The Girl from the Paradise Ballroom (27 page)

Bernard visited Frith Street at the end of June. He had intended to go much sooner—Olivia had asked him to do it days ago—but he had been engulfed by the demands on his time. As the Nazis advanced there was a deluge of refugees from Belgium and the Netherlands. They spilled out from grimy, overcrowded trains at Victoria, clutching parcels and suitcases, and accommodation had to be found for them all. It was not easy. Londoners might welcome the soldiers who were arriving in the capital, the Polish and the Free French, but they were more grudging about civilians, those needy bewildered creatures with their foreign habits.

“I'm seeing a hotel manager in Paddington at twelve, to see if they can take a dozen families, but I'll go to Soho first,” Bernard said. “I know you've been anxious about Antonio, darling. I have too, of course. I expect he is all right, but it would set my mind at rest to know where they've sent him.”

Olivia was kneeling upright on the bedroom floor, sorting out blouses and warm cardigans to give to the refugees. She looked peaky, Bernard thought, through the haze of his exhaustion. Her face was hollow and even paler than usual.

“I should have gone,” she said. “I could still go, if you don't have time.”

“No, no. Much better for me to do it. I've already told you, I don't want you traipsing about Soho on your own, not after those riots. Besides, we don't know what Antonio's sister is like. She may be one of those hysterical girls who panics at the sight of strangers. I'm used to that, I'll know how to deal with it.”

Olivia was folding a blouse of brushed yellow cotton. She paused, her hands in her lap. “You will do it today, Bernard, won't you?”

“Of course I will. I've said I will. For heaven's sake, Olivia.” Bernard turned toward the door. “Oh, and I won't be home for lunch today. In fact, I have no idea what time I'll be back. You'd better tell Avril to leave me some supper on a tray.”

It was Filomena who answered when he knocked at the house in Frith Street. Bernard's first impression was one of disappointment. He had imagined that perhaps she would share Antonio's good looks, but she was a plain, solid woman in a faded blue dress. She was not going to be hysterical, though; he could see that at a glance. She greeted him calmly and showed him into the kitchen: a dim, shabby space, smelling of fried onions and damp.

“Can I offer you something, Mr. Rodway? Coffee, perhaps?”

“That is kind of you, but no, thank you,” said Bernard. “I came to ask if you have any news of Antonio.”

Filomena shook her head. “No, I have heard nothing. The police took him three weeks ago. Since then there has been nothing, no letter, no message. My father was arrested too, at the Italian hospital.” Her mouth trembled for a moment but she pressed her lips together. “Antonio said he would write to me, he asked me to tell you his news. And I would have done, but…”

Her voice trailed into silence. Bernard could tell that she was desperate not to cry, especially in a stranger's presence.

“There is no reason to be anxious, Filomena.” He said it briskly because he knew that kindness would only make matters worse. “The authorities are overwhelmed, that's all. They have rounded up all these people and now they have no idea what to do with them. I don't suppose that Antonio is particularly comfortable, but wherever he is I expect he's safe.”

Filomena did not speak for a moment, her face still taut. Then she said: “It is the not knowing. That is what makes it difficult to bear.” Her mouth twisted into a smile. “And the fact that it is so pointless. Antonio has never been a fascist, he would do nobody any harm. This war has made everyone mad.”

Her wryness took Bernard by surprise. “You are right, Filomena. The whole business is absurd.” He reached into his pocket for his card. “When you do hear from him, please will you tell me? My wife and I are very fond of Antonio. We would do anything we can to help him.”

Filomena lifted her head to look at him. She had beautiful eyes, Bernard noticed, deep and expressive. “Of course,” she said, “of course. My brother is lucky to have such friends.”

On board the
Arandora Star
the Italians were divided into two. Antonio's group was sent to A deck, the lowest in the vessel, stinking of oil and of sweat. When the ship's doctor saw Enrico, though, he had them moved to the ship's great ballroom, closer to the main deck.

“The sleeping arrangements are not so comfortable, but he'll have more air,” the doctor said. He was an elderly man, white haired, his face a deeply wrinkled brown.

“Is my father dying?” asked Antonio. The old doctor looked at him for a moment. In his eye there was the somber glint of candor.

“Not yet,” he said.

The ballroom was vast, with a honey-colored wooden floor, the walls decorated in green and ivory. As he helped Enrico through the door Antonio remembered how Olivia had talked about her honeymoon, that night in Sussex.
We went on an Atlantic cruise. I had never seen such luxury.
All at once the memories Antonio had been suppressing flooded through him: the taste of Olivia's mouth, her spicy perfume, the way her pale breasts spilled sideways as she lay on the bed. Perhaps she had sailed on this same ship, perhaps her feet had touched this very floor, dancing the tango in new expensive shoes. The bitterness of it made him groan aloud. Nobody heard him, though. The men were too busy seizing their places, putting down their sleeping bags, staking their claims for space. They had all been given life jackets made of cork, which they kept close at hand with their other belongings.

