by RA Williams
The fugue died away.
❖❖❖
Eleanor Annenberg was just dozing off when the shudder awoke her. Gazing at the panelled ceiling of her stateroom, she watched the chandelier above her gently rattle. Elle ran her hand along the mahogany wainscoting behind the headboard and felt a distant vibration through her fingertips. She rolled over and looked out of the window. The moon reflected off the sea, casting moonbeams through her window, which looked like countless tiny diamonds dancing across the ceiling. They vanished abruptly as a white mass swept by the window. When it had passed – and the shuddering with it – the diamonds danced again. Elle rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Perhaps she wasn’t quite awake. Why would a ship’s sail be so close to Titanic?
She awaited an alarm. None came. Rolling onto her back, she stretched her willowy limbs almost regally, and looked around her First Class accommodation: Queen Anne–style opulence, a grand brass bed, an abundance of polished wood and Chippendale furniture. So new was her B-Deck stateroom, the smell of paint and beeswax lingered on the air still. Her only bother had been to use the bath in her parents’ room, as her own cabin lacked one.
Despite its luxury, there was something defiant about the ship that she found unnerving. It wasn’t the aristocratic passenger list; old money was nothing new, and the Annenbergs were red-letter members of Detroit’s social follies. Perhaps it was the ship’s arrogant reputation. ‘Unsinkable’ flew straight in the face of God.
Elle was nearing the final leg of her journey home to Michigan. Her parents had enrolled her in a private school for girls in Hampstead two years ago. Although she had passed out of sixth form with top marks, her head of year hopelessly failed in her attempt to turn a maverick American schoolgirl into a dainty lady. In London, Elle glimpsed life beyond her own society, to a life filled with foreign intrigue and adventure. Getting out of trouble, as it turned out, was more interesting than getting into it.
And as she began to outgrow her gangly figure, it was no longer just her attitude that got her noticed. She’d been told her entire life that she’d inherited her mother’s beauty but, suddenly, Elle became aware of it. Like her mother, Elle was bestowed with unruly chestnut hair and eyes neither brown nor green, but something in between. Her pouting lips – the cause of much scorn as a child – became an object of desire as she reached adulthood. She seduced merely by talking. Almost overnight, it seemed, men began to fancy her. But she wanted nothing to do with coquettish schoolgirl games nor unwanted advances from odious geezers. Even in these supposedly ‘modern’ times, a proper girl was relegated to courtship larks. Elle flouted convention and, as a result, was regarded as a troublesome suffragette – a seventeen-year-old in a woman’s body. But while her mother – a German Jew, whose family had fled to Detroit years ago – had learned caution in a world where her tribe was hated, her father, Franklyn Annenberg, was altogether quite different. Growing up privileged, he never found reason to worry. Yes, he had married outside his own tribe, and for that he was ostracised, but he never minded, nor had cause to. Love was the foundation of all things, and optimism was his strongest trait.
And so Elle, like him, was an optimist, although perhaps inheriting a little of her mother’s caution. Even if she did not yet know what life had in store for her, she knew without doubt it wouldn’t be a life tethered to a repressive chinless wonder.
There came then voices from the companionway, followed by a knocking at her door. Elle climbed from her bed. Cabin Steward Swinburne had come round earlier in the evening to turn her bed down, but her electric heater was on the blink; it was either freezing cold or sweltering. She’d opted for the latter, sleeping atop the eiderdown in her new French lingerie. Of course, her mother derided it as too risqué for a proper young lady, but the silk brassière with stitched-in pearls and scalloped silk knickers were all the rage in Paris. A lady was meant to don petticoats and corsets under an evening gown, like the one her mother forced her to wear to dinner and which was presently thrown over the back of a chair. Elle loathed the quaintness of ladylike attire. She ran with the youth of London. Disinterested in the opinions of others, they were smart-mouthed, confident girls who smoked cigarettes without a holder, drank whisky in front of men and dressed in the avec désinvolture – free and easy – style of Parisians. Elle liked disguising her long limbs and sensual body beneath jodhpurs, riding boots and teddy bear coats. Unrestrained. And at times, uninhibited.
She was every bourgeois gent’s nightmare.
