“I won’t, Ducka,” I told her. “I won’t, I promise.”
A few days later, and in circumstances I could never possibly have foreseen or imagined in my wildest nightmares, I would be thinking of those last moments alone with Aunty Ducka on the staircase, and how I was failing to keep that promise, like so many others I’d made to her over the years, and how, at least in this case, it wasn’t my fault. There are times when it is impossible to keep the promises we make.
When we came back into the dining room some minutes later, I saw that Old Mac was reading aloud from a newspaper. He stopped at once when he saw us come in. He was clearly in the middle of relating something he did not want me to hear. But I did catch the end of what Mama was saying. “It’ll be all right, Mac – it’s silly rumour, tittle-tattle, that’s all. We are sailing tomorrow morning, and that’s that, whatever the papers say. We have to. We must. It’ll be fine.”
“What is it, Mama?” I asked.
“Nothing, dear,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand, “nothing that need concern you, or me, for that matter. Now, Ducka, let’s get this child into bed. We have an early start in the morning.”
I didn’t sleep much that night. The moon rode through the treetops outside my window. I sang my Mozart tune, my ‘Andante Grazioso’, humming it again and again. I listened. Papa was there. I could hear him singing too.
Old Mac had been right. The ship wasn’t just big, it was gigantic, twice the size at least of the ship Papa had sailed on, and ten times more magnificent too. She towered over the quayside, dwarfing the docks and every other ship around. She was the grandest, most majestic ship I ever saw. Even the cranes seemed to be bowing down to her, overawed in her presence.
Old Mac and Aunty Ducka found porters for us and escorted Mama and me up the gangplank on to the ship. Inside, the ship was as splendid as it was huge, more how I had always imagined a palace to be than a ship. Everyone on deck seemed to be rushing about in a state of high excitement, going somewhere, but not quite sure where. They were, I remember thinking, rather like excited chickens. There was shouting and laughing and crying all around me, a cacophony of human confusion.
The sailors, the porters, the maids were all in uniform. I never saw so many smart salutes or bobbed curtsies in all my life, a smiling “Welcome on board, Miss,” with every one. There were chandeliers and mirrors everywhere, gold paint, carpeted staircases, polished wood and gleaming brass handrails.
Without Old Mac and Aunty Ducka there to help us along, I think we should have been lost entirely, and never found our cabin at all. We kept losing sight of our porters and our luggage in the melee of passengers that crammed the corridors, corridors that seemed to go on for ever. The porters were always rushing on ahead, and Old Mac had to keep calling them back. Aunty Ducka was holding my hand very firmly all the time, as she always had done when we crossed roads in New York; and she was doing it now partly so that I didn’t get lost, or left behind or knocked over, but also, I am sure, because she knew the time for parting would be soon, and she didn’t want it to come, didn’t want to let go of me. That was certainly why I clung to her hand just as tightly.
Somehow, we kept our porters in sight and eventually caught up with them. After they showed us into our cabin, we found we still had an hour or two to go before we were due to sail. Once inside, and with the door closed, it was a lot calmer and quieter. But none of us seemed to know quite what to say. Even Old Mac was lost for words. Aunty Ducka and Mama busied themselves unpacking our trunks and our cases, and filling the closet and bureau, while Old Mac sat in a chair, clearing his throat and reading the newspaper, looking rather too often at his fob watch. I simply wanted this parting to be done with, for the crying to happen, which I knew it would. I could feel it welling up inside me. I wanted it to be over, for them to be gone. Aunty Ducka was laying out Mama’s peacock dressing gown on the end of her bed, putting out her slippers. That was the moment she could not contain her tears any longer. I went to sit beside her, and put my head on her shoulder. She patted my hand. She had kind, workaday hands, familiar hands.
