Unspeakable

by Caroline Pignat

  “Hurry up and change into your uniforms or Jones will have our heads.” Kate moved to the doorway. “I’ll meet you at the stairwell down the hall. Can’t have you lost already.” She smiled and closed the door behind her.

  “She seems nice,” Meg said.

  “She seems like a bossy know-it-all,” I grumbled, folding my arms. “Just what I need.”

  “Exactly.” She opened up her bag and put her meagre items in her newly acquired drawer. “I mean, who better to teach us than someone who knows everything?”

  I slumped into my bunk. This was going to be a long trip.

  THE DAY AFTER

  May 30, 1914

  Rimouski, Quebec

  Chapter Three

  THE WHISTLE SHRIEKED as the train pulled into the station, steam puffing in the afternoon chill. It felt cold for May. Maybe it was just me. I hadn’t stopped shaking since I’d arrived in this small town yesterday, and no amount of hot tea or quilts or roaring fires helped. I doubted I’d ever feel warm again.

  “Tiens,” Monique said, taking off her shawl and draping it across my shoulders. Willing her warmth into me.

  About three hundred of us stood on the platform, clad in the homespun generosity of those hard-working strangers who literally gave us the clothes off their backs. Even the richest men among us, who had worn nothing but ties and tails on the ship, now sported farmers’ jeans and mackinaw jackets, their wives in calico and old bonnets. We were not first or third class. Passengers or crew. Not anymore. We were victims. Only victims.

  I scanned their faces one more time—spending a bit more of my hope. But not too much. I’d always thought I had hope in endless supply. But I knew now I didn’t. Hope was a fistful of pennies. Each prayer and every wish meant tossing one more penny into the depths. Every time, it cost me. I knew that soon enough I wouldn’t have any hope left, and a part of me was afraid to waste it. But there was no sign of either of them.

  The doors to the cars opened and, numbly, I followed the crowd onto the train. We didn’t want to think. Just tell us what to do. Where to go. Take this dress. Drink this tea. Take this train to Quebec. Take that ocean liner back to Liverpool. It didn’t matter that getting on another boat was the last thing any of us wanted to do. And what then? I pictured old Bates in his butler uniform, leaning against the car as he waited for us at the Liverpool docks, how he used to fuss over whatever small trinket Meg brought him back from across the sea. This time, all I’d be bringing him was the news that Meg, his only granddaughter, was never coming home.

  Take this seat. Yes. That was enough for now.

  I leaned my forehead on the cool window and closed my eyes.

  Jim was there, as always. In that moment. His face before me. His arms around me. And his eyes, those eyes, seeing right inside me. Even now I could almost feel his warmth, almost smell his scent as he drew me inside his peacoat. His voice, strong and sure.

  “You are my hope … and I won’t lose you, Ellie. I won’t.”

  That was the last time I saw him. For all I knew, he—

  I opened my eyes.

  No.

  Don’t go there.

  All I had was a fistful of memories. Stolen moments at the ship’s rail. Wishes. Hopes that he felt the same way about me. I knew it was him I wanted above all else. I just never knew for sure if he felt the same.

  I never told him my truths. I never asked for his.

  The train lurched forward. Through the window, I saw Monique raise her hand to me as we pulled away.

  I never said thank you. I never said goodbye. I suppose I never said a lot of things these past few days.

  And now it was too late.

  “Ellen!” The young girl clambered up on the seat beside me, her blue eyes wide in their dark pockets. She wore a sailor dress of white with blue trim, a gift, no doubt, from some family in Rimouski.

  “Gracie.” I managed a smile. The man with her wasn’t her father. I recognized him as one of the Salvationists, but when I glanced behind him, there was no sign of Bandmaster Hanagan or his wife, Edith. He met my eyes and shook his head—a tiny movement that said it all.

  “Ernie Pugmire,” he said, offering me his hand. He sat across from Gracie.

  “Well, well,” a man said, as he stepped between us and settled in the empty seat across from me, “you must be Gracie Hanagan.” The reporter from the shed, Wyatt Steele. How the hell did he get in here? Instinctively, I rested my hand on Gracie’s leg.

