by Hazel Gaynor
May 1, 1982
Grace loved the wildness of the wind, the way it whispered through the barley fields and sent ripples rushing along the rivers and lakes, and the clouds hurtling across the sky. To a girl who had spent her childhood outdoors, the wind brought a feeling of reckless freedom, reminding her that she was alive, feeding her soul with a new energy.
It was two weeks since her birthday party and a welcome, blustery Saturday afternoon as she drove the short distance from Maggie’s home to the nearby town. Maggie sat in the passenger seat, commenting, as she always did, on the irresponsible speed of the other drivers, tutting loudly as they overtook other cars. Grace didn’t notice. She was thinking. For the first time in years, she was really thinking, about her past and about her future. She was excited, purposeful, hopeful.
As she had done every Saturday afternoon since she dropped out of college, Grace was taking Maggie out for afternoon tea. It was a happy arrangement they’d fallen into by chance, stopping at a small café on the way back from a trip to the cemetery where Grace’s great-grandfather was buried. Maggie had suddenly announced that she would like a cup of “good, strong tea” and the Cherry Tree Café, pleasantly situated along the river, with an enticing pale pink door, had taken her fancy. The café, as it turned out, served the best apple pie in town, and their Saturday afternoon ritual was born.
The Cherry Tree Café was a quaint, intimate place, simple in its cottage kitchen design but clean and well looked after. The owner was a very friendly, terrifically overweight woman named Beth, whose raucous laughter could often be heard coming from the kitchen. She always insisted that Maggie be taken especially good care of. She said that Maggie reminded her of her own grandma and that it was nice to see the old lady walking through the door every week. Maggie, of course, loved all the fuss and attention and particularly liked the white linen tablecloths with the little vases of pink and white daisies that always stood on the tables. She said it looked elegant and refined, like a little café she had once seen a very long time ago.
After parking in their usual space just outside the entrance, Grace helped Maggie out of the car, the two of them giggling as the wind whipped around their hair and tugged at their coats. They entered the café in a breeze that blew all the menus over on the tables and found their favorite spot near the window. Grace helped Maggie to take off her coat and then settled herself into the comfortable Shaker-style chair. The waitress brought over two slices of apple pie and a pot of tea for two, their usual order.
“Well, Grace, would you look at that.” Maggie chuckled. “There’s tea for two and I haven’t even gotten my ass into my seat!”
Grace laughed. “So, Maggie,” she said, sinking her fork into the soft apple pie. “I’ve been dying to ask you something.”
Maggie considered her great-granddaughter from behind her china teacup, the short burst of fresh air having given a lovely radiance to her usually pale cheeks. “Yes, dear? What is it?”
“Well, I’ve been wondering why you decided to tell me all about Titanic and everything now. Y’know, after all these years. Did you really never talk to Mom or Grandma about it, or anyone else in the family?”
Maggie sighed, staring into Grace’s warm chestnut eyes. They had looked so dull in recent months but seemed to have got a little of their spark back recently, a fact that pleased her.
“Well, Grace, it’s as simple as this: it seemed to me that you needed a story and I knew that I had one of the best to tell you. I think it was also watching you on your birthday. Birthdays can do that to old folk like me, y’know—turn you all nostalgic, make you realize you’ve been lucky to see another year pass. I guess I started thinking on the fact that I might not be around for very much longer and that perhaps my Titanic story would be lost with me.” She took a sip of her tea and broke into her own slice of pie. “People in the family knew I’d sailed on Titanic, but they also knew I didn’t want to talk about it. So nobody did. I decided to tell you the whole story ’cause I figured it was too important to be forgotten about entirely.”
“But you must have talked to Great-Granddad James about it?”
“Oh, yes, dear. Of course. Your great-granddad knew all about it.” She paused, as she often did when she spoke about her husband, momentarily lost in her private thoughts of a man she had clearly adored and missed terribly. “But, y’know, Grace,” she continued, “that night when Titanic went down was so terrible that some survivors, like me, just wanted to stop talking about it.”
