Crossings (24 page)

And he stood alone on the deck, waving frantically to the ship, until he could see them no more, and then when it was too far for his son to see, he dropped his face into his hands and began to sob. A workman on the dock coughed softly as he walked past him, and he stopped to pat Nick's shoulder.

“She'll be all right, mate … she's a great ship, she is. … I came over with her from New York … moves like the wind, she does … the krauts won't be able to touch her.” Nick nodded, grateful for the encouraging words, but he was unable to answer. He felt as though his very life and soul had set sail on the ship. He went inside the lounge for a drink of water, and saw the manifest posted on the wall. As though it would bring Johnny closer to him again, he looked at the list and saw them there. “Burnham, Mrs. Nicholas … Burnham, Master John …” The nurse was listed farther down, and then he felt his heart turn to ice as he read the name “Markham, Mr. Philip.”

he normal number of passengers accommodated on the
Aquitania
was 3,230 with a crew of 972, but for this last voyage, as much furniture as possible had been removed, and extra beds put in. They were carrying an additional 400 people. The accommodations were more than cramped, and there were several families traveling like Hillary and Johnny, cramped into one room, when they normally have had two or three cabins or a suite. But this trip was entirely different. Dinner was served at four and five in the afternoon, and by nightfall everything was in total blackout. The passengers were urged to be in their rooms by then, so as to avoid accidents in the corridors. The windows were painted black all over the ship, and the passengers were requested to use the bathrooms without turning on the lights, a circumstance everyone seemed to get used to. There were a vast number of Americans on board, and English too, and the British appeared particularly calm, coming to dinner in black tie every night, as though nothing were amiss, as they discussed the war news.

As for the ship itself, what was left intact still had the aura of elegant Victorian drawing rooms, and it was an odd contrast to the notices on the walls, instructing passengers what to do in case of attack by a German U-boat.

By the second day out John had seemed to calm down, enough so that Hillary felt she could introduce him to Philip Markham. She explained that he was an old friend from New York, and she had run into him on the ship, but as Hillary and Philip talked, Johnny watched them with open suspicion. And the next morning, when he saw them together on one of the promenade decks, he told his nurse, “I hate that man.” She scolded him soundly, but he didn't care, and that night he said much the same to his mother. She slapped him soundly across the face, and he looked at her without a tear. “I don't care what you do to me. When I grow up, I'm going to live with my daddy.”

“And don't you think I am too?” Her hands were still shaking but she tried to control her voice. The child was much too smart for his own good, and she was glad that he couldn't tell Nick. She wondered if he had seen them kissing. She had been in her own bed every night, though not by choice. There were three other men in Philip's cabin. “What do you mean you're going to live with your daddy? So am I.”

“No, you're not. I'll bet you're going to live with
him.”
He refused to even say his name, or acknowledge Philip when they met.

“That's a stupid thing to say.” But it was precisely what she and Philip had been discussing lately. She wasn't at all sold on Nick's idea that they had to stay married forever, and if she could get him to agree to a divorce when he got back, or if she could get grounds to sue him, she would, and marry Philip. “I don't want to hear you say that again.” And she didn't. He scarcely spoke to his mother again on the trip. He stayed with his nurse, and spent most of the time playing with his puppy in the cabin. It was a long, tiresome journey for them all, following a zigzag course, and with the nightly blackouts. It took them longer than usual to reach New York, and when at last they did, Hillary hoped she never saw a ship again, and she had never been so grateful to be in New York in her life, although she stayed there for only a few days before taking Johnny up to Boston to stay with her mother.

“Why do I have to stay here? Aren't we going home?” Johnny didn't understand why he had to stay with his grandmother.

“I am. And I'm going to get the apartment ready in New York.” It had been closed for four months, and she claimed that she had a lot of work to do to get it ready. But two weeks later his grandmother registered him in a school in Boston. She said that it was just for a little while, so he wouldn't miss too much school while his mother was getting the apartment ready. But he overheard his grandmother talking after that. It had been her idea to put him in school. She had no idea when Hillary was going to come back for him, and she seemed to be stalling. Johnny knew why, though he kept silent. She was probably with that man … Mr. Markham. … He was going to write to his father about it and tell him, but something told him that that wouldn't be such a good idea. His dad might get too worried. It would be better to tell him when he saw him. And in the last letter he'd gotten from his dad, Nick told him that he would come home as soon as he could, probably right after Christmas. It seemed like a long time to Johnny, but Christmas was only two months away, his father reminded him in the letter.

It was a lonely life for Johnny with his grandmother. She was elderly and nervous. Johnny was just glad that she had let him bring his puppy with him.

