That Fatal Night

by Sarah Ellis

Sometimes my mind just says “pinky paper all folded neat” over and over again.

  May 27

  Mother has a new hat. The milliner brought it around this morning. Hats have their own language, just like ships. Mother and the milliner said things like, “blue and green mixed fancy felt braid, low crown, speckled quill, Chantilly lace and a cabochon which provides a touch of completion.” Mother told the milliner that it looked so airy that a slight breeze would blow it away and the milliner said that was the nicest thing anyone could say about a hat.

  Grandmother didn’t usually wear a hat. When we first went out for a walk to the village I thought she had forgotten, so I reminded her and she said, “Oh, I don’t favour hats. I like to feel the sun on my head and the wind in my hair.” That was very hard to get used to. I don’t believe I have ever seen a grown woman on the street in Halifax without a hat. Grandmother did wear a hat to church, but it was a very plain brown-felt one, with no touches of completion at all.

  The only time I saw Grandmother in a proper hat was when she and Grandfather had a fancy dress party. It wasn’t a special occasion. They just liked to have parties and they were not like Mother and Father’s parties where everybody just eats dinner and then talks or maybe, once in a while, they have a musicale. G&G’s parties always had things to do. Sometimes they put on real plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (which I now remember I never described because I got distracted by writing my own plays, but I’ll just say that the most surprising thing was that Grandmother painted a forest background right on the wall!) and sometimes they just put on “entertainments.” Like “An Arabian Night’s Entertainment.” Everybody came dressed with embroidered silk shawls draped around them. When Mrs. Hawkins saw them she said, “There are many naked pianos around the neighbourhood this evening.”

  The men wore baggy trousers in bright colours or their bathrobes and slippers decorated with shiny things. Grandmother made herself a purple velvet turban and stuck feathers in it. Millie and I looked at the drawings in the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba and we wore shawls tied around our waists and beads around our ankles. Owen would have nothing to do with it except to try to make himself a scimitar but it turned out to be too bendy.

  We moved all the rugs into the parlour and put them over low boxes. A young man from somewhere foreign (Russia?) played snakey music on the piano and Mrs. Burns from the village sang songs about harems and love in the desert while gazing at a flower vase. The adults were sillier than the children.

  Millie and a young woman called Dora and I performed the dance of the seven veils with the net curtains from the kitchen until Millie stubbed her toe on one of the rug-covered boxes.

  Mrs. Hawkins baked some honey cakes and one of the guests brought a sweet called Turkish Delight, which I would like to eat every day of my life. Millie and I had tried to make rosewater by boiling dried rose petals, but that turned into grey, dusty-tasting water so we gave up on helping with the food and there was an ordinary supper later when everyone got tired. Mrs. Hawkins said that being Arabian is all very well but there comes the time when everybody just wants a cup of tea.

  I cannot imagine Mr. Niven from Father’s bank coming here for a party wearing his bedroom slippers decorated with jewels.

  May 28

  The Vicar came to our house for dinner today. Here’s what happened.

  Scene: Our dining room.

  Dramatis Personae: Mr. and Mrs. Wilton, a banker and his wife

  The Rev. Hill and Mrs. Hill, a vicar and his wife

  Mr. and Mrs. Fraser, people from church

  Miss Doughty, head of the altar guild

  Dorothy Wilton, Titanic survivor

  Rev. Hill: So, Mrs. Wilton, what do you think about these suffragette women and the vote and such-like?

  (The Titanic survivor stops daydreaming and begins to pay attention. This is a subject that was much discussed in Lewisham.)

  Mrs. W.: I don’t quite see the point. I would obviously vote with …

  Miss Doughty: Did you see the news of that big march in New York City? Thousands of women, some of them on horseback, parading to show that they wanted the vote. I do wonder. What kind of riff-raff would they encounter on such a march?

  Rev. Hill: Estimable women, I’m sure. Estimable but misguided.

