Raging Sea, Searing Sky

by Christopher Nicole

  As Joseph McGann could tell. ‘You have that right,’ he agreed. ‘But it must not be a guilty anger, Lew. You could not have saved them.’

  ‘I saved May Gerrard,’ Lew muttered. ‘And for that you are a hero.’

  ‘I should’ve saved Mom and Shirley.’

  ‘These things happen, Lew. You saved a life. No man can ask for the opportunity to do more than that, much less accomplish it.’

  Father insisted on meeting May, and shook her hand, most solemnly. By now her uncle had turned up, and he wanted to shake Lew’s hand in turn. ‘A most gallant gentleman,’ he said. Lew had the feeling that he almost added, even if you are an American! The uncle was very like Mr Gerrard, heavily built and with a small moustache. He was no more than conventionally grief stricken; Lew gathered that he had now become sole owner of the business, whatever it was.

  ‘Oh, Lew!’ May held his hands. ‘Are you really leaving today?’

  ‘Well, yes, I guess so,’ he said. ‘Father has to get back to the Embassy, and I...well, I guess I have things to do.’ He didn’t know what. Except hate, and hope to be avenged.

  ‘I shall miss you so,’ May said. ‘You saved my life. Oh, Lewis...’ she gazed at him, waiting for him to say some magic word. A word he wanted to say. But that would involve confessing that he was only fifteen years old, and that therefore he had no magic words to offer, for a very long time.

  ‘I’ll miss you too, May,’ he said, and kissed her fingers. She wanted more than that, he knew, but his father and her uncle were both standing there. The romance of the voyage, the so tragic romance, was over.

  *

  Father spoke little on the journey back to London, which comprised of a train journey to Dublin, then a ferry across the Irish Sea, then another train journey across the south and west of England. Father clearly had a lot on his mind. Of which the loss of Christina, the bride he had plucked out of the turmoil of war in the first place, only to lose her to the turmoil of war at the end, was uppermost. Lew had nothing to say either. Theirs had been a most intimate family, but because of Father’s absences at sea, the intimacy had been between Mom and Shirley and himself; Father had always been something of an outsider. Therefore he knew what had happened was being harder for him to bear than for anyone else. It was next to impossible to imagine life without Shirley’s booming laugh just as it was impossible to imagine life without Mom’s strong arm thrown round his shoulder or Mom’s all-pervading confidence. He could only hope and pray that she had been confident of survival up to the very moment the sea had flooded her nostrils and thence her lungs, had known no moment of fear. Christina Diaz McGann would never have known fear. But those who had killed her...

  ‘We are going to fight them, Father?’ he asked. ‘We are going to beat them?’

  ‘Sure we are,’ Joseph McGann promised. ‘Sure we are.’

  But his voice was less certain than it had been in Queenstown. The same newspapers which carried Lew’s photograph, and spoke of ‘American hero saves British girl’ were also carrying suggestions that the Lusitania had actually been loaded with arms and munitions, that there had been only one torpedo, and that the second explosion had been internal. While for all the initial reaction of horror and outrage by the American people, President Wilson was cautioning restraint, making demands for apologies from Germany, insisting that it had all been a mistake and that the United States had no business becoming involved in a European squabble, no matter how ghastly. Joseph McGann could recognise the sound common sense in that point of view...but he could also feel the bitter sadness that there was, after all, going to be no American move to avenge the deaths of his wife and daughter — a mood which communicated itself to his son.

  He had rented an apartment — the British called it a flat — in South Audley Street, just along the road from Grosvenor Square, where the Embassy was. On the third floor of a walk-up, which was perfectly fashionable in London where elevators — the British called them lifts — were not yet very common, it had three bedrooms and a large lounge as well as a good-sized dining room and a superbly appointed kitchen. The staff consisted of cook, housemaid and butler, as well as a porter who performed necessary duties for all the four flats in the building. It was a home made for entertaining, and for being presided over by a beautiful and gracious hostess: by, in fact, someone like Christina Diaz McGann. Who was now at the bottom of the ocean.

