The Ocean Liner

by Marius Gabriel

  ‘Mr Hubbard?’

  He looked up. Mrs Joseph P. Kennedy was standing at his table, wearing a severe grey wool suit. Her face was stony. He rose to his feet. ‘Good morning, Mrs Kennedy.’

  ‘Come with me, please.’

  He had just ordered his breakfast, but he didn’t think fit to mention that. ‘Sure.’ He followed her out into the street. It was a wet morning, and the doorman gave them a large umbrella. He opened this and held it over Mrs Kennedy’s head as they walked along. She was a thin, brusque woman, and she walked fast. He had no idea where they were going.

  ‘I understand my daughter visited you in the night,’ she said.

  Hubbard felt his face flush. ‘I’m not going to lie about that.’

  She could see the bite on his neck, inflicted by her daughter’s teeth in the throes of copulation. She felt nauseated. ‘You realise that I could go to the nearest policeman and have you arrested?’

  There was, in fact, a large policeman standing on the street corner, majestic in a shiny cape. ‘Look, I’m glad of the chance to talk to you about Rosemary. I care about her very deeply.’

  ‘My daughter is at present suffering a violent seizure on the bathroom floor. That is what your “caring very deeply” has done for her.’

  ‘You mean that you’ve driven her half crazy,’ he retorted angrily. ‘Have you called a doctor?’

  ‘Don’t presume to instruct me in what I should or should not do with my own daughter.’ Her face tightened. ‘What will it take to get you to leave Rosemary alone?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  She didn’t look at him, but kept her face averted, even though he was hurrying close beside her with the umbrella. ‘How much?’

  ‘How much what?’

  ‘How much money, if you force me to be crude.’

  He was astonished. ‘I don’t want your money.’

  ‘Everybody wants money. You’re an itinerant musician – which would never allow you to give Rosemary the kind of life she’s accustomed to, let alone the nursing care she will require all her life.’

  ‘I do okay. But I believe that Rosemary only wants one thing in life, and that is love.’

  ‘A very pretty speech. If you’re not in this for the money, then you’re a fool as well as a knave.’

  ‘You can insult me as much as you please,’ Cubby replied. ‘It won’t make any difference to my feelings for Rosemary. I’ve already told you that I love her. I told your son the same thing. I would rather have your blessing.’

  ‘You will never have that.’

  ‘Then I’ll do without it.’

  He was a little out of breath. Mrs Kennedy was a good walker. They had been making brisk progress up the hill, and had now reached a church, which was (to Hubbard’s eyes) a hideous Victorian structure of blackened brick. Workmen were boarding up the stained-glass windows against German bombs, and laying sandbags around the foundations. She turned to him, her eyes the same colour as the autumn sky. ‘And that is your last word?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then we part as enemies, Mr Hubbard.’ She reached out her gloved hand. He thought she wanted to shake hands for a moment, but she only wanted the umbrella. He gave it to her. She turned without another word and went quickly into the church. He made his way back to the hotel, turning up the collar of his leather jacket against the rain. Her last, ominous words rang in his ears.

  Le Havre

  His head full of tumult, a roaring in his ears, Arturo Toscanini strode the deck, muttering to himself. His fellow passengers had by now learned to keep out of his way. There had been some collisions and furious altercations at first. But even though the ship grew more crowded daily, promenaders had learned caution.

  Toscanini himself was oblivious to everyone around him. He paced all day and he paced all night. He had neither visited his cabin nor slept. As for food, he had kept himself alive by bursting into the kitchen at odd hours (he had not revisited the Comanche dining hall) and tearing at whatever he could find – stale bread, slices of beef. It was the way he had always eaten, on his feet.

  Carla had not appeared. Carla was lost somewhere in the swarming ants’ nest that was Europe, while Hitler’s armies battered down the gates. But the tension was terrible. La forza del destino, inexorable fate that drives me on to a foreign shore! Orphan and wanderer, tortured by fearful dreams! Weeping, I leave thee, beloved homeland! Farewell! Only Verdi could capture the pathos, the horror.

