buildings thrusting up into the clouds – ‘skyscrapers’, they called them – from a distance. She especially loved the Woolworth building, said to be the tallest in the world, its windows glinting in early afternoon sunshine on this fresh spring day. As the ship passed the harbour bar, she could smell the ocean. She knew rivers and sea mingled here because not far up the East River she liked to swim in a floating pool, where the water had a slightly salty flavour.
Gerda had mixed emotions about the trip: she longed to see her sister Thomasine and meet her new niece and nephew, to feel part of a family again, but at the same time she dreaded those familiar questions – ‘Is there not a beau? Someone special perhaps?’ – and the sense of failure they induced. At the age of twenty-nine, she was firmly ‘on the shelf’ and had no idea why it had turned out that way because, she yearned for a husband, someone to love who would stop her feeling so alone. She was pretty enough, with blonde, blue-eyed, Norwegian looks from the country of her birth; she was a talented seamstress who dressed well, given her limited means; and she lived in a respectable house, with no slur on her good name. She met gentlemen from time to time – nice gentlemen, with decent jobs – and they called on her for a while and then stopped, either saying they were ‘too busy’ or simply drifting away without explanation.
‘You’re too direct,’ her friend Charlotte told her. ‘You come across as too keen.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. How do I act differently from anyone else?’ She’d watched other girls, noted their jocular repartee, their bright smiles, the hand placed lightly on a man’s forearm, and she tried her best to emulate them, though it made her feel false.
‘Do you remember when Mr Taylor, the jeweller, began to call on you? You barely knew him and yet you asked about the extent of the accommodation above his shop, as if you were interviewing a potential husband.’
‘I was curious – that’s all.’
‘And with Mr Eliot, a highly eligible bachelor, you asked if he would consider pruning his whiskers …’
Gerda wrinkled her nose; she could see that had perhaps been indelicate, but his facial hair was so overgrown a small rodent could easily have nested therein.
‘You need to stop yourself blurting out personal questions. Be mysterious. Try to act as if you have dozens of gentlemen callers, as if you are the kind of girl who receives proposals every day of the week but will only accept if you meet someone exceptional.’
Gerda mused on this but still couldn’t imagine how she would follow it. If she play-acted too much the man might fall in love with the person she was pretending to be and she’d have to maintain the act throughout her marriage. Perhaps some women did that, but she feared she wasn’t a good enough actress.
Two young boys were running along the deck twirling hoops on sticks, and when she turned to watch, she caught eyes with a dark-haired man standing ten feet away. He wore a trilby and a nice suit: single-breasted, decently tailored, expensive cloth. He smiled and she smiled back instinctively.
A minute later he appeared at her elbow. ‘I didn’t like to disturb you as you seemed lost in thought. I hope you are not melancholy to be leaving New York City.’
He was English, with a northern accent and friendly eyes. ‘Not at all. I was simply admiring the view.’
‘Aha! Do I detect a hint of a Geordie accent?’
‘Actually I’m Norwegian, but my sister and I grew up in South Shields … And you?’
‘Manchester. T’other side of the Pennines. The name’s John Welsh. But friends call me Jack.’
‘Gerda Nielsen.’
He touched his hat. ‘Pleasure to meet you, Miss Nielsen.’
‘What brought you to America, Mr Welsh?’ she asked, wondering if he might be one of those men who came out to the New World to make their fortunes then returned home to collect their wives or fiancées once established.
‘I’ve been in Honolulu working for the Marconi radio company, but I got homesick for the old country. Now I want to go home and settle down, taste Ma’s hotpot and drink a decent cup of tea … What about you?’
‘I’ve been working in a dressmaker’s in Brooklyn but I’m on my way back to visit my sister.’ America was now a hazy mass on the horizon and all around them was dark choppy water with sunspots dancing on the surface. She felt a warmth about this man. He seemed open and genuine, with no edges to speak of.
‘It’s hard being a traveller,’ he said. ‘You make friends in one place, build a life for yourself, but all the while there’s a tug from your roots. I know folks who travel to and fro, year on year, but I don’t want to end up like that. Ma isn’t getting any younger and I should be there to look out for her.’
She smiled. ‘That’s nice.’ It sounded as though there wasn’t a wife involved, but maybe he was just omitting mention of her for now. She wished she could ask but guessed it was the kind of question Charlotte had warned against.
After a while they found some deckchairs and swapped stories. He told her that as a boy he’d liked to discover how things worked; his mother bought him an old alarm clock that he spent hours taking apart and putting together again. After finishing school he studied mechanical engineering at college before getting into telephones and travelling all over America with his work. She told him that her father brought her and her sister to England after their mother’s death then she decided to try her luck in New York after her father died. ‘We were very close,’ she said, her voice catching. She told him of the family friend with whom she lodged in Brooklyn, of her work, of a life that seemed settled yet had an impermanence at its core.
I like this man, she thought. He was easy to talk to. You didn’t have to work to come up with new topics of conversation because he listened to what you said and asked relevant questions and somehow the words just flowed.
The gong rang for lunch, delayed because they’d sailed more than two hours late.
‘Might I have the honour of sitting with you?’ he asked, rising to his feet and offering his arm.
‘I’d like that,’ she said, trying not to let him see the smile that tickled the edges of her lips or sense the leap of her heart.
*
The third-class dining room was grand, with polished-wood panelling, long pine tables and individual chairs for each diner, unlike the benches they’d had on the Mauretania when Gerda sailed out five years earlier. They sat with a family called the Hooks, and a woman called Mrs Williams who was travelling with her six children, and all introduced themselves as waiters brought steaming plates of roast pork with vegetables, rice and bread. The dishes and cutlery bore the Cunard insignia of a crowned lion holding the globe between his paws.
‘Were you nervous about taking this crossing, my dear?’ Mrs Hook asked Gerda. ‘I must say, I would worry if I were travelling alone.’
She was puzzled. ‘I’ve sailed alone before.’
‘I meant because of the German Kaiser’s threat.’ Gerda looked blank. ‘He warned that any ships crossing the Atlantic into the war zone are a fair target for U-boats, whether they are military or not.’
Gerda turned to Jack, her eyes wide. ‘I didn’t know about that.’
He rushed to reassure her: ‘There was a notice in the newspapers a few days ago. It said those who travel in a war zone do so at their own risk, but it’s simply posturing. They wouldn’t dare attack a civilian ship, especially one with Americans on board, because they’d risk dragging America into the war.’
Mrs Hook started listing the famous Americans said to be on board: millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt, the fashion designers Carrie Kennedy and Kathryn Hickson, theatrical impresario Charles Fröhman, all of them in first class.
Gerda was silent and Jack seemed to sense her concern. ‘It will be fine. If there are U-boats in