The It Girls

by Karen Harper

  “All right,” she said and downed the rest of her goblet. “But I’ve been on such a whirl, I don’t know if I can sleep.”

  They headed toward their cabins, feeling the slight roll of the massive ship. Others had remarked on the rough seas, but after all, it was mid-April in the northern Atlantic. Not only the engineer but the designer of the vessel were aboard and so proud of this break-speed liner on its maiden voyage. And why not, with such elegance and beauty everywhere they looked on board? Lucile saw it as a luxurious, floating palace with decor like something she would design, and she’d seen three Lucile gowns besides the one she was wearing this evening.

  “That’s not the champagne making me sway this time,” Cosmo commented, zigzagging slightly again.

  “Nor the remnants of our dancing three nights straight when I know you’d rather they do a Scottish reel.”

  “Not tonight with a pounding head.”

  “Poor Franks won’t know what to make of my actually using my cabin,” she told him as they strolled their corridor.

  He kissed her quickly on the lips and rapped on her cabin door for her. “I’m going to turn in. Call me for a late breakfast. Good night, Franks,” he said when Lucile’s secretary opened the door.

  “G’night, my lord,” she said, obviously surprised Lucile was stepping in past her.

  Lucile sank onto her bed with a sigh. The cabin was very pretty with pink curtains and several bouquets of flowers. She’d needed the closets and drawer space here as well as in Cosmo’s cabin, but most of her jewelry was in the ship’s safe.

  “Wait until my sister hears about this ship,” she said as she sat on her previously unused bed and took her shoes off. “She’s holed herself up writing like mad, but when I tell her about the Titanic, she’ll want to use it for a lovely, romantic setting.”

  Elinor was struggling to find the words to write. She knew things were stacked against her. She had to write fast, at least thirty pages a day to make her deadline. Since she was desperate for money to pay off Clayton’s debts, Gerald Duckworth had promised her a thousand pounds for a novel to be serialized if she could do it quickly. She wasn’t sure she was composing up to her usual standards, and that scared her. It didn’t seem to flow. And it wasn’t only her layabout husband’s flight to distant Constantinople to escape his debts that was worrying her, but George Curzon’s activities right here in England—or the lack thereof.

  Quite simply, they didn’t include her lately, not even snatched, private, hidden moments like lunch in their old hotel. Sometimes he didn’t write or telephone for days—eleven days and counting right now. Of course he knew she was busy. No doubt he was busy, too, with his daughters and government service, but she felt panicky when thinking he had wearied of her.

  Thanks to her publisher, she’d paid George back for his loan to Clayton, every bit of it, despite how he’d never mentioned it again and others were hounding her. Could he have taken offense at that? Or had his Souls’ friends sabotaged his passion for her when she’d been certain he meant to tell them to steer clear of that? Or was he simply bored with her when she needed his strength and attention desperately?

  “Curse it all!” she cried. She wadded up the new, half-written page, despite getting ink on her hands, and threw it across the room against the wall. What if this novel was utter rubbish? Should it all be in the dustbin? Why weren’t her golden thoughts working to attract her beloved Milor, as she called him in her diary. Even her last novels had been letdowns. The Reason Why had not been well received, and Halcyone, which she’d hoped would be her intellectual book, her masterpiece, had been misunderstood and even mocked for its pretensions. And now she had ideas to write a book she would call The Man and the Moment, and had that somehow passed her by with Milor? Had she given him too much too fast?

  Drat, she actually wished Lucile was here to talk to, even though lately they went weeks in their own worlds without a word, or subtly sniped at each other when they were together. But whatever would she do without her, even if it was to argue and scold, trying to one-up each other? Sometimes, though she’d never tell Lucile, she envied her for Cosmo and for her new shops and designs—and her luxurious, glamorous maiden-voyage trip on that new wonder of a steamship.

  She glanced at the clock. Mother used to say that nothing good ever happened after midnight, so maybe she should try to sleep or at least send both her daughters some golden thoughts and Lucile and Cosmo, too.