The cabin was much larger than I had expected, and as palatial as the rest of the ship. We had our own porthole, and my bed was right underneath it, so I could kneel on it and look out. I could see the dockside below was crowded with passengers still boarding, some soldiers in uniform among them, Canadian soldiers, Old Mac told me. And it was true: some had uniforms just like Papa’s. There were, as well, several families with children coming on board – some of the children looked about twelve or so, my age, and that cheered me. Passengers in their hundreds were crowding the rails, waving and laughing, and many of them crying too. I could hear a band playing somewhere, the big drum thumping. I could feel the engines throbbing. It would not be long now. Aunty Ducka was kneeling beside me on the bed, looking out of the porthole, her arm round me. “I so wish I was coming with you, Merry,” she said.
“Me too, Ducka,” I told her. “Me too.”
I was aware then that Old Mac was talking in urgent whispers to Mama behind me. I turned to look. The two of them were in a huddle together by the cabin door. I listened hard, because I could tell from the confidential way they were speaking that they did not want me to overhear. He was showing her the same newspaper he’d been reading. “It’s in this paper too,” he was saying. “I’m telling you, I don’t like it, Martha, that’s all I’m saying. They wouldn’t say it unless they meant it. Why should they?”
“Stop it, Mac,” Mama whispered. “Merry will hear. I told you before. I don’t listen to tittle-tattle. And that’s what it is, just rumour. No, it’s worse, it’s propaganda. Yes, that’s what it is – German propaganda, German threats. You cannot believe everything you read in the newspapers. Anyway, I don’t care, even if it is true. I have to get to England, I have to be with him, that’s all there is to it, Mac. England is where this ship is sailing, and we’re sailing with it. You said it yourself, there’s no ship afloat that will get us there faster than this one.”
That was when the ship’s siren sounded, and moments later someone came knocking loudly, insistently, on the cabin door. “Pardon me,” came a voice. “All ashore! All ashore now, if you please! If you’re not sailing with the ship. All visitors ashore!” The four of us looked at each other, and then found ourselves clinging to one another. I had never in my life before seen Old Mac cry. He did then. We all did, Mama too. Aunty Ducka held her and kissed her, and for just a moment I saw my mother become a little girl again in her arms, a child in need of comfort.
We were up on deck a while later, leaning over the rails, as the ship prepared to leave. I was waving down, shouting my last goodbyes at Uncle Mac and Aunty Ducka again and again, until my arm ached, until my throat was sore with crying. Then, all of a sudden, I noticed there was an excited kerfuffle down below on the dockside, and I heard gales of laughter and cheering from the crowd both down on the quay and around us up on deck. It was a moment or two before I saw what the kerfuffle was all about. It was a young family, a father carrying two tearful children and a mother with a babe in arms. They were struggling to find a way through the crowd on the quayside, arriving flustered, breathless and full of apologies, at the very last moment at the foot of the gangplank, just as it was about to be hauled away. To raucous cheers and applause from all around, they were helped through the crowd, and up the gangplank.
But then came a strange change of mood. There was quite suddenly no more cheering, but instead a murmur and a hush passed through the crowd, like a chill wind, like an ill wind. It seemed to me a universal shudder of fear, which became an unnatural silence. I could not understand the reason for it at all, until I glimpsed what so many must already have noticed. As the family were almost up the gangplank and into the ship, the porters helping them with their luggage, a black cat was dashing down past them. Just at the very last moment, even as the gangplank was being withdrawn, he leapt out over the gap on to the dockside and disappeared into the crowd. Th
ere was laughter then, but nervous laughter. The band struck up again, but the mood of celebration was broken. Gulls circled the ship, crying, screaming. I looked up at Mama. She tried to smile at me, to reassure me, but she could not.
As the ship’s siren sounded, and she edged slowly away from the dockside, the deck throbbing under our feet, I was still waving. But neither Uncle Mac nor Aunty Ducka was waving back any more. Aunty Ducka could hardly bear to look at us. She kept turning away and burying her head in Old Mac’s shoulder. Uncle Mac though was looking. He never took his eyes off us, not for a moment. It was as if he knew he was looking at us for the last time, and I found myself thinking just the same about him, about them, about New York and everyone I had known there. Under my breath I said goodbye to Pippa, to Miss Winters. The cheering and waving, ship to shore, shore to ship, had resumed by now, but it was half-hearted, sporadic. We stayed there until we were so far away that Uncle Mac and Aunty Ducka were lost in the crowd, and we couldn’t make them out any more.
