Unsinkable (2 page)

B
eckett sat on the deck of the ship that was taking them to England and read back over what he had written.

It wasn’t a bad start for a novel, he thought. His main character was a young man not unlike himself who was trying to decide what he wanted out of life. Unlike himself, the main character had seen a beautiful woman on board a ship taking him to his next adventure and fallen head over heels in love.

As the boat moved swiftly toward its next port, he looked across the deck and saw her standing there, dressed in a gown as blue as the ocean and an enormous hat trimmed in roses and feathers, her hair, which was a shade between red and gold, tumbling down her shoulders and blowing in the breeze. In that moment, he knew that he had found the woman he had been dreaming of his entire life.

Beckett wondered if people in real life really did fall in love that quickly. He was a bit of a romantic himself, but had never been that much in love. Still, he was writing fiction. He would go with the plot as it was progressing and see where it would lead him.

Two children playing caught his eye and he watched them for a moment. The boy took the little girl’s doll and she began chasing him.  All this was happening as the children’s governess sat on a deck chair reading a book. Without thinking too much about it, Beckett wrote the scene into his story.

The little boy snatched the doll from his sister’s arms once again and rushed to the side of the boat, dangling the toy over the ocean as his sister cried out.

Realizing what the young boy was about to do, Beckett resolved to make the scene in his book end better.

The little girl threw her arms around her brother and begged him not to throw her doll overboard. After a moment more of teasing, the boy  thought better of his actions and returned the doll to his sister, pausing even to wipe her tears away before running off on his own.

Beckett looked up from his leather bound book as the little girl continued to cry and as he watched, the little girl did exactly as he had written. She embraced her brother and implored with him to give the doll back. Beckett consulted his words again and then watched as the brother handed the doll back and wiped the tears off her face before calling out to another boy and leaving her alone.

The words of the market vendor came back to him.
This book has the power to change lives.

Was it coincidence or his words, written in the book that made the little boy change his mind? He looked over at the little girl, now settled on a deck chair with the governess, happily cuddling her doll while the governess read.

Beckett stood up and closed the book. He walked to the side of the ship and gazed out over the ocean. The story was beginning to come together in his mind. That morning he had read in the newspapers about Egyptian discoveries near the gravesite of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. He had read before of curses attached to mummies and wanted his character to somehow be involved with an Egyptian curse. He would have the main character meet the beautiful girl he had seen on board, they would fall in love and then a number of strange events would occur. He turned away from the ocean and glanced again at the little girl. He opened the book and re-read his words. Shaking his head he told himself that of course
he
hadn’t changed the little boy’s actions. It was just coincidence, nothing more.

                            *******

“So how is the writing going?” Warren asked as he and Beckett strolled on the deck after dinner.

“I’m having a bit of writer’s block,” Beckett admitted. “I know what I want to write, I just don’t know exactly how to get there.”

“Three more days until we board the unsinkable ship,” Warren reminded him.

“Ah yes,
RMS Titanic.
Soon we shall see if all the hype is true. It is also being called the ‘Ship of Dreams.’ I am afraid with the way things are going that my dreams will sink hard by the time we reach New York.”

“How much did you write today? Is it really that bad?”

Beckett stopped walking. “It wasn’t bad. It was quite good, actually. It was just…strange.”

“Your writing was strange?”

“Not exactly. Do you remember the man with the turban who sold me the book?”

Warren nodded. “He said something mysterious, like ‘the book has special powers.’”

“More precisely he said the book had the power to change lives. I watched a little boy teasing his sister, acting like he was going to throw her doll overboard. This is what I wrote.” He opened the book and showed the passage to Warren.

“And?”

“That’s exactly what happened.”

Warren laughed. “Coincidence.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Warren said, “We could test your theory. Write me into the story. Write something that happens to me and if it really occurs as you wrote it, we’ll know.”

“Is that crazy?”

“Maybe, but at least when nothing happens you can forget the man in the turban and keep writing.”

 It was cold on deck and they went back inside. Beckett went to his cabin and tried to think of a clever way to write Warren into the story.

I can’t really believe that I am doing this,
he thought, but he knew that to put his mind at rest and allow him to keep writing, he had no choice. In the end, he just made him the close friend of the main character who he happened to discover was on the same boat.

Now…something that could actually happen to his fictional Warren and the real Warren…that was harder. Before he fell asleep, Beckett finally wrote a hasty passage.

Warren woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. He pocketed a deck of playing cards and went to his friend’s room. When the door opened he asked “Care for a couple of hands of rummy?”

Beckett closed the book and closed his eyes. He fell asleep still dressed in his evening clothes.

                               *******

He was sleeping soundly when he heard the knock at the door. It couldn’t possibly be Warren, he thought as he got off the bed and went to open the door.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Warren said. “Care for a couple of hands of rummy? Just like when we were in school?”

