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The lawyer's wife proudly displayed a picture of her daughter on her wedding day and told a little story: "We invited three American officers to dinner without knowing any of them, you know. My daughter went to meet them at the station and my son-in-law says that he hadn't touched the ground before he'd made up his mind he was going to marry her. Now his parents write us that everyone loves her."
Her Notables. Only a sprinkling of notables was aboard. There was Lord Brand, who had recently made an important speech on the Transport Bill. There was Major General William ("Wild Bill") Donovan, who played deck tennis with youngsters a quarter of his age and did very well at it too. There was Sir William Stephenson,* who was the eyes & ears of the British Empire years before Bill Donovan's Office of Strategic Services was dreamed of. There were David Farrar, the movie star, David A. Smart, publisher of Esquire, and the very smart Mrs. Smart.
Snatches of conversation were reminders that not all the travelers were en route to visit daughters. The woman who had crossed so often that she had almost lost count was heard to say: "But didn't you hear what happened to him? He married a perfectly beautiful French girl and they found out she was a German spy, so the marriage was annulled, and now everything's all right."
The precise Czech economist made a political point with great economy of words: "Some Bulgarians were educated in Berlin and they mostly turned out Nazis. After the war they were shot. The other educated Bulgarians were trained in Prague and they were democrats. In Prague, I asked for an old Bulgarian friend and the Bulgarians told me he had been shot. I said: 'He was educated here. He was a democrat. I know that. You know that.' They said, 'Yes, we all know that. It was a mistake. But it has been rectified. The judge who sentenced him has also been shot.' "
An Australian, pacing the deck, told of attending the recent royal garden party at Buckingham Palace. "I went to Moss Bross and rented one of those outfits, and when we got there the crowd looked like people at the track milling about looking for odds. My wife pointed about a quarter-mile away and said, 'There's the pavilion where the King is. Shall we sit down?' I said, 'Let's sit down, but not here. Let's go back to the hotel where I can sit down with a whiskey.' "
In the smoking room a U.S. businessman was annoyed at what he thought were the excessively polite goodnights and hope-you-sleep-wells. He was for a more honest world: "What do we all care how each other sleeps? It's like me and my board of directors. When I meet them, I always call them gentlemen, but I know and they know I know they are a bunch of thieves, one and all."