Mama wanted to go down to the cabin at once, but I insisted on staying on deck. “Please, Mama, just until we pass the Statue of Liberty.” So we stayed. I could not get over how much smaller Liberty seemed as we sailed by her in our great ship. Some of the other passengers were waving her goodbye, as if she too was family they were leaving behind. So I did too. But Mama didn’t. She had turned away, and was glancing down at the folded newspaper in her hand. I could see she was worried. “You and Uncle Mac,” I said. “You were talking about something, something in that newspaper. You were, weren’t you? Back at home you were doing the same, and down in the cabin just now too. What was it, Mama?”
“I told you, Merry. Nothing,” she replied firmly, angrily almost. “Nothing at all. Everything is fine, just fine. Come along, Merry. Let’s go down to the cabin. It’s cold up here. I’m shivering.”
I realised then that I was too. I took one last look at the Statue of Liberty, at the skyline of New York, then turned away and went below.
As I lay in our cabin that night, I wasn’t thinking about Uncle Mac or Aunty Ducka, or Pippa, nor even of Papa lying wounded in hospital in England, as I knew I should have been. All I could think of was that black cat running down the gangplank, and leaping out over the water on to the quayside. A black cat leaving the ship like that had to mean something, I was sure of that. But I couldn’t work out whether it meant good luck or bad luck. Time will tell, I thought, time will tell.
THEY HAD ALL HOPED THAT Dr Crow’s instincts were right, that music might somehow restore Lucy’s sunken spirits, and lift her out of herself, that it might even unlock her memory, and her voice too. But Jim was, from the start, deeply sceptical about the whole thing – he wasn’t too fond either of the music that all too often wafted through the house these days. He could see though that, for Mary, any hope was better than none; that she was pinning so much on Lucy’s recovery; that this strange, silent child from nowhere had come to mean the world to her. So Jim did his best to keep his doubts to himself, and put up, mostly uncomplaining, with the sound of music that, day in, day out, filled the house, and greeted him every time he came home.
After a while though, even Jim had to acknowledge that Dr Crow’s faith in the restorative powers of music had not been entirely misplaced. Lucy did come downstairs sometimes, only very rarely, but this was a change, an improvement. They never heard her coming, no creak on the stairs, no lifting of a latch. She would simply be there, a sudden, silent presence in the kitchen. They’d turn and see her standing there – still as a ghost, Alfie thought sometimes – an apparition at the bottom of the stairs, always wrapped in her blanket, and holding her teddy bear. She would not be looking at them, but rather at the gramophone, listening intently to the music, almost hypnotised by the record going round and round. Realising it had to be the music that was at last getting Lucy up and about, Mary or Alfie – even Jim sometimes, if Mary reminded him – would wind up the gramophone whenever they passed it by, or whenever they heard the music slowing down, trying to keep it playing as constantly as possible.
Despite all this, Lucy still spent most of her days lying upstairs in bed, propped up on her pillows, living inside her silence, staring out of the window or more often up at the ceiling. But from time to time Mary did discover her out of her bed, more often at night-time, and when no music was playing too. They would hear her humming away in her room – and they were all sure by now it was humming, not moaning. Several times now, when Mary had looked in on Lucy as they came up to bed, she had found her out of bed and standing by the window, gazing up at the moon and humming that tune again, softly, sadly, and not just to herself, Mary thought, but to the moon. She seemed fascinated by the moon.
As time went by, they did notice that Lucy seemed more and more to time her appearances downstairs – and they were becoming ever more frequent now – to coincide with meals. As she listened to the music, she would stand there by the gramophone, still keeping her distance from the family, but watching them eat. Every time she came down, Mary would make a great fuss of her, hugging her fondly and taking her hand, trying all she could to encourage her to come to the table to be one of them.
