The Captain's Daughter (42 page)

Ella stood staring at her, trying to take in this shocking news, shaking her head in disbelief.

‘And you’ve known all this for months?’ she said. ‘She never told anyone but you? Don’t believe her. She was mad . . . She said I wasn’t her daughter once before. It can’t be true. She couldn’t steal a baby.’ Ella was running down the stairs now. ‘I don’t believe any of it. Why are you telling me this now?’

‘Because Archie said I should have told you straight away, as soon as I knew. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re
sorry? It’s that woman who should be sorry. How could she steal a baby?’

‘Don’t say that! May always loved you as her own. You were her baby from the moment she had you in her arms. No one claimed you on the
Carpathia
, the rescue ship, so she felt that she had been saved to give you a proper mother.’

‘So who am I then?’ There was a hardness in Ella’s voice and a fierce anger. ‘You tell me who am I. You’ve taken away one identity. So where do I find my real parents?’

‘I don’t know, somewhere within the
Titanic
’s passenger list perhaps. There has to be an answer. We could try to find out.’

‘How can we? Not after all these years . . . who cares about the
Titanic
now? Anyway, it’s not your place. You’re no relation to me!’ Ella snapped.

‘I never was. But you’re like a daughter to me nevertheless. I’m sorry. There was never going to be an easy time to tell you. I don’t know why I’m saying this now but Christmas is a strange time for families with so many memories. We all get so nostalgic for past times,’ Celeste offered, but Ella wasn’t listening.

‘You have a family. I have no one. You’ve just taken away everything I thought was mine. I hope you’re satisfied.’

Archie came in at that moment with the silver tray, silently putting it on the table, looking up to see the two women glaring at each other. ‘Please don’t blame Celeste, Ella. This was my idea. It’s just gone on too long, and I’m glad it’s out in the open.’

‘Well, I’m not. Keep your bloody sherry. I’m going out.’ Ella stormed out and they heard the back door bang.

Celeste sat down, winded. ‘Are you satisfied now, Archie McAdam, forcing me into a corner, confronting her like that? What a mess, an awful mess and all because you wanted answers because of your own insecurity. I hope you know what you’ve done.’

‘Be patient, all shall be well,’ he offered.

‘Don’t preach at me. It doesn’t suit you. The jack is out of the box now and there’s no shoving him back in. I’m off to bed . . . alone. You really can be the honest lodger for once. Good night.’

Celeste tossed and turned for what felt like hours. She ought to go to Ella and comfort her. She ought to put a hot-water bottle in Archie’s cold spare bedroom, she thought. She ought . . . oh to hell with oughts. Tonight she’d think only of herself. She needed to sleep on all this but she was too tired and angry and frightened and uncertain about anything now. It would be a long night.

Ella took the lamp out to the shed. This was her little bolthole, with its paraffin stove and chair and all her unfinished artwork. She felt nothing but a raging disbelief at what she’d just heard, a roar of denials in her ears, and yet she knew it was true. Ellen was the name her mother had called out in the hospital. ‘You’re not my child,’ she’d screamed at the seashore, all those years ago. It had to be true. Secrets and lies that had lain unspoken for years, making a mockery of all they’d done together. All that nonsense about Joe Smith the sailor lost at sea. Her mind was racing with incidents, conversations, half-broken sentences that had passed between them.

It was as if all the stitches of her life were unravelling back into twisted, broken threads. With those few words Celeste had destroyed her history. Who am I? Who was I? Where did I come from? Was there anyone left who even knew?

‘You can’t think about this,’ she screamed out loud. ‘You’re a fake, a nobody, an impostor!’ She found herself flinging her papers across the floor, scattering her tools, a chisel in her hand battering down on the face of a carving she’d been working on, the face in the stone that had somehow become her mother’s face. ‘I hate you all!’ she yelled, hammering into the plaster. Months of work were destroyed in a fury that fuelled itself until she stood exhausted, weeping, looking round at the devastation she’d wreaked. ‘I’m not staying here . . .’

‘Oh yes you are, young lady. You’ll clear up this mess. All this good work destroyed in a tantrum.’ Uncle Selwyn walked in and focused his lamp over the chaos. ‘What a bloody waste . . . Feel good, do you?’

‘Go away!’ she snapped.

‘So you know the truth and you’re angry. Quite right too . . . Everyone holding out on you . . . So you’re not who you thought you were?’

‘You don’t understand, how could you?’ Ella was feeling small and stupid now.

‘Don’t you tell me what I can or can’t understand. I thought I was a gentleman and a lawyer, a fine upstanding man of the city, but when I stood on that trench ladder to go over the top, I found I was just another man: a beast, a killer, an unthinking automaton leading men into carnage, seeing them blown to shreds of bone and sinew. I am a man who bayoneted strangers in a fury of rage. The man who came back from no man’s land to roll call was not the man who went over the top. I’ve spent years trying to find out who I am and more besides.

‘So you were given life, given a home and love by a stranger? Did you ever consider her a stranger? Didn’t May give you her last penny? She may not have been your blood mother but don’t you dare say she didn’t care for you . . . You’ve had a shock, a terrible shock, and it’s changed a lot of things. You can’t unlearn this knowledge. Sure, it’s a reason to feel sorry for yourself, a reason to sulk and take it out on all of us for what we withheld. Or, Ella – and this is the hard bit – you can get on with what you are good at, knowing someone somewhere gave you a wonderful gift: the observing eye and hands of an artist.’ Selwyn paced up and down, his eyes fixed on her. ‘While you work with these gifts, they live on. Destroy them and they die too. Is that what you want?

Ella had never heard Selwyn make such a long speech.

‘But I want to know who I am. How can I not know who I am?’

