Titanic Ashes, page 7
The fork twitches in his hand and an expression of desperate unhappiness comes into his face, hinting at depths of despair she already knows about but has rarely seen. She almost relents. But the anguish seems to pass from him. He lays down his knife and fork, calmly takes a sip of water and coughs slightly as he lowers the glass to the tablecloth.
“And what exactly are you going to do? You can’t sue someone for looking at us.”
Already Evelyn is shifting in her seat with the urgency of it all. War has been declared, and publicly. “Something, Father, ” she says. “I have to do something.” The blood pounds in her ears, not like something liquid at all, but wooden, muffled and pounding. As children, she and Margaret used to practice holding pillows over their heads, seeing how long they could go without breathing, and now all those experiments seem like a string of premonitions, bringing her to this point in her life. She wishes the association might provide some clue as to how, precisely, she should act. But it’s already too late. She is already standing, putting her napkin on the table, still half wishing for some interruption, another bird perhaps, even a bomb or a man wielding a gun and running amok around the tables.
As luck would have it the palm shields her approach and her nerves become quiet. For all anyone will know, she is merely coming toward the foliage for a better look, to examine the exotic, rubbery leaves; she has seen diners do this on previous occasions and knows it still might provide a reasonable alibi for a tactical retreat. But she catches Miranda’s face—her startled eyes, set in a face of patchwork white and pink, an exotic primate chanced upon by an explorer and terrified of being taken captive.
She moves out from the palm and circles toward the Grimsdens’ table. Miranda gives an audible gasp and the young man opposite her moves as though preparing to rise, but the energy coming from him is confused. His gaze darts from one face to another and he remains seated. Although the sudden hush is profound, Agnes Grimsden, whom she turns to face, meets her eyes with interest but no apparent fear.
“You seem to have something on your mind, Mrs. Grimsden.” The voice Evelyn hears is hardly her own but is, at least, steady, unwavering. “Is there anything you would like to discuss with Father or me?”
“What?” The first interruption, unexpectedly somehow, is from Mr. Grimsden; part word, part cough, and part laugh, it seems unchivalrous, almost bullying, especially delivered from a sitting position.
“Goodness!” says Mrs. Grimsden, smiling, a hand coming to her chest in mock protectiveness.
Evelyn takes a gulp of air, feels the floor grow unsteady beneath her. A young waiter two tables away seems to glare at her as he spoons potatoes from a serving bowl, and there are signs that faces on other tables are turning her way.
“It’s quite simple, ” she says, feeling what’s left of her confidence drain as though from an invisible siphon. “I had the distinct impression you were trying to communicate something. I would like to know what it was.”
It does sound simple, she tells herself, and reasonable, but her skin is on fire and her vision blurring. The voice she hears has become stiff, yet emotional, and the extraordinary silence that greeted her arrival subsides into tired sighs, one from Mrs. Grimsden, another most likely from her husband; she is too focused upon her target to confirm, too aware that if she lets the challenge of eye contact slip, she will not be able to establish it again.
But in another moment she does let it slip as, dimly, she becomes aware of another problem. Although the hush has lifted from the Grimsden table, a tangible murmur of interest is rippling outwards. A quick glance shows a lady just a few years her senior, with dangling gold earrings, craning her neck and staring at her. The woman whispers to a man at her table, who then raises his head to see. Farther off, toward the restaurant entrance, a mixed party halts their conversation to watch. The air in the restaurant changes—becomes electric with some new interest; a strange young woman standing alone at a table where the men folk are still seated. The grumble of conversation softens to a murmur, and then fades into a hush, as Evelyn fires another stare into the bemused smile of Agnes Grimsden. She has never been so aware of herself, of how she must look from the outside— a stark, stranded figure with arms stretched rigid at her sides, confronting a woman old enough to be her mother—and the withering shame of it goes through to her bones. She feels movement at her right side, a man standing close to her shoulder, his presence too near for comfort.
“Can I help madam back to her seat?”
As she flinches, she catches enough of a glimpse to know he is the same young waiter who glared at her a few moments ago.
