The Master's Tale--A Novel of the Titanic

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  I don’t know if he did, but by my next visit things had settled down. For John and for me. As Eleanor’s grief abated, her fears for me lessened.

  Of necessity, I found myself spending most of my free days at Woodhead. Being there meant working hard but it was different kind of work to what I did at sea, and besides, it was a joy simply to be with Eleanor. I helped with the spring sowing of peas and beans and potatoes, and caught the last couple of days of haymaking in June. The weather was glorious, with just a few thunderheads roaming the horizon, but John had chosen his time well; the scented, flower-strewn hay was turned and aired and stacked and spread until it was fit for pressing and baling. Back-breaking work but that sense of working with the weather – remembered so well from my sailing ship days – was hugely invigorating. Rarely since the Lizzie Fennell had I worked as hard or intensively as I did that year. But I enjoyed every minute.

  It was good to stay at the farm, to be with Eleanor. I got to know her, how hard she worked, how kind-hearted she was and how short-tempered she could be. Perversely, perhaps, I rather liked that. At least I knew where I was with her. And I got to know the other members of the family. I never did feel entirely comfortable with Mrs Pennington, often having the feeling that she was looking just beyond my shoulder, hoping for a better man to come along. Eleanor said I was wrong, that it was my own modesty made me think I fell short in her mother’s eyes. Well, I wouldn’t have called it modesty, but maybe there was a grain of truth there.

  When I looked at the extent of the farm buildings, when I walked the fields, and most especially when I accompanied the family to church, I felt my lack of background. Eleanor and her siblings had been educated at the Rectory with the parson’s children, young people who became their friends. These connections were not paraded, but I was aware of the fact that they called on each other, and shared certain obligations.

  The parish of Winwick covered a wide area, and the building itself was grand indeed with a new chancel designed by some famous London architect. From the floor tiles to the highly coloured ceiling it was new-Gothic and much admired. I thought it a bit overdone myself, but forbore to say so. The patrons were some titled family whose pedigree disappeared into the mists of time. Well, they featured strongly in the Wars of the Roses, or so Eleanor said, and that was enough for me.

  Then I came across Pennington Lane. On the far side of Newton, to be sure, but it surprised me. I wondered if Penningtons had been on the field when Richard III lost his crown, and whether Eleanor’s pedigree could match that of the local grandees. She laughed and said not, but in the light of some of her mother’s comments I did wonder.

  With the sad year behind us, and stronger bonds to tie us, Eleanor and I were married in the New Year of 1887. Sure enough, as the Americans would say, we had the grand church at Winwick, a solemn parson to do the deed, and Cap’n Joe, Thomas Jones, John, Martha and Mary Jane all as witnesses. The second-degree cousins were there to fill the church and eat their way through a sumptuous repast. My mother came too, and, for reasons which eluded me, she and Mrs P got along very well. Businesswomen both, Eleanor said.

  We married to coincide with the month’s leave that was due to me. Instead of battling my way across the Atlantic, I spent a more productive and enjoyable time renovating Spar Cottage.

  Much of the heavy work had been done earlier, but hanging pictures and curtains and arranging our bits and bobs of furniture – mostly donated by relatives – were jobs we were happy to do together. I fetched my boxes of books from Joe’s, and made a set of shelves beside the chimney breast. Eleanor’s collection of novels and journals and slim volumes of poetry, sat beneath a row of china plates in the other alcove, while her notebook of recipes never left the kitchen. She was an excellent cook.

  The cottage was close enough to the farm for convenience, but distant enough to allow us a degree of privacy. Although we promised ourselves a few days in the Lake District when the weather improved, whenever possible we made the best of what a wet winter could throw at us by being cosy together indoors. We learned a lot in those first delightful weeks, and not least about ourselves. My impatience was calmed, and as trust grew between us, Eleanor blossomed.