  The staff were clearly embarrassed by the situation, kept saying the wrong things and backing from rooms with anguished expressions on their faces. ‘I guess I told them too much of how it was going to be, when Christina got here,’ Joseph McGann said after their first dinner in their new home, and they were staring at each other across the table. He held up the brandy decanter. ‘Care for one?’

  ‘No, thank you, Father,’ Lew said.

  Joe nodded. ‘Bright boy.’ He poured a goblet for himself. ‘Life has to go on, for those of us who live, Lew. Much as I would like to get a seagoing command and sink every U-boat in the sea, I can’t do that, and I wouldn’t do much good anyway if the President isn’t going to declare war on Germany. So we just have to sweat it out and try to pretend your mother and Shirley died in some kind of accident. Right?’

  Wrong, Lew thought. Never. But he didn’t say so.

  ‘So,’ Joe McGann went on. ‘I guess I am stuck in London for the next couple of years. That means you are too. In England, anyway. I could send you home, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to think of you crossing the Atlantic again, without me, and if you’re going to stay here, I want you to do what Christina had in mind for you. She wanted you to go to Winchester College, and they are happy to have you. They can’t take you until September, though, and they can’t take you anyway until and unless you pass their entrance examination. That’s in a couple of weeks. I don’t reckon you’ll have too much trouble as they know your circumstances. But...do you feel up to it?’

  ‘I don’t want to go to school, Father,’ Lew said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Sure,’ Joe said. ‘I know how you feel, boy. I would feel just the same in your position. But there’s nothing you or I can do about the situation. I’ve tried to explain that. You still have to get to Annapolis. Having the name McGann is a step in the right direction, but it isn’t all the answers. You have to go to school, and finish school, with credit. Believe me, that’s what your mother would want more than anything else in the world.’ He grinned, and poured himself another glass of brandy. ‘So I’m pressing the matter, maybe a little out of turn. Listen, you forget about it for a couple of days. The examination isn’t for another two weeks. Things will look a little different then. More settled. You’ll see. And until then...we’ll holiday. How about that? How about the zoo, tomorrow? I’m told they have a rip-snorter of a zoo over here.’

  *

  Father was being just splendid, as he always was. The next day they went shopping, first of all, for new clothes for Lew. It had been Mom’s decision that he should abandon knickerbockers for the voyage across, and that had been after Father had already left the States. But she had apparently written him and told him what she had done, and to his relief Lew was fitted out in a proper pair of pants, and a blue jacket which Father called a blazer, and a tie, the whole topped by a straw hat. ‘There,’ Father said. ‘You look a perfect young English gentleman. Which can’t be bad, as you’re in England.’ Then they went, as he had promised, to Regent’s Park Zoo, and had what should have been a magnificent day out...save that Mom and Shirley should have been there too. Father was making the mistake of assuming he was still a kid, Lew realised, whose mind could be taken off of tragedy by physical distraction. He maybe had been just a kid when Father had left for England, last August, because then he had been only fourteen. Father didn’t realise how much someone could grow up in a year. In one particular year. He didn’t know about the nightmares Lew had every time he closed his eyes, the dreadful feeling of cold water enveloping him and trying to force its way into his lungs, th
e way he could still remember the soft nudge of that dead body from which he had taken the lifebelt. And Father didn’t know about May; Lew wasn’t sure whether she was a nightmare or not. Or whether he would ever see her again. Or indeed, whether he wanted to.

  Father also had his duties to attend to. ‘I’m sorry, Lew,’ he explained the following day. ‘I have to be at the Embassy. But I’ll be home for dinner. And if you want anything, just ask Simmons.’

  Simmons was the butler.

  But even with Simmons, and Mrs Clarkson the cook, and Gertie the maid, all in constant attendance, and anxious to keep him entertained every minute of the day, the flat was bitterly lonely. Until the post, as Simmons called it. ‘I’ll just leave these here for your father,’ he announced. Apparently they were all letters of sympathy in Captain McGann’s bereavement. ‘But there is one for you, Master Lewis.’

  Lew knew who it had to be from before he even inhaled the scent from the envelope. The only person in the world who could possibly understand how he felt, because she was the only person in the world who had shared his experience. And more than that. His fingers trembled as he ran into his bedroom and tore open the envelope.

