by Alma Katsu
She shivers. She longs to share it and burns to hide it. “It’s from a friend.”
“The friend who used to work with you aboard the passenger ship?” He pauses. “Violet, wasn’t it?”
She starts to panic. “She’s working on another ship now. She says they are in dire need of help and she wonders if I would return to service.” There. It’s out.
His dark eyes study her. She cannot resist the weight of his expectation. She has never been good at saying no; all she has ever wanted was to please people, her father, her mother. To please all of them. To be good.
Like she once was.
My good Annie, the Lord favors good girls, said her da’.
She reaches into her pocket and hands him the letter. She can hardly stand to watch him read, feeling as though it is not the letter but her own body that has been exposed.
Then he glances up at her, and slowly his mouth forms a smile.
“Don’t you see, Annie?”
She knots her hands together in her lap. “See?” She knows what he’s going to say next.
“You know that you’re not really sick, not like the others, don’t you?” He says these words kindly, as though he is trying to spare her feelings. As though she doesn’t already know it. “We debated the morality of keeping you here, but we were reluctant to discharge you because— Well, frankly, we didn’t know what to do with you.”
Annie had no recollection of her own past when she was admitted to Morninggate Asylum. She woke up in one of the narrow beds, her arms and legs bruised, not to mention the awful, aching wound on her head. A constable had found her unconscious behind a public house. She didn’t appear to be a prostitute—she was neither dressed for it nor stinking of gin.
But no one knew who she was. At the time, Annie scarcely knew herself. She couldn’t even tell them her name. The physician had no choice but to sign the court order to detain her at the asylum.
Her memory has, over time, begun to return. Not all of it, though; when she tries to recall certain things, all she gets is a blur. The night the great ship went down is, of course, cut into her memory with the prismatic perfection of solid ice. It’s what came before that feels unreal. She remembers the two men, each in their turn, though sometimes she feels as though they have braided together in her mind into just one man, or all men. And then, before that: fragments of green fields and endless sermons, intoned prayer and howling northern wind. A world too unfathomably big to comprehend.
A terrible, gaping loneliness that has been her only companion for four years.
Surely it is better to be kept safe inside this place, while the world and its secrets, its wars, its false promises, are kept away, outside the thick brick walls.
Dr. Davenport looks at her with that same wavering smile. “Don’t you think, Annie?” he is saying.
“Think what?”
“It would be wrong to keep you here, with the war on. Taking up a bed that could be used for someone who is truly unwell. There are soldiers suffering from shell shock. Everton Alley teems with poor and broken spirits, tormented by demons from their time on the battlefield.” His eyes are dark and very steady. They linger on hers. “You must write to the White Star office and ask for your old job, as your friend suggests. It’s the right thing to do under the circumstances.”
She is stunned, not by his assertions but that this is all happening so quickly. She is having trouble keeping up with his words. A slow dread creeps into her chest.
“You’re fine, my dear. You’re just scared. It’s understandable—but you’ll be right as rain once you see your friend and start working again. It’s about time, anyway, don’t you think?”
She can’t help but feel stubbornly rejected, spurned, almost. For four years, she’s managed things so that she could stay. Kept her secrets. Was careful not to disrupt anything, not to do anything wrong.
She has been so good.
Now her life, her home, the only security she knows, is being ripped away from her and she is once more being forced out into the unknown.
But there is no turning back. She knows she cannot refuse him this, cannot refuse him anything. Not when he has been so kind.
He folds up the letter and holds it out to her. Her gaze lingers on his strong hands. Her fingers brush against his when she takes it back. Forbidden.
“I should be happy to sign the release papers,” her doctor says. “Congratulations, Miss Hebbley, on your return to the world.”
3 October 1916
My dear Annie,
I hope this letter finds you. Yes, I am writing again even though I have not heard from you since the letter you sent via the White Star Line head office. You can understand why I continue to write. I pray your condition has not worsened. I was sorry to read of your current situation, although, from your letter, you do not sound unwell to me. Can you ever forgive me for losing track of you after that Terrible Night? I didn’t know if you had lived or died. I feared I would never see you again.
To speak to the question that may still be weighing on your mind: I have received no further knowledge of what happened to the baby. Throughout the cold and miserable evening waiting in the lifeboat, silently praying to God to spare us, I held her tight to my chest to keep her warm. But when we were rescued by the Carpathia, as I mentioned in my last letter, I was forced to surrender her to the crew, and I have since gathered that she was likely left at an orphanage. You must consider that she may be lost to you and to me forever.
I’m so sorry, Annie.
Let me turn my attention now to you, dear friend. It grieves me to think of you wasting away behind the walls of an asylum. Whatever melancholy has possessed you since that fateful night, you must rise above it. I know that you can. I remember the girl who was my roommate on that doomed ship. I shall never forget the last time I saw you, jumping into those dark, icy waters. We thought you had lost your mind, made senseless by the terrible shock of it all. But only you had seen the baby tumble into the water. Only you knew that there wasn’t a moment to waste. Annie Hebbley is the bravest girl I have ever known, I thought that night.
