by Leah Fleming
Then he recalled a conversation with Frank about the new church in New Jersey, one that was built as a replica of a church in Italy. That wouldn’t be difficult to find. It took only a few phone calls to find St Rocco’s on Hunterton Street and the address of Frank’s family in New York. He wrote a short note introducing himself, asking for a visit of condolence before he headed back to Ohio. He told them he owed Father Frank his life.
Two days later he found himself knocking on the door of a brownstone apartment in the Italian quarter of Lower Manhattan. A grey-haired woman opened it, smiling. ‘Please come in, Captain. I’m Kathleen Bartolini.’
Roddy found he was shaking at the thought of meeting Frank’s parents. He would just say his piece and leave. They wouldn’t want reminders of him and the consequences of Frank helping him.
‘You must be Roderick Parkes. Frank wrote about you. You joined his choir. His “English choirboy”, he called you,’ she said, immediately putting him at ease with her Irish lilt.
He followed her into the parlour full of pictures and ornaments and Holy Statues of the Madonna and Child. Sitting on the sofa was an old man and the most stunning girl he’d ever seen, with a head of glorious wavy auburn hair and green eyes. She stood up, tall and slender, as her mother introduced them. ‘This is my husband, Angelo, and our daughter, Patricia.’
The old man made to struggle to his feet. ‘No sit, please, sir,’ Roddy insisted.
‘My husband has not been well for many months,’ his wife offered. Roddy was struck by his dark piercing eyes, the same as those of his boys, Frank and Jack, who peered across the room from their photograph on the shelf.
‘Please call me, Patti,’ said the vision in a green silk blouse, stretching out her hand. ‘Sit down, Captain.’
‘Thanks, ma’am. I must tell you, I saw a picture of you all in your grandmother’s house,’ he said. ‘But you were only this high.’ He smiled and Patti smiled back. He knew he was already lost in the loveliness of her smile.
The old man stared at him. ‘You met my family, the Bartolinis? When?’
‘I did, but please tell me first what happened to Frank.’ He looked across again to his portrait. He’d not looked so smart in the camp, none of them did. ‘I only heard on the ship that he died.’
‘He was shot and left to die. They say he was trying to escape. That’s all we were told.’ They all stared in Frank’s direction as if expecting the portrait to chip in and give his side of the story.
Roddy shook his head vehemently, holding his hands up in horror. ‘That’s not true. He was going back to camp to be with the men. Frank helped me escape. Your family sheltered me. I saw him leave in the truck with the priest to return before curfew. That’s all I know. He was offered a chance to escape but he didn’t accept. He wouldn’t go. I was there. You must believe me.’ He found to his horror he was crying. ‘He was a good man, my friend. If I had known what risk he was taking . . .’
The family stared at him in amazement. ‘You were with him near Anghiari?’
‘To be honest, I never knew where I was, but Frank made contact through the Church with his father’s family. That I do know. They took me in and gave me my freedom. Are they safe?’
‘We’ve not heard anything. Maybe we can write now the war is over. You went there with my son and you saw him leave?’ Kathleen looked at him again.
Roddy told them every detail he could remember of the secret visit, even the story of the little shoe and what had happened when they showed it to the old grandma.
‘Alessia’s shoe?’ gasped the old man.
‘I don’t know any Alessia but when he showed it to them, the old lady knew it was you who had sent it, proof that the young priest was Frank and not a spy. She did say something about the lacework but I’m afraid one piece of lace looks much like any other to me,’ he offered, seeing the reaction on their faces.
Kathleen crossed herself. ‘Oh, Angelo, you were right to give it to him. My husband had a daughter and wife who died.’
Roddy knew what was to come next. ‘On the Titanic, Frank told me. My mother was on that ship too but she lived. What a strange coincidence.’
‘Did he tell you my sister drowned also?’ said Kathleen. ‘All three us connected by that terrible disaster . . . you say he gave the shoe to the family as proof. When he gave away his talisman, his sister’s shoe, he gave away his luck,’ Kathleen cried, and Patti folded her into her arms.