  A sudden gust of wind swept the hat from his head. Toscanini snatched at it unsuccessfully. It bowled along the deck, scurrying between the passengers, some of whom made efforts to catch it. But it was too cunning, and evaded all grasping hands, rolling along on its brim until it came up against an immaculate pair of spats. A long-fingered white hand picked it up. It belonged to none other than Igor Stravinsky, who was walking the deck with a teenage boy who appeared to be wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth.

  Stravinsky restored the errant hat to its owner. ‘Good morning, maestro. We had heard you were on board.’

  Toscanini clutched the fedora. ‘When do we sail, Igor? Have you some idea?’

  ‘Not today, at any rate,’ Stravinsky replied. He indicated Manhattan’s red, white and blue funnels, which towered silently over them. ‘The engines have not yet been started, and the stewards tell us that the bunkers have not yet been filled with fuel, either.’

  ‘Incredible,’ Toscanini burst out, ‘that they cannot say when we sail.’

  The two men made an odd contrast: the Italian conductor dishevelled by the wind and his emotion, the Russian composer impeccably turned out in homburg hat, plus-fours, argyle socks and spats, as though for a promenade through the Bois de Boulogne. ‘I understand you are waiting for your wife?’

  Toscanini groaned by way of an answer. He raised his arms to the autumn sky, his gnarled fingers crooked, his lined face anguished.

  ‘Calm yourself, maestro,’ Stravinsky said. ‘She will come. There is time. Passengers are still boarding.’ Indeed, a group of new passengers was even now hurrying up the gangplank, lugging suitcases and trailing coats. The ark would sink under their weight soon. ‘They tell us that you don’t go to your cabin or the dining room.’

  ‘I cannot stand the company of idiots.’

  ‘You should not have become a conductor, then,’ Stravinsky replied.

  Toscanini was unamused. ‘You laugh, but I cry,’ he said angrily.

  ‘I am not laughing. I have left my wife behind – in her grave.’ Stravinsky was in a mood of weary irony. ‘My young friend Thomas here has been telling me about a talking robot they have in America. It can do sums and smoke cigarettes. Perhaps your occupation and mine will be usurped by such inventions in time.’

  Toscanini groaned again. He yearned for Lake Maggiore, for Isolino, for the palazzo on the island where he had made his home, in a coppice of cypresses and pines, in a thicket of peace. He yearned for Italy and Italians. For how many years would he be condemned to spend his life on an alien shore, among crazy foreigners?

  ‘I was invited,’ Stravinsky went on, ‘by the manufacturer Pleyel to transcribe my compositions for the Auto-Pleyela, their mechanical piano. The music is conveyed on to perforated paper rolls, which are put into the device. Through a system of membranes and pneumatic valves, the machine then plays the music exactly as the composer transcribed it. No need for a conductor or a performer. What do you think of that?’

  ‘That is a diabolical invention,’ Toscanini retorted.

  Stravinsky shrugged. ‘I hope to leave a series of model performances to guide future interpreters. A composer hears every sort of distortion of his work, which of course prevents the public from getting any true idea of his intentions.’

  Toscanini drew himself up stiffly. ‘Are you saying you were dissatisfied with my conducting of your Petrushka in Venice?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I take no liberties,’ Toscanini went on, deeply offended. ‘I have
never tried to enforce my own ideas from the podium. I have always had the utmost contempt for that kind of conductor, in love with showy effects and self-aggrandisement.’

  ‘Of course, maestro.’

  ‘I rely on my iron discipline, my mastery of the score, my excellent memory. My only desire is to enter the spirit and intention of the composer.’

  ‘Indeed, maestro,’ Stravinsky said blandly. ‘Yet is it not a pity that your Promethean energy and marvellous talents should almost always be wasted on such eternally repeated works as fragments of Verdi and Wagner that have long since grown stale?’

  ‘Stale!’

  ‘I mean in the sense that food exposed for too long on a buffet will inevitably lose its freshness and become mouldy.’

  ‘Mouldy!’

  ‘Concert programmes,’ Stravinsky went on, ‘contain too much that is wearisomely familiar, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Luckily,’ Toscanini snapped, provoked beyond endurance, ‘we have composers who do not scruple to mangle the rules of music beyond all comprehension in the pursuit of something new!’

  Stravinsky tipped his hat, as though he had received some exquisite compliment, and walked on, accompanied by the pale German youth.

