by Sarah Ellis
Mother asked me if I was feeling poorly and I said no and why did she ask and she said that I seemed a bit dreary. Then she said that she and Father had a surprise in store for me.
I’m curious as to the surprise but not really looking forward to it. I seem to have lost my taste for surprises. Maybe Mother is right and I am dreary. No wonder Phoebe and Winnifred don’t really want to play with me.
July 3
Phoebe and her family visited this evening for a musicale. It all ended in a sad muddle. It was going along very well. I played “Camp of the Gypsies” on the piano without falling into disaster. Phoebe’s sister Edwina played a complicated piano piece, one of those ones where you think the left hand must belong to an entirely different person than the right hand. If I practised scales night and day from now until I was twenty, I would never be able to play like that.
Then Father played a ragtime piece on the mandolin with much laughing and kidding from everybody. Then he said that Phoebe’s father had to perform as well and Phoebe’s father said he had no musical talents and Phoebe’s mother said nonsense, he had a lovely bass voice and what about “Asleep in the Deep.” Edwina started playing some chords and chivvying him so he finally started in on a sea song. He really does have a surprising voice, so deep and solid you feel you could stand on it. The song had a chorus that went like:
Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep
So beware.
Bee-ee-ee-ee-ware.
On the “ee” parts his voice went down and down and down. But just when he got to the final “ware” he happened to catch my eye and then he stopped singing and coughed and turned red and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Idiotic of me. I just didn’t think.”
And then everyone was embarrassed and didn’t know what to do and still I didn’t understand. Then I really thought about the words “asleep in the deep.”
Oh. It means drowned.
I wanted to say something to make it all right, to get him to keep singing, to get everyone to keep laughing. I wanted to say, “I don’t think about the Titanic every minute. It’s not the most important thing about me. I don’t want to be the reason to stop singing.” But I couldn’t say any of that and the musicale ended and then we ate cake and soon after that, people went home. I suppose the musicale was the surprise that was in store for me.
July 4
In stories it’s the end when somebody comes home. In The Railway Children it ends when the father comes home from prison. In “The Jumblies” they all come back after twenty years away. But in real life things just go on. Now I’m not just myself but a “Titanic Survivor.” This is like being a hero, but heroes are supposed to do brave things and I didn’t do one brave thing. The only reason I am alive is luck, like a game of Patience.
July 5
The musicale was not the surprise!
I would write today as a play except that if I list the dramatis personae it will give away the surprise. So I’ll just write it in the ordinary way. There is a lot to write so I’m not going to worry about perfect penmanship.
At breakfast Mother and Father were jumpy. Then Father had another cup of coffee, which he never does, and then he said he wasn’t going to the bank but was taking the day off. Father never takes a day off, except for his annual holiday, which this wasn’t. Then he said he was going out to fetch something. It was all very mysterious.
Later, I was up in my room making my bed and tidying when I heard him return to the house and then he called for me. When I got to the top of the stairs I saw him standing in the front hall with somebody wearing a large hat. Then the hat tipped back and it was Beryl!
I didn’t run down the stairs. I flew.
Beryl was the surprise!
Mother appeared from the drawing-room and there were introductions and lots of adult talk. I found out that Mother and Father had written to Beryl. (They wrote to Beryl and didn’t tell me? I did not have time to be angry.) First of all they wrote to thank her for taking care of me, and then asking her to please come visit any time she could and, by luck, she got a job on a ship stopping in Halifax and she has a day of shore leave and here she was and they so looked forward to getting to know her better but perhaps Dorothy would like to take her for a walk to the park first.
As soon as we were out the door Beryl started talking a mile a minute. She told me everything that had happened to her since the Carpathia. She told me that she was sorry that we did not get to say goodbye properly. She said that by the time the crew disembarked, the pier, which had been so crowded, was dark and empty. Then the crew was put in a tender to transport them to another pier, and from there onto another ship called the Lapland where they got to have dinner in the first-class dining room.
I remembered from the stops at Cherbourg and Queenstown that a tender is a smaller boat that delivers passengers and cargo to a ship. I was happy that Beryl was still treating me like a true sailor who uses the right words.
She told me that some of the crew had to stay in America in the hospital because they were sick and some of the crew had to stay to talk to important people about what went wrong on the Titanic, and why there were not enough lifeboats, but that she was allowed to sail home on the Lapland to Plymouth and from there she went to stay with her married sister. She said that her sister’s children were like certain first-class passengers she could name and I would know what she meant.
I had forgotten how Beryl talks to me just as though I am her age.
Then she told me something amazing about the two little French boys, Momon and Lolo. Their father had kidnapped them and they were travelling under a false name! The father and the mother did not live together. I don’t know why. They must have had a terrible fight or something. Beryl didn’t know about that part. Anyway, the father kidnapped the boys and he was bringing them to America from France. He said his name was Hoffman but really it was Navratil. After the disaster, the mother of the boys came from France to New York and took them home. I wonder if Momon still thinks it is funny to point to your knee and say “Tête.”
