Women and Children First (37 page)

In early August, a storm blew up the Atlantic coast of America. At Mr Grayling’s summer house, they could feel it approaching a day in advance as the atmospheric pressure dropped and the skies clouded over. Headache pills were consumed and nerves became frayed. In the middle of the afternoon, a shriek erupted from Miss Hamilton’s bedroom followed by raised voices and everyone rushed out to the hall to see what was going on.

Miss Hamilton ran down the stairs crying, ‘She’s a thief! I caught her red-handed, George. I watched her tucking my diamond brooch into her bodice when she didn’t know I was standing in the doorway behind her.’

Molly stood at the top of the stairs. ‘It’s not true, sir. Miss Hamilton is mistaken. I was simply dusting the dresser.’

Reg knew from one look at Molly’s pink cheeks that it
was
true, though.
Silly girl. She was in trouble now.

Mr Grayling asked Molly to come into the drawing room and ordered everyone else back to their duties. Reg and Alphonse went into the kitchen, but they could clearly hear what was being said, as the voices drifted through the wide-open windows.

‘I’ve been suspicious for a while,’ Miss Hamilton said. ‘Remember I lost those sapphire earrings? And I’ve noticed that I never seem to have as much money in my purse as I thought I had. I suspect this has been going on for some time.’

Molly stuttered in mock outrage. ‘I have never in all my years in service taken a single thing that wasn’t mine, sir. It’s not in my nature.’

‘But I
saw
you with my own eyes,’ Miss Hamilton insisted. ‘I know I wasn’t mistaken.’ She demonstrated where she had been standing and the clear view she had of Molly’s actions.

Mr Grayling listened to both women before making up his mind. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to let you go, Molly. You’re lucky that I’m not going to call the police. I’ll arrange for you to be driven back to New York this afternoon, and Mr Frank will supervise as you pack your belongings at the house.’

‘You can’t fire me, sir,’ Molly said, and something about her sly tone made Reg nervous. ‘There are too many secrets around here that you wouldn’t want me to let slip.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

There was a pause before Molly took the plunge. ‘I have a hunch that the newspapers would be very interested to hear that Reg saw you kissing Miss Hamilton on the
Titanic
before your wife’s death. Except that she was travelling with a fake name, wasn’t she? What is she trying to hide?’

Reg sat down hard on a kitchen chair, and Alphonse whirled round, his face furious. ‘This is all your fault. You have turned her head. Since you came to the house, there has been nothing but gossip and
malheur
.’

Reg sank his head into his hands as Mr Grayling shouted and Molly responded with sullen obstinacy. The volume rose, and Reg could hear the word ‘blackmail’ being bandied about. Mr Grayling must be furious that Reg had blabbed. He was part of this now whether he liked it or not.

Reg got up and walked out the back door and through the yard onto the beach. The wind was whipping the waves into swirling white foam and lifting clouds of sea spray that he could feel dampening his cheeks several yards back from the shoreline. The air was darkening, and to the south the sky was purply-black. He sat down on the sand to smoke a cigarette, preferring the impending destructiveness of nature to that of human beings, but when the rain started to fall suddenly and heavily, he had to repair indoors. It was time to lay the table for dinner.

Reg passed Mr Grayling in the hall, but nothing was said. In the kitchen, Alphonse was furiously hurling pots around the stove. Reg bumped into Molly in the hall near the staff bathroom.

‘Did you hear what happened?’ she whispered. ‘I’m being asked to leave, but he’s giving me a hundred bucks severance pay. If he thinks that’s the end of it, he’s got another think coming because I’ll just come back and ask for more when that runs out. I told you my plan would work.’

Reg stared at her, aghast.

‘Are you sure I can’t change your mind? Come away with me and we’ll get old Grayling to subsidise us to set up our own restaurant. That money would be nothing to him.’ She held out her arms as if to embrace Reg, but he heard Alphonse coming down the hallway and stepped out of reach.

‘I don’t want any part of this,’ Reg told her quietly. ‘You’re on your own.’

‘Are you all right, Molly?’ Alphonse asked, barging against Reg. ‘Is he bothering you?’

She gave a little laugh. ‘Oh, I’m fine. I’m staying here tonight because the driver doesn’t want to drive in the storm. Bring me some dinner in my room, could you? And a glass of wine. I’m not working and I deserve a little treat.’