The knocking on her cabin door became more rapid and urgent. Passing the wardrobe, she grabbed the teddy bear coat she had liberated from Father years ago and tied its belt around her. She opened the door to Park Lane, the companionway named after London’s fashionable thoroughfare. Mother pushed her way into her stateroom. She wore a worried look on her face and a lifebelt over her nightgown and mink coat.
‘What is it, Mother?’
Steward Swinburne peeked in then, reading glasses swinging like a pendulum on a chain about his neck. ‘Miss Annenberg, please put on your lifebelt. We’ve been requested on deck.’
‘Are we sinking?’
‘Not to worry, it’s just precautionary.’ Hurriedly continuing his journey, he disappeared through the baize doors to the deck’s reception area.
‘He seems worried,’ noted Elle, as Mother closed the stateroom door.
‘Eleanor, I fear the incident is rather serious. You’d better get dressed and come to deck with me.’
Pulling on a pair of thick woollen trousers, Elle sat on a sofa in the corner of her cabin to lace up her motoring boots. She watched her mother pick up her gold Cartier watch, diamond rings and sapphire necklace and stuff them into the concealed burglar pocket of her mink.
‘You’re taking my jewellery. It’s that serious?’
Mother turned to her, looking over the teddy bear coat she’d put on. ‘Why must you wear that moth-eaten coat of your father’s?’
‘It’s warm.’
‘You look like a dyke,’ she scolded.
‘Blame Father,’ Elle replied.
Her mother sighed but pursued the matter no further. ‘The steward banged on my door first. He said the ship has struck ice.’
‘Is that what it was? Ice?’ Elle said, taking up her lifebelt. ‘I saw it through my window.’
‘You saw it?’ Her mother spun her round, tying the lifebelt over her teddy bear coat.
‘I thought it was a ship’s sail. It must have been an iceberg.’
Mother turned Elle to face her. ‘We must find your father.’
It was getting on for midnight by the time they made their way to the First Class entranceway, joining a queue of regal, if heavy-eyed, passengers proceeding to deck. Bundled up in a fur coat over a kimono and evening slippers, the pinch-faced Lady Cunard gave Elle’s modern attire a scowl of disapproval, for which Elle was only too happy to reply with her biggest and most disingenuous American smile. Lady Cunard had married up. Sir Archibald Cunard kept fashionable addresses in both London’s Belgravia and the Kent countryside. Rumour had it Sir Archibald had found Her Ladyship dancing topless in Soho’s Windmill Cabaret. It could be said she got the gold mine marrying an old duffer like Sir Archibald. And he got the shaft.
Following Mother up the staircase to A-Deck, Elle spotted Second Officer Lightoller walking briskly towards the Promenade Deck vestibule. He had given Elle and her father a tour of the ship the day they departed Southampton. She caught his eye. He offered an unconvincingly brave face.
She knew then the matter at hand was serious. How serious, Elle was as yet unsure.
Pushing through a revolving bevelled-glass door, she followed Mother into the First Class smoking room.
‘I’ve not been in here before,’ she said, squinting curiously through a blue haze of cigar smoke.
‘I should hope not. This is a gentlemen’s lounge.’
Unashamedly tarted up with dark mahogany panelling and far too many leaded glass panels, it looked like a Pa
ll Mall gentlemen’s club after a night in a bordello. Despite the seriousness of the moment, Elle couldn’t help but smile. It was nice to see Mother breaking from convention now and again.
A foursome, including her father, sat calmly around a Chippendale table near the coal fire, playing bridge. On the mantelpiece stood a sculpture of Artemis of Versailles. The men in the company of her father, all side-whiskers and smoking jackets, Elle had known since she was a child. Hutton Armstrong and Artie Moorhead were Detroit royalty. Automobile money. Elle’s father provided them with the steel they needed to build Henry Ford’s Model Ts. The fourth, Ribs Wimbourne, stroked his greying Kitchener moustache as he studied his hand of cards. A commander in the British Royal Navy, he’d been dressed in full navy blues the first time Elle had clapped eyes on him. She was nine years old. And smitten. Ribs was the only gentleman, other than Father, whom she regarded as genuine.
Wobbling to the table in her lifebelt, Elle’s mother swiftly admonished her father. ‘Franklyn, the ship is sinking and you’re playing bridge.’
