by Leah Fleming
31
The candelabras glittered, the diamonds shone on bracelets and ear drops. Dinner had gone well enough although Celeste hadn’t been able to eat a thing. How could she with her ribs so bruised, chafing against the tightness of her corset. It was agony to bend or twist but she must smile and be the perfect guest. Formally and precisely seated were the usual stuffy line-up of masters of industry that had sprung up in the past few years in the city, including partners from the Roetzel and Andress law firm. One of the B. F. Goodrich Company rubber magnates was sitting opposite her. Everyone wanted to hear her dramatic tale.
‘Isn’t it terrible about Walter Douglas?’ The Akron newspapers had been full of the loss on board of the founder of the Quaker Oats Company. ‘Poor Mahala was left with nothing but a fur coat on her back. And John Jacob Astor, Guggenheim, and that poor Strauss couple, all of whom died . . . You must have met some of them in First Class, Celestine?’
She paused before replying, seeing Grover giving her a pointed look. She smiled, nodding. ‘Those gentlemen were all so brave,’ she said. ‘They won’t be forgotten for their courage. I met some of their wives at the Relief Committee.’
‘I hear the steerage men behaved like brutes,’ said Grover’s mother, Harriet, as she stuffed another piece of cherry pie into her mouth.
‘That’s not what I saw,’ Celeste snapped back. ‘There were many gentlemen of all classes waving their children off and kissing their wives, knowing they’d never see them again. Most of the steerage passengers weren’t allowed on deck until near the end when there were no lifeboats left. Women and children too. The poor souls were left to die, abandoned. Fifty-three children died that night in steerage. Fifty-three. Only one in First Class and that was because she refused to leave her parents.’ She knew now that she had their full attention and could have turned their stomachs with even more harrowing details but this was neither the time nor the place. They wanted stories of heroism, nothing to disturb their night’s sleep. ‘But we raised ten thousand dollars on the ship alone for their immediate relief,’ she added proudly.
And besides, Grover had said earlier that she mustn’t go on about her experience at dinner. He’d not been impressed with her account.
‘Titanic!’ he’d said angrily. ‘I am sick of the damned ship, nothing but news of it on every page of the Tribune. Everyone knows the score now so don’t bang on about it on your high-and-mighty drum at the dinner tonight.’
‘But it was terrible, Grover,’ she’d protested. ‘I’ll never forget what I saw. I was so lucky to survive.’
‘What was all this business I heard from Bryden about sorting out that widow from steerage? There was an army of do-gooders to do that.’
‘May and I sat together in the lifeboat. She lost her husband and everything they possessed in the world. How could I not do my duty?’ Celeste said, trying not to raise her voice. She’d heard Susan bringing Roddy back a few minutes before. She longed to see him but knew she must wait for Grover to dismiss her. To rile him risked him keeping Roddy from her for even longer. ‘Besides, I wanted to help Mrs Brown with the survivors’ fund.’
‘Always the parson’s daughter,’ he sneered. ‘Thank God I had more sense than to let you take my son. If anything had happened to him . . .’ She could hear the threat in his voice.
The beating that followed was no surprise. She’d angered him and so she must be punished. He’d withheld Roddy until the last moment before they left for the dinner. She was too sore to pick him up and he had cried when he saw her, hiding behind Susan at first until she had produced a little package of toys. It broke her heart not to stay. It was all her fault for not returning when demanded.
Now she looked at the eager faces of Harriet’s guests and swiftly changed the subject.
‘Enough about me, what’s been happening while I was away?’ Celeste was soon subjected to all the local gossip, but when the women retired to the drawing room while the men took their port they took up the subject again. ‘Did you see Madeleine Astor? They say she is in a delicate condition . . .’
‘I saw her on the Carpathia, looking dreadful, and yes, she is pregnant.’
‘Only eighteen, not married five minutes to a man twice her age . . . and him a married man when they met . . . Still, what will be will be, and we mustn’t speak ill of the dead.’
