Dangerous Sea

by David Roberts

  ‘Did you see anyone?’ Frank asked Barrett.

  ‘No, nor did I expect to. We’re not dealing with amateurs.’

  Frank had wondered just who they were dealing with but decided not to ask. In their heavy ulsters, Barrett and the chauffeur were reasonably well protected against the wind but they must have been cold, Frank thought. The rest of them in the back were protected by the glass partition. When they stopped for petrol half an hour later, Frank saw Barrett probing a hole in the upholstery with a knife. ‘Ah, got it! I thought so.’ He had handed the spent bullet to Frank. ‘Keep it as a souvenir, if you like. It’s no use to me. Let’s hope it’s the last of its kind we see. It must have missed my head by an inch, damn it.’

  After their game they showered and, at Perry’s suggestion, repaired to the bar. Frank would have liked to talk about being shot at with his new American friend but he stopped himself. Perry seemed ‘a good chap’ and was travelling First Class but, even so, he really knew nothing about him.

  ‘You’re related to the President?’ he asked.

  The direct question seemed to fluster Perry a little. ‘I’m only a cousin . . . a distant cousin. It’s a huge clan. My sister and I hardly ever get to see the great man except at major family gatherings. You know Mrs Roosevelt is also a cousin? It must be odd to marry someone and not change your name.’

  ‘Your sister? Is she on board?’

  ‘Sure. Talk of the devil, here she is. She’s my twin.’

  The girl who came towards them with the unconscious grace of the young was wearing a simple white dress, white stockings and a straw hat with a ribbon round it. She looked part angelic child – the kind you don’t trust – and part tennis player, Helen Wills without her racket. She was the most beautiful thing Frank had ever seen and he fell helplessly in love before she had even opened her mouth.

  ‘Philly, I want you to meet my new friend, Frank . . . Lord Corinth? Is that how I should introduce you?’

  Frank did not hear what was said to him. He just gazed at the girl, his mouth a little open, proving that love really can strike a person deaf and dumb.

  ‘Hey there,’ Perry said, waving a hand in front of Frank’s eyes, ‘don’t fall in love with my sister like all the rest. You’re my friend. I found you first. Philly, Frank here’s a duke or he will be one day, I guess. He’s a genuine English aristocrat and don’t pretend you’ve met any others because you haven’t.’

  Philly swung her long legs over a stool and said, ‘A Gibson, please, Roger.’ The bar steward looked gratified that the pretty girl already knew his name.

  ‘And for you, sir?’

  ‘Oh, a gimlet,’ Frank said, trying to sound sophisticated. ‘What’s a Gibson?’ he inquired, unable to sustain the fiction that he was a habitué of nightclubs.

  ‘Gin and vermouth,’ Philly replied. ‘Just a martini really. I was trying to impress you.’

  ‘You succeeded.’

  Perry gave every sign that he was bored – or was it jealousy? ‘Have you seen the swimming-pool? It’s a killer. What say you? Shall we go use it before the hoi polloi find it? I need to shower anyway and so do you, Frank. Doesn’t he stink, Philly?’

  ‘I don’t smell anything. Come over here.’

  Obediently, Frank got off his stool and went over to the girl. She raised her face to his and sniffed. ‘Closer,’ she commanded and Frank lowered his face to hers. A whiff of scent made his head swim. He thought he must kiss her or die but, before he could do so, she said, ‘You’re right, Perry. He does stink.’

  Frank looked from one twin to the other, bewildered and not a little in love with both of them. ‘I’ll go and get my costume,’ he said with an effort. Feeling very thirsty all of a sudden, he swallowed down his cocktail and almost choked. The twins laughed.

  The pool was the most luxurious Frank had ever seen. He guessed it must be over thirty feet long and maybe twenty wide. It had two diving boards and was faced with glazed terracotta tiles. The walls shimmered green and red while the mother-of-pearl ceiling added to the impression of being in a jewel box. Perry and he showered and then, laughing loudly to fill the emptiness of the place and hear the echo, pulled on their trunks and made a dash for the water. Out of the corner of his eye, Frank saw the girl leaning against one of the faience columns which supported the arches over the pool. She too had changed but seemed in no hurry to get into the water. Making every effort to impress her, Frank dived off one of the boards and resurfaced to find Philly had not even been watching. She had been fitting her bathing cap in a mirror on one side of the pool.

