The Ocean Liner

SS Manhattan

Having missed Thomas at breakfast, Masha went to look for him in one of his favourite refuges, the little triangular breakwater deck at the very front of the boat. Few passengers lingered there; it was filled with derricks and loading machinery, and always very windy, with a good chance of being drenched by spray. No hat or scarf was safe there. But she knew that Thomas liked to hang over the rail and stare at the empty horizon ahead, thinking his thoughts, whatever they were.

She found him sheltering from the wind in the lee of a winch motor, his chin resting on his knees, his arms clasping his shins. She sat down beside him. The cold had sharpened his features, making him look like one of those stray dogs one saw in Berlin parks, too aloof to beg for scraps, yet eyeing every morsel hungrily.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you yesterday,’ she said.

‘It’s all right.’

‘I shouldn’t have mentioned your mother. I know you must miss your parents. I miss mine. I miss Berlin. I miss all the people there.’

‘I’m sorry, Fräulein Morgenstern.’

‘Oh, you must call me Masha now. Haven’t we got beyond “Fräulein”? I hope we have. When you call me that, you make me feel like a schoolteacher.’ She laid her hand gently on his shoulder. ‘You remind me very much of someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Someone I was once very fond of.’

He turned to look at her, his cheek on his knee. ‘Do I look like him?’

‘I don’t mean in that way. But he cared for me, as you do. And he was always considerate and kind, as you are. He thought of ways to help me before I even knew that I needed help. You are the same. You will make some lucky woman a wonderful husband someday.’

He had nothing to say to that.

Masha went on, her voice even softer. ‘I am very grateful for everything you’ve done for me, Thomas. You’ve been very gallant. I know that—’ Masha hesitated. ‘I think that you have perhaps developed feelings for me. Feelings that are more like those of a man than a boy.’ She saw that his cheeks were crimson now. She took her hand away from his shoulder. ‘I don’t mean to embarrass you. I know how painful such feelings can be. Especially when there is no possibility of their being reciprocated. I mean only,’ she hastened to add, ‘that there is a gap of several years between you and me—’

‘I know all that,’ Thomas said in a tight voice. ‘I understand. You need not explain, Fräulein.’

‘Masha.’

‘Masha,’ he repeated, almost inaudibly.

‘I just don’t want you to be wounded. These feelings can help us to grow, or they can hurt us very much. I would rather it was the former than the latter. I would not wish to repay your regard by injuring you. But if you should feel pain, I want you to know that the pain passes. With time. It fades, and makes a place for new feelings to grow, feelings for someone else, someone who can share them with you.’ Masha looked at Thomas but he made no reply, his head hunched between his shoulders. ‘And by then,’ she went on, ‘I promise that you will have forgotten all about me.’

‘Please don’t say anything else,’ Thomas whispered.

‘I’ve been very clumsy. Forgive me.’ Masha picked herself up and held out her hand to him. ‘I didn’t see you at breakfast. You must be starving. Let’s go and have lunch.’

Since learning that Rosemary was not on the ship, Cubby Hubbard had been desolate.

He paced along the deck now, hunched around his wretchedness, passing the rows of deckchairs where happier passengers were lounging at their ease. The chances of his seeing Rosemary again anytime soon were vanishingly small. He could never get back to London until the war was over. Nor could she easily come to the States except under heavy escort. Guarded in a tower somewhere in England, she was more than ever a lost princess in a fairy tale.

He paused in his walk and leaned on the railing to stare at the rolling Atlantic which now separated him from Rosemary.

‘I presume,’ said a quiet voice behind him, ‘that you are wishing for wings to fly.’

Cubby turned. The words had come from a woman reclining on the lounger closest to him. She was in her seventies he guessed, wrapped in a diaphanous, embroidered shawl that looked as though it had come from India or somewhere, a large panama hat and a pair of dark glasses shading her face. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

She removed her sunglasses, revealing that her eyes, though lined with age, were a bright blue. She was lipsticked and powdered with great care to present an appearance of youth. ‘You don’t know the song? The water is wide and I can’t get o’er, neither have I wings to fly. My name is Fanny Ward. I don’t mean to intrude on your thoughts. I couldn’t help overhearing your exchange with Mrs Kennedy in the lifeboat the other night.’

‘Oh. Yes.’

‘It was her daughter you were speaking of? Rosemary, the eldest.’

Cubby nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘A very pretty girl.’

Cubby winced. ‘She’s the loveliest woman in the world.’

Miss Ward considered him appraisingly. ‘First love is a beautiful thing. There’s nothing like it.’

