The Ocean Liner

Southampton

‘I call this a damned disgrace,’ Dr Meese told Commodore Randall. They were on the upper deck, seventy feet above the waterline, looking down at the stream of new passengers coming aboard. ‘These people aren’t Americans by any stretch of the imagination. Look at them, Commodore. Yet more aliens. Hebrews, Levantines, Semites – whatever you want to call them.’

‘They are refugees, Dr Meese. Do you want me to order my crew to beat them back with oars?’

‘Where are you going to put all this garbage?’

‘I’ve instructed the stewards to prepare emergency sleeping quarters in the grand salons, the palm courts, the gymnasiums and the ship’s post office.’

Meese snorted. ‘So we’ll be picking our way over recumbent bodies? Why it’ll be like a Bowery flophouse on a Saturday night.’

‘There was a time,’ Commodore Randall said, ‘when as a young swab I was glad to find the shelter of a Bowery flophouse.’

‘You cannot tell me that you are proud to be bringing this unsavoury collection of oddities into the United States? You might as well inject a healthy man with the cholera bacillus.’

‘I have saved a few lives in my time, Dr Meese,’ the Commodore said easily, laying a large flipper on Meese’s shoulder, ‘and if God spares me, I will save a few more. It’s not a question of pride, but of common humanity.’

Annoyed by the Commodore’s imperturbable calm, Dr Meese tipped his hat and walked off whistling, with his hands in his pockets. The Commodore turned to his first officer, who was standing beside him, and who had made no contribution to the conversation thus far. ‘These Britishers are preparing for a scrap, by the looks of things, George.’

George Symonds, who had made many a voyage with Randall, nodded his head, gazing at the gun emplacements all around the harbour, and then up at the fleets of barrage balloons overhead. They had seen much the same sort of preparations in Bremen and Le Havre. ‘My money’s on the German dog.’

‘You think it’s the better animal?’

‘I think it’s bigger than all the others put together, and has the sharpest bite. And I don’t see how the old bulldog can beat it without our help.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. One is liable to get bitten in a dog fight.’

‘You never can tell with a dog fight, Commodore.’

‘Masha, I’m begging you not to do this.’

Rachel’s usual ironic composure was breaking down as she followed her cousin, who was hauling the suitcase up the companionway. She had remained stoical through so much in the past decade. What should have been her youth had been consumed in the rising conflagration of Jew-hatred which the Nazis had lit and fanned. Her education had been curtailed, her property, her home and finally her family had been taken from her. She had been forced into exile. All that she had borne with stoicism. But this last blow was too much to bear.

‘Masha, please.’

Masha merely shook her head. Her face was ghastly. She hadn’t slept or eaten. They emerged on the deck, finding it thronged with people jostling and milling in a fine drizzle which had begun to fall. Masha blundered through the crowd towards the gangplank.

‘Now then, now then, what’s all this?’ At the top of the gangplank they were brought up short by the figure of Mr Nightingale, the senior steward, looking very seamanlike in a slick oilskin coat. He looked Rachel up and down. ‘You’re going to catch your death of cold, young lady. Where are you off to?’

‘She’s disembarking,’ Rachel said, now crying helplessly.

‘Your geography’s not very good,’ Mr Nightingale said archly. ‘I’m certain your ticket says New York. This is Southampton.’

‘Her parents have been sent to a concentration camp by the Gestapo. She wants to go and join them.’

‘My goodness. And what do you think disembarking here is going to accomplish?’

‘If they are going to die,’ Masha said in a choked voice, ‘then I will die with them.’

‘Do you know what you are?’ Mr Nightingale asked.

Masha looked at him with eyes that were almost swollen shut by the salt tears, uncomprehending.

‘You’re an enemy alien, that’s what you are.’ Mr Nightingale jerked his thumb at the rain-blurred outline of Southampton behind him. ‘That country’s at war with your country. Which means that as soon as you set foot off this gangplank, you’ll be detained. If you look, you can see the policeman who’ll arrest you, standing there in his size-twelve boots. You won’t ever get back to Germany. You’ll be sent to some internment camp in some dreary place like the Isle of Man, and you’ll sit there for years and years and years.’

Igor Stravinsky and the young German boy had now arrived, sheltering under the same umbrella. Mr Nightingale turned to the composer.

‘Am I right, Monsieur Stravinsky? Am I right in what I say?’

