Eleanor

by RA Williams

  First published in 2021 by whitefox Publishing

  Copyright © RA Williams

  The moral right of RA Williams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

  Library of Congress Registration No. : TXU 2-183-876

  Service Request No.: 1-8417688381

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or

  localities is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 9781913532956

  Also available in:

  Ebook: ISBN 9781913532963

  Audiobook: ISBN 9781913532970

  Typeset by seagulls.net

  Cover design by kid-ethic

  Maps by Uroš Pajić

  Chapter heading artwork by David Pickford

  Project management by whitefox

  Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books

  All my love to my wife, Daiana, and our blinder, Tommy.

  And for Mum, for being the window to a world

  long past, but never forgotten.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  In 1925, a humble essay appeared in the French sociology journal L’Année Sociologique.

  14 April 1912: RMS Titanic, The North Atlantic

  30 April 1912: Banana, Belgian Congo

  12 July 1915: Cape Helles, Gallipoli

  31 March 1929: St Dunstan’s, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

  4 April 1929: Abaco Islands, Bahamas

  8 April 1929: Islas De La Bahia, Honduras

  27 April 1929: St Dunstan’s, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

  14 April 1912: RMS Titanic, The North Atlantic

  27 August 1936: St Dunstan’s, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

  26 August 1939: Tor Externsteine, Teutoburger Wald, Germany

  30 August 1939: The Strait of Dover

  30 August 1939: Folkestone, Kent

  10 April 1921: Kinuwai, Belgian Congo

  31 August 1939: Folkestone, Kent

  31 August 1939: Folkestone, Kent

  1 September 1939: Folkestone, Kent

  Acknowledgements

  Books to Come in The Gift Trilogy

  9 September 1940 Highgate Cemetery

  About the Author

  In 1925, a humble essay appeared in the French sociology journal L’Année Sociologique. Written by Dr Marcel Mauss, a French ethnologist and socialist, ‘The Gift’ was considered by many in the fields of sociology and anthropology to be groundbreaking. Mauss – like many of his contemporaries – was deeply affected by the loss of both colleagues and family to the trenches of the Great War. As a result, he retreated from the known world, finding solace in research.

  In ‘The Gift’, Mauss asked: ‘What power resides in the gift that causes its recipient to pay it back?’

  He believed the giver of the gift does not merely give a physical gift, but also the soul of themselves. As a result, the gift indissolubly ties the giver to the recipient, creating a debt that must be repaid in kind. To not do so could have the gravest of consequences.

  As a result of the horrifying mass slaughter Mauss bore witness to, he put forward a belief that sacrifice (some argue he in fact meant love) – more than anything else – was the gift compelling the recipient to ‘do ut des’. I give so that you may give.

  In the end, nothing comes for free.

  14 APRIL 1912

  RMS TITANIC,

  THE NORTH ATLANTIC

  ‘Bollocks to Scotland Road,’ grunted Podgy Higginbotham, waddling along the corridor named after the working-class thoroughfare he hailed from. Used by both steerage passengers and crew to traverse Titanic unseen, Scotland Road was poles apart from the stately First Class corridors above. He paused. Something beyond the steady thrum-thrum-thrum of the ship’s engines caught his attention. Straining his ear, he heard it again. Distant and peculiar, it sounded something like the sweet canticle of an Anglican boys’ choir.

  Titanic played tricks on him.

  ‘Enough your mithering, Podgy,’ he told himself. Further along the corridor, a steward emerged from the gentlemen’s lavatory.

  ‘Is that me auld fella Dougie?’ Higginbotham asked, squinting through his spectacles. ‘You heard something just now?’

  Dougie Beedham put his mop and pail down on the wood-planked floor before wiping his hands on his apron. Looking up and down the eight-hundred-foot passageway, he shook his head.

  Higginbotham sighed, the strange choir going quiet. ‘This ship is doin’ me head in.’

  ‘You want something to moan about, have a look in the loo. Atlantic’s calm as a boat pond and some auld bastard manages to be sick all over it,’ Beedham replied.

