The Ocean Liner

by Marius Gabriel

  ‘As soon as she seems to be getting agitated again.’

  ‘Have you got the stuff?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Put it on my desk. I’ll give it to her.’

  The nurse took the packets out of her bag and laid them on the desk in a row. ‘A single dose stirred in a glass of water,’ she murmured. ‘Whenever necessary. She goes out like a light.’

  He nodded, still holding Rosemary, who had buckled against him, her body getting heavier in his arms. ‘I’ll call you if I need you. You can go.’

  When they were alone, Kennedy lifted his daughter’s head and looked into her face. Her features were blurred, coarsened, as though someone had beaten her with fists, though there were no injuries to be seen. Her beauty had gone. She looked, he thought, hideous.

  ‘God damn it,’ he said angrily, ‘how could you let yourself get into this state?’

  His displeasure, always terrible to her, made her break out in fresh tears. ‘I’m so – sorry – Daddy.’ The medicine they had given her made it hard for her to talk properly. Her tongue lolled in her mouth, her words slurred into each other.

  He gave her a handkerchief. ‘Clean yourself up.’

  She swayed as she tried clumsily to wipe her eyes and nose. She had been barely conscious during the drive from Southampton, lying on the back seat of the car, her misery suppressed by the medicine, all her functions slowed to a standstill so she could hardly even breathe, her heart a slow thud. Now she felt as though she had been broken all in pieces, and put together wrong. Her head ached dreadfully. She could barely see. Her father’s softly lit study swam around her. All she knew was that Cubby was far away, and that her mother had promised she would never see him again. The grief of that was like a vast chasm, at the edge of which she teetered, only prevented from falling in by the thinnest of threads.

  ‘Tell me about this boy.’ Daddy always knew what she was thinking. Daddy knew her better than anyone. ‘Have you slept with him?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy,’ she whispered.

  He didn’t scream at her, the way Mother did, but his expression made her want to curl up and die. ‘Did you go all the way?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘I – I don’t know.’

  ‘Ten times? Twenty?’

  ‘I – I don’t know, Daddy.’

  ‘Are you pregnant?’

  ‘I don’t – don’t think so. But I want a baby!’ He had put on his glasses and was looking at her intently, one fist on his hip. ‘Please don’t be angry with me,’ she begged. ‘I love him!’

  His face grew more hawk-like for a moment, his eyebrows coming down. He turned and filled the whisky glass on his desk. ‘Drink,’ he said, pushing it into her hand.

  Rosemary tried to obey, but the stuff burned her throat, which was swollen and raw from all the crying she’d done. She choked. ‘Can I have ginger ale with it?’

  ‘I don’t have any here. Throw it down, Rosie. You’ll feel better.’

  She closed her eyes and drank the whisky obediently. She got it down in two gulps, but her head instantly began to spin even more wildly. She staggered.

  ‘Stand up straight.’

  ‘Daddy, I have to go back. The ship – the ship is leaving.’

  ‘Yes. But you’ll be staying here.’

  ‘No,’ she moaned, shaking her head from side to side desperately, ‘no, no, no.’

  He took the empty glass from her. ‘You have to forget him, Rosie.’

  ‘No, Daddy!’

  He spoke slowly, reasonably. ‘Even if I would accept a son-in-law like that – a musician, and a Protestant into the bargain – you’re not ready for marriage.’

  Rosemary struggled to articulate her anguish through the fog of the whisky and the sedative. ‘I am, I am. I love him!’

  He gripped her arms in strong hands, shaking her. The green glitter in his eyes was cold. ‘You don’t love any man more than you love your Daddy, do you?’

  She hung her head. ‘Daddy . . .’

  He shook her harder. ‘Do you?’

  ‘No, Daddy,’ she whispered.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘And you know that no man will ever love you better than I do, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  ‘You know that I’ve taken care of you all your life. You know that no man could have taken better care of you. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘All your life. From when you were a little, tiny girl. I dried your first tears.’ He rubbed his thumb under her brimming eyes. ‘Just as I’m drying your tears now. Isn’t that right?’

