Titanic Ashes, page 10
His life, he realizes, must have always been under a microscope, even before the Titanic. Like everyone in his class and position he has always been an ant under the lens, but since there was so little notoriety in his behaviour, the public eyes which glanced upon him—office and hotel employees, railway porters, hotel guests, servants, valets—remained disinterested and silent. But the disaster, and his part in it, changed all that. Since then he could feel the burning heat of the lamp, the hush of interest, the magnified attention, the crowds gathering to view and confer, and has never quite shaken himself free of it.
Staring through the glass now at the attendant’s left shoulder and twitching gloved hands, the whole exercise seems like hopeless bravado, and so clearly not what Evelyn wanted. Never has he seen such mortification on his daughter’s face as when he unsuccessfully tried to bluff his intentions.
“I find I have to rush into the lobby for an errand, my dear.”
“No, Father, ” she said.
“It’s all right, really. Everything will be all right.”
He remembers the last time he spoke that promise, a burning, foolish one, on a freezing deck minutes after receiving news that the ship would founder. It seemed a sensible thing to say at the time, as belief in safety eased the passengers into the lifeboats far more efficiently than signs of danger that elicited questions and a general agitation. Everything, of course, was not all right. He knew the gash under the waterline ran along at least four watertight compartments and he knew, without Andrews’ confirmation, what that meant.
A party of two women and one man strolls by the phones. One of the women glances in his direction and he finds himself hunching and turning, like Grimsden in the adjacent box, a pose he would likely use if he were talking to someone. The earpiece is hot against his lobe and the flex slaps gently to the rhythm of his pulse against his palm. He notices the fabric covering the wire becomes damper with sweat each time it touches upon his skin. The subterfuge infuriates him, makes everything seem urgent, and when he hears the creak of Grimsden’s opening door, he drops the earpiece and steps outside.
Ismay is close enough to feel Grimsden’s body heat as the unsuspecting man places a piece of paper in his wallet and slides the wallet into the inner lining of his jacket pocket. It’s a moment until he looks up, startled, brown eyes staring into Ismay’s face. The physical closeness is too awkward. Ismay shuffles slightly backwards but delivers the challenge quickly.
“I want a word with you, Grimsden.”
Grimsden’s face changes, his eyebrows raising. Understanding, a hint of dark humour perhaps, comes into his expression.
“Your wife has been staring at us through dinner.” The same party that passed the phones now returns in the opposite direction. The young woman who glanced at him then, does so again now. The gentle conversation of the party ceases altogether. Ismay realizes his words may have carried. “She has quite upset my daughter.”
“When it comes to that, Mr. Ismay, your daughter may have caused us some problems with digestion too. And it was not a cheap meal.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say?”
The group of three has passed now, silently, going toward the elevators leading to the rooms and suites. They begin to murmur, and the other lady takes a swift backward glance. The phone attendant stands by the farthest door. He looks straight ahead like a soldier, but his expression is worried.
“What would you have me say? It’s an argument between the womenfolk. Why don’t you let them sort it out?”
The logic of it hits Ismay like a wall, but he knows logic can’t satisfy him. Evelyn can’t sort it out, and he doesn’t want her to try. If there is a cause for Mrs. Grimsden’s insulting behaviour, it is he. And he can’t argue with Mrs. Grimsden, so he must do the next best thing. He must challenge her husband.
“I think you and I should sort it out.”
Grimsden smiles. Joviality has an odd effect upon his bulldog appearance, bringing his jowly cheeks up several inches, transforming him into an unlikely Father Christmas.
“It’s been some considerable time since I’ve received such an offer. Will it be fisticuffs in the street or should we look into the cost of booking the Albert Hall and give everyone a laugh?”
“I’m sorry you should find it so amusing.” Ismay finds his eyes watering, is ashamed of how this must look, but feels he may explode with the impotence of his fury. “But my family have heard me called coward once too often, and you are responsible for your wife whether you realize it or not.”