“When I’m ready, ” she says, expecting his hand to come down upon her shoulder, shrinking from it in anticipation. She keeps her gaze on the form of Mrs. Grimsden now, on the pearls, the long earrings, the bony shoulders within the onyx-jewelled dress. Her vision slips onto the scattered black jewels themselves, like swirling portholes in an Impressionist’s nightmare.
“Ismay.” The voice, soft as the wings of a moth, emanates from a few tables distant; the name, Evelyn thinks, seems almost to have been designed for whispering.
There’s a fresh wave of murmurs which takes an age to spread to the far reaches of the dining room, where voices seem to resound and echo before returning, like a poorly synchronized communal prayer, converging and rising into a single gasp.
Evelyn becomes aware again of the tautness of her arms. She measures the distance between her right hand and Mrs. Grimsden’s face, knows that in a flash she can really give them all something to stare at, that these people are all enemies, every one of them, and that what they think of her and her father can’t get any worse. But the helplessness of it all is overpowering and she feels as though she’s balancing cannonballs upon both shoulders.
“Evelyn, ” comes Father’s voice to her left. “Let’s return to the table.” He touches her gently on the left shoulder and her courage returns. She meets Mrs. Grimsden’s face squarely once more, sees a glassiness over otherwise triumphant eyes, a touch of a tremble about the lips. Her gaze slips as she turns to Miranda, whose head is down, eyes blinking wildly.
A thought comes to her, makes her throat and tongue itch to free it. It’s a mad, extravagant thought that makes her think of barred windows and padded cells, yet only the calming presence of her father as he leads her back to the table stops her from yelling it with all the force of her lungs.
As he pulls out her chair, to the watching silence of the dining room, the impulse becomes smothered—but barely, uncomfortably, like swallowed air. And she regrets this immediately, already wants to hear the shock that would have greeted the words: It’s a pity you weren’t all on the Titanic!
chapter nine
MIRANDA’S SKIN IS ALIVE with pins and needles, and the thought repeats over and over: it’s happened; it’s happened. The words prickle between her toes, dart like flies from her hair to the arcs at the top of her ears, to her shoulders and down the back of her dress.
Father makes an astonished guffawing sound, followed by, “Fancy!” and in a moment, sooner than she might have expected, plates begin to tinkle again near and far with the sound of cutlery. The gentle hum of conversation becomes a buzz. Miranda can feel the interest of Graham, wants to meet his eye and gain comfort from the sympathy his gaze always gives her. But she’s afraid to look up, afraid to catch her mother’s eye.
It’s all her own doing, she knows. Belated as the punishment might be, it’s Miranda whose actions unleashed this misery and confusion. She set it in motion with that letter, and kept it brewing again tonight, when she ducked behind the shield of her mother, daring the Ismays to strike.
“What extraordinary behaviour, ” Mother says after a moment or two. “I really thought the girl was going to hit me! What do you make of it, Miranda?”
Miranda looks up at last, feeling nauseated. She hasn’t been picked for an opinion at random. When Mother asks for her thoughts it’s always because she’s implicated in something.
“I think she was angry, ” Miranda says quietly, wishing that she could whisk Graham away, tell him all about her childish letter to Mr. Ismay, her own feeling of shame and horror, and all the misery and self-loathing that brought it about in the first place. She wishes she could unburden the whole story before her mother will get to torture her with it. But she knows it’s too late, that humiliations will likely unravel, and on her mother’s terms, without the context that Mother would neither fully understand, nor wish others to know about.
But it’s the context that swallows Miranda now as her hand limply picks up her fork and pushes carrots around on her plate. She’s in New York, thirteen years ago. It’s a day or so after she cut and pasted the newspaper article. A new superstition, and a fresh sense of mission, rushes in her ears. She’s at the desk in the hotel suite’s little nursery bedroom, looking beyond the avenue at the rolling foliage in Central Park opposite the road. As the breeze captures the branches, sets the leaves dancing, turning silver in the sunshine, the huge oaks and beeches seem paternal and wise, true guardians of mysteries and insights yet to be unravelled. There are signs in everything, she thinks; nature is sending these visions to her as her father’s emissaries. He needs her help just as she needs his.