‘Weezy, my dear, Titanic won’t sink,’ replied Father. He used Mother’s pet name when he wanted her to do something she wasn’t keen on.
‘The engines have stopped,’ she said.
‘Routine,’ Ribs told her, watching the legs of his port creep down a chunky Waterford tumbler in his hand. ‘I’ve gone through this drill in the Royal Navy. They’re just sounding the ship. Making certain there’s no damage.’
‘Franklyn.’ Mother pushed a lifebelt into his lap. ‘You shall put this on at once and accompany your daughter and I to the Boat Deck.’
The others smirked over their cards.
‘Dearest, would you leave this comfort and warmth for the chill of an open deck?’ He raised his cards for her to see. ‘Particularly with this hand?’
‘Piffle,’ Armstrong scoffed. ‘Titanic sink? What rot.’
Elle’s father chuckled, tipping his cigar ash into the turn-ups of his trousers and resting his port glass on the card table. It slid straight across it, tumbling into Rib’s lap. The ship listed towards the starboard bow.
Looking up at the commander, Franklyn said, ‘Perhaps we ought to have a look?’
Elle followed her parents onto A-Deck’s enclosed promenade. Ribs accompanied them, chatting to her mother and father with little more concern than he might if he was simply taking a stroll along the seaside. Keeping themselves warm under their steamer rugs, other First Class passengers sat in polished deckchairs, watching crewmen crank down the promenade windows, letting in the frightfully cold night air. As Elle trailed behind, pulling her collar tight, a clammy hand touched hers. Recoiling, she turned.
Brooks Thompson, a Detroit banker known as much for venality as for being a loathsome cad, crowded her.
‘Aren’t you sprightly,’ he said.
Elle pulled her hand away. She’d done this dance. Men like Brooks Thompson made such advances only to women they held in low regard. Normally, she’d have given him a thump but, given the situation, she decided to try something else.
‘I’m Eleanor Annenberg, Mr Thompson.’
He stared at her blankly through his boozy eyes.
‘You’re my father’s banker.’ She tossed in the smile, the very definition of mischief. Big and toothy, it filled her face, banishing her aloofness, replacing it with confidence. She found through experience it had a magical ability to defuse even the most uncomfortable of moments. It was equal parts androgynous and feminine. It accentuated the kindness in her eyes and stole away a man’s resolve. It charmed even the most spiteful of women. Well, perhaps not Lady Cunard.
‘Haven’t you grown into a pretty young lady?’ Dressed in pyjamas and carpet slippers, he bowed unsteadily. ‘Call me Brooksie.’
Elle sighed, smile fading. ‘Really, I’d rather not.’
‘You’re a very pretty girl.’
‘You already said as much. Won’t you let me alone?’
‘Don’t know about that bearskin rug, though,’ he said, looking over her teddy bear coat.
‘Said the man wearing pyjamas and slippers,’ she replied petulantly. ‘You do realise the ship has struck an iceberg?’
‘Do you think I could manage a chip off it for my drink?’
Snatching the glass from Mr Thompson’s hand, she knocked it back. Vodka stung her throat.
‘To hell with ice.’
The stewards beckoned for women and children to come forward and walk the plank that stretched from the deck to the lifeboat. There weren’t many takers. Most preferred the fear aboard Titanic to the uncertainty of a lifeboat at sea.
‘I’ll climb in if you do,’ said Mr Thompson.
‘Are you a woman or child, Mr Thompson?’ Irritated, Elle shoved the glass into his hands.
‘My God, aren’t you deliciously complicated.’
She stared at him, pursing her lips. ‘In point of fact, I’m simply uncomplicated.’
‘Oh now?’ he asked, giving her a salacious grin. ‘What am I then? Simply irresistible?’
‘Simply stupid.’ The vodka had pleasantly sharpened her tongue. ‘Now get lost, you vulture, before I rat you out to your wife.’
A brash Molly Brown, the widowed American millionaire, barrelled across the Promenade Deck, knocking Thompson aside. Maids trailed behind, carrying her hatboxes.
‘Hurry to it – they’re uncovering the lifeboats up there.’ Uttering curses so thick her words could be spread on bread, she lifted her skirt to her knees – and with the help of the stewards – Molly Brown ‘walked the plank’ across the deckchair bridging the deck and the lifeboat. Her maids hurriedly passed over her hatboxes before joining her.
