The Ocean Liner

The Solent

The Manhattan sailed promptly at six. Every ship in Southampton, including the troop transports that were themselves preparing to leave for France, sounded horns, steam whistles or sirens. The unearthly chorus sounded to those on board like wails of woe and despair, despite the customary carnival of streamers and confetti that trailed from the high decks of the liner, fragile links with shore that were soon torn apart, joining the debris in the water.

Masha Morgenstern felt as though her heart were being torn out of her. Unable to watch the docks receding behind Manhattan, she left Rachel waving at the rail, and clung to the huge trumpet of a ventilator intake, pressing her face against the cold metal. She would never see her parents again.

She felt a hand on her arm, and looked up blearily. It was Thomas, his face twisted in sympathy.

‘Oh, Thomas,’ she blurted out, ‘this world is a travesty, a travesty.’ She drew his head on to her breast and held him tightly.

As the great liner steamed down the Solent, Cubby Hubbard hunted for a sight of Rosemary Kennedy. He pushed his way through the emotional throngs of people on every deck, craning to see over the hats (he was not a very tall young man). He knew that the Kennedys were keeping to their stateroom. One of the stewards had told him that. He’d heard nothing from Rosemary for days. He was concerned. He knew that her mother would have made her life difficult, and Rosemary didn’t respond well to having her life made difficult. He wanted badly to see her.

At last, leaning back over the rail on the lower deck, he got a glimpse of Luella Hennessey, the family nanny. She was on the deck above him, waving a handkerchief. Beside her was Patricia, Rosemary’s younger sister. Cubby made for the companionway which connected the two decks, but the going was difficult. The stairs were jammed with people who blocked his ascent. He was breathless and dishevelled by the time he got to the First Class deck.

He glimpsed Pat Kennedy’s blue woollen beret at the rail, and fought his way over to her. He managed to elbow himself a place beside her. Manhattan uttered a deep, bone-jarring blast on her horn. The docks were already a mile away up Southampton water.

‘Where’s Rosemary?’ he asked in a low voice.

Pat turned to Cubby in surprise. She stared at him, her mouth half-open, but didn’t answer.

‘Is she okay?’ Cubby demanded.

Pat shook her head slightly. Her freckled face was pinched with the cold. She looked frightened. ‘No. She’s—’

Luella Hennessey, now aware of Cubby’s presence, took Pat’s arm and pulled her away before she could say anything more. Cubby called after her, but apart from a last glance over her shoulder, Pat was helpless. Cubby leaned on the rail, biting his lip in frustration as he watched them disappear into the crowd.

As Manhattan turned west, Commodore Randall was on the bridge, his binoculars to his eyes, watching the horizon.

‘Heard the news from France, George?’ he asked his first officer.

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘If France falls, the Germans will control the Atlantic coast from Brest to Bordeaux. They’ll be hundreds of miles closer to Allied shipping lanes. They’ll build airfields and U-boat bases all the way along the Channel.’

‘It’ll be the end of Southampton, Plymouth and Portsmouth. The south coast ports will be far too dangerous to use. Shipping will have to use Liverpool or even Glasgow instead.’

‘And what’s more, the Germans will be perfectly poised for an invasion of Britain.’

George Symonds nodded. ‘It’s a bad lookout, Commodore.’

Randall grunted like a walrus, lowering his binoculars. ‘I’m retiring at the end of this trip. I don’t mind telling you, I’m damn glad to be getting out, too.’

Arturo Toscanini was at Manhattan’s stern, looking down at the ship’s wake.

He reached into the pocket of his overcoat and took out the sheaf of letters that Carla had brought him from Kastanienbaum. Ada’s letters, bound together by a length of purple ribbon, the ribbon from her slip which he’d begged her to give him after they’d made love for the first time.

He had read them all over the past two days, often with his heart pounding. So much passion! So much feeling!

Toscanini relaxed his fingers slowly. There had been others before Ada. But she—

She had been the love of his life. Ah, that cliché on the lips of every cheap Romeo. The love of my life. But when you considered it, when you really understood it, it was a sentence pronounced by the most terrible of judges, echoing down the barren years that remained.

