“Quite. I daresay the British papers will restrain themselves only for a time. And, just between the two of us, I think it’s a bloody good thing.”
She took Spencer’s hand and shook it. “Well, I’m off, Lieutenant Spencer. We’re booked on one of Emerald’s liners departing in two days’ time, and we’ve got lots planned for New York beforehand. I must get ready. Haven’t done a thing, really.”
She looked at him carefully, squinting against the early-morning sun.
“You’re not a bad sort, really,” she said. “We absolutely adore Chips, but you deserve better friends.”
“I have them.”
“Yes. She’s lovely. You’re a lucky chap. Well, off I go. In a few days we’ll be back in Europe and all that horrid Abyssinia business. Do enjoy yourself. I hope we shall meet again sometime.”
She walked quickly away. She was beautifully dressed, all in white.
The motor launch was nearing the British destroyer. History was in motion. Spencer could be part of it. Just one long, fascinating story. By now he’d worked it all out in his mind.
He lingered at the rail a moment longer, then started back for his quarters. As he made a turning in the corridor, he heard murmuring voices. Continuing on, he saw that it was Edwina and a ship’s officer, in an embrace—a morning’s farewell. He retreated and waited a moment. When he made the turn again, they were gone. The officer had been young Kees, who after the past night was likely quite a bit older.
Perhaps she was just showing her gratitude for Kees’s saving the life of her husband. Spencer started to laugh in his mind at that notion, but caught himself. Instead, he would believe in it. This was, after all, a quite beautiful morning.
Nora was still packing, a travail that she’d abandoned the night before to accommodate her passion—and his. There was no passion now. She was very fussy and businesslike as she moved about their—her—suite. Every dress and gown was a major concern. She’d called in a maid to help. Once again she was Nora Gwynne, star of stage and screen.
“The captain has invited us to join him on the bridge when we sail into the harbor,” she said. “It’s a great honor.”
Arriving at New York on the deck of a ship, more particularly standing on its bridge, is perhaps the only way to reduce that sprawling, gigantic slag heap of a metropolis to human dimension, or to increase oneself to its. One feels a giant, as well, able to reach out to either shore. After the immensity of the nearly limitless sea, the New York harbor seems a small and confining place, certainly impossible to navigate without ships’ pilots and all those darting, chuffing tugboats.
The Chrysler and Empire State buildings rose towering above the smaller structures of Manhattan as they approached the Narrows. The upper harbor was filled with every manner of craft, ferry boats moving in every direction, freighters at anchor, fireboats, and more tugboats racing to meet them.
“Steer two ninety degrees,” said the pilot, his gaze fixed on the channel ahead.
“Steer two ninety,” said van der Heyden, standing with arms carefully folded just beside.
“Steering two hundred ninety degrees,” repeated the quartermaster at the helm.
Spencer, Nora, and the other invited guests stayed back against the rear bulkhead of the bridge area, keeping out of the way. Out the port windows, they saw the figure of the Statue of Liberty. It had been four years since Spencer had been in the United States.
“You can step out onto the bridge wing, if you like,” said Mr. van Hoorn of the Lage Lander Line. “We won’t be needing it until docking at the pier.”
It was a glorious place to observe their arrival. Other ships and boats were saluting them with blasts of horns and sirens as they passed, honoring their maiden voyage, the sound echoing off the metal of the Wilhelmina in the now-crisp, clear air. The fireboats shot up sprays of fountaining water, like spuming whales. The tugboats-nestled close, like little lovers. The full ship’s orchestra was on deck, playing an American military march with unrestrained enthusiasm. All the ship’s flags and bunting were flying from the rigging. Streamers were sailing through the air. People were drinking, lifting celebratory glasses, bottles, and flasks. The blackened section of the superstructure aft of first class did not seem to matter, except perhaps as a symbol of their triumph over disaster. They had crossed the ocean. They were alive. Lives had been changed by this voyage, Spencer’s immensely. He put his arm around Nora’s waist. She placed her arm around his.