‘Did you see many bodies? How terrible for you to be shoved onto a boat with all the Third Class riffraff! How relieved you must be to be home and dry and back amongst your own.’
Oh shut up, she wanted to say to these silly women, overstuffed into their evening gowns, their double chins wobbling, flesh bursting out of their low bodices. You have no idea how the world lives outside the few miles around here. Once your approval mattered to me, but not now. None of this mattered now, she sighed. I’ll never belong here. I’m too English, too different, too young to be sitting here gossiping with puffed-up women who care only for show and status and haven’t grasped anything of the horror I experienced. Why should they? It’s all like some cinematograph drama on the silver screen to them. I don’t want to be here, her heart cried out. I want to take Roddy and run.
She’d never felt so alone, so trapped, so frustrated. She’d watched Grover drinking steadily all night, his eyes flashing with fury as the attention kept being drawn back to his wife’s story.
The carriage would soon come and he’d paw her all the way home, expecting his reward in the bedroom. Not the gentle caresses of a lover but a rushed brutal entry, a grunt and then it would be over and she’d be left sore, feeling used and degraded once more.
How had it come to this? His tender caresses had quickly changed into attacks, even on their honeymoon in Paris. Once they were married, it was as if Grover had become a different person, criticizing her for the smallest thing: the way she dressed, her hairstyle, her accent, her background. He talked of moulding her into a suitable wife as if she was a piece of clay.
At first she had been too shocked, too frightened to resist or protest. But this terrible secret she must endure. His assault earlier was only a sample of what was to come if she disobeyed again.
In the early hours of the morning she’d lie awake listening to his snores, feeling desperate and helpless to move in case he woke and she’d have to be subjected to it all over again.
Now, sipping coffee, pretending she was enjoying herself and trying not to wince in pain, she realized she couldn’t live like this any more. Tonight a plan had formed in her mind. Listening to all that talk, to the spurious gossip, she knew there might be a way to take control. When they reached the house on Portage Hill, she’d offer Grover some of the fine whiskey she’d brought him back from New York and sit him down. She’d slip away, take her time undressing, knowing he was tired, drunk and ready to sleep. She would slip into Roddy’s nursery, careful not to disturb Susan next door. She would lock the door and find some blankets and a cushion for the daybed in there. Tonight she would be safe, and if Grover complained she’d explain that he was so tired she thought it better for him to sleep it off on the sofa.
Something that Harriet Parkes had said after dinner had made her think. ‘You ought to write it all down, my dear, before you forget the details.’ Why should she stay silent about what had happened on the Titanic? Why shouldn’t she tell her own story raise funds for the needy Titanic immigrants from Cornwall, arriving in Akron, by all accounts? The papers were full of the story of Margaret Brown, the socialite who had rowed one of the lifeboats herself. She was now a friend and Celeste was determined to attend every Titanic Survivors’ Committee, no matter what she had to do to get there.
She thought about May and Ella on the high seas. Would her plan work out for them? What would the Lancashire girl have made of all the glitz and falseness of tonight’s gaudy spectacle? Celeste was not going to keep silent. There must be ways to stir up debate. What had happened was awful but preventable, of that she was sure.
Back home, in the nursery, she lit a candl
e, found a writing pad and pencil and began to write down every detail she could recall of that night while it was still fresh in her mind: conversations, scenes, out it all poured onto the paper. She felt such a surge of energy and resolve as she wrote her account of that fateful night, not only for Roddy to read when he was older but to withstand time as a piece of history. Something was shifting within herself as she realized she was no long Grover’s doormat to be trampled on, but a woman of worth who had survived a cruel disaster and would never be put down again. She slept soundly for the first time in days.
32
Angelo sat slumped in a backstreet bar knocking back glass after glass of bourbon. He could never drink enough to dull the ache inside. What was the point of going home? The tiny apartment was as he’d left it on that April morning weeks ago, gathering dust, but it was somewhere to flop down when he staggered back in the early hours, somewhere to sleep off his hangover and hide from Aunt Anna, who screamed at him to tidy the place up.