  Frank pulled himself up on to the side and watched the water stream off him. It was quite warm but, feeling suddenly naked, he pulled a towel round his shoulders. Perry came to sit beside him. ‘Fancy swimming in February in the middle of the Atlantic!’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d last many minutes if you were swimming in the Atlantic.’ Frank paused but Perry made no comment so he continued, ‘With a name like Roosevelt, I suppose that means you are going into politics.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not immediately, anyway. I want to make money.’

  ‘But aren’t you rich?’ Frank asked naively. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. That sounds rude.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. I guess we are rich compared with other folk but we’re not rich by the standards of the rich, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘But there’s always going to be someone richer than you,’ Frank laughed.

  ‘Maybe, but not much richer by the time I’m through. You can’t go into politics without money, anyway. I expect it’s the same in England.’

  Frank considered. ‘Money always helps, I suppose, but politicians aren’t rich the way you mean it. Stanley Baldwin’s father was an industrialist – steel or iron, I think – and the Chamberlains are not poor but we don’t have Rockefellers and Mellons like you do in the States.’

  ‘Not even dukes? Aren’t they rich?’

  Frank blushed but tried to answer coolly, as if talking about how rich you were was something he did all the time. ‘My father is rich in land but he doesn’t have millions in the bank.’

  ‘Did you go to Eton?’

  Frank found there was something distasteful about being questioned so blatantly but he had, after all, started it. He knew it was the American way not to beat about the bush and, in theory at least, he approved.

  ‘I went to Eton but then I went off to Spain before I was finished to join the International Brigade,’ he said casually.

  Perry was impressed. ‘Wow! You’ve been to war? And all I’ve done is prepped at Grotton and now I’m at Harvard – just to please my Pop.’

  ‘Your parents are here, on the ship?’

  ‘My mother is. Pop’s in Washington. They’re divorced.’

  Frank could not prevent himself being shocked. Where he came from divorce did not happen – or, if it did, it meant social ruin. He had heard divorce did not carry the same stigma in the States, but still . . .

  They turned to watch Philly on the end of the board, preparing to dive. She was clearly waiting until she had their full attention. ‘She’s very beautiful,’ Frank said, without meaning to.

  Perry looked at him oddly. ‘Don’t let her sucker you. She’s like that girl in Great Expectations – they made us read it at college – she has no heart. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  Frank wasn’t listening. With a graceful bounce, Philly had dived. Clean as a knife she cut the surface of the water and then swam to the side to join them. ‘Look,’ she whispered, ‘we’re not alone any more. I’m going. I hate being looked at.’

  This was so obviously untrue, Frank opened his mouth to object. Then he saw the old man and his wife at the other end of the pool climbing gingerly down the steps into the shallow water. She meant she only liked being watched by people she wanted to impress. He saw that now and it cheered him up no end. He understood that, for some reason, this wonderful girl wanted to impress him. He gathered up Philly’s wrap and helped her
put it on. He was tender and she shot him a look of gratitude which made his pulse race. At that moment, he would have done anything she asked him. He looked apologetically at Perry who was smiling compassionately at him.

  4

  Not many hours had passed since those who had boarded the Queen Mary at Southampton had looked about them with, as the poet Keats puts it, ‘a wild surmise’. They had struggled to find their way about, found their berths and lost them again, expressed wonder and awe at the grandeur and luxury of their new abode while worrying, at least in the case of the females, at the inadequacy of their wardrobes. These same passengers now watched with amused condescension the absurd floundering of the lost souls joining the ship at Cherbourg. The ‘old hands’ chatted amongst themselves, no longer strangers, but an aristocracy bemoaning the necessity of absorbing these interlopers, many of them, it was whispered, ‘foreigners’.