“We have a corner suite at the Plaza,” she said. “Overlooking Central Park. It’s supposed to be enormous.”
“I’m all for it, but it’ll be a couple of hours before we can get clear of quarantine and customs,” he said.
“I still love you,” she said into his ear. “Even though our shipboard romance is over. I’m told hotel romances can be even nicer.”
“Not in Toledo,” he said.
“What?”
“A joke. It depends on the hotel.”
“There are nice hotels in Toledo.”
“I’m sure there are, but let’s be grateful for the Plaza.”
An American warship, a small aircraft carrier with a dozen or more large biplanes on its deck moored along the New Jersey shore, sounded horn and sirens as they came past, sailors waving hats and cheering. The Wilhelmina responded with its own horn, the thrill of its reverberations passing up Spencer’s and Nora’s legs and backs. She held him tighter.
“Such a happy ending, after such sadness,” she said. “I almost didn’t expect a happy ending.”
The bridge door slid open as they passed the Battery. Van der Heyden, van Groot, the pilot, and a crewman stepped outside, rendering the bridge wing very crowded.
“If you’ll please excuse us now,” said the captain, who was looking purposeful but cheerful. In a few minutes he would no longer ever again have to be responsible for a ship, its passengers, or crew—let alone female assassins. He had also had three Bols gins.
“Let’s go up to the bow,” Nora said. “I don’t want to miss a minute of this.”
A crewman that chained the entrance to the companionway leading down to the forward deck at first hesitated when they asked to be let by, but then relented. He, like all the crew, now knew them to be important and famous.
There was a breathless moment as the ship turned into the slip and nosed toward its pier. A line was tossed to a man on the dock and he and several of his fellows pulled on it until it drew out the heavy main hawser. When it was secured, two of the tugs on the other side began pressing at the stern of the Wilhelmina until she was flush with the pier and more lines were dropped over the side. The engines stopped. Their silence and the lack of motion beneath their feet were strangely unsettling. Spencer kissed Nora’s forehead.
“Congratulations,” he said.
She smiled. “I’ve still more packing to do. Come help.”
“In a moment. For some peculiar reason, I don’t feel in a great hurry to leave the ship.”
As soon as the Wilhelmina was cleared through quarantine, a horde of reporters and photographers swarmed aboard. Moving in a pack, they paused to ask information of officers and crewmen, then fanned out through the ship, a small mob of them gathering noisily outside Nora’s door.
She opened it a few inches.
“Wait for me in the first-class lounge,” she said to them.
“We need pictures, Nora!” one of them shouted.
“I have a deadline!” another protested.
“Wait in the first-class lounge!” said Spencer. He shut the door on them. Was he like them? Had he been like that at the first sailing of the Normandie from Le Havre?
“A pack of beasts,” Nora said, “as Lady Diana would say.”
Olga had been waiting. She stood by the wall beside her locked door. In her hands was the heavy lid from the top of the toilet tank from the cabin’s small bathroom. Her swollen right wrist hurt from the effort, but she steeled herself to it. This was vital. It meant her life.
> The door opened and a crewman stepped in. He got out the word “Miss” just before Olga banged the porcelain weight down on his head. The loud sound made her wonder if she had killed him. He dropped to the floor instantly. She had no time to worry further about him, for another crewman was just behind him. Olga struck him in the face with the toilet top. She was certain she broke his nose. Blood came spewing forth from it as he staggered back.
She had only one chance—just one chance left in all her life—and she took it, leaping past the injured man and up the stairs, running madly and panting heavily as she reached the promenade deck. Without pausing, she bolted out onto the planking and clambered over the railing. She heard someone shout as she dropped to the water.
Nora was the center of attention at the press carnival in the first-class lounge, but some of the reporters began to drift away when, in response to so many shouted versions of what amounted to the same question, Nora began to repeat herself. She had hoped they would ask her about her new play, but they were treating the Wilhelmina’s crossing as a disaster akin to the Titanic’s and Nora as the principal heroine. They were not at all interested in anything else.
