‘Have fun,’ said Lou, into his second ice cream.
The rolling seas had calmed, and Eleanor stepped out onto the deck to a beautiful night. She leaned back against the rail and watched the Olympic flag on the top deck flutter gently against a sky already filling with stars. Water lapped away from the ship, which hummed gently. The lights of a distant vessel twinkled and bobbed, and she felt a sudden yearning in her heart, a void that longed to be filled, but with what, she wasn’t sure. Didn’t she already have love? Phrases of music from the upper decks carried down on the breeze. She turned and climbed the stairs up to first class, trying to push Herb from her thoughts.
Some of the ship’s grander passengers were walking off their dinner with a promenade on A deck. Eleanor caught the sparkle of diamonds around the women’s necks and the scent of expensive perfume. Inside, a piano was playing a familiar song, ‘The Glory of Love.’
She followed the music down a wide corridor to a small lounge decorated in the modern style. The lighting was soft and low.
At a bar made entirely of polished chrome, Charlie MacArthur and his wife, Helen Hayes, were standing drinks for a number of men Eleanor guessed were the reporters. Helen, fair haired and delicate in a white gown and corsage of apple blossom, looked lovelier in the flesh than she did on the silver screen, and, unlike Eleanor, had received the benefit of the A deck hairdresser.
Charlie spotted her in the doorway and clicked his fingers several times to get the attention of the pianist, who obliged him by playing the signature tune Eleanor sang in her shows with the band.
‘Charlie,’ she said, arching an eyebrow. ‘I’m on board as an athlete.’
‘Eleanor, my rose, you know Helen of course? Come and meet our friends.’ The men stood up. He introduced her to Allan Gould of the United Press, and two journalists, John Walsh of the Chicago Tribune and Paul Gallico, the chief sportswriter of the New York Daily News.
‘The pleasure’s ours, ma’am,’ said Gallico. ‘We’re fans of yours.’
He had a fresh, square-chinned face, glasses, a college tie, and an Ivy League manner of the shy sort. She liked him immediately.
A groomed young man with an Errol Flynn moustache stepped forwards, holding a half-pint glass brimming with champagne. He was the only one wearing white tie. ‘William,’ he said, handing her the glass. And she realised he must be William as in Randolph Hearst Jr. ‘You’ve got some catching up to do, my dear. We’re all getting pleasantly soused here.’
‘You can’t shake your shimmy on tea,’ Eleanor said, raising the glass and downing it in one.
‘Now, where did you learn to do that?’ said Hearst, slipping his arm around her waist.
‘An Illinois roadhouse called the Sudsbucket,’ said Eleanor, gently removing his hand.
Another gentleman, introduced as George Kennan, an American diplomat returning to Moscow, joined them. ‘Seems you’ve got the run of the decks here,’ he said to Eleanor, a pipe clenched in his teeth. ‘I’ve been dodging gum-chewing Tarzans all afternoon.’
‘Mr Kennan, some of those Tarzans were Janes,’ she said.
Helpless laughter.
‘So I guess you finally told those boycotters where to get off,’ said the diplomat.
‘Oh please, George, this is a party,’ said Helen, clutching his elbow. ‘Did Charlie tell you I’ve returned to Broadway? California was simply ruining my skin…’
Eleanor considered for a moment, reminded of something that had irked her in Brundage’s speech. She’d heard every boycott argument over this last year and shrugged them off. Politics, as far as she was concerned, was supremely irrelevant to the Games. Not once had her conscience been troubled by the thought that she shouldn’t go to Berlin; not a wink of sleep had she lost. But tonight? She found herself very reluctant to side with Brundage, whose pro-German argument had struck her as highly unsavoury, with its mysticism and horseshit about forging a new race. The text of that anonymous note from under her pillow flickered across her mind like a title card in a silent movie- every day citizens who do not think like the Nazis are tortured and murdered — and now she caught herself wondering how much truth was in it. And yet… her mind reached for an argument that trumped them all: Jesse Owens. Wasn’t he the key?
‘The fastest man on earth is on board this ship,’ she said, interrupting Helen, ‘and he’s a Negro. He’s going to win gold in Berlin in front of the whole world. Don’t you think that’ll be one in the eye for stupid, hokey race theories? I think it’s damned right that we’re going to these Games.’
Mumbles of ‘Here, here.’
But for the first time along the contours of her brash and uncomplicated worldview, there were buds of doubt.
They were joined by a dozen more friends and acquaintances of Charlie’s and Helen’s, who arrived to squeals and cheers-‘My dear, what a surprise seeing your name on the passenger list’-and the party progressed noisily through its indistinct stages: sociable, elated, raucous.
Eleanor was enjoying herself. Enjoying herself more and more as the champagne went down. Two hours later, after repeated requests from Paul Gallico, and now more than a little refreshed, Eleanor was persuaded to sing.
‘Name your song,’ she said.
‘ “Let’s Misbehave,” ’ someone shouted to howls of laughter and encouragement. She stepped unsteadily up to the piano, which played her in, and began, in her low voice:
‘We’re all alone,
No chaperone
Can get our num-ber,
The world’s in slum-ber
Let’s misbe-’
She stopped midnote. Her face froze, and the piano fell silent one bar later. The revellers turned, following the line of her gaze towards the doorway of the lounge, where a stout woman in the Olympic team uniform was standing with her arms folded. Mrs Hacker stared straight at her ward with a slow nod of her head.
‘Eleanor Emerson,’ she said. ‘Go to bed. Now. Or shall I fetch Mr Brundage?’
Someone snickered as everyone in the room looked back at her. But Eleanor wasn’t going to feel embarrassed.
‘Friends…,’ she began, with a straight face. ‘Do we need to go to Germany to see a notorious dictator with a moustache? We have our very own right here. Folks, meet our team chaperone, Mrs Eunice Hacker,’ she yelled, throwing her arms out as if introducing a star act. The party cheered and raised their glasses.
A flash of alarm in the chaperone’s eyes, but then her face hardened, and so did Eleanor’s resolve not to have her evening spoilt.
‘What’re you gonna sing, Hacker? Hey, this is first class. You can’t wear that movie-usher’s uniform up here.’ Mrs Hacker turned and waddled away, to more applause from the revellers.
‘Oh boy,’ said Eleanor, collapsing in a fit of laughter. ‘That’s done it.’
Chapter Four
Denham smoked an HB between courses, staring out over the great expanse of the lake at dusk. The place had drawn him into its mood-placid, untroubled, deep-and he remembered why people took holidays. He stubbed out the cigarette just as two white-gloved waiters arrived to serve him the duckling with champagne cabbage; a third showed him a Moselle from the Kurgarten’s cellar and uncorked it for him to taste.
For something to read he’d brought the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, the publication with the most pictures and the fewest lies. It was full of features on the Olympic athletes and the hopes for Aryan victories. One story, titled ‘Seven Beautiful Girls from the USA,’ caught his eye. The magazine saw movie-star qualities in the American team and had given one girl a full-page photo. Wearing a white, one-piece bathing suit and a white cap strapped beneath her chin, her long legs crouched at the edge of a pool as though she were about to dive, the girl faced the camera, wide mouth smiling provocatively, her nose puckered. She had a long neck and a beauty spot to the right of her nose, one of those little imperfections that only seem to magnify