‘What for?’ he yelled back. ‘Who is there to see my mess but me?’
‘You will bring rats if you leave food everywhere. Look at you, you’ve not shaved for days, nor worked. How will you pay the rent? They can’t keep a man on who never shows up. Maria would be ashamed of you.’
‘Don’t you dare speak her name! You never even met her.’
‘Salvi says she was beautiful and proud. You soil her memory with all this . . .’ She flung her hands around in despair, picking up his dirty shirts as she swept round the room.
‘Go away, I can do my own washing.’
‘Bah! You want people to think Bartolinis are filthy pigs? The family name must be honoured. We have a business to run. Drinking solves nothing.’
‘I’ll do what I want,’ he snapped.
‘We worry about you. You are family. We can’t let you sink to the gutter.’
‘Why did I ever come to this rotten country? It has taken all that I had, all I loved. There’s nothing for me here.’
‘Then go back to Italy with your tail between your legs, tell them your sad story. Start again on the farm. Anything. But don’t waste your life.’
‘Leave me alone.’
Anna left him with her suggestion buzzing through his head. Go back to the village, back to his brother, his old mother and Maria’s parents. But how would he face them?
He’d dragged himself out to Rizzi’s bar and drank until there were no coins left in his pocket. There was no shame in returning home, but something was stopping him.
Angelo pushed his way through the crowd into the street. Here he was his own boss. Anna was as bad as his mother nagging him: do this, do that. Go home, no! Here he could do as he pleased, be invisible, drink what he wanted, when he wanted. Here he could hide from friends and family. He’d never go back! It smacked of failure and defeat. For better or worse, he was staying put.
33
Even before the train drew up in Trent Valley Station, May caught sight of the three cathedral spires. The Three Ladies of the Vale, Celeste had called them. She noticed that the cottages around the track were made of red brick, not the Accrington shiny brick of Lancashire but a softer blue with a pinky hue. Despite her anxiety at arriving in a place where she would be a complete stranger, May was glad that everything looked unfamiliar.
Ella was fast asleep, worn out by their journey. They were helped off the train onto the platform by a soldier in khaki. He was on his way to his regiment at Whittington Barracks, just outside the city. He’d been taken with Ella’s antics on the long ride from Liverpool and had pushed a shilling into her little palm. The kindness of strangers, May mused, and her thoughts automatically strayed back to Celeste.
The spring day was bright and green leaves sparkled in the sunshine. It was more like being in the country, May thought, as she admired the church spires that replaced the mill chimneys she was used to back home. It was all so different from Bolton with its rows of terraced streets.
Thankfully there was an omnibus to take them from the station into town, and before long they alighted in the Market Square. May found a café to slake her thirst, fixing her dusty appearance before she took the short walk up Dam Street to Cathedral Close. It was all very quaint, like a picture book. She saw Minster Pool, heard the quack of ducks and stood in wonder at the cherry trees decked out in pink blossom. Across the pool there were high brick buildings with gardens leading down to the water’s edge. Here was fresh air, cobbled streets and old-world buildings, a world away from what she’d known before. Perhaps Celeste was right, this was a new place and they could settle here.
In her pocket were Celeste’s instructions and her father’s address, but try as she might she couldn’t find the house. She walked round the outside of the cathedral to where the West Door rose up to a wall full of statues. She asked directions from a passing woman with a wicker basket, who pointed out an archway into a tiny little square with higgledy-piggledy low houses facing a vegetable patch.
‘Who’re you looking for?’ she asked, smiling at Ella, who’d now woken.
‘Canon Forester,’ May said.
‘Number four. He’s the one with the daughter who was on the Titanic. She was saved, praise the Lord! Terrible, wasn’t it?’