She took another bite of apple pie, taking her time to savor it and commenting on how delicious it was before continuing. “And I suppose people move on, history moves on, and there will, sadly, always be something more terrible waiting around the corner. Do you know, almost sixty thousand American soldiers died in Vietnam?” She paused to brush a crumb from her mouth.
“But people have always been fascinated by Titanic,” Grace remarked, motioning to the waitress that they’d like more milk. “I knew all about it, and it always comes up in history lessons at school.”
“Ah, yes, dear. I know that. But for those of us who survived, it was too painful a memory. To people like me, Titanic wasn’t about impressive bedrooms and huge boilers to make her go faster than any liner before her. To me, Titanic was about real people, real lives, real hopes for the future. That was what I saw disappearing into the ocean.” She paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. “I certainly never wanted to talk about it again after talking to all those press people in New York and telling my aunt Mary everything when I eventually got to Chicago. I had to tell her, you see, had to go over the whole thing. Terrible thoughts go through your head, you know—thoughts about them poor souls at the bottom of the ocean and . . .”
Grace saw the tears glistening in Maggie’s eyes and took hold of her hand. “Don’t, Maggie. Don’t think about it. It’s too upsetting for you.”
“I refused to talk about it after the first anniversary had passed,” Maggie continued, “and Titanic just wasn’t mentioned in the family. Your great-grandfather and I only ever talked about it on the anniversary, when we would light a candle and say prayers for those who had been lost, but as far as anyone else was concerned, it was a part of my past that they knew I didn’t want to revisit. Since your great-grandfather died I haven’t spoken about Titanic at all, and with me not getting any younger and watching you blowing out your birthday candles, it struck me that in years to come my great-great-grandchildren would know nothing about their great-great-grandma’s involvement in the whole terrible event. And perhaps they should.”
Grace poured more tea into both their cups. Neither of them noticed the breeze that filled the room as other customers came in. They both sipped their tea in comfortable silence.
“And which great-great-grandchildren might these be anyway?” Grace asked, smiling and hoping to lighten the mood a little. “You and Nana and Mom might have all had kids before you were in your twenties, but I’m certainly not planning on having any babies until I’m at least forty!”
“Exactly!” Maggie replied. “And there’s not much chance of me being around for that, is there? So I figured I would tell you now, while I still have my senses straight and you wouldn’t be whisking me off to that ‘institution’ they all talk about, thinking I’d turned crazy in my old age.” She winked at Grace and reached for her other hand. “As my aunt Kathleen used to say, ‘Time is a great storyteller.’ I guess she was right.”
They paused for a moment as the waitress came over to check that everything was all right. It seemed to Grace to be a strange conversation to be having here in this inconspicuous little café. What would the people around them think if they knew Maggie’s background?
“Titanic had a very big impact on my life, Grace, but I sometimes think that even if it hadn’t sunk, the fact that I was leaving my home and so many people I loved would have changed me forever anyway. As it turned out, I got lucky. I got off that boat and carried on with my life. I married a wond
erful man and we spent many very happy years together. We had three wonderful kids, plenty of grandkids, and even a couple of great-grandkids. I really can’t complain now, can I?”
Grace absentmindedly prodded at the few remaining crumbs on her plate. “You’ve lived a very happy life, Maggie, haven’t you? Despite Titanic.”
“Not exactly.” Maggie looked at Grace, her hands shaking slightly as she brought her teacup to her mouth. “I’ve lived a very happy life because of Titanic. Life is fragile, Grace—it is no more than a petal of cherry blossom: thriving and in full bloom one minute and blown to the ground by a sudden gust of wind the next. We shouldn’t take our life for granted, and we should do whatever we can to make ourselves happy.” She paused then for a moment, remembering something privately, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Are you happy, Grace? Really happy?”