She crumples the first letter, a simple desperate plea to be rescued, and begins to scratch out another, more veiled in the adult language she has been trying to emulate:
Mister Johnston has been so kind to Mother, they spend all their time together. Everyone here thinks they are man and wife! Somewhere outside in the suite, the bedroom perhaps, Mr. Johnston laughs in his extravagant way— nothing is on an ordinary scale with Mother and Mr. Johnston; it is as though they are playing out some great drama requiring grand gestures and shimmering clothes. Miranda has been hearing cupboard doors opening and closing for some time; Mother and Mr. Johnston are getting ready to go to the theatre, but she knows they can take ages over preparations. Things might easily go quiet again for twenty minutes or more, and then the sound of footsteps and cupboards might begin all over again. They can’t leave yet, anyway, as Jenny, who is supposed to mind her, hasn’t arrived.
She hears the staccato clop of her mother’s tread quite unexpectedly close to her nursery, then the door creaks open. Miranda turns around and drops the pen.
“Miranda dear, ” Mother says loudly as though she imagined an audience crouching in the shadowed corners of the room. Her eyelids flicker oddly, as though shielding herself from being looked at too directly. “Mr. Johnston is about to escort me to the theatre where we are to meet some friends of mine and your father’s. Will you be all right until Jenny arrives to look after you?”
“Yes, Mother.” Miranda’s face stings with the heat; Mother’s dress sways as she goes to leave, but then hesitates.
She bustles in and Miranda turns abruptly back to the desk and leans over the letter so it won’t be visible.
“Why so secretive?” laughs Mother uneasily, laying her hand upon Miranda’s shoulder. “What’s this?”
Miranda goes rigid. Mother eases her backwards with surprising strength so that her forearms slide from the letter, leaving it exposed. In the silence, Miranda’s vision blurs. Beneath the urgent fear and shame flutters a wisp of a true desire, that her reasons for acting as she does be understood, that her mother see the loneliness, the confusion, and the fear. But it’s a feather before a tidal wave; she knows what is coming. Before she has had time to brace herself, she feels the blow, the sting of her cheek, the sudden deafness in her right ear followed by a clear, high note.
“I don’t understand you!” Mother whispers savagely. Miranda catches the scent of her lipstick and perfume as Mother pulls away the letter and crumples it. “I’ll never understand you! Do you want it all to end? Do you? Do you want your father to leave us? Do you want to live on the street? Is that what you want?”
Miranda’s been breathing hard, keeping closed upon herself like a hedgehog under attack. Now her mother turns and strides away, she feels the tug, as though she’s connected to her mother by a rope attached around her waist. She feels the tears now rolling down her cheeks and creeping into her mouth, and miraculously almost, Mother turns.
“It’s that ship, ” she says softly kneading the crumpled letter in her fingers as she speaks, “that dreadful voyage has upset us all. I’m sorry, Miranda. We’ll spend the day tomorrow, just the two of us.”
MOTHER’S GAZE REMAINS ON her, amused and questioning. The palm between their table and the Ismays seems to shiver. Miranda’s eyes dart in that direction, half expecting a second attack from Evelyn, but her view has returned to the way it was when she first glanced at Mr. Ismay. Again it’s that face bordered by an irregular star-shaped gap in the foliage, his face concerned, glassy-eyed, intent upon his companion as he raises his fork to his lips.
“I could see she was angry, Miranda dear. I was wondering if you had any other profound insight.” Her voice has taken on that odd sing-song quality that confuses newcomers to the Grimsden family, like poor Graham. Miranda, however, knows it to indicate a sense of dissatisfaction, of not being sufficiently entertained by the people with whom she sits. It is the voice of fading grandeur bemoaning the present lack of ebullience, the inability to see the dramatic potential in any given situation.
