child is terrified. Rosemary is like a wild beast.’

‘What set her off?’ Joseph Kennedy asked wearily.

‘This man, of course. I’ve prevented her from seeing him and she’s raging. All she thinks of is—’ She glanced at Pat, who was listening, pale-faced. ‘You know what,’ she concluded, tight-lipped.

‘She’s in love with him?’

‘That’s dignifying it. It’s unbridled lust.’

He sighed. ‘Jack said he spoke to the fellow.’

‘It’s Rosemary who is intractable. She’s obstinate beyond belief.’ Mrs Kennedy covered the mouthpiece and hissed at Pat. ‘This is not for your ears. Do as I say. Go to your sister. Don’t you dare disobey me!’

Reluctantly, partly because she wanted to hear what Rosemary had been doing with ‘that boy’ and partly because she was afraid, Pat obeyed. She picked up the latest copy of Hollywood Magazine, which she had been reading, and went to sit beside Rosemary on the bed.

‘They’re remaking The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Rosie,’ she said, ‘with Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara. Do you want me to read you the article?’ She showed Rosemary the page, but she might not have been there at all. Rosemary was lying on her side with her face half-buried in the pillow, her body convulsing with strange, choking sobs.

Pat persevered. ‘A bear escaped on to the set while they were filming. They thought it was foaming at the mouth, and everyone ran away screaming, but it was just eating a bowl of ice cream. Isn’t that funny?’

Rosemary was only dimly aware of her sister’s presence. She was in a wilderness, battered by every sound, clawed by the light. Everything hurt. Nothing made any sense. Except pain. She couldn’t bear her own feelings. She couldn’t bear the skin that was wrapped around her flesh or the hair that clung to her sweaty face. She couldn’t bear the organs inside her; she could feel every one of them in rebellion. She couldn’t bear her own bones. But there wasn’t anywhere to go. Because she was the wilderness, and everything was howling around inside her and nothing was bearable. She wanted Cubby, but she couldn’t let him see her like this. She couldn’t even think of him like this. He didn’t belong in here.

‘It takes three hours to put on Charles Laughton’s make-up,’ Pat went on, ‘and an hour to take it off, so they can only film for a short while every day. He has such a chubby, cute face. I guess it takes a lot of work to turn him into a monster.’

The word monster lanced through Rosemary’s wilderness like a lightning bolt, cracking open the sky, becoming a snarling shape with fangs and claws. She tried to bury herself, like a terrified animal, but her world was rock, unyielding.

Pat looked up at Rosemary, and saw that there were now watery, red stains on the pillow. Her heart sank. Rosemary’s tantrums were really awful lately. She dreaded the thought of the voyage to come, and wondered how they were going to cope with Rosemary in the States, without Dad. She turned to another of her magazines, Film Weekly.

‘Hitch is coming to the US. That’s Alfred Hitchcock. He says he wants to direct American stars for a change. He says British actresses bottle up their feelings. He says you can throw them into an ice-bath and they come up still trying to look aloof and dignified.’ She giggled.

Rosemary covered her face clumsily with her hands, sobbing. The light from the window was savage, stabbing into her eyes, prying between her fingers to get into her brain. She hadn’t understood anything of what Pat had said except the word ice-bath. She could feel the piercing cold of the ice, feel the slippery blocks sliding across her skin, pushing inside her. Everything was too cold, too hot, too hard, too loud, too raw. Everything tortured her. The only sense anything made was pain.

‘Please stop crying, Rosie,’ Pat begged in a quavering voice. But the stains on Rosemary’s pillow were bright red now. Pat put the magazines down and stroked Rosemary’s convulsing shoulders. ‘Mother,’ she called out, ‘she’s biting her tongue real bad.’

Exasperated, Mrs Kennedy came away from the telephone to look at Rosemary. She groaned. ‘You stupid, wilful girl. What is the point of this?’ She pushed Pat out of the way and shook Rosemary hard. ‘These dramatics impress nobody.’ The shaking had the effect of silencing the jerky sobs for a moment. Mrs Kennedy hauled Rosemary upright and pulled her mouth open. She had champed her tongue until it bled. Her face was swollen and blank, all her beauty gone. She glared at her mother for a moment, then her eyes rolled away. She spat bloodily.

‘Don’t you spit at me,’ Mrs Kennedy said furiously. ‘Go and wash your mouth out. Get up, get up.’