Selwyn shrugged. ‘Fair enough but not tonight. There’s no one who can tell you all that on Boxing Day, now is there? It’s cold out here. Everyone’s gone to bed. I’ll make you some cocoa.’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘Thanks, I’ll do it myself. You always scald the milk and I hate the skin.’ She looked up, seeing him holding out his hands.

‘We were never related but you’ve always been special to me, and May too. Time for bed . . . Things will look better in the morning for all of us.’

They picked their way down the frozen path by torchlight. Ella was feeling foolish, exhausted and empty. Selwyn was right. Finding who she really was would have to wait for another day. Yet shocked as she was, there was a tiny bit of her that had always known she was different in some way, that when she looked at her mother she’d wondered how she could have once belonged inside her body. It had made her feel so guilty and she’d learned to ignore that niggle in her head. Now she knew the truth and felt an odd sense of vindication.

She stopped to stare up at the winter sky and the moon.
Who am I? Where will I find out? Is there someone somewhere in the world who knows about me?

Italy

Maria’s mother was dressed in black from head to toe as she examined the baby shoe but her eyes were filmed over. ‘I can’t see. It is a pretty shoe but, I don’t know, every baby has shoes like this. The lace is fine but do not pin your hopes on such things.’

‘But Maria made such good lace,’ Angelo argued. Her words were giving him no comfort.

‘So do most of the girls in Anghiari and Sansepolcro. We have the Marcelli sisters to thank for that and their little
scuola di merletto.
Lace may only be thread and pins, but we’ve made so many beautiful pictures with it over the years: stars, animals, flowers, snowflakes. I remember how Maria used to sit with me at my cushion and watch how it was made. Now she is taken from us. It was God’s will.’

This was not what he wanted to hear. ‘I thought you would know these things,’ he said, shoving his offering back into his pocket, embarrassed. It was never going to be an easy meeting. ‘I wish we had not given her the ticket,’ he sighed.

‘You wouldn’t have stopped her. She wanted to join you. For months she spent her spare hours making lace for the baby’s clothes, and collars and cuffs, extra work that she could sell. Look, you can see the smile on her face in the picture, and the fine lace of Alessia’s gown. She was so proud of her work, and the little one so dark like you.’

Angelo knew every grain of that precious photograph by now but he stared at it again as Maria’s father filled his glass with rough wine. ‘Get that down your throat, son. We bear you no grudge. You did not sink that ship. It was too big for the ocean and it swallowed it. She was on the wrong vessel.’

Angelo cried, ‘But it’s hard to live with this in my heart.’

‘Then let it rest and live your life with your new family. We wish you all well. The son wants to be a priest? I should like to meet such a young man. But he is in America; that is good, for here he would be joining the young Blackshirts. Things are different here under Il Duce. Children are to be taught only what they want them to hear. The children of officials are pampered in leather and lace while others starve. It is not easy to speak your mind in the village in case someone complains to the mayor. They say it will be good for all of us to follow Il Duce. I think it’s better to live free where you are.’

Angelo hugged them both. He knew he’d never see them again. As he walked through the village, people stared, thinking him a stranger. He felt like one. He smiled and waved but they went inside and shut the door to him. How quiet it was compared to the bustle of New York streets, the smell of garlic and frying onions, the barking of voices in the cafés and on the sidewalks selling fruit, the honking of the motors impatient to be on their way. New York was home now.

He made his way to a ridge high over the village where he could look down on the rooftops and across to the hills in the distance. It was here he’d kissed Maria for the first time, a lifetime ago. Now it was chilly, grey and misty, not green like in the spring, with new leaves and blossom and the scent of pine. Everything had its season, he sighed. Maria would always be springtime and he was now in the fall of his life. It was time to go home.

May 1928

Ella hung over the railings of the cross-channel ferry, breathing in the sharp air with relish. From Birmingham New Street to London, then to Dover and onwards to France – here was freedom at long last, after months of bickering and frustration with the Foresters. She knew she’d been a pain but what did they expect after holding out on all those secrets for months?

It was the archdeacon’s wife who had come to the rescue, asking if Ella would be prepared to assist one of her friends in Paris as a mother’s help for the summer.

Hazel had been green with envy as she packed her new passport, tickets and currency, feeling so grown up to be travelling alone; well, almost. Celeste had insisted she tagged on to a party of art students from Lichfield who were doing a tour of the museums. Little did they know she’d thrown them off at Waterloo.

This was her adventure, her chance to live a grown-up life without any interference from her guardians. She was being mean to them, she knew. Selwyn had bought her a beautiful leather case and Celeste had taken her into Birmingham for some summer clothes. Archie had found her some maps of Paris. ‘You must see Rodin’s work. I promise it won’t disappoint.’ As if she didn’t know that.

They were nervous for her but the Reverend Mr Burgess was one of the chaplains at St George’s Anglican Church on the Rue Auguste Vaquerie. She was to be in charge of his two little girls, and there was to be a new baby soon. There would be time off to go to art classes and she had no compunction now in asking the
Titanic
Relief Fund for a grant to attend as part of her education.

There had been a battle over this at first until Archie explained that no matter who she was, she had still suffered a great loss on the
Titanic
, as much as May. Poor Selwyn had gone to the trouble to seek out the original passenger list from the White Star Line, but she wasn’t ready to look at it. It would mean confessing to the mistake May had made, besmirching her memory and making her own identity a false one. Better to stay Ellen Smith for the time being. She didn’t want any more complications.

The seagulls screeched overhead and Ella’s spirit lifted as she saw the French coast coming into view. No more bad memories, no more small-town gossip, she was on her way to a new country and new people, who knew nothing of her sadness. She couldn’t wait for this new life to begin.

Postcards from Paris, 1928