He raised the letters to his nose, trying to catch the scent of Ada’s perfume over the salty wind that buffeted him. There! The faintest, sweetest trace of violette di Parma. He inhaled it deeply into his lungs, and then with a groan threw the sheaf of letters away from him. The purple knot unravelled; the letters tumbled in the wind like dying doves, spiralling down into the churning maelstrom of the liner’s wake. For a moment there was a flash of purple silk in the foam, a scattering of dainty envelopes; and then the correspondence was sucked into the deep and gone forever.

Carla Toscanini was in her little cabin, breakfasting off toast and coffee. She had never adopted the Anglo-Saxon custom of a cooked breakfast; and in any case, there was her figure to think of. If she put on any more weight, she would have nothing to wear. And she couldn’t be bothered to go back into corsets.

She hadn’t seen her husband for two days, though the stewards told her he tramped the decks ceaselessly. That frenetic engine inside Artú beat with greater energy than ever; but the housing was growing frailer, and one day the engine was going to shake it all to pieces, and that would be the end of Arturo Toscanini.

Why had she not suspected Ada, thirty years younger than Artú, and with all the right qualifications? Perhaps because Ada’s husband had been young and handsome, and Italy’s foremost cellist. She should have remembered that Artú could conquer any woman, and feared no rival, no matter how young and handsome. Mainardi must have known. Perhaps he had been compliant, even complicit? The tyrant Toscanini subjugated men as easily as women. He was demoniac.

The word genius, so often thrown carelessly at Artú, had a dark shadow that few people considered. To the ancients it meant the god that ruled each person’s life and passions and appetites. The greater the genius, the greater the appetites. And the more implacable the rule. Artú’s genius was a monster. If one were to see it as it really was, it would not be a little man with white hair. It would be a towering, horned thing, rampant, destructive, mad.

That was perhaps what his adoring public really worshipped, if the truth were known. Not the music, but the madness.

The children, of course, knew more than she did. They saw what she preferred to close her eyes to. As one of them said, ‘Papà casts his net wide.’

Did Artú have no scruples? There had been a line in one of Ada’s letters that had stuck in Carla’s mind:

You write that your conscience is always fighting with your will, that you hate yourself, are disgusted with yourself! But my darling—

Perhaps he felt remorse, from time to time, when the horned thing was exhausted. But not enough to bring him back to sanity. And one could not live with a madman.

She was sixty-two now. At sixty-two, her own mother had been an old woman, already dying. But times had changed. A woman of sixty-two these days was not yet old. There was still enjoyment left in life, for all the tragedies that had beset her – the death of her own child and those of her sister, the ravages among the family of drug addiction and cancer.

Out from under Artú’s shadow, she could live a little before the end came. Enjoy what was left of her life. Take refuge from the storm. And find some peace.

Fanny Ward, the Perennial Flapper, had eaten nothing as yet, though her hamper still contained most of the cold chicken and half the game pie. She had remained in her bunk, with the silk sheets (she had brought her own on board) pulled over her head during the noisy departure from Southampton. She hadn’t wanted to see or hear any of it. It was far too painful.

She got up now and went to her window, opening the curtain cautiously. She peered out, anxious that she might still catch a glimpse of the country she was leaving with so much sorrow. To her dismay, there was still land to be seen: chalky white cliffs gleaming in the watery sunshine, with a sparse green topping; chalky white rocks sticking out of the sea like a few last teeth; a chalky white lighthouse, painted with fading red stripes.

She stared blankly at these things, feeling the dull ache in her heart. At least there were no towns, no signs of humanity to be seen. She was leaving behind half her life, and she had a deep foreboding that she would never return to it again. All her lovely things, some of them priceless, now stored in a sandbagged basement. Her friends, her life, her peace, all gone.

Sighing, she drew the curtains closed and set about the long task of preparing herself to face the day.

Young Teddy Kennedy was fascinated by the little people. They were called Hoffman’s Midget Marvels. There were eight of them, and they were holding court in the Observation Lounge, seated in a group on a banquette so they could be photographed. They were all dressed fashionably, four miniature ladies and four miniature gentlemen, and their miniature suitcases had been arranged around them for extra effect. None of them were any bigger than Teddy himself, and he was only seven. The smallest was so tiny that their manager, Mr Harry Hoffman (in a jacket with very wide shoulders and smiling very widely) was bouncing him on his knee. Although he was tiny, you could see that he was really quite old, older than the manager, with a face like a wizened apple, and he looked cross at being bounced, which made everyone laugh even more.

