by Alma Katsu
Diary of Lillian Notting
8 January 1912
My daughter.
You’re finally here.
And now that you’re here, I can only wonder how I could’ve been so afraid of you, afraid of what you meant for my life. Mine and your father’s.
How beautiful you are. You deserve to have a good life. I know what people would think of you if I kept you. How you would spend the rest of your life disgraced for being a bastard and treated differently because of it. How your prospects would shrink. How much smaller and harder your world would be. How unfair, and all because of me.
How could I, your mother, do that to you?
This is why I am agreeing to my end of the Bargain.
You deserve to be in a better place than this.
My greatest hope is that you remain untarnished by the past that brought you here. That you remain safe and innocent forever, as I was not.
1916
Chapter Forty-Seven
20 November 1916
HMHS Britannic
Annie’s hands shake as she carries Lillian Notting’s diary to the edge of the railing. Below her the sea is dark and winking. She has read all of the entries, up to the last one, which ends abruptly on January in 1912. Just three months before the Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage.
She couldn’t face her shift after the argument with Mark, so she told Sister Merrick that she’s not feeling well and asked for the evening off, before creeping out of the ward under the matron’s suspicious and watchful stare.
Annie thinks about climbing the railing and jumping into the sea.
With no cloak, she hugs herself for warmth. How could she have been so stupid as to get her hopes up? Mark never felt anything for her, apparently. Was I mistaken? It hadn’t felt wrong. It had felt—at the time—like he really had been drawn to her. The warmth of that feeling was the most real thing she had ever felt.
And without it, she feels lost. Having read the diary, nothing makes sense. The world is turned upside down. She opens the diary and in the dim light emanating from one of the windows nearby, she once again scans its passages.
17 May 1911
Fate has spared me, though I do not know why.
My closest friends are all gone. Beth, Tansy, Margaret. I keep thinking of Margaret’s little boy—motherless now. I keep thinking how Tansy must have screamed. She was so timid, scared of everything. She had said the building was unsafe. I never considered she was right.
Now there is nothing left of the factory girls whose voices once filled my days. Nothing left of the mill except a husk of charred brick.
23 May 1911
I realized something today: I am alive because of Mark’s gambling. If it weren’t for his disastrous night—the sobbing for forgiveness, the waves of fury—I would not have been left quite so desperate and penniless. With the comfort of my meager savings, perhaps I never would have been brave enough to ask for a better wage, and if I hadn’t asked for more money I would not have been brought before the mistress herself. She would not have deemed me “presentable” enough to meet clients and sent me to the house of Caroline Sinclair to do a fitting. I would not have been on my knees taking up Mrs. Sinclair’s hem when the fire broke out at the old factory. I would not have been in her parlor, laughing at her witty comments and greedily accepting her gifts of candy and praise. I would not have been holding her hand as she dragged me through her spacious mansion, showing off the purchases she’d made on her European tour, the vast array of dresses in every color and modern style you could dream of. I would not have been drinking her tea and listening, rapt, as she told me her theory that life is for living and that women have as much right to life and liberty as a man. She told me that every article she commissioned for herself is an assertion that she matters in the world. I would not have been eyeing her in the mirror as I measured her waistline, thinking I had been introduced to Caroline Sinclair for a reason, catching my own reflection beside hers, and seeing two women so very different, yet drawn to each other immediately.
In this way, it is both Mark and Caroline who have saved me.
14 June 1911
Caroline’s rented home is in Hampstead Heath, on a hill overlooking the park. We sometimes sit for hours in her front room, the one with the best view of Kenwood House, just watching the people coming to visit the famous Russian couple living there, and talking. Talking nonstop—about love and life and all of our trials. About her late husband. About sex, even. Of course, I have told her all about Mark, too. I love spending time with her. We don’t even bother to pretend that she has me making her clothes. That is a mere formality, a tiny part of what really brings us together.
And I have fallen in love with this house, because it is the place where she lives. I hope she never goes back to America. I have by now memorized all my favorite sitting areas, all the best of her dresses—one in every color, to celebrate, in her words, a modern widowhood.
She may sound crass this way, but she is anything but. An heiress in her own right and now inheritor of her late husband’s estate, I know she must be wealthy beyond belief, but there’s a sweetness to her, a freshness, that just seems so pure, so good. So unlike the society ladies I have known in London. I cannot help but think that just one of her fine dresses could wipe out Mark’s debt. Not that I would ever mention it to her. I don’t want her pity.
1 July 1911
It was my destiny to survive, Caroline tells me every day. I mustn’t feel guilty for having lived when my friends died. If this is true, though, then why do I have these debilitating pains every morning? The headaches, the bone-deep ache, the stomach cramps? I believe it is guilt, but Caroline will have none of it. She wants me to see her physician and insists on paying for it. I must take this seriously, she insists.
So, I have relented. I am to see her physician tomorrow.
