‘Where are you going, Arturo?’
He was brought up short. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’ve arrived.’
‘You see me, don’t you?’
‘Of course I see you.’
‘You can’t imagine the journey I’ve had,’ Carla said crossly. ‘The whole of Europe has gone mad. Including you, I think.’ She rapped the trolley sharply with her umbrella. ‘Get these things back on board. Don’t you know the ship is about to leave?’
‘Of course I know that,’ he snapped.
She took his arm as the porter heaved the laden trolley around, and began to trundle back up the ramp. ‘Why aren’t you wearing the scarf I gave you, that cashmere one?’
He clutched his throat. ‘I put it on this morning. I think I may have dropped it somewhere.’
‘You’re becoming impossibly forgetful,’ Carla said severely. ‘It was expensive. Really, you are hopeless without me.’
‘Without you,’ he growled, ‘life was a lot quieter.’
After his visit to the engine room, Thomas had been unable to stop talking about the sights he had seen. They had made an immense impression on him. Words poured out of him: so many degrees Fahrenheit, so many pounds per square inch, so much boiler horsepower, he remembered all the figures precisely.
He, Thomas and Katharine had gone up to the games deck, the highest part of the ship. It was crowded with passengers, but they found a place at the railing. Two tugs had arrived alongside the Manhattan. As they nosed her away from the wharf, pouring black smoke, the great liner seemed to give a shudder all along her steel body.
Down on the quayside, a band was playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, but the thumping of the anthem was barely audible over the cheering of the multitude. At least, it was presumably cheering; at times, it sounded like wailing. Streamers and confetti poured from the ship, snaking down on to the crowds below, a final, tenuous link with Europe that was soon broken.
The tugs nudged Manhattan into the channel, leaving behind her empty berth, where mats of coloured streamers floated in the oily, grey water. The liner moved steadily away from shore. The sound of the band grew distant. Already, there was a new perspective. The buildings of Le Havre appeared smaller, a toy town for children. The security of the harbour gave way to a prospect of the open sea, dark blue and mottled with the sunlight that streamed through the patchy cloud cover.
The tugs fell away on either side. Again, Manhattan shuddered, more deeply this time. Her gears had engaged. She uttered another long blast on her hooter to indicate that she was making way under her own steam. The tugs responded, and so did every other vessel nearby. Thomas clapped his hands over his ears to shut out the huge sound. Stravinsky patted him on the shoulder, and then stared at the receding shapes of France. The ship felt different now, purposeful. She steamed steadily out of the harbour towards the open sea.
The crowds that lined the digue nord at the mouth of the harbour were densely packed, but largely silent. As the ship passed them, Stravinsky noticed a few waving hands and fluttering handkerchiefs, but by and large, the last Frenchmen he saw simply stood passively, watching the ship sail away.
The English Channel
The radio transcript was delivered to Commodore Randall as he dined in Tourist Class, which it was his habit to do two or three times on each voyage. Unlike some captains, he was not above joining the hundred-dollar passengers now and then, and conferring upon them the reflection of his glory.
They were having a rough crossing of the Channel. Plates slid across the tables as Manhattan rolled. Half the tables in the dining room were empty. Commodore Randall’s dinner companions included the Russian composer Stravinsky and his companion, Miss Wolff, who had both been staring at their plates during his anecdotes, showing little of the sympathy or excitement one might have expected from highly sensitive persons.
Randall paused in his narrative as the steward put the slip of paper into his hand, and studied the message. The first line was enough to make Randall swiftly fold it again and put it into his jacket pocket. He glared at the fool who didn’t know better than to bring such messages into dining rooms, but the man was already hurrying away. He would make sure someone had a word with him later.
‘And so it was,’ he continued, steadying his wayward plate, ‘that the story, which began so badly, had a happy ending.’
The German boy with the swastika on his lapel, who had been the only listener hanging eagerly on the captain’s words, spoke anxiously in his guttural English. ‘But you have not said what happened next. Was nobody drowned?’
‘We didn’t lose a single soul,’ Commodore Randall replied. ‘It was all in a day’s work for me and my crew, but for some reason the newspapers got a hold of the story, and imagine my surprise, on returning to New York, to be given a ticker-tape parade.’
‘What is this, please?’
Randall smiled indulgently at the pale youth. ‘I and my crew were driven in an open car down Broadway, from the Battery to City Hall. We were showered with confetti and streamers all the way.’ Randall was already pushing back his chair preparatory to leaving the table. ‘But I must excuse myself. We’ll be in Southampton by morning. I bid you good night, ladies and gentlemen.’
With a snappy salute, he left the dining room, nothing loth to forego the rest of his dinner, a hash of beef which, between the fat and the gristle, required careful navigation. He would fill the empty place inside him later. For now, he was more concerned to examine the transcript he had been handed.
He read it on the bridge, watched by a group of officers who already knew the contents. It consisted of a series of Marconigrams. The first read:
SOS FROM BRITISH CARGO SHIP ROBERT RECORDE POSN 54 22 N 1705. TORPEDOED BY GERMAN SUBMARINE. 23 CREW SOME STILL ABOARD. SINKING. URGENT.
The position given was in the Western Approaches, along the route which Manhattan herself would shortly be traversing. The second Marconigram, sent an hour later, read:
M.V. PEARL PRINCESS. DISTANCE FROM YOU 30. STEERING FULL STEAM AHEAD TO YOUR ASSISTANCE.
The third was also from the Pearl Princess, and had been sent to the British Admiralty some six hours later:
REACHED LAST POSITION OF ROBERT RECORDE. OIL SLICK AND WRECKAGE FOUND. NO SIGN VESSEL OR LIFEBOATS. CONTINUING SEARCH.
Randall folded the paper and looked up at his officers. ‘Anything since?’
‘Nothing, Commodore.’
‘Well, gentlemen. We know what we’re up against. We’ll be setting special watches. I’ll order a lifeboat drill as soon as we leave the British Isles.’
‘Will we be plotting an evasive course, sir?’
‘No.’
The first officer cleared his throat. ‘The British Admiralty advised—’
‘I’m fully aware of the advice of the British Admiralty,’ Commodore Randall growled, turning a cold eye on the man. ‘It applies to British shipping. We are a United States vessel.’
‘Yes, Commodore.’
There was a silence. The Admiralty announcement had been sent from London on the first day of the war, advising all shipping to travel at speed in a zigzag pattern to avoid submarine attacks. Randall’s officers watched him, waiting.
‘Well?’ he demanded, glaring back at them. ‘Spit it out.’