  Mrs. Hill: Yes, misguided. I feel, as I’m sure you do, Esme, that we make our contribution to the nation by staying home and taking care of our husbands and children. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, that’s what I say.

  Mrs. W.: Yes, we just let the men think they are running things.

  (Laughter all round.)

  Rev. Hill: You’re absolutely right, Esme. Think of the women in the parish, on our altar guild, like excellent Miss Doughty here, and in our ladies’ auxiliary, doing such good work. Where would we be without them, I ask you, where would we be?

  Mrs. Hill (also known as The Echo): Yes, where would we be?

  Mr. Fraser, smiles at Dorothy: I have just one thing to say to suffragettes and those who want women and men to be equal: Remember the Titanic.

  (Nods all round.)

  Mr. Wilton: Do you mean because the men let the women and children go first into the lifeboats?

  Rev. Hill: Precisely. Male gallantry and courage. Chivalrous self-sacrifice.

  (Nods all round, except from Mr. Wilton.)

  Mr. Wilton: But, wasn’t it also men who said the Titanic was unsinkable? Wasn’t it men who decided on the number of lifeboats?

  (Pause all round. Mrs. Wilton looks startled.)

  Rev. Hill, gives a little laugh, one of those laughs that pretend to be jolly and comical but really the person is sort of peeved: Well, goodness me, we wouldn’t expect women to be marine engineers then, would we? Ha ha. Anyway, enough of this subject. I’m sure Dorothy doesn’t want to dwell on the tragedy of that fatal night. Safe home now.

  The Echo: Yes, safe home now.

  Mrs. Wilton: Would anybody care for a taste more of the trifle?

  CURTAIN.

  That was a surprise. Father sounded just like Grandfather or Grandmother.

  May 29

  I’ve just thought of something. It is completely obvious but I never thought of it before. Father was there. When he was a little boy he sat at that breakfast table and listened to those discussions. Grandmother and Grandfather are his parents, just like Mother and Father are parents to me. Was he in plays? Did Grandmother knit him things in wool dyed with plants? Did he get to play the piano all black keys?

  He never talks about when he was a boy except when he rolls his eyes and says things like, “Are they still having Russians in to paint those dreadful pictures on their walls? I’m so happy that your mother runs to wallpaper.”

  But this evening, at dinner, I knew that he must have had those arguments with Grandfather. Think for yourself. Take a position and defend it. Well, he didn’t really defend it. It would have made everybody uncomfortable. But he said it. What if women had helped plan the Titanic?

  Something else I wonder. About the Vicar. Does nobody else notice such things? Does nobody notice when somebody is pretending to be one way and really they are being the opposite way? Irene Rudge does this all the time, being extra-courteous to grown-ups and horrid to other girls. I used to want to grow up so much because I thought that would be over. But now it seems it just goes on and on. Perhaps it even gets worse.

  May 30

  I woke up early. The light was just coming through the lace curtains, making light lace on my coverlet. I noticed that one curtain was not quite closed so I had to get up to pull the other one over to make them match. It was a very pink sunrise. Sunrise or sunset, which is better? Either/Or.

  Grandmother and Grandfather played Either/Or all the time. Crumpets or pikelets, horse or bicycle, snowball fight or water fight, pantomime or Punch and Judy, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass. When G&G played, they shouted and interrupted each other, slapped the table (“
Crumpets, Augusta! Crumpets, hands down!”), always laughing. At first I started saying, “I like both,” but that’s “waffling” and not allowed. I learned to make a choice and stick with it and argue until … until I was blue in the face, but not really. But Mother and Father don’t understand Either/Or. They just waffled.

  One of the best rounds with Grandfather happened on the riverbank. We had been rowing in the skiff and he was pretending it was the Titanic. It was one of the days when he told me facts. So long, so wide, so heavy, so many propellers. The biggest number was three million rivets. “And we’ll see it, in just a few weeks. Think of it. You’ll tell your grand children. It is a marvel of the age. The dock at Southampton is sixteen acres big,” he said. “You could fit the whole village on it.”

