Flight from Berlin by David John Read Free Book Online Page B

the hallway where the main stairs led down to D deck, a fury rising inside her. The lousy, childish, jealous, cheating shuckster . The dirty, worthless, two-faced—
    ‘Eleanor, bed in half an hour, please. It’s nine-thirty.’
    She looked round to see a bald-headed AOC official with a bow tie who had been present during her coffee room encounter with Brundage.
    ‘Oh, take a jump overboard,’ she shouted without stopping.
    She had never heard of Velma Delmont, but the fact that Louella Parsons had seen the need to put ‘actress’ in front of the name meant she was either a showbiz nobody or a streetwalker.
    ‘Herb, my man, I hope you got everything you deserve. Velma Delmont has VD written all over her.’
    In her darkened cabin Eleanor shut the door and slumped against the wall, seeing the faint disc of light from the porthole begin to blur. For a long while she stood there reddening, her teeth bared, her face streaking with tears.
    ‘Damn it,’ she whispered, the breath juddering in her chest.
    In a corner of her heart perhaps she’d known he was no good. Perhaps she’d even known that he didn’t love her. She’d been a fool. His music had captivated her. And that night at Radio City when they’d first met, his pomaded hair a touch too long, his patterned tie with a diamond pin, she’d seen his potential for shocking her parents. She was young and rich, and he’d married her. Why wouldn’t he? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried to make it work. But the more she’d done to win his affections the worse his behaviour seemed to get. And for the first time in her life she’d been vulnerable.
    Where does it go from here? she thought.
    She wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands and told herself that she refused to cry. She absolutely refused.
    At the end of her corridor she put her head round the steward’s door and found the cabin boy, Hal, dozing with his feet on a stool, a Lone Ranger comic book across his lap. She shook him gently.
    ‘So,’ he said, opening his eyes, ‘we’re alone at last.’
    ‘Kid, do me a favour. Go find out if there’s a return party for Mr and Mrs Charles MacArthur on A deck?’ His eyes bulged when she showed him a silver dollar.
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’
    Minutes later she was half changed into a gown when Hal knocked on the door and handed her a note.
My dear, what’s keeping you? Humdinger of a party up here!! Put your dancing shoes on. Charlie
    Much later, when she tried piecing together the fragmentary memories of the evening, she wasn’t sure if it was Herb’s betrayal or the certain knowledge of consequences from Brundage that made her drink even more than usual. Either way, the champagne flowed and she had raised her glass with no thought for tomorrow. When the band had played ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance,’ she’d heard an omen and a direct appeal.
    She remembered Paul Gallico stepping through the throng to greet her.
    ‘Darling, do you have a match?’ she asked him.
    ‘Have you been crying?’
    She mingled with Charlie, Helen, and John Walsh before dancing with Hearst Jr to ‘Let Yourself Go.’ Throughout the evening Charlie brought over people eager to meet her. It seemed she’d become something of a celebrity for defying Brundage—who, she learned, was unloved among the great and the good—and her exchange with Hacker at the MacArthurs’ party had become the best piece of gossip on A deck. This is probably what had emboldened her to further indiscretion.
    In the final throes of the party, with the few loyal revellers-in-arms still standing, she had a memory of inventing an uproarious new dance called ‘the Avery,’ which involved making jerky, chickenlike steps, arms flapping and rear ends stuck out, in a burlesque parody of the Charleston.
    Sometime in the early hours, Paul Gallico had carried her down to D deck and had found Mrs Hacker blocking the corridor to Eleanor’s cabin. The chaperone, in her bathrobe and hairnet, cocked her head as