  ‘You wouldn’t be tidying up someone’s horrible mess if you was a Second Class steward.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be in a lot of bother about walking this great long passageway if you was better than a stores keeper.’

  ‘I seen enough of Scotland Road in Liverpool. Didn’t reckon I’d trudge up and down it on a White Star steamer thrice a bloody day,’ replied Higginbotham, tugging at the peacoat prickling the back of his neck.

  ‘You stout scouse.’ Beedham pointed to the coat, buttoned tightly about Higginbotham’s waist. The taut buttons looked as though they might shoot off at any moment. ‘You look like a grease-filled sausage in that clobber. I reckon you only visited Scotland Road’s pie shops.’

  ‘Who you calling a scouse, you blert? You is from Liverpool an’ all.’

  ‘I ain’t Titanic boiler-like, is I?’

  Beedham wasn’t wrong – ‘Podgy’ wasn’t just a term of endearment. He was four stone over regulation for seamen employed with White Star Line, but his decades at sea offered value beyond his weight. White Star Line had the pick of the best, ensuring Titanic’s maiden voyage was without incident, and had been happy to overlook his ample girth.

  ‘Have you a bifter?’ Beedham asked.

  Higginbotham produced a tin of cigarettes, offering his friend one before sparking one up for himself.

  ‘What time is it?’

  Retrieving the watch attached to his ring of keys, Higginbotham looked at the time. ‘Quarter past eleven,’ he said. ‘Bloody hell. I’m late on. Best get agate.’

  ‘Crikey,’ Steward Beedham said as he followed with his mop and pail. ‘I was meant to be off duty at eleven. Where you off to, then?’

  ‘Some First Class berk taking his motor car to the States. I’ve orders to inspect it thrice a day.’

  ‘Ain’t it your honest employment to inspect cargo?’

  ‘Marching up and down Scotland Road to check a motor car in these calm seas? Not a thing shifting down there.’

  Stopping at a stewards’ staircase, Higginbotham heard a melody flowing faintly up from the labyrinth of companionways below. It was different from the canticle he’d heard before.

  ‘Right,’ he said, grasping the polished wood handrail. ‘I’m off.’

  ‘Me as well. Gagging for a pint. Come round the stewards’ mess when you’re done. The lads have a few fighting ales after duty.’

  ‘I’m on the ghoster shift. Won’t see my bunk ’til dawn,’ Higginbotham said. Descending a few stairs, he heard the singing more clearly. ‘Sounds as though someone’s holding up the bar down here.’

  Pausing a
t F-Deck, Higginbotham gazed aftward. The singing came from the Third Class saloon – far from the ears of the nobility in their opulent staterooms above. Recognising the tune, he hummed along, My lady far away. It brought a smile to Higginbotham’s sea-worn face; he’d left home to the same tune, thirty-five years before.

  Descending to G-Deck, he leaned against the stair railing, catching his breath. He was too heavy, his hips ached from rheumatism, and he needed the loo. From the moment he’d boarded Titanic, he had felt unsettled; the ship was unashamedly decadent. Too big. Too surly. Below decks, an ominous darkness concealed itself. A darkness more foreboding than the fathomless North Atlantic. It gave him the shivers.

  With the cargo manifest under his arm, Higginbotham knocked on the door to the mailroom. He wasn’t surprised to find that the clerks weren’t answering at such an hour. Removing the ring of keys attached to a button on his trousers, he unlocked the door. Brass racks filled with bags of post cluttered the room on all sides. Descending an iron stairway to the orlop, a deck completely off limits to passengers and nearly at the bottom of the ship, he waddled across the mail storage hold brimming with registered post from the Continent. An unpleasant blast of stale air filled his nose as he swung open the hatch on Watertight Bulkhead C. Securing the handles behind him, he entered the icy gloom of the No. 2 Hold. He felt a thousand nautical miles from the lights and gaiety of the First Class decks far above. Down here, in the gloomy and dank holds, all that was left below was the keel, and the freezing blackness of the North Atlantic below it.

  ‘Baltic in here,’ he moaned quietly to himself, pulling his coat collar tight about his neck.