  A sea voyage, it has been said, suspends time so that, whether it last four or five days, as would this transatlantic crossing, depending on the weather, or weeks, had the destination been Australia or India, the time would pass both very slowly and so fast that, when dry land was achieved, the days at sea would be immediately forgotten. Intimacies, even love affairs, fanned by the sea breezes or the music of Henry Hall’s dance band, would dissolve in the dirty air of reality when feet were once again on solid ground. ‘It was a dream,’ a passenger would say to herself or himself. ‘I must have been bewitched. Did I really give those awful people our address and beg them to come and stay whenever they were next in London or Leeds, Boston or Philadelphia? Did I really think this man handsome enough to kiss by the lifeboats? Or, the girl with her appalling mother – did I really ask her to spend the rest of her life with me?’

  Fortunately, it was generally agreed, promises made on a luxury liner were as gossamer. There was a code or formula, Edward had once been told, which excused actresses’ indiscretions on the film set – DCOL. Amy Pageant had told him it stood for ‘doesn’t count on location’ and, when it had been explained to him, he was shocked and Amy had laughed at him. However, he was soon to think there must be a similar exculpation covering shipboard flirtations. He had happened to see his nephew deep in conversation with a pretty American girl. Frank said something – Edward could not hear what – and the girl threw back her head and laughed, exposing her exquisite throat. Frank half raised his hand as if to shield himself but had then laughed too, with the delicious complicity of the acknowledged lover. Edward sighed as he watched the besotted boy and then chided himself. Were he Frank’s age, would he not be in love with this elfin child? Hadn’t he seen Verity looking at Sam Forrest with just such intense fascination? He wondered if, after all, this was going to be the right moment to ask Verity to be his wife.

  An elderly couple called Dolmen, who came aboard at Cherbourg, were immediately and instinctively judged to be beneath the notice of many of the English. It was generally held to be unfortunate to be foreign, a deliberate affront not to speak English and thoroughly reprehensible to be German. Mrs Dolmen fell foul of all of these tenets. She spoke no English and only a little French. Mr Dolmen spoke English with a heavy accent but Frank, who was the first to meet him – he had the cabin on the other side of his – rather liked the look of him.

  He had no such feeling about the couple occupying the cabin on the other side. ‘Major Cranton,’ the man had barked, thrusting his hand out to Frank when they had happened to leave their cabins at the same time. His little moustache, wrinkling as he spoke, and military bearing advertised the truth of his assertion. From what Frank overheard – quite involuntarily – the Major seemed to have little time for his wife whom he ordered about as if she were his batman. The walls of the cabins were not thin but nor were they completely soundproof and Frank, registering this, hoped he wasn’t going to be disturbed by the Major’s parade-ground expletives.

  Once they had left Cherbourg, it was time to dress for dinner. Marcus Fern, who had been to the States on several occasions, agreed with Edward that it was important to make ‘a good impression’ on the first night, particularly as they were invited to sit at the Captain’s table – a compliment they owed to being stars in Lord Benyon’s firmament. So it was that, come seven o’clock, Frank could be found struggling with his white tie, cursing his starched shirt front and hopping about on one leg looking for an errant sock. Ready at last, he leant over the basin to peer in the mirror and prepared to do battle with his hair. Springy at the best of times, it could not be made to lie flat. He risked a little brilliantine but in the end gave up. He cursed for the last time as one of his gold shirt studs popped off his chest and down the plughole. Awash with pleasurable self-pity, he comforted himself that, whatever he wore, he would still feel inadequate when he saw Philly Roosevelt again.

  He went to Lord Benyon’s suite on the deck above where Edward, Verity and Sam Forrest were already congregated, drinking cocktails. He noticed that Sam had chosen to wear a dinner jacket, or tuxedo, as he referred to it to Frank who had not heard the word before. Instead of a waistcoat, Sam wore a white cummerbund. He looked rather dashing and Frank felt overdressed and half-throttled by his collar.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Verity demanded. ‘I told Mr Forrest he needn’t put on the whole soup-and-fish but never mind,’ she said, seeing Frank’s face fall, ‘you do look very handsome in it. I would kiss you but I don’t want to smudge my lipstick.’

