The Titanic Enigma (19 page)

*

‘A champagne haze is a wonderful thing,’ Fortescue thought as he glided slowly across the polished wooden floor of the Verandah Café. The band
were still playing, a quiet, slow number dominated by a subdued piano motif, a low trombone and a single viola. He was alone with Frieda. The other guests had trickled away, Marcus, the last to go,
his face filled with pleasure, eyes bright, proud and humbled at the same time. Fortescue had decided that Marcus was a jolly decent sort and had told him so at least twice a short while before the
young man had retreated across the room swaying slightly.

Then suddenly the music was over, and the musicians were standing up and beginning to pack away their instruments. Frieda went over to thank them warmly and to give each a sovereign.
Fortescue saw the bandmaster bow slightly and smile, then she was back in his arms even though there was no music playing.

After the silence fell the room seemed a little forlorn. The corridors back to the First Class cabins and suites were quiet, the lights dimmed. Frieda and Marcus had small suites on
B-Deck. Fortescue stood at the door to Frieda’s and looked into her eyes. In that moment, he believed he was the happiest he had ever been in his life. All the anxieties that had hung over
him seemed now to be of little importance. The coming war, if such a monstrous thing should happen, seemed a distant shadow. His work he loved, but at this moment he could no more focus on that
than walk to the moon, so why bother? ‘Float,’ he told himself, ‘just float.’ And then Frieda was opening the door and pulling him into the room.

Her lips tasted of candyfloss. It was the most wonderful flavour in the universe and he knew something of the universe.

Frieda’s hands were on his face, her tongue searching inside his mouth. He felt her narrow waist under his palms and she leaned into him provocatively, the swell of her breasts
against his shirt.

They seemed to melt, to merge together as if they were a single being. He was between her naked thighs, her hand reaching down, pulling him out of his dinner-suit trousers, ripping
buttons and cloth. Then she had him in her hand and he had never felt so aroused in his life. Her warmth hit him, and the scent of her. He thought he would come straight away, but he managed to
rein himself in and to move inside her, hearing her moan in his ear, urging him on. She wanted it quickly and he let himself go.

The merest tease of orange had appeared above the eastern horizon. Fortescue walked along the poop deck towards the stern. He could hear the churning of water as it
slewed through the propellers, and with it a deeper sound – the throb of the massive engines producing the 50, 000 horsepower that propelled the ship through the ocean.

There was a bite to the air, a predawn chill and something extra, the first tendrils of cold from the icefields to the north. But wrapped up in a thick greatcoat over his dinner
suit, a woollen scarf about his neck and good-quality leather gloves, Fortescue was feeling warm.

He had left Frieda in her room, her blonde curls decorous on her pillow, shadow and light cast across her face as she slept. She looked utterly exquisite, an angel in
repose.

Alone now in the predawn, his mind was awash, a clash of intellect and emotion he had never felt before. Less than a week ago he had been in Manchester with Rutherford. The meeting
with the prime minister lay behind him, the plans set in motion, his destiny decided for him by the great men – Asquith, Churchill, American politicians. Now, he was at sea . . . all at sea!
He was in love, he was sure of that. But at the same time he was on fire . . .
In love and on fire, what a combination
,

he mused. His mind was racing: formulae, Frieda’s thighs, numbers, her breasts, powers of ten, the power of her scent, exponentials and flawless skin. It was
intoxicating.

He took a deep breath. The salt and the oxygen, the spray of the ocean foam and he was imbued with – what would he call it – power? Yes, power; a strange power . . . It
made him believe there was little he could not do.

Sitting down, he withdrew his pen and sheets of headed notepaper, glanced for a moment at the water as it was sucked down by the ship’s giant propellers, churned and tossed
around, and he started to write his formulae, emptying his mind.

The symbols flowed, a torrent of numbers, letters, expressions. Swept up in the commotion of mathematics, he could barely breathe. He paused, looked at what he had written and felt a
wave of excitement. ‘This is special,’ he whispered, the sound caught in the air. ‘This is really special.’ He began to cover page after page until he felt
drained.

He heard a shuffling sound from behind him and turned to see the young kid, Billy O’Donnell.

‘Well, hello there,’ Fortescue said, tucking his papers into his jacket pocket. ‘What are you doing up so early?’ He looked at his fob watch.
‘It’s barely six o’clock.’

‘Can’t sleep,’ Billy replied. ‘I’m sharing a bunk with another kid. Three families in the room and the men all snore like hogs.’

Fortescue laughed, but then saw Billy’s serious expression and nodded. ‘Can’t be very nice.’

‘So what brings you here, Mr Wickins?’

‘I couldn’t sleep either, Billy. Wanted to get some air. What’s the book?’ He noticed a tatty volume under Billy’s arm; the cover was half off and the
front scuffed and oil-streaked.

‘I was tellin’ you about me maths. This is me prized possession. ’ He lifted up the book. ‘I’ve read other maths books in the library but this is me
favourite; I take it with me everywhere I go.’

‘May I?’

It was a copy of Euclid’s
Elements
. Fortescue opened the front cover and glanced through the book that was so familiar to him from his own teenage years. The margins
were covered with untidy scrawl, question marks, comments and calculations. ‘You understand any of this?’ he asked.

The boy looked affronted. ‘Yes!’

‘Who wrote in it? Your schoolteacher?’

Billy laughed. It was the first time Fortescue had seen him produce more than a brief smile. He had three teeth missing. ‘Told you yesterday, ain’t been to school for a
long time. It’s my writing. I have lots of questions, see.’