That is how I know you will survive your current circumstances, Annie. You are stronger than you think.
I am no longer a stewardess but a nurse now, as part of the war effort. The ship on which I currently serve is a twin to that lovely one we both knew so well. Imagine if you can, however, that all its finery has been transformed, like Cinderella returned to her life as a scullery maid! HMHS Britannic has been fitted out as a hospital ship. The crystal chandeliers are gone, as is the flocked paper from the walls of the grand staircase. Now all is whitewash and canvas duck and everything smells of antiseptic, always antiseptic. The ballroom has been remade into a series of operating stations, the pantries made to hold stocks of surgical equipment. The wards can accommodate thousands of patients. The nurses and rest of the crew occupy many of the first-class staterooms, where you and I would’ve once made the beds and doted on passengers.
Annie, the Britannic is still in desperate need of nurses. I beg you, again, to consider reprising your career at sea to come to work with me. I shan’t lie to you: we see injuries almost too terrible to be borne. What they say in the newspapers is true: this is surely the war to end all wars, for we could never surpass its horrors. These boys need you, Annie—to lift their spirits, to remind them of what’s waiting for them at home. You will be the best tonic in the world for them.
And, if I am truthful, you will be the best tonic in the world for me. I have come to miss you terribly, Annie. There are few people who would understand what we have been through. Few people to whom I could admit that I still am haunted by that night, that it comes in my dreams monthly, weekly, and that I still sometimes cry out in fright. Who could understand why I still make my living on the water, why I am bound to it when it has shown me what awfulness it can do.
Write, Annie, and tell me that you’ll join me on the Britannic. I have already filed a letter of recommendation for you with the London office. We depart from Southampton terminal on the twelfth of November. I pray to see you before we sail.
Yours most fondly,
Violet Jessop
Chapter Two
11 November 1916
Southampton, England
HMHS Britannic
Charlie Epping is a man who respects a finely waged war, the way that others respect a well-made watch.
People so often misunderstand what war is—they think it’s scattered, chaotic. But it is an incredibly sophisticated, constantly moving set of coded messages and information, quantities, commands, bodies, supplies, numbers, logistics. Those who can master the patterns can save countless lives. And what better business in the world is there than that?
He takes a long drag on his cigarette. The sky is wonderfully blue over Southampton, the kind of crisp autumn day that makes a man happy to be alive, though come night out on the open water it’ll be brittle cold—brutal, even.
He leans forward, one foot on the railing, to watch the activity below. He’s on the boat deck not far from his station in the radio room. From his perch a hundred feet above the froth of churning waves breaking against the piles, he has a clear view of all the activity, men on the other decks and the pier below. It’s like a colony of ants, the men reduced to black dots, scrabbling to and fro to get the giant ship ready to leave tomorrow.
He has a million things to do, too, him and Toby Sullivan, the second radio operator: There are tests to run to make sure the fancy Marconi wireless telegraphy system works properly. Wireless is new. Like most Marconi operators, Epping volunteered for the training as soon as he joined the military. He likes the idea of learning a trade and sees a future in wireless.
Some days are busy for the radio operators, others less so. At sea, they can pick up transmissions only when they are in line of sight with another ship, or close to one of the wireless stations. The technology is cranky and mercurial. Weather affects transmission, as does the time of day. There are codes to memorize, numbers that represent standard commands. And then there is Morse code itself. Epping knows it so well that he finds his mind translating words into dots and dashes even in conversation, swears he hears the tap of the stylus in his sleep.
He throws the nub of his cigarette over the railing, his eye following its motion, like a flying dash against the repeating whitecaps. Then he checks his pocket watch: the morning pouch should’ve been delivered by now. Orders and intelligence reports come up twice a day from Southern Command at Tidworth Camp, and it’s the radio operators’ job to sort through them. Things will slow down once they are at sea, but for now he and Sullivan are hard-pressed to keep up.
The Britannic was converted from a grand ocean liner—the most luxurious ever built, or so at least they tell him. Unlike purpose-made military vessels, the ship has proper stairs instead of ladders. The alleyways are wide. There are plenty of portholes. You don’t feel boxed in on this ship, the way you do on a cruiser or battleship. Epping’s gotten so used to close quarters over the last few years that the sheer amount of open space on board the Britannic sometimes makes him feel as though he doesn’t know what to do with his own arms.
Of course, the ship has a rather notorious sister. Command was upfront about the Titanic disaster from the beginning, assembled the entire crew to explain all the improvements that had been made to the Britannic in response to the tragedy. Doubled the hull and sealed all the bulkheads, all the way to the top. This ship is much safer than the other one, they were assured. No need to be nervous.
And Epping’s not the nervous type. Can’t be when you’ve got a floating ballroom that’s been converted to a sleeping ward for the sick and dying: men torn to pieces like rag dolls, missing arms and legs, faces ripped apart by shrapnel, lungs destroyed by phosgene gas. The doctors say the carnage is greater for this war because modern weaponry is so much deadlier.