It was a week after Nick had written the last letter to Johnny that he ran into Armand and Liane at a small dinner party given by the American consul. It was the first time Armand and Liane had been out in months, and everyone seemed to have aged considerably over the summer. Liane was wearing a very pretty long black satin dress, but she looked very tired. The strain was telling on them all, although on the surface Paris was very calm. But everyone was still grieving over the surrender of Warsaw a month before. The Poles had fought valiantly until the end, but the Soviets had attacked them from the east on the seventeenth of September, and on the twenty-eighth it was all over, despite all their efforts, including Nick's steel. Their sister city of the east had fallen.

“How have you been?” Nick found himself sitting next to Liane at dinner, with Armand at the other end of the table. And Nick thought Armand looked ten years older than he had on the ship in June. He had been working fifteen and eighteen hours a day and it showed. Armand looked like an old man now, and he had just turned fifty-seven.

“We're all right.” Liane spoke very softly. “Armand has been burning the candle at both ends and in the middle.” She saw the ravages too, but there was no help for that. He would push himself until he dropped, for the love of his country. It left her alone with the girls almost all the time, but she accepted that too. She had no choice now. And she was doing volunteer work for the Red Cross. There wasn't much she could do yet, but it was something. They were helping to ship vast numbers of German and Eastern European Jews out through France, and at least she knew she was helping to save some lives. They were going to South America and the United States, and Canada and Australia. “How's my friend John?” She smiled at Nick now.

“He's all right. I'm not entirely sure where he is though.” Nick had expected him to be in New York, but the letter he had gotten from Johnny had said that he was with his grandmother in Boston, probably for a visit, to reassure her that he was all right.

But Liane looked confused. “Isn't he here with you?”

Nick shook his head. “They sailed on the
Aquitania
in September, on her last trip over. Actually, what I meant was that I thought he was in New York, but he appears to be in Boston with my mother-in-law.”

“You sent him alone?” Liane looked shocked. It was the ship that Armand had tried to get her to sail on.

“No, his mother went too. I didn't want them over here anymore. I feel better knowing that they're in the States.” Liane nodded. It made sense even though it hadn't been what she had wanted. She suspected however that Hillary Burnham had been only too happy to go. She had heard the rumors about Philip Markham. The international community in Paris was small and inbred and very loquacious. But Liane looked at Nick now, wondering how he was faring. He looked tired too, although not as much as Armand. She remembered their last conversation on the ship and wondered how his life had been since then. It seemed a thousand years ago since they had all come over, and it had only been four months since then.

“And how are you doing?”

“All right, I suppose.” He lowered his voice to speak his mind. She always brought that out in him. She was that kind of woman. “I have to live with my mistakes and my misjudgments.” She knew immediately what he meant, that he was referring to his German contracts.

“You're not the only one who misjudged them. Think of what they're saying in the States. Roosevelt is trying to get reelected next year on the basis that the Americans won't ever get involved in the war over here. It's madness.”

“Willkie is saying the same thing. They might as well be on the same ticket.”

“Who do you suppose will win?” Liane asked. It seemed odd to be speaking of the American elections while Europe was in blazes around them.

“Roosevelt will, of course.”

“For a third term?”

“Do you doubt it?”

She smiled. “Not really.” It was nice speaking of those things with him. A taste of sanity and home in the midst of the nightmare they were living.

The dinner party ended early and Armand took Liane home. He yawned all the way and patted his wife's hand in the back of the Citroën, with its government driver. “I see that Burnham was there tonight. I never got a chance to talk to him. How is he?”

“Fine.” Their conversation had had none of the personal flavor of their talks on the ship, but that was to be expected.

“I'm surprised he's still here.”

“He says he's going home after Christmas. The boy and his wife went home on the
Aquitania
.”

“Probably with Philip Markham.”

“Did you know about that?” She looked at Armand in surprise, and then she grinned. He had never mentioned it to her, she had heard it on her own, from some of the Americans she knew in Paris. “Is there anything you don't know, Armand?”

“Hopefully not. Information is my business.” He knew also about Burnham's secret deals with Poland but he didn't say so. And then Armand glanced quickly at the driver. But the man was to be trusted. He had top security clearance.

“Is it?” Liane looked surprised. That wouldn't have been how she would have described his work. But nowadays everything was changing.

And Armand drifted away rapidly from the subject. “It was nice seeing you all dressed up tonight, my love. Like the old days, when we lived in a peaceful world.” She nodded slowly. She was still thinking about what he had said, but she didn't want to question him in the car. She had seen him glance at the driver. But she had been wondering about his activities for a while. He never told her anymore about what was going on at the office. He told her just the news that she read every day anyway in the paper. But he was much more secretive than he had been in the past. And more tired than she had ever known him. They hadn't made love since late August. And she suspected that tonight would be no different. He was already drifting off to sleep in the car before they reached the Place du Palais-Bourbon. She woke him up and they went upstairs, and while she was undressing, he did the same and reached the bed first, and was sound asleep when she got there.