‘The whole business is hopeless,’ Cubby replied heavily.

‘Oh, it always is. In my young day, girls were never allowed to marry their first love. It simply wasn’t done. One’s parents swiftly intervened. The man was told never to darken the threshold again and one was packed off to reflect on one’s folly in some dull and remote location until the season was over. One was supposed to be grateful in later life. For having been rescued from a terrible mistake, I mean.’

‘Is that what happened to you?’ Cubby asked.

Miss Ward examined the brilliant rings on her fingers. ‘Well, I was rather a naughty girl, and I ran away to be with my first love.’

‘Did you? What happened?’

‘It’s too long a story to tell you now. But it was considered terribly wrong. One was meant to accept the intervention. And one’s feelings were to be folded in tissue paper in a secret drawer and never referred to again.’ She cocked her head. ‘You don’t mind my speaking to you of this? I’m old enough to be your grandmother, after all.’

‘I don’t mind at all.’ Cubby was glad, rather than otherwise, to have this interest taken in his unhappiness. ‘Your face is familiar. Are you in the movies?’

Miss Ward merely smiled. ‘First love is never forgotten,’ she went on. ‘It’s the only love that remains fresh and potent for a lifetime. It’s the truest and most innocent of loves, exactly because it can never come to fruition. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘It never grows old; you see? It’s as fleeting as the morning dew, yet it clings to us all our lives. It becomes part of our existence. It’s probably the last thing we remember on our deathbeds.’

Cubby had been listening to the old creature with a growing feeling of discomfort. In her queer, gossamer wrap, with her pale-blue eyes, she was like an elderly fairy of some sort, laying a spell upon him. ‘We don’t want to give it all up,’ he said sullenly. ‘We want to get married.’

‘Oh, you mustn’t think of it,’ Miss Ward exclaimed. ‘First love is far too precious. It’s not of this world. It asks nothing and gives all. It has nothing to do with the trade and barter of marriage – the dreary practicalities of rent and children and dirty dishes and all that.’

‘But that’s exactly what we want.’

‘Would you lead a goddess to the kitchen sink? First love is divine. It belongs in the realm of the soul. Keep it there, young man.’

She replaced her dark glasses, and the advice (if that was what it had been) appeared to be at an end. It had hardly consoled Cubby.

He braced himself to speak to Mrs Kennedy.

He tipped his hat to Miss Ward and found his way to the Kennedy stateroom and tapped at the door. Mrs Kennedy herself opened it. Although he saw her in his mind as a dragon, complete with scales and fiery breath, she looked pale and tired today.

‘You don’t give up, do you?’ she greeted him.

‘I just want to know that she’s okay,’ he replied quietly.

‘If you’re asking whether she’s weeping and wailing without you – the answer is no. She’s with her father, and she’s very happy.’

‘I’m glad to hear that.’

‘And don’t bother writing her any more love letters. She won’t get them.’

He swallowed that without comment. ‘What happens if they bomb London?’

‘She’s somewhere safe, Mr Hubbard. It has never been my policy to expose my children to harm.’

‘I don’t mean Rosemary any harm.’ When she made no comment, he went on, ‘I do care for her very much.’

‘You think you do.’

‘I know I do.’

‘Perhaps you can even kid yourself that you didn’t do her any harm. But you did. Just like all the others who took advantage of her.’

‘I didn’t take advantage of her.’

‘You are no better than a man who has sexual relations with a child.’

He flushed. ‘She’s not a child.’

‘Not in body, perhaps. But everywhere it matters – in her heart, in her mind, in her soul – Rosemary is a child. She will always be a child. Your idea of marrying her is not just absurd, it’s obscene.’

‘So is locking her up,’ he retorted. ‘How long do you think you can keep her shut in a convent?’

‘The rest of her life, if that’s what it takes to protect her.’ She looked at him with hostile green eyes. ‘Rosemary is as happy as Larry without you. She’s forgotten you already.’

‘I don’t believe that for one moment.’

She laughed shortly. ‘How dare you contradict me to my face? You’ve got some nerve, coming to me like this.’

‘Like I said, I do love her. I don’t want to live without her.’

‘In that case, I suggest you go to the rail and throw yourself over.’

‘You’re a cruel woman,’ he exclaimed, stung by her coldness.

‘Then you wouldn’t like me as a mother-in-law,’ she retorted. ‘If you use extravagant language, you can expect to be mocked. You’re a young man who sees what he wants to see and hears what he wants to hear.’ She reached into her pocket. ‘You have no right to read this, but I want you to understand, once and for all.’ She handed him the telegram.

