Elfriede returns to the list. Now the second-class passengers. Because she didn’t really expect Charlotte to book a first-class cabin—that’s a great deal of money—unless this windfall has maybe made her reckless. But no. Charlotte’s prudent. She didn’t buy first-class tickets on the train to New York, and she’s not going to buy them now.
Mr. Jacob Mueller. Dr. and Mrs. Henrik Schoenbrun, 1 child. Miss Roelfein Vandercamp.
And of course, there’s Wilfred to consider. Beating at the back of her head, the words I will sail from New York in six days’ time, aboard RMS Cedric. Which is today. (She’s already confirmed this date at the White Star Line offices, because sometimes ships are late arriving in port, you never know for certain.) In the meantime, where does she find him? There’s no time to look, is there? She can only track down one missing piece of her heart at a time, for God’s sake.
At least she knows where to find him tomorrow, in the middle of the afternoon. At Pier 51 on the Hudson River, climbing out of a taxicab, carrying a suitcase and a second-class ticket for Liverpool, England.
Mr. and Mrs. Nicolaas Cloet. Mr. and Mrs. John Middleton, 2 children.
Mrs. Charlotte Kassmeyer, 3 children.
Elfriede sets down the lemonade and rings the bell for the officer.
“The Statendam,” she says, when he rushes through the door. “It departed on schedule?”
“Yes, Frau von Kleist. To the hour.”
“And when will it arrive in Rotterdam?”
He glances at the clock, of all things, and then at the calendar on the desk. “In eight days’ time, Frau, after a stop at Boulogne. The twenty-third of July.”
Elfriede looks back down at the paper on her lap. Reads the name again, just to be certain, and then lifts her head to find Johann staring at her.
“Is it them?” he asks softly.
“Yes, darling. They sailed for Holland three days ago.”
Johann’s jaw makes a small, desperate movement. His nose twitches. He turns away and stares out the window, and Elfriede’s heart pours right out of her body and into his. Her boy, her boy. Everyone abandons him, don’t they? Beginning with Elfriede, his own mother. He’s sucked his lips all the way inside his mouth. He sets his jaw bravely. He’s not going to cry, Gerhard’s son will not cry over some girls, of all things, who sailed away from him across the ocean.
Elfriede returns her attention to the officer, who clutches his hands before her. “Your next ships,” she says. “When do they depart?”
“Ah. Ah.” He searches the papers on his desk and finds the one he’s looking for, the sailing schedule. He runs his finger down the column. “The Ryndam came in two days ago, I believe, and departs tomorrow morning. The Rotterdam is due in next week, and departs for Rotterdam on the twenty-sixth.”
“I see,” she says. “You’re quite sure the Ryndam departs in the morning?”
“Yes, Frau. She’s scheduled to leave the pier at ten o’clock.”
Elfriede hands him the passenger list and puts her gloves back on. Her heart beats and beats in that overheated room, and yet she’s strangely cold, she has to stop herself from shivering.
“Mama?” says Johann.
“Thank you so much for your help, Mr. Patterson,” says Elfriede.
“It’s my pleasure, Frau von Kleist. Is there anything else I can do to assist you?”
“Yes, if you would. I should like to reserve a first-class cabin on the SS Ryndam for myself and my son, if there are any still available.”
Mr. Patterson, of course, is happy to make this arrangement for her.
Lulu
June 1942
(The Bahamas)
For a woman born and raised in the American South, Wallis Windsor didn’t express much tolerance for the heat of a Bahamian summer. She had this fan of Chinese silk, acquired during what she called her “lotus year” in the Orient—this occurred between husbands one and two, a kind of soul searching—and she waved it vigorously as the limousine trundled up the hill toward the maternity clinic in Grants Town.
“I don’t know why on earth you stand it here, Lulu,” she said. “We’ve got no choice, of course, but you don’t have to stay in this dump. You could go to Maine.”
“I don’t know anybody in Maine.”
“The Oakeses?”
“I’d say they already have their hands full, at present.”
“Oh, of course. That business. Do you know something funny? I’d put the whole sordid affair out of my mind.” She turned her head and stared out the window. “Awful man. Did you ever meet him?”
