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Papa and I were only ever meant to come to America for a short while. It was summer 1916, and since neither of us was much able to make a contribution of our own, we thought we would leave the war behind, which had already taken my brother, and my father could finally start to work again.
The trip was another of Papa’s Big Ideas; it was the Big Idea, like all the others before it, which was finally going to rescue us. We believed it, he and I.
We embarked on that long voyage – the one that was going to save us – with only each other in the world to care for. I had no memory of having met our American benefactor, John de Saulles, whom my father assured me would be waiting for us at the other end. But Papa swore we had been introduced in the spring, at the Chelsea Arts Club, where my father and I used to spend so many evenings together. He tended to forget that during those long nights I often used to peel off on my own, hide away and read or, more often, simply fall asleep.
They were like peas in a pod, the two of them: utterly feckless, and hopelessly, faithlessly – lethally – addicted to a certain type of woman. Mr de Saulles had been in London the previous few months, on some sort of business, I don’t recall what. It happened to coincide with a time when my father was especially desperate for money, having blown his last of everything, once again, on who knows what? Mr de Saulles had visited Papa’s rented studio, and after plenty of bartering (something Papa took a great and uncharacteristic pleasure in), my father had made a painting of Mr de Saulles, in exchange for which Mr de Saulles had not only provided the paints (or so I assumed, since Papa was often so broke he was unable to finish a work for lack of materials) but also paid for his and my passage, second class, to America.
Mr de Saulles wanted Papa to paint his wife, a celebrated beauty. Also his mistress, a celebrated professional tango dancer (named Joan Sawyer. I was quite a dance fanatic back then and I had read about her, even in England). Since, by then, Papa had infuriated virtually everybody who might have been inclined to employ him in London, either by delivering botch jobs horribly late or – more often – by taking the money but failing to deliver anything at all, and since, with the war, portraiture was not in very high demand in London at the time, and since Papa was almost certainly broken-hearted again, we took up the offer.
The tickets were hand delivered to Papa’s rented studio on 27 July 1916. On 6 August, we had packed up our few possessions and boarded the great Mauretania for New York.
I shall never forget how the two of us stood on deck, quite silent, as that vast ship pulled slowly out to sea. Side by side, we stood, surrounded by noise: the ground-shattering bellow of the ship’s horn, the whistling and weeping and the weeping and cheering of passengers on either side of us, and from the decks above and below us; and together we looked back at the Liverpool dock, where not a soul in the great waving crowd was weeping or whistling for us . . . It seemed unimaginable to me then that we would not return to England again.
In any case, we watched until we could no longer make out the faces on shore. I was tearful, feverish – half wild with every crazy emotion – grieving for my brother and my unremembered mother, and for England, and for myself a little.
I longed to speak, but couldn’t quite summon the confidence. So it was Papa in the end, with one of his heavy, melancholic sighs, who finally broke our long silence.
Ah, well, he said.
And he turned away. From me. From the shore. From everything he and I had ever known. My father presented himself as a man of the world, and he was, I suppose, in a way. But he had never left England before, so perhaps he was afraid. Or perhaps he already knew, as I didn’t yet, that the wonderful, whimsical era of Marcus Doyle and his Big Ideas was edging ever closer to its tired and unfulfilled finale.
Or perhaps he might have been searching for somebody in the crowd, hoping until the last minute that some beautiful, familiar woman might appear from the midst of it and beg him to turn back again. Poor Papa. Since ever I can remember there was always a woman, always absurdly beautiful, always breaking his selfish, silly, fragile heart.
I said, impertinently, because usually it lifted him a little when I was pert, and in any case I needed to talk – to say anything, just to make a noise, ‘You oughtn’t to worry, Papa. I understand there are ladies galore in the city of New York. Some of them quite intelligent. And not all of them hideous.’
He smiled rather weakly. ‘Thank you, Lola. You’re very kind.’
Papa used to call me Lola. I never knew why. He didn’t like the name Jennifer, I suppose. It’s why I chose it, of course. When the choice was mine.
‘But, Papa, you may find them alarming at first,’ I continued facetiously. ‘Mostly they are entirely fixated with the vote. So I read. Much more so than the average Englishwoman. You may have to become a “suffragist” if you’re to make any progress with the American girls.’
He laughed at that. Which thrilled me. He ruffled my careful, seventeen-year-old hair, which, I remember, thrilled me rather less. ‘Come with me, my silly friend,’ he said to me. ‘Come and entertain me, will you, Lola? While I get myself a little stinko.’
It was how we spent the voyage. It was how Papa and I spent the greater part of all our time together actually, once my brother had died – or since probably long before: since Mother died and Marcus was away at school and it was always just the two of us, on our own, with him a little stinko, and me trying my darnedest to keep his melancholy at bay.
Dear God, this heat! This sticky, dirty, airless warmth. So much is different since I left the city all those years ago, but the New York summers don’t change. They remind me of August at Roslyn. It reminds of everything I would most like to forget.
I am writing this in a wretched little café just a couple of blocks from my own flophouse . . . Oh, and what a come-down it is! The Ambassador Hotel has its own air-cooling system – of course. As one might expect of such an ultra fine and modern hotel. It lent Rudy and me a magic, secret climate of our own, up there in our private paradise. I had forgotten what the rest of Manhattan was enduring. – Not that I care! Nothing in the world could bring me down tonight—
Ah! The little dooge has come with my eggs at last. I thought I might die from hunger . . . devilled eggs and buttered toast . . . I never saw a more welcome sight! And more coffee, too. And I have asked him to bring me a large slice of chocolate cake and some fruit Jell-O. And some ginger ale and some vanilla ice cream. And more toast. Good God, I’m so hungry I could swallow the whole of it in a single mouthful then order it all again – except I’m not sure I have enough money in my purse.
Is he thinking of me?
Is he thinking of me now?
But if I continue along those lines I shan’t be able to eat a thing, and it’s hopeless, because I must or I shall probably faint in this dreadful heat. I’ve hardly eaten for days. It would be too horribly embarrassing.
I must keep writing. About the beginning – when Papa was still here, and it was only the two of us, thrown together on that great big ship, setting off to start our new life together.
It’s strange. I’ve not dwelled – purposely not dwelled – on the beginning, not for all these years, and yet suddenly, tonight, it comes to me in a rush, as vivid as yesterday.