  We tied up at our dock, one smithereenth of an acre big. “River or sea?” asked Grandfather.

  He had to choose river, of course, because he had one at the bottom of the garden and he had lived in that house since he was a boy. But I had to stand up for Halifax and choose the sea.

  Seas have waves.

  Rivers go somewhere.

  Seas have salty water which holds you up better than fresh water when you’re bathing.

  You can drink from a river.

  Seas have whales.

  Grandfather then used one of the Either/Or tricks: win by listing.

  Rivers have carp and roach and pike and tench and trout and stickleback … and I can’t remember the rest of the fish he listed.

  He won.

  I didn’t say that the sea has icebergs. I didn’t think about icebergs when I was sitting on a dock on the River Quaggy with my grandfather. If we played again I would choose river.

  May 31

  Here is a mystery about grown-ups. Why don’t they play? Mother and Father never play. Father plays golf and they both play whist but that’s not real playing. I mean that they never jump in leaves or build forts or play hide-and-seek. They make the rules, which means that they could climb trees and they would be good at it because they are tall enough to reach the lowest branches, but they don’t even want to. What is the good of growing up if all you get to do is go to the office or have ladies to tea?

  But it is not true that all adults do not play. Grandfather is good at playing.

  A PLAY TO PROVE MY POINT

  Scene: A sandy bank on the River Quaggy. The roots of the trees make little cubbyholes in the shallow water.

  Dramatis Personae:

  Grandfather, Grandmother, the Canadian Girl, Owen. (Millie had Girl Guides.)

  Props: A picnic in a picnic basket, a message in a bottle, licorice allsorts in a paper sack.

  Grandmother: Oh bother, I forgot the salt. Hard-boiled eggs are dreary without salt.

  Grandfather: Look! What’s that? In the shallows there, green and shiny? Owen, Dorothy, go have a look.

  Owen, holds the CG’s hand so that she can lean way out over the roots and grab the mystery, which turns out to be a bottle with a cork in it: It looks like there’s something in it. A paper or something.

  The CG, gives a whoop: I’ve always wanted to find a message in a bottle. Always and always. It is my top most-wanted-thing ever! Open it, quick.

  (I really did say this.)

  Grandmother: I might forget the salt but I would never forget the corkscrew. Here you go.

  (Owen, opens the bottle and pulls out a piece of old, thin, tattered paper. It has brown, spidery writing on it and a map. He hands it to the CG.)

  The CG: All it says is, “I leave this treasure, mined from the mountains of the Sierra Madre, to the future. Find it who may. And may it bring you happiness in equal measure to the pain it has visited upon me. Josiah Q. Snedden, Captain, The Flying Armadillo.”

  Owen: How did a bottle get upstream?

  (Everybody ignores Owen.)

  Grandmother: Cheese and cress sandwich, anybody?

  Grandfather: Augusta! Where is your sense of occasion? Nobody is interested in sandwiches. We are possibly on the brink of an important discovery. Let’s have a look at that map. Hmmm, see where the stream bends just beyond that big oak? That looks just like the map.

  The CG: What are we waiting for?

  Grandmother: I’ll stay and guard the picnic from marauders.

  (Grandfather, Owen and the CG set off upstream, then across a stile and past a Roman earthwork, all of these things clearly marked on the map. Then past a barn with a weather vane, a giant copper beech tree and a fence post with a white blaze on it.)

  (How would they do this on a stage? It would have to be a very big stage.)

  The CG: Last clue. A stone wall. There it is. We need to find a green stone with two white rings around it.

  Grandfather, sits against the wall: This explorer is weary. I’m going to have a sit-down.

  (The CG and Owen search the wall. They don’t see a green stone with two rings. They start trying to pull out green stones, or stones with rings, or any old stones at all.)

  Grandfather: Stop! You’ll have the wall falling down. The expedition is a failure, I guess. Come on, at least we have cheese and cress to look forward to.

  (Grandfather stands up.)

  Owen: There it is! Right where you were sitting. Two rings!

