The Memory of Eva Ryker (27 page)

The minute hand of Waterloo Station's big clock reached the hour mark and the guard waved his green flag. With a shrill whistle the locomotive hauled the White Star boat train away from Platform twelve.

By eleven o'clock the train began its gradual downgrade from Basingstoke's Plateau toward the coast of Eastleigh. Sticking her head out the window, Eva watched smoke from the locomotive settle in a black shroud over beeches and elms flitting past the train like shadowy figures painted on a rotating drum.

“Eva! Get back inside.”

She frowned and turned back to the window. Somehow she felt funny when Jason and her mother were together. She wasn't sure why, but …

Eva forgot the nagging feeling as she pointed at the sign marked
TERMINUS STATION.
“We're there!”

Jason's camera exposed footage as the train glided over Canute Road and through the ugly tangle of telephone poles, cranes, rail tracks, boxcars, and low sheds fringing the Southampton dock.

The boat train puffed to a final stop by a platform built alongside the quay. Eva ogled the four yellow and black smokestacks jutting head and shoulders above the clutter of the port.

“That's it! There's the
Titanic
!” She bolted for the door, dashing from the train toward the dock.

Suddenly Eva stopped, her head craned back. Her long black hair whipped in the cold wind as her mouth sagged open.

A black, rivet-studded steel cliff rose seventy-five feet up to the bow, on which gold letters spelled
TITANIC.
High above, the Stars and Stripes fluttered on the foremast.

She only half felt Jason's hand on her shoulder. “Quite a sight,” he said quietly.

Eva impatiently posed with her mother for Jason's camera, then broke away. Running inside the White Star shed, she darted up a flight of steps, dodging startled couples on the first-class gangway, then dashed into the ship, past the purser's office.

She roved through the endless decks of the ship, marching down the grand staircase and snooping along the labyrinthine corridors surrounding the first-class staterooms.

The random prowling eventually brought her up to the Boat Deck. She peeked under the railing, watching men load crates and trunks from the dock up to the forecastle hold by means of electric cranes.

A burly man in an expensive Simpson Crawford suit shook his fists theatrically as a crate tottered on a crane high above his head.

Jabbing a thumb and forefinger in her mouth, she emitted a window-shattering whistle. “Hey! J.H.!”

He reconnoitered over his shoulder and caught sight of her waving hands. With an impatient wave at the rattling cranes he clambered up a ladder to join her.

“Howdy, Eva! Does your mother know where you are?”

She shrugged, her eyes lowered.

“I thought so.” He took her hand, marching along the deck. “We'd better find her before she tans your ass. Not to mention mine.”

Eva grinned at Martin's language. “What's in the box, J.H.?”

“Huh?” He barely swallowed his surprise.

“Back there on the dock.”

“Oh, you mean the crate!” He pressed a finger to his lips in the gesture of a conspirator. “Hush, hush. Some things your father wants delivered to New York.” Martin sighed in mock weariness. “Your daddy's a cruel taskmaster, Eva.”

After considerable trial and error they reached their destination. Eva warmed up her innocent and woebegone expression as she spotted her mother standing by the purser's door.

“There you are! What have you to say for yourself?”

“Sorry.” Eva strived for the proper combination. Contrite, yet winsome.

Clair stepped into the purser's office, thanking Hugh McElroy and Martin, then led Eva to the elevator.

“Where're Jason and Lisa?” Eva asked, pushing the call button.

She held her daughter's hand as they stepped aboard. “We're meeting them now.”

Five minutes short of noon the deep, gut-shaking horn of the
Titanic
boomed through the corridors of the liner, echoed into the bright April air, and finally bounced into silence between the sheds of Southampton dock.

Lifting her eyes from the Boat Deck up to the four thrusting smokestacks, Eva felt a tense flutter in her stomach.

Crowds lined the port railing, blocking her view. She tugged Jason Eddington's trouser leg.

“Can't see?” He smiled, bending down. “Hop on.”

Sitting atop his shoulders, Eva was hoisted high above the crowd. She clung to his collar as he handled the Pathé.

Suddenly a pack of men—crew members, to judge from their clothes and tattered baggage slung over their shoulders—ran along the quay, waving and yelling desperately as the last gangway was being lowered.