Grace stirred her tea slowly, using the opportunity to think a little before responding. She loved the way Maggie was always able to tell how she was feeling—she’d missed this from her father and was glad to have her great-grandmother there to take his place.
“I guess not. Not really. But,” she continued, squeezing Maggie’s hand, “I will be. I will be happy. Your whole Titanic revelation, and especially the way you wrote in your journal about your love for Séamus, has really made me think over the last couple of weeks. I want to feel love like that, Maggie—and I did once. With Jimmy. So I’ve decided to try and get in touch with him again. God only knows whether he’ll want to hear from me. I doubt it, but I can only try. And,” she continued, feeling that she needed to say all these things now, before she changed her mind, “I’m going to send the article I’ve written about your Titanic story to my college professor. I want to see whether he thinks it might be good enough to approach the editor at the Tribune again. I don’t really rate my chances all that highly, but, well . . .”
“I guess you can only try,” Maggie interjected.
“Yeah.” Grace smiled. “Exactly.”
Maggie said nothing for a while, finishing every last mouthful of her apple pie and draining the last drop of tea.
“Well, I’m very glad to hear that, Grace. It might seem right now that you’ll never be able to get your life back on track after everything you’ve gone through, but it will happen. Lord knows, it took me plenty of years to feel like I’d really gotten off that ship—I sometimes feel that I’m still on it, even now. As my own mammy used to say, God rest her soul, ‘On an unknown path, every foot is slow.’ Take your time, Grace. Take one step at a time.”
Grace stood up and walked around the small circular table. She threw her arms around this dear old lady, who was always so wise and so certain, hugging her frail body gently.
“Thank you, Maggie. Thank you—for everything. For confiding your story in me and for making me realize that it’s never too late.”
“I didn’t make you realize any such thing. You realized it yourself—you just needed an old woman with a bit of a story to help you on your way.”
Maggie picked up her empty teacup, staring into it as she turned it around in her hands. “You know, I think it’s a shame they use tea bags nowadays,” she remarked. “I quite liked the notion of reading the tea leaves—although I didn’t always like what they predicted. Piseóga, we called them, superstitions, like reading the tea leaves, putting eggs among the new hay, respecting the fairy forts and hearing the banshee—and of course you know all about those silly little leprechauns.” She chuckled to herself. “Perhaps we could get some proper tea leaves in the store before we go home and I’ll teach you how to read them—a bit of an Irish tradition for you to pass on to those kids you’re gonna have one day.”
Grace laughed. “Well, I’ll get you the tea leaves, Maggie, but I can’t promise anything on the kids, I’m afraid.”
CHAPTER 25
Grace was well aware of the fact that Maggie’s story had given her the perfect way to resurrect her neglected journalism studies. Stories like this probably came around once in a lifetime, and the fact that a Titanic survivor had been discovered would, Grace had no doubt, be pounced upon by the media. This could be more than a break into an apprenticeship with a notoriously difficult features editor; it could really put Grace Butler’s name on the map.
But aside from the indisputable strength of the story, Grace sensed that there was more to this for both her and Maggie. The more she read about her great-grandmother’s love for Séamus and the more Maggie told her about the packet of letters she had lost the night Titanic sank and about the steward who’d helped her, and about Peggy and Katie and her aunt Kathleen—in fact, all those she had traveled with—the more Grace wanted to know about what had become of them all, the letters included.
Grace didn’t know much about Maggie’s life—it had never really occurred to her to ask. In a way, she supposed she had taken her for granted, just a frail old lady whom everyone fussed over at Thanksgiving dinners and other family gatherings. She was simply Great-Nana Maggie. Who she had been before that Grace didn’t know—and now she wanted to. So she continued to read the newspaper clippings, some of which were dated some months after Titanic sank, and she continued to read Maggie’s journal, which she had started writing again from the hospital she was taken to in New York after being rescued. For three days and nights, Grace immersed herself totally in Maggie’s life, editing and perfecting the article on her electronic typewriter until she was finally happy with it. Only then did she breathe a sigh of relief, which felt like two years’ worth of sighs, and went to skim stones on the lake, feeling a lightness about her that she hadn’t felt for a considerable time.