  A few adjustments were necessary – marriage was a first trip for both of us, after all – but on the whole we managed very well. Eleanor was used to housekeeping, but at the farm there had been many hands to share the tasks. The only outside help we had was with the laundry, so I endeavoured to assist with simple chores, like scrubbing saucepans and polishing cutlery. Like being a deck-hand again, I said with mock complaint, scrubbing decks and polishing brass.

  Playing house was fun, but I worried about leaving her when I went back to sea. I was afraid she’d be lonely with no husband coming in each evening, and none of the family around. Eleanor said she’d be all right, while her sisters assured me they would visit often. Their mother said she could come back to the farm while I was away.

  I was not too happy with that idea.

  ~~~

  When my leave was up and Republic was ready to sail I did not want Eleanor to see me off. I’d seen enough weeping women on docksides, I said, to last me a lifetime. Being there to greet me on my return was a different matter though. It turned the last leg of the voyage into one of eager anticipation, and made the boarding of the Mersey pilot something to smile about.

  I was rather taken aback on my first return to be greeted by tears. My dear girl wept like a child in my arms.

  ‘I prayed,’ she sobbed, ‘all the time you were away…’

  ‘But I’ve been away before,’ I reasoned, ‘and come back safe. Why should I not this time?’

  ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t the same before, we weren’t married, we weren’t… And I’ve missed you so much.’ She wept even harder. ‘I’m sorry. I was all right until I saw you – and I’m so happy. I don’t know why I’m crying like this…’

  Having only a few days together, the reason did not become apparent until my next time home. Eleanor was expecting a child – our child – which seemed to me the most incredible and astonishing thing ever. Absolutely the best news since the day she agreed to marry me.

  It turned out that she’d suspected, wasn’t sure, felt terribly emotional, hadn’t wanted to tell me in case she was wrong. But now she was sure, and besides, everyone said she looked like she was, and didn’t I think so too?

  I was over the moon with delight, but to be honest I thought she looked pale and wan, as though she’d been doing too much. Not that I said so. I just tried to make her sit down, put her feet up, let me see to things. And when I’d cosseted her a bit, and we’d made wonderful plans for this wonderful child of ours, we ate our supper and went to bed. No mad passion this time, just a gentle holding, a gentle loving, while it seemed to me the whole meaning of the world was contained between us.

  ~~~

  At the end of April I returned from New York as Master of the Republic. A temporary appointment while her Old Man was recovering from a broken leg in a New York hospital, but I was cock-o-hoop when Thomas Ismay himself told me I was to cover the Old Man’s absence for the duration. I had four months as Captain of a first-class Atlantic liner. I felt I had arrived, that after this they would surely not bump me down.

  But they did. They said it was because I had not yet taken my Extra Master’s Certificate, for which I had been studying at sea for almost two years. Patience was the word, Thomas Ismay said. To help me exercise it – and to enable me to complete my studies – I was sent to relieve the 1st Officer on the Britannic.

  In one sense it was an achievement of an ambition – I’d lusted after the Britannic the day I first saw her, sweeping out of the Mersey when I was urging my waterlogged Lizzie Fennell into port. But I’d imagined being her Master – going aboard as Mate was a blow to my self-esteem. But that blow was as nothing compared to the personal tragedy that followed.

  The honeymoon baby Eleanor was carrying was stillborn at seven months. It was harve
st time and she’d been helping out at the farm. I blamed that. Her mother blamed me. Indirectly, of course. It was a terrible time. Eleanor was distraught, kept asking why, in such a bleak little voice it tore right through me. I couldn’t answer. Who could? We would have had a son. It was no consolation to be told by all and sundry that we could try again. Seeing Joe at that time, with his fine sons, was hard.

  Worse, Eleanor lost the second baby, this time at two months, just before Christmas.

  Why? Now I was asking the question too, but their family doctor couldn’t answer, nor the specialist Eleanor consulted later. These eminent gentlemen made similar comments, that we were young – well, Eleanor was, at 26 – and recently married, and that time and patience would produce the children we wanted. In the meantime, a period of abstinence was recommended.

