“My lady,” said the man called O’Reilly, who by his accent I knew was an Irishman. “Forgive me for saying so, but may I remind you that you frequently misplace things.” He suggested she visualize herself removing the pearls. The trick had always worked for me.
“Jolly good idea,” she said, talking like the Queen of England. She started in on a blow-by-blow of her last night at port. First there was dinner with Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife with the fat ankles. They ate at a place called the Russian Tea Room, where the First Lady tried to order chipped beef on toast but had to settle for Boeuf À La Stroganoff. This was followed by a “leisurely” stroll back to the Waldorf-Astoria, where the English lady: first, admires a bouquet of flowers sitting on her dressing table; second, notices that the roses matched her complexion; and third, admires the beadwork on her Schiaparelli jacket.
“The pearls, my lady. Get to the pearls,” said O’Reilly, and I couldn’t blame him.
“I’m getting there, O’Reilly, one can’t rush these things. Hum… In the mirror before me, I can see Lord Sopwith’s reflection as he approaches from behind, whilst removing his bow tie. Oh, wait a minute… I’ve got it! It was my husband who last took the pearls from my neck!”
The Irishman was “bold to suggest” they look in Sir Thomas’s kit bag for them pearls. (I figured out that Sir Tom was the husband.) O’Reilly said it would save them the headache of rummaging through trunks. I hoped with all my might the lady would go for his plan. If they found me, I might never see Jack again.
“Excellent idea,” she said, and they left the storeroom. I gulped for air and felt dizzy. Then I found my notebook and added deep breathing exercises to my training regime.
CHAPTER SIX
I WAS KEEPING TRACK OF THE DAYS by carving marks into one of the wood crates, the one labeled vermouth. A boat like this might take a week to cross the ocean, two weeks tops. Without food, I’d starve before landfall. Not the kind of starving you do before supper, but the kind the Irish did during the Great Famine. Killed half the country. So, using my fine-tuned hearing—developed over years ducking my sister—I hunted for food. One night there was a close call when a sailor who, diverting from his regular schedule, took a break from the helm while I was foraging in the galley. Luckily for me, he was whistling I’ve Got A Girl In Kalamazoo, by Glenn Miller.
Peeking into the hallway, I realized it was Peewee. His back faced me as he leaped the stairs leading up to the deck. Sometimes my ma said, “Tommy, isn’t this weighing on your conscience?” but I never got her drift. Maybe it was missing her, because now them words came back to me full force. For the first time, I felt a nagging feeling I suspected was this conscience thing she was always going on about. I fingered the pocket watch. It was engraved on the back: Till death do us part, Martha. Exiting the kitchen galley, I creeped to the door leading into Peewee’s bunkroom. Once the door was cracked opened, I threw the watch at his bed using a junk-pitch, the slowest of all, so the watch wouldn’t break. I must say—the second that watch rolled off my fingers my conscience all but disappeared.
I’d never be fool enough to take an entire chocolate cake again. If they noticed things missing, the game might be up. I managed to fill my stomach by sneaking slivers of goodies, which the naked eye would never see missing. In this way, I squirreled away cheese of the likes of which I never known existed. One kind had holes in it, like a mouse beat me to it. The package said it came from Switzerland. One nighttime raid on the galley pulled in a huge slab of steak, which was mind-bogglingly thrown in the trash. My ma would make a potpie with it or add it to a beef stew. The supply of soda pop was getting low though. I’d have to start rationing.
After a fourth day at sea, I bunkered down for the night. Everything in me wanted to keep reading Huckleberry Finn, but it was important that I bone up on the Nazi agenda, so I picked up Mein Kampf, spit on the cover, and started reading. Two lines in, and I began to get a creepy feeling, like Hitler was there in the storeroom with me, hiding in one of the trunks. I shoved the book into the bottom of my duffel and picked up Huckleberry Finn. By then I was drowsy, the words blurring on the pages. I was deep under when the sound of people entering the storeroom jolted me awake.
This time it wasn’t the Irish servant and his absent-minded boss lady. It was none other than Hitler’s dastardly henchman, Heinrich Himmler, and with him, a troop of SS officers. They began searching the room and I trembled behind a stack of steamer trunks. Then Eva Braun, Hitler’s girlfriend—dressed in lederhosen—yelled, “Who is responsible for this?”