‘This is too much to take in, but thank you,’ Patti said. ‘You were sent to us for comfort,’ she wept.
Roddy jumped up, not wanting to intrude any longer. ‘I’d better go now,’ he said.
‘No, please stay, we have so many questions for you. You’ve brought us strange news and talking about Frank helps bring him alive again. I’ll make us something to eat.’ Kathleen disappeared.
‘I’ll have to go soon.’ Patti wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘I’ve got a show tonight.’
‘My daughter’s in the chorus on Broadway as an understudy: Patti Barr is her stage name,’ Angelo smiled with pride.
Roddy eyed her again. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she was on the silver screen. ‘Which show is that?’
‘Annie Get Your Gun. I can always get you tickets.’
‘You bet,’ he answered with just a little bit too much enthusiasm. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend at such a time.’
‘No, no, we’ve gotten used to the idea of Frank not coming home. He’s not our first loss. Our other son, Jack, was killed in the Pacific,’ Angelo explained.
‘Frank told me. I saw the letter. Both your sons, I’m so sorry.’ Roddy didn’t know what to say. The old man shrugged and held up his hands.
‘Frank would say, it’s God’s will, He gives and He takes. It’s a test of faith but here you come and bring him back to us with your news. Please stay and tell us everything you know. You were sent to us for a reason. Now tell me about my famiglia. Were they well? It is so long since I was there.’
Roddy pondered that question for many weeks afterwards as he conducted a cross-country courtship of the beautiful Patti Bartolini. He had never believed in love at first sight, but one glimpse of that face and he had been lost. Roddy had always known what he was looking for but had never found it until that moment in New York.
He hadn’t walked through Italy and fought his way through Europe to fall at those first hurdles of distance, of different faiths and backgrounds. What was more amazing was that Patti responded to him just as enthusiastically.
So what if their union would mean taking instructions in her faith, Frank’s faith? That was good enough for him if it had made men like his friend. Where would they live? It didn’t matter. What was important was that Frank had brought them together in the strangest of ways. Roddy would be forever in his debt.
All that was left was to write to his mom and tell her this good news. He’d found his match. He’d found his wife and life was just beginning.
Angelo couldn’t sleep that night, not because of the usual ache in his legs but for a strange feeling of joy. The shoe had done its work again. Lost, found, given, taken, received, a curious journey it had had. Now a stranger comes and claims his daughter. He had seen the thunderclap of recognition between them; a half-English Protestant soldier had stolen his daughter’s heart from under his nose. He should forbid such a match, but this was the very last man to see his son alive, a good man with good prospects. No, it was all a mystery. Here they were, battered, bruised and tossed on the rocks of life, and now there was talk of weddings and celebrations to come.
None of it would bring his children back but these young ones might bring others into this world for him to love.
Part 5
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER
1958–1959
120
England
‘They’re making a film about the Titanic,’ said Clare, scouring the latest issue of Picturegoer magazine. ‘A big one in London, starring Kenneth More.’
‘Oh, yes, dear?’ said Ella, who was hard at work on her latest commission and didn’t want to be distracted.
‘No, really, it says here, it’s going to be an epic tale: a true story based on a true book.’
‘I very much doubt it,’ Ella replied. ‘In all honesty, who knows what really happened that night?’
‘Oh, don’t be such a stickler, you know what they mean,’ Clare snapped, flouncing off, not waiting for her explanation.
Ella sighed, wondering if she had been so touchy at that age. Clare was home from her boarding school near York. It always took them time to get back into their comfortable rapport. It wasn’t easy bringing up a girl on her own, not one as sparky and bright as Clare, who played rock ’n’ roll records on her Dansette, driving Ella out into the studio for peace and quiet.
