Titanic Ashes (2 page)

EVELYN LOOKS ACROSS AT
Father, at his troubled
moustache and chalky skin. The joke she attempted was
one of Basil’s. Had it worked, had Father’s eyes not been
glassy and preoccupied, had his head not bobbed mechanically back toward his dinner, she would have told him the
source. She wants to talk about Basil, feels the subject
ought to bring him back to himself. He should be glad. His
daughter is stepping out with a man who, like his own
younger self, is a shipping agent; who, also like himself,
will be the likely inheritor of chairmanships and directorships. He couldn’t wish for greater proof of her pride in
him, could he?

Evelyn’s mother tries so hard to reassure him of her
feelings and her respect. But there is so little she can do
to prove this that would be in any way dynamic enough to
capture his attention. She can’t remarry Father without
divorcing him first. But his daughters can make it quite
clear they think their mother chose well if they make similar choices themselves. In marrying Basil Sanderson,
Evelyn will quite literally be bringing the White Star Line
back into the family.

But it might be just as well to leave the subject for
tonight. Basil—Shipping—Father—
Titanic
. It’s all too
close. She saw the Grimsdens a few minutes ago. Ever
since, she has felt breathless and unsteady. It’s as though
she is leading poor Father along a high wire, a silent
crowd beneath watching for the one slip that will bring
them hurtling to disaster. If she mentioned Basil, Father
would think not of his own career, but of one terrible
night. He would think of Basil not as a shipping agent, or
director, or son of his own colleague and friend, but as a
war hero. He might focus on that term
hero
, and its opposite, a painful word, used over and over to describe
himself. Tonight, it seems, all words are laying traps.

“That must be one of Basil’s, ” says Father unexpectedly, just as Evelyn thought he had drifted off. There is a
vague, tired smile on his face. He seems like a man who
has floated from the earth and is trying to find his way
back through layers of haze and mist.

“Yes, Father.”

“And how is he?”

“Fine, Father, in fine form.”

Father gives another faraway smile and his head nods
once more toward his plate.

The
Titanic
is with them, and has been haunting
Evelyn even before she was conscious of the Grimsdens’
presence. She thought at first it was because she was with
her father in this leafy, extravagant restaurant, breezy and
luxurious in the way the great ocean liners must have
been before the war. A band swirled through popular
tunes, some modern, and some—like “Daisy, Daisy, ” which
greeted her entrance—reaching back to that bygone era
for which the older patrons no doubt yearn. The place
oozes with the unapologetic pre-war opulence that has
long since gone underground, except in places like this.
Everything these days is sleek, clear lines. Rampant
foliage, and ornate mirrors, and lights are bound to haul
one back to an earlier time.

Although Father took that fateful voyage alone, it
never feels that way. And the experience—pieced together
through fragments of first-hand accounts, imagination
and daydreams, as well as from the constant heightened
empathy she feels with her father—have been especially
strong since she stepped into the Palm Room on her
father’s arm. She sensed the
Titanic
in a chill around her
shoulders, in objects just beyond her field of vision, the
curl of a moustache or the wave of a fan. She heard it in
the discordant swell of conversation, a ridge of shrillness
over the clatter and grumble, a gooselike panic of moving
sound. She felt impending catastrophe in it all. More than
anything she felt the memory in her father’s habitual nerv
ousness and preoccupation. Here in the Ritz he was
surrounded by people who likely knew who he was,
people who had made up their minds about him one way
or the other.

It wasn’t surprising, thought Evelyn, that the memory
seems her own. They had all lived the
Titanic
experience.
From the agonizing hours when the ship was swallowed
by the ocean, to news—certain reliable news—that Father
was saved, through the headlines and articles, artist renditions, some accurate, some wildly at odds with known
facts, to the seemingly endless enquiries. They all heard
the shrieks of terror and pain, saw the glassy black waters,
heard the mighty yawn of the ship as it buckled and sank.
They all lived through a different kind of horror at the
names Father was called— “loathsome coward, ” “J. Brute
Ismay”—the comparisons between Father and the heroic
Captain Smith who went down with the vessel, and the
astonishing tidbits—the Montana town called Ismay
which debated changing its name to “something less ignominious”—terrifying proof that the idea Father was a traitor had become accepted by all of society.