Through the process of unraveling Maggie’s past life, Grace thought more and more about the shoe box under her own bed. It contained the unopened letters Jimmy had written to her after she’d stopped writing to him. Ever since, she had tried to ignore the nagging urge to crawl under the bed, take the rubber band off the shoe box, and tear open the envelopes to see what Jimmy had wanted to say to her. She had also tried to ignore the urge to call him. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him anymore. She did. Completely.
Although she had tried to forget about Jimmy, had stopped herself from rushing to the phone to hear the sound of his voice, stopped herself from reading his letters, addressed to her in his distinctive handwriting, Grace had never stopped thinking about him, or loving him. She had forced herself to let him go, to give him the freedom to enjoy his college years while she focused on caring for her mother and letting the wounds of grief for her father heal. She’d been stopping herself from loving Jimmy Shepard for two years, and she was exhausted.
Since Maggie had taken her aside at her birthday party and confided in her about Titanic, Grace had started to feel different about her own life. With every new revelation about Maggie’s life in Ireland and through the words she had written in her journal, Grace felt an increasing sense of purpose, of focus and renewal. She sat on her bed now, the dusty shoe box in her hands, and imagined how Maggie must have felt as she sat in that trap on the long journey from Ballysheen to the train station, being taken farther and farther away from her home and the man she loved; how she must have felt sitting on the narrow bunk bed of the cabin she shared with her aunt and her two friends, clutching the packet of letters from Séamus, carefully unwrapping them one day at a time as she sailed away from him.
Maggie had told Grace that she had read only four of the letters. The contents of the others were never known, because they were lost on the night of the sinking. Maggie had said that she would have liked to know what was in the rest of the letters, even though she realized that it really didn’t matter now. I have a chance to know, Grace thought as she looked at the shoe box that contained the letters from Jimmy. I have a chance to find out.
Her hands shaking, she removed the rubber band from the box, sending a shower of dust into the air. She lifted the lid and looked at the four envelopes. The postmarks were from January to June 1980. After that, there
were no more. After that, Jimmy had understood that Grace was not going to respond; that she had meant it when she’d written him to say that he wasn’t to wait for her, that he was to get on with his own life while she tried to patch together what was left of hers.
As the spring rain fell soft and steady outside her window, Grace remembered something her father had said to her once. “Never leave yourself open to regret, Grace. We can only make a decision when we know the choices we are faced with. If we shy away, turn our backs and hide, we will simply never know. And that is when you end up old and wondering and regretting. Live a life of hope. Don’t live a life of regret.”
Those words swam around her mind now, and she knew that he was right. Whatever had made Maggie break her silence after all these years, there had been a reason, and if even part of that reason had been for Grace to realize that she had so much to be grateful for in her own life, had so much to look forward to, she knew now that she had to act on that reason. Her hands carefully opened the first envelope. She took a deep breath and began to read.
By nightfall, Grace had placed four typed pages of paper into a manila envelope. The title at the top said The Girl Who Came Home: A Life Beyond Titanic. She addressed the envelope: Private and Confidential, Professor Peter Andrews, Medill School of Journalism, Fisk Hall, Evanston, IL. Within the packet, she placed a smaller envelope, marked Jimmy Shepard, fourth-year student of journalism, c/o Professor Andrews, Private and Confidential. Please deliver if possible or return to sender. Inside the envelope was a single piece of paper with the handwritten words I am so, so sorry. Please can I buy you a cup of coffee? G.
A week later, Professor Andrews sat back in his chair, placed the typed pages onto his desk, and put his hands behind his head.
“Unbelievable!” he said aloud, a smile spreading across his narrow face. “Absolutely unbelievable.” He excitedly rummaged around in his top drawer looking for a phone number, muttering to himself. “I knew you had it in you, Miss Butler! I knew it, I knew it!”