The Ocean Liner

by Marius Gabriel

  It had been a terrible five years, years of personal, professional and financial loss. After his first struggles, then his explosive successes in music and ballet, moving to Paris had seemed like the culmination of Stravinsky’s career. Instead, it had proved the graveyard of his hopes. Exhausted and broken-hearted, the daring young composer, once thought of as the most advanced talent in modern music, had sunk into a middle age of illness and failure. Darkness hung around him, almost visible.

  Katharine knew how bitter he felt about the sale of The Rite of Spring to Disney. It had been the music which, more than any other piece, had made his name and had exemplified the innovative brilliance of his genius. He saw it as a public humiliation. He had been brought low and forced to sell out to the arch-purveyor of American vulgarity. Not even the enthusiasm of Walt Disney himself – who was said to have danced around the gramophone when the music was played in his office – could make up for the shame he felt.

  ‘You haven’t seen any of Disney’s films,’ she ventured, trying to comfort him. ‘They’re charming, you know. Pinocchio was very good. And they say that Fantasia will be the most original one yet. Think of it as a new medium. You’ve always been at the forefront of culture.’

  ‘It’s amusing, really. The role that was commissioned by Diaghilev and danced by Nijinsky will now be performed by a caricature mouse in red knickerbockers.’

  ‘Oh, Igor.’ Katharine laid her hand on his.

  Thomas König looked up from his book. ‘Do you mean Mickey Mouse?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stravinsky said, ‘I mean Mickey Mouse.’

  The boy looked impressed. ‘Mickey is very famous.’

  Stravinsky made a wry face. ‘I am glad to hear it. What’s that you’re reading?’

  Thomas brightened. He held up the publication. It was a colourful guidebook entitled The New York World’s Fair, The World of Tomorrow. ‘They have a huge golden robot who can walk and talk.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He can even smoke cigarettes.’

  ‘That is undeniably progress,’ Stravinsky said, looking at the picture Thomas was showing him.

  ‘His name is Elektro. He can count and do sums. He’s full of diodes and triodes and electromagnetic cells.’

  ‘I suppose you know all about those things,’ Katharine asked, her eyes on the gleaming swastika fixed in the boy’s lapel. ‘Diodes and triodes and so forth.’

  ‘A diode has only two terminals and it regulates current in one direction only, whereas a triode has three terminals – anode, cathode and grid. It’s used for amplification. It’s what allows Elektro to speak.’

  ‘What else do they have at this fair of yours?’ Stravinsky asked.

  A little flush of pleasure touched Thomas’s angular cheekbones. ‘They have the Trylon and the Perisphere.’

  ‘Indeed. And what are they?’

  The boy showed them the photograph of a gigantic white sphere and an equally dazzling needle which towered above it. ‘The Perisphere is eighteen storeys tall. The Trylon is sixty storeys tall. You can see them both from five miles away.’

  Stravinsky gazed somewhat wistfully at the glowing geometric structures. ‘And this is the world of tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir.’

  ‘They look like the deserted monuments in the paintings of de Chirico or Salvador Dali. Who lives in them?’

  ‘The Democracity is inside the Perisphere. It’s the city of the future, where everyone is perfectly happy.’

  ‘No doubt your Führer will want a full report,’ Katharine said dryly.

  The arrival of the mutton stew interrupted the conversation. Katharine found the German boy hard to stomach, but at least he seemed to distract Igor a little. Perhaps Igor was reminded of his own children.

  Across the dining room, Masha and Rachel Morgenstern were also observing Stravinsky. They had chosen the fried flounder, which was proving to have been a mistake.

  ‘I’m terribly excited that Stravinsky’s on board,’ Masha said. ‘I can’t deny that. And I shall do my best to engage him in at least one conversation before we reach New York, so I can tell my grandchildren. I shall get his autograph, too. There!’

  ‘Good luck. He looks as though he could hardly lift a pencil.’

  ‘He’s so exotic,’ Masha murmured, fascinated by the composer’s weary face and drooping eyelids. ‘So Russian.’

  ‘I should say he’s just a funny little man with a funny little moustache,’ Rachel replied. ‘Not unlike our beloved Führer.’