May nodded but said nothing. You couldn’t miss the billboards, their sensational headlines screaming news of the disaster. ‘TITANIC BODIES SALVAGED FROM SEA. BOUND FOR HALIFAX’ – each paper wanted to outdo the others in lurid details. But no one would get anything out of her. As far as they were concerned she’d never set foot on the ship.
‘What a bonny baby,’ said the woman, patting Ella’s curls and looking from her to May with surprise. May was getting used to this response everywhere she and Ella went, be it on the train, the bus, or in the café in the square.
May took her leave with a nod of the head and made towards the door, hoping it was the right one. She knocked. A white-haired man with a lined but kindly face opened the door and smiled.
‘Ah ha! I think I know who you might be. Come in . . . come in, Mrs Smith. I hope you had a pleasant journey.’
‘You know about me?’
‘Of course. My daughter, Celeste, cabled to us. How is my unsinkable daughter?’ His eyes twinkled and May sensed a generous man.
‘I can’t begin to tell you just what a friend she has been to me . . .’
‘Just like her dear mother. Sit down. I’ll make some tea. My lady’s not been in today so you see I’m in a bit of a muddle,’ he apologized, trying to clear piles of books and papers to make room for May to sit down.
May placed Ella down on a chair, surrounding her with battered dusty cushions. ‘Let me help. If you show me where everything is I can . . .’ The room was a clutter of books and newspapers and cuttings. Not one surface was visible.
‘I’ve been cutting out all the articles about the sinking. I was wondering if you were both mentioned but so far no . . . I’ll send them to Celeste. I am very sorry for your loss, Mrs Smith.’
‘We were on our way to Idaho . . . to start a new life.’ May felt the tears that were never far from the surface welling up but she must hold back her despair.
‘What a blessing you have the child for comfort.’
‘Yes,’ she replied quickly, anxious there wouldn’t be too many questions. ‘She’s my priority now. My poor husband had such dreams for her future. He wanted her to have a good education so I will do whatever I can to give her those chances. I have to work for both of us now and that’s why I’m here.’ Having said her piece she busied herself putting some cups and saucers on a tray while Canon Forester set the kettle to boil.
‘I realize that. Have no fear, there’s always work for honest folk in Lichfield. I’m sure I can get you fixed up. Have you any special training?’
‘I was briefly in service and then in the cotton mills. I can get references but it may take some time,’ she offered, knowing this would risk her address being known up north.
‘My daughter’s word
is good enough for me. She’s a shrewd judge of character as a rule.’ He paused as if thinking about something in particular and sighed. ‘Let’s have some tea and I can tell you of some options that might work for you both.’
While Canon Forester poured out two cups, May pulled a rusk out of her bag for Ella. ‘I have to fit work around my baby. I can’t . . . won’t farm her out to strangers . . . not now.’
‘I’m sure we’ll find a way around that. Once people know your circumstances . . .’
‘No!’ she said, alarmed, almost dropping her teacup at his words. ‘Please, sir, I don’t want anyone knowing about all that . . . It’s better if no one knows. I’ve seen how some of the survivors get no peace from the newspapers.’
‘It won’t last, my dear. Memories are short but at least the Titanic Relief Fund is cashing in on public sympathy while it can. It has raised thousands already. People want to help. They want to show their support. But I understand your wish for privacy. The place I’ve got in mind is the Theological College across the Close. They’re always in need of staff to help with meals, or in the laundry. I’ve had a word with the principal’s wife, Mrs Phillips, and she’s willing to show you round and explain your duties. There may be rooms where you can lodge nearby.’
May nodded with relief. ‘Thank you, it sounds like work I could do.’ She sipped her tea. Whoever was keeping house for him needed a lesson in washing up. The little kitchen was none too clean and several of the cups were chipped.
When they’d finished their tea, Canon Forester escorted May and Ella across to the college principal’s house, where a maid told them the mistress was in the cathedral somewhere.
‘I can wait,’ May said, not sure if this was the right time for her to be interviewed.