  22

  There followed a difficult period of time. After some intense studying, I submitted myself for the Extra Master’s examination. That all-important certificate was awarded to me, but it was hard to celebrate when Eleanor was grieving the loss of two babies. When, to be truthful, we were both grieving.

  My bright, happy darling was absent. In her place I found this low, sad girl, given to lethargy and misery. The cottage was a mess, but if I set to, she yelled at me and wept. Concern was misinterpreted, love was rejected, she seemed to want nothing from me. Once my studies were over I found solace in being back at sea, in some foul Atlantic weather which mirrored my feelings exactly. I was glad to have no more than a few days off between trips. If it was solitude she wanted, I said, there was plenty of that on hand. Except she didn’t. She wanted her mother and her sisters, which I suppose was natural in the circumstances.

  The following winter I was due some leave. Although it was not a good time of year to take a holiday, I felt if we didn’t get away our marriage would never recover. I decided to take her to Paris, exotic and foreign and – if American passengers were to be believed – the most romantic place on earth.

  I’d been to London before, but Paris was a first for both of us. As to conversation, Eleanor knew a little French, courtesy of the governess at the Rectory, and I’d picked up some patois in Quebec and Louisiana, but I can’t say either was much use. Fortunately she saw the funny side. Despite our struggles with the language – and the bone-chilling cold outdoors – we enjoyed our few days in that beautiful city. It even snowed while we were there, turning Notre Dame into a kind of Camelot on its island in the Seine, and the Luxembourg Gardens into a place Lancelot and Guinevere might have enjoyed.

  Our hotel room, with its splendid views and gurgling hot-water pipes, was almost too warm, but taking advantage of the sub-tropical heat, I pursued my darling wife with every lover’s trick at my disposal. I’d hoped the holiday would turn out to be the honeymoon we’d postponed, but she kept putting me off, turning away, sliding out from every embrace as though there were something deeply wrong in my desire for her.

  She was not a prude, and having been raised on a farm had known from childhood what procreation entailed. But that was it. That was the problem. In her view, a man and a woman coming together, be it pleasurable or not, was for the purpose of getting children. Since we had been told to put our desire for a family aside for a while – an unspecified period of time, incidentally – she seemed to think we should cease all contact. On the principle that kissing and touching were bound to give rise to forbidden desires.

  That such desires might be indulged purely for pleasure, without reproduction in mind, appeared to be an uncomfortable idea. Sinful was the word she used, which I put down to the Rectory education, but it was difficult to counter without sounding like a – well, like a rampant male with just one thing in mind. And in fact she came close to saying that – not in so many words, but the inference was there.

  ‘I thought you loved me,’ I remember saying towards the end of our last night in Paris.

  She was crying, huddled on her side of the bed. ‘I do.’

  ‘No, you don’t, Eleanor. If you did, you’d know I married you for yourself, not just to make children.’

  I was staring through darkness at the ceiling, remembering Dorothea’s hedonism, wishing some of that careless, self-indulgent passion might find a root-hold here. As my thoughts ran on, I realized that in marrying Eleanor I’d imagined I would broach her virginity and teach her the ways of sensuality and passion as they had been taught to me. I never envisaged resistance to such lessons, or that her ideas of love and marriage would be different from mine.