Beckett hauled him into the room. “I’ll play but first you need to read what I wrote earlier.”

He opened the book to where Warren came into the story. Warren read it, then looked up in surprise.

“It can’t be you…or the book. You were just remembering how we used stay up all night playing cards in boarding school.”

“Subconsciously I might have been thinking about it. But I wasn’t, not when I was writing. Were
you
thinking about playing cards?”

“No, actually I was sound asleep almost as soon as we got back from our walk. Then I suddenly woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep and I decided to see if you were up for a couple of hands of cards.”

They sat at the table in one corner of the cabin, and Beckett laid the book open on the table. “You used almost the exact same words that I wrote. How is that possible?”

Warren insisted, “Because I’ve said the same thing a dozen times before in the middle of the night. I was joking when I told you to write me into your story.”

“And yet I did…and you did what the character in the book did.”

“Stop it,” Warren said. “I don’t want to think about this. There is no way you, or your book can control real people.”

“You’re right. Deal the cards.” He closed the book and tossed it on the bed.

M
argaret Toilben Brown, known to everyone as Molly, packed her trunk. At the last minute she had been able to secure passage on the ship
RMS Titanic
, thanks to the advice of her friends John Jacob Astor and his wife Madeleine. She had been in Cairo with an entourage that include the Astors, William Stead and Benjamin Guggenheim. All wealthy Americans, like herself, who had decided to see the latest Egyptian treasures for themselves.

Molly hadn’t planned on going back to New York quite so soon, but the news from home that her grandson was seriously ill had changed her plans.

Madeleine Astor had told her that the
Titanic
was not only luxurious but the fastest ship ever built. There was not even time to let her family know she was coming. She had secured a first class ticket and immediately started the process of packing up to go home. When she boarded the new ship, on its maiden voyage, in Cherbourg, France she would have her two trunks of clothes, a number of things she had picked up on her travels prior to going to Egypt, and three crates filled with Egyptian souvenirs and figurines, many of which she planned to donate to the Denver Museum.

The one thing that Molly hadn’t packed away in the crates and trunks was a mummified ushabti figure .It was supposed to bring good luck. Molly figured it would keep her safe and bring good luck to her grandson- or at least it couldn’t hurt. She tucked it away in her handbag for safe keeping and turned her attention back to her trunks.

As she packed, she reflected on the fact that she was able to purchase a ticket for first class accommodations on the most elegant ship ever built. She knew that to many of the people she would be dining and socializing with on the voyage she was ‘new money’ and therefore not truly of their social circle. People looking down on her had ceased to bother Molly Brown. She had come from a poor Irish family on the Mississippi River and had found her way to Denver, where she had met J.J. Brown, a mining engineer who had struck it rich during the gold and silver rush.

Their lifestyle had changed overnight. They had gone from having almost nothing to wanting nothing in a heartbeat. J.J. let her travel, preferring to stay at home. She had started this journey visiting their daughter who was at school at the Sorbonne and met up with the Astors in Cairo. She had found the Egyptian part of her trip to be fascinating, enjoying even the stories about mummy curses. She laughed to herself at what she imagined J.J. Brown would say about all the artifacts she had packed. He would like the stories behind them but she doubted he would want any of them sitting around the house.

She could already hear him, “Three crates, Molly. Three?”

She’d had an amazing trip, but she was ready to go home.

                                ******

Carrington stood in front of the glass case one last time. She would be boarding the
Titanic
tomorrow. Her parents still had very little to say to her, but they hadn’t stopped her from coming to the museum every single day since she had turned Alastair down the second time.

How hard would it be, she wondered, to simply book passage to Cairo? To forget about boarding the boat they called ‘the ship of dreams’ and go what her heart told her that she should do? Could she really spend the rest of her life just dreaming about seeing the pyramids and all their treasures? Would she ever find someone who would understand that longing or would she be an old spinster who never fulfilled her dream?

Silently, she bid the Princess of Amen-Ra farewell and made herself leave the dimly lit room that housed the mummy cover and the rest of the Egyptian collection. She exited the grand museum and went into the bright sunlight. She would have so easily traded the light of this beautiful day for hours inside a dark pyramid.

Her parents had talked around her for the last three days, everyone carefully avoiding the subject of her failed engagement. Her father spent most of his time discussing the attributes of the
Titanic
, her mother joined in, raving about the newspapers’ descriptions of the first class cabins and dining. Carrington hoped the ship would travel as quickly as report promised it would; although she hadn’t a clue what waited for her when they returned.

The talk about Titanic continued over tea later that afternoon. “I do hope that the first class passengers will not all be new money,” Rose lamented, stirring her tea.

