“Oh, I don’t think—”
“None of that. And if you dare even pronounce the term ‘senior citizen,’ I’ll demonstrate that I’m capable of throwing you into this pool. Headfirst. And hold you under. I am old. I was born near the turn of the century, so I’ve never had any trouble remembering my age.
“Anyway, when I was a boy we lived in New York. On Madison Avenue. We had a house—long gone—a four-story brownstone. My father, mother, two sisters, and me. And a dog actually named Fido. Plus several servants; my father was a successful marine-insurance broker, and we were well-off. Every morning our whole family breakfasted together, by paternal fiat, in the dining room. And one spring morning, a Wednesday, I remember, my father asked me whether I’d like to skip school that day. Well, I was twelve years old, and I acknowledged that just possibly I might; but why? Well, there was a ship coming in, he said, a liner, and it had occurred to him that I might like to see her come in, from his office. He knew very well I would. I was wild about the big liners in the same way, I suppose, that my grand- and great-grandchildren are about planes today. Although come to think of it, I don’t believe they really are. They seem to take everything in stride, pretty hard to impress. They know more than I did when I was twenty years old. And some things, I’m sure, that I don’t know yet.
“But I loved the big liners. Thought about them, read about them, looked at their pictures and drew my own. And would have given anything I had or ever would have to sail on one. As we all did four or five years later. To Europe on the Leviathan. That was the old Vaterland, as you know. You do know, of course?”
“Sure, who doesn’t?”
The old man laughed. “In the years since, I’ve sailed on the Mauretania. More than once. The old Mauretania, of course. And the Normandie, the Laurentic, the Isle de France, God bless her, and the Queen Mary many times. Wonderful ship, the Mary, one of the great ones. Compares with even the Mauretania, and I don’t like it that she’s tied up and engineless in southern California, where she doesn’t belong and never did. I suppose we should be grateful, though, that she still exists. None of the others do. All scrapped the moment their profitable days were done. Suppose we’d saved them? Had them all lined up in Southampton from the Kaiser Wilhelm on, say, right on through to the Mary. Be wonderful, wouldn’t it? Then someday finally we’d add the newest and last, the Queen Elizabeth, Second: the QE Two. Which I’m happy to say is fully in the grand tradition. Modern, yes. As she should be. But a most worthy successor to her ancestors. You must sail on her, my boy, if you never have.”
“Can’t afford it.”
“Stow away then, but do it. Because when she’s gone, when they scrap the QE Two as of course they will, picking her bones and selling the skeleton for the last dime of profit, there’ll be no more Atlantic liners. Not ever. She’s your last chance to know one of man’s most pleasurable experiences, including sex, though a young man like you should be able to combine the two and avoid the comparison: I can assure you it makes for a wonderful crossing. Sail on the QE Two while you still can; I insist. Where was I?”
“Your father.”
“Yes. My father. Of course he knew what my response to his invitation would be, but he was aware, he said, of my burning thirst for knowledge; maybe, after all, I’d prefer to go to school? He’d understand if I did. My father liked to tease us a little, and we enjoyed it, at least I did.
“We went downtown to his office after breakfast, at Battery Place and West Street. The Whitehall Building, new then; it had a good view of New York harbor, and the old Battery. I wore corduroy knickerbockers, long black knit stockings, a kind of Norfolk jacket, and a cloth cap with a peak. All boys did; it was compulsory. We took the El downtown to his office, which had a huge rectangular window overlooking the entire harbor and bay as far as the eye could see. He had a big leather-bound brass telescope on a wooden tripod. I expect every office on that side of the building had one.
“The ship was already visible when we arrived, still far out, hardly more than a speck, but my father found it in the telescope, focused carefully, then turned it over to me, and I stood hardly breathing so as not to jar the telescope, watching that ship grow in the tight little circle of my vision. She was coming straight on, with a bit of white bow wave, and her stacks smoking; I could see that almost tangible blackness curling straight back. She was coal-fueled, and I expect she had a full head of steam. She grew, filling the circle, then expanding beyond it, and I stood erect and found her again with my own vision, shrunk back down in size. But once more she grew, very fast, and then I could see the colors of the pennants strung in her rigging for the occasion. Fireboats appeared, moving out to meet her; then they swung around to escort her in, their long brass hose tips pointing up, pumping great pluming jets of white water and spray. First time I’d ever seen that, though not the last.
“The tugs reached her next, as I recall, and now—she seemed very close—she turned to port, and I saw the full astounding length of her, the great stacks streaming smoke straight out over the port side. They all had four stacks, you know, and I still think it’s the way a liner should be. It’s the only thing wrong with the QE Two; she ought to have four stacks as God intended. Just as He meant automobiles to have running boards, and airplanes two wings. Right, my boy? You agree, of course.”
“Of course,” said Ted’s voice. “It’s what I keep saying all the time.”
“I’m sure you do, but you must try not to be boring about it; you’re not old enough. She turned, as I say, I saw the magnificent length of her, the sun lighting those millions of portholes, and of course in just that moment she sounded her horn. I saw the steam puff first, a sudden whiteness, and then oh, the glory of that deep sound. All the lost sounds: wagon wheels, ships’ steam horns, the whistle of steam locomotives. Yes indeed. God also meant locomotives to run only by steam.”
“I know. Diesels are the devil’s work.”
“You’re right! You’re right! You know, you don’t look eighty at all.”
The chairman laughed. “You two got along, didn’t you?”
Ted poked a control, stopping the tape. “Yeah, we did. ’Course he’s a lawyer, a pro; instinctively wants you on his side, and knows how to get you there.”
Ted started the machine again, the reels turned for a moment, then the old man’s recorded voice continued: “The sound, the cry of that ship, actually rattled the windows, and I do remember clearly that I could feel the vibration of it in my chest. So deep. Such a low, rough, growling, utterly thrilling sound.
“And then very quickly, the tugs assembling around her, little blobs of color fussing at her waterline, their stacks blowing black, she was gone, cut from our view by buildings, but then I learned that the best was yet to come. My father had passes, he announced now, which would admit us to her dock, on the Hudson; she was a White Star liner. And if I liked, we could go watch her dock, unless—and some more nonsense then about my deep love of school and learning.
“The only thing that might conceivably have made that day more wonderful for me would have been to find that down in the street at the cab rank one of the waiting cabs was an automobile. But this morning there were only two waiting cabs, both horse-drawn, and we climbed in, and moved up Broadway, through Washington Square, then over on Fourteenth, I think, and along the Hudson on West Street, to the docks.