The Lifeboat: A Novel

by Charlotte Rogan

  I nodded. The captain of the mail packet tipped his chin in return, and that is the last I saw of him. I turned from him just as he turned from me; then I walked with the same uncertain steps as the others down the rest of the gangway. By the time I had traversed the wharf and put my foot on firm soil, my steps no longer faltered, and even when I realized that no one had come to meet me, I walked steadily toward whatever the future might hold.

  Epilogue

  ACQUITTAL HAS NOT solved everything, though I suppose the situation is worse for Mrs. Grant and Hannah, whose sentences were commuted to life in prison. Dr. Cole has suggested I expand the notes I made for my defense, saying that what I need now is psychological acquittal. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t feel guilty!” I exclaimed, heartily sick of the good doctor. Of course there are things I want to forget, but I wonder if it is wise to continue to dwell on them. If only I could forget, for instance, the deafening roar of the wind and waves, the puny slap slap slap of the wooden boat against the boundless majesty of the sea, those sticks of oars that got us nowhere, the black-green immensity that ever threatened to engulf us. Forget the sight of Rebecca’s hair spread out over the water before she went under and the relief I felt when at first she failed to reappear. Forget, most of all, my own temptation to interfere with fate and the sick, dead weight of Mrs. Fleming on my lap and later of Mary Ann. Hannah and Mrs. Grant, at least, were capable of making a plan and seeing it through, but I could make no hard and fast decisions. More than once I wished Anya Robeson would hide me under her coat with little Charles.

  As I write this, there is word that a transatlantic steamship called the Lusitania was sunk by German submarines that were sliding darkly beneath the waters of the Irish Sea. The news made me wonder if our ship had been an early victim of the war, but the authorities were quick to say it wasn’t, for both the timing and location were wrong; and even if it had been, would that have changed anything? I smile to myself to think how Mr. Sinclair would have answered with a resounding “No!” but I am not sure I agree with him. The authorities aren’t right about everything, and it still gives me a sense of importance to think my life was shattered because I was caught in the cross fire between powerful nations rather than because of carelessness or greed.

  After I had wrestled Hardie out of the boat, it was my turn to lie, exhausted, with my head in Mary Ann’s lap. I slept fitfully and awoke with a start, thinking that Mary Ann was talking to me. “I only pretended to faint,” I heard her say. “I could never kill anyone, but of course Mrs. Grant never had any doubts about you.” Later in the night she said, “I’ll tell them who did it if we’re ever rescued. I’ll tell them it was you, and I’ll tell them about the jewelry and how you bought your way onto the boat.”

  “There was no jewelry, Mary Ann,” I said or didn’t say, for such was the erratic nature of my thoughts that it was as likely to have been a nightmare as something that had actually taken place.

  For nearly a year now Dr. Cole has been harping on the events of the lifeboat. He is beginning to sound exactly like the prosecuting attorney. I have told him I won’t talk about the lifeboat anymore. Of course it affected me, but not in the way he thinks! This he refuses to accept. I don’t see how reliving every day again in detail will reveal the source of my anxiety, which stems far more from the trial and worry about my future than from anything that happened out there. It was not the sea that was cruel, but the people. Why should any of us be surprised by that? Why did the jury sit there with their jaws hanging open and their eyes popping out? Why did the reporters follow us like hungry dogs? Children! I thought. I would never be a child again.

  I have lost patience with the idea of an insignificant human being standing up above the rest of us—whether he is called Reverend or Doctor or Judge—and shouting at us all about this thing or that. As soon as someone starts to pontificate in this way, I am apt to cut him off or leave the room, or, if this can’t be done gracefully, I simply arrange that sweet vapid smile on my face that was so useful during the trial but that so infuriates Dr. Cole. After all, I have already taken the measure of my own insignificance, and I survived.

  When I said something to this effect, Dr. Cole began lecturing me about guilt and saying that people are not responsible for the good or ill fortune that befalls them. I keep telling him I do not wonder “Why me?” any more than I wonder about the accident of my birth. Rather, I feel both lucky and unlucky about it, suffused with a sort of happiness as it has opened up a whole new world to me, one quite devoid of dependencies on other people, devoid even of the fear of death and belief in God, though this could be exactly what baffles him; and it occurs to me that Dr. Cole is as interested in curing himself as he is in curing me.

  Today I told Dr. Cole I am going away, though I am not yet entirely sure where I will go. “But our work is not finished!” he cried. I said I was about to embark on a grand new adventure now that this one was done. “You’re getting married!” he exclaimed.

  “How unimaginative you are! There are endless possibilities. There’s no telling what I might do,” I said, and I felt very free and relieved as I said it, but I fear that the world is as unimaginative as he and that I will have to accept Mr. Reichmann’s proposal of marriage for want of a better plan. Henry’s mother has been asking me to come to New York, and at some point I will visit her, but I keep putting it off. Is it strange that what had seemed a crucial element of my future no longer seems to figure into it at all?