“You’re family now, Lucy dear,” she would say. “You, Uncle Billy, Alfie, Jim, me – we’re all your family now.” She would tell her about Uncle Billy, how he was one of the family too, and how, once Lucy was up and about a bit more, she would take her down to the boathouse to meet him, and to see the Hispaniola. “Billy’s done wonders with that boat, Lucy. It’s beautiful, beautiful. You wait till you see it.”
But Lucy would not sit with them, however often Mary encouraged her to. It was Alfie’s idea to put a chair for her against the wall beside the gramophone. It quickly became her place. She would always sit there, and eat her food there too. She seemed to eat much better with them down in the kitchen than upstairs alone in her bedroom. She was eating properly now, not picking at her food as she had before.
One evening, before Lucy came downstairs, Alfie decided to try something. He moved her chair from the wall by the gramophone over to the kitchen table. When she saw it there, she hesitated for long moments, her brow furrowing. They all thought she was going to turn round at once, and go back upstairs, but, to their great joy and surprise, she walked slowly across the kitchen and came to sit down with them at the table.
As they sat there with her, they all realised that they had just witnessed a moment of supreme importance. Not a word had been said, not a look passed between them; but they all felt a surge of sudden hope, a sense that a corner had been turned, and that this might really be a promise of better things to come.
The next day Alfie showed Lucy how to wind the gramophone up herself, how to blow the dust off the needle, how to wipe the record with a damp cloth before you put it on, how to lower the needle on gently to make it play, everything in fact that Dr Crow had taught them a few weeks before, all of which was almost second nature to them by now. Alfie had tried to teach her once or twice before, but she had shown little interest in learning. Now, quite suddenly, she was not only attentive, but clearly impatient to get on and do it for herself. And, when she did, it was soon obvious to Alfie that he needn’t have bothered to teach her at all. She seemed to know perfectly well already. She managed it with consummate ease, an ease borne of familiarity. Alfie was sure she had done it before.
From that day on Lucy always put the records on for herself – no one else had to bother any more. She took complete charge of the gramophone, made it her own. Dressed now in the clothes Mary had made for her, she’d be downstairs, all day and every day, playing the gramophone. As soon as a record was finished, she’d play it again or put on another one. She’d never let it wind down either.
She may not have been communicating with them any more than she had before, but she was there, living amongst them. Sometimes she would even help Mary with her bread-making. Lucy seemed in particular to love kneading the dough. But mostly, she would sit there for hour after hour, sw
athed in her blanket, one foot tucked under herself, rocking back and forth, her teddy bear sitting smiling beside the gramophone. Sometimes Lucy would be humming along to the music. Humming seemed to bring Lucy great comfort, as if the tunes were lullabies for her, even if they were sometimes sad. She seemed to know many of them already – either that or she was picking them up very fast. It was the humming – and the bread-making too – that gave the whole family even more cause to be optimistic now about her recovery. After all, if she could hum, then surely one day she must speak, and not just a word or two, but properly.
One day soon, Alfie kept reassuring his mother, Lucy would speak her memories, would know who she was again, and tell them at last how she came to be there. What a story she would have to tell.
Dr Crow always brought along a new record every time he came to visit, but Lucy did not like all of them. Anything too loud she would not play. It was above all piano music she liked to listen to, and one particular record by Mozart best of all. She played the doctor’s record of Mozart’s ‘Andante Grazioso’ piano sonata over and over again. She began and ended every day playing only that piece on the gramophone, often with tears in her eyes as she listened, as she hummed. She clearly adored it. And in time the whole family came to love it too, even if Jim still found the constant music hard to bear sometimes. But he too came to love ‘Lucy’s tune’, as they called it.
“She sings it beautiful, don’t she?” he told Mary one evening, after both Lucy and Alfie had gone up to bed. “She sings it like an angel.”
“That is because Lucy is from heaven,” Mary told him. “Like all children. I never believed anything before as much as I believe this, Jimbo: that child is a gift to us from heaven, just as Alfie was. I told you before. It weren’t just luck that it was Alfie and you who found her on St Helen’s and brought her home. It were meant to be.”