  “Can you not leave us in peace?” I snapped. “She’s a child, Mr. Steele. A victim.”

  “She’s no victim.” He smiled at Gracie. “She’s a survivor.”

  Gracie sat a little taller, strengthened by his words. “How do you know my name?” she asked shyly.

  “Why, you’re famous. One of the four children who survived.”

  My stomach sank. Only four?

  There were over one hundred and thirty-five children on board. I remembered the way the young boys cheered when the huge ship sounded one long blast from its tall stacks before pulling away from the Quebec docks; the bonneted babes mesmerized by their mothers’ hankies fluttering as they waved to those ashore; the little ones skipping around the deck, dancing to the music as Gracie’s father led the Salvation Army Band, trumpets and trombones winking in the sunlight.

  Could they really be gone? All of them—but three and Gracie?

  “The world wants to hear your story, Gracie,” Steele continued with his familiar sales pitch. But I wasn’t having any of it.

  “I doubt her parents would’ve wanted her … ” My voice trailed off as she turned to me. I’d just mentioned her parents. Spoken of them in the past tense. But it didn’t seem to bother her.

  “It’s all right, Ellen. I want to tell Mr. Steele my story,” Gracie explained. “We can ask permission when we get to Quebec. Mama and Papa aren’t on this special train, but they’ll be on the next one.”

  I met Ernie’s sad eyes. He hadn’t told her—or perhaps he had, and like the rest of us, Gracie didn’t want to hear it.

  I faced Steele. “How many people … survived?”

  He pulled out a black leather notebook and flipped back through the pages, giving me the toll as if he were merely telling the time. “Four hundred and sixty-five.”

  We’d sailed from Quebec with 1477 souls aboard. I didn’t let myself do the math that would surely tell me over a thousand were dead. Instead, I clung to the fact that four hundred and sixty-five were alive. Four hundred and sixty-five had made it.

  Maybe he had, too.

  Maybe even Meg. She could very well be coming on the next train with the Hanagans. Hope flickered in my heart and I cupped myself around it, protecting it against all reality that might snuff it out.

  I didn’t like the man or his mission, but Steele was right about one thing at least—Gracie’s very presence gave hope to us all.

  Chapter Four

  I EXCUSED MYSELF TO USE THE LAVATORY as Gracie spoke. I never wanted to think about that night again, much less relive it through poor Gracie’s eyes. Even as I came back down the aisle, I could see Steele scribbling furiously in his notebook, getting every detail. His readers would get their story—but they would never know what it was really like. And those of us who did know could never forget.

  I sat back in my seat, and tired from her interview, Gracie put her head in my lap as Steele reviewed his notes.

  “Can you keep an eye on her?” Ernie asked me. “I’d like to check the other cars.”

  I nodded and stroked her hair. Already, her breathing slowed, her eyes grew heavy. “You fall asleep faster than Emmy.”

  “Who?”

  “Emmy—the ship’s cat.”

  She drifted off for a moment then sat up in terror. “Ellen! Cats can’t swim!” Her eyes flitted frantically. “What if … what if she—”

  “She’s all right, Gracie.” I held her face in both hands, forcing her to focus on me. “Emmy is fine. She’s fine, pet. She wasn’t even
on the boat. She took off down the gangway right before we sailed.”

  I remembered seeing the bellboy going after her, running back at the last minute, his arms full of orange tabby. We’d never sailed without our shipmate Emmy. Some even thought of her as the captain’s cat, even though she often slept in our cabin. Meg always kept her a saucer of milk. But as soon as the lad brought her on board that day, Emmy leapt out of his arms and scurried back down the gangway as though the devil himself were after her. At the time, we thought it was the strangest thing. Now I’m thinking it was the smartest.

  Gracie relaxed. She could retell the facts of that night, but I wondered if she truly understood them. Hundreds dying. Hundreds already dead. Her parents drowning—that was too much for her. It was too much for most of us. And so she worried about a cat she’d never met.

  “So she’s waiting for us … at Quebec?” she asked, uncertain.

  “Yes,” I said, and ran my fingers through her curls. “She’s waiting.”

  “Emmy knew.” She settled back on my lap. “She knew what was going to happen.”