Peppino managed to secure a corner of the bandstand, where one of the potted palms still stood, its fronds brown and shriveled.

“You should feel at home here, Antonio,” he said, as he surveyed the ballroom from the platform's edge.

“Home,” Enrico said, hungrily catching the word. “We're going home, aren't we, Antonio? Will Valentino be there to meet us?”

The
Arandora Star
left Liverpool at four the next morning, zigzagging across the Irish Sea. From the deck you could see the coast of Wales, then the Isle of Man, as the ship headed north toward the Atlantic.

Down below Antonio's spirits lifted. The onward movement of the ship gave him the illusion of progress. Even Enrico was calmer, nestled upon the dais in his badly knitted jersey, Valentino's photograph in his hand.

“I think it is very kind of the British government to send us on a cruise to Canada,” Peppino said. He had just asked one of the ship's amenable stewards to bring them a drink, and the man had returned with pink gin on a tray. “Here's to them. And bugger the
duce
.”

Across the ballroom a knot of young Germans, the sailors from the captured merchant ship, began a ragged chorus of the Hitler Youth anthem. “
For today Germany belongs to us, and tomorrow the whole world.
”

“Just listen to those bastards,” said Peppino. “You sing, Antonio. If you sing you can drown them out. Sing ‘Tornerai.' It will cheer your father, it will cheer us all.”

Antonio stood at the front of the dais. His father was watching him with an eager, peaceful expression. For an instant, as he opened his throat, he feared the sound would be lost in the clatter of the ballroom. Then his own voice soared, swelling through the air like a sirocco. Slowly the faces turned toward him: not only the Italians but the stewards, the British soldiers, the refugees, the Nazis. Little by little the Hitler Youth anthem died away. Antonio was filled with hope, and a sense of rightness. This is what I am for, he thought. This is what I was born to do.

At dawn on
July 2 the sea was calm, beneath a damp, cloudy sky. The
Arandora Star
was steaming due west when it was spotted by a U-boat on its way home to Germany. U-47 was under the command of Gunther Prien, the bold young Nazi who had penetrated Scapa Flow and sunk the
Royal Oak
. On his latest mission he had destroyed eight British ships in three weeks. Through his periscope he examined the
Arandora Star,
with its cannon on the stern, its antiaircraft gun on the bow. The zigzag course of the ship identified it as an enemy. Gunther Prien had one torpedo remaining. Just before seven o'clock he fired it.

After his visit to Frith Street Bernard tried without success to find out where Antonio was. The civil servants whom he knew talked in harassed voices about emergency camps in Manchester and Liverpool, but they had no lists of names, and he soon realized it was pointless to keep asking; he would use up goodwill that he might need later, in a greater crisis.

Meanwhile a complaining letter arrived from Penelope. With so much riffraff flooding into London her dowager friend was anxious about the apartment in Hyde Park—worried sick, Penelope said, and she had heard nothing from the Rodways for weeks.

“Tcha!” Bernard flicked the letter down upon the lunch table. “It would serve the old trout right if I installed eight homeless families in her flat. God knows it's big enough. When did you last go there, Olivia?”

Olivia was eating pea and ham soup, or rather, not eating it, but turning the spoon over and over in the flecked green broth. She had not set foot in the Hyde Park apartment since the day she said good-bye to Antonio.

“I can't remember,” she said, untruthfully. She raised her spoon and tried to swallow a mouthful of soup. It filled her with nausea. She had been sick once already today. “I can go this afternoon, if you want.”

“Well, why not? If you don't mind, darling. I know it's a chore.”

The weather was cloudy and stiflingly warm. Olivia felt a sense of oppression as she climbed the curved stairway to the Hyde Park flat. Like most women in these early days of war she wore sober clothes, a cream silk blouse, a tobacco linen suit. Her heart was thumping in her throat. She dreaded stepping through the door of the apartment.

Inside the brocade curtains were drawn, just as she had left them. She did not open them, nor put on the lights, but crossed toward the bedroom in the half-dark. Her blue kimono and a discarded towel were sprawled on the carpet. Olivia sat upon the unmade bed. The crumpled sheets smelled faintly of Antonio, of his skin, of his sweat. I should have come sooner, she thought, the scent of him is already fading.