  Owen, pulls out stone and reaches into hole to find paper sack full of licorice allsorts: Here it is, treasure!

  (The treasure seekers return to the picnic site, all the while discussing licorice allsorts):

  Blue beady ones are the best because you can suck them and make them last.

  No, the layered kind are better because you can eat them layer by layer.

  Purists everywhere prefer the plain black licorice bullets.

  But only the bullseyes have cocoanut, besides which, they look like a diagram of the Earth with the licorice centre being solid, liquid or gas and the pink part being everything else.

  (These pieces of dialogue can be shared among the cast but the CG gets to praise the bullseyes because she really does love those, especially the pink ones.)

  Grandfather: Which ones should we save for Augusta and Millie?

  CURTAIN.

  The treasure did not ruin our appetites at all. We still ate all the sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, cherry cake and walnut cake, dried plums and ginger beer. Grandmother saved her share of the booty till last and made no offers to share.

  But here’s what I mean about play. Of course Grandfather wrote the letter and hid the bottle. I figured that out about the time we were climbing over the stile. And Owen knew too, even before. But as long as we pretended to believe in Captain Snedden it was fun. Fun is what grown-ups who say, “Don’t get carried away by make-believe,” don’t understand. If you go along with the make-believe you have fun and you also get licorice bullseyes. Sometimes.

  June 1912

  June 1

  White Rabbit.

  Mrs. Hawkins said that it was good luck to say “White Rabbit” the very first thing when you wake up on the first day of a new month. This morning I remembered and I’m also writing it first thing for extra good luck. My first chance to try it out was April 1st but I forgot because that morning Brownie woke me up by licking my hand, which was over the side of the bed, and I woke with a start and said, “Brownie, stop it,” before I remembered the magic words. And on May 1st I forgot about it because I was only thinking about Irene.

  It is just silly to think that forgetting to say White Rabbit meant that a ship as big as a city ran into an iceberg as big as a castle. But people say many silly things. They say that naming the Titanic the Titanic meant that humans were being too proud, and that caused the disaster. They say that when that other ship nearly hit the Titanic when we were leaving Southampton — that was an omen. They say that when the stoker stuck his soot-covered head out of the funnel and startled people, it meant something bad. They say that some little dying girl in England woke up the night of the disaster and said, “Why is that ship sinking?” or something like that.

  Grandfat
her said that you cannot know what will happen in the future because it hasn’t happened yet. He said that fortune telling and seances and all that are nonsense for gullible people.

  Of course he is right. But I am never going to forget to say White Rabbit again. Never.

  June 2

  There is a special kind of quiet on Sunday afternoons. It feels as though the house has taken off its shoes and put on its slippers and has gone to sleep in an easy chair with the paper across its face.

  There was a guest at lunch, Charles’s friend Cedric. Cedric is very superior and he ignores me completely. He also has blond eyelashes. I suppose if somebody was extremely congenial I could bear blond eyelashes, but as Cedric is the first person I ever saw with blond eyelashes I do not think they are nice. He and Father talked about cricket. They didn’t really talk, they just traded numbers. It was all googlies and silly mid-ons and test averages and centuries. I have noticed this about men when they talk to each other. They just bat numbers and facts back and forth.

  And it was just the same in England. Whenever Grandfather was with me and Grandmother he would talk about everything under the sun. When Owen was with me and Millie he was normal too. But when Grandfather and Owen got together it was facts, facts, facts, back and forth. When Father wrote that he had booked me passage on the Titanic they started storing up everything they could find out about the ship. The women in the family tried to play pig-in-the-middle and grab the conversation, but it was hard. Tea time would go something like this:

  FACTS: Scene one.

  GF: Three million rivets.

  O: Five hundred pounds of grapefruits.

  GF: Four funnels, one of them false.

  Grandmother: So, what do you think are our chances of having an earthquake today, Dorothy?

  The CG: I think we’ll be spared this time but I’m quite concerned about rumours of a giant hedgehog in the county.