Spooky, I thought, she sounds like my sister Mary.
Eva Braun was pointing to her silk gowns strewn on the storeroom floor. She screeched, “Find the culprit!” One of the nastiest Nazis, a real bruiser named Wolfgang, made his way to my hiding place. He held a leash attached to a gigantic German Shepherd. The hound had teeth the size of a killer whale. I wasn’t afraid of Himmler or the SS; I’d make fast work of them using my darts. But the second that dog’s fangs came near my leg, I wet my pants that’s how scared I was. And screamed at the top of my lungs, “Ma! Ma! Save me, Ma!” Then someone grabbed my collar and started shaking me hard. I opened my eyes and seen it was broad-daylight.
“Got ya!” he said, with a brogue just like Ma’s.
I tried to think how an Irishman came to be a Nazi, but it didn’t make no sense. Then he pinched my arm and that woke me but good. It was the servant O’Reilly talking. He said, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, who in God’s name are you?” My voice was wobbly, still shook-up by the nightmare. I was in a bad predicament. But at least my leg wasn’t mauled, Eva Braun was gone, and my trousers were bone dry.
“Speak up boy,” said O’Reilly, spitting out the words. He was wearing the uniform of a bellhop, the kind with two rows of buttons down the front. His white-gloved hands gripped my shirt collar. There was no getting away. So I told him I was on my way to Europe in search of my brother, missing in action. But he didn’t look at all simpatico and told me to come along without making trouble. I had no choice but to do what he said. He pushed me down the narrow hallway leading to a door I’d never been brave enough to enter. My biggest worry was that he’d turn the boat around, making me go home, and I let him know it. He boxed my ear and said, “If I know Sir Thomas Sopwith, he’ll want to let you off right here. Mid-Atlantic.” Then he told me to wait outside and slipped through the door.
Once the door shut, I put my ear to the keyhole, but all I caught was the voice of a lady laughing her head off. O’Reilly opened the door again and motioned with his index finger for me to enter. That’s when I got my first look at the main stateroom. It was paneled floor to ceiling in dark oak. Shelves lined the walls, filled with leather bound books. The room was cloudy with the smoke of expensive cigars that came all the way from Havana. A schmaltzy record was playing on a portable Victrola, skipping whenever the boat rocked. On a long sofa, sat a lady dressed in nothing but a thigh-length terrycloth robe, flung open to reveal a bathing suit. My ma would call it indecent, even though I’d seen worse at Jones Beach. The lady was tanned to a crisp, with sunglasses pushed up on her head to hold back her unpinned hair. Her feet were slipped into white tennis sneakers with the heels squashed down. She looked classy in her swimsuit—maybe because she was twirling a long string of pearls.
“Come here,” she said, pointing to the floor in front of her.
“Look sharp, young man,” said O’Reilly.
I did as the lady asked and stepped to the spot.
Seated near the lady was a man dressed in a yachting getup that put my own to shame. I’d seen a fella like this in a movie called The Lady Eve. Barbara Stanwyck played a gold-digger who takes a cruise hoping to swindle a millionaire. She goes after a sucker played by Henry Fonda, dressed just like the man in front of me. I figured this had to be Sir Thomas Sopwith in the flesh. His pants were made of crisp white linen and his jacket of fine navy blue worsted wool. The genuine brass buttons on his jacket gleamed in t
he light coming from a crystal wall sconce, nailed to the paneling behind him. The crest on his jacket pocket looked like it was made with one hundred percent pure gold thread. A yellow ascot made of silk was wrapped around his neck. His feet were clad in white leather oxfords, polished so they looked like glass. He didn’t find a getup like that in the Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog.
“What do we have here?” he said.
“Obviously he’s a stowaway,” said the lady. “Whatever shall we do with him?”
“Put him to work on the press gang would be one option,” said Lord Sopwith.
“There is the gang-plank, sir,” said O’Reilly. “He’d make excellent shark food.”
I looked Lord Sopwith up and down, trying to get his measure. He wasn’t a pirate—that much, I was sure of—but he was the captain. The faster we made friends, the longer my life expectancy. I asked if he’d ever heard of Treasure Island, hoping to gain his sympathy. Maybe he’d think I knew the whereabouts of a treasure and spare my life. Lord Sopwith drew on his cigar, and let smoke escape from the side of his mouth. All the time he looked straight at me, like we was having a staring contest. I made sure not to blink. Finally he said, “A classic,” and threw his index finger in the direction of the bookshelves, claiming to have a first edition. His first question told me he knew the story:
“Whom would you be, Jim Hawkins?”