“Yes. He seemed like a gentleman to me.”
“She’s a schoolgirl, Lulu.”
“Nancy’s eighteen and just graduated.”
“He’s in his thirties. Divorced. It’s too horrible, really.”
On my other side, Miss Drewes looked up from the duchess’s appointment book, and I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was. Ex-husbands, I mean, of which Wallis had two. If she did, she made no sign. Just tapped her pencil against her lips a couple of times and turned back to her work. Miss Drewes was an American through and through, Mamaroneck bred, a Mount Holyoke girl, but she greeted her employers each morning with Your Royal Highness and continued in that vein throughout the day, which was just the sort of attitude Wallis appreciated most.
“I’ll tell you what he did,” Wallis said. “You know he’s got these properties out in Cable Beach—”
“Naturally. I happen to live in one of them myself.”
“Do you really? That bungalow of yours?”
“I’m bound to confess, he’s a conscientious landlord.”
“Well. Apparently he built a block of luxury apartments out there, right by the golf course, and whoever rents them is entitled to play on the links and so on, rent a cabana. And do you know what he did, one season?”
“Something just awful, I’ll bet.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it awful. Provoking, that’s what it was. He took I don’t know how many thousands of dollars from a pair of New York Jews and rented them apartments. The entire season! Didn’t even think to ask the members if they’d mind.”
“You don’t say. The nerve.”
“That’s the sort of fellow he is, Lulu, always on the take. Never a thought for anyone else’s comfort. And really, it wasn’t fair to the tenants, either. I’m sure they thought everybody would take them in, you know, invite them to parties and dinners and so on, and—well. There are certain things you can’t buy, you know, no matter how much filthy money you’ve got.”
The duchess waved her fan in smart little movements, as if to drive away her own ire. By now, we’d crested the hill, and I glanced to my right, where you could see Cable Beach and the golf course as this oasis, surrounded by scrub on three sides and ocean on the other.
“You know, you’ve got to hand it to Hitler,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be convenient if we could just—oh—just confiscate all that filthy money for the common good? And then herd them all into camps and ghettos and shoot anybody who objects? I guess we just haven’t got the guts for it.”
Miss Drewes sucked her breath. The duchess snapped her fan shut. The landscape glided past the window. I remember thinking how the cabanas looked like handkerchiefs tossed on the white sand, how serene everything looked on that side of the hill. I heard the sound of metal clinking, paper rustling, the rasp of a cigarette lighter. The limousine slowed into a curve, and the sunlight shifted to enter through the rear window and scorch our necks.
The duchess muttered, “It’s not the same thing, you know.”
A curl of smoke made its way past my face.
“Anyway, most of those stories are made up by the newspapers, which you know are all controlled . . .”
I turned and lifted my eyebrows. The duchess smashed her lips together and turned her head to the side, where Miss Drewes scribbled away at her notes, red-faced.
“I forget, you’re from New York,” Wallis said.
Th
e car straightened out and proceeded down the hill. The duchess dragged on her cigarette. I stared at the snap, snap of the Chinese fan, the whiteness of her knuckles beneath her scarlet nails.
“It’s so lovely,” I said. “Your fan.”
Wallis stopped the waving and spread it out. “Isn’t it? A gift from an admirer. I like this fellow here the best.” She pointed to a chubby, smiling, naked man hiding behind a tree. “Look carefully and you’ll see that’s not a branch.”
“Dear me.”
She snapped it closed. “But we mustn’t shock Miss Drewes. Eh, Miss Drewes? Not until you’re married. You know, I gave one of my Chinese screens to Sir Harry, to thank him for his hospitality when poor old Government House was being redone. I believe he’s put it in his bedroom.”
“If it’s anything like this one, I don’t blame him.”
She laughed. “You haven’t been to the Orient, have you, Lulu?”
“Never. Although I’d like to go, one day.”
“You should. It changes your life.” She opened the fan and resumed waving. “I sometimes wish . . .”
“Wish what?”
“Nothing. Here we are at last. Look at them, poor dears.”