All this was close enough to her most of the time, was
especially vivid tonight. But it was only when she was
obliged to shift her seat slightly to get a better view of the
band that she knew why the memory had come upon her
with such visceral power. Her father, knowing she loved
music, encouraged her with a gesture and a brave but
false smile as he looked at the musicians and settled back
in his chair. Not for the first time this evening she had the
distinct impression that what he really wanted was to be
left alone with his thoughts. So Evelyn played along,
adjusted her position so she could see beyond the splaying leaves of the palm.

A hot, prickling sensation crept up her neck as she
listened to the swish of the light jazzy number. It was the
bald head of a man on the other side of the plant that
claimed her attention first, a coincidental similarity she
thought initially—the brown canine eyes, the jowly look
with the preoccupied scowl, hardly uncommon in a man
of his age. It explained the image that had evoked the
Titanic
and she rested more easily for a moment. But then
she leaned to the left, pressing her palm into the table rim
for balance, and saw both his wife and daughter, along
with a young man unknown to her. The narrow, upward
slanted eyes of the older woman, and her red Celtic hair,
were unmistakable. It
was
the Grimsdens. Although she
had not seen the Grimsden daughter since she was a
spindly child, more than a dozen years ago, she knew the
one sitting there, white skin slightly mottled with red, as
though from sitting too close to a fireplace, was Miranda,
now grown up.

Miranda Grimsden was a name that could conjure
demons as effectively as the word
Titanic
. Once, a long
time ago, Evelyn had marshaled her own arsenal of words
to keep Miranda Grimsden’s spell at bay. The newspapers
and the enquiries were men’s stuff. Father, his solicitors,
and his friends would deal with that. Miranda Grimsden’s
foul little mouth was Evelyn’s territory. She gathered all
the insults she knew from the schoolroom and the hockey
field, garnished them with a few choice phrases picked up
second-hand from the gardener’s son and from surreptitious reading of some books and magazines on the
library’s highest shelf. These she had bolstered with words
she made up, guttural sounds with vile imagined meanings. In the end, it was not enough; she had never been
given the chance to hurl them at Miranda Grimsden.

The lessons of the schoolroom were no doubt right, up
to a point. Revenge may feel sour once it is achieved. But
being denied vengeance is far worse. It eats you up from
inside. In the years after the
Titanic
, Evelyn had been
powerless to vent her anger at the obnoxious little girl
who had so effectively invaded the inner life of her family.
She had been left with no redress.

As she glimpsed the young woman Miranda Grimsden
had become, the old anger smoldered afresh. She could
remember so precisely the envelope addressed to her
father at his home address, with the carefully underlined
phrase, “
personel and confidentional
.” Similarly underscored in the missive itself were the little girl’s killing
words. “
Although I realize I am young and I have no doubt
you will think me impertinant to say so, I think that you are
a
coward
and a
thoughtliss
person to have left those poor
women and children on the ship while you
sneaked
off to
save your own
misrable
life
.”

It surprises and shocks Evelyn that she can still remember it all word for word, can even conjure the spelling errors
and the style of the hand, leaning slightly to the right,
cramped and deliberate in the loops, the letters joined self-consciously. She remembers, too, the way the thick, bonded
paper had lain upon the table like a felled dove after her
father stood, without a word, noiselessly eased back his
chair, and walked away from the breakfast table.

ONLY SIX MONTHS BEFORE
, the whole Ismay
family had made rather a fuss of the girl. The Grimsdens,
mutual acquaintances of the Foresters, had been guests at
Sunday lunch at their house in Mossley Hill. When the
Foresters sent word that one of their party was sick, it had
been too late to postpone, and there had been an uncomfortable half hour or so when Mother had been obliged to
make awkward small talk with Mrs. Grimsden, under the
watchful gazes of the Grimsden daughter and the three
Ismay children. The unnatural focus on the back and forth
rally of polite trivia had mimicked the atmosphere of a
tennis match. The spectators’ gazes silently followed the
bounce of enquiries and answers. Father had fired a few
work-related questions at Mr. Grimsden who answered
everything with sardonic monosyllables and a cough, as
though he would rather be asked nothing at all. He was
Manchester born and bred, and his business was scrap. He
rolled the r of the word
scrrrrap
in the way Evelyn had
heard Shakespearean actors do.

