The Ocean Liner

by Marius Gabriel

  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 o
n 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.’