‘Elle?’
Turning, Elle saw Titch Blaine-Howard, a minute socialite and sixth-form chum from school, sitting in a deckchair drinking from a bottle of 1904 Taittinger. Titch was youthful, gay and pure British aristocracy. Elle often thought Titch was the very antithesis of her.
‘Come and join the party.’ Passing the champagne bottle to a fair-haired boy, she stumbled to her feet, still in her glad rags. ‘Missed you in the Café Parisien tonight.’
‘I was recovering from the champagne we swizzled there last night, actually,’ replied Elle, a shiver making a mad dash up her spine. And not because she was cold. Lurking under the veneer of bravado and sharp words was fear. ‘You do understand an iceberg has struck us?’
‘Pfft,’ Titch said, and she waved her Dunhill cigarette holder dismissively.
‘Who’s the bookend?’ asked Elle, looking to the fair-haired young man in dinner jacket and white celluloid collar.
‘An Austrian I met tonight in the Café. Come have a natter with us.’
Elle shook her head. ‘I really should stay with Mother and Father.’
‘Doesn’t look as though they’re going to miss you, darling,’ she said, drawing Elle’s attention to her parents, now sitting casually in deckchairs, chatting with Ribs.
‘For a minute, then,’ replied Elle, eyeing the Austrian as he guzzled champagne straight from the bottle. He had big ears, a long nose and a lascivious gaze.
Titch stepped back, taking stock. ‘Sporting a bull-dagger look, are we? Chiltham School for Young Ladies was meant to turn you into a lady, not a déclassé lezzer.’
‘“Teaching young ladies to behave in a manner conforming to one’s position”?’ quoted Elle.
Titch shrugged.
‘The teddy bear coat is practical.’ Elle shivered. ‘Especially tonight.’
‘Strangely enough, I don’t feel the cold one jot,’ Titch replied.
‘That’s because you’re drunk.’
‘Drunk?’ she asked as she staggered, taking Elle’s arm in hers. ‘I’m banjoed.’ Then, plonking down in a deckchair, she took Elle with her.
The young Austrian laughed, passing her the bottle. ‘Fancy a sip, lovely?’
Elle refused.
‘Something more exotic, then?’ he asked, tapping the side of his nose.
/> ‘You do realise this ship is taking on water?’ she asked matter-of-factly.
‘Sinking? Poor poppet,’ he said condescendingly, all grand manner and dapper clothes. ‘Titanic is unsinkable.’
‘Oh, you think so?’ Elle chipped sharply. ‘Tell me why this deck is angling down to the head then?’
‘I’m an officer in the German Navy.’
She looked to Titch. ‘You said he was Austrian?’
‘Who knew there was a difference?’ Titch asked, blowing him a kiss.
‘Titanic has nineteen watertight bulkheads,’ said the German. ‘She’s down at the head because one of them has taken on water. But the watertight doors have sealed the rest of the bulkheads, and I can promise you Titanic isn’t going to sink. We’ll continue to New York under reduced steam.’
‘Actually,’ Elle corrected, ‘there are sixteen watertight compartments on Titanic. Not nineteen.’
His chin shook. He looked unhappy at being shown to be wrong.
‘See much action in the German Navy?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Had a few bombs thrown at you?’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Of course you don’t,’ Elle said. Then, taking the cigarette from his hand, she dropped it into the neck of his champagne bottle. ‘When they spoke of “winter campaigning”, you thought they meant the Cresta Run at St Moritz.’
Titch snorted out a laugh.
‘I will not participate in this battle of wits,’ said the German, and he stood, turning to Titch. ‘Sie ist ein gemeines Stück.’
‘This is no battle of wits between you and me,’ replied Elle, offering a cut-glass smile in response to being called a mean bitch. ‘I never pick on an unarmed man. Sprich bitte nicht mehr mit mir.’
Realising Elle spoke his language, the German wisely chose to escape her scathing contumely. ‘You will excuse me,’ he said, before stomping away.
‘I’d say someone’s got their mad up, haven’t they?’ Titch said to Elle as she watched him go. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I merely explained that he should probably stop talking.’