An artist needed uninterrupted hours, and the school holidays were always a chaotic time for both of them. Clare wanted attention, outings, one-to-one time with her mother, but Ella’s work piled up, holidays or not. Since that first exhibition after the war when she’d presented a series of sculptures of airmen, aviators, weary figures dragging jackets over slumped shoulders, and the bust of Anthony, alongside a series of studies of war-ravaged faces, she’d never been out of work: monuments, memorial plaques and private commissions for busts of lost men and women from the war.
She had been part of the Festival of Britain artistic exhibition representing the figurative side of modern sculpture rather than the startling abstract sculptures of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Their avant-garde work had stolen the show at the Battersea Exhibition Centre in 1951.
Sometimes Ella was so busy, it was hard to settle to anything else. Her private life was Clare, work and the Foresters. She still lived at Red House with Selwyn. It suited them, sharing the expenses. He was older and frail now, his old war wounds weakening his constitution, his drinking ravaging his liver.
She had never found anyone to replace Anthony. He was her one true love and besides, she was content to put all her passion into her work. There were men who’d taken her out, offered romantic interludes, but Clare and work were her priorities.
She’d fallen in love with her art all over again after those fallow wartime years when all she had done was copy, repair, teach and learn to breathe. Now it was as if all that pent-up energy had been released. Poor Clare was feeling neglected so she must make time to take her out for lunch.
Clare knew about her Titanic past in a vague disinterested way. She’d found the suitcase full of baby clothes in the linen cupboard after the war, played with the bonnet for her doll and one day Ella had come home to find the lace border cut off the nightdress and sewn onto a little underslip for her tennis dress.
Ella hadn’t minded about the lace. What was the point of letting it all moulder in the top of the airing cupboard, slowly turning yellow? But the rest of her baby layette she kept in a suitcase for old times’ sake. It would all get thrown out if she ever moved house.
There was a real story in there, one this new film would not be telling, but she was curious. She didn’t know what to make of another Titanic film. How could they make such a story on a film set? She’d like to see them try. It was funny how Walter Lord’s book had become a bestseller. A Night to Remember, it was called. A night to forget, more like.
Renewed interest in the ship had led to articles about the great disaster in the paper, survivors telling their stories. No one would ever believe her story and she couldn’t recall a single memory of the event. She wondered what Mrs Russell-Cooke would make of someone playing her father. They’d kept in touch after the war, linked forever by the loss of their airmen. Her companion now was an artist and she’d seen them in London across the room at an art gallery cocktail party. She hadn’t wanted to intrude as they were deep in conversation with the owner. When she turned to catch up with them they’d disappeared.
Perhaps that was for the best. So many people wanted to forget the war and the loss of so much that was precious in their lives. But grief, someone once said, was like an ever-present lodger hogging the fireside and blocking any heat from getting to you. You learned to put on an extra jumper to stop the shivers. She’d never pursued the quest to learn the identity of her real parents after promising herself to make the effort after the war. Her work and other distractions got in the way. You make time for what you want to do, she sighed. Somehow the quest for information was always bottom of the list. It was all too late now.
Life was about now, the present and the future and yet . . . What was the point of looking back to what she could never change? But still she felt a niggle of guilt that she’d never even tried.
Celeste was just back from Roddy’s in the States. They’d gone to see their grandchildren for one of their birthdays. She still couldn’t get over Roddy settling down with his Italian-Irish wife, becoming a Roman Catholic and opening a chain of diners across the highways of America. Roddy’s businesses had hit the big time. He’d had a good war. Ella and Clare had been invited to his lavish wedding, of course, but the trip was too time-consuming to make: that was her feeble excuse. Celeste and Archie had dined out on their experience for months afterwards. No expense was spared. Patti had looked like Maureen O’Hara in her lace bridal gown and veil imported from Italy. Everyone had danced until dawn, the food was piled high and after wartime British austerity each course made Celeste’s mouth water. There was talk of their moving over to the States permanently, but Celeste knew Archie would never leave Britain.
It was strange how life had worked out. If Roddy hadn’t met that chaplain whose family had helped him escape, he would never have met Patti.
