Call Me Ismay

by Sean McDevitt

  Ismay flinched ever so slightly, as images of a mortally wounded ship rushed through his mind with a renewed intensity: those shrieking rockets exploding high overhead in the night sky in vain, with no ships close enough to sail to the rescue. He managed, however, to maintain a description mostly void of any emotion. “The ship had quite a list to-” Ismay had to give it some thought- “to port. Consequently this canvas boat, this collapsible boat, was getting hung up on the outside of the ship, and she had to rub right along her, and we had to try to shove her out, and we had to get the women to help shove her clear of the ship. The ship had listed over that way, to port.”

  Senator Fletcher stared at him intently. “Did you help handle the oars?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You did not have any more men than you needed to take care of the boat?”

  “No.”

  Senator Fletcher cast his eyes down upon his notes, taking a moment to glance at both sides of a sheet of paper before resuming in state of bemusement. “Were you... actually under the care of a physician and under treatment after arriving on the Carpathia?”

  Bruce Ismay- who, with the one exception of snapping at Smith- had endured the potential surfacing of many emotions throughout his testimony and had managed to restrain most of them. However, this was the first time that a sense of embarrassment seized and threatened to completely overtake him. To relive the spectacle of himself, the head of the White Star Line, being reduced to the weakness of having to accept the administration of opiates was too much to bear. Ismay kept his response succinct. “I was, more or less, yes. He took care of me. The captain sent down and offered me the use of his room on board the Carpathia.”

  “What was the name of the surgeon of the Carpathia?”

  Ismay's shame deepened as he realized his memory had yet again abandoned him. He could not recall the physician's name, even though he had been under his care for four days. “I really forget his name. I wrote to him before I left the ship. I- I forget what his name was. McKee, was it?” Ismay tried not to sound too jocular.

  Senator Theodore Bourne of Ohio, who had up until now been silent, startled his colleagues and Ismay by suddenly interjecting a forceful question. “Mr. Ismay, do you think the demonstration has been made that it is impossible to construct a nonsinkable ship?”

  There was a risible stir in the Conference Room, which Senator Smith interrupted with two sharp taps of his gavel. “Silence, please, ladies and gentlemen!” he scolded.

  Ismay, wounded once more, drew in a few breaths before speaking as Senator Fletcher retook his seat. “I would not like to say that, sir, because I have not sufficient knowledge to make any statement with regard to that.”

  Senator Bourne shared a look of disgust with his colleagues at Ismay's response. “That is all.”

  Senator Smith, perhaps eager to placate the unsteady mood, drew the hearing to a close. “That is all, Mr. Ismay, and I want to thank you for your courtesy to the committee and for the information which you have given us. So far as the committee is concerned, you are no longer under its restraint, and I only ask you to respond to any further efforts upon our part to acquire information regarding the causes leading to this catastrophe.”

  Ismay clutched his aching hands to the handle of his walking stick once more. “I will be glad to give you any information I possibly can, any time you call upon me for it.” Smith gave his gavel a final tap, and Ismay the witness rose from his chair, exhausted. As he gathered his belongings, he felt no measure of comfort due to the clearly angry Americans who gawked at him and whispered venomous observations to each other as he left the room under guard. In stark contrast, the inquiry would turn its attention later that day to Captain Arthur Rostron of the Carpathia, who was hailed as a hero for guiding his vessel through a field of ice in a daring attempt to rescue as many survivors of the sinking as possible. A few of the Senators wept openly during Rostron's humble testimony, and he would become the first non-American citizen to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  Within hours, Ismay was on a train to New York, eager to leave the States on board the Adriatic. Although the ship was the first ocean liner to have an indoor swimming pool and a Turkish bath, at least when she was constructed in 1906, he would avail himself of neither luxury, nor was he to be seen by any of the other Titanic survivors on board. When he arrived in Liverpool, he was politely greeted by a gathering of supporters, but it was a recognition he neither wanted or felt he deserved.

  The miniscule amount of satisfaction he gained from his warm reception was short-lived. Upon his return to England, Ismay learned that the Chicago Daily Journal had run a story depicting him as bleating to crew members upon boarding the Carpathia the morning after the disaster, “For God's sake, get me something to eat. I'm starved. I don't care what it is or how much it costs.” I'm starved! Ismay was horrified beyond description, and vowed with steely determination that he would vigorously defend himself when the British Board of Trade questioned him about it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  February 7th, 1912

  The Public Library on West Hill in the Wandsworth Borough of London was a more than familiar sight to Kerry Langston. During many a spring, he had visited its grounds just for the sight of its bright display of orchids and other flowers. On this cold and cloudy day, however, there were no flowers for a wayfarer such as Langston to enjoy. The winter had rendered the library's garden lifeless, and the stucco building, which at one time held the distinction of being London's second public library, was framed by a column of trees without leaves.

  Langston dragged on yet another self-made cigarette, walking the grounds in a timid semi-circle. His nerves were frayed once more and his tweed coat and cloth cap were providing little comfort from the biting cold. Silently, he berated himself for not dressing appropriately for the cold weather, but that morning had proven to be a shaky distracted mess for him when it came to any sort of clear-headed preparation. It had been precisely one week and a day since he had received the latest letter from his no-longer anonymous source: someone named Lillith.

