Мариус Габриэль - The Ocean Liner

‘Do you mean Hitler?’ Masha asked timidly.

‘They asked me to return to Bayreuth in 1933, to conduct The Ring . With Hitler sitting in the front row? The bloated Goering beside him? And that hideous gnome Goebbels on the other side? Never!’ He kissed Masha’s hand again. ‘They sent me ten thousand Deutschmarks. I sent them back. Hitler himself wrote to me, pleading. Do you know what I told him?’

‘What?’ Masha asked breathlessly.

‘I told him, Toscanini says Tosca-no-no!’ He burst out laughing. ‘What has Wagner to do with Hitler?’

‘Quite a lot, it seems,’ Rachel put in dryly. ‘The effect of the former on the latter is noxious. I sometimes ask myself whether the war would have started if Hitler hadn’t been such a regular visitor at Bayreuth.’

Toscanini, who had still been pressing kisses on Masha’s hand, threw it down furiously. His face flushed dangerously. ‘Wagner expresses all that is sublime in the human condition,’ Toscanini thundered, ‘Hitler all that is most execrable.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Masha exclaimed, thrilling to the conductor’s fiercely curling moustaches and flashing eyes.

Toscanini shook his finger in Rachel’s face. ‘Do not blame the composer of Parsifal for Hitler!’ He pushed past the girls and hurried away on his peregrinations.

‘The maestro is so fiery, isn’t he?’ Masha said in awe.

‘Half-mad, you mean,’ Rachel commented.

They arrived at their table to find Stravinsky, Katharine Wolff and Thomas König already seated. The boy got up with perfect manners, his eyes flicking apprehensively from Rachel to Masha.

‘I’ve been copying out your manuscript, Monsieur Stravinsky,’ Masha said eagerly.

‘I hope you are not making expensive mistakes,’ Stravinsky said, looking at her from under hooded eyelids.

‘Oh no, I’m being very careful. But the music is so classical in form. It’s nothing like The Rite of Spring .’

‘My dear, it’s at least fifteen years since I began composing in the neo-classical style, and at least twenty-five since I wrote The Rite of Spring . Are you disappointed?’

‘Not at all. The music is wonderful. I’m surprised, that’s all.’

‘My life has been a long vista of surprised faces,’ he replied. ‘Unpleasantly surprised, I might add. They complained when I wrote new music, and said they wanted to hear classical forms. Now that I write classical forms, they complain and say they want to hear new music again. But one thing I cannot do is go backwards. I cannot be false to my aspirations.’

‘Of course not,’ Masha said, shocked at the idea. They ordered breakfast, and Masha and Stravinsky entered into a discussion of the accented off-beats in the music she was copying.

‘Have you seen what your great army is doing to Poland, Adolf?’ Rachel asked Thomas. ‘You must be very proud.’

‘It’s pitiful,’ Katharine said. ‘I was in tears in the night, listening to Polish Radio on my short-wave. They put on a Chopin nocturne. I had to switch it off. I couldn’t bear it. Even the women in my cabin were crying, and God knows they’re not sensitive souls. That poor, tragic country! Between Stalin and Hitler, God help them.’

Thomas stared at his plate, pale-faced as the two women discussed the invasion. The dining room was completely full, and passengers were crowding at the doors, demanding tables. The overtaxed stewards were pleading in vain for them to form orderly lines. Those who had tables were shouting impatiently for food, which was emerging all too slowly from the kitchen. The crash of dropped crockery was becoming more frequent, the atmosphere more charged.

The SS Manhattan had been in Southampton harbour for a week already, and passengers were still coming aboard along the steep, narrow gangway, a steady flow of humanity, or as Dr Emmett Meese indignantly put it, human garbage.

Those already on board were showing signs of strain. Some, like Rachel and Masha Morgenstern, who had embarked in Bremen, had already been on the ship for a fortnight, and felt themselves to be choked by the ship’s surroundings. These prolonged stays in port were hard to bear.

The sound of a bell cut through the hubbub. The public address system crackled.

‘Attention all passengers. This is the chief purser. The Manhattan will be sailing tomorrow morning at oh-six-hundred hours.’

There was a moment of silence. Then the entire dining room erupted into cheers. The purser could barely be heard announcing that all passengers had to be on board by eleven p.m., and all visitors had to have left the ship by the same time, and repeating the announcement in French and German.

Masha looked at Thomas and saw the tears running down his cheeks. She rose quickly from her chair and put her arms around him. She had made up her mind to be especially kind to him, even if Rachel enjoyed sharpening her claws on him. He was just a boy, and his solicitude had touched her.

‘Don’t cry, Thomas. You’ll be at the World’s Fair very soon.’

Enveloped in her warmth and fragrant softness, Thomas had no words. She kissed his cheek and gave him her handkerchief, which he pressed to his face with both his hands.

The car pulled up in front of the big white mansion. Rosemary didn’t want to get out, but Daddy said, ‘I’m not in the mood to argue with you, Rosemary,’ and she knew that tone of voice, which always made her shrink inside. She got out of the car and looked around her.

She didn’t really like the countryside. She didn’t understand it, with its silence and its emptiness and the way people fussed about things like the view and the trees and cows. And she’d been crying all the way from London and she couldn’t see very much because her eyes were all swollen. But when Daddy said, ‘Isn’t this grand?’ Rosemary nodded and said it was grand.

Daddy held her hand as they went into the house. It smelled like all the schools she had been to, of floor polish and cooking and the rubber boots lined up in the hallway. The smiling nun took them to see the Mother Superior in her office.

‘This is Rosemary,’ Daddy said.

Mother Isabel took one look at Rosemary and asked, ‘Have you been crying, Rosemary?’

Rosemary didn’t say anything but Daddy said, ‘She’s having a very emotional time lately. I’m afraid we’ve been asking far too much of her. Engagements, appearances, dances. The embassy is a very public place. The press never leave her alone. There’s a lot of pressure.’

Mother Isabel nodded sympathetically. She was old but you could tell right away she wasn’t one to be messed around with. ‘Oh yes. Of course, Rosemary’s face is already familiar to us from the newspapers. It’s natural that they would take an interest in such a lovely young woman, but the attention must be difficult.’

‘Very difficult.’

‘Your life will be much quieter here, Rosemary,’ Mother Isabel said, touching Rosemary on the shoulder. ‘You’ll find it very much more peaceful than London. But I promise you won’t be lonely or bored here.’

‘I don’t want to be here,’ Rosemary sobbed. ‘I want to be with Daddy.’

Mother Isabel had a box of Pond’s tissues on her desk, perhaps because a lot of people cried in this room. She pulled one out with a little pop and gave it to Rosemary to staunch the tears that were pouring down her cheeks. ‘Daddy will be only an hour’s drive away.’

‘I’ll see you every weekend, Rosie.’

‘And you’ll be much safer here than in London,’ Mother Isabel went on, ‘now that the war has started.’

‘I don’t want to be in school any more,’ Rosemary said in a loud wail.