  Mr Carter of Pennsylvania had insisted his new Renault motor car be inspected three times a day. If it were up to Higginbotham, he’d give it a single looking over in the morning and be done with it. However, orders came down from the ship’s captain, and nobody mucked about with Captain Smith.

  The holds of Titanic were unheated and also sparsely lit. Making his way through the cargo stores, Higginbotham’s wellington boots squeaked against the iron floor. Carter’s Renault sat in the centre of the hold, strapped tightly to a wooden pallet. As ever, all was in order. Slipping the cargo manifest out from under his arm, Higginbotham ran a gloved finger down the list: mink coats from Russia, crystal from Venice, rugs from Persia, a Roentgen secretary – whatever that was – and one 1912 Renault.

  ‘Odds and sods,’ he muttered, looking forward to the end of his shift and a warm pot of tea.

  The sound of a distant canticle broke the silence once more. Straining his ear, he heard it cease, then begin again. High-pitched and pure, a distant, sweet staccato ending in a curious fugue as other angelic voices joined in.

  ‘You’re hearing things, you daft apeth,’ he mumbled.

  Squinting through the thick lenses of his spectacles, he noticed the hatch on Watertight Bulkhead B was ajar. Certain he’d secured it at the start of his shift, he moved to inspect it more closely. Condensation dripped from the handles, and as he swung it open, a peculiar odour greeted him. Dry-rotted cloth, like old sails.

  There was nothing like that in the hold.

  ‘Wot niffs in here?’ he muttered to himself as he peered into the forward hold, more curious than afraid. It was dark and silent within. He reached for the light knob and found it too wet with condensation. It clicked, but the hold remained in darkness. Dodgy circuit – a common failure. Nonetheless, Titanic’s engineers had been clever enough to fit an oil lamp to a hook beside the hatch. Striking a match, Higginbotham lit the wick, and amorphous shadows began to undulate around him. Resting the lamp on a crate stamped R.F. Downey & Co, he glanced at the cargo manifest: Eight dozen tennis balls.

  He scoffed, removing his tin of cigarettes from his peacoat. It wasn’t the oddest thing he’d heard shipped transatlantic, but it seemed silly. Tennis balls. Couldn’t the Americans make them themselves?

  Opening the box of matches once more, he tutted; just a single match remained. He singed his finger as he struck it and dropped the glowing match to the floor. He found it, still lit, lying between the crates beside what looked like an odd pile of debris. Bending with a groan, his gut impeding his reach, he retrieved the match, sparked up his bifter and adjusted the lamp’s wick to have a closer look.

  It wasn’t debris after all; it was a jumble of fresh rodent guts. ‘Nay, damn and blast it,’ he cursed. Squinting through steamed-up spectacles, he swept the hold with the lamp, nervous now about what could have torn the rats to pieces, since Titanic’s mouser had abandoned the ship in Southampton with her litter of kittens.

  From the bow came an echo sounding a bit like the flutter of wings – a sound unusual in a ship’s hold. It travelled in one direction, got lost among the crates, ricocheted off the iron hull and found itself again, now moving in another direction.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Higginbotham called, flickering shadows rising and falling before the lamp. The disturbance came again. Fear leeched through his peacoat and, not for the first time that evening, a shiver ran down his spine.

  ‘You ain’t meant to be down here,’ he said, and paused, awaiting a response. None was forthcoming. ‘I’m getting right knotted,’ he boomed, more to fire his own courage than bait whoever was there. Then, from the pocket of his coat he withdrew a cudgel – non-regulation, but in his trade he’d found it useful on the odd occasion.

  Advancing warily, his eyes swept the crates. All remained secure. His fear subsided, only to be replaced with the urge to wee again. Resting the lantern upon a crate, he unbuttoned his kecks and pissed against the hull.

  ‘Uff, that’s all right, that,’ he said, looking lazily about. At the forward end of the hold, he noticed an upturned crate. He buttoned his trousers and picked up the lamp. Shuffling towards the disturbed crate, he raised the lamp above his head and gazed four decks up the shaft to the underside of No. 1 Cargo Hatch. It remained sealed.