With the aid of Pat, she got Rosemary to her feet and pushed her towards the bathroom. Rosemary stumbled inside. Mrs Kennedy went back to the phone, leaving Pat hovering nervously outside the bathroom door. The sounds from within were scary, as though there were a wild thing in there. She cracked the door open and peered in. Rosemary was groping at the blank wall, leaving streaks of bloodstained saliva on the white tiles.

‘There’s nothing there, Rosie,’ Pat whispered.

But Rosemary could see the door in front of her. Except there was no handle. And push as hard as she may, it wouldn’t open. There was no way out.

‘There’s nothing there, Rosie. Please come and rinse your mouth.’ She tried to steer her sister to the sink, but Rosemary abruptly turned on her, flailing in panic. ‘You’re hurting me,’ Pat gasped, trying to protect her face. ‘Stop it!’

Those awful sobs were coming faster now, sounding more like choking than crying. She didn’t even look like herself any more.

She grabbed at Rosemary’s wrists, but Rosemary was far too strong for her to subdue. She clawed and panted and thrashed. Pat was forced to back away, gasping, ‘Okay, okay, okay. I’m not touching you.’

Something raced through the wilderness of Rosemary’s mind. A yellow animal, with its ears back.

She recognised it. The yellow cat that her brothers had trapped in a fishing net in the rambling garden at Hyannis Port. It had rolled its eyes and hissed and bared its teeth and fought for its life, while the boys had laughed and tormented it. She could see it now, as vividly as though it were happening in front of her.

Why did the boys do that? Why did they hurt and torture weak things? They said it was a game, but it wasn’t. She knew, because they did the same thing to her when the mood took them. They said they loved something and then they hurt it for fun. Why? She’d begged them to free the yellow cat, and eventually they had done so. It had streaked away across the sand, not stopping till it was out of sight. But she didn’t know how to free herself from the invisible net that had closed around her.

Her bladder was bursting. She couldn’t bear it any longer. She fumbled her skirt up and squatted on the floor, her underpants around her knees.

Pat ran back out. ‘Mother, she’s going to pee on the floor.’

‘Well, stop her.’

‘I can’t. She’s hitting me in the face every time I come near her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.’

‘She knows very well what she’s doing.’

‘Mother, please come.’ Pat dissolved into tears, too upset to continue.

‘I’ll call you back,’ Mrs Kennedy said to her husband, and replaced the receiver. She went to the bathroom, where Rosemary was crouching in a spreading puddle. ‘Oh, for the love of God. Don’t you see the lavatory right next to you?’

All around Rosemary was flashing light, roaring sound. Her own pee running over her thighs was like boiling water. She tried to squirm away from it.

‘We have to call someone,’ Pat said, appalled.

‘There’s no one to call. We can’t let anyone see her like this. Nobody can know. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Come out of here. Leave her.’

‘But Mother—’

Mrs Kennedy pushed Pat out and closed the bathroom door on Rosemary. ‘She’ll come to her senses in there. Until then, there’s nothing to be done.’

Mrs Kennedy went to the window and shed some tears of her own, crying silently into a handkerchief. Rosemary had been in secure schools from puberty onward. With all the other children to deal with, there had been little option but to shut her behind high walls, leave her in the hands of devoted nuns who had dieted her, schooled her, drilled her, supported her, loved her, and attempted vainly to discipline her. She had been safe.

But it had become increasingly difficult to keep Rosemary shut away. She had turned into a beautiful young woman, and the press were hungry for news, eager to photograph her. So far, those who knew the truth had remained obligingly silent. But their discretion could not be relied upon forever. And the terrible reality was that Rosemary was getting worse, not better.

Mrs Kennedy was conscious that an era was coming to an end. Over these past two, glittering years, the most glamorous years of a life that had not been short of glamour, she had dined with the King and Queen of England (beef on a Friday once). She had been in every newspaper, met every celebrity, sparkled like a diamond. She had played golf with diplomats and film stars, had seen the great art, music and ballet of Europe, holidayed in the south of France. Teddy, at seven, had received his First Communion from the Pope himself in Rome.

All that was over. Joe’s diplomatic career was now in jeopardy, despite the folderol that continued. His support for Hitler would never be forgiven or forgotten by the Brits now that war had broken out. The only hope for his remaining as ambassador – and continuing his political career in the United States thereafter – was an early peace settlement. Or, of course, a German victory.

For her and the children, there was little option but to return to the safety of America. And there, a solution to the problem of Rosemary would need to be found.