  Since then, however, Langston had received yet another communication from Lillith and for the first time, it was not in the form of a letter. In the late morning of yet another busy day at the Chronicle, one of the staffers (not Stanley Johns) had approached him at his desk, stating there had been a young lady named Lily waiting outside who wished to speak with him, and that if he hurried he still might be able to catch her. A stunned Langston had made the staffer repeat what he had said- quickly surmising that Lily must have been a mispronunciation on the part of the staffer. He then dashed outside, pushing through a crowd of pedestrians gathered around the chalkboards on the sidewalk. They all had been hoping to secure some cheerful news, perhaps, from the London Stock Exchange.

  There wasn't a woman in sight. An agitated Langston shoved his way back into the office, seeking out the staffer who had alerted him. The clerk, when confronted, insisted that the woman had been out there, asking for Langston specifically, and had said something about the 'West Hill Library on Wednesday.' Langston desperately pressed the clerk for more information- a physical description, how old was she, was she alone- but the nervous man could only offer up that she appeared young, not unattractive, and perhaps a bit frightened.

  The remains of that work day were a total loss for Langston. As he sat at his desk- pretending to examine and edit all of his assignments- Langston's heart raced and his hands felt like ice. A person, an actual physical being tied directly to the mysterious letters, had just been outside his workplace, tantalizingly out of reach. Based on what the staffer had told him, he mused that perhaps his fantasy of the writer being a young, lovely relative of Lyons hadn't been too far off. He was quick to internally chastise himself for such thoughts, however, recalling the gruesome details of each and every communication up to this point. Mostly he obsessed over one detail in particular that the staffer had offered: she appeared frightened. Why frightened? he
thought. Has something bad happened, or is something horrible about to happen?

  Langston had excused himself from the newsroom of the Chronicle on this Wednesday morning. The assignment on most everyone's minds seemed to be the British War Minister's visit to Berlin, but he couldn't be bothered to care. Indeed, Langston sensed that his preoccupied behaviour was starting to wear thin with his superiors, but with so much serious secret information coming forth regarding Edward Lyons, he increasingly felt a semblance of duty was all that was required of him.

  Langston had investigated, to the best of his ability, what connection the name of Lillith may have held to Edward Lyons, but had turned up nothing. Lyons was by all accounts a confirmed bachelor, and Langston had fearfully considered the possibility that perhaps those frightening letters he'd been receiving were the vengeful work of a jilted lover. The MP had endeared himself to many legions of women throughout his vociferous support of suffrage, and there was no telling whom he might have alienated along the way. Perhaps he'd been victimized by attracting the attention of someone unstable. Maybe the name Lillith was a falsehood, a fraud cruelly perpetrated by a male saboteur unsympathetic to the suffrage movement, making an attempt to smear and discredit Lyons. Still, that would not explain the frightened young woman who had appeared, apparently, at the Chronicle. He even worried for a brief while that maybe someone at the newspaper was having a laugh at his expense-perhaps no one had come to see him that day at all. However, he soon realized that would have to involve a conspiracy far too serpentine to possibly be true.

  In any event, Kerry Langston once again found himself exposed to the elements, shuddering in the cold while trying to sort out a confounding mystery while Lyons, quite possibly, sat at home, comfortable, with his feet propped up by a crackling fire. Langston tossed the dwindling remnants of a cigarette out into the empty street. His glasses were now fogging up with regularity as he blew onto his hands for warmth. He could hear in the distance the clip-clop of a horsecart, the only indication that any other soul was nearby.

  Langston had his hands in his pockets, his cloth cap pulled down tightly in an effort to contain some bodily warmth, when the soft, cautious voice of a young woman drifted over his shoulder, from about ten feet away.

  “Mr. Langston, sir?”

  Langston turned. She was wearing a black dress with a white collar and cuffs, an impractical frilly apron bundled under her arm, and a matching cap that covered soft, dark ringlets of hair. A white shawl hung like a protective cloud over her shoulders, and her young features bore an expression that Langston could mentally compare only to a frantic little sparrow.

  Langston was startled by her apparent nervousness and yet entirely mesmerized by her languid eyes. After a moment, he allowed himself to speak.

  “Are you... Lillith?”

  “Yes, indeed, sir, I am.” Hers was a dignified but sad presence.

  “'I grasp your spirit in the palm of my Hand'.Are you truly the author of those words?” Langston took a furtive step towards her, but she immediately raised her hand.

  “Sir, please do not come any closer. I must know, do you have any of your tools with you?”

  “My- my tools?” Langston sputtered. “Do you mean...the kit? The vampire kit?”

  “Yes sir.” The young woman was urgently concerned, her sad brown eyes seeming to search his face for unspoken cues.

  “No, I do not. Should I have?” he asked, warily.

  Lillith's shoulders relaxed, if only a small measure. “No. Not necessarily. Mr. Langston sir, I do not have much time. This is my only day off and yet I have only a few moments to share with you.”