  Elinor pulled out another sheet of paper and stared hard at its vast, white blankness. It seemed so big, so cold, almost dangerous. Though it was quite warm in here, she shivered.

  Trying to go to sleep, Lucile said a quick prayer and fretted briefly about how Elinor had gone overboard for Lord Curzon. She hoped Cosmo would be in a better mood and rested in the morning. He was a dear to come on this voyage with her, and she was worried he wouldn’t like New York with all its bustle and rush—and how busy she was there, so busy . . .

  She stepped off into sleep but something woke her. A jolt nearly flung her out of bed. She bumped her head on the wall above her pillow. One of the vases of flowers in the room crashed to the floor.

  “Franks, are you all right?”

  “I’m up. I felt something earlier. I just looked out in the hall. The lights are out. And what’s that funny rumbling noise?”

  “Sounds like the engines straining. I wish they wouldn’t try to set some sort of speed record on this first voyage.”

  She had been chilled, even with their electric stove, so she had not completely undressed. Now, especially with the glass on the floor, she jammed her feet back in her shoes, seized her fur coat from the foot of the bed, pulled it on, and got up.

  “I can’t believe there would be anything wrong with the engines on this ship,” she said. Her voice shook. “It sounds like someone rolling large balls on a wooden bowling alley. I’m going to check on Cosmo.”

  She wrapped her coat she’d been using for an extra blanket tightly around her. Fumbling for her purse in which she had both cabin keys, she went across the hall. Amid many voices and some people rushing past, a man’s voice down the way carried to her, though he was speaking to someone else: “I hear there’s ice on the deck. Can we have hit something? Someone said an iceberg.”

  The corridor lights were flickering now—perhaps it was only some sort of electrical problem. She unlocked her husband’s door and went in. Unbelievably, he must be sound asleep because he was snoring.

  “Cosmo, dear, the ship is having some sort of problem. People are most disturbed and many are up. I heard someone say we might have hit an iceberg.”

  She touched his shoulder. He startled. “Lucile, it’s damn cold out there and so is the draft from the hall. Go back to bed. This ship is built with watertight compartments. It may slow down their race for the crossing record, but go back to bed and don’t worry.”

  Upset he was so gruff, she went back out. But, with Franks standing in the door of their cabin, she told her, “I’m going out on deck to see what I can learn. I’ll be right back.”

  The night was blank black. The ice cold wind cut right through her coat and froze her face. “Nothing but temporary trouble,” she heard someone down the deck say. “Word from a steward is not to worry.”

  She exhaled a sigh of relief that turned to a puffy cloud the wind ripped away. But as she went back to her cabin to assure Franks all was well, a deadly silence fell. The constant hum and slight vibration of the ship’s engines had stopped. The sudden silence was terrifying, especially when it had been filled with the distant sound of raised, panicked voices.

  She ran back to Cosmo’s cabin. He was up and getting dressed. “Strange sounds,” he told her. “I’m going to check things out. Get dressed—doubly dressed—and not in those flimsy dance shoes, just in case.”

  In case of what? she wondered. Thank God this was an unsinkable ship.

  However exhausted she was, Elinor could not sleep. She wrapped herself in an old lilac-and-pin
k Lucile cape and jammed her feet in shoes. Taking an electric torch, she went out the back door of the small house, hoping not to wake her mother, and stepped out under the fading stars that the rising sun was devouring. She clicked off her light, wishing she’d managed more sleep.

  The wind was a bit chill for April fourteenth—no, it was the fifteenth now, the Ides, as Julius Caesar would have called it. Beware the Ides of March, she recalled the line from Shakespeare that was to warn Caesar just before he was assassinated.

  She went out and sat in the swing her daughters had once enjoyed when visiting their grandmama. It creaked, and the wind rustled the new leaves of the apple tree. What time would it be aboard the Titanic now? she wondered. If the ship were close enough to New York, it would be about seven hours from daylight for them. Well, she’d hear it all from Lucile, whether she wanted to or not.