  I stroked her hair and watched her breathing deepen as the train rocked her to sleep.

  Steele’s pencil scratched across his notepad. The girl. The cat. This was good stuff. He flipped to a clean page and glanced at me. His eyes so dark they seemed all pupil. I felt exposed. Hunted.

  “So,” he asked, “how long have you known the Hanagans?”

  I didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want to answer his questions. I had a story, but it was one I’d been hiding for nearly two years and I wasn’t about to tell it to Steele. Good Lord, he’d be the last person I’d tell.

  “I met them when they boarded.” That truth seemed safe enough. “They were one of my twelve rooms this trip.”

  “Second class, is that right, Miss Ryan?”

  I nodded. How did he know my name? Did Gracie mention it?

  He flipped back through his notes. “Been a stewardess with the Empress since … January this year?”

  Gracie definitely didn’t know that.

  He raised his hands and added apologetically, “Ship’s records, Miss Ryan. No big secret. Just doing my job.”

  I folded my arms and looked out the window. Let him get his damn story somewhere else.

  We sat in silence as the train clickety-clacked along the river’s edge, passing the lighthouse at the point. The shore looked so different now from this side, in the daylight, without him next to me at the rail—our rail.

  Where would I find him now?

  “Did you lose someone … close?” Steele asked. He set aside his pencil and pad.

  I nodded.

  “Your roommate, Margaret Bates, was she—”

  “Meg, her name was—her name is Meg,” I whispered. She hated being called Margaret.

  “What brought you to the Empress? You both worked for a Lady Hardy in Merseyside, or so the records said.” He said it as if he knew it was not the truth. After months of secrecy, someone had unravelled me just like that. “But you’re not from Liverpool. Yours is an Irish accent. Wicklow, if I’m not mistaken.”

  I met his eyes. Who was this man?

  He shrugged, almost apologetic. “I make it my business to know things.”

  I clenched my jaw and turned back to the window. There was no way I’d be telling this man anything. He already knew more about me than most of my fellow stewardesses did.

  “It must be so hard for you,” Steele said after a few minutes. He leaned forward, voice low, eyes shining with sincerity. And for a moment, I felt as if he understood, really understood, how hard this all had been. He lightly rested his hand on mine, his fingers radiating warmth and strength.

  “What happened that night—can you tell me?”

  Images flashed across my mind—gushing water, people scrambling. Hundreds upon hundreds trapped in flooded cabins and hallways, unable to reach the deck. Bodies floating. And Meg’s face. Always Meg’s terrified eyes watching me as they disappeared beneath the black water for the last time.

  No. I pulled my hand away.

  “Yours is an incredible story of survival, Miss Ryan,” he continued. “You must tell it. People need to know.”

  “I—I can’t.” I raised my hands to my ears, trying to block the thousand screams, the heavy silence of buoyed corpses drifting into the dark. A tremor ran through me. “I’m sorry … I just … I can’t speak about it.”

  His eyes searched mine for a moment. I wasn’t going to tell him anything. Ever. As though reading my thoughts, he settled back in his seat, picked up his notebook, and jotted in its margins.

  Ernie returned and sat beside me. I didn’t need to ask to know his search had been in vain.

  My eyes flicked back to Steele from time to time as we rode along the track approaching Quebec, but he paid me no mind. Clearly, he’d done a lot of research about the ship and those aboard. He’d even managed to secure an exclusive train ride with the survivors. He was good at his job, I had to give him that. But I wasn’t going to give him what he wanted. My eyes took in the measure of this mysterious man, cunning, relentless, resourceful—I wondered if he might know something that could help me.

  Gracie woke and rubbed her eyes as the station came into view and the train hissed to a stop. After our goodbyes, Gracie and Ernie made their way to the front of the car. Steele flipped his notebook shut and slipped it into his pocket as he stood. He glanced out the window at the throng of reporters pressing closer. They waved their hands and elbowed for position as Gracie and the first few survivors stepped onto the platform, dazed and disoriented by the popping flashbulbs.

  “We’ve already been through hell,” I snapped. “Why can’t they just leave us alone?”

