“You saw your first husband off to war,” Robert said.
He sounded bitter, Sarah thought. Was he jealous of Ada’s previous husbands? It seemed absurd. Perhaps it was only this first husband, she thought. Elliot. She was fairly sure he had been the first. Or was it Arthur?
Sarah knew little about any of Ada’s husbands. Ada was someone who lived, by and large, in the present day, seldom discussing her past. And by the time Sarah had come to live with Ada, the last of Ada’s four spouses had been dead for more than twenty years.
Sarah tried to remember the little she had been told. There had been an Elliot, an Arthur, a Charles, and finally John Milington, Sr.-the father of the man who had adopted Sarah. Yes, that was the order. She remembered that Ada had married the first one when she was eighteen, and that he had died in World War II.
Bella had once let it slip that Ada had a son from that marriage, a son who so disliked Ada’s third husband, mother and son had become estranged. Sarah frowned. Or was it a son by the second husband who disliked the third? Sarah could not remember. She couldn’t even recall Ada’s eldest boy’s name. She did recall Bella’s warning never to mention this son to Ada. Not wanting to cause Ada pain, or to make trouble for the old housekeeper, Sarah had kept her silence.
She glanced at Ada, and saw that her grandmother was frowning. It was then that another implication of Robert’s remark came home to her.
“If you said good-bye to your first husband that day, he must have sailed on the Queen Mary when she was used as a troop ship, during the war.”
Ada nodded. “I never saw him again.”
“But being on the ship again-won’t it be sad for you?”
Ada smiled and shook her head. “No, Sarah dear. Not at all. I was never actually aboard the ship, of course. We said good-bye at the dock. And the ship doesn’t even look the same on the outside now. She was painted a dull gray then, and her portholes were blackened. She was called ‘the Grey Ghost’ during the war.”
“I read about that period of the ship’s history,” Sarah said. “The Queen Mary was able to cross the Atlantic in four or five days, which made her the fastest ship on the sea-capable of outrunning German submarines, if need be. She was even faster than German torpedoes.” She paused, frowned, and added, “Faster than the ones used at the beginning of the war. There was a bounty on her. Hitler promised he would give a quarter of a million dollars and Germany’s highest honors to the submarine captain who sank her.”
“My, you have read up on her,” Robert Parsons said.
Sarah responded as she always did under stress. She turned to numbers. “Yes. The ship made a great contribution to the Allied efforts. During the war, the Queen Mary carried over seven hundred and sixty-five thousand military personnel over half a million nautical miles.”
She saw that Parsons was smiling again, until Ada said, “One of those three-quarters of a million was mine.”
“Yes, of course,” Sarah said. “I’m sorry.”
Robert reached forward and took Ada’s hand.
Ada, never one to brood, soon changed the subject.
She began to recite the guest list for the party. Sarah stayed silent, only half-attending as local dignitaries and old friends were named. While a woman of Ada’s wealth and influence would never have trouble finding guests for her parties, it was her reputation for holding lively, out of the ordinary celebrations which made her invitations much sought after.
At last the Queen Mary came into sight. Sarah, seeing the long, sleek giant before her, its trio of mammoth red stacks cuffed in black towering above them, quickly realized that all the reading she had done about this historic vessel could never do it justice.
“A building?” she heard Robert Parsons ask.
“No,” Sarah said quietly. “A ship, a beautiful, beautiful ship.”
“Nothing like her in the world,” he agreed. “Wait until you’re aboard.”
“You’ve been on the Queen Mary before?” she asked, surprised.
“A few times,” he said, but Ada began directing her to the hotel entrance before Sarah could ask more.
As they were welcomed by the staff at the registration desk, Sarah’s eyes roved over the Art Deco lines of the ship’s interior, the etched glass and shining brass, the rich exotic woods that surrounded her-crafted into curving, sumptuous, smooth surfaces and marquetry unlike any she had ever seen.
She was recalled from her admiration by Ada’s voice. “The small bag to Mr. Parsons’s suite, please. The trunk and the rest of this group to mine, all except those two very serviceable but dowdy bags, which I’m sorry to say, belong to my granddaughter.”
Sarah followed mutely as they were shown to their rooms, noting that like Ada, Robert was staying in one of the royalty suites. Each suite, Sarah knew, featured a large sitting area separated from a spacious bedroom, a private bath, and an additional small bedroom with a single twin bed in it-servant’s quarters. In the ship’s glory years, the luxurious suites had been occupied by the wealthiest of first class passengers, who paid the equivalent of an average Englishman’s annual wages for round-trip passage-a large sum, even with the servant’s fare and all meals included.
Robert’s suite was near Ada’s, but not adjoining it. Having braced herself for the likelihood that Ada would make the most of such a romantic setting, Sarah was surprised by this arrangement. He had been given a room that certainly placed his status well above that of hired help, but an adjoining room would have made assignations much easier.
Ada had offered a suite to Sarah, but Sarah had opted for one of the staterooms. Not as grand as the suites, it was nevertheless spacious, and like the suites, had many original furnishings in it. Sarah opened the two thick portholes, which provided a view of the Long Beach shoreline and downtown skyline. Taking a deep breath of cool air, she soon put aside her questions about her grandmother and Parsons. She spent the next half hour exploring her own luxurious room.
Soon her toiletries had been neatly arranged, her clothes hung in one of the closets, and nearly every other item she had carried with her stowed in an orderly fashion. She was just deciding where she would place a pair of books she had brought-about the history of the ship-when the phone rang.
“Sarah? Be a dear and run along to the Observation Bar, will you?” Ada said. “I told Robert I would meet him there, but now I’ve learned that Captain Dolman will be here any moment.”
“Captain Dolman? Is he the ship’s captain?” Sarah asked.
“No, no, an old friend. An army captain, retired for years. Now be a dear and don’t make Robert wait there alone-some young wench might look at his handsome face and decide to lead him astray. A man like that, drinking alone in the bar-the consequences are not to be thought of.”
“I don’t-”
“Think you can find it? Of course you can. It’s near the bow of the ship, on the Promenade Deck. Thank you, dear, it’s such a relief to know I can depend upon you.”
Sarah bore this with her usual good grace. She climbed the stairs to the Promenade Deck and moved quickly through the ship’s shopping gallery to the cocktail lounge. Stepping into the curving, multi-level room, she saw before her a row of tall windows with a view of the main deck and bow, and the harbor beyond; nearer, in the room itself, a nickel-colored railing made up of a mixture of creatures real and mythological. She turned; above the mirrors behind the bar, she saw a painting that, up until now, she had only seen in black-and-white photographs of this room. For several long moments, she forgot all about looking for Robert Parsons.
The painting stretched across the length of the bar, and depicted a street scene. More than two dozen figures were caught in motion. They were people from all walks of life, dancing hand-in-hand: sailors, bakers, and men in top hats cavorted with stout matrons, elegantly clad ladies, and women in everyday dress. All were laughing as they circled round and round in celebration. Pennants fluttered above them; one of the revelers had lost her footing, but this was forever that moment before the others would notice.