  ‘I should hate to think we will never see each other again,’ May Gerrard had written.

  I think you and I must he twin souls, destined to be thrown together by fate. I grieve for the deaths of your mother and sister, just as I know that you grieve for the deaths of my mother and father. Dear Lewis, I know that I owe you my life. That is a debt I can never repay. But I know too that I owe you much more than that. Dear Lewis, I remember everything that happened on that horrible, ghastly, unforgettable day. Dear Lewis, I so want to hold you in my arms again.

  He had to pause to wipe sweat from his brow.

  We are staying at an hotel on Park Lane while Uncle Clive sees lawyers and people but we are leaving for Tonbridge, where my uncle’s home is, on Thursday. Dear Lewis, we have so little time left, time in which we must decide on our futures, in which we must seize time and fate by the forelock, as it were. Dear Lewis, I shall walk in the park, by the artificial lake called the Serpentine, at ten on Wednesday morning. Dear Lewis, do not fail me.

  Lew put down the letter and wiped his brow again. He had never received a letter like that before, and had indeed never supposed it was possible to write a letter like that. So there was something wrong with her. He had formed that opinion on board the ship...and had determined to take shameless advantage of it. But had not that determination saved her life? And perhaps his? For without her to care for he might well have succumbed to the cold and the despair.

  So there was something wrong with her. He did not know what. And it could well have been merely an outpouring of loneliness, or unhappiness, even before the catastrophe of the U-boat; he had not thought she was particularly happy with her parents. And now she wanted to see him again, desperately, going by her letter. And it must have taken some determination to find his address.

  So there was something wrong with her. But he had saved her life. Out of all the horror of the Lusitania, she was something tangible...that he had saved. Besides, he so wanted to see her again. To touch her, perhaps to hold her...if fate had indeed cast them together, then he wanted to take the fullest advantage of fate.

  *

  He was in Hyde Park at half past nine the next morning, having with difficulty kept up an act during dinner with Father the previous night, and at breakfast that morning. ‘You’re looking much brighter this morning,’ Joe McGann observed. ‘Time, that’s the secret.’

  Oh, Father, Lew thought. How he wanted to take this big, unhappy man into his confidence. But they had never been close enough for that. And besides, the guilt was back. What right had he to be so happy when Father was so sad, when Mom and Shirley were dead...but even Father had said that he had to go on living.

  ‘Mind you look out for the traffic,’ Simmons said when he announced his intention of taking a stroll in the park. ‘It’s fierce on the Lane.’

  ‘Would you like Gertrude to accompany you?’ asked Mrs Clarkson.

  ‘I’d rather be on my own,’ Lew told them.

  The park was beautiful early in the morning, with a gloriously fresh smell. There were immaculately dressed men and women exercising their horses on Rotten Row, a kaleidoscope of red and blue jackets and silk hats; he watched a platoon of brilliantly uniformed Life Guards — also with scarlet jackets but with burnished cuirasses and helmets and polished leather accoutrements as well — walking their horses along one of the bridle paths; and there were swans on the Serpentine, gliding to and fro.

  There were very few people by the lakeside, this early in the morning; even the nannies with their prams had not turned up in any numbers as yet. He sat on a bench and watched the swans, and tried not to be anxious, and was quite surprised when she suddenly sat beside him.

  Like him she was wearing obviously new clothes, a pink poplin skirt and bolero jacket over a white lace blouse. She also wore a straw hat, although hers was considerably more elaborate than his, and was tilted down over her eyes where his sat on the back of his head, and she carried a little pink parasol. She looked absolutely beautiful.

  ‘Oh, Lewis,’ she said.

  ‘May. Thank you ever so much for your note.’

  ‘You don’t think I was forward?’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ he lied.

  ‘I just couldn’t go off without ever seeing you again,’ she explained. ‘Will you walk with me?’

  ‘Surely.’

  They strolled along the path together, attracting glances from the various park attendants; they must be jealous of my luck, Lew thought.