Jason pointed them out to Eva, Clair, and his wife. “Poor devils! Look, the officer on shore's not letting them on! Serves them right for being late.” He laughed grimly. “I wouldn't like to be in their shoes.”

As the last gangway was hauled ashore, Eva felt a tremor run up from the decks as the
Titanic
's great engines turned over. Cheering floated up from the dock; a cheer returned by those on board.

Inch by inch the chasm between the ship and the quay widened as tugs heaved at the hull.

Two gigantic screws, with a combined weight of seventy-six tons, churned the water behind the
Titanic
into a swirling indigo whirlpool.

The giant liner crept away with agonizing slowness, under the anxious attendance of the tugs, and crawled toward the entrance of the dock.

The maiden voyage had begun.

24

As the
Titanic
swept across the Channel toward Cherbourg, Eva peeked through the windows of the Promenade Deck, watching St. Catherine's Head sink behind the stern like a fallen soufflé.

The long afternoon was whittled away playing shuffle-board with Jason and Lisa, followed by a visit with her mother to Maud Slocombe's Turkish bath down on G Deck. As the orange sun lowered itself into the sea, Eva curled up in a wicker chair on the Ryker suite's private promenade and studied the whitecaps floating lazily by.

She thought of the Eddingtons and small lines of concern deepened in her brow. A memory darted through her mind, a vision from early in the day, when Martin was introduced to Jason and Lisa in the Cafe Parisien. J.H.'s smile was cordial as he shook Jason's hand, but, for a fraction of a second, his face had gone slack and his eyes filmed over in an inward-looking glaze. The moment was gone in an instant, then everyone settled back to polite parlor chatter. But Eva still noticed a slight tightening around Martin's eyes that wouldn't go away.

On Thursday afternoon, April eleventh, the
Titanic
anchored at Queenstown Harbor, two miles off the Irish coast.

Along with the two tenders,
Ireland
and
America
, a fleet of bumboats nestled up against the liner's hull, their owners propping up a jury-rigged market on the Promenade Decks, selling Irish linen and lace.

Eva peered down at the steerage passengers coming into the ship from one of the tenders. Girls in rough dresses and young men in soiled shirts and heavy shoes gaped up at the liner. Some cast lingering glances back at the shore. They looked sad, she thought. And a little scared.

She raised her head to watch sea gulls swoop over the stern. Galley scraps spit out of the ship's waste pipes and the birds raucously squabbled among themselves over the floating potato peelings and wilted lettuce.

Roaring over the water, the
Titanic's
horn shooed away the tenders and bumboats. Propellers thrashing a white trail, she arched a graceful quarter circle, then steamed westward.

The great liner proudly cruised between four to five miles off the coast of Ireland. Skirting the Sovereign Islets, laden with herons and terns. Passing the jagged cliffs of Court-macsherry Bay, the Stags, Toe Head and Kedge Island.

Hunched in a deckchair on the Promenade Deck, Eva saw two familiar figures sit together about five chairs away. She was about to wave, but instead pulled her coat high over her face. Eva felt very smug in her role of eavesdropper. Jason and her mother would never spot her!

“Beautiful, isn't it?” Clair Ryker calmly watched the distant gray cliffs. “A pity Lisa couldn't come.”

“She's very sensitive to cold,” Jason said stiffly. “Probably better off in the library.”

Eva peeked over the edge of her collar. Her mother still had her eyes trained on the sea.

“I'm sorry not to invite you to our suite, but our maid is a frightful gossip and so are the stewards. You understand?”

Silence. Jason shifted toward Clair but didn't meet her eyes. “I wouldn't want to cause you any trouble, Mrs. Ryker. I never had anything like that in mind.”

Clair's laugh was short and amused. “Oh, my dear Jason, you're a prize; you really are! At the train station, when you found out who I was, I saw the way you looked at me.”

An awkward pause. A puzzled frown slowly replaced Eva's smile.

“You're the wife of a famous man, Mrs. Ryker. Naturally I was surprised.”

“Don't be tiresome, my dear. I'll tell you what you thought. ‘Clair Ryker?' Why I can hear the penny papers whispering this very minute! Of course, Willie has paid millions wallpapering over my indiscretions, but still everyone seems to know the same tired stories. There's Clair Ryker, child-stealer. Apparently my preference for the continent is depriving Eva of her American birthright. A ‘loose environment,' it's called. As opposed to a tight one.