Teddy took a photo with his Brownie while the midget men all lifted their hats and the midget ladies all crossed their legs. Some of the ladies were very pretty. Their manager explained that they were en route to the World’s Fair in New York, where they would live in Little Miracle City, a whole midget town, with midget houses fitted with midget furniture and kitchens.

‘Come visit them there, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. You can walk around their tiny town, and see them living their lives, just like real people. Tell all your friends.’

Teddy wanted to get closer and take a photo of the prettiest of the midget ladies, but his mother stopped him and said she didn’t think the whole thing was very nice at all. He was reluctant to be pulled away. He asked his mother if they could go to the World’s Fair and see the midgets there, and she said that they could certainly go to the World’s Fair, but there were much more interesting things to be seen than human beings put on show like performing monkeys. She said it was on a par with tattooed ladies and sword swallowers. Teddy wanted to see a tattooed lady, and looked around carefully, but there weren’t any to be seen.

Igor Stravinsky sat with his head in his hands on the edge of his bunk. Katharine sat beside him, with her arm around his shoulders. Despite his long struggle, he had finally given in to the desolation inside him. He felt that his irony and worldliness had sloughed off him like the dry skin of some reptile, leaving him emotionally naked, unable to continue the masquerade.

‘Everything is finished,’ he whispered. ‘You are right, Katharine. It’s the end. The end of art, the end of music, the end of everything that matters. The end of me. I cannot express the anguish I feel.’

‘You’ll recover, Igor.’ She rocked him, feeling how frail his body had become. He was all bones. He smelled sick. ‘Everything will get better, you’ll see. You’ll start composing again. As for the war, they can’t possibly win. The world won’t let them win.’

‘The world has let them win before, these people. Over and over again.’

‘America won’t let it happen this time. There’s a new life waiting for you there.’

‘I’m too old to begin again.’

‘You feel like that now, but you’re exhausted, grieving. You’ll get strong again. There’s so much life in you, Igor. Don’t give up.’

Commodore Randall had warned the passengers that they might be heading into some bad weather once they had called in at Cobh. The more experienced travellers prepared by lining up in the deckchairs along the sunny side of the ship to soak up all the warmth they could, their chins lifted to catch what solar rays there were, their legs wrapped in rugs.

There was strong competition for the deckchairs on the overcrowded Manhattan. Miss Fanny Ward, who had taken the wise precaution of slipping Mr Nightingale a five-dollar note beforehand, was one of the fortunate ones. He conducted her to a prime spot, sheltered from the wind, yet catching the full benefit of the hazy sun.

Miss Ward stretched out carefully on the deckchair, trying to ease her knees into position without too much clicking and creaking. An unwise movement would have her hobbling for a week. Mr Nightingale got the cushions behind her head just the way she liked them, adjusting the rug gently around her feet. She half-expected him to kiss her tenderly on the forehead before leaving. They had sailed together many times.

She had slept badly the night before. She closed her eyes behind the dark sunglasses, composing her mind for a morning nap. Irritatingly, however, the child on the deckchair beside her was singing ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’, a song which Miss Ward particularly detested. She tried to shut out the piping voice in vain. It continued, thin and true, to the end of the song, and then began again.

Miss Ward sat up to look severely at the child. She found herself staring at a little girl of considerable beauty, around seven years old, with a cloud of dark hair and large, lilac-blue eyes. She stopped singing, and looked back at Miss Ward from under impossibly thick eyelashes.

‘Am I annoying you?’ the child asked with adult composure.

‘It’s not my favourite song,’ Miss Ward said.

‘It’s my favourite song,’ the child replied. ‘It’s from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’

‘Yes, I know that.’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve seen it three times. And they’ve got it in the ship’s cinema. So I’m going to see it again.’

‘Each to his own,’ Miss Ward replied.

‘I’m going to be a film star,’ the child volunteered.

Miss Ward settled back down again and closed her eyes. ‘Good luck to you.’

‘I’m going to America to do a screen test for Paramount.’

Miss Ward sighed. ‘What’s your name, child?’

‘Elizabeth Taylor.’

‘Well, Elizabeth Taylor, what makes you think you’re going to get a screen test with Paramount?’

‘It’s all arranged,’ the child said calmly. ‘It might be MGM. Louis B. Meyer wants me especially. It could be Universal. But I’d rather it was Paramount.’