“How scared were you, Miss Gwynne?”
“Is it true Lord Mountbatten was aboard and that he was the hero who steered your lifeboat back to the ship?”
“How did those people in your lifeboat get killed?”
“Will you ever go to sea again, Miss Gwynne? Will you ever go back to Europe?”
A photographer pushed through close to the settee where Nora was sitting, followed by others.
“Our turn now. Hey, Nora. Can you cross your legs?”
Spencer moved away. This was part of the business of being a movie star, a glamour goddess, and there was nothing he could do to make things easier for her. The vulnerable little girl from Toledo would have to revert to her public persona now. And she seemed well disposed to do it.
Someone clutched at his arm. “Spencer! I thought you were in Paris. What were you doing in her room? Did you get aboard early for an interview, or were you on this ship?”
It was a reporter from the Chicago Tribune named Henry Pullen, whom Spencer had not seen since they’d covered a prison fire together in Columbus, Ohio, in 1930. Built for 1,500 men, the penitentiary had housed 4,300, and 318 of them had burned to death. Pullen had won a prize for his story.
“I thought they’d sent you to South America,” Spencer said.
“They did. Now I’m in New York. Were you on this ship? What were you doing in Nora Gwynne’s stateroom? You don’t seem to be asking any questions.”
“Yes. I was on this ship.”
“You want to give me a fill?”
“The ship had electrical problems. It caught fire. A few people burned to death and some drowned when the lifeboats were put to sea in a storm. Now if you want a personal account, there are several hundred people aboard who I’m sure would be glad to give you one. Don’t ask for it from the competition, Henry.”
Pullen, a heavyset man in a thick wool suit, leaned closer.
“We got word out of our Paris bureau that the Prince of Wales might have been aboard,” he said, with lowered voice.
“Why would Prince Edward be aboard a ship like this?”
“It sounded crackpot to me, too, but then we heard that his cousin Louis Mountbatten was on her, and maybe some friends of his.” He lowered his voice still further. “There’s talk about a woman, too, from Baltimore.”
“The Prince of Wales and a woman from Baltimore. That would be a hell of a story. You fellows are drinking too much.”
“Haven’t touched a drop today, but let’s go get one. I’ve got enough stuff from Nora Gwynne.”
Spencer glanced back at her. She had crossed her legs again and was arranging her skirt higher on her knee. She smiled brilliantly. The camera flashes began exploding.
“Okay, Henry. A drink. Just one.”
Nearby, Diana Cooper was posing for a lone photographer, looking flattered.
Then came the shouting—no one could tell from where: “Woman overboard! Woman overboard!”
The newsmen began pulling away from their interview, jostling each other. There was a commotion down the passageway. People were rushing to get to the starboard side, out onto the promenade deck. By the time Pullen and Spencer reached it, so many were packed against the rail that the Wilhelmina went into its famous list, causing two or three people to cry out.
Down far below, swimming away from the ship in a struggling arc, was the woman, dark hair spreading out on the grimy surface. She gave up the crawl and went into a slower breaststroke. Dark clothing was visible, including a long skirt. It must be heavy with water, working against her progress like an anchor, Spencer thought. She could not know her peril.
The crew was trying to lower the starboard side rescue motorboat to pursue her, the same one that had kept her and all the Prince of Wales’ party alive through the fire and storm. The crewmen were being thwarted by the list and malfunctioning davits. The officer in charge was again Kees, the fugitive in the water his Eastern European woman.
She was slowing. After the enormous openness of the sea the slip between the two confining piers must have seemed a narrow place, a short swim to freedom. Down there, in the cold, greasy water, it must have looked like miles to the other side, which was why she was swimming in an arc. She had given up her attempt to reach the opposite pier and was now trying for the dock ahead of the ship. Could she be so oblivious to the passengers and crew at the railings and in the rigging watching her every stroke? Could she not see the several policemen waiting along the pier for her approach?