He unfolded it. It had been sent to the ship from London the day before. The pasted lines of printed capitals covered the whole page:

Cubby handed the telegram back to Mrs Kennedy. ‘Sounds like he is talking about a six-year-old,’ he mumbled. But his eyes felt hot and there was a hard knot in his throat.

Mrs Kennedy put the telegram back in her pocket. ‘You think me unkind, Mr Hubbard. But I’m going to give you some advice that is the kindest thing anyone will say to you: get on with your life and forget Rosemary.’

She closed the door in his face.

Igor Stravinsky was coughing heavily into his handkerchief that night. Masha laid her hand on his arm.

‘You should not be smoking. This is killing you.’

‘It’s not – the smoking – which is killing me.’

He spat into the handkerchief. It was a dark night, but by the dim light on the promenade deck, where they reclined side by side, she could see the red stain on the linen.

‘You are not well.’

He let his head sag back against the cushion, gasping for breath. ‘How far – have you got – with my symphony?’

‘I’ve copied forty pages. It’s a great privilege. But—’

‘But?’

‘The music is not in any sense Russian, Monsieur Stravinsky.’

He was silent for a long while. ‘I do not feel myself to be a Russian in any sense,’ he said at last. ‘I consider myself a French citizen.’

‘Why have you stopped working on it?’

He made a weary gesture with the bloodstained handkerchief. ‘I have stopped everything, Masha.’

‘Even living?’ she asked. ‘Forgive me, but you told my cousin that you wanted to die.’

‘I am old. I have lived. And I have lost a wife, a child. You are still young. You haven’t had a child yet. You can’t stop living until you’ve reproduced, that’s the law of nature.’

‘And what if I were to lose my child, the way you’ve lost yours?’

‘You have to hazard everything,’ he replied. ‘That is the law of nature too. Risk everything, your whole being, on that throw of the dice.’

‘And how do you survive the death of a child, Monsieur Stravinsky?’

‘Maybe you don’t.’

‘Then how are we supposed to make sense of life?’ she asked. ‘Are you telling me you can’t leave until you’ve had your heart broken?’

‘Perhaps, yes.’

‘And to whom does it matter, whether you suffer or not?’

‘To God, perhaps.’

‘I don’t believe in God any more.’

‘I do.’ Stravinsky sat up and coughed up blood again. ‘But not in a God who keeps us from harm.’

‘What sort of God, then?’

He rose with an effort to his feet. ‘I think of God as a stern country schoolmaster. He calls us one by one, to write something on the blackboard before he will let us go home. Some of us write beautiful things, some of us write nonsense, some make glaring errors. For some of us, the chalk snaps in our fingers before we can finish.’

Masha watched him walk slowly away, then she rose and went to the rail alone. The moon had not yet risen, there were no stars. The lights of the ship glimmered on the nearest waves, but beyond, all was blackness.

Masha leaned on the rail, thinking about the letter Rachel had received in Cobh, before the submarine. Did she feel any differently towards Rachel, since Rachel had revealed her inner self? She felt that she didn’t. She was too fond of her cousin to be disturbed in any way. She felt, more than anything else, compassion for the difficulties Rachel had faced in her life, pity for her isolation and her sorrows. But there was much that was strange about Rachel that had now been explained, and which she had begun to understand.

‘You are sad tonight.’

Masha turned. Arturo Toscanini had joined her at the rail, wrapped in a heavy coat and scarf against the cold. ‘It’s a sad world, maestro,’ she replied.

‘I feel it also.’ He struck his breast. ‘This is broken.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

He stood beside her, his face in shadow, the deck lights making a silvery halo of his sparse hair. ‘But you are too young to feel such things.’

‘I don’t think it matters how old one is.’

‘Perhaps that’s true. When I was young, I suffered from profound bouts of melancholy.’

‘I’m not normally a melancholy person,’ Masha replied with a catch in her voice. ‘But I’ve heard so much terrible news of late. Sometimes it overwhelms me.’

‘Poor little bird.’ He put his arm around her shoulders. Grateful for the fatherly reassurance, Masha laid her head on Toscanini’s shoulder.

‘You are so kind, maestro.’

‘It pains me to see you all alone in the world,’ he replied in a husky voice. ‘So young and so beautiful. I should like to help you.’

It was almost like having Papa back. She nestled into him. ‘Oh, maestro—’

But before she could finish her sentence, he was kissing her. She was astonished to feel his bristly moustache prickling against her nose, his lips sucking at hers. ‘So young,’ he repeated, munching greedily, enveloping her in a miasma of bad teeth, ‘so beautiful—’

‘Maestro!’ Masha exclaimed in horror.