Ella forgot about the film until, a few months later, out of the blue, an unusual invitation arrived from Mel Russell-Cooke, who was hosting a private dinner to celebrate the premiere in Leicester Square of A Night to Remember. She hoped that Ella and her family would attend with Celeste, as guests of the film company in July.
‘You’ve got to go.’ Clare pranced around, delighted. ‘You just have to. You’ll meet all the stars. It’s not fair, though, I shall be still at school.’
‘It’s not really my idea of a night’s entertainment, watching people drown,’ Ella began, but when she talked it over with Celeste she knew it wouldn’t be an easy invitation to refuse.
‘We were there, my dear. It’ll be interesting to see how they muck up the storylines. We owe it to those who didn’t survive to represent them. I heard they built half a ship on a lake and sliced a decommissioned one in two to get the angles right. It’s the first time there has ever been any real public interest in the Titanic since the war. I wonder if there’s even a mention of you, or the story of how Captain Smith rescued a child and put it in the lifeboat. You never know, you might find out something to your advantage,’ she argued.
Ella was not convinced. ‘I don’t want my story all over the papers. I’m not going.’
Celeste was not easily dissuaded. ‘When do you and I get a free trip to London, all expenses paid, dinner and the best seats at a West End premiere? Think about it. It sounds fun to me.’
‘Fun? How can you say that? You were there, you saw it all happen.’ Ella was shocked at Celeste’s breeziness.
‘It’s all history now, all so long ago. It’s become a famous drama all of its own. We could talk to other survivors but, Ella, I couldn’t go on my own.’
It was that heartfelt plea that made Ella change her mind. She owed Celeste so much; to deny her this trip would be churlish and ungrateful.
‘I’ll go on one condition. I go as Ella Smith, Ella Smith Harcourt, not as Ellen God only knows who. That knowledge must stay in the family for my mother’s sake.’
‘May wanted you to find out more. It was her dying wish.’ Celeste lifted up May’s picture as if to emphasize this. ‘Her dying wish. That’s why she told me, I’m sure.’
‘I know, but I don’t want history rewritten or any sensational stuff. I can see the headlines: “Mot
her of British artist steals Titanic baby girl. The lost baby of the Titanic found at last! Do you know this child?” That’s not going to happen.’
‘You drive a hard bargain. I take it you’ve never told Clare your true history? She’s so like you, so determined when she gets an idea in her head.’
‘Why, what has she been telling you?’ Ella was curious.
‘She’s given me an autograph album to collect signatures. She hopes to sell them at a pound a time for her travelling fund. So you see, we have to go now.’
121
Roddy and Patti made sure Kathleen was sitting between the two of them at the premiere of A Night to Remember. Angelo was advised not to go as it might destabilize his heart murmur. There’d been mixed feelings in the American press about this low-budget British attempt. William MacQuitty, the producer, had done his homework and invited some of the Titanic survivors, officers and crew to flesh out the human stories behind his epic. His radio appeals asked for Americans survivors to come forward with their own tales. Immigrants, now well-established matrons from all over the world, answered the call and Kathleen received an invitation as a sister of one of the Irish victims.
Patti, with her Broadway connections, made sure they got good seats and met all the VIPs. Roddy ensured they had a wonderful weekend in New York visiting friends and relatives, shopping in Macy’s for presents for Frankie Junior and little Tina, who were at home with their nanny.
Prosperity sat easy on Roddy, but he’d worked hard to develop the Express Diner end of the business. Will Morgan headed up Freight Express, and with Patti’s flare for décor and the theatrical, they’d cornered the market for reasonably priced roadside comfort stations where you could dine at ‘Mamma Joe’s’ Italian style, or ‘Murphy’s Irish kitchen’.
They bought up old rolling stock and pitched them by the state highways in fields or close to gas stations. They’d hacked out the interiors using the carriages as dining rooms decked out with pretty curtains and furnishings.