  Elinor scratched her ear and was surprised to realize she still had Milor’s gift of emerald earrings on. He had said those would remind her that he wanted to remain her close friend, no matter what, through thick and thin. Now she feared, they were a farewell gift. Her trust in golden thoughts and angel guardians was useless. So hard to say good-bye. But if this separation of theirs was to be permanent, she somehow knew how it felt to die.

  Cosmo, thank God, returned to the cabin quickly. “I’m glad to see you both warmly dressed, though I’ve been assured it’s nothing dire. Still, they are taking the covers off the lifeboats, and it is captain’s orders we are to wear our lifebelts. Just keep calm. Think of it as a drill, and I’m certain we will be all right.”

  Cosmo’s deep voice had always calmed her, but Lucile sensed his alarm. They helped each other don and strap on the awkward, clumsy belts. The three of them went onto the port side of the ship and there saw a scene of horror.

  “Who the hell is in charge?” Cosmo asked, as if speaking to himself.

  They huddled back against the ship wall—was it tilting slightly?—as screaming people charged the lifeboats. They rushed for places on them, shoving others aside, even screaming women and crying children. From somewhere in the chaos, officers on megaphones roared, “Women and children first! Stand back! Order! Order here!”

  Cosmo’s arm came tight around her. She leaned into him, and Franks pressed close to her. “I’ll get you two on a boat,” he shouted over the noise. “It might be more serious than they’ve said. I think the deck is listing.”

  Just then a lifeboat in front of them tilted from its uneven weight and cast shrieking people into the cold blackness of the sea. Everyone on deck gasped, but the shouts for help far below soon quieted.

  “No!” she told Cosmo, gripping his arm. “I won’t leave you, no matter what! Maybe we can put Franks—”

  “I will stay with you!” Franks cried over the renewed noise on deck. “Please let me stay with you, milady!”

  A sharp noise split the night, and the flare of red rockets overhead screamed into the sky. “SOS flares,” Cosmo muttered. “From the other side of the ship. Let’s try that instead of this hell here.”

  He seized Lucile’s elbow and propelled her inside with Franks following. He nearly bounced off the door on the shuddering deck but managed to open it. People fled at them, pushing at the door. They staggered across the width of the ship as it jolted, lurched, and went even more atilt. That pressed them into the wall of the corridor, but they fought their way on.

  CHAPTER Twenty-Five

  Amazingly, on the starboard side of the ship, relative quiet reigned. They saw only some of the crew preparing to launch a small boat, calling to one another. And the boat had empty seats.

  “Hey, there!” Cosmo shouted. “Any room in that boat for three?”

  “’Tis the captain’s boat, sir, and we be firemen, and I a petty officer, a seaman. An officer said to take it ’cause the captain, he’s still on board till the ship be righted. Sure, then, there’s some room.”

  Lucile was shaking uncontrollably. If the captain was going to right the ship, wouldn’t it be better for them to stay on board? It was so cold, so dark and dangerous out there in the utter void. But then there was the horror on the other side and—

  Cosmo gave her no choice and held her upper arms hard as he handed her, then Franks, to the man, who indicated seats in the prow. For one moment she feared Cosmo would not come. Since he was always a man of honor, she would not have put it past him to go fetch some women and children from the other side of the ship. She saw him hesitate for a moment, staring at her.

  “Please, Cosmo!” she cried and held out a hand toward him.

  “Got to shove off now, sir,” the petty officer said.

  He climbed in, followed by two other male passengers who appeared from somewhere and said they were Americans as they clambered in without an invitation.

  “Cast off!” the officer shouted to the oarsmen. “Once we hit the water, pull away as fast and far as possible, mates!”

  Sitting next to Cosmo with Franks in the closest seat next to one of the other male passengers, they held on as the boat was lowered into the water. It hit hard and began to rock, even knocking against the side of the listing ship at first. Waves and wind threw icy spray. Struggling, the men rowed away from the vessel, with its rows of lighted portholes on each deck above growing smaller and smaller.

  If the electricity was back on, Lucile thought, surely it would stay afloat. On their voyage from Canada to England when she and Elinor were young, they’d tossed and turned but a much smaller ship had ridden it out and—

  Her stomach roiled and churned. She bent over the bow just in time to spew her supper and cocktails into the inky, white-capped sea. Worse, she saw floating in it, blank, jagged pieces of ice as if someone had ripped up huge pieces of paper.