I gave him my name, laying on the Thomas part. But since I didn’t have a rank or serial number, I thrown in my address and phone number instead.
“Hempstead,” said the lady, speaking to Lord Sopwith, “Don’t we take the Hempstead Turnpike out to the Hamptons?”
“Yes, Phyllis, I believe that’s right,” he said.
“We have a son named Tommy, in fact.” She dabbed her eye with a hankie. I wondered if the boy died in the war.
Turning to me, Lord Sopwith asked “what in confounded” I was doing aboard Endeavour. O’Reilly said, “Besides pilfering,” and wagged a glove at me. When I explained about my brother and gived the details of my mission, Lord Sopwith clapped his hands and said, “Fantastic! Very brave, what?”
“Why, isn’t the boy simply adorable?” said Lady Sopwith.
O’Reilly moaned. But you could see Lady Sopwith considered me the perfect boy. That is—until I opened my mouth again.
“My darling child,” she said, “Please remove the chewing gum. It is rude to speak to your elders whilst blowing bubbles.”
Lord Sopwith pondered his thoughts. Then, I’ll be darned, he told me he’d designed one of the airplanes flown by my brother’s squadron: the Hawker Hurricane.
I told him straight away that Jack was flying a Hurricane when he shot down his first Messerschmitt, describing the dogfight exactly how it read in the newspaper, but adding a few touches of my own. Lord Sopwith was riveted to his seat. “Capital!” he said. “And you say your brother was shot down over Belgium and is missing? I dare say, very distressing.”
“This dreadful war,” said Lady Sopwith. “When will the bloodshed stop?”
No one had an answer. Not even me.
Lord Sopwith promised to discuss my mission later but changed the subject, wanting to know if my parents were “apprised of the fact” that I was onboard Endeavour, headed for Weymouth, England. I hemmed and hawed a little, before saying that my da was too busy drinking whiskey at the Cold Stream Pub to care much about anything; that sometimes he’d forget my name, even though it was same as his; that he wouldn’t notice I was missing until somebody sent a telegram saying as much. Lady Sopwith looked horrified. Lord Sopwith tapped the tip of his cigar in an ashtray, but his face gave nothing away. O’Reilly said, “The drink,” and left it at that. Then I mentioned the letter left hidden in my ma’s secret dresser drawer, next to the box of Whitman’s chocolate mints. My letter explained everything, I said.
“Very clever, Tommy,” said Lady Sopwith. “No doubt she’s discovered the truth by now.” She asked O’Reilly when luncheon would be served.
“At your pleasure, my lady,” said O’Reilly, as he snapped to attention.
“Then inform the cook that we shall be having a guest join us,” said Lord Sopwith. Then speaking to me, “That is, unless you have another engagement, Tommy.”
O’Reilly shot me the evil eye as he left the stateroom. I suspect he was an Irish patriot who didn’t like one of his own hobnobbing it with the enemy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LORD SOPWITH WENT TO A SIDEBOARD and opened the cabinet. There inside—low and behold—was a mini pub. “Martini, Phyl?” he said, pouring liquid into a silver cup. He attached a lid and shook it violently. “Fabulous,” said his wife, who turned to me and offered a Roy Rogers. “Fabulous,” I said and licked my lips. I had a passion for ginger ale and sugar syrup with maraschino cherries. They served the concoction on the pizzeria side of the Cold Stream Pub, where kids was permitted. Lady Sopwith ate an olive straight out of the jar and I warned her about botulism.
A steward—much younger than O’Reilly—finished laying the banquette table that took up most of the far side of the stateroom, with more silverware than I’d ever seen in my life, and all of it for just the three of us. Lady Sopwith instructed me to bring my drink over and take a seat. Lord Sopwith sat at one end of the table, his wife at the other, me in between.