Someone threw a life preserver toward her from the bow, and then another. They both fell far short and anyway she ignored them, concentrating on her slow, painful, weakening swimming strokes, her face dipping more and more into the slimy water.
They had the motorboat sliding downward now, Kees at the helm. It struck the surface with a heaving splash and the engine started with a puff of smoke bubbling out of the exhaust. Kees drove the craft hard, steering to the side a few times to make certain that he was not about to strike her, that she was still there. The final time he did this, she had disappeared. As they could see from the deck of the Wilhelmina, she slipped under the surface when the motorboat was still fifty feet or more from her. It was like the Parker boy and the Countess von Kresse. Olga simply ceased to be.
Nora had joined Spencer and now turned into his arms, pressing her head against his shoulder, away from the scene below.
“I don’t understand,” said Pullen. “Didn’t the first officer say she was a murderess or something? Didn’t she try to kill Louis Mountbatten? Why all this effort to save her?”
“Jimmy,” Nora said. “I want to get off this ship! Right now! I don’t want to look at it ever again.”
The taxi scarcely had room for the two of them what with Nora’s trunk and the rest of their luggage. They sat close together.
“The Plaza Hotel,” Spencer told the driver.
Nora was holding his hand. “We’ll stay here only about a week, I guess,” she said.
Spencer said nothing, listening to the rattle of the taxi over the bricks of the pavement, the sound and feel of solid land, of the United States, of New York, one of his favorite cities.
“You do want to come to Philadelphia with me, don’t you? You said you did,” she said.
“Sure I do.”
“Good. Because I’m really going to need you.”
When the cab swerved up to the hotel’s 59th Street entrance, a doorman and two porters leapt forward at the sight of so much luggage. Spencer lingered in the seat as she started out the door.
“You settle in,” he said. “I want to keep the cab.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the seedy little office in the New York Times where the Chicago Press-Bulletin has its bureau here.”
“But what for?”
“I have to do somethi
ng, something I promised myself I’d do. At the moment it’s the most important thing in my life. Don’t worry. I’ll be back well before time for dinner.”
“The most important thing in your life?”
“After you.”
“Is it your story? About the ship, and the voyage?”
He leaned to kiss her cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.”
She touched his face with her gloved hand as she returned his kiss, but her eyes were troubled when she withdrew.
There was a brief rain shower while Spencer was gone, and the streets and sidewalks were still glistening with its remnants when he stepped out of the Times building. There was time for a drink and he decided to walk over to have one at the Algonquin, pausing to buy a late edition of one of the afternoon newspapers. It was a splashy Hearst paper, with the front page full of stories about the Wilhelmina’s arrival and its difficult passage. There was also a four-column front-page photo of the Wilhelmina taken from the side and showing the dramatic extent of the fire damage.
He went into the small bar off the lobby to the right of the hotel’s entrance, took a seat at the only available table, and ordered himself a large congratulatory drink in honor of what he had just accomplished. Then he began to read the stories. For all its length, the main one was rather sketchy, and padded with reports of other ships’ misadventures during the hurricane, including the foundering of the Rotterdam. The sidebars were more fleshy, filled with vivid writing. One was about “the hero captain” who had badly burned himself trying to put out the fire with his own hands. There was another about Mountbatten’s assisting in the navigation and his other heroic exploits. It noted he’d been transferred to a British destroyer off Sandy Hook to sail for duty in the Abyssinian crisis. A breathless piece told of Nora’s brave endurance of the perils, and was accompanied by a photo of her and her charmingly arranged legs. The casualty list described all the deaths and injuries as accidental. The passenger list was rather incomplete. Spencer’s name was not on it, nor was Lord Brownlow’s or Fruity Metcalfe’s.
There was no mention of Lindbergh, of course. Spencer was certain he’d remain in hiding on the ship and then slip off to his home in New Jersey sometime during the night.
Dance on a Sinking Ship Page 47