Grimsden sighs. “Mr. Ismay, unless you are talking about the processes of law, libel and so forth, Agnes is responsible for Agnes, I am responsible for me, and you are responsible for you.”
Ismay finds himself squaring up, shoulder sinews tightening. Improbable and undignified as he knows it will be, he is on the brink, eyes skimming Grimsden’s bloated left ear with its tuft of brown hair, the pitted flesh of his nose for the likely landfall of a first blow. But he needs the trigger word—coward—and Grimsden will persist in skirting it. “For the record, Mr. Ismay, I’ve no reason to doubt your personal courage. No, I know how newspapers and gossip work. But what did you think was going to happen when you were saved?”
The phone attendant, who had been watching with growing alarm, is distracted by an elderly man asking directions. Ismay feels he is at a multiple-lane crossroads, baffled by Grimsden’s contradictions, harried by the constricts of time and opportunity. “You’ve had the rewards, Mr. Ismay. First class all the way, birth on upwards. Why should you avoid paying the price?”
“What is this?” Ismay says with a laugh. Only a trace of spittle sparking under the light differentiates his tone from pure, detached scorn. But his body does relax. This is all he has been fighting for the last thirteen years, he thinks: a brazen, primitive absence of logic. “I’ve had it good. I’ve attracted envy. So now I must pay. Is that it?”
“I dare say that’s what it boils down to, Mr. Ismay.” Grimsden tucks the fingertips of his right hand into his waistcoat pocket. “You know your history, no doubt, but I’m not talking about the classics—Greek and whatnot— but plain, ordinary English history. The heir to a throne, you’ll remember, is a target for assassination from the moment he can crawl. All his rivals need is a cause, just or otherwise. That’s all your rivals needed too, and you gave it to them.”
“And how about you, Mr. Grimsden?” Ismay finds himself trembling. Now he will turn the tables. Now he’ll break a hole through Grimsden’s self-satisfied air and make him strike first. “Did you also not have fortune in your own career? Your marriage, for instance?”
“My marriage?” Grimsden tilts his head, brown eyes shining.
“She’s the heiress of a shipbuilding company, too, I gather. What does that make you?”
Ismay senses he’s just stepped into the dark. This is what Mrs. Grimsden said, isn’t it? He traces urgently through thirteen-year-old snatches of conversation. Her father was a shipbuilder in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is sure he heard so much, either from the Grimsdens themselves or from the Foresters who provided the introduction, although the name of the company eludes him.
“Oh, my father-in-law built ships all right, Mr. Ismay, ” he says now, folding his arms over his chest. “And he was much more of a shipbuilder in a practical sense than you or your celebrated father. Between you and me now, as Agnes never says a word to a living soul. But my father-in-law was a ship’s carpenter.”
Ismay moves backwards, suspecting a trick, hoping for evidence of a trick. But another look at Grimsden’s indomitable expression and the agitation in his nerves dissolves to defeat.
“When I met Agnes, Mr. Ismay, she was seventeen years old, penniless, in service to a Manchester family much like your own, business owners for generations.” He hums in consideration, clearly enjoying Ismay’s discomfort. “I was an employee somewhat overwhelmed to be invited to their party. All the silk, the gold, the genuine pearls, made me restless.” He scratches a furry earlobe at the memory. “But you wouldn’t know about that. Naturally I found myself gravitating to the servants, especially the young redhead with the slightly haughty manner—yes; she had it then— from Nova Scotia. I liked the ring of that name, New Scotland. ‘Better than the old one, ’ it seemed to say, and I myself was moving into new territory.”
He holds up a finger as if to flag a point in danger of escaping. “But she was poor, Mr. Ismay, not a businessman’s daughter at all, but a serf like me, determined to improve her lot in life. You see, I imagine that, whether or not she knows it herself, her dislike of you—which I will not, by the way, trouble to deny—has nothing to do with ‘women and children first.’ No. In some dim corner of my wife’s mind she knows that had we not prospered as we did, had she boarded the Titanic in steerage class, as she would have been obliged to do, my wife and her daughter would have shared the fate of the rest of her class and accompanied your fine vessel in its long and freezing journey to the bottom of the ocean.”