5 July 1911
I have not yet told Mark. Telling him will only make it real. And besides, I fear he’ll guess at the dark thought I keep turning over in my mind, the thought I’d only share in these private pages. The thought of making it go away.
I’ve heard of such things. Witch doctors and the like, who can give you an elixir, a little dose of poison just enough to make the unborn thing bleed out of you in a rush. Painful but over in a matter of weeks. Though sometimes they say it sweeps the mother away, too. You can never be sure what’s safe.
Caroline—sweet Caroline. She says she will help me. Help us. She has asked Mark and me both to move into her home. I will have better care there. And though it is unusual—crazy, even—I am tempted to accept.
2 September 1911
It is all very unorthodox. I know this. But these past months have felt like a summer out of a bewitching novel. Caroline worries that once the child is born, I will want to change my mind, but she is wrong. She can give the child a life that we could not. And in exchange, we will have enough to live comfortably forever, to pay off all Mark’s debts and put the ugliness of the past behind us for good. This is the Bargain we agreed to. I do not go back on my word.
Mark, too, is flourishing. He has not set foot in a gambling den in over two months. And while he resisted living under the same roof, he has finally given up the charade of returning to that dreary flat of his in the evenings. He has taken up with us, and it makes me so happy. Our walks in the garden. Our late nights in the west-facing parlor, the one full of outlandish art. And though Caroline has given him his own rooms, he spends many of his nights in mine.
Sometimes I think I see something like envy flit across Caroline’s face, and I do not blame her. To bask in a love like ours is to be blessed. I know it’s unlike anything she experienced with Henry, her late husband. I know she, too, longs for that love in her life. But in a way, she already has it, for I can feel how Mark’s heart is widening toward her more and
more every day, just like mine did. We are both in love with each other and in love with her. It is a wonderful thing.
1 November 1911
This is hard. I don’t know where to begin. First, my body is not my own. I hate this giant thing I have become. I crave Mark more than ever, but my body refuses his. I feel cramped and sick all the time. And the ease of Caroline, the very thing that has always made me love her so, now makes my heart feel wretched with jealousy. I can’t say what for—is it that perfect, unblemished body, or the smile that has never known the kind of doubts and worries that I have seen, or that eternal optimism that smacks of privilege? Or is it the way Mark sees all those things, too, only with a sparkle in his eyes, with the swallow of lust in his throat. I’ve always told him that I can read his mind, and I can. I know what he wants.
He wants what every man wants—the gamble, the risk, the thrill of potentially losing it all.
He wants what he can’t have.
He wants her.
12 December 1911
They think I don’t know. It’s absurd, outrageous. Mark says that it is only the pregnancy making me out of control. He wants me to doubt myself. How dare he? After everything he has put me through in the past? After I’ve agreed to trust him, again and again, no matter his past deeds, his failings—how I’ve held him when he wept with apology. After he spent all my money. After he begged me to take him back. After he threw himself on the floor and kissed my knees. After we’ve made love a thousand times—in his flat, in his office when the rest had gone for the night, even in the park once, last year. We’ve laid claim to all of London with our love. We used to laugh, holding hands and racing the streets, pointing out places we’d like to christen with the act of our love. He knows every part of me. Every willful, rageful, wild, and prideful flare to my being. He has seen my best and my worst. I will love him to the ends of the earth, and he knows it. Even if he breaks me. No matter what he has done. No matter what he does now. I would do anything—give up anything. I would give up my child.
I would even share him.
So, how dare he lie to me.
I know what is going on.
And I know, too, that if I were Caroline, I would not be able to resist him, either.
* * *
—
It’s too much. Annie slams the journal closed again and presses it to her chest, finding it hard to breathe. What happened to you, Lillian? The child was born in January. There are no entries after that, but Annie can feel the rage and fear and love of this woman as though it were her own, and it’s unbearable. Lillian may have made a bargain with Caroline, may have promised away her baby with goodwill, but something changed. She died wanting that child back. Annie is sure of it. That is what keeps her lingering here, in Mark’s wake, all these years.
She is about to let the pages flutter out over the Atlantic when she feels the presence of someone approaching, and quickly slips the journal back into her apron pocket.
She turns to see Charlie Epping, the wireless operator, sidling up next to her in his easy, warm way. Since the day Annie came on board this ship, Epping has tried to get her attention, smiling at her, trying to engage in small talk. He seems a nice man and is universally loved by the nurses, who treat him like a little brother. They say he is very smart, most likely a genius.
“Taking the air, Nurse Hebbley?” he asks. He tosses his cigarette over the railing, then looks at her intently, trying to read her face. “Had a rough day on the ward? Though I suppose they’re all tough.”
He invites her to the radio room for a drink. Helplessly, with a hollowness inside her, she follows.
Perhaps the ghost of Lillian cannot find her in here.
