‘The family had the best intentions, Sister Gertrude. Rosemary was a danger to herself. Going with strange men. Who knows what might have happened.’
Sister Gertrude sniffed. ‘Look at the girls today. Look how they carry on. They let their sex drives run free. They don’t get locked up or lobotomised.’
‘In the Thirties,’ Cubby said quietly, ‘a woman with a strong sex drive was in danger of being called insane. Especially if she didn’t try to hide it. And Rosie couldn’t hide her feelings. She didn’t know how. That’s why she was so vulnerable, and so terribly fragile. She loved life and fun, and didn’t care too much about the consequences. I loved her for her spontaneity. We never got a chance to see what she would have grown into. What they did to her didn’t change my feelings,’ he went on. ‘But it froze them. She vanished, but she was still there. It might have been easier if she’d—’ He didn’t finish the sentence. ‘I don’t think there was ever much chance that we could have had a life together, but after the operation, I had to give up whatever hope I still had left. I still love her. I always will. I’m a grandfather, and I have my own life at home, but deep inside, it’s always me and Rosemary. Frozen a lifetime ago. Just waiting for something that will never come.’
Rosemary had woken up. Her eyes were on his, dark and warm. Her lips moved, framing words, but without a sound, as though only he could hear and understand.
He took her hands as they were saying goodbye.
‘Rosie, I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again. They want to do an operation in a couple of weeks’ time, and after that – well, I don’t know how things will be. So if I don’t come for a while, I hope you’ll understand.’
She nodded.
He kissed her. ‘If I don’t see you through the week, I’ll see you through the window.’
He left her sitting in front of her little house, huddled in the wheelchair, flanked by the nuns.
He had plenty of time to get to the airport for his flight, so he drove slowly, the windows down, enjoying the balmy evening air and the sunlight on the cornfields. He found it soothing. The ripples in his life were flattening out. He was returning to his customary calm. Or was it numbness?
A long time had passed. A long, long time. And yet it had gone by in the blinking of an eye. How did you explain that, the way the years and the decades sped past so slow, so fast? It was a mystery.
County Road Y was deserted. There was not so much as a car coming either way, just farmland and crops. The pain in his chest, which had been there all afternoon, was swelling so much that he found it difficult to drive any further. It seemed to occupy the whole of his body.
He pulled over and stopped the car beside a field of grain that rolled down between clumps of trees and lost itself in the haze of twilight. He tried to breathe.
The last verse of the poem came to him; the verse Rosemary wouldn’t let him read to her:
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In September 1939, the United States Lines ship SS Manhattan left Europe for New York with a passenger list very much as I have described. However, this book is a work of the imagination, not a historical account, and should be regarded as fiction from start to finish. The thoughts, words and actions of all the characters in this book were invented by the author.
Most readers will have no difficulty disentangling the historical passengers from the ones I put on the ship, but a few notes may help.
Leaving Europe at the lowest ebb of his personal and professional life on the Manhattan, Igor Stravinsky made a new start on his arrival in the United States, immersing himself in American music, including a number of Hollywood projects. He and his second wife Vera took American citizenship in 1945. At the time of his death in 1971 he was among the most celebrated of composers, having left an indelible stamp on twentieth-century music.
Carla Toscanini died in Milan in 1951. Her husband Arturo was left broken-hearted and in poor health. He died in 1957. More than any other conductor, he defined the interpretation of classical music in the twentieth century. His recordings bear testimony to his fiery genius.
Fanny Ward, the Girl Who Wouldn’t Grow Old, did not return to London after the war, but remained a fixture on the East Coast high society scene until her death in 1952 at the age of eighty.
Elektro the talking robot is still in existence, passing a peaceful retirement in a museum in Mansfield, Ohio.
Commodore Albert ‘Rescue’ Randall received a citation from President Roosevelt on his retirement in September 1939, praising his service and heroism. He died in 1945.
The encounter with the German submarine which I have described actually took place in 1940. The vessel involved was Manhattan’s sister-ship, SS Washington, commanded by Captain Harry Manning, whose cool-headedness helped to save the day.
The character of Rudi Hufnagel is very loosely based on the U-boat ace Reinhard ‘Teddy’ Suhren (1916–1984).
Joseph P. Kennedy was withdrawn as ambassador to Great Britain in October 1940. His political career ended shortly thereafter. He suffered a stroke in 1961 that left him unable to talk or walk. His wife Rose also suffered a stroke in 1984, which together with advancing dementia, placed her in care for the last eleven years of her life.
Rosemary Kennedy died in a Wisconsin hospital in 2005 at the age of eighty-six, having outlived most of her siblings. Her lobotomy was one of over three thousand performed in the 1940s and 1950s by Doctors Freeman and Watts, who promised happier (and more docile) patients, but delivered irreparably damaged brains. The procedure, which destroyed so many lives, is now very rarely performed. While nobody could have foreseen the shocking results of the botched operation, it was clearly a last resort. Her adolescent ‘slowness’ had been an embarrassment; but her unrestrained adult sexuality presented much more serious problems to the Kennedys. She fell victim to a fatal combination of her family’s political ambitions, repressive attitudes towards sex and mental health, and her own tragic vulnerability as a young woman with educational disabilities.
Cubby is an imaginary character. The poem quoted by him is ‘When You Are Old’ by W. B. Yeats, which appeared in 1892.
Racial attitudes underlay and partly caused the Second World War. Derogatory terms used in the novel reflect the language prevalent at the time and are not intended to offend any reader.
In 1941, with America’s involvement in the war imminent, Manhattan, along with the Washington and the newly-built America, were all seized by the US Navy on the orders of President Roosevelt. They were fitted out as troop carriers, Manhattan being renamed USS Wakefield.
Having served throughout the war, she was decommissioned in 1946. But she never re-entered passenger service. She was mothballed for over a decade. The glory days of ocean liners were coming to an end and the United States Lines was heading for bankruptcy. The Manhattan was eventually sold for scrap and broken up in 1964.
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