This made Miss Ward sit up again. The child was strangely convincing in the matter-of-fact way she spoke of the great Hollywood studios. Miss Ward studied her more carefully. She was a ravishing little thing with an upturned nose and a look of the young Vivien Leigh about her. ‘You’d rather it were Paramount, eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is your father arranging all this?’

‘My mother and my father. That’s them, over there.’ She pointed to an attractive young couple who were leaning on the rail, the man taking photographs of the woman, who was posing with her straw hat dangling from her hand. ‘My brother’s coming, too. I can sing and dance. I’ve been to Madame Vacani’s school of ballet.’

‘Have you indeed.’

‘She said I had star quality.’

‘I can see that.’

‘I’m not sure whether to be a film star or an actress.’

‘I’m an actress myself, you know,’ Miss Ward offered.

Elizabeth Taylor looked at her with incredulous violet eyes, but was too polite to express open disbelief. ‘Oh really?’

‘Yes. My name is Fanny Ward. I’ve been in thirty films.’

‘What films?’

‘You wouldn’t have seen them.’ As it happened, her most famous films had been made in the silent era, and were now as dead as the dodo.

‘I’m going to be in lots of films,’ Elizabeth replied, unimpressed.

‘I imagine you will,’ Miss Ward said dryly. The child had beauty, self-confidence and presence. In a film industry which fawned on child stars, and promoted them relentlessly, young Elizabeth had a decent chance of success. But Miss Ward wondered whether her handsome, confident parents knew what a hard road lay ahead of the child. How much sorrow and disappointment would she endure in her life? How many times would the studios chew her up and spit her out before every vestige of happiness had been sucked out of her? And then, when she was no longer a child, would she join the long list of forgotten infant prodigies in alcoholic homes?

Approaching the end of her own career, Miss Ward felt she should have some words of wisdom for this hopeful, starting out on the rocky road to the heights. But there was nothing she could say that would be believed, or wouldn’t be instantly forgotten. She felt worn and sad. Without another word, she put her sunglasses back on and lay back down. Beside her, Elizabeth Taylor continued singing ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’.

In their cabin, Rachel was trying to console Masha. They were together on one of the bunks, Masha lying back against Rachel, with her aching head pillowed on Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel held her tight, kissing her temple.

‘Don’t cry any more, Masha. You’re exhausted.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about Mama and Papa. Don’t you think about yours?’

‘Yes, of course, my dear.’

‘Then why don’t you cry too?’

‘I suppose,’ Rachel replied slowly, ‘because I had already parted from them.’

‘I said goodbye to Mama and Papa in Bremen. But I always thought I would see them again.’

‘My parting with my parents was some years ago,’ Rachel said quietly, ‘and of a more definitive nature. We’ve seen very little of each other since then.’

‘Was it because of this love affair of yours?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t know.’ Masha pressed the palms of her hands against her swollen eyelids. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to pry into something so painful.’

‘It’s all right.’ Rachel gently took Masha’s hands away from her eyes to stop her rubbing them. ‘Her name was Dorothea.’

‘Whose name was Dorothea?’ Masha asked tiredly.

‘The person you have been so curious to know about.’

Masha was puzzled for a moment. Then she sat up and peered at her cousin closely. ‘A woman?’

‘Yes, a woman.’

Masha gasped. ‘Rachel!’

‘She was older than I, an assistant teacher at the conservatory, which of course made it all far worse.’

‘Are you telling me that you are a—’ Masha stopped herself before uttering the word.

Rachel nodded. ‘Ever since I can remember, I’ve known I was what you cannot bring yourself to name. Now you understand why your family thought I was a danger to you. Are you appalled?’

‘How can I be appalled when I love you so?’ Masha asked. ‘But – don’t you like men?’

‘As a class, you mean? I don’t dislike them. But I cannot desire them.’

‘Perhaps you just haven’t met the right one, yet,’ Masha said innocently.

‘I think it goes a little deeper than that,’ Rachel replied, her tone light.

‘Did something happen to you to make you this way?’

‘What should have happened to me, Masha?’

‘I don’t know – a bad experience with a man, perhaps.’

Rachel smiled a little wearily. ‘Do you think that’s what makes us one thing or another? A bad experience?’

‘Sometimes it does, I’m sure.’