Fortescue turned back to the book and read a comment. ‘This Euclid fella knows a thing or two.’ He smiled and turned the page. ‘Don’t get this . . . oh, yes,
right . . . correspondences.’ Fortescue was staggered and looked up to see Billy staring at him earnestly. ‘So how far through are you?’ There was an edge of scepticism to his
voice.

Billy took back the book. ‘Well, I’ve been through it all three, four times, but I always find Book IX,
Number Theory
the best.’ He flicked forward to find
the appropriate section.

Fortescue considered the boy. ‘How old are you, Billy?’

‘Twelve, Mr Wickins.’

The scientist took the book again and found the section on number theory. ‘OK.’ He ran a finger down the right-hand page. ‘Let’s see how much you know.’
He took a breath. ‘If a number multiplied by itself makes a cubic number, what can you say about that number?’

Billy looked into Fortescue’s eyes. ‘Ican see why you wouldn’t believe me, mister.’

Fortescue held the boy’s intense look. He could read so much pain there, years of neglect and filth. He could imagine how Billy had been treated all his life. He had probably
been kicked from pillar to post, physically and mentally abused, and yet there was a light in those eyes, a light that was markedly absent from so many wealthy and celebrated people Fortescue had
met. It was the light of a self-respect that had been hard won, battled for, squeezed from the dry sponge of the shabby life Billy O’Donnell had been allotted.

‘I’m sorry,’ Fortescue said and handed back the book.

‘That number would itself be cubic,’ Billy said, finally answering Fortescue’s question.

Fortescue bit his lip and tilted his head to one side. ‘Sit down.’

The kid glanced around nervously but did as he was told and Fortescue withdrew his papers, found a blank page and removed the top of his pen. On the paper he wrote out a simple
equation, the meaning of which a clever fifteen-year-old at a decent private school should have grasped. ‘What does that tell you?’

Billy considered the expression. ‘It says that y is equal to three x squared minus five.’

‘All right, so, in your head, work out what y would be if x was two.’

‘Seven,’ Billy said immediately.

Fortescue took a deep breath. ‘Good.’ He wrote out a much more complex equation involving higher powers of x and square roots and handed the pen and paper to Billy.
‘What is z when x is four?’

Billy merely glanced at the paper. ‘Three.’

Fortescue was stunned, took back the piece of paper, wrote out an elaborate piece of calculus and handed it to Billy. ‘There’s nothing like this in
Elements
,’ the scientist commented. ‘What do you make of it?’

Billy studied the symbols and the figures. ‘It’s a quadratic equation that has to be integrated. I think it’s to work out the volume of rotation between the two
points.’ He paused and ran a finger along the line of mathematical symbols. ‘The answer is 3.24 cubic inches.’

Fortescue was shaking his head and staring at the boy’s serious expression. ‘Well,’ he said excitedly, ‘that is truly remarkable. Come with
me.’

‘Where to?’

‘My cabin. I want to see how much you know . . . I won’t bite!’

They saw no one on the way and when Fortescue found half a jug of barley water left over from the previous evening, poured a large glass and handed it to Billy, the boy relaxed a
little.

‘Let’s see how far this talent of yours goes,’ the scientist said. ‘Is that OK with you?’

Billy shrugged. ‘What do I get out of it?’

Fortescue gave him a surprised look and went to reach into his pocket.

Billy was shaking his head and wore his affronted look again. ‘I didn’t mean money, Mr Wickins.’

‘What do you mean then?’

‘Just that you teach me something new that I can take away with me.’

Fortescue nodded. ‘Yes, yes, of course, Billy.’

Fortescue completely lost track of the time. This young boy was an astonishing prodigy. It had taken him an hour of questions, pushing further and further into advanced mathematics,
before Billy hit a wall and could not solve a problem, and that was simply because he had never learned the technique. When Fortescue had then taught him how to unravel the question, the boy had
the answer in a few seconds and was ready to move on.

The rap on the door came as a surprise. Fortescue glanced at his watch to see that it was nine o’clock and his breakfast must have arrived. He got up from the desk and walked
to the door, opening it only a little. The steward was there with a tray.

‘I’ll take that,’ Fortescue said.

The steward looked puzzled for a second and then he understood his passenger must have a lady friend with him. He accepted the generous tip Fortescue gave him and
retreated.

Billy was starving and Fortescue took great pleasure in watching the boy eat.

‘What is that?’ Billy asked.

‘Raspberry jam.’ Fortescue dipped a silver jam spoon into the basin and plucked a croissant from a basket, ran the jam over it and handed it to the boy.

‘And that?’ Billy pointed to the croissant.

‘A croissant. It’s French. Absolutely delicious.’

‘I’ll take your word for it, Mr Wickins,’ Billy retorted and took a big bite. ‘Um,’ he said, eyes wide, mouth full . . .
‘Good.’

‘You have an incredible talent, Billy. Has no one else ever realized?’

The kid shook his head. ‘Never told no one.’

‘Your parents?’

Billy looked down between his worn leather boots and ripped trouser bottoms. ‘Both dead.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘No need, it was a long time ago. I live with me aunt. She don’t care two figs about me, though.’

‘So, how did you end up here?’

‘Me aunt – Mary’s her name – married a man called Bert, Bert Spindle. Me Uncle Tom, he died two years ago . . . bad lungs. He used to cough so loud we
couldn’t sleep. Then one morning, the coughing suddenly stopped. My new uncle is all right, I s’pose, a bit rough sometimes. Don’t think he likes me much, but Mary made a promise
to me mum and dad to look after me.’