  “You’ll never find inner peace if you don’t resolve your ambivalence toward the lifeboat…towards me,” Dr. Cole started to say, but I replied that I had already found inner peace. Life at that moment again seemed like a game to me, a game I might even win, mainly because I had been acquitted and I hadn’t made any other irrevocable choices yet. No doubt I soon would. One couldn’t inhabit the knife-edge cusp of possibility for long without stepping off on one side or the other, as my experiences in the lifeboat had unambiguously shown. Did I get butterflies of happiness in William’s presence? No, but he professed to get them in mine, and it made me happy that he did.

  I had heard from Greta again, who wrote that the women from the lifeboat were collecting money for Hannah’s and Mrs. Grant’s appeals. Did I want to contribute? Furthermore, they wanted me to use my influence to persuade Mr. Reichmann not only to take their cases, but also to reduce his fee. The previous day I had sat for a long while over my notebook, drafting a reply—several replies, in fact. In one, I offered them any assistance within my power and in another I asked how people who had not only implicated me in their crime but later turned against me could ask for my help. In yet a third, I politely and distantly wished them well and promised nothing. I told Dr. Cole about the three letters and asked his opinion about which to send. “Which one do you want to send?” he asked, as I had known he would.

  “Of course, I have no money to give them,” I said. I honestly wished them well, but I did not want William spending the first year of our marriage immersed in the events of a time that was now behind me.

  Unlike the dank prison room where we had met, Dr. Cole’s office was large and airy and had a bank of windows that overlooked the harbor. I spent the last minutes of our time together gazing out at the water, which was frothy with whitecaps. In the distance, a fleet of small sailing vessels scudded like graceful birds before the wind. “You’re smiling,” said Dr. Cole. “Yes,” I replied. “I suppose I am.”

  I was wearing a new silk dress and it rustled magnificently when I stood up to go before the allotted hour was up. I said, “You will have to find your answers without me,” which made him tap his fountain pen so hard in frustration that it left a large blot of ink on his compulsive little page of notes. If I had not felt so sorry for him, I would have laughed out loud at his desire to pin everything down, at his naïveté, at his childish desire to know.

  Acknowledgments

  My love and thanks go to my family: to my parents, for giving me an appreci
ation of boats and oceans; to my siblings, for making the voyages fun; and to my husband and children, for cheering me on as I added pages to my collection of lidded file boxes even though they weren’t always sure what I was doing.

  Without Sara Mosle, the boxes would have remained sealed. Sara was kind enough to read my work and introduce me to her wonderful agent, David McCormick. David, you are a hero for giving me guidance and support and, now, an audience.

  Little, Brown, it was love at first sight. My editors Andrea Walker, Ursula Doyle, and Reagan Arthur were not only smart and insightful, but funny and a delight to work with. And to the many others whose enthusiasm and expertise helped to launch The Lifeboat, thank you: Marlena Bittner, Heather Fain, Zoe Hood, and Amanda Tobier for keeping me on task; Mario Pulice for generously sharing his expertise on all things ocean liner; Emma Graves for her spectacular jacket; Victoria Pepe and Deborah Jacobs for their superhuman copyediting; and Susan Hobson, Sarah Murphy, Bridget McCarthy, and Pilar Queen for their all-around facility with the metaphorical ropes.

  I am enduringly grateful to my early writing mentors: Andrew Kaufman, Leonard Kriegel, Harold Brodkey, and Marshall Terry. Their words and wisdom resonate to this day. To my friend Angela Himsel: thank you for twenty-four years of encouragement. And to the writers through the years who, by example, taught me how to write: I wish you the same sort of inspiration you have given me.

  Finally, my heartfelt thanks to Reagan Arthur and Michael Pietsch for giving me a chance.

  About the Author

  Charlotte Rogan graduated from Princeton University in 1975. She worked at various jobs, mostly in the fields of architecture and engineering, before teaching herself to write and staying home to bring up triplets. Her childhood experiences among a family of sailors provided inspiration for The Lifeboat, her first novel. After many years in Dallas, she and her husband now live in Westport, Connecticut.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part I

  Day One

  Night

  Day Two

  Day Three

  Night

  Day Four

  The Empress Alexandra

  Part II

  Day Five

  Night

  Day Six

  Days Seven and Eight

  Henry

  Part III

  Day Nine

  Night

  Day Ten, Morning

  Day Ten, Afternoon

  Night

  Day Eleven

  Day Twelve

  Night

  Day Thirteen

  Night

  Day Fourteen

  Part IV

  Prison

  Dr. Cole

  The Law

  Innocence

  Witnesses

  Decisions

  Rescue

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2012 by Charlotte Rogan

  Cover design by Emma Graves—LBBG

  Cover photographs: ocean © Mark Owen / Arcangel Images; boat © The Francis Frith Collection / Superstock

  Cover copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First e-book edition: April 2012

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  ISBN 978-0-316-20284-8