Nudging off her beige kidskin shoes she climbed into the bed. As she lay there she remembered how when her mother died, the warmth in her body had so quickly evaporated, leaving her rigid, a stranger. She thought of poor disappointed Daisy, of her lost sister, Wilma, of Uncle Dickie. She thought of the phantom child she had flushed away in the mildewed lavatory in Pimlico. They clustered about her, drifting silvery figures, half threatening, half reproachful. She buried her face in the mattress, trying to conjure the touch of Antonio's fingers, the friction of his cheek against her neck. What was it that he had said?
I would do anything on earth to find you.
Olivia breathed in the scent of the sheets, but the smell of Antonio's skin had vanished.

Antonio was helping
his father to dress when the torpedo struck. It hit the starboard engine room with a low deep crash, exploding the generators. The
Arandora Star
was plunged at once into darkness.

“Holy mother of God,” said Peppino, “it must be a mine.”

There was the acrid stink of burning. The ship juddered to a halt. Half the internees were scrambling up, grabbing their belongings, crying out to one another. Antonio could hear the German sailors repeat
torpedo
in rapid urgent voices. It took him a moment to recognize the word.

“It's not a mine,” he said, “we're under attack. What should we do, Peppino? Wait for instructions?”

“There won't be instructions.” Peppino, still in pajamas, seized his cork life jacket. “It's every man for himself. Let's follow those Nazi bastards. They know what they're doing.”

The merchant sailors had formed a line behind their leader and were making their way out of the ballroom toward the deck. The ship tilted. There was an unearthly creaking from the lower decks, and the sound of men screaming. Antonio hauled his father to his feet.

“My photograph,” said Enrico, resisting, his hand outstretched, “my picture of Valentino. I can't find it.”

“Leave it, Papa. Nothing matters now.”

Peppino helped to carry Enrico along the gangway, up toward the deck. The morning light was densely gray. A lifeboat, chock full with men, was being lowered from the davits. Above them a man was climbing toward another lifeboat on the top deck, impeded by the coils of barbed wire. A couple of others were hurling furniture overboard, deck chairs, benches, empty barrels, anything that would float in the oil-drenched water.

“Here, let me tie your father's life jacket.” It was the steward who, the night before, had brought them the tray of pink gin. “If it's not tight it'll ride up when you hit the water. Could break your neck.”

The German sailors had stripped naked and were lining up to dive into the sea, fifty feet below. The arc of their bodies was white and graceful as they fell. The water below teemed with men. Some were hanging on to debris from the ship, others were swimming toward the crowded lifeboats. Even as Antonio watched a man was pulled onto one of the rafts, his feet still dangling in the water.

“We're in a shipping lane,” the steward said. “That's the good news. It won't be long before we get picked up. Just try and jump as far from the ship as you can.”

Antonio stared as he realized what the steward meant. “We could wait for another lifeboat—” he began.

“No,” said Peppino, “if we wait we'll die. Let's jump. I'll help you with your father.”

They clambered to the ship's side. Peppino seized a rope from one of the davits, to help them swing out from the deck. It felt as though they were plummeting from the sky. As they hit the water Enrico's weight dragged Antonio under. There was oil and salt in his mouth, burning like swallowed fire. Just as he thought his lungs would burst they surfaced, buoyed by their cork life jackets. A wooden bench, floating among the debris, struck Antonio on the shoulder. He seized it, pushing his father toward it.

“Here, Papa, hold on. You'll be safe if you hold on.”

Antonio encircled his father with both arms, pinning Enrico to the bench. A few yards away he could see Peppino swimming for a life raft; then the ocean swelled, and Peppino disappeared from view. On the deck of the
Arandora Star
stood a row of men, Italians mostly, staring down at the crowded water. Some were holding suitcases. They had struggled up from the lower decks, too late for the lifeboats, too frightened to jump. The great ship hissed and swayed, its stern dipping obliquely.

“Oh, my son,” said Enrico, “oh, Valentino—”

A wave surged from the heaving ship, knocking Antonio sideways. As he sank he felt his father slide from his grasp. The old man slid away easily, almost willfully, without resisting. Antonio flailed and snatched but his arms closed upon nothing. And then the dark water was over his head, and he was struggling for breath, kicking and fighting his way to the surface. He managed to grab at the wooden bench once more, allowing it to support him. Enrico had vanished beneath the oil-black shimmer of the sea. Antonio tried to call out, to cry, Papa!, but his throat was still burning and the words would not come out.

A dead man floated past, his skewed head bobbing above his life jacket. Antonio gripped the bench. His fingers were numb and slow, as if they belonged to someone else, and he could not get the hang of using them. Perhaps it is for the best, he thought, that Papa mistook me for Valentino. Perhaps it helped him to go in peace. He wondered, quite calmly, how much longer he would be able to hold on. The last thing he heard was a high-pitched whistle like birdsong. He did not recognize it as the sound of men drowning.