The phone attendant, relieved now, glances at them as he opens the door for a lady in a feather hat. Grimsden stares at Ismay for a moment. He turns his wrist inwards to glance at his watch. “Now, Mr. Ismay, if there is nothing more, I shall return to my table. Well…” With a final shrug, Grimsden departs, leaving in his wake the scent of sweet tobacco and wine.
Ismay finds he’s unable even to turn toward the dining room for fear of the life within—the shimmering dresses, the rising smoke, and the beating fans. He hears a splash somewhere close, off to his right, a sound so resonant, so fully embodied and real, he’s surprised to see not a length of oar half submerged in rippling dark waters, but rather the richly patterned red Persian carpet. There’s no explanation for the noise, no jugs of water on trays, just the Ritz lobby, the phone attendant, looking straight ahead, with white-gloved hands at his sides.
Ismay thinks of the questions at the enquiry about why he had his back to the sinking ship. He’d had to explain he was at the oars, pulling, and that his back was turned not from choice. He wasn’t in charge of the lifeboat. It was the truth too. But he wonders if it could have been any other way. If a clear-sighted vision had accompanied the thunderous groans of buckling metal, the crashes of boilers and engines slamming through bulkheads, and worst of all, the human sounds—the endless, agonizing wailing— he wonders whether he would have been able to see again. Would the lush rolling hills of his chosen retreat in Ireland, the face of his wife or his children have become forever superimposed with the images of destruction—his ship upended in the water, its lights still burning, great clusters of people like ants clinging to the stern, some dropping, bouncing against the hull on the way to certain death? It seems more than a lucky chance now that he should have been facing the other way.
As he turns to go back into the dining room at last, he promises himself it will be his last time here, the last time in London or in any English city, his last appearance among the crowds. He feels the tramp of the Connemara turf beneath his feet, damp but solid enough, more firm than anything under the souls who perished thirteen Aprils ago. Oblivion wants him and the desire is mutual. He has outlived his time.
HE SMILES AT EVELYN as he sits, notes the battle of emotion there—worry, relief, and urgent need to know—and feels the profound peace of a man who knows a war to be finally over, and the only chore remaining to be the announcement of the fact. The waiter slides dessert plates before Evelyn, then before Ismay.
“Most efficient, thank you, ” he says. The waiter’s face twitches and he hurries off.
“Father.” Evelyn leans toward him. “What happened?”
“What happened?” Ismay echoes, raising his dessert fork. “About fifteen hundred people died on one of my steamships in 1912.”
Evelyn stares, open-mouthed. She seems suddenly so young, this daughter of his, in her fashionable loose-fitting dress, with the pink in her cheeks. He’s become used to thinking of her as a wise old woman in the body of a girl, and wonders whether it’s because he’s always felt so shielded, so taken care of, in her presence. It seems an injustice to her now. She is indeed as young as she looks.
Evelyn hesitates, lifts her own fork, and stops again.
“Father, what do you mean?”
Her eyes are intent upon him, aware that there is a meaning, that this is not merely the prelude to a nervous breakdown.
“I mean, my dear, that the only thing that should ever have mattered is the disaster and what caused it.” He taps with the side of his fork on the hard sugar coating of his crème brûlée.
“Isn’t that the problem, Father? People seemed to think that you caused it, and we have to put them right.”
“It was my ship, Evelyn. There were design flaws and there were not enough lifeboats. Someone has to take the blame.”
Despite the calmness in his voice, he sees disquiet in her eyes. He lays his fork down.