‘Not in my case. I never had any confusion about myself or what I wanted. Do you think I don’t feel the same tenderness you do? The same yearning, the same desire – the same love? I longed for my Dorothea long before I knew she existed. And when she entered my life, I thanked God for her.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Trust me,’ Rachel replied wryly, ‘everything that could be said on the matter has already been said a thousand times. My ears are still ringing with it. My father even took me to the celebrated Professor Freud in Vienna, which by the way was very expensive, in the hopes that I could be cured by psychoanalysis.’

‘What did Professor Freud say?’

‘He said that I was incurable. In the sense that I did not need to be cured. He said that my condition was neither an illness nor a neurotic conflict, and that eliminating my feelings was not possible or desirable. I liked him very much, as a matter of fact. To be spoken to like a human being was worth whatever it cost my father.’ She made a bitter face. ‘Naturally, that didn’t please him. It did nothing to soothe his outrage to be told by the great Sigmund Freud that my disgusting perversion, as my father called it, was innate biology.’

‘Oh, Rachel. How awful.’

‘Freud told him, in my presence, that in most cases, any “cure” achieved is just a superficial compliance to avoid conflict. I added that I wasn’t the bravest woman on earth, but that I had enough courage not to pretend to be something I was not. So we went back to Leipzig no happier than we left it.’

‘And your friend – Dorothea?’

‘They tried to forbid me from seeing her of course. And then the Nazis expelled me from the conservatory anyway, because I was a Jew, so it seemed that was that. But I found I couldn’t live without Dorothea. I left my father’s house, and got work, and we set up in a small apartment together.’

‘That sounds so cosy,’ Masha said wistfully.

‘We were very happy for a while, even though our families disowned us both. But as you once put it, the darkness came swiftly. It started to become obvious that I couldn’t continue to live in Germany. Like you, I had a brush with the Gestapo which left me bruised in body and soul. I always had difficulty in keeping my mouth shut. My parents decided that, wicked as I was, they would help me to emigrate. Of course, I refused their help at first – but it was Dorothea herself who persuaded me to go in the end.’

‘And she stayed behind?’

‘It broke my heart to leave her,’ Rachel said calmly. ‘It breaks my heart every morning to awaken without her beside me. She had planned to join me in America, once she got her visa, but now that the war has begun, I don’t know whether we’ll ever see one another again. We parted four months ago in Leipzig, and I’ve heard almost nothing from her since then.’

Masha touched her cousin’s hand timidly. ‘I’m so sorry. How much you’ve kept inside, Rachel. I wish you’d confided in me before.’

‘One never knows how people will react.’

‘Did you think I would be disgusted?’

‘I thought you might be alarmed.’ The corners of Rachel’s eyes lifted for a moment in that secret smile. ‘When other women find out, I often see a look of trepidation on their faces. Perhaps they think I might pounce on them like a hungry lioness. But I assure you, you’re safe from me.’

Masha kissed her. ‘Of course I am. How could I think otherwise? You don’t want anybody except your Dorothea.’

‘You’re right, I should have spoken earlier. But I’ve learned to live inside myself, Masha. I live a concealed life. I’ve had to hide what I was, not only from society at large, and especially from the Nazis, to whom I am an abomination, but from my own family. I’ve grown some sharp corners as a result. I’m like one of those suits of armour one sees in museums, all spikes and uncomfortable protrusions. I know that. I’m very glad you’ve learned to put up with me.’

‘I’ll do much better from now on,’ Masha said. ‘And I know you will find Dorothea again, when all this is over.’

Rachel shrugged. ‘If the Nazis neglect to send her to a camp. And the British neglect to drop a bomb on her. I don’t entertain hopes. I’ve learned not to.’

‘Don’t talk like that.’ Masha, who had found some distraction from her grief in these intriguing revelations, settled herself among the pillows. ‘Tell me about her. Don’t hold anything back!’

‘What is it you want to know?’

‘I’m sure she’s beautiful. Tell me what she looks like.’

‘I don’t know whether you’d think her beautiful,’ Rachel said reflectively. ‘She is to me, but most others think her plain. She’s tall and slender. She wears round-rimmed glasses which she hates to take off because her eyesight is poor. Her hair is the same colour as yours, and very long. She usually wears it braided and coiled around her head in the old-fashioned German style, but when she lets it loose, it hangs all the way down her back.’