Mother and Mrs. Grimsden had talked about the
weather, always in surprised and delighted agreement, as
though it were a revelation known only to the two of them
that scattered showers had rather marred a crisp, sunny
afternoon the day before yesterday. Mrs. Grimsden talked
much more than her husband, but she was similar in the
sense that those small, dark eyes seemed to be holding
something back.

The symmetry between the two families was obvious,
and the likely reason the Foresters advanced the meeting.
Father and Mr. Grimsden were both northern businessmen
and both had homes in Liverpool, Mr. Grimsden, apparently, because he was exporting
scrrrrap
these days. They
were both married to women from somewhere in the
Americas, Mother from New York, Mrs. Grimsden from
the Nova Scotian capital of Halifax. Evelyn wondered
whether this odd similarity caused her reserve, whether
Mrs. Grimsden feared the comparison. Her own father
had been a shipbuilder too, but she became particularly
vague and distant when questions were asked.

“Yes, indeed!” she would reply to Mother in her lilting
accent, an American-softened version of Scots. Her expansive smile would withdraw quite unexpectedly and she
would gaze off into some middle distance beyond the
coffee table. Her poise seemed at once real and exaggerated; Evelyn suspected that her sister Margaret and she
would have fun imitating her in private afterwards.

The atmosphere remained brittle, and the silences
between words rather intense, until Margaret, bounding
off her chair with a sigh, announced she would take
Miranda up to the nursery to play with George’s train set.
Evelyn ran quickly to join them, stopping briefly at the
door to ask Mother if she had her permission. Mother
nodded gratefully, and as the three girls flitted out of the
room, followed by George who was grumbling that no one
had asked his permission, the house seemed to relax.
Margaret and Evelyn strung bows in Miranda’s hair and
spun tales for her of daring rescues at sea, encounters
with polar bears and sea monsters. The Grimsdens, at
least mother and daughter, were planning a summer in
New York and would likely travel on one of Father’s liners.

Later, during lunch, conversation flowed more easily
and there had been the palpable sense of excitement
about the upcoming voyage, communicated like a wave
from the returning children and taken up by the adults
who already seemed more relaxed in each other’s
company. Mr. Grimsden, who was to stay in Liverpool,
relaxed into a different person, slipping fingers into his
waistcoat pocket in a rather comical way that Margaret
and Evelyn made fun of later and expounding on the
necessity of more open trade with the Americas. When he
looked at Father now, his dark eyes flickering, Evelyn realized his quietness up to this point had been a form of
shyness. He seemed almost boyish as he leaned back in his
chair and emphasized a point with a sniff and watched
with quiet trepidation to see whether Father would agree.
And Father could find a way of sounding like he was
agreeing even when an analysis of his words might reveal
that he had turned a subtle loop, moving from empathy
and affirmation to quiet contradiction.

As it happened, Margaret and Evelyn did not have fun
imitating Mrs. Grimsden in the weeks that followed,
although they did roll their r’s when they mentioned the
word
scrap
. The friendly softening toward the Grimsdens
had created a quiet sense of loyalty, and the feeling the
visit left them all with was wholesome and good.

WHEN MIRANDA GRIMSDEN
’
S LETTER
appeared that September morning, the
Titanic
disaster had
been five months in the past. A sense hung over the family
that things might never be the same again, but that the
duty of one and all was to simulate life as it had once
been. An irresistible image emerged from a dream and
returned to Evelyn over and over: Mother, Margaret,
Evelyn herself and even George scrambling with buckets
and spoons trying to scoop water out of a rickety lifeboat.
This was their home life as Father moved from being out
of reach and silent, to twitchy and distracted most of the
time, to finally buckling down to work, and settling into a
rhythm the whole family understood.