Having retrieved the mail pouch from its hook on the pier, Epping returns to the radio room, where Toby Sullivan points to a stack of papers at the telegraph station. “We forgot to send the updated crew list to Tidworth. Can you take care of it?”
Charlie doesn’t mind; he’s three times as fast on the stylus as Toby, who hasn’t completely memorized Morse just yet and still gets hung up on letters—and not just the ones that are rarely used, like the Q’s and X’s and Z’s, but also the ones that are only slightly uncommon, like J’s and V’s. Charlie sits down in front of the crew ledger, picking out the names of those who came on board since the last report, and makes a check mark in pencil beside each. There is a list of information they need to send on each crewman: name, last held position, age, residence, next of kin.
Then he taps in the preamble: From HMHS Britannic to Southern Command, Tidworth Camp . . . dot dot dot dot, dash dash . . .
He moves his finger to the ledger and finds the first entry. Edgar Donnington, Uxbridge Shoring, age 34, Ickenham, Mrs. Agnes Donnington (wife).
Then to the next.
Anne Hebbley. Titanic . . .
He pauses. A survivor. Makes a mental note to find out more. The girl must either be a hardy one or extraordinarily lucky to have lived—or both. He can only imagine the stories she must have.
He goes on, tapping in her data: age 22, Liverpool. For next of kin, he quickly punches dash dot pause dash dash dash . . .
None.
Chapter Three
12 November 1916
Southampton, England
HMHS Britannic
It is easy to imagine, as Annie stands on the dock, squinting into the brilliant morning sun, a world without past, only future. Before her heaves the great Britannic and beyond it, the open sea.
Now that she is here, she feels the rise of determination in her—an urgency. She had been right to come.
The entire journey from Morninggate, she felt exhausted and exposed, worn down by all the people everywhere. Drivers and innkeepers, policemen and shoe polishers and street peddlers. Dr. Davenport had directed two nurses to take her into town a couple of times before the journey, to help her acclimate to crowds and noise. But since then, life has been a great roaring tide hurtling at her: the train to London, then Waterloo Station to catch another train out to Southampton to the great port. It was all almost too much at first, and she had to sit on the train with her eyes closed, clutching her little drawstring purse to her chest because she was afraid she’d misplace it—that she’d misplace herself. Fear was a chained dog, startling and rough and always dangerously close, stretching its leash, baring fangs.
By the time she got to London, the first leg of her trip behind her, she’d gotten used to the constant movement beneath her and the press of so many bodies. Gotten used to being surrounded, once again, by strange voices and smells and sights, even if she still felt them like a film of cobweb against her skin.
Even if everywhere she looked, she expected to see a familiar face in the crowds, imagined she’d spotted Mark—the wash of dark hair and the handsome cut of his face, the knowing gaze.
Even if every time it was not him but a stranger, she felt an old ache reopen in her chest.
Inside Morninggate, too, she often used to think she’d seen him among the other patients or strolling the lane outside the walls. But now she knows it’s only her mind playing tricks. Mark died four years ago in the frozen black waters of the northern Atlantic.
Arriving in Southampton, she is again swamped by sensation. She remembers this feeling—somewhat—from that first time, when she came to work on the Titanic. She’d been in a complete whirl then, a child in disposition if not ag
e, on the run from Ballintoy. That time, it was like an unseen hand had guided her—a guardian angel? She had known intuitively the right train to board, which street would lead to the White Star Line office. Strange men had offered to help the lost-looking young woman, and it was her guardian angel who told her which one would put her right and which one would try to lead her into a lonely alley.
It wasn’t trust, or intuition, but something else that had swooped in, in the absence of both, to guide her.
The man in the White Star Line office is one of the good ones—whose eyes don’t seem to judge, whose hands don’t seem to linger. He leads her to the ship, insisting on carrying her satchel, a slight embarrassment for her because it is so light. All that’s in it are a few objects of her personal possession—a Morninggate-issued hairbrush; a few barrettes and things accrued from inmates who’d traded them with Annie for favors; and of course, the brooch, a fine item far more valuable than the rest, and one Annie has held on to since her days on the Titanic.
The officer undoubtedly thinks she must be a very poor lass to have so little. She can’t explain that she had nothing else but her gray linen Morninggate uniform, that the dress, hat, and shoes she wears were plucked from a stash of old clothes that had been donated to the hospital, and that the money for the rail tickets and meals came out of Dr. Davenport’s own wallet. It is a different kind of Vanishing Game she is playing now, to dress in clothes meant for another woman, of another build and another time. To move among all these people as if she were one of them, even while knowing, deep down, that she is not one of them. That she is separate, somehow. That she is still alone.
Making her way across the docks takes her back to her first day on the Titanic. The crowds, the chaos. Bodies everywhere, each seemingly headed in a different direction. Lanes choked with wagons loaded with cargo and luggage. Carriages for the richer passengers picking through the crowds, drivers yelling to be heard over the hubbub, horses snorting nervously. Annie lifts her skirt so she doesn’t have to look at her feet and can keep her eyes trained on the White Star Line man, who keeps disappearing in the crowds.