Carrington reached for a scone and said nothing, but her father, Wilson St. Clair, said, “I have heard that the list includes the Astors and Benjamin Guggenheim, my dear.”

Carrington looked up. “John Jacob Astor?” she asked.

“Yes, Carrington, and his new wife, Madeleine.”

“The new wife is so young,” Rose said. “Have you ever met them, Carrington?”

“No, but I had read that they were in Cairo until recently. I found that interesting.”

“Perhaps you can ask a few questions about that, but please promise me that you won’t annoy the poor man and his wife nonstop about all that Egyptian nonsense.”

“They spent quite some time there, Mother. I hardly think they would be annoyed.”

“Even so, bear in mind that they are one of the richest couples in the world.”

Carrington buttered her scone. “Of course Mother.” She thought to herself that her mother might pretend to be scandalized at how young J.J. Astor’s wife was, but had she had the chance to marry her own daughter off to him, she would have done so as quickly as possible.

Wilson looked up from his newspaper. “I’m sure we can expect Carrington to behave with decorum, my dear.”

“Judging from how she handled Alastair’s proposal, I am not sure about that,” he mother said.

“And we agreed to let that go. What’s done is done.”

“Yes, well.” Rose’s expression showed that she still had not let it go.

“I’m sure there is someone who will be suitable for our daughter,” Wilson said, going back to the newspaper.

“And when I meet him,” Carrington said, rising, “I will be sure to let you know.” She swept out of the room without looking back.

“Carrington, really…”

Rose poured some cream into her tea. “Sometimes I wonder what that girl is thinking.”

                            *********

Beckett had written three more chapters but had refrained from trying to manipulate any characters. He told himself that nothing he had written that had actually happened in any way significantly changed anyone’s life. It still bothered him that the events had happened at all the way that he had written them. His father had asked him how the writing was going, almost as if he were joking and he assumed that was how his father looked at the proposal he had agreed to. He firmly believed, Beckett knew, that his son would have produced nothing worthwhile when they docked in New York.

And he hated to admit that his father might be right as he prepared to board the
Titanic
.

“It’s every bit as amazing as the papers described it!” Warren said.

Beckett gazed up at the enormous ship before them. “It is supposed to be like a floating city,” he said. “A pool, a gymnasium, cafes, cabins to rival the finest hotel.”

“This leg of the journey should be interesting,” Warren said. “And hopefully you won’t be too distracted to write, or else it’s the bank for you.”

“Don’t remind me.” The prospect was almost more than Beckett could bear. He followed Warren onto the ship. They found their cabins and then went back up onto the deck as the grand ship began her maiden voyage.

He looked across the deck and saw her standing there, apart from the rest of the crowd. The paragraph he had written just before the incident with the children aboard the other ship came back to him. It wasn’t possible, was it, to describe a scene, a person that you had never seen and then have that scene play out, in real life before you?

He pulled the book from his pocket and opened it, found the passage and re-read it.
As the boat moved swiftly toward its next port, he looked across the deck and saw her standing there, dressed in a gown as blue as the ocean and an enormous hat trimmed in roses and feathers, her hair, which was a shade between red and gold, tumbling down her shoulders and blowing in the breeze. In that moment, he knew that he had found the woman he had been dreaming of his entire life.

Looking at the young woman in the blue dress, he knew too. He turned to the last page he had written and began to write another chapter. He had to make sure that the woman he had been dreaming of, the one he had certainly made sure was on the ship with him, fell in love with the main character.

                                ********

Carrington turned away from the ocean as the ship got underway and scanned the crowd. The rumors had been flying since they boarded. Was there indeed a mummy on board? Several crates with Egyptian markings had been loaded. She was shamelessly hoping to catch a glimpse of the Astors and figure out how to engineer a conversation with them when she saw him.

A man so handsome that she caught her breath. He stood on the other side of the deck, leaning casually against the ship, scribbling furiously in a leather bound book. His chestnut colored hair ruffled in the breeze, his overcoat flapping around him. She surmised that he was close to her age. He was obviously traveling with the man who stood next to him, talking on occasion to him, but never stopping his writing.

She was filled with a sudden desire to get to know him. But how? How could she walk over to him and tell him that when she looked at him her heart stood still for a moment? She had never, ever believed in love at first sight, but what she felt at this moment was something akin to it. As if somehow destiny had meant for them to both be on this boat, at this moment.

He looked up and saw her staring at him. Their eyes met and he smiled. She smiled back and quickly turned away, blushing furiously.

Somehow, some way, she had to meet him. Across the deck, Beckett wasn’t worried about that. He had already written it into the story. He would meet her over dinner that evening, after she had come down the grand staircase of the ship of dreams, dressed in a gown of cream and lavender, with gardenias in her hair.