The Man Who Went Down With His Ship Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dorothy said, since she too had heard the rumours about what her lover had supposedly done or not done, and had always thought it kinder to steer clear of the subject. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it.’ ‘But come to think of it,’ she added a little later, somewhat cautiously, ‘it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you did, would it?’ Thereby, the implication was, setting the record straight one way or another. Or at any rate, getting whatever’s been on your chest all these years, off.
    ‘No,’ Alfred thought every evening, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. On the contrary, it might be a very good idea. Furthermore, if he knew quite well why he had never written of the sinking before—and not only not written of it, but put it out of his mind so thoroughly that to all intents and purposes what had happened had not happened to him—now it came to him that in a sense all his adult life he had been waiting for this moment, when the creature would spring out of the cover in which it had been hiding, and stand exposed in the light; and he had been preparing himself mentally, or morally, for it.
    The years of hanging around are over, he told himself bravely. It is time to face the beast.
    As he was still telling himself the following morning; when he received a letter that according to the postmark had beenmailed before the publication of his interview in the paper. A typewritten page from the son of the captain of the Chateau briand : informing him that he was planning to write a biography of his father, and saying he would be very grateful if Alfred, as one of the most distinguished passengers on board, would give him the benefit of his recollections.
    A coincidence, or an omen? Alfred wasn’t certain, but he wrote back to the son saying he would certainly be willing to talk to him, though he might be interested to know that strangely he was planning to write, if not immediately publish, his memories of that night, ‘as you may have seen in the interview I did with Olivier Rosenthal that came out last Sunday. Of course,’ he added, ‘mine will be a strictly personal account, and won’t in anyway encroach on your territory.’
    That the son might not, nevertheless, be entirely happy with his version of the facts, he thought it prudent not to mention for the moment.
    *
    Yet now, he reflected, as he stood under the shower and decided that on second thoughts the first thing to do was take the letter to the police, it seemed that the son, or someone else, already knew what he was likely to say, and was determined to prevent him saying it. Either because he knew that although Alfred had made it clear, in his letter at least, that he wasn’t going to publish his account, when it actually came to it he would probably be persuaded to, not least because it would cause a certain scandal and sell a few extra copies of the newspaper in which it appeared, or simply because he didn’t want the truth to be told to anyone, not even to Alfred himself; as if, once it were out, in however private a form, it would somehow escape, like a wild animal from a zoo, and cause irreparable damage.
    That meant, therefore, that he had two choices. One was to announce publicly that he had given up the idea, and had decidedto continue to forget about that night all those years ago. The other was to go away somewhere in secret, with Dorothy and Matilda, and stay away until he had finished his task. By which time, with any luck, his persecutors would have forgotten about him; and anyway, he would have deposited copies of the story with a number of different people, with instructions that it was most definitely to be published should anything happen to him.
    Unless, he seemed to hear a voice whispering to him, he followed a third course. Namely: at this rather late stage in the game, emulate his illustrious father. By taking at last a public, unequivocal stand against anti-semitism, injustice, the greedy, the cruel and the murderous, and not