“Evelyn, there comes a time in everyone’s life when after years of building, of pursuing some goal or other, one simply has to say: enough; I’ve done my part for good or ill. I was at that point in 1912, ready to retire, to move gracefully off into the file drawers of the White Star Line. But the Titanic prevented me. It couldn’t be the last word, this appalling disaster, this unthinkable loss of life, the shame of it all.”
“Yet you did resign within a few months.”
A cloud seems to pass over Evelyn, the shadow of a waiter perhaps. Ismay wonders if she’s afraid his memory is going.
“I physically left the workplace, yes.”
“And against the wishes of your colleagues, ” she prompts quickly.
“Against the wishes of some of them, yes. They understood me, just as you do.”
A flicker of gratitude comes into Evelyn’s eyes.
“But I never left the deck of the Titanic. And why should I? Others weren’t allowed to.”
Her lip trembles and he sees her wrestle with something.
“You blame yourself, Father.” She nudges forward in her chair, a coil of energy about to be released, and he can feel it coming, the same arguments against his guilt. He knows them all by rote. He took no one’s place in the lifeboat. It would have been a pointless act of self-sacrifice. He hadn’t influenced the captain on that night, had no say at all in navigation. He holds up his hand to stop her, hushing her like a child.
“And who else is there to blame?” he asks quietly. “Fifteen hundred people, Evelyn. Some of them never even made it to the boat decks until the lifeboats had all gone—steerage people.”
Evelyn catches his eye, then looks down and presses the base of her glass to the tablecloth as though they are on a dining car of a train and she is preventing the motion of the tracks from making it spill. “Thomas Andrews designed the ship, Father.”
“And who hired and directed Thomas Andrews?”
She looks up at him again, eyes damp.
“No more arguing, ” he says, “no more stating of my case, either to myself or to others. You freed me of it all tonight, Evelyn. You showed me again how futile it was to go through it over and over, to try and face out your accuser. After tonight I shall finally leave the Titanic.”
“Leave?” A hint of alarm sparks in her eyes.
“Nothing drastic.” He picks up his glass and holds it toward her. “Tomorrow, I return to Liverpool to pick up your mother and thence to Ireland, where I shall live the life of a country squire.”
Evelyn sighs and he can feel the warm breath of her relief.
“From now on you’ll have to visit me, you and your Basil. He will have to do the building from now on.”
She gives him a shy smile. He’s well aware that Evelyn tries to rouse him by suggesting how similar her intended is, in character, to himself. Ismay often sidesteps the intended compliment as Basil is a decorated war hero and the contrast is too painful, the flattery too undeserved. This reciprocation will, he hopes, reassure her.
“I’m glad we came here tonight, Evelyn, ” he tells her, raising the fork to his mouth.
He sees sadness behind her smile, as well as acceptance, and a quiet breeze moves over them, swaying the heavy leaves of the palm.
chapter thirteen
MIRANDA’S BEEN TRYING TO fathom things since her father returned. But the conversation, mainly between Graham and Mother and about the benefits of different areas of London, keeps distracting her. She has to keep an eye on her fiancé to prevent Mother from breaking through his wall. Graham seems dithery now, and tired, and Mother’s probing is all the more intense. The only sign that anything happened at all outside the dining room is Father’s mildly fed-up sigh as he resumed his seat, a quick look at the table and a tetchy glance at his watch.
Mr. Ismay returned a few moments later and, despite the expression on Evelyn’s face when her father left, he seems relaxed enough. The conversation she’s spied through the palm seemed a little intense, perhaps, but calm. It’s a strange feeling. For thirteen years she’s believed that her actions may well have caused untold grief and fury. The feeling swelled to a dizzying height tonight but has collapsed into this: two men who seem hardly interested at all. That she should experience it as an anticlimax causes real disquiet. Is this what she wanted, and still wants now, to be noticed, hated, and despised? It brings her back to her ten-year-old self sitting alone in the dimness of her father’s study, surrounded by the fragrance of embossed leather and bonded paper, scratching hateful lines with her new fountain pen.
Mother breaks through the memory, her voice rising in triumph.
