Titanic Ashes (7 page)

A petty officer yells across the deck and a cluster of
seamen follow his command; he feels the vibrations of their
footfalls. Sweet tobacco from a group of gentlemen close to
the lounge entrance wafts over him. He catches something
of their murmured conversation about Royal Ascot.

Time is suddenly a dreadful thing. He knows it is the
sole diminishing barrier between himself crouching at the
winch handle overhearing details of horseracing and
himself being a central part of a catastrophe so appalling
its details are beyond imagination.

The question creeps into his mind for the first time:
how much of it dare he witness? He thinks of the ocean,
icy enough here in the Labrador current to play host to
bergs and growlers, and he thinks of the labyrinth of
cabins and corridors already under water below and likely
deserted and quiet. The lure is powerful enough to make
his hand push too hard.

“Steady there, ” warns the officer overlooking the
lifeboat’s descent. Ismay nods and slows down. The
faintest sound follows, more
pat
than
splash.
Half a turn
more and the lifeboat is freed.

“Father, ” says Evelyn.

The band ceases, the final high note hanging in the
silence. The leader, violin and bow in hand, nods to a scattering of applause. Ismay turns to his daughter, catches
her expression, both worried and chiding, and feels a
protective layer has been peeled away between them, a
taboo breached. He knows it’s no use pretending otherwise.

EVELYN ENCOUNTERS
THAT
SMILE
, the one he
uses with Mother—vague, dithery, sinking into a kind of
generalized appeasement. But there’s a change in him, too. It
was a shock a moment ago to watch him turning to meet the
stare of Agnes Grimsden—not necessarily an unwelcome
one. It suggests that either he is becoming forgetful and has
failed to spot an enemy, or that a fire long doused might be
smoldering afresh. He was once a man of authority, and a
deeply embedded rock of well-being dwelt under the foundation of their home. Even his fussiness of manner carried an
aura, a sense of being associated with work and important
matters. When the Ismays went to church and heard about
the Almighty from the pulpit, this was the aura Evelyn envisioned, and the picture that went with it was of a carefully
waxed moustache, oiled hair, the scent of decision, and the
gentleness that would come across such an entity at home
after an hour or so with a pipe and playing with the dog.

When he returned Mrs. Grimsden’s stare and gave
what seemed to be an unforced, disparaging laugh, this
almost forgotten father had returned. Evelyn searches his
eyes now for some clue to his thoughts.

“Father, ” she repeats, “are you all right?”

He tilts his head and gives her an affectionate look,
lifting his glass.

“Why shouldn’t I be all right, my dear?”

Again a tactic used with Mother, and a challenge of a
kind. They both know perfectly well why he should be out
of sorts. But the cause has never been named and he is
banking that their mutual silence will continue. It’s a
reasonable assumption. Thirteen years of secrecy is like an
airtight cell with thick metal walls; the idea of opening it
now seems frightening, like scattering a thousand tiny
demons into the world.

Not for the first time Evelyn considers that if the
memory of the
Titanic
looms over her, and Tom, and
Margaret, and Mother, and possibly even George, filling
ordinary sounds and objects—a shriek of laughter, the
tinkling of wine glasses—with images of catastrophe, how
much closer must that terrible event seem to Father?
Keeping everything unsaid, even if they all believed it was
for Father’s good, suddenly seems like a terrible disservice
to him. And it all makes so little sense.

Generals who from the safety of distance have knowingly given commands that kill many thousands have then
stood proudly with medals pinned to their chests. Yet
Father, who hurt no one deliberately, is lambasted
publicly, whispered about, stared at, and treated like a
pariah. Her anger at them all—the Grimsdens and everyone like them—gives way a little to a sudden rush of
admiration for her father, for the fact that he can still sit
in a London hotel restaurant, eating, drinking and listening to music; and that when he catches the eye of his
accuser, he will stare back and laugh.

Evelyn puts down her knife and fork, hands trembling
from pride mingled with fresh indignation. She turns
slowly, glimpses Miranda’s face bobbing toward her plate,
Mr. Grimsden’s shoulder, and through a clearing in the
foliage, Agnes Grimsden, who has, telepathically, it seems,
shifted her own gaze now to her. The look on her face is
neither furtive nor unfriendly, but relaxed enough for
direct eye contact to suggest communication. For a
moment, Evelyn wonders whether she might have it all
wrong; perhaps when Mrs. Grimsden had said, “Some
men are afraid of everything, ” she really had been talking
about the waiters, and now sees her blunder and is trying
to offer some apology and recompense.