When we settled in on a bench in the park Beryl said that it was strange to go home. “They are always glad to see me, and gladder this time of course, but nothing really changes there.” I said it was like when the Jumblies came home, and she didn’t know about the Jumblies so I said the whole poem. She laughed and nodded and made me say the homecoming bit twice:
And in twenty years they all came back —
In twenty years or more:
And everyone said, “How tall they’ve grown!
For they’ve been to the Lakes, and the Torrible
Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore.”
“The Torrible Zone,” said Beryl. “That’s a good description of what happened to us. We’re Jumblies, you and I, because we’ve been to the Torrible Zone.”
Then she told me that she had a big question to decide. A few years ago she was on a ship where she met an elderly rich couple from a place called Atlanta. They all liked each other. Beryl said, “They were complete dears.” After the Titanic they read about Beryl and they found out how to write to her and they had written to offer her a job. Beryl said that they were offering lots of money, much more than she made as a ship’s stewardess. And the work would be light. No more heavy trays. No more bells.
I’m going to copy what Beryl said next: “It will seem peculiar to say this, after that terrible night, but I fear I cannot do without the sea. A land job, even such a pleasant one as this, would seem tame.”
She said that she cannot tell her sister about the offer because her sister would think she was “completely daft” to turn it down.
Then she asked me my opinion! I had to say that I didn’t know. Secretly, what I was really wondering was if she had a sweetheart and if she was going to get married and have babies or if she was always going to make her own living, with or without the sea.
And then I had a new thought. Had Joe been her sweetheart? And because it was
already so strange, sitting with Beryl on dry land, in Point Pleasant Park, I just asked her straight out. She smiled and said that no, he wasn’t a beau but a true pal all the same and her heart was sore with missing him.
Then we sat in silence for a while and shared Beryl’s hankie because I had left in a flurry without one (and without finishing making my bed or tidying my room either).
That is when it started to be like a play:
Scene: A summer morning. Point Pleasant Park, a bench.
Dramatis Personae: Beryl, a stewardess; Dorothy, a Canadian Girl.
Beryl, takes off shoes: Oof. New shoes and I haven’t worn them in yet.
(Pause. Sound of waves lapping.)
Beryl: When my mind goes quiet I think about it.
(The CG does not have to ask what “it” is.)
Beryl: I go over the events of that night and try to make it come out different. I should have gone back for that Miss Pugh. I should have put you in the lifeboat and gone back. I think and think and I cannot imagine what went wrong, why she and Joe didn’t come above deck, why Miss Pugh wasn’t in one of the boats.
The CG, confused. Beryl must have known that Miss Pugh was delayed because she couldn’t find her shoes or her coat: But …
Beryl: What?
The CG: It was my fault.
Beryl, gives her head a little shake: What?
The CG: The mess. I did it.
Beryl: What mess?
The CG: The mess in the cabin, when you came for us.
Beryl: There wasn’t any mess.
The CG: But, I threw everything around, before I went to sleep.
Beryl, frowns: Oh. Is that what happened? I remember now. When I came into the cabin that evening, while Miss Pugh was at the hymn sing, things were a bit at sixes and sevens, so I tidied up, quiet-like because you were fast asleep. I was a bit surprised, now that I remember, because your cabin was usually quite orderly, not like some I could mention where it looked like a tornado had hit every day.
The CG: You tidied up?
Beryl: Yes, that was part of my routine.
The CG: Everything?
Beryl: Every bit.
The CG: But when you came for us, why was Miss Pugh saying, “Oh dear, where is this and where is that?”
Beryl: Because she was afraid. She was afraid and that made her even more dithery than usual. She kept saying that she couldn’t go above decks until she had taken the curlers out of her hair. I just did not feel I could wait. It was my responsibility to take care of you. But I do ask myself again and again, Should I have gone back?
CURTAIN.
That was when I started to feel dizzy.
There was no mess. Miss Pugh’s coat was right where it should have been and so were her shoes.
There was no mess.
It was about curlers.
It wasn’t my fault.
It wasn’t my fault.
A gull swooped by at that moment, the sun shining off his wings. Then the sky was full of swooping, calling birds. Or maybe they had been there all the time.
July 6
I’ve done it. I’ve almost finished the notebook.
Beryl stayed all day yesterday. We scrambled about on the rocks at the park and then went home for lunch. Mother came with us to the Old Market. Beryl bought a basket. It was a day when everything seemed ordinary and funny. Aunt Hazel came for afternoon tea and Beryl told the story of sitting on the crocodile and another one about a pet armadillo and Aunt Hazel laughed so hard she inhaled tea up her nose.
Then Beryl asked Mother and Aunt Hazel whether she should go and live the easy life in Atlanta and I thought they would say, “Of course,” but Aunt Hazel said, “No!” And Mother said, “A girl should make the most of life while she’s young,” which sounded almost like, “A girl should make the most of life while she’s young.”