  ‘Hush!’ Masha replied automatically.

  ‘You needn’t hush me. Nobody loves the Führer more than I do.’

  ‘People could be listening.’ Masha was finding it hard to shake off her terror at any disrespectful reference to Hitler. ‘Be prudent, Rachel, for God’s sake.’

  ‘This fish is a more immediate threat than the Gestapo.’ Rachel pushed her plate away. ‘I think my piece was bad.’

  ‘Mine was all right.’

  ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘I am. I can feel it.’

  ‘But there’s the rice pudding to come.’

  ‘I need air. I have to go out.’ Rachel rose and Masha had no choice but to follow her. Their route out of the dining room took them past Stravinsky’s table. As they approached, Stravinsky raised his head slowly and Masha met his eyes. She could not stop herself from speaking.

  ‘Oh, Monsieur Stravinsky,’ she blurted out, ‘I saw your Rite of Spring in 1934.’ Everybody at the table looked up. Wanting to express the excitement she had felt, she could only stammer, ‘It was – it was—’

  Stravinsky stared at her dully, waiting. Rachel was pulling urgently at her arm. With everything unsaid, she allowed herself to be dragged away.

  Outside, she lamented, ‘Oh, I felt such a fool. I couldn’t think of anything to say.’ But Rachel was running up the companionway, her hand clamped over her mouth. Masha followed. When she reached the Tourist Class promenade deck, Rachel was leaning over the rail, retching. Masha went to offer what succour she could. The fish had not been nice, but Rachel had been prone to these vomiting fits ever since they’d left Bremen. She had brought up almost every meal. Masha suspected it was her way of expressing her grief and stress. She put her arm around her cousin’s shoulders consolingly.

  It was very dark. There were no lights to be seen either on the ship or the land, other than the searchlight which occasionally reached out from the harbourmaster’s building across the vessels moored in the harbour. One of these sabre-strokes of brilliance swept across the Manhattan now. Masha looked up in its glare and saw, on the Lido deck above, an old man looking down on them. She gasped. The curling moustaches, the strong, passionate features, the white hair tossed by the wind: despite the wildness of the expression, there could be no doubt about it.

  ‘It’s Toscanini!’ she exclaimed. ‘Look, Rachel. It’s Toscanini.’

  Rachel looked up, but the darkness had rushed in already. She spat and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief. ‘This penchant for seeing famous musicians amounts to a mania, my dear Masha. There’s probably some deep psychological cause for it.’

  ‘He was there. And he looked half-mad.’

  ‘Tell Professor Freud all about it.’

  ‘And now I’ve missed the rice pudding,’ Masha mourned. She was still hungry, but as usual after vomiting, Rachel was restless and wanting distraction.

  ‘Let’s go to the bar and have a beer. Perhaps you’ll see Mozart there.’

  Southampton

  Rosemary waited until Luella Hennessey’s breathing grew regular and deep. The devoted family nurse had been given the bed next to hers, an unlikely watchdog between Rosemary and the door. But Luella was tired after a day dealing with the younger children, and Rosemary knew how to wait. She was adept at the whole thing, easing the bedclothes off, sliding her legs out, slipping on her dress without a sound. She knew how to open and close the door without so much as a click. Sh
e’d had a lot of practice.

  Outside, she slipped on her shoes. She was giggling to herself as she flitted down the corridors of the hotel. Because of the war – she already hated the war – the lights were turned down almost to nothing at all.

  She met nobody on the stairs. The place was as dead as a graveyard at two in the morning. But Cubby had left his door unlocked, as he had promised. She glided in without a sound, her heart starting to race. Cubby was her darling. There was nobody like Cubby. He never did anything that frightened her or hurt her. He wasn’t like everyone else, even her brothers, who got impatient with her and pushed her away when they’d had enough of her. His love for her was something new in her life: a love that didn’t ask her to be any different from what she was, never yelled at her or mocked.

  Cubby was awake, reading a paperback in bed. She jumped on to him joyfully.

  ‘Oh God, I’ve missed you,’ she moaned, hugging him tightly. ‘Oh God, oh God.’