  Franks handed her a handkerchief to wipe her mouth, bless her, and Cosmo gripped her to him. Dear heavens, she was going to be sick again, right now, but not as sick as picturing all those poor souls who might still be fighting for a boat on that great, grand vessel. But—but maybe things were under control, because she could swear, even now, she heard the orchestra they’d danced to last night still playing.

  The men rowed on. Someone said something about not wanting to be sucked down when it went. When what went?

  She opened her teary eyes to look back at the Titanic, only to see its stern suddenly tilt sharply upward. Had it cracked apart where the iceberg had hit? Franks screamed, and they watched in horror as row after row of round portholes lights slipped beneath the sea until the unsinkable ship was gone.

  Two hours later, Lucile lay curled up in her wet fur coat on the floor of the lifeboat with her head on Cosmo’s booted feet. She wasn’t certain whether her retching over the bow was physical or spiritual at the shock of it all. The others sometimes whispered and sometimes tried to buck themselves up, but they sounded delirious, as if this were some sort of feverish nightmare—and it was.

  “You shall have to lend me another Lucile gown for New York,” Franks said, her voice quaking. Someone had a canteen of water aboard, and she washed Lucile’s face with a wet handkerchief, not salt water for once. They were all trembling from the temperature and wind as well as from shock. She could tell even Cosmo was shaking.

  “What about us poor lads?” one of the firemen asked. “We’ve not only lost our pay but our kits, too, when she went down.”

  Cosmo told them, “I’m sure you’ll get another ship and have tall tales to tell.”

  “If we’re not cursed from being on the one that went down,” the petty officer said. Lucile recalled he’d said his name was Hendrickson.

  “Tell you what,” Cosmo said, his lips so numb with cold that he didn’t sound like himself. “I’ll give you each a five spot toward a new kit when we are taken up somewhere. I hope those distress rockets in the sky bring a rescue vessel if the wireless didn’t put out an SOS.”

  “Heard the closest ship didn’t respond but another one, thank the Lord, must have. The second one had a name something like the
Corinthian,” said a young, shaky voice.

  “Carpathia,” an older voice corrected. “A steamer. Stoked its boiler fires on one round-trip. And thanks for your kindly offer, your lordship. Got a wife and three little ones at home, and grievin’ I am for those kind went down with the ship, even for those in all those other boats out on the sea like us here. Was wishin’ some o’ them had found us ’fore we launched, but glad you all did. No good empty seats in a tragedy like this. And they said she would get to New York fast and never sink.”

  Just when Lucile thought she was feeling a bit better on this rocky, black sea, she pictured people fighting for lifeboats, some saying good-bye forever to their menfolk who remained on deck. She pulled herself up to be sick over the side again, though she had nothing left to lose. In the crest of the waves—no more ice floes right now—she saw her own daughters’ little faces years ago and she thought of the young Irish cabin girl who had been so sweet and helpful that she’d given her a woolen robe she’d brought.

  Franks handed her the damp handkerchief wet with seawater this time, and, still sitting in the bottom of the boat, Lucile leaned against the strength of Cosmo’s legs as his shaking hands gripped her shoulders.

  Just then, the sun peered over the edge of the eastern sea.

  The next evening, as the sun set, Elinor was finally writing again. Yet she felt exhausted. Drained. So sad. She jolted when Mother called from outside her closed door, “Elinor!”

  “Working, Mother!”

  “I know you don’t like to be disturbed, my girl, but you have a telephone call! I don’t know what those calls cost since I don’t use the contraption Clayton insisted on, but the way things are, you had better hurry!”

  Elinor’s hands trembled as she jumped up and rushed out. She was expecting Gerald Duckworth saying he needed the book soon. At least he was going to take it in segments for serialization, but that was so dangerous. Who knew that the first part written would work with the way plot and character developed later? Sometimes amazing things emerged that were even a surprise to the author.