‘She sounds very interesting.’

‘She’s a brilliant musicologist. She was assigned to me as my music theory tutor in my first year. I hadn’t paid her too much attention at first – I was a sulky girl in those days, and stared at my shoes most of the time. But the first time we were alone together in her room, I saw her properly at last. She seemed to me like—’

‘Like what?’ Masha demanded as Rachel hesitated.

‘Like a perfect, unopened seashell that one finds on a beach. I couldn’t take my eyes off her while she talked about pitch, duration, rhythm and tempo. She noticed me staring at her. I saw her face suddenly flush to a deep pink, like a musk-rose. It was the most extraordinary transformation. Her eyes became liquid. I saw her lips swell and grow moist. She had become beautiful in a moment. And I, for my part, felt I had come alive for the first time in years.’

‘I’ve had that feeling,’ Masha whispered. ‘So you knew at once?’

‘I knew,’ Rachel agreed. ‘But we continued in the same way for a few weeks, I sitting there staring at her, she enduring my stare with her colour coming and going every few minutes. The tension was unbearable. And yet I was deliriously happy inside. And it was I who made the first move.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I waited until the end of the tutorial one day, and then I said to her, “I’ve been longing to kiss you since the moment I saw you.”’

Masha leaned forward breathlessly. ‘You were so bold! Did she allow you to kiss her?’

‘Not then. After all, she was older and wiser – and far more cautious – than I. She had a great deal more to lose. Her position, her reputation. I was eighteen, and ready to burst out of my skin. She simply gathered her books and hurried out of the room.’

‘How disappointing!’

‘Not altogether. I’d seen the look on her face. And I wasn’t about to give up. Once I set my heart on something, I usually get it.’ Rachel smiled. ‘I am a lioness, after all.’

‘You pursued her?’

‘I pursued and stalked and laid in wait. I left flowers on her desk. I told her what I wanted with my eyes. I sat close to her in the concert hall. I followed her everywhere, up the marble staircases, in the cloisters, in the refectory. I pushed my bicycle behind her in the street. It was autumn, and she wore a long, English houndstooth coat that drove me wild with desire. The smell of burning leaves is forever associated in my mind with that period. She fled from me, but she looked over her shoulder. And at last—’

‘At last—?’

‘At last she was mine.’

‘What was it like, the first time?’ Masha demanded.

‘As to that, my dear, you will have to use your imagination.’

‘You can’t stop there!’

‘I can and I will. And you are exhausted. You need to sleep.’

‘How do you expect me to sleep now?’ Masha complained.

‘I think you’ll find it easier than you think.’ She held out her arms.

Masha, still protesting, sank against her cousin’s breast and was enfolded. And despite her reluctance, as Rachel had predicted, sleep came on swift wings.

Cubby Hubbard had thought it over and thought he had a pretty good idea of what ‘your cock, my tail’ had meant, and it wasn’t very nice; but whatever it meant, it meant that Mr Nightingale was an easy-going sort of guy who could be approached with a proposition. He grabbed the steward’s arm as he flitted past.

‘Say, Mr Nightingale—’

‘Yes, Mr Hubbard?’

‘If I needed to get a message to a passenger, could you deliver it?’

The steward put a manicured finger archly to his cheek. ‘That depends on the passenger.’

‘It’s Miss Rosemary Kennedy. She’s in First Class.’

‘And why would you be sending messages to Miss Kennedy?’ Mr Nightingale asked suspiciously.

‘We’re engaged to be married. We’re crazy about each other. But her family don’t approve of me. They don’t think I’m good enough for her. They’re trying to keep us apart. I know she’s on board, but I haven’t seen her once since we left Southampton. I’m pretty sure they’re keeping her locked up in her cabin. She’ll be desperate to hear from me. If I could just get a note to her, telling her I love her, and that we’ll see each other in New York—’

Mr Nightingale’s guarded expression had softened during the recital of this fairy-tale account. ‘Well, Mr Hubbard, I have to say that’s very romantic and all, but…’ He paused as Cubby discreetly slipped the note he’d written, plus a five-dollar bill into his top pocket. ‘But now that you come to mention it, I’m going to be in First Class this afternoon. I’ll see what I can do. Leave it with me.’