“Then we have Clair Ryker, nymphomaniac. The carnal chaser for my husband's business deals.” Smiling, she raised an eyebrow. “You've heard that one, no doubt.”

Sweat beaded on Jason Eddington's forehead as he inspected the horizon. Far in the distance sat a crumbly signal tower planted on a headland, a remnant of the Napoleonic Wars. “I suppose so.”

Clair put her hand on his. “Jason, I want you to look at me. Do I look like that sort of woman?”

Eva watched his face over her mother's shoulder. At first he blushed, then his lips flattened. “You sure as hell do, Mrs. Ryker.”

For a second Eva thought her mother was going to hit him. Then she laughed, loudly and vulgarly. “Jason, you're an honest man! There're damn few of them left!” Her laughter died as quickly as it began. “I just wonder if you're honest enough.”

“I don't understand.”

Clair's eyelids eased shut. “You see, I'm right. A long row to hoe, Jason.”

Her fingers ran gently down his arm as she stood. “Give my regards to Lisa.”

“Hey!” he called, but she didn't look back. Fists jammed in his pants pockets, he brushed, unseeing, past Eva.

Amber sunlight splashed across the Rykers' private promenade, slanting long railing shadows across the deck.

Eva stared out at the ocean, eyes blinking at the sun. The Fastnet Tower stuck up feebly, dwarfed by the distance. Cape Clear Island jutted up to the north, a green quilt of tidy farm plots. She glimpsed the silhouette of Mizen Head and Dursey Island, and—so far away she thought she was imagining it—a phantom vision of the Skellig Peaks and the Kerry Mountains.

John McFarland, the steward for the Eddingtons, had pointed out the landmarks as the last sight of shore until the
Titanic
reached the coast of Nova Scotia. Eva felt a sorrow she couldn't explain as she watched the hazy green mountains slip from her grasp.

A knock on the parlor door distracted her thoughts. “Who's there, Georgia?” she called over her shoulder.

“Just J.H.”

Eva hurried into the sitting room at the sound of his voice. Dressed for dinner, he squatted down and pecked her cheek. “Hey, kid. Get ready. We're keeping the chef waiting.”

As Eva ran to her room, she heard Martin chatting with Georgia Ferrell. “Where's Clair?”

“Oh, off somewhere.” Her voice was elaborately casual. “She said she'd meet you and Eva in the dining room.”

Eva buttoned her pink dress and listened with one ear.

“Do you know what I spotted on B Deck?” J.H. was sour with disgust. “The cabin right next to the Eddingtons? Niggers! In first class. A couple of coons! Named Klein, if you can believe it.”

On Friday the twelfth the
Titanic
skimmed like a flat rock on a mill pond, cutting through the placid Atlantic at twenty-one knots. The ship's passage through fresh morning swells stirred Eva awake.

Slowly rising to her knees, she blinked sleepily at the gunmetal sea, then padded out on deck and looked down sixty feet to the racing, foaming waterline. The railing beneath her hand trembled as the engines drove the
Titanic
faster than ever before. She grinned and darted back for her clothes. It looked like a beautiful day.

The sea breeze blowing through the corridors swept away early morning drowsiness as Eva ran up the grand staircase to the Boat Deck's gymnasium. Children were usually allowed only from one until three, but Eva, seeing the gym was vacant, aimed her mournful eyes at instructor T. W. McCawley, who finally gave in. She rode the electric horse and camel, paddled an exerciser cycle, and rowed stationary oars until blood pounded in her head.

Barely halting to catch her breath, she ran below decks, stopping at the sight of Lisa Eddington in the tailor's shop. Curiosity drew her inside.

“Hi, Eva.” Lisa paid off the clerk and took a small gift-wrapped box. “You're up early.”

Eva pointed at the package as they headed for the door. “What's that?”

“A gift.”

“For whom?”

Her lips puckered in a look of censure. “It's for Mr. Martin, Eva.”

“But what is it?”

Lisa glanced at the clerk behind the counter. “It's a knife. A pocket knife.”

Her nose wrinkled. “What's he need a knife for?”

“You never know when it might come in handy.” Lisa took her by the hand. “Come on. We'll be late for breakfast.”