  A heavy calm was settling over her, following the slow, rhythmical cadence of his voice, an acceptance that was like despair. But it was better than the anguish. It stopped her from falling into the chasm. ‘Yes, Daddy,’ she said dully.

  ‘You see, Rosie, the difference between me and all other men is that I understand you. Nobody else can. Nobody else ever will. I’m sure this Cubby is a nice enough boy, but he can never know you the way I know you. Sooner or later, he’ll find out what you really are, and then he’ll hurt you. He’ll go away. I will never hurt you. And I will never go away. I will always be here.’

  ‘Daddy . . .’ She swayed against him. He took her in his arms again, stroking her tangled hair with one hand.

  ‘It’s all over now,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll forget everything and then you’ll be better again. Calm again. It’s going to be great. The best. You and me. Nobody else. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just you and me?’

  She nodded her head, no longer able to speak.

  ‘Good.’ He studied her face. ‘You’re so tired. This has been bad for you, Rosie. Very bad. We can’t let this happen again, can we?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You need to sleep, now. Go to your room and get into bed.’

  She walked away from him slowly, like a woman in a dream, her eyes almost closed. He made sure she got out of the door without bumping herself, and watched her drift down the dimly lit corridor and vanish into the shadows.

  Then he went back to the telephone on his desk and called his wife.

  ‘She’s arrived safely,’ he told her. ‘She’s calm now. I’m putting her to bed. Everything’s under control.’

  The Western Approaches

  Servicing the torpedoes was a regular task which nobody enjoyed, least of all the crew who had to live in the company of the greasy monsters. It didn’t help that the sea continued to be very rough. U-113 pitched and rolled violently, causing even the nimblest sailors to lose their footing and slide into metal projections which seemed designed to imprint the human body with a rich diversity of bruises.

  In the forward torpedo room, the torpedo mechanics were hauling the long, heavy ‘fish’ out of their racks, using the hoists installed for that purpose. The things were twenty-five feet long, weighing three thousand pounds, eight hundred pounds of which was high explosive. They were complex beasts, with tails and fins and brains and teeth, and they could swim at a speed of forty knots.

  The few ratings who had chosen to remain watched the torpedomen unbolt the access hatches of the torpedoes and work in their tangled entrails. The rest were squatting along the passageways, some with miniature chessboards between them: Rudi Hufnagel, in an effort to combat the tensions bred by boredom and fear on board, had organised a chess tournament.

  He had drawn up a league table with considerable care. Out of forty-eight crew members, twenty-three were chess players. All of them had signed up eagerly. Somewhat to Hufnagel’s surprise, Todt put his name on the list, and as luck would have it, the commander drew Hufnagel for his first match. They played in the captain’s quarters, wedged around his fold-down table. Todt wore his white captain’s cap, perhaps to remind Hufnagel who was boss.

  ‘Chess,’ Todt said, inserting his pieces into the little holes on the board, ‘is an intrinsically Aryan game.’

  ‘I thought it w
as Persian.’

  ‘Exactly so. The Persians are descended from ancient Aryan races. It is from the very word “Aryan” that they draw the name of their country, Iran. The meaning of the word “Aryan” is free, noble and strong.’ Todt made his first move and scratched at an ugly red rash that had spread around his groin. Despite the cold, he was wearing shorts so as to air the inflammation.

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ Hufnagel said, making his countermove. He was wondering whether to try to win his match or whether it would be more diplomatic to allow the captain to beat him.

  ‘Do you know that I found recordings by Vladimir Horowitz in the crew’s music collection?’ Todt said.

  ‘That is very serious,’ Hufnagel replied gravely.

  Todt did not pick up the irony in his tone. ‘The difference between music made by Aryans and music made by Jews is the difference between healthy air and poison gas. Any contact with Jews spreads an infection, insidious but deadly, which eventually overpowers the strongest organism. The danger of Jewish infection is something you ignored when you took one of their females to your bed.’

  Hufnagel had a memory of a night at the opera, of a soft body in his arms, of soft lips on his. He moved a pawn, saying nothing.