  ‘Are you still going to join the Navy?’ May asked.

  ‘Don’t you think I should?’

  ‘I thought maybe...’ she gave him a quick, shy glance. ‘Maybe you’d gone off the sea.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘The McGanns have always been sailors.’ His turn to glance at her. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Uncle Clive and Aunt May are taking me down to Tonbridge, as I wrote in my letter. They want me just to do nothing, for a while. I suppose they really want me to get married, and be off their hands.’ They had reached the top of the Serpentine, and he discovered she had walked him round some fairly high bushes, so that they were for the moment quite alone. And now she stopped, and turned to face him. ‘I don’t want to get married,’ she said. ‘Unless...’ she paused, staring at him, her lips slightly parted. ‘Wouldn’t you like to kiss me?’ she asked.

  He did. He took her in his arms and inhaled her scent and touched her tongue and felt her against him and thought she was the most lovely girl in the world. His straw hat fell off, and when he released her she laughed. ‘I always have that effect on you,’ she said. ‘Oh, Lew, I am so happy. I know I should be miserable, and I know you should be miserable too...but if we have each other...’

  Lew stooped and picked up his hat.

  ‘Oh, Lewis,’ she said. ‘I think you are the most adorable man. Lewis, will you come back with me, now, and speak with Uncle Clive?’

  Lew licked his lips. Then he held her hands, while her stare took on the aspects of a frown.

  ‘Lewis?’ she asked.

  ‘May,’ he said. ‘I really would love to marry you. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do. But I don’t think I can speak to your uncle right now. You see, you’ll have to wait for a few years...’

  ‘Oh, you mean the war,’ she said. ‘There’s no need for us to wait for that. I don’t mind you going away to sea, Lewis. I’ll be there when you come back.’

  ‘It’s not the war,’ Lewis explained. ‘It’s that we’re kind of young...’

  ‘Oh, tish. What does our age matter after what we’ve been through? Anyway, I’m seventeen. And you...’ she gazed at him.

  ‘Oh, May...’ his grip on her hands tightened. ‘The fact is, I’m not going to be sixteen until September.’

  Her fingers seemed to dis
solve in his, and he let them go. The stare had become almost piercing, and she seemed to be having trouble breathing; the bodice of her blouse was rising and falling quite sharply.

  ‘I guess I’m kind of big for my age,’ he explained, sheepishly.

  ‘You’re fifteen!’ May breathed. ‘And you...you kissed me.’

  ‘Well...’ he didn’t know if he should remind her that she had virtually asked him to.

  ‘And you...you touched me!’ she said, raising her voice.

  Lew gave an anxious glance left and right. There was still nobody in sight, but he knew there were people around.

  ‘You...you schoolboy!’ May cried. ‘You wretched little scoundrel. You...’

  ‘Now, May,’ he protested. ‘You wanted me to do those things.’

  ‘I...you...’ she slapped his face. He saw the blow coming, and could easily have blocked it or evaded it, but he did neither, just stood there and let her hand slash into his cheek.

  ‘I saved your life,’ he said. He didn’t know whether that was the right thing to say or not, but he felt it was important.

  ‘I hate you,’ she spat at him. ‘I don’t ever want to see your face again. And if you follow me I will have you arrested. Good morning to you, you horrid little boy.’

  He watched her disappear round the bush, seemed able to hear the swish of her skirt for several seconds after she’d gone. Then he rubbed his cheek; it was still stinging and he thought she might have cut the inside of his mouth.

  So that was that, he thought. Presumably something like that had had to happen, some time. And now he was more lonely and miserable than ever. With an absolutely desolate future. He was going to be sent to a boy’s boarding school, have to learn to play cricket, presumably, and be treated as a child for at least two more years.

  And where there would not be a girl in sight. The odd thing was that throughout his life, surrounded mainly by female cousins and by Shirley, of course, he had often thought how splendid it would be had Shirley been his brother rather than his sister, and the cousins mostly boys. It had been May who had taught him the delight of holding a girl in his arms...all because she had supposed he was older than herself. It seemed so absurd that one’s life could be so bedevilled by the fact of a year or two.