  Sorely tempted to tell her about Dorothea, I stopped myself. Had Dorothea loved me? At the time I thought probably not. I was just an apt pupil who’d gained a few distinctions in the art of love: distinctions that were useless here.

  ~~~

  Bruised and despairing, I was glad to be going back to sea. At least I knew where I was with a ship under my feet and the ocean before me. There was consolation in the wide skies and rolling green seas, in the scent of salt on the wind, even in the mournful cries of sea-birds as we left land and Liverpool behind. As ever, those old mariners seemed to be saying, forget the land, the lass, the dusty road – forget the tears, come fly with us…

  There was little time to dwell on sadness. Keeping discipline aboard, making sure the men were constantly up to the mark, was a daily challenge. With passengers aboard everything had to be spotless and shining, the decks holystoned and smooth, the brassware gleaming, paintwork untainted by rust or salt. An endless task.

  Then, in the spring of ’88 I was promoted to Master, and everything came under my command. Master under God, as Joe had signed himself. With that power, came the full weight of responsibility. But a certificate that declared me competent did not give me the experience needed to bear that weight. Yes, I’d been Master before, often responsible for a handful of passengers in addition to the ship and its cargo. In comparison to my new job, however, it seemed small beer indeed.

  If I was reasonably at ease with wealthy Americans, the English upper classes daunted me. I’d been brought up to respect authority and revere those who by tradition ruled at home. Lords and ladies and landed gentry were the upper crust; well-educated, knowledgeable, used to regarding themselves – and being regarded – as better than the common herd. It was hard for me as a potter’s son from Hanley to put myself in the same bracket. To sit at the same table, if you like. At the head of it, no less, when my sort had always been decidedly below the salt.

  Eleanor urged me to remember, when I was feeling short of the mark, that what I did none of them could do. They had to defer to me. I was the ship’s Captain, and they were in my care, not the other way around.

  I’m not sure it worked every time, but it helped.

  ~~~

  Like all newly-appointed White Star shipmasters, I spent the next eighteen months or so relieving the more established ones while they were taking their annual leave. So I was in turn Captain of various liners, and – for just one voyage – my old ship, Republic.

  On the approach to New York, either by misjudgement of the pilot or some neglect of the dredging company at Sandy Hook, we ran aground. Frustrating, even though we floated free with the next tide. Tragedy was to follow, however. Alongside in New York, we’d cleared the ship of passengers and the engine room was shutting down all but essential power for the next few days, when one of the pipes fractured, shooting superheated steam in all directions. Several men were badly injured, arms and faces ballooning with blisters even as they were dragged free.

  The engine room was a place where accidents of one degree or another were always happening. Since we carried our own surgeon, most were dealt with professionally and quickly, but no one had seen injuries on that scale before. They were appalling. Two engineer officers died from their burns, as well as one of the firemen.

  Republic was getting to be an old lady by then, and whether that fracture was due to the grounding is impossible to say. Even so, the responsibility hit me hard. It was worse for the Chief because they
were his men. Attending the inquests and arranging for burials was a harrowing experience.

  Feeling mangled, I came home to a summons from the Royal Naval Reserve. It had become part of White Star’s policy to have their officers trained by the Royal Navy in case our passenger liners should be required for transporting troops. With rumblings of war in various parts of the Empire it seemed a not-unlikely eventuality, and I’d volunteered for the RNR some months previously. I groaned at the thought of wasting my precious days off with bunch of Jack Tars, but in fact the week spent learning to fire guns and brandish cutlasses aboard an old wooden frigate, turned out to be like playing pirates. Just the kind of light relief I needed.

  My next assignment was to another liner on the Atlantic run – after which I was due for leave myself. Arriving back in Liverpool on a muggy late summer’s day, I took the ship’s papers into the office on Water Street, whereupon one of the clerks told me that Mr Thomas Ismay wanted to see me.

  It was rare to be summoned by the owner. I wondered if something was amiss but Mr Ismay greeted me cheerfully as I was shown into his office. ‘Would you consider,’ he asked, waving me to a chair, ‘taking command of the Coptic?’

  He must have been dismayed by the way my face fell. Offered a ship to call their own, most Masters were overjoyed. But for me Coptic was synonymous with Dorothea. ‘A year’s run,’ Mr Ismay added quickly. ‘Probably not even that. I see from your record you did two years in the Pacific Service – this is just a New Zealand trip. Out via the Cape, and back by way of South America…’

  My blood started pumping again. For one panic-stricken moment I’d thought he was going to send me to Hong Kong. I could hardly have refused, but it would have been unbearable. New Zealand was different though – I’d never been there. ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, summoning a smile, ‘I’d be delighted. I hesitated only because my wife and I are about to move house…’