By poor dears, she meant the Negro women lined up outside the entrance of the small white building to which we had just pulled up, in our giant Government House limousine with its little Union Jacks fluttering from the wheel wells. Each one bore a baby in her arms, or in a cloth sling against her body, newborns and bruisers, squallers and sleepers, in various states of dress and fretfulness.
“Frightful, isn’t it?” said Wallis. “You see, they breed like rabbits.”
As we prepared to climb out of the limousine, I thought that possibly some of these babies were the children of the men who had rioted three weeks ago, seeking twelve shillings a day and getting—after a soothing radio address from the Duke of Windsor to calm everybody’s nerves, after newspaper pontification by the column mile, after days of fractious negotiation—five shillings a day plus lunch. Five shillings a day on which to raise a family. The duchess and I both wore our Red Cross uniforms, white and crisp, and our spectator shoes of polished brown and white leather. We hurried through the entrance, dogged by Miss Drewes and her satchel of careful records. Once the photography was out of the way, Wallis and Miss Drewes headed for the business side of things—taking down weights, recording vaccinations, that kind of thing—while I messed about in the waiting room, played with the babies and chatted with the mothers.
It’s funny, I remember how oddly cheerful they were in that moment, in that hot waiting room in the Duchess of Windsor’s clinic, how confident the Duke of Windsor was going to make everything better, was going to right all of history’s wrongs and begin a new chapter in the story of race relations in the Bahamas, and maybe the whole world. There had been some wonderful speech by one of the Negro leaders, made right there in the Government House annex before the duke himself, the day after the riot on Bay Street—had I heard about it? This man, he had said everything that was in the hearts of the black and colored folks in these islands, he had actually said in thunderous voice to the royal Duke of Windsor, former king of the British Empire and its dominions, Art thou He that cometh, or look we for another? And the duke had nodded to that. Had nodded and smiled. Oh, things was going to change, Mrs. Randolph.
On the way home, Wallis told me she was thinking of starting up a canteen for all the enlisted men due to descend on Nassau, British and American and dominion, once the airfields were completed.
“Aren’t the Daughters of Empire setting one up already?” I said. “Down on Bay Street, near the British Colonial. You can’t miss it.”
Wallis’s face turned a little stony. “And I’m sure it’s a worthy endeavor. But it’s teetotal, you know, and what red-blooded airman is going to hang about a canteen that doesn’t serve beer? And if those boys aren’t gathering in the canteen in a civilized atmosphere, they’ll be causing trouble in the streets and the nightclubs.”
“Fair point,” I said.
“I’ve already spoken to Fred Sigrist. That club of his out by Cable Beach, that would be perfect. It’s empty now that the American tourists have fled home. It’s a bit shabby, but we can fix it up. Can’t we, Miss Drewes?”
Miss Drewes glanced up. “The canteen? I think it’s a swell idea. You’ve got such a terrific knack for decoration and entertaining, Your Royal Highness. I’d say it’s right up your alley.”
“We’ll knock the socks off that Daughters of Empire joint,” Wallis said viciously. Then she gathered herself. “Morale is so important, after all, absolutely vital. I’ve worked it all out. I know this fellow at the American army base in Miami, he’ll help me with Lend Lease supplies. Real ham and bacon and eggs. I’m going to take such a personal role. I think it would cheer the men a great deal to have the Duchess of Windsor frying up their eggs to order, don’t you?”
“I can just see it,” I said.
“Just think of all the photographs you can send back to your magazine. We’ll have a gala opening. It should be open by Christmas, don’t you think, Miss Drewes?”
“If not sooner,” said Miss Drewes.
Wallis was smiling, tapping her sharp finger on her knee, waving the Chinese fan. She gazed out the window at the passing landscape. We were climbing the hill now, back toward Government House, and the shacks of Grants Town had begun to thin out and make way for the villas and bungalows of white Nassau, soaked in sunshine. As if struck by inspiration, Wallis turned back to me.
“Of course we’ll set up a canteen for the colored troops too,” she said. “Where they can listen to their own music and eat their own food. Won’t that be fun?”
