staggered backwards, and Gallico caught her.
‘Well, I’ve never in my life been spoken to like-’
‘You creeping, crawling old spider!’ Eleanor shouted. Doors along the corridor opened, and a number of girls popped their heads out to listen.
‘You dried-up fossil cat’s turd…’
‘I’m going to fetch Mr Brundage this instant,’ the chaperone shrieked, but she seemed rooted to the spot, shrinking before the onslaught of Eleanor’s rage.
‘You do that, old girl, you do that,’ Eleanor said, pointing an unsteady finger.
Then she stumbled into her cabin and passed out on her bed.
Sometime before breakfast, she heard afterwards, the ship’s medic was called and failed to revive her. He thereupon diagnosed, no doubt at the prompting of Brundage, a condition of ‘acute alcoholism.’ Later that morning she found herself once more summoned to appear in the coffee room before the committee. As she was climbing the stairs to C deck, Gallico stopped her.
‘Eleanor, John Walsh and the press boys want a quick word before you see Brundage.’
T en minutes later she walked into the coffee room. Brundage was tight-lipped, eyeing her as though she were some repellent specimen pickled in alcohol. The bald-headed committee member with the bow tie who’d told her to go to bed last night was the nominated spokesman, but she already knew what he was going to say. She had no time for bow ties, which she associated vaguely with frivolity and penile inadequacy. Brundage nodded to him.
‘Mr Penworth, if you please.’
The man cleared his throat and began reading from a statement.
‘After due deliberation with my colleagues concerning your violation of the AOC training rules in the early hours of this morning and Tuesday last, and after consideration of the various complaints from the team chaperone thereunto pertaining, and of the medical diagnosis of your condition, we regret to inform you that your entry into the Olympic Games is cancelled.’
He looked up, a sheepish blink behind his eyeglasses.
‘Look, gentlemen,’ Eleanor said in a bleary voice, ‘please don’t do this. I know I had a few glasses of champagne, and I’m very sorry about the whole thing, it was wrong of me to-’
‘We gave you every chance, Mrs Emerson,’ said Brundage, ‘but you forced our hand. You have not demonstrated the Olympic spirit, nor indeed any team spirit.’ Eleanor had expected him to be angry, but he seemed relaxed, as though vindicated and relieved to be rid of her.
‘Please,’ she said, the composure starting to drain from her voice. ‘I’ve spent four years training for these Games. You know I can win the gold. I want to apologise for my-’
‘I’m afraid the committee’s mind is definitely made up.’ Brundage snapped his rulebook shut and got up to leave. ‘You will disembark at Hamburg later today and return immediately to New York on board the Bremen. Mr Penworth here will make the arrangements. Goodbye, Mrs Emerson.’
As the other committee members began to rise, Eleanor felt her face flushing and adrenaline pumping-the instinct that kicked in when she was in danger of being beaten in the pool.
‘Now just hold on one minute,’ she said, leaping towards the entrance and barring the men’s way. She was damned if she was going to let them close the door in her face. Avery Brundage, accustomed to having the last word, looked surprised. The committee members stood still.
‘Sir, last night my friends in the press corps realised, probably before I did, what my fate would be this morning.’ She stared Brundage full in the face. ‘So they offered me a job.’
‘A job?’
‘Yes, a job. As a reporter, at the Games. They’re not hiring me for my writing-they’ll do that for me-but for my name. It seems, thanks to you, that I’ve already acquired a certain infamy in the dailies back home.’
Brundage removed his spectacles, his eyes narrowing with irritation.
‘Didn’t I make myself clear? I said you will disembark at Hamburg and return immediately-’
‘I heard what you said. If you’ve fired me from the team, that’s my hard luck, but you have no further rights over me.’ Her eyes glistened, but her voice held. ‘I’m from a free country, and if I want to be in Berlin to support my friends, there’s not a damned thing you can do to stop me-unless you want to make an ass of yourself in the thirty daily newspapers of William Randolph Hearst.’
Brundage opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. For a moment he seemed ready to yell something that far exceeded the strict parameters of his own code of conduct.
Eleanor walked to the door with her back straight and her head held as high as it would go, keeping her hands in her jacket pockets so they would not see her shaking.
‘See you at the opening ceremony,’ she said.
Chapter Six
Zeppelins had been a part of Denham’s life for as long as he could remember. The serene giants first floated into his imagination in pictures on cigarette cards. Every day after school he’d walk home to Pound Lane, a quiet row of terraced houses along the river in Canterbury, daydreaming of airships-imagining fleets of them in the sky over the cathedral, humming like giant bumblebees. He’d draw them and make models from household litter. He wanted to know everything about them. Luckily his father, Arthur, a mechanical engineer, had caught the Zeppelin bug, too.
Even in those pioneer days there was no doubt in Arthur Denham’s mind that lighter-than-air ships were the future of long-distance travel. Aeroplanes, he said, were flying hedge-cutters. They’d never be good for anything but deafening, hair-raising hops. ‘Not for sailing through the clouds,’ he’d say with a twinkle in his eye, ‘across continents and oceans.’
The Great War was into its second year when Denham finally saw a Zeppelin. He was eighteen. He and his younger brother, Sidney, were on a day trip to London with their mother’s sister Joan, a nervous, childless woman who doted on them. Her surprise treat for them at the end of the day was a musical revue at the Strand Theatre.
Over the years the events of that night would assume a luminous clarity in Denham’s memory. It was a chill evening in October and an air raid blackout was in force. Only the yellow lights of trams and taxis lit the faces of the crowds along the pavements-the theatregoers, the office workers heading home, the soldiers on leave from the Front. Hollow-eyed lads lost in a gloomy limbo. Above the grand buildings of the Aldwych the constellations stood out as keen as diamonds.
The show was Sunshine Girl, and the audience was encouraged to join in the songs.
When the final curtain call ended, the audience rose and began making their way along the rows towards the exit. They hadn’t quite reached the auditorium doors when the floor shook and an ominous rumble sounded from outside.
‘And here’s us come without a brolly,’ Aunt Joan said.
The next rumble silenced the crowd and stopped them cold. Fragments of plaster dropped from the ceiling, and the stage curtains swayed. Sidney looked up at him wide-eyed, wanting reassurance.
When it came, the explosion was almost a direct hit.
A blast ripped through the foyer, sending rolls of plaster dust into the auditorium. The crowd fell to the floor, clutching their hats to their heads. In the commotion outside a man yelled, ‘ It’s a Zepp! It’s a bloody Zepp!’ A woman screamed, and unrestrained panic broke out as the crowd surged towards the exits. Sid began bawling and hid in the folds of his brother’s overcoat.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies-and-gentlemen- please,’ a voice boomed from the stage. Mr George Grossmith, the show’s star, was addressing them. ‘Remain inside until the danger has passed over, I beg of you.’ His peremptory tone seemed to take control of the crowd, making the panic subside somewhat. People hesitated, and one by one, they began to sit. ‘Now, all of you, sing along with me to calm yourselves down.’
The orchestra played ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag,’ and slowly people joined in the singing. Aunt Joan’s voice came in short, rattled breaths, but she persevered, as if fearful of bringing on her asthma if she