‘I believe you are.’ He turned to Masha Morgenstern, and took her hand. ‘My dear child, I beg you to listen to me. You must consider—’

Whatever Stravinsky was about to say was cut short. A thunderous volley of gunfire suddenly rolled over the harbour. Deafened and panicking, passengers scattered, pushing each other out of the way, some diving for the shelter of the lifeboats, others crouching where they stood with their hands over their heads. Everyone was looking up at the skies. Some of the women were instantly in hysterics. Their screaming could hardly be heard over the guns and the sirens, which were now wailing.

‘It’s an air raid,’ a man shouted as he ran past. ‘Get under cover!’

Thomas had thrown his arms around Masha, and was trying to shelter her as she cowered on the deck in shock.

‘Everybody stay calm.’ The ship’s quartermaster had appeared, megaphone in hand, making his way among the terrified crowd. ‘Stay calm. There is no danger. The anti-aircraft batteries are having air-raid practice, that is all. Remain calm.’

The thunder of the firing spread around the docks. The smoke from the guns was filling the air, grey and sulphurous, luridly lit by the muzzle flashes. The macabre warble of sirens had now been taken up all around the harbour. Despite the quartermaster’s assurances, every report sent a shockwave through the crowd. People hurried off the deck, shaken, dragging screaming children who had been terrified out of their wits.

Mr Nightingale turned back to Masha, who was trembling. ‘Now, Miss Morgenstern. I’m going to have a hot cup of beef tea sent to your cabin. You drink that, and have a good cry, and think about things.’

Thomas released Masha and helped her to get back on her feet. The shock and noise seemed to have dazed her. ‘I will take your suitcase back to your cabin, Fräulein.’

Masha allowed Thomas to take it from her nerveless fingers. It weighed little. She had given most of her clothes to Rachel.

Stravinsky put his arm through Masha’s to support her, since she seemed unsteady on her legs.

‘I understand that young Thomas has given you a ticket to the world of tomorrow,’ he said, as he and Rachel steered her gently away between them. ‘I think you should take it.’

It was four o’clock in the afternoon by the time Cubby Hubbard got to his cabin. There had been an extraordinarily long line of passengers ahead of him, and much confusion and ill-temper at times through the day. The repeated air-raid practices by the shore batteries had told on everyone’s nerves. People were complaining of headaches, their nerves rattled. The shocking anger of those guns had brought home the reality of the war more than any broadcast speech or strident newspaper article.

The ship was already well over capacity. It was said that there were not enough in the kitchens to cater for all the extra passengers who would need to be fed, and that some three dozen Irish cooks would be taken aboard in Queenstown.

He’d had no sight of the Kennedy family. They had been secluded in their suite in the hotel since his interview with the matriarch. He presumed they would be in First Class, while he of course was in Tourist.

His cabin was meant for two, but now contained four. The three others were young Canadians of his own age, all (somewhat to his disgust, since he liked a good time) training to be Methodist ministers. Like Cubby himself, they had been on a tour of Europe. They were in a state of considerable excitement.

‘We were stranded in France,’ the freshest and pinkest of them told Cubby in his weird Canuck accent. ‘Our passage home was on the Britannic. She’s owned by the White Star Line, the same people that own the Athenia. When Athenia was torpedoed – guess what? They cancelled our ship.’

‘We managed to obtain a passage on the Manhattan through the grace of God,’ another said.

‘We were in the hands of Providence,’ the pink one assured Cubby earnestly.

‘It was a singular deliverance for us all,’ the third said, his Bible in hand. ‘The Lord conducted us safely through manifold dangers.’

While Cubby unpacked, they began an earnest discussion of St Paul, whom they clearly regarded as the prototype of their own peregrinations. It looked like being a dull trip home if he couldn’t – as he anticipated he wouldn’t – see much of Rosemary during the voyage.

When the dinner bell sounded, the Canadians took each other’s hands to pray before going to the dining room. They invited Cubby to join them, but he declined politely, and set off on his own.

Strolling along the corridor, he came upon Mr Nightingale, the malleable senior steward, knocking on a passenger’s door with a tray in one hand, on which was poised a brightly coloured drink. The occupant, a plump man wearing a flowery dressing gown, threw open the door.

‘Is that my cocktail?’ the passenger asked gaily.

‘Your cock, my tail,’ Mr Nightingale carolled, slipping into the cabin and slamming the door behind him.

Puzzled by this exchange, Cubby made his way to supper.