  He squirmed under her substantial weight. She was all knees and elbows, digging into uncomfortable places on his body. Her mouth, wet and hot, locked on his and flooded it with saliva. He managed to roll her off, though she was strong and determined. ‘Rosie. You came!’

  ‘’Course I came. Didn’t you want me?’

  ‘I want you more than anything in the world.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Are you sure nobody saw you leave?’

  ‘I’m not stoopid.’ She jumped up and in one fluid movement, hauled off her dress. She was naked beneath it, her full breasts rebounding. She came back to him, bringing an intoxicating wave of her body scent. ‘Kiss me properly.’

  He was always shocked at her daring, she who could be so timid in public. ‘Honey, put your clothes back on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We agreed—’

  ‘Are you afraid Mother will burst in?’ She put on her mother’s stern face and voice. ‘Mister Hubbard. Phwhat are you doing with my daughter? Don’t you know that Jesus H. Christ and all his angels will punish you with eternal hellfire?’

  ‘Please, honey,’ Hubbard begged, ‘put your dress back on.’

  She blinked at him, her face flushed. ‘Don’t you want me?’

  ‘More than anything in all the world.’

  She reached between his legs. ‘I want you, you, you.’

  ‘We said we would wait.’

  ‘I’m no good at waiting.’

  He tried to prise her fingers off. ‘It’s one of the things we all have to learn, honey.’

  Her skin prickled all over with disappointment. ‘We did it before. Why can’t we do it now?’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for all that.’

  ‘When we’re married?’

  ‘Yes, when we’re married.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘My hubby, Cubby!’ She snuggled up beside him, sliding a strong leg across him. ‘You’ve promised. You can’t break a promise.’

  ‘I never break my promises.’

  ‘I get scared when I think you don’t want me any more.’

  ‘I’ll never stop wanting you. You’re the most wonderful girl in the world.’

  ‘Say it again!’

  ‘You’re wonderful.’

  ‘Again, again!’

  ‘I’ll get your name tattooed over my heart.’ Cubby stroked her hair. ‘I have to tell you something. Your brother Jack came to see me today.’

  She cringed. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said your mother wants me to go away.’

  Her fingernails dug into him. ‘Don’t,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. I told him that, too.’

  ‘Did you tell him we’re going to get married?’

  ‘Yes. He wasn’t very impressed.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m going to be Mrs Hubbard,’ she said passionately.

  ‘Yes, baby, you are.’

  ‘And we’ll have our own home. Our very own.’

  ‘Yes, my Rosemary Rose.’ She was rubbing her thigh over his loins. With Rosemary warm and naked in his arms, he was finding it terribly hard to control himself. She was supremely confident in this, if in little else in her life. Sex came to her with the naturalness of a healthy, lusty, wild animal. A lioness, as the Kennedy boy had called her this morning. She felt no guilt about her body, no inhibitions about her desires. He knew she had been with other men, that they’d abused her naiveté, got her to do things. He hated to think of those others to whom she had given herself so artlessly. But he knew that none of it had touched her. She was still innocent, pure in a way he’d never seen in anyone else.

  ‘Our very, very own home. With fine things everywhere. And Jack and everyone will come to visit us there. And they’ll see all my fine things all around, won’t they?’

  ‘As fine as I can afford,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘And they’ll see me there with my beautiful baby. Being a wonderful mother. And the baby calling me Mamma. And they’ll treat me just like one of them. I won’t be “empty head” any more.’

  He kissed her tenderly. ‘No, my darling.’

  ‘I won’t be “retarded” any more, will I?’

  ‘I hate that word,’ he said. ‘Please don’t use it.’

  ‘And we’ll go for rides on your motorcycle.’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘I’ll hold on tight, tight.’

  ‘You’ll never let me go.’

  ‘Do you really love me?’ she said, looking into his face eagerly. ‘Really and truly?’ Her lips were parted, her green eyes luminous. She had a slight squint. It sometimes gave the impression that she was looking not at him, but past him, to something beyond. It was the only flaw in her beauty and it melted his heart. He cupped her soft, rounded cheeks in his palms. He could scarcely believe that this lovely woman could be his.

  ‘You are my life, Rosemary.’