  ‘And this is not to mention the case of negro music, which although different, is equally dangerous. Negro music attempts to excite the worst passions in man, to drag man down to the level of a jungle ape. It drives the listener to sexual excess of the worst kind. And in the United States, of course, the Negroes have been given a dominant place.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Hufnagel replied dryly.

  ‘They are allowed to dominate in music and sport, to name but two areas.’

  Hufnagel hid a sour smile. No sooner had the Nazis banned Aryans from frolicking to the rhythms of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington when along had come Jesse Owens and his Negro teammates to sweep past pure-blooded Germans at the Berlin Olympics – and that under the nose of the Führer. ‘Shocking,’ he murmured.

  ‘Shocking indeed. This worship of the savage is the surest sign that the American culture is doomed.’

  Half-listening to Todt’s high-flown analysis of what he called ‘nigger-music’, Hufnagel tried to disguise his boredom. Unlike Todt, he had visited America, albeit briefly. Their training ship had docked at Baltimore, Maryland, and a group of them had caught the train to New York to do some sightseeing.

  They’d been careful not to show swastikas or other emblems, knowing that Nazism was already held in opprobrium by many people. He remembered the first Negroes he had seen, their lively grace, their seeming good-fellowship, mingled with a certain humorous cynicism.

  They had strolled around Harlem, looking at the dark folk and listening to their music spilling out of shabby doorways, along with the smell of spicy cooking. He’d been struck by the difference between them and the hard-faced, thrusting, white New Yorkers who bustled like ants from one skyscraper to another.

  He studied the board. Perhaps in his enthusiasm for the topic, Todt had made an unwise move. Hufnagel capitalised on this quietly, bringing up a knight which had been previously held back, strengthening his command of the middle of the board. As they played, they could hear noises from the bows of the U-boat, where the torpedomen were working, the rattle of chain winches and the clank of tools on metal casings.

  Todt continued. ‘This war, Hufnagel, is not being waged for profit or land. We are Teutonic knights, going to war against an enemy who spreads his tentacles right around the globe. If we allow infection to spread here, under our very armour, then, Hufnagel, we are beaten before we begin.’ He scratched his crotch, looking more closely at the board. ‘I see I have made bad moves.’

  ‘One or two, Captain. All is not yet lost,’ Hufnagel said, contemplating making a bad move of his own so that Todt could recover the initiative.

  ‘You still have not answered my earlier question.’

  ‘What question was that, Captain?’

  ‘How you could have brought yourself to have intercourse with a Jewess.’ Todt raised his hollow eyes to Hufnagel’s. ‘It’s the most disgusting thing I ever heard. It makes my gorge rise.’

  ‘Yes, you said as much before.’

  ‘Was she very hirsute?’ Todt’s lean cheeks flushed as he asked the question. ‘I have heard that Jewish women have an abnormal quantity of bodily hair, particularly in the reproductive regions. It reaches to the knees in some cases. It’s said that this can be used to identify a Jewess, even if she attempts to conceal her race.’

  ‘I am unable to comment on that,’ Hufnagel said icily.

  ‘But surely your experience—’

  Hufnagel cut in. ‘My experience is not one which I choose to share. It is a private matter.’

  Todt’s eyes flicked from the board to Hufnagel’s face. ‘You still entertain feelings for this Jewess, then?’

  ‘I refuse to discuss it.’

  ‘Then you are not to be trusted, Hufnagel. You have been corrupted, as all are corrupted by contact with Jews.’

  ‘That is nonsense,’ Hufnagel replied tersely.

  ‘In the moment of crisis, you will fail the Fatherland. That is inevitable.’

  Todt moved his queen, another bad move. Hufnagel now had his opponent in his sights, and victory was more or less inevitable. Todt, if he was any sort of a player, could see that. And Hufnagel now had no intention of losing the match.

  Southampton

  Fanny Ward, now aboard the Manhattan, had not gone to dinner. She had provided her own nourishment in the form of a little hamper from Fortnum & Mason. Since Dotty’s death last year, she did not care for public appearances. The press conference she had given in the hotel had to be endured because one endured such things as part of one’s profession. But the death of a child changed one. One no longer wanted to see so much of the world. Or be seen by it.