  No sooner had this irritation passed, however, when Toscanini was confronted with a second, in the shape of two young women, who had been standing behind Stravinsky, forming a kind of queue.

  ‘Oh, maestro,’ one said breathlessly, ‘please could you autograph this?’

  Toscanini was about to snarl a rebuff when he noticed that the young woman in question was extremely pretty, her expression appealing. ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘This is all I have,’ she went on, ‘but if you were to sign it, it would be a great honour!’

  The thing she was holding out, he now saw, was a Tourist Class dining room menu. He caught the words mutton stew on the list of fare. He took it and the proffered pen. ‘To whom should I inscribe it?’

  ‘My name is Masha Morgenstern. And this is my cousin, Rachel Morgenstern.’

  She was of the type that he liked best – petite but curvaceous, with a heart-shaped face and a full mouth. He glanced over her shoulder. The other girl, though of a more austere type, with angular cheekbones and the cold blue eyes of a Siamese cat, was also attractive in her way.

  ‘You young ladies are travelling to New York?’

  ‘Yes, maestro.’

  ‘Emigrating?’

  ‘We are Jews.’ She looked up at him shyly. Her lips were parted, the gloss of youth upon them, fresher than any paint. Toscanini stroked his moustache with the tip of the young woman’s pen. His recent annoyance with Stravinsky was fading swiftly. Even thoughts of Carla had receded. Under his scrutiny, she dropped her gaze modestly. Her eyelashes were thick and soft as owl’s feathers. The sun caught the golden glow of down on her cheeks. He felt a stirring. One could imagine such a face smiling up at one shyly from the pillow. ‘I wish you luck in your new home, my dears.’

  He uncapped the pen and wrote, in his elegantly sprawling hand,

  ‘Me, pellegrina ed orfana,

  Lungi dal patrio nido.

  Un fato inesorabile

  Sospinge a stranio lido . . .’

  He signed it with his name.

  Masha took it from him and gasped. ‘Why, it’s Verdi! From La forza del destino! Oh, maestro, I will treasure this all my life!’

  He beamed at her. ‘I hope we will see one another many times more on this voyage.’

  Rendered speechless by this gracious condescension, Masha nodded. Flushing, she allowed herself to be led away by Rachel.

  ‘Old goat,’ Rachel said shortly.

  ‘Hush!’ Masha exclaimed in shock. She looked over her shoulder. Toscanini, who appeared not to have heard Rachel’s observation, raised his hat after them. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘He was practically undressing you with his eyes.’

  ‘That good, kind old man? Nonsense!’

  ‘He’s still leering at your backside.’

  Masha pulled her arm out of Rachel’s. ‘You’re awful sometimes, Rachel.’

  ‘I thought you admired my awfulness.’

  ‘But you see the worst in everyone.’

  ‘Toscanini is no saint, believe me.’

  ‘Look what he has written,’ Masha said, holding up the menu. ‘So apt. Such sensitivity. What a wonderful soul, Rachel.’

  ‘Make sure he doesn’t get you alone in a dark corner,’ was all that Rachel would comment.

  The Western Approaches

  Jürgen Todt was in a state of nervous elation. He had sunk two more vessels within forty-eight hours. It was true that they had been small fry – a 1,500-ton collier limping along the Irish coast, and a 2,000-ton freighter carrying pig iron to the Clyde – but his total was already approaching seven thousand tons sunk. At this rate, the Knight’s Cross would be his in a matter of weeks.

  In the lens of his periscope now was a fishing smack of around 250 tons. She was so close that he could read the name on her bows, Kitty of Coleraine, and underneath that, the name of her owner, a Northern Irish fisheries company.

  She was fair game. And he lusted for her. But U-113’s complement of sixteen torpedoes was already reduced to nine. To use a torpedo on such a small prize would be wasteful. He weighed up his options, then closed the handles of the periscope and pushed it down with a pneumatic hiss.

  ‘We’ll take her with the deck gun,’ he said.

  ‘That will be hard,’ Rudi Hufnagel noted. ‘It’s rough up there.’

  Todt ignored his watch officer. ‘Action stations. Prepare to surface.’