  ‘I’m so happy when you say that.’ She straddled him, rubbing herself against him. ‘Cubby, my Cubby, my own Cubby!’

  ‘Rosemary, wait,’ he gasped.

  She was panting with excitement, her hips thrusting rhythmically. The softness of her body was enfolding him. He knew that now she was in her stride, there was no stopping her. It was cruel to even try. He took hold of her mobile hips and in seconds he was inside her. She gave a broken cry as he pushed deep into her. Her eyes had become unfocused. She smiled down at him blindly. As she began to rock, she dug her nails hard and rhythmically into the muscles of his chest. A lioness, he thought, she was a lioness conquering her prey, devouring him; and it was heaven to be devoured. Her fingers bit into his shoulders, his stomach, his arms. There would be cuts and marks in the morning to remind him of this.

  She loved it fast. He grew swiftly bigger and harder, she hotter and wetter. She angled her sturdy hips to give them both the maximum pleasure. She was no longer calling his name, just uttering gasps. It never took either of them very long to climax. They wanted each other far too urgently for niceties. He felt her insides tighten and ripple around him, dragging him into her world. She bent down and bit his neck, her command to join her in bliss. He obeyed, pouring himself into her. For a long moment she held him like that, a prisoner of her teeth and claws and loins. Then, with a shuddering sigh, she nestled languidly beside him again. ‘Oh, I feel good, I feel sooo good. Do you feel good?’

  ‘You didn’t give me time to get any protection on, honey.’ He got his breath back. ‘You’re going to get pregnant, Rosie.’

  ‘I want our baby.’ Her voice was thick and dreamy. ‘I can’t wait to have our baby. How many babies will we have?’

  He laughed breathlessly. ‘Let’s start with just the one and see how it goes.’

  ‘I want five. Six! Tell me about our house.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, gathering her in his arms, ‘it will be in Pasadena. The sun always shines there. And it will be cosy and neat and bright and full of happiness.’

  ‘With a garde
n?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Not like the big gardens you’re used to, but it will be pretty, with lots of flowers.’

  ‘And I’ll sit there with our baby.’

  ‘Yes, you will.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’ She gave a great sigh. ‘When will we be married?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that. I think it should be as soon as possible.’

  She propped herself up on one elbow, excited. ‘Tomorrow?’

  Cubby smiled. ‘It can’t be tomorrow, honey.’

  ‘When, then?’

  ‘Perhaps soon after we arrive in New York.’

  ‘In St Pat’s?’

  ‘Not in St Pat’s,’ he said regretfully. ‘It’ll have to be a registry office. Your family aren’t going to be happy. But they wouldn’t have come even if it was in the cathedral.’

  Rosemary thought about that for a moment. Then she lay back down again. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I can still wear white, can’t I?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘And have a bouquet?’

  ‘White roses.’

  ‘White roses and cream lilies.’

  ‘You’ll be so lovely.’

  ‘You’re my Cubby hubby. My hubby Cubby.’

  ‘I’m yours.’

  ‘You’re mine.’

  They were her last words. She fell into one of her swift, deep slumbers, her body becoming heavy and inert against him. He held her close to his heart, aching with love, knowing that in half an hour he would have to wake her and send her back to her own room again.

  The Western Approaches

  The blazing wreck lit up the night, a spectacle which almost the entire crew of U-113 had come on to the deck to see. It was their first kill of the war. Initially, there had been cheering and congratulations, but these had died down as they watched the stricken ship consumed in the fire which had been started by the two torpedoes they’d launched just after midnight.

  She was the Robert Recorde, a 3,000-ton merchantman, built in Newcastle upon Tyne, registered in Cardiff, carrying a cargo of timber from Canada to the Clyde. This information had been provided by one of the survivors, whom they’d fished out of the sea, a sixteen-year-old boy rating named Howell Lewis. He was badly burned, and they’d dropped him near one of the lifeboats to be picked up. There were only three of these. The rest had been shattered when Todt had ordered the bridge and radio room to be machine-gunned. The British sailors huddled in the lifeboats shouted at the submarine as U-113 rumbled between them, playing its searchlight around the floating wreckage. The U-boat crew stared back silently, some taking turns to use the night-glasses.