Then Aunt Hazel looked at her watch and said, “Leslie will be home from the office by now. I have a good idea. Back in half an hour.” When she returned she had Uncle Leslie and the Tudhope Torpedo. We all piled in and took Beryl down to the docks in style.
When we got there Aunt Hazel asked Beryl if she wasn’t afraid to go on another steamship. “Not a bit,” said Beryl, “I figure that I’m disaster-proof.” Then she reached over and messed my hair. “That goes for Dorothy, too. She’s a true sailor and, besides, what are the chances that she and I are going to be famous twice?”
I think that if Grandfather had been there he would have said that there was something wrong with Beryl’s logic. But he wasn’t, and standing there, on the tar-and-fish smelling, bustling dock, with messy hair, alongside a giant liner, and everybody smiling, it was the most perfect thing to hear.
Epilogue
Dorothy wanted nothing more than to put the Titanic disaster behind her. In some ways she succeeded. She refused all interviews. She did not attend reunions. The friends she made in later life had no idea that she was a Titanic survivor. She did not even tell her own children. It wasn’t actually that hard to bury the past. Interest in the Titanic waned until mid-century. There was not a single non-fiction book published about the Titanic from 1913 until 1955.
For the people of Halifax, the sinking of the Titanic as a disaster story was trumped five years later when a French cargo ship loaded with explosives collided with another ship in Halifax Harbour, resulting in the world’s largest man-made accidental explosion. Dorothy, in her final year at school, was at morning prayers when there was a huge crash and all the windows of the school were blown in. She was slightly injured. The school was turned into a hospital and many of the students spent the next few weeks in relief work. While distributing clothing to the homeless, Dorothy could not help remembering the kind women of the Carpathia. The following spring she wrote, for her school yearbook, a well-researched and heartwarming report on her experiences at the clothing distribution centre.
Following graduation, Dorothy went on to university. During her late teens she realized that, although she had tidied away her Titanic memories, her experiences during that spring of 1912 had left her with a fascination for news. The question of how the newspapers could have published such inaccurate information — “All Saved from Titanic After Collision” — continued to bother her. She left her studies before graduation and took a job with a newspaper, a move that worried her mother and delighted her grandmother. (“Absolutely what we need, women writing the news.”)
In the early days of her career, Dorothy was given assignments like editing recipes for date loaf or reporting on new styles of parasol. But as she proved herself to be an able writer, an energetic researcher and an effective interviewer, she was gradually accepted into the old boy’s club of newspaper reporting and ended up as “Our Woman in Ottawa.” She liked nothing better than debunking a myth or uncovering a scandal.
Beryl and Dorothy maintained a lifelong correspondence. Beryl did not take the job in Atlanta, but continued her career as a stewardess. Amazingly, she experienced a second sea disaster. In May 1915 she was employed on the Cunard liner Lusitania when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank in eighteen minutes. She survived to spend the rest of her working life on the sea.
Owen went to university, supported by Dorothy’s grandparents, and pursued a career in the British civil service. He was always very discreet about his actual job and Dorothy had a theory that he was a spy, but even with her skills at interviewing she never found out for sure. Millie married a young man from the village when he returned from serving in the Great War and they bought a confectionery and newsagent shop in London.
Interest in the Titanic was revived on the publication of a novel, A Night to Remember, in 1955, and even more so when a movie based on the book was made in 1958. Dorothy liked the book well enough (“enjoyable, for a novel,” she pronounced) and she thought the movie was generally “well-researched and accurate,” which were her terms of highest praise. But at the age of ninety-seven — in a wheelchair but still engaged with life — she cou
ld not be persuaded to go and see the blockbuster movie Titanic, even though her great-granddaughter, who had finally found out about her family’s Titanic connection, begged her to. Dorothy declined. “I’ve seen the advertisements with that weedy little actor,” she said, “and I just know that it is going to be utter bilge.” So the great-granddaughter went without her. She did not find Leonardo DiCaprio weedy in the least.
Historical Note
A preschooler stuffs her Barbie doll into a yoghurt container and floats it around a plastic wading pool. The container tips over and begins to fill with water and sink. “Titanic,” shouts the preschooler.
Kids sit around a campfire and sing, with gusto:
It was sad, oh it was sad,
It was sad when the great ship went down
(to the bottom of the … )
Husbands and wives, little children lost their
lives,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
Then the kids get sillier and sing:
Uncles and aunts, little children lost their pants.
An ebay auction advertises “an original piece of coal recovered from RMS Titanic during the 1994 expedition” but warns bidders that “the size of coal may vary.”
The Titanic was not the only major marine disaster of its time. Two years later the Empress of Ireland collided with a freighter in the St. Lawrence River and sank, taking 1012 lives. The Titanic was not unique among luxury ocean liners. Her sister ship, the Olympic, was launched a year before her. Many lives were lost through natural disasters within a decade of the Titanic. Three thousand people died in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Twenty-eight thousand people died in a volcanic eruption in the Caribbean in 1902. But it is the Titanic that everybody knows about. Why?