  The lovely Commodore Randall, whom she knew well, had made sure she’d got a cabin to herself, even if it was a tiny one. Such a gentleman, for all his saltiness. She appreciated such courtesies all the more now that fewer and fewer people knew who she was, The Eternal Beauty, The Perennial Flapper. The Girl Who Wouldn’t Grow Old.

  But she had grown old.

  She sat at her dressing table, pulling her rings off. There was something about fabulous diamonds on gnarled fingers that made one shudder. But that was what one was reduced to. The bare bones.

  Some of those reporters had been laughing at her, she was sure of it. Not the laughter of delight, but mocking laughter. Did they know what she had been? That men had lost their reason over her, that she had been the most fashionable woman in London for a time, that she had been directed by Cecil B. DeMille? A few, perhaps.

  As one aged, one entered a funnel. One’s circle of acquaintance shrunk, there were fewer people each year who had shared one’s life, who knew who one was. But the loss of a child was the most terrible thing of all.

  Fanny removed her wig of chestnut curls and stored it carefully in its box. Her own hair, secured by a net, was now too sparse to bother dyeing, and lay lank and white across her skull.

  At least Dotty had died a glamorous death. She had raised Dotty to understand the importance of glamour. And no death could be more glamorous than perishing beside one’s husband, the sixth Baron Plunkett, in a plane owned by William Randolph Hearst, on one’s way to stay as a guest at San Simeon. It would be talked of for years.

  Of course, one didn’t like to dwell on the details. Dotty and Terence, trapped in the plane’s cabin, engulfed in flames. It didn’t do to look at the details of anything, really.

  Fanny pulled off her false eyelashes carefully, her lids stretching into watery pouches as she did so. Of course the children would be well taken care of, raised by Lord Plunkett’s sister and brother-in-law. It simply hurt, that was all, to be left with the last years to fill, and no Dotty. Her love-child. The child of her great love.

  Fanny wiped off her lipstick. The cupid’s bow vanished,
leaving a thin, bitter gash. Running back to America was humiliating, but one was terrified of the bombing. Simply terrified. The last war had been bad enough. She’d come to London at the turn of the century, when things had got rather too hot for her in New York, and the last three decades had been marvellous, simply marvellous. But now they were over.

  She didn’t expect that she would ever be back. Or that London would survive Hitler’s bombs. But one couldn’t say that, of course.

  She wiped away the powder and rouge, watching in the mirror as her own face emerged, washed-out, haggard, unhappy.

  For years they’d been asking her, what’s your secret, Miss Ward? Is it surgery? Do you eat monkey gland? Usually she told them it was a secret facial treatment passed on to her by Gaby Deslys, and available (for a substantial outlay) at her salon in Paris, in six weekly sessions.

  The truth, of course, was that it was all simply an illusion, carefully maintained, and possible only because those charming gentlemen of the press participated in the conspiracy, printing photographs of her that were twenty years old, retouching negatives, lavishing lies on her. She hoped they would continue the conspiracy. It would be too tedious to have to grow old in public, as well as in private.

  She rubbed cream into her face and hands. In the cruel light of the vanity mirror, this made her face gleam like a skull, her hands appear even bonier. Putting away her potions, she rose and removed her dress. With it came the strategically-sewn padding that had given her body its youthful curves. She hung the garment in the closet, and wrapped a dressing gown around herself.

  Gaunt, frail and almost hairless, she opened the Fortnum’s hamper and investigated the contents. A game pie, a bottle of port, a cold chicken. She picked at the food with skinny fingers. She would take her teeth out after supper.

  Alone in her own cabin, Carla Toscanini had also been thinking about the death of a child. But her Giorgio had died at the age of six, not in adulthood. Diphtheria had choked the innocent life out of him before he could even open his wings.

  She had been four years married when she’d had Giorgio. Not yet twenty-three. And Arturo was already unfaithful to her.