  His wellies crunched down on something. By the lantern’s flickering light, he saw the deck ahead strewn with rough-hewn ingots.

  ‘Wot’s all this mess?’

  As he approached the upturned crate, Higginbotham’s lamplight revealed a pair of ornate stone sarcophagi, the ingots spilling from the shattered lid of one. Ornately chiselled into that lid was the form of a human body – a river of maggots flowing from its split gut, topped with a skull. An engraved phrase came from its mouth. ‘Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,’ he read slowly. There was also a name – Balthasar Toule.

  Yet more condensation dripped from an iron beam above his head, landing on his spectacles. ‘Bugger,’ he cursed, wiping them clean. Replacing them on his face, he rested his hand on the sarcophagus. A chunk broke away. He held it to the light to look more closely and, as he did so, it crumbled in his hands. The sarcophagus wasn’t stone at all, but chalk. Peering inside, he covered his nose. The fabric lining was mouldy and, save for the odd ingot, the sarcophagus was empty.

  ‘Hang on,’ he whispered, noticing something more. Reaching in, he fumbled with a railway spike. It was lustreless but heavy. Leaving it for the moment on the sarcophagus edge, he flipped through his cargo manifest. Stopping on page eight, Higginbotham’s thick finger slid down the list, coming to a last-minute addition, scribbled in pencil crayon:

  27061965QI.

  Item description: 1 Large Crate. Roentgen secretary

  Notation: Excess weight. Charge levied.

  Destination: New York

  Port of Origin: Folkestone

  Looking back to the upturned crate, he located a lading number stencilled in black on the side: 27061965QI. QI denoted Queenstown, Ireland. Titanic’s last stop. Podgy Higginbotham hadn’t the first idea what a Roentgen secretary was, but he struggled to believe the shattered crate’s contents were it.

  Cadging a pry bar from the hook on a hull support, he hung the lamp on the hook, and decided to prise loose the other sarcophagus lid. He knew perfectly well that the penalty for tampering with White Star cargo was dismis
sal upon destination, but the contents of the crate didn’t seem to match the manifest, and it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d discovered smuggled goods.

  The crate must have tipped on its side during loading and the second sarcophagus likely fell in, shattering the lid of the other. Chipping away at the intact lid’s lip with the pry bar, he used his stout middle as leverage to slide the lid away. Crashing to the floor, it shattered into three pieces.

  Lying within was a trove of ingots, packed tightly around a mummified fiend swathed in an exquisite pearl frock. Higginbotham gagged. The remains stank like Liverpool’s overflowing rendering pits prior to cooking. He tried breathing through his mouth, but the sticky rot coated his tongue. Unease caused bile to rise into his throat, and his hands trembled slightly from a surge of adrenaline.

  ‘Balls,’ he muttered, spitting on the floor, his mind cooking up a scheme. Avarice elided caution. Each ingot was of a similar size, its rough-hewn shape the only variation. Although lustreless, the sharp edges were burnished. Shifting the contents of the sarcophagus, he held the last two in his greedy hands.

  ‘Seaman Higginbotham, your ship’s finally come in,’ he told himself.

  From the darkness came a sudden crackling sound, like the head of a carrot being twisted off.

  ‘Oi!’ he said with a start, staring into the maze of crates. First a boys’ choir, now someone preparing a stew.

  The hold was giving him the jumps. The sooner he finished shifting these ingots, the better. He looked to the corpse. No doubt it was a woman, its long, frizzled black hair touched with curls, the thin nose and sunken lips the remnants of a temptress. Laying his hands on the edge of the sarcophagus, he took a deep breath. He inched closer, gazing at her narrow eyelids, long eyelashes still intact. ‘Co’, you must have been a right angelic bird.’

  Her eyes flashed open.

  Cataract-glazed pools of darkness stared back at him. Leaping away, Higginbotham heard the secular choir arise again, very close now. Foul breath licked the back of his neck. He turned.

  ‘Spring-heeled Jack,’ he gasped in terror, his trousers suddenly warm as he shat himself.