As though to confirm this, Mrs. Grimsden tilts her
head, raises her eyebrows, and gives a sad, shoulder-heaving sigh, all the while holding Evelyn’s gaze. So practiced
is Evelyn in the art of pleasing, she begins to find the
muscles of her face forming into a smile and the tendons
of her neck readying themselves for a nod. But then she
remembers Miranda’s admission, “There’s nothing that
can be done with Mother, ” and the absolute nature of the
confirmation that came with it. The power to decipher
contradictory messages—the friendly look at her, the
insult aimed at her father—comes to Evelyn with a wave
of anger. The smile is one of pity; she’s showing Evelyn
sympathy at having a coward for a father.

She tears her eyes away and counts to three as she
looks down at the puckered skin of her pheasant. Picking
up her knife and fork again, she glances at Father, who
meets her eye straight away and gives a kindly shrug. But
it’s no longer enough for either of them, she thinks, not
any more.

She wonders if it’s too much to hope for that Mrs.
Grimsden might need to go to the ladies’ cloakroom,
whether the attendants there might witness a second
drama, one with more lurid details, more escalating
conflict, than the first.

Her heart begins to hammer as she realizes such a
chance is unlikely. Something truly extreme, and public, is
required. She finds it curious suddenly that old-fashioned
notions of dignity have remained synonymous with
courage. She could remain dignified; it wouldn’t be hard.
She could avoid the glances of the Grimsdens all evening,
sit up straight, sip her wine and talk to Father about all
manner of things. But there would be not one ounce of
courage in it. Courage is an ugly, red-faced drunkard.
Courage leaks spittle and blood. It yells in fury, and causes
others to gasp in horror. She remembers witnessing a real
argument outside a public house in Liverpool. Two men
yelled at each other, their fists clenched, faces deep red,
blue veins running down their necks. They seemed
scarcely human in their passion, all elbows and boots,
angular contraptions designed for conflict. Bobbies waded
in before it came to blows, and the crowd, a mix of local
gentry and students, who, like Evelyn and her mother, had
come from the nearby concert hall, all seemed to give a
collective gasp of disapproval.

“Disgraceful display!” she heard a man say.

“Shocking, ” added someone from another party.

And while Evelyn recognized these were the right
things to say, she also realized they were lies, that many
of the onlookers were silently captivated, almost admiring, not at the ugliness of it, or the danger, but at the
forgetfulness of self, at the sense that these two men were
brimming with emotions that were so much bigger than
the crowd, so much greater than caution and embarrassment. Evelyn felt a kind of awe bordering on envy. It
almost came down to a simple formula, that he who is
naked is somehow ennobled, while she who is protected
by layer after layer of refinement and manners is diminished, even in a moral sense.
Especially
in a moral sense.
Stillness is noble in a flower, not in a human being. To be
courageous, to be good, one has to
become
one’s emotions,
and emotions are seldom dignified.

When she starts to speak, it takes her by surprise.
“You’re going to have to forgive me, Father.” Her lips burn
as though her breath is fire. “I’m going to do something.”

She looks up and sees him frown, not comprehending,
or pretending not to comprehend. Then his pupils
contract. “No, ” he says. There’s nothing pleading or fearful in the word. It comes out rather like an order, and
again reminds her of the father he once was, kind but in
charge.

“It’s not just about you anymore, ” she says. “It’s about
all of us.”

The fork twitches in his hand and an expression of
desperate unhappiness comes into his face, hinting at
depths of despair she already knows about but has rarely
seen. She almost relents. But the anguish seems to pass
from him. He lays down his knife and fork, calmly takes a
sip of water and coughs slightly as he lowers the glass to
the tablecloth.

“And what exactly are you going to do? You can’t sue
someone for looking at us.”

Already Evelyn is shifting in her seat with the urgency
of it all. War has been declared, and publicly. “Something,
Father, ” she says. “I have to do something.” The blood
pounds in her ears, not like something liquid at all, but
wooden, muffled and pounding. As children, she and
Margaret used to practice holding pillows over their
heads, seeing how long they could go without breathing,
and now all those experiments seem like a string of
premonitions, bringing her to this point in her life. She
wishes the association might provide some clue as to how,
precisely, she should act. But it’s already too late. She is
already standing, putting her napkin on the table, still half
wishing for some interruption, another bird perhaps, even
a bomb or a man wielding a gun and running amok
around the tables.