Miranda winces, and this time beneath her distaste for her mother she feels the stirring of an anger that rather scares her. She has so far treated this evening as an exercise in controlling others but feels suddenly, like an object turning in the water to reveal contours unsuspected, she may end up trying to control herself.
“No, Mother, ” she replies plainly, almost sulkily. “I don’t have any profound insight beyond the obvious fact that she doesn’t like her father to be talked about in a negative fashion.” Her mother’s eyes narrow, seeing the challenge, but still Miranda continues. “But that dreadful voyage upset us all, didn’t it, Mother?”
This is the closest she has come in many years to bringing up the Titanic herself and alluding to her own conduct, the letter she wrote to Mr. Ismay. It’s thrilling, somehow, as well as terrifying, the idea that her own personal taboo may be slipping. She feels its incredible weight through its sudden absence. So many afternoons and evenings she has spent in company with Mother flirting around the subject of Miranda and the Titanic—her daughter’s strong belief in courage and cowardice, some action connected with that belief—teasing forth the topic with allusions subtle or daring, then moving the conversation abruptly away if a direct question is asked. Always the guardian against her daughter’s pain, she then gives Miranda her sympathetic look—the code a reminder for the secret bond they share.
Now she’s come close to broaching the subject herself, Miranda feels her shoulders and neck muscles loosening. It’s no more than a taste of liberty, a slight dent in an oppression sustained for so long, since September 1912, a day after she sent the letter. Her imagination spins on the thread of that memory now, the blood-thumping panic as Miranda read those words—libel, lawsuit, ruination—in one of Father’s newspapers. She’d been asked to fetch it from the study, had been holding the broad sheets one way, then another, unable to get the creases right, the way Father liked it, when the words first caught her attention and hauled her into the story of a businessman now claiming bankruptcy.
She stood there in the dim light, the hanging page making a hushing sound against the leather of Father’s chair, as she delved further into the world of adulthood she had entered stealthily the day before. She had an idea those three words might also be connected in some unforeseeable way with her own communication to Mr. Ismay, but the rush of terror was at first slow to come. She read a few lines and creaked slowly toward the door, laid the newspaper upon the carpet, planning to fold it again properly, but read a little more, enough to realize that libel occurred when one person said something bad against another, and that ruination—financial ruination— would come down upon the person who had spoken ill.
Father lived in dread of financial ruination. It had occurred to some of his friends, and to Uncle John, and as far as Miranda could tell, he arranged everything in his life as a dam against any possibility of it occurring to him. And without him knowing, she had already set this disaster in motion; the letter was on its way and she already knew enough of schoolgirl pranks gone wrong to realize she could not prevent its delivery. Frantic now with fear, Miranda folded the newspaper inside out so that the football scores were on the crumpled outside. She rushed into the sitting room, handed the sheath to Father, who took it in surprise and laughed, then shot out of the sitting room and into the hallway, flying up the stairs two at a time.
Mother was silent at the mirror when Miranda entered, her breathing too urgent for words. When she did manage to speak through gulps for air, what she said made little sense to Mother or to herself. The confusion in her mother’s eyes deepened into interest when she managed to talk about the letter she had written, and then softened into the warmth of a confidence between them when she at last connected the whole episode to her fears of reprisals in the courts.
“You were right to send the letter, Miranda, ” she’d said soothingly, when she had drawn most of the content from her daughter. “Mr. Ismay is a coward and you were brave to challenge him.” She had sat Miranda down upon her bed, and with a sense of privilege and luxury, Miranda watched as her mother dressed herself for the evening. They had a housekeeper and a maid and Mother had often talked of a personal maid to help her dress, had always rather disparaged her father for the fact they were without one. But Miranda was terribly happy there was no one between the two of them as Mother’s underskirts rustled between the wardrobe and the bed, as straps were fastened and fabric smoothed. It all told Miranda that what she had done, and who she was, matched an ideal she carried in her head. “Don’t worry, Miranda dear, ” Mother said, applying her lipstick. “He’ll never dare show it, because it’s true. But don’t tell your father anyway. He’s a worrier. All men are. It’ll be our secret.”
