‘They are a well-motivated and hard-working crew,’ Hufnagel replied. ‘In their time off, they benefit from laughter and relaxation.’
‘A mind which is not capable of responding to the speeches of Adolf Hitler must be dull and swinish indeed.’
‘I didn’t say they weren’t capable of responding. Only that they are energetic young men who need to loosen up from time to time.’ He tried a smile. ‘These young crews don’t fight for the Führer, or even for Germany. They fight for each other, because they know that if one dies, they all die.’
‘They do not fight for the Führer? I will make a note of this conversation in the captain’s log,’ Todt said, with an unmistakable threat in his voice. He was trembling all the more, and now no longer meeting Hufnagel’s eye.
Hufnagel decided to give up. He saluted Todt and turned to leave the captain’s quarters. As he opened the curtain, however, something occurred to him, and he turned back.
‘What did you mean by saying that you have inherited the problems of other captains?’
Todt did not look up from his log, in which he was energetically writing. ‘It’s no secret that this crew is made up of misfits and rejects.’
Hufnagel paused. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘I was warned when I was given this command that the crew contained a high proportion of borderline cases.’
‘Really? Does that include me?’
Todt finally met Hufnagel’s eyes. ‘Your adherence to National Socialist principles has been in question from the start, Hufnagel. That is no secret, either. It is well-known that you conducted a liaison with a Jewish woman in Berlin.’
‘I see.’
‘I shudder to think of it. Mad folly! How could you defile your racial lineage in that way? I would sooner embrace a serpent or a crocodile.’ Todt capped his fountain pen. He used ink, not pencil, which could be rubbed out. ‘Close the curtain when you have left.’
Hufnagel made his way slowly forward to the torpedo room, thinking of Masha Morgenstern. A liaison with a Jewish woman in Berlin. Yes, it had been mad folly. He had crippled his career during those few months. But was not first love always mad folly? And had those mad, foolish months not been the happiest of his life? It had been a dream of another life, with the most beautiful woman in the world on his arm, laughing at the Two Eggs who followed them everywhere, floating on champagne.
And hardly before it had begun, it was over; and he was standing in the snow, looking up at her window, knowing he would never see her again.
He had certainly never loved any woman other than seventeen-year-old Masha Morgenstern. He was probably going to finish this war on the bottom of the ocean. He could at least say he had loved with all his heart, even if he had subsequently lost. That was something to take to the bottom of the ocean.
Southampton
‘I call this a damned disgrace,’ Dr Meese told Commodore Randall. They were on the upper deck, seventy feet above the waterline, looking down at the stream of new passengers coming aboard. ‘These people aren’t Americans by any stretch of the imagination. Look at them, Commodore. Yet more aliens. Hebrews, Levantines, Semites – whatever you want to call them.’
‘They are refugees, Dr Meese. Do you want me to order my crew to beat them back with oars?’
‘Where are you going to put all this garbage?’
‘I’ve instructed the stewards to prepare emergency sleeping quarters in the grand salons, the palm courts, the gymnasiums and the ship’s post office.’
Meese snorted. ‘So we’ll be picking our way over recumbent bodies? Why it’ll be like a Bowery flophouse on a Saturday night.’
‘There was a time,’ Commodore Randall said, ‘when as a young swab I was glad to find the shelter of a Bowery flophouse.’
‘You cannot tell me that you are proud to be bringing this unsavoury collection of oddities into the United States? You might as well inject a healthy man with the cholera bacillus.’
‘I have saved a few lives in my time, Dr Meese,’ the Commodore said easily, laying a large flipper on Meese’s shoulder, ‘and if God spares me, I will save a few more. It’s not a question of pride, but of common humanity.’
Annoyed by the Commodore’s imperturbable calm, Dr Meese tipped his hat and walked off whistling, with his hands in his pockets. The Commodore turned to his first officer, who was standing beside him, and who had made no contribution to the conversation thus far. ‘These Britishers are preparing for a scrap, by the looks of things, George.’
George Symonds, who had made many a voyage with Randall, nodded his head, gazing at the gun emplacements all around the harbour, and then up at the fleets of barrage balloons overhead. They had seen much the same sort of preparations in Bremen and Le Havre. ‘My money’s on the German dog.’
‘You think it’s the better animal?’
‘I think it’s bigger than all the others put together, and has the sharpest bite. And I don’t see how the old bulldog can beat it without our help.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. One is liable to get bitten in a dog fight.’
‘You never can tell with a dog fight, Commodore.’
‘Masha, I’m begging you not to do this.’
Rachel’s usual ironic composure was breaking down as she followed her cousin, who was hauling the suitcase up the companionway. She had remained stoical through so much in the past decade. What should have been her youth had been consumed in the rising conflagration of Jew-hatred which the Nazis had lit and fanned. Her education had been curtailed, her property, her home and finally her family had been taken from her. She had been forced into exile. All that she had borne with stoicism. But this last blow was too much to bear.
‘Masha, please.’
Masha merely shook her head. Her face was ghastly. She hadn’t slept or eaten. They emerged on the deck, finding it thronged with people jostling and milling in a fine drizzle which had begun to fall. Masha blundered through the crowd towards the gangplank.
‘Now then, now then, what’s all this?’ At the top of the gangplank they were brought up short by the figure of Mr Nightingale, the senior steward, looking very seamanlike in a slick oilskin coat. He looked Rachel up and down. ‘You’re going to catch your death of cold, young lady. Where are you off to?’
‘She’s disembarking,’ Rachel said, now crying helplessly.
‘Your geography’s not very good,’ Mr Nightingale said archly. ‘I’m certain your ticket says New York. This is Southampton.’
‘Her parents have been sent to a concentration camp by the Gestapo. She wants to go and join them.’
‘My goodness. And what do you think disembarking here is going to accomplish?’
‘If they are going to die,’ Masha said in a choked voice, ‘then I will die with them.’
‘Do you know what you are?’ Mr Nightingale asked.
Masha looked at him with eyes that were almost swollen shut by the salt tears, uncomprehending.
‘You’re an enemy alien, that’s what you are.’ Mr Nightingale jerked his thumb at the rain-blurred outline of Southampton behind him. ‘That country’s at war with your country. Which means that as soon as you set foot off this gangplank, you’ll be detained. If you look, you can see the policeman who’ll arrest you, standing there in his size-twelve boots. You won’t ever get back to Germany. You’ll be sent to some internment camp in some dreary place like the Isle of Man, and you’ll sit there for years and years and years.’
Igor Stravinsky and the young German boy had now arrived, sheltering under the same umbrella. Mr Nightingale turned to the composer.