‘Let me console you. I understand, I understand everything!’

‘Please, maestro!’ She struggled to get away from him.

His wiry arms were surprisingly strong, and he was very determined. ‘Don’t fight me. I can make you happy, piccolina.’

‘Let me go!’

‘Patatina, dai.’ He had lapsed into Italian, and was murmuring endearments to her as his whiskery kisses, like the attentions of an elderly terrier, planted themselves on her mouth, cheeks and eyes.

‘Maestro, stop!’

‘Carissima!’ The conductor’s nimble fingers were prying under her coat, searching for the curves of her breasts.

‘Say, what’s going on here?’ The interruption had come in the form of a burly young passenger in a checked jacket, his hair slicked back in the defiant quiff which was popular with young Americans these days. ‘Is everything okay?’

Toscanini appeared momentarily baffled, his tongue still protruding, his eyes rolling. However, his arms relaxed, and Masha extricated herself swiftly from his amorous grasp. ‘Thank you,’ she said breathlessly to the young American.

‘I’ll walk you to your cabin.’ The American offered his arm. She took it gratefully.

‘Carissima!’ Toscanini bleated in dismay as Masha and her rescuer made their escape down the deck.

‘Who’s that old billy goat?’ the American asked.

Masha took out her handkerchief and wiped the spittle off her face in disgust. ‘It’s Arturo Toscanini.’

‘The conductor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Gee. I hope I did the right thing. You looked kind of reluctant, so I thought I better say something.’

‘I think he got carried away.’

‘He’s old enough to be your grandfather.’

‘Yes. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

‘He ought to be ashamed of himself. My name’s Cubby Hubbard, by the way.’

‘I’m Masha Morgenstern.’ She glanced over her shoulder, anxious that Toscanini would follow her; but he had vanished. ‘I’m so glad you were there.’

‘No problem. I’ve seen you and your friend around the ship. I guess you’re getting away from Hitler?’

‘Yes. And you’re going home?’

The American’s pleasantly chubby face looked unhappy. ‘I’m going to enlist as soon as I get back.’

‘But America’s not in the war.’

‘Not yet. But I reckon we soon will be. I thought I’d get an early start. So when it happens, I already have some rank, you know what I mean?’

‘I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,’ Masha said uncertainly. ‘Do you come from a family of soldiers?’

‘No. Matter of fact, I’m a musician. But—’

‘But?’

‘Well, I’ve had a disappointment. I don’t feel the same way about things any more.’

‘A disappointment in love?’ Masha asked.

‘You could say that.’

‘Did she choose someone else?’

He sighed. ‘Other people chose for her.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry. I know how that feels,’ Masha said quietly.

‘You do? Well, I guess we’re in the same boat. The whole thing was just a dream.’

‘You mustn’t say that.’

‘I shouldn’t have tried to kid myself it could ever work. A couple of days ago an old lady – I think she was a witch – told me you should never mix dreams with reality.’

‘But you can’t live without your dreams,’ Masha said wistfully.

‘Well, that’s all I have now. I don’t see my future the way I did before. A few weeks ago, I was in Paris, listening to Django Reinhardt. I was kidding myself that one day I could be as good as that. But I just realised I’ll never be as good as that. No point in even trying. So it’s the Navy for me.’

Masha glanced at his face. Under the youthful plumpness there was a square, dogged strength. ‘I hope you go back to your music one day.’

‘You never know.’

‘No, you never know.’

He escorted her to her cabin, where she thanked him and disengaged her arm. She went through the door, half-giggling, half-tearful. ‘Oh, Rachel!’

‘What’s the matter?’ Rachel demanded.

‘Toscanini. He’s been trying to make love to me on the promenade deck.’

Rachel rose angrily. ‘What did he do, the wretch?’

‘Oh, it’s too absurd. He put his arm around me, and I thought he was just trying to be nice, but then he started kissing me and calling me piccolina and patatina—’

‘How disgusting.’

‘But such a nice young American came to my rescue. He told me he’s going to enlist. I feel so sad for him.’

‘Never mind him. Didn’t I warn you not to let Toscanini get you in some dark corner?’ Rachel said.

‘But he’s so old! I never imagined he could behave like that—’

‘We must complain to the Commodore.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly. Everybody will laugh at us.’

‘He’s a revolting creature. His wife is on board!’

Masha sat down and began to laugh breathlessly. ‘Well, at least I can tell my grandchildren I was kissed by Toscanini.’

‘You,’ Rachel said dryly, ‘and a few hundred others.’