  U-113 surfaced in moderately heavy seas, about fifty yards off the fishing boat’s starboard quarter. Todt broached the U-boat so that it was parallel to Kitty of Coleraine. It was early in the evening, and very cold.

  The crew went into action fast, clambering out of the conning tower and on to the rolling deck. Their captain had brought them within range of the RAF’s Sunderland flying-boats, so what had to be done had to be done quickly.

  The gun crew of four lugged the heavy 20mm flak gun along the deck and mounted it on the firing-platform behind the conning tower. The swell made the work difficult; waves dashed over the mounting, the men slid and fell, saved from being swept away only by their safety-lines.

  ‘Take out the bridge, quick,’ Todt commanded, the binoculars to his face. ‘Rapid fire.’

  The Oerlikon opened fire, its twin barrels pumping shells into Kitty of Coleraine’s wheelhouse. The flimsy little structure collapsed almost immediately, the radio mast sagging down into the water. It was a miracle of gunnery, given the conditions. They could see crew members running in panic for the single lifeboat, which was slung on a davit over the stern. The gun crew ceased firing as the ammunition canisters emptied.

  ‘Reload!’ Todt screamed at them. ‘Keep firing.’

  ‘We’re giving them a chance to abandon ship, Captain,’ the chief gunner called up to the conning tower.

  ‘The bridge, the bridge, God damn you. They may be sending a radio message right now.’

  The gun crew locked the fresh canisters in place and opened fire again. The wheelhouse disintegrated in the storm of shells, its wooden wreckage now ablaze. Some of the Irish crew, scrambling to ship the lifeboat, were caught in the barrage of shells, their bodies spinning like rag dolls.

  ‘Again! Again!’ Todt commanded. ‘Don’t stop until I give the order.’

  The rest of the U-boat crew watched from the bridge while Todt ordered the gunners to keep firing until the smack’s deck was a blazing ruin. The single smokestack was gone, all the tackle and rigging had been shot away. Though they’d tried to spare the lifeboat, the heavy seas had made accurate aiming impossible, and a shell had hit it, blowing off most of one side. It dangled uselessly over the transom.

  Todt studied the fishing boat tensely through his binoculars, wiping them impatiently as condensation formed in the lenses. Satisfied that there was no further
movement, he leaned over the rail to the heavier cannon. ‘Now, the waterline,’ he shouted.

  The cannon crew obeyed, raking Kitty of Coleraine’s hull with half a dozen 88mm shells. The little boat listed heavily and began to founder.

  Todt circled U-113 around the sinking fishing boat. The crew stared in silence at the morning’s work. As the deck submerged, Kitty of Coleraine’s cargo of fish started to float out of the hold, like the disgorged last meal of some stricken animal. Silvery, the fish drifted among the oil that slicked the sea.

  Other things were drifting, too: the men’s cots, their few possessions, unused life jackets. Some of the flotsam was human, no longer intact, blackened lumps of men barely breaking surface as they wallowed in the swell. And there were two living men, too dazed to call for help, clinging to the same lifebelt.

  ‘I count sixteen bodies,’ Hufnagel said without inflection. ‘Including the survivors.’ The sea-spray had frozen in his and Todt’s eyebrows and beards, white forests riming their faces. There was no hope for the men in the sea. ‘We could have warned them before we opened fire.’

  ‘So they could radio for a plane to come and sink us?’

  ‘We could have told them to keep radio silence and ship their lifeboat. That is the procedure we are asked to follow.’

  ‘This is not a gentleman’s game,’ Todt retorted. ‘It’s war.’

  ‘Yes, Kapitän.’

  ‘We can hardly stop every ship for a friendly chat. What would you say, three hundred tons?’

  ‘I would say less. Perhaps two hundred and sixty.’

  ‘Good enough. Put that in the log,’ Todt commanded.

  The silence among the crew continued as the U-boat slipped away from the kill. Many of them were the sons of Baltic fishermen. Seeing those bodies broken by the anti-aircraft gun had left a bad taste. ‘Boys and old men,’ as Ludwig the diesel officer muttered, opening a can of peaches he’d saved for such an occasion, when he would want something sweet. ‘No warning given. Just goodbye, nice to meet you.’