Мариус Габриэль - The Ocean Liner

Miss Ward merely smiled. ‘First love is never forgotten,’ she went on. ‘It’s the only love that remains fresh and potent for a lifetime. It’s the truest and most innocent of loves, exactly because it can never come to fruition. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘It never grows old; you see? It’s as fleeting as the morning dew, yet it clings to us all our lives. It becomes part of our existence. It’s probably the last thing we remember on our deathbeds.’

Cubby had been listening to the old creature with a growing feeling of discomfort. In her queer, gossamer wrap, with her pale-blue eyes, she was like an elderly fairy of some sort, laying a spell upon him. ‘We don’t want to give it all up,’ he said sullenly. ‘We want to get married.’

‘Oh, you mustn’t think of it,’ Miss Ward exclaimed. ‘First love is far too precious. It’s not of this world. It asks nothing and gives all. It has nothing to do with the trade and barter of marriage – the dreary practicalities of rent and children and dirty dishes and all that.’

‘But that’s exactly what we want.’

‘Would you lead a goddess to the kitchen sink? First love is divine. It belongs in the realm of the soul. Keep it there, young man.’

She replaced her dark glasses, and the advice (if that was what it had been) appeared to be at an end. It had hardly consoled Cubby.

He braced himself to speak to Mrs Kennedy.

He tipped his hat to Miss Ward and found his way to the Kennedy stateroom and tapped at the door. Mrs Kennedy herself opened it. Although he saw her in his mind as a dragon, complete with scales and fiery breath, she looked pale and tired today.

‘You don’t give up, do you?’ she greeted him.

‘I just want to know that she’s okay,’ he replied quietly.

‘If you’re asking whether she’s weeping and wailing without you – the answer is no. She’s with her father, and she’s very happy.’

‘I’m glad to hear that.’

‘And don’t bother writing her any more love letters. She won’t get them.’

He swallowed that without comment. ‘What happens if they bomb London?’

‘She’s somewhere safe, Mr Hubbard. It has never been my policy to expose my children to harm.’

‘I don’t mean Rosemary any harm.’ When she made no comment, he went on, ‘I do care for her very much.’

‘You think you do.’

‘I know I do.’

‘Perhaps you can even kid yourself that you didn’t do her any harm. But you did. Just like all the others who took advantage of her.’

‘I didn’t take advantage of her.’

‘You are no better than a man who has sexual relations with a child.’

He flushed. ‘She’s not a child.’

‘Not in body, perhaps. But everywhere it matters – in her heart, in her mind, in her soul – Rosemary is a child. She will always be a child. Your idea of marrying her is not just absurd, it’s obscene.’

‘So is locking her up,’ he retorted. ‘How long do you think you can keep her shut in a convent?’

‘The rest of her life, if that’s what it takes to protect her.’ She looked at him with hostile green eyes. ‘Rosemary is as happy as Larry without you. She’s forgotten you already.’

‘I don’t believe that for one moment.’

She laughed shortly. ‘How dare you contradict me to my face? You’ve got some nerve, coming to me like this.’

‘Like I said, I do love her. I don’t want to live without her.’

‘In that case, I suggest you go to the rail and throw yourself over.’

‘You’re a cruel woman,’ he exclaimed, stung by her coldness.

‘Then you wouldn’t like me as a mother-in-law,’ she retorted. ‘If you use extravagant language, you can expect to be mocked. You’re a young man who sees what he wants to see and hears what he wants to hear.’ She reached into her pocket. ‘You have no right to read this, but I want you to understand, once and for all.’ She handed him the telegram.

He unfolded it. It had been sent to the ship from London the day before. The pasted lines of printed capitals covered the whole page:

HAD RING-A-DING AFTERNOON TEA AT BELMONT HOUSE WITH ROSEMARY. LOOKED CHARMING AND WAS PRAISED BY EVERYBODY. LOVES THE PLACE. SAYS ‘MOST WONDERFULEST’ SCHOOL SHE HAS BEEN TO.

ALL SERENE AND HAPPY. NO SIGN OF PINING FOR YOU OR CHILDREN. MUCH LESS DEMANDED OF HER NOW. SHELTERED FROM STRESS AND KEPT OCCUPIED. VERY RELAXED. IDEAL LIFE FOR HER.

SISTERS CONSTANTLY REMARKING ON ‘MARKED IMPROVEMENT’ IN HER ATTITUDE AND STUDIES. AM VERY OPTIMISTIC.

HAVE INSTALLED TELEPHONE LINE AND FIREFIGHTING EQUIPMENT FOR THEM. SEE ROSEMARY EVERY WEEKEND. DON’T WORRY ANY MORE. JACK AND JOE JR HEADING HOME SOON. MUCH LOVE TO YOU AND KIDS. JOE.

Cubby handed the telegram back to Mrs Kennedy. ‘Sounds like he is talking about a six-year-old,’ he mumbled. But his eyes felt hot and there was a hard knot in his throat.

Mrs Kennedy put the telegram back in her pocket. ‘You think me unkind, Mr Hubbard. But I’m going to give you some advice that is the kindest thing anyone will say to you: get on with your life and forget Rosemary.’

She closed the door in his face.

Igor Stravinsky was coughing heavily into his handkerchief that night. Masha laid her hand on his arm.

‘You should not be smoking. This is killing you.’

‘It’s not – the smoking – which is killing me.’

He spat into the handkerchief. It was a dark night, but by the dim light on the promenade deck, where they reclined side by side, she could see the red stain on the linen.

‘You are not well.’

He let his head sag back against the cushion, gasping for breath. ‘How far – have you got – with my symphony?’

‘I’ve copied forty pages. It’s a great privilege. But—’

‘But?’

‘The music is not in any sense Russian, Monsieur Stravinsky.’

He was silent for a long while. ‘I do not feel myself to be a Russian in any sense,’ he said at last. ‘I consider myself a French citizen.’

‘Why have you stopped working on it?’

He made a weary gesture with the bloodstained handkerchief. ‘I have stopped everything, Masha.’

‘Even living?’ she asked. ‘Forgive me, but you told my cousin that you wanted to die.’

‘I am old. I have lived. And I have lost a wife, a child. You are still young. You haven’t had a child yet. You can’t stop living until you’ve reproduced, that’s the law of nature.’

‘And what if I were to lose my child, the way you’ve lost yours?’

‘You have to hazard everything,’ he replied. ‘That is the law of nature too. Risk everything, your whole being, on that throw of the dice.’

‘And how do you survive the death of a child, Monsieur Stravinsky?’

‘Maybe you don’t.’

‘Then how are we supposed to make sense of life?’ she asked. ‘Are you telling me you can’t leave until you’ve had your heart broken?’

‘Perhaps, yes.’

‘And to whom does it matter, whether you suffer or not?’

‘To God, perhaps.’

‘I don’t believe in God any more.’

‘I do.’ Stravinsky sat up and coughed up blood again. ‘But not in a God who keeps us from harm.’

‘What sort of God, then?’

He rose with an effort to his feet. ‘I think of God as a stern country schoolmaster. He calls us one by one, to write something on the blackboard before he will let us go home. Some of us write beautiful things, some of us write nonsense, some make glaring errors. For some of us, the chalk snaps in our fingers before we can finish.’

Masha watched him walk slowly away, then she rose and went to the rail alone. The moon had not yet risen, there were no stars. The lights of the ship glimmered on the nearest waves, but beyond, all was blackness.