“Usually, I dress for luncheon,” she said by way of an apology. “But when we are at sail, we tend to be rather casual. I plan to go straight back to sun bathing and miss pudding. Trying to get all the color I can. England is so dreary, and I so hate that ghostly look popular in the 20s. I’m hoping for a tan that will last at least a few weeks.” She looked me over. “You are looking a tad ghostly yourself, young man.” I explained that I was hiding out in the storeroom these last few days and only coming out at night. “You are positively like a mouse,” she said. “And I assume you’ve been with us since New York?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s right,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind too much—my sneaking aboard without permission. I don’t have the bucks for a boat passage and it’s very important I get to Europe toot sweet.”
“We quite understand,” she said. “And to tell you the truth, I’m thrilled you’ve joined us for the return passage. You see—we just left our little boy in America. We couldn’t have our only child killed in a bombing, consequently he’s been evacuated.” She looked like she might cry. “So many children perished in the Blitz. God only knows what it must be like on the Continent. I shudder to think.” She looked at me and forced a smile, changing direction the way grown-ups always do, wanting to keep things from kids because they think it might give us nightmares. So now she had a smile on her face but still with the sad eyes: “I was dreading our son’s absence, and then, like a prayer—here you are to take his place!” She cleared her throat to get her husband’s attention. “Isn’t this a pleasant surprise, dear?”
Lord Sopwith had a pen out and was doodling on the tablecloth. I leaned over and seen that he was working on a design for an airplane propeller.
“Dear, how many times must I ask you not to draw on the good linen? Pooh!” said Lady Sopwith. She made O’Reilly go and fetch a piece of paper. Turning back to her husband, she said, “For heaven’s sake, this is family linen, Tom. An heirloom. Really, how maddening.”
“I’m sorry, Phyl,” said Lord Sopwith, capping his pen and putting it into an inside satin jacket pocket. “Had a sudden flash of inspiration. Couldn’t be helped, what? You know how I must get these thoughts down right away or they fly from my head.”
I laughed at that. Propeller. Fly. That was good.
“But on Victorian linen? And look at the lovely lace-work—hand work, no doubt, by Belgian Benedictine nuns.” She turned to me shaking her head in a way that wanted a collaborator but I wasn’t biting. Better not to take her side. I’d worked hard to gain the captain’s sympathy and wasn’t about to lose it. Just a few minutes ago I was about to be thrown overboard. Now I was being waited on.
&nb
sp; Lord Sopwith wanted to know when my brother joined the Royal Air Force. When I answered, he said, “A long run really,” pulling on his chin. “Dangerous business. You know, I’m a pilot myself.” He went on to tell me that he was the 31st British pilot to get a license and one of the first to fly over the English Channel. “Now that was an adventure—”
Lady Sopwith cleared her throat and said, “I’m headed back up to the deck for some more of those lovely rays.” She rose from the table, leaving Lord Sopwith and me alone in the stateroom.
“My first crossing was back in 1910, before the Great War,” he said. “I’d bought my plane from Howard Wright—no, not one of your Wright Brothers. A bi-plane, with—in theory—enough horsepower to lift to 2000 feet. Half-way over the Channel I lost altitude. For a moment there, I questioned the wisdom of ever having started on the trip. By George, seagulls were higher than I was—I had droppings on my clothing to prove it!” He flicked dandruff off his shoulder. “I was bundled up better than Ernest Shackleton on his ill-fated Antarctica expedition. There’s a photograph.” He pointed to the wall and I rushed over to take a look. Sure enough, he looked like a polar bear in that getup.
“Go on, sir. Give me the rest of the story,” I said.
“So I crossed over the Channel finally. I was almost certain I had the French coast in view. Visibility was less than ideal, mind you. The sun was setting. And to top it off, I had a faulty compass.”
“I’ve got a first-rate compass,” I said, taking it from my pocket to show Lord Sopwith. “You’re welcomed to borrow it anytime you want. It’s how I made sure we was heading for England.”
He took a close look at my compass and handed it back. “Well, I wish I’d had that compass with me that night. At one point, I nearly collided with a church steeple; but I managed to give it more throttle and get over the belfry without so much as a scrape. Then I hit an air bump and was nearly tossed out of the airplane. I was perched on the leading edge, you understand, with no seatbelt to hold me in. After that I decided it was best to land. Had I waited any longer, I’d have had trouble telling a field from a village. There was a quarter tank of petrol left, and I might have made it further if not for the lack of visibility, what?”
Telegram For Mrs. Mooney Page 4