Carrying hundreds of extra passengers as she was, Manhattan was slow to feed her charges. Dinner began early and finished late. In the First Class dining room (which was panelled in American oak, and studded for some reason with the huge heads of buffalo, elk, moose, grizzly bear and caribou) the tables were still crowded, though it was close to midnight.

Families with children and the elderly had eaten early and gone their ways. As the evening progressed, the dining room filled with more glamorous diners. Men in evening jackets and women in long gowns came in from the bar, laughing, trailing the scents of expensive perfume and cigars, sparkling with diamonds. These were passengers of the upper crust, people who moved in the same circles, knew each other, and knew what was what.

At the Commodore’s table, in the centre of the dining room, the crème de la crème had gathered. The party included Fanny Ward, the Eternal Beauty, Mrs Joseph Kennedy, the wife of the American ambassador; and Madame Quo Tai-Chi, the plump and pretty young wife of the Chinese ambassador.

The two ambassadresses, of course, were well acquainted with one another, though there was not a great deal of warmth between them. Mrs Kennedy privately considered Madame Quo Tai-Chi rather a coarse little woman, though she had supposedly written a book on Chinese art. In London she had presented a fulsomely inscribed copy to Mrs Kennedy, which Mrs Kennedy thought showed far too many airs and graces.

Nor had she forgiven Madame Quo for the public humiliation of a gala dinner given at the mansion in Portland Place, at which Chinese dishes had been served – with chopsticks. After watching Mrs Kennedy struggling with these primitive implements, Madame Quo had scuttled round the table and – with everybody laughing and applauding, including the malicious Russian Ambassador, Maisky – assisted her to eat, positively ladling noodles into her mouth like a mother with a messy child.

For her part, Madame Quo regarded the entire American administration, and most particularly its representative, Joseph P. Kennedy, as a gang of loathsome hypocrites. Savaged for a decade by Japanese aggression, which had wrested away the vast resources of Manchuria, China had been begging America and Britain in vain for help. Even now, her husband was pleading with His Majesty’s government to stop selling guns and planes to the Japanese, guns and planes which had already killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese.

‘What an enchanting outfit, Madame Quo,’ Mrs Kennedy said.

Madame Quo’s cheongsam was pale pink, piped in crimson and embroidered all over with silver thread. ‘It required six months to make,’ Madame Quo said, accepting the tribute with a gracious nod. But she did not return the compliment. That was one up to Madame Quo. Mrs Kennedy was aware that she’d made a mistake with the black dress tonight, which showed her shoulders; once she’d taken off her stole, she felt dowdy, cold and skinny. ‘You’re travelling with your children, Mrs Kennedy?’

‘With three of them.’

‘You have so many, of course. Thirteen, isn’t it?’

Mrs Kennedy smiled thinly. ‘Nine.’ Madame Quo had two boys, Merlin, if you please, and Edward.

‘How is your daughter Rosemary?’ Madame Quo asked, toying with one of her spectacular jade earrings, which were a vivid green and no doubt ancient and priceless, unless they came from Hong Kong. ‘Such an original young lady.’ She accompanied this with a pitying smile on her smooth face, indicating that ‘original’ was intended in this context to signify ‘crazy as a coot’.

‘She’s doing extremely well,’ Mrs Kennedy said robustly. ‘She has just qualified as a nursery school teacher. She loves the little ones.’

‘Ah,’ Madame Quo said sympathetically, turning her head to toy with the earring on the other side. ‘My sons and I are heading to Tucson. We always spend the winter in Arizona. Such a perfect winter climate.’

This gave Mrs Kennedy a much-needed opening. ‘Oh it is, it is. By a coincidence, we met the lady from whom you rented a house last year, Mrs Robert G. Nelson. A charming person.’

Madame Quo nodded blandly at this sally, though it must have stung. The Mrs Robert G. Nelson in question had won damages of several hundred dollars against Madame Quo for stolen silverware, broken china, and the house left in a disgusting state. So much for Chinese culture.

Mrs Kennedy turned her back on Madame Quo and addressed herself to Fanny Ward, who was painted like a doll, and wearing an extraordinary garment of luridly flowered silk, gathered in a jewelled knot right over her you-know-what, as though anyone were still interested in that.

‘I was so sad to say goodbye to their Majesties. They told me that they intend to remain in London, whatever happens.’