  If she was looking for a compliment from her young admirer, Frank did not oblige. He still hadn’t altogether forgiven her for the part she had played in his ignominious return from Spain. In any case, for the last three hours there had been only one girl in his life and it wasn’t Verity.

  ‘According to my uncle, First Class passengers never wear dinner jackets on the first night at sea,’ Frank replied, then, seeing the American wince, realized he had been rude. He added hurriedly, ‘But what does it matter. It’s all bunk anyway!’

  Verity appeared not to have noticed the slight to her friend because she carried on as if Frank had not spoken. ‘Sam wants to tell you about the Youth Congress and the struggle for workers’ rights,’ she continued bossily. Frank was unable to feel any enthusiasm for a political lecture and his face must have shown it because Forrest winked at him and after a moment’s hesitation the boy smiled back. He decided that Sam was ‘a good chap’ for all he was an American. In fact, come to think of it, he was starting to like Americans more than some of his own people.

  Verity looked at Frank sharply. ‘What have you been up to? You’ve been up to something.’ Then, remembering she had no rights over this young man, she added hastily, ‘Not that it has anything to do with me, of course.’

  ‘I was swimming. You said you didn’t need me, sir,’ he said, turning to Benyon.

  ‘No, that was all right by me, my boy, but I’m not in charge of your political education.’

  Verity looked a little put out. She had a feeling she was being teased. Given that her political example had led Frank – or so his family thought – to run away from school and nearly get himself killed in someone else’s war, her attempt at ‘educating’ him might be seen by two or three of those present as something of a disaster.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Edward announced to his nephew’s relief. ‘Shall we go in to dinner? I confess to being curious as to what the food will be like. I hear they have employed a famous French chef.’

  ‘I agree,’ Benyon said. ‘All my instincts – and I should add the steward’s instincts – suggest that we’re in for a bit of a blow, so who’s to say we’ll feel like dining tomorrow night.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Verity wailed. ‘I really mean to live like a capitalist exploiter for a few days. I’ll be devastated if I spend the whole trip writhing on my bunk, or whatever you call it.’

  As they entered the restaurant through the silver-metal screens, they were all struck by the magnificence of the scene that presented itself to their gaze. Surmounted by a vast dome, the great room, th
e whole width of the ship and over a hundred feet in length, glistened in subtle, indirect lighting. A huge painting of the English countryside embraced the bronze grille doors which dominated the room. The tables laid with silver were reflected in glass wall panels but the brilliance was tempered by the wood and bronze. Most striking of all, a huge map of the Atlantic Ocean, decorated with aeroplanes and stars, covered almost the whole of one wall. Remarkable though this was, it was made even more marvellous by a model of the Queen Mary which passed over the painted ocean between representations of London and New York, enabling passengers to plot the progress of their ship.

  The head waiter, who now approached them, might have been welcoming them to the Savoy Grill or the Berkeley. Without being required to identify themselves, they were ushered the whole length of the restaurant to the Captain’s table which rested on a slight dais. The Captain was not yet present but Verity was delighted to see, half hidden behind a huge swan sculpted in ice and dripping from the beak on to a silver salver, Warren Fairley and Jane Barclay. Proudly, she introduced them to the party and was glad to see the respect and warmth with which Edward greeted Fairley. She admitted, grudgingly, that, whatever his faults, Edward’s manners were perfect. Rather unexpectedly, Edward considered, the Dolmens were also brought to the Captain’s table as was Bernard Hunt accompanied by a lady wearing the most extraordinary coiffure which looked as though an exotic bird had died in her hair. This was Miss Doris Zinkeisen.

  Miss Zinkeisen was one of the best-known names in theatre and film on both sides of the Atlantic. She had designed the costumes for Nymph Errant and Wild Violets and numerous Cochran reviews. She was a friend of many Hollywood stars who depended on her, on and off the set, to look their best and she had been appointed ‘Personality Creator’ to one film studio. She was also a successful artist and had her first picture hung in the Royal Academy when she was seventeen.