Perhaps she just needs a man to protect her from all of this—from herself, even. From the darkness and fear that curl up on all sides when she is alone with her thoughts.
The wireless operators live in the radio room; she remembers this from the Titanic as well. A quirk of the position, someone needs to be near the equipment at all times. The hospital ship has only one wireless operator and so Epping is the only man beside the officers to have his own living quarters.
They hurry along silently to the boat deck and the small room behind the first funnel, a stone’s throw from the bridge. He takes a bottle from one of the cupboards—the room seems fitted with many secret little compartments holding all manner of equipment, little tubes and wires and such—and pours two tiny glasses of amber liquid.
She sniffs and winces at the medicinal smell, like the rubbing alcohol she uses on patients and to clean the counters and equipment. He raises his drink to her before throwing it back in one fell swoop. She does the same.
Within a few minutes, she feels like she is floating. When she turns her head, the view doesn’t change right away but lags. Everything is stilted—removed and abstract. The weight that she normally feels pressing down on her chest every minute of every day has lifted. She starts to laugh for no reason.
It is a delightful feeling.
Epping pours another drink for her.
An hour later, the room is spinning. She is having trouble with the tiny, fold-down perch next to Epping’s worktable, sliding off it suddenly, as though the ship is rocking. She’s having trouble, too, putting words in their proper order and getting them out of her mouth without erupting into laughter. Also, she is hot. She’s had to remove her apron and loosen her collar, and has taken off her starched cap. Her hair billows down around her shoulders.
Charlie sits on the other side of the table, within easy reach. His face is red and he is sweating, but his smile is big and loose and easy. It has been so long since someone saw her. Noticed her. Appreciated her. Wanted her. For four years at Morninggate, she had been as invisible as a ghost. She was not a person but a shadow. Here, with Charlie Epping, she is light.
The rest is a blur—how his hands tug at her buttons and she doesn’t stop him.
How his lips find her throat.
How even as he moans against her, all she hears is Des’s voice. What have we done, Annie? What have we done?
* * *
—
She’s not sure how many hours have passed. Annie wakes with Desmond Flannery’s whispers still ringing in her ear.
Where am I? The cramped room smells of musk and sweat. There’s a young man sleeping next to her and then she remembers. Charlie Epping. Cheap whiskey. Clumsy kisses.
She slips out of the bunk and gathers her clothing. Epping sleeps on, the deep slumber of the satiated. Annie puts her clothes on slowly, as though she’s forgotten how things are supposed to go. She doesn’t feel well. She is feverish and achy; even the bottoms of her feet are tender.
She staggers a step or two, steadying herself on the furniture, and her hand lands on paper. It’s large, covering a quarter of the table. In the dim light spilling from the hall, she sees that it’s a map. It reminds her of that night, four years ago. Maps and coordinates and knowing precisely where things were had been very important. She’d seen the numbers, but she hadn’t known how to find those coordinates on a map, so once the numbers were lost the knowledge was, too. . . . She can still picture those tiny white squares disappearing in the blackness of the Atlantic Ocean, and she’s still filled with regret for what she did.
She feels as though she’s still adrift in a dangerous sea and there’s something about the map that makes her feel safer. It is protection, a talisman like a rabbit-foot or a four-leaf clover, so she rolls up the map, squashes it flat with both palms, then folds it until it’s small enough to fit in her apron pocket.
And then she leaves.
She is far from the nurses’ quarters when she realizes she is burning up with fever—or something like it. She’s dizzy, afraid she will faint before she gets to her room and they’ll find her in the morning sprawled out on the floor not far from the radio room. Afraid not of
death but of the scandal. Of everyone knowing what she’s done.
She’s near a tub room, where they immerse patients in water to flush out wounds and take down runaway fevers. There’s a big metal bathtub inside and barrels of water.
Normally, for the patients, they heat up the barrels of water, but Annie doesn’t bother with that: it would take too long and besides, she is burning up. The last thing she wants is hot water. Then she strips off her clothing, which is damp with her perspiration, and steps into the tub. It reminds her of wading into the ocean back home, the cold bite of the sea on her feet, then her calves. She lowers herself into the water, slowly at first, then quickly.
It feels good at first, countering the fever inside her. For a minute, she feels in perfect balance. But then the cold sets into her extremities, chilling her fingers and toes, nipping at the flesh of her buttocks, tickling her armpits. She wishes the cold would take her away. It feels oddly familiar, like being in the arms of a lover.
Annie closes her eyes and starts to drift. Snippets of memories come to her. The shimmering surface of the bathwater reminds her of the scrying bowl Mr. Stead used for the séance, its brilliant mother-of-pearl lining flashing silver and white. . . . Steel-gray and periwinkle shells washed up on the beach outside her childhood home . . . As a child, swimming for what seemed like miles with fat gray seals, past the tiny rocky outcroppings that dotted Ballintoy’s coast.