As luck would have it the palm shields her approach
and her nerves become quiet. For all anyone will know,
she is merely coming toward the foliage for a better look,
to examine the exotic, rubbery leaves; she has seen diners
do this on previous occasions and knows it still might
provide a reasonable alibi for a tactical retreat. But she
catches Miranda’s face—her startled eyes, set in a face of
patchwork white and pink, an exotic primate chanced
upon by an explorer and terrified of being taken captive.

She moves out from the palm and circles toward the
Grimsdens’ table. Miranda gives an audible gasp and the
young man opposite her moves as though preparing to
rise, but the energy coming from him is confused. His
gaze darts from one face to another and he remains
seated. Although the sudden hush is profound, Agnes
Grimsden, whom she turns to face, meets her eyes with
interest but no apparent fear.

“You seem to have something on your mind, Mrs.
Grimsden.” The voice Evelyn hears is hardly her own but
is, at least, steady, unwavering. “Is there anything you
would like to discuss with Father or me?”

“What?” The first interruption, unexpectedly somehow, is from Mr. Grimsden; part word, part cough, and
part laugh, it seems unchivalrous, almost bullying, especially delivered from a sitting position.

“Goodness!” says Mrs. Grimsden, smiling, a hand
coming to her chest in mock protectiveness.

Evelyn takes a gulp of air, feels the floor grow
unsteady beneath her. A young waiter two tables away
seems to glare at her as he spoons potatoes from a serving
bowl, and there are signs that faces on other tables are
turning her way.

“It’s quite simple, ” she says, feeling what’s left of her
confidence drain as though from an invisible siphon. “I
had the distinct impression you were trying to communicate something. I would like to know what it was.”

It does sound simple, she tells herself, and reasonable,
but her skin is on fire and her vision blurring. The voice
she hears has become stiff, yet emotional, and the extraordinary silence that greeted her arrival subsides into tired
sighs, one from Mrs. Grimsden, another most likely from
her husband; she is too focused upon her target to
confirm, too aware that if she lets the challenge of eye
contact slip, she will not be able to establish it again.

But in another moment she does let it slip as, dimly,
she becomes aware of another problem. Although the
hush has lifted from the Grimsden table, a tangible
murmur of interest is rippling outwards. A quick glance
shows a lady just a few years her senior, with dangling
gold earrings, craning her neck and staring at her. The
woman whispers to a man at her table, who then raises
his head to see. Farther off, toward the restaurant
entrance, a mixed party halts their conversation to watch.
The air in the restaurant changes—becomes electric with
some new interest; a strange young woman standing
alone at a table where the men folk are still seated. The
grumble of conversation softens to a murmur, and then
fades into a hush, as Evelyn fires another stare into the
bemused smile of Agnes Grimsden. She has never been so
aware of herself, of how she must look from the outside—
a stark, stranded figure with arms stretched rigid at her
sides, confronting a woman old enough to be her
mother—and the withering shame of it goes through to
her bones. She feels movement at her right side, a man
standing close to her shoulder, his presence too near for
comfort.

“Can I help madam back to her seat?”

As she flinches, she catches enough of a glimpse to
know he is the same young waiter who glared at her a few
moments ago.

“When I’m ready, ” she says, expecting his hand to
come down upon her shoulder, shrinking from it in anticipation. She keeps her gaze on the form of Mrs. Grimsden
now, on the pearls, the long earrings, the bony shoulders
within the onyx-jewelled dress. Her vision slips onto the
scattered black jewels themselves, like swirling portholes
in an Impressionist’s nightmare.

“Ismay.” The voice, soft as the wings of a moth,
emanates from a few tables distant; the name, Evelyn
thinks, seems almost to have been designed for whispering.

There’s a fresh wave of murmurs which takes an age to
spread to the far reaches of the dining room, where voices
seem to resound and echo before returning, like a poorly
synchronized communal prayer, converging and rising
into a single gasp.

Evelyn becomes aware again of the tautness of her
arms. She measures the distance between her right hand
and Mrs. Grimsden’s face, knows that in a flash she can
really give them all something to stare at, that these
people are all enemies, every one of them, and that what
they think of her and her father can’t get any worse. But
the helplessness of it all is overpowering and she feels as
though she’s balancing cannonballs upon both shoulders.