McVicars and the crew stood behind Captain Moulton. Don Fracassi emerged from the hatch to join them. His black cassock dragged on the floorboards, soaked with oil from the lower decks. He had blessed the men before they jumped to save themselves. For the Italians, the last words many heard before dying were a prayer in their native language. The priest managed a smile for McVicars, who made his hand into a fist in solidarity with the priest. “Coraggio,” Fracassi said to McVicars as he took his place with the crew on the bridge. Moulton moved to look over the side of the ship.
“Jump!” Moulton shouted to a boy who clung in fear to the nets on the side of the ship, tears covering his face.
The captain reassured the boy: “Don’t be afraid, son! You can do it! Jump!”
The boy jumped into the sea. Moulton returned to his position with the men.
John McVicars stood tall as the Arandora Star sank into the ocean. The crow’s nest was swallowed by the depths. John took the last moments of his life looking not out to sea but up, to the sky. His last thoughts were of Domenica Cabrelli, the Italian girl he had been lucky enough to love and marry. A smile crossed his lips when he pictured her, the delicate woman with the will of a general and the heart of a healer. She was the best person he had ever known. His heart was full of so much love, he imagined that her love might save him. He kept his face to the sky. The sea was no longer his world, and he had seen enough of it. He embraced the morning sky and the clouds that had moved in. The clouds were so low, he could touch them. He said a prayer of his own. McVicars would find his way back to God, and in so doing, he was certain that he would see his wife again. He reached into his uniform jacket and pulled the holy medal Domenica had given him to his lips. He kissed the medal.
* * *
Domenica woke in the bed she had shared with her husband as thunder shook the windows in the stone cottage in the convent garden. The front door blew open in the wind, banging against the wall behind it. Heavy rain began to beat on the ground as lightning seared through the black clouds. Domenica sprung out of bed and stumbled to the door. A fierce gale-force wind blew her back inside and off her feet. She got up, pushed the door closed, and bolted it.
She had locked the door the night before. She had closed all the windows. Something was wrong. She feared the house would crumble. Domenica was not usually a fearful woman. A terror seized her, and she was unable to move. The world seemed to be ending. She would wait until the storm subsided and run to the convent over the hill, where she knew she would be safe.
* * *
Piccolo clung to a wooden baluster from the grand staircase of the Arandora Star that had been thrown into the water by a desperate sentry who had run out of life preservers. Piccolo was a good swimmer, and he wore a life jacket, but he saw good swimmers slip out of the life preservers and drown all around him.
When the ship Ettrick arrived to rescue the survivors, Piccolo was pulled from the wreckage on the surface of the water. He set out to find his father aboard the rescue ship sailing back to the port at Liverpool. He called out his father’s name so many times, he lost his voice. He found a man who had last seen Mattiuzzi on the first tier. He went from man to man, asking if any of them had seen his father. His worst fear would become his lifelong grief. Amedeo Mattiuzzi was gone.
Piccolo did not learn the fate of Antica, though he knew that a man of his age would not have survived jumping into the ocean. Savattini was not among the survivors on the rescue ship either, but Piccolo figured if anyone could survive the bombing of a mighty ocean liner, it would be the stylish ma?tre d’ from London. Savattini was a gold lariat of a man; he slipped through trouble with ease, any knot in the chain that bound him was easily undone.
Piccolo wrote a letter as he wept and explained the circumstances of his father’s death to his mother and sister. He wrote a second letter to Margaret Mary McTavish and included it in the envelope to his mother. Piccolo explained that he had survived the bombing of the Arandora Star, but fate was not through with him. The Ettrick was due to set sail for Australia, from Liverpool immediately taking survivors of the Arandora Star with it. There would be no reprieve for the Italian Scots.
DUNMORE STRAND, IRELAND
July 8, 1940
Eleanor King took a walk along the beach at Dunmore Strand every morning after Mass at Saint Patrick’s Church. She walked over slivers of black and gray shells that covered the beach and crunched under her feet. Her posture was upright for a woman of seventy-seven. She moved along the shore at a brisk pace as she said her rosary. She was praying, keeping one hand in her pocket on the beads, when she looked down the beach.
“Not another one,” she muttered as she approached a corpse that had washed ashore, the eleventh body that week.
Eleanor knelt next to him. She was startled that his eyes were open; they were as blue as thistle. He was handsome too. Eleanor King liked a tall man. His skin was bloated and waxy and tinged with green from the drowning, but his color didn’t trouble her. He looked like a painting. The stranger’s hand was glassy, and his gold wedding band, lodged on his finger, was intact. His uniform hung in tatters on his body, the gold bars of his naval rank having survived.