  “Your day off?” Langston queried. “Pardon my presumption, madam, but judging by your clothes, I must ask you- are you a chambermaid?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you...” Langston's mind was racing, and yet he could feel the pieces of a puzzle starting to congeal. “Are you employed by the MP Edward Lyons?”

  Lillith's darting eyes provided her response. She started to fidget as Langston enthusiastically put forth a theory. “Of course! There wouldn't publicly be an association with your name- I could find no trace of a 'Lillith' in any of the circles that Lyons travels within. That would explain it! No offense, madam, but servants, of course, in the natural order of things, are to remain invisible...” Langston paused, realizing his face was blushing from both embarrassment and excitement, and that Lillith was obviously uncomfortable. “I beg your pardon miss. I should be commending you on your courage for agreeing to meet with me, for sharing such sensitive information with me for so long-”

  “Please, please, Mr. Langston,” she interrupted, at once gentle and firm. “My time with you today is short. I've come to warn you of an action that Mr. Lyons might take...”

  “A moment, please, Miss Lillith,” he pleaded, in soft but urgent tones. “You must understand the horrible burden your information has placed upon me. I do have many questions about the kit-”

  “The kit should be the least of your concerns,” she interjected, once again using a tone that was quiet, and yet forceful. “My last missive to you explained that Mr. Lyons is headed west.”

  “Yes, yes indeed,” Langston nodded. “But my interest isn't so much on where his next move is, but why. And how. And what it is that Lyons intends to do. There has to be- and there had better be,” he added, with a slightly annoyed chuckle, “a plausible reason as to why you would direct me towards a kit that bears such a dark purpose. I've risked far too much of my own reputation and livelihood on something that may be fantastical. Miss Lillith, I do feel that I am owed some answers and an explanation.”

  Lillith sighed slightly, then grudgingly gave Langston a morsel. “The kit was stowed away in Winkleigh two years ago by my brother, who lives near Blindwells Copse in Devon County. He never knew what was inside, I only told him that it was very precious and that it must be hid. I started to send you what little information I could about Mr. Lyons after I read your tribute to George Meredith when he passed away a few years ago. My niece taught me how to read and write using his poems. I felt that I could trust you.”

  Langston gazed at Lillith with intensity, fearing that somehow she was trying to endear herself to him using the unlikeliest of examples. He had completely forgotten the piece he'd written on Meredith until she mentioned it. “Well, I'm obviously flattered that you would remember it, although I do find it a bit strange that you chose to put me on the trail for Bartholomew Gidley because of it. I'm sorry to say that I did some serious damage to Gidley's monument while trying to retrieve the kit- then again, I inflicted that damage upon a marker for a man who supposedly is not even dead.”

  He took a step forward, continuing to address her sotto voce. “Miss Lillith, you simply must give me more information on Gidley and Lyons. I cannot put a seal on this for much longer- I won't. I beg your pardon for my harsh tone, but I'm going to have to insist that you be totally open and frank with me, and no more of those blasted vague infuriating notes!” Langston heard himself expressing his frustration in anger, yet felt like an observer while doing it.

  “I had no choice for the wording of those notes. Mr. Langston, sir... you must understand the sort of danger that I am placing myself in simply by meeting with you today.” She turned and quietly took a seat on a nearby wooden bench, the sort that featured a center arm rest to deter street people from sleeping on it at night. “I might even be making a horrible mistake that could place you in danger.”

  “I'm in danger right now!” Langston exclaimed, taking a seat on the other end of the bench, beginning to plead his case passionately. “Miss, have you not heard what I have said? I fear that my very livelihood and reputation is in peril while I try to borrow time from a group of editors who probably think that I'm hiding an illicit love affair, or perhaps even an addiction to alcohol, from all the assignments I've begged off of. Indeed- we are on the cusp of perhaps the greatest social change in our time- women being given the liberty to v
ote- and instead of putting attention where it should be, where have I engaged myself as a journalist? I've been nowhere to be seen. I have been off playing parlour games- word play, occult nonsense, and hunting down the likes of Count Dracula, apparently, with the help of a chambermaid who supposedly works for a necromancing MP. My words may seem harsh, Miss, and for that I do ask you to forgive me- but these nebulous clues of yours simply are no longer going to be acceptable.”

  Anger flickered for a moment in Lillith's eyes, then passed. “Mr. Langston,” she resumed, her eyes cast downward, “I can understand the anger that you must feel. But I can assure you and you must believe me, sir, that everything I did by writing to you was meant as an act of survival, of hope, of dreaming of the freedom to escape. This is a very powerful man, Mr. Langston. I had to act cautiously- and you must also do so, now, sir.”

  Langston stared at her, searching for signs of deceit or insanity, but found none. “Miss Lillith,” he spoke quietly, “I know that we are on the edge of something most Britons are going to find hard to believe, unless you've some special knowledge- and it has to be something tangible, something real, something irrefutably damaging. There is simply no chance of me going back to the Chronicle with any hocus-pocus nonsense- and again, I mean no insult to you by my words, but you must understand the position that I find myself in. I cannot, and will not, pursue this any further without any truly solid information. The fact that you've revealed yourself today, however, leads me to believe that you must have something real to offer.”