  Steele slicked back his hair and set his hat upon it. “Miss Ryan, the sinking of the Empress is Canada’s worst maritime disaster. We are talking more dead passengers than the Titanic, which puts it as one of the worst tragedies in North American history. Do you know how big a story this is?” He paused. “And you lived to tell the tale.”

  Was that why I’d lived?

  “Like it or not,” he added, “you are somewhat of a celebrity now.” He tipped his hat and turned to go, but desperate, I grabbed his sleeve. He might know something—I couldn’t just let him go, I had to ask.

  “What about the engine crew?” I bit my lip. “Do you know anything of them?”

  He paused, brow arched, dark eyes searching. “Anyone in particular?”

  I opened my mouth and shut it, unsure, but the name weighed on my heart.

  “Miss Ryan, I can’t find him if you don’t tell me his name. I’m good but even I’m not that good.”

  “Jim,” I whispered, and suddenly it all became real. The ship. That night. The last time I saw him at the rail. “His name is Jim Farrow. But they all called him Lucky.”

  FOUR MONTHS BEFORE

  January 1914

  The Empress of Ireland,

  somewhere in the Atlantic

  Chapter Five

  IT WAS ON MY SECOND CROSSING that I first saw Jim. All blood and soot and cinder he was, lying on the cot in Dr. Grant’s office with his right arm draped over his face as the doctor tweezed cloth from skin on the left. Jim had burned it raw from elbow to palm, like charred meat, in the flames of the boilers. The fire he was hired to stoke. An accident, they said. But Jim’s knuckles said otherwise. Bruised and bloodied on the teeth of another, they told the truth of a fire within. One that never subsides.

  I knew Jim was trouble, plain and simple. A scrapper. Sullen and surly. A right mess if I ever saw one—and, God help me, I could not take my eyes off him.

  “That’s all I can do for now,” Dr. Grant said, washing his hands. “Clean around the wound, will you, Ellie?”

  I’d been helping Dr. Grant since my first crossing. It was a welcome relief from scrubbing second-class toilets, making beds, and fetching spinsters cup after cup of tea. He’d called me in as I’d passed by one time, asked me
to help hold a child’s leg while he set and splinted it. Afterwards he’d praised my steady hand and nerve. It was no different to me than gentling a mare, and I’d done that enough times on the farm. Father always scolded me for mucking in. Said it wasn’t fitting for a young lady of my station. But I liked the work. I liked feeling needed. I liked doing something that mattered. After that, Dr. Grant would ask for me by name—much to the annoyance of Matron Jones, the head stewardess.

  Jim never made a sound. Still, I tried to be as gentle as I could as I wiped the wound, skirting the edges of his pain. I dipped the cloth in the bowl of water and, wringing it slightly, brushed down his thick biceps and around his callused fingers. The black of the soot wiped away easy enough, but not the cuts and bruises.

  I’d heard the men talking. They’d said Lucky had gotten into another one of his rages, and in the fight, he fell into the open door of his furnace. The Black Gang were notorious for fighting as hard as they worked—and when docked, drinking as hard as they fought. Matron Jones had warned the dozen stewardesses to give them a wide berth. She made it clear those men were trouble and that any shenanigans would result in termination. Not that we saw much of the men. Our paths never crossed during duties, and Meg and I had no desire to enter the rowdy taverns they stumbled into and staggered from. Besides, Meg was smitten with Timothy Hughes, the ship’s librarian—a bookish lad who scurried away at a sudden move. All they’d shared were a few magazines and even fewer words since our first voyage. And I had no interest in any man. Not after what I’d been through. No, Matron Jones had no fear of any so-called shenanigans, not from us.

  At least, not until Jim.

  Dr. Grant handed me a tube of ointment. “Apply this once it’s clean.” He turned to Jim. “Check back in a few days to see how you’re healing.”

  Jim lowered his right arm and nodded, thanking the doctor as he left. I wrung the cloth once more and turned my attention to his face, discerning soot from bruise. After a few wipes, it was clean for the most part, but I kept dabbing at his bleeding brow, riveted by the blue fire in his red-rimmed eyes. It gave me an excuse to stare. Something, whatever it was, burned inside him with fierce intensity.