By the time I arrived home, Veryl had gone for the day, bound for the afternoon shift at the Prince George. The bungalow was shut tight as an oyster. I went around switching on the electric fans, opening the windows, but no amount of manufactured draft, no amount of fresh air—such as it was—could chase away the noontime heat of Nassau at the end of June. And the smell, the potpourri of rotting flowers and mildew. That odor, it hangs in my nostrils still.
She’d laid the morning post on the table, as was our custom since September, when the invitations began to arrive through the letter slot in their dozens, dinner parties and tennis parties and Red Cross fairs, even an occasional wedding or two. Sometimes I wonder how those couples turned out, where those lives exist now, on what continent and with how many children, or at all. On this particular night, I was due to attend both a supper dance for the RAF officers at the Emerald Beach Hotel and a dinner party at Lady Annabelle Taylor’s place. The dance sounded like better fun; the dinner, like better gossip. I set my hat on the stand and straightened my hair. In the mirror, I caught the reflection of the table behind me, and the stack of cards and invitations, and beneath these small, ecru envelopes a larger one, a parcel, plain brown and wrapped in string, the parcel I dreaded.
I allowed myself the luxury of a moment’s hesitation. Sometimes you have to gather yourself, you know, sometimes you need to gird your loins or whatever needs girding. In that empty instant, I recalled a dream I had the night before, just a flash of it, in which I was wandering down a hotel corridor in search of something, I didn’t know what, something peculiar. The way it is in dreams.
But I wasn’t made for waiting. Some people can wait around forever in the face of bad news, putting off the inevitable, insisting on living in a world that doesn’t really exist, but I can’t. I stepped forward and yanked the thick brown parcel from the bottom of the stack, toppling the envelopes, and sure enough it was from New York, all right, from the headquarters of Metropolitan magazine on Madison Avenue, sent by airmail at considerable expense. Miss Brown—Lightfoot’s secretary—she always knotted that string but good. I carried the parcel into the office and found the scissors in the drawer. Snip, snip. The string fell away. I tore the paper to reveal the latest issue of Metropolitan—hot off the press, as they say, not eve
n yet present on an actual newsstand—and flipped to the “Lady of Nassau” column on the inside back cover.
And it was no more than I expected, really. Because while my Remington and I had composed a brilliant column on the Burma Road riot last month, clickety-clack, had quoted from the duke’s radio address, had described the scene and snapped a photograph of the smoke and ruin the next morning, called it “Now Is the Summer of Our Discontent,” I had also taken the precaution of sending along an alternate column. An alternate June, in which Nancy Oakes’s elopement with Alfred de Marigny occupied every imagination, and that was all that mattered.
And thank goodness for this particular precaution. Thank goodness I had lain awake all night after writing the Burma Road column, heart smacking, and counted up how many dollars might remain in Lulu’s coffers if dear old Daddy decided not to run her column that month. Thank goodness I’d risen at dawn with the damned songbirds and rattled off the usual tittle-tattle, the awful scandal, the whispers, and sent it off to Madison Avenue for Lightfoot to weigh against the first. Thank goodness.
Because, according to her column in the upcoming issue of Metropolitan, it seemed the Lady of Nassau had never heard of Burma Road, had never wandered outside on a hot morning, the first of June, and discovered a riot. In the July 1942 issue of Metropolitan magazine, she had nothing to talk about but heiresses and playboys.
From between pages eighty-two and eighty-three a check fluttered to the floor, made out to Leonora Randolph in the amount of two hundred dollars. Thank goodness.
Because it was Saturday, the bank was closed. I tucked the check in my desk drawer and locked it—not that an enterprising thief couldn’t crowbar the thing to smithereens in a jiffy—and considered the clock. Quarter past one. At least five hours remained before the evening got under way, before I would freshen up and dress, select my shoes and my pocketbook, and head to Lady Annabelle’s for the dinner party before moving on to Emerald Beach, where the RAF officers would surely be dancing until midnight. After that, who knew? I was the Lady of Nassau, after all. Saturday nights were part of my job. Two hundred smackeroos to swan around paradise and flirt with the flyboys, flatter the flutterbys, you couldn’t sneeze at that.
The Golden Hour Page 27