Miss Ward was looking glazed. She had already spent a couple of hours in the bar, hoisting back gin and tonics. She nodded a little too vigorously now, making the feathers in her extraordinary headdress dance. It contained what must surely be real diamonds, and was perched on top of what must surely be a wig, a very unconvincing one. ‘Not lacking in courage,’ she said, enunciating very distinctly. ‘And the dear girls. Wanting to do their part, they told me. A beacon of inspiration.’

‘I presume there are air-raid shelters in Buckingham Palace?’

‘Basements. Lots of them,’ Miss Ward agreed, her feathers nodding. Her famous eyes, heavily ringed with mascara, were bloodshot oysters tonight. Perhaps she’d been crying, or trying too hard not to. ‘So brave. Not running away, like us.’

‘I am not running away,’ Madame Quo said sharply. ‘I always spend the winter in Arizona. I shall be back to London in the spring.’

‘Nonsense,’ Miss Ward said. ‘Why should you? Not your war.’

‘It is very much our war. For us it began in 1931. Manchuria, Shanghai, Nanking. Ten million Chinese are dead. Your turn, now. The Japanese are already preparing to attack America and Britain.’

‘Now, now, no warmongering,’ Mrs Kennedy said.

‘You would be a fool not to know that’s true,’ Madame Quo retorted, ‘and I don’t believe you are a fool, Mrs Kennedy.’

A four-piece jazz orchestra had been setting up in a corner of the room, and the waiters had been clearing tables away in front of the bandstand. The musicians now struck up ‘Begin the Beguine’, a clarinet taking the lead.

‘They’re playing for their passage,’ Commodore Randall said. ‘Refugees, all four of them. Apparently Herr Hitler doesn’t approve of their kind of music.’

Diners abandoned their food to dance. The syrupy melody lines stopped conversation for a while. Couples glided to and fro under the glowering gaze of the great land-animals whose heads were mounted above them.

‘I wonder,’ Miss Ward said brightly, ‘if their bodies are on the other side.’

‘Whose bodies?’ Mrs Kennedy asked.

‘Those bison and moose and things. We should go and have a look.’

‘Your husband,’ Madame Quo went on, ‘has been singing the same song for years, Mrs Kennedy. Peace in our time, and all that. But it’s the wrong song now. The gospel of isolationism is dead. It died in 1917.’

Mrs Kennedy looked at Madame Quo with dislike. ‘You know I can’t comment on American policy,’ she said stiffly.

‘He’s not only out of step with the British government, but with your own State Department. Fawning on Hitler, egging on Neville Chamberlain and all those smart Nazi sympathisers at Cliveden.’

Mrs Kennedy’s lean cheeks were flushed. ‘I don’t intend to sit here and be scolded by you.’

‘You must scold your husband. He can’t go around loudly insisting that Hitler is going to win this war. Nothing could be more distasteful in an American ambassador. And he’s setting himself in direct opposition to your President.’

‘I suppose you know just what our President thinks,’ she snapped.

‘Everyone knows what your President thinks.’

‘Wanting to commit another whole generation of young men to the fire? To save a rotten old house that ought to be pulled down?’

‘I understand that history impels you Irish to consider Great Britain a hated enemy, Mrs Kennedy. But I assure you, you would find the Nazis a great deal worse. They’re rotten too, but in quite a different way.’

‘I’ve had enough.’

‘Your husband is committing political suicide,’ Madame Quo said as Mrs Kennedy rose. ‘He’s going to be sent back to Washington in disgrace if he doesn’t change his tune.’

Stony-faced, Mrs Kennedy swept up her stole and stalked out of the dining room, ignoring the others at the table. Being lectured by that little woman was too much to bear.

She walked along the promenade deck, trying to cool the heat out of her face. There were too many things to bear. Unhappiness and worry weighed on her intolerably.

What to do with Rosemary. Joe’s diplomatic career heading for the rocks, along with the whole damned country. The looming war. The dreadful prospect of the boys enlisting.

Was Madame Quo right? There were others who said the same things. After everything Joe had done for Roosevelt! They had courted Roosevelt for two decades, raising millions for his campaigns, preaching the Roosevelt doctrine, even sending planeloads of live crabs and lobsters to the White House. But as was the way with politicians, Roosevelt would drop Joe in a heartbeat if it was expedient. And Madame Quo had been right in one thing, at least: it was becoming expedient to drop Joe.

She hurried back to her cabin to call her husband.