Alphonse agreed that he would, and she cooed ‘Thank you, my hero.’ She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, making sure Reg could see. He turned away in disgust.

When Reg served dinner to Mr Grayling and Miss Hamilton, he found them in sober mood. They ate in silence, bar the odd comment on the food, and neither of them looked at Reg. Once when he opened the door he caught them whispering to each other, but they stopped as soon as he came into the room. He couldn’t work out if he was
persona non grata
as well as Molly, or if they realised that he was a different type of person, with higher standards. He wished Mr Grayling would raise the subject so that he could make his own position clear, but he wasn’t brave enough to bring it up himself.

In bed that night, he lay awake, wondering how this new turn of events might affect him. Mr Grayling must be cross that Reg had talked about seeing them on the
Titanic
. He had every right to be upset since he had given Reg a second chance only for him to turn out to be loose-tongued. He had betrayed his trust yet again. Perhaps he would be fired the next morning.

Outside, the storm had exploded into a frenzy of howling wind and horizontal rain that battered the wooden clapboard and rattled the shutters. It was like a huge deadly animal trying to attack them and Reg huddled under his blankets, grateful for the roof over his head.

He was beginning to drift off to sleep, when all of a sudden he heard a sharp, high-pitched scream, a woman’s scream. He opened his eyes, fully alert. Through the noise of the storm, he made out angry voices but couldn’t work out whose they were, then he heard another scream and to his ears, it sounded like a scream of terror. It was coming from the garage, which was just through the wall from him. Reg jumped out of bed, pulled some trousers and a jacket over his nightshirt, slipped his feet into his shoes without lacing them, then hurried down the corridor.

The house was in silence. He opened the back door as quietly as he could and stepped out into the cold. The wind buffeted him and rain plastered his hair to his head as he walked round to the garage entrance, picking his way in the moonlight. The door was open and as he peered in, he saw Molly in the passenger seat of the car.

‘Molly? What are you doing?’ he called, over the noise of the wind. ‘Are you all right?’ She didn’t turn round, didn’t seem to hear him.

He took a step into the garage towards her, and was dimly aware of a movement over his left shoulder. Before he had time to turn, something heavy hit him on the head and he blacked out.

Somewhere in the depths of his brain, Reg became aware that he was in an automobile, being driven along a bumpy road. He was lying at an odd angle, virtually upside down and curled in a foetal position. He couldn’t force his eyes open but he could hear the rattle of the motor and feel the vibrations and the roughness of the road surface. His head was knocking against something hard but he couldn’t shift himself to a more comfortable position. It was a bizarre feeling to be vaguely aware of his surroundings but paralysed and unable to affect them, as if in a nightmare.

No one was talking. Was Molly still in the passenger seat? Who was driving?

The automobile stopped and he heard the door open and someone get out. He felt strong arms beneath his shoulders, lifting him upwards and hauling him over from the back seat into the front. His arm was trapped beneath him and it wrenched in its socket. He tried to resist but his muscles wouldn’t obey. Still nothing was said. Surely if Molly was there, she would be talking? Ordinarily, the girl never shut up.

The door slammed, and he felt the automobile rolling forwards. Suddenly the earth disappeared beneath it. There was a moment when Reg was flying through the air, then he was thrown backwards violently as they hit something hard, and cold water began to gush around him.

Am I dreaming?
Reg wondered. It was reminiscent of the recurring dream in which he was standing on a rapidly sinking boat.

The automobile somersaulted forwards and now he was submerged upside down in icy water and knew he had to fight for his life. It was pitch-black and he thrust out with his arms, frantically groping at the surroundings. The steering wheel was beneath him and something hard was directly above. To his left he felt a soft yet immoveable object, but on his right he found a narrow gap he could crawl through. He hadn’t had time to fill his lungs with air and they were burning with the pressure. His brain was burning. He couldn’t see which way to go but he kept struggling till his body was free of the automobile.

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.
It was as if he was back on the
Titanic
again and he only knew one thing: that he wanted to live. How stupid to survive that and die so soon afterwards.

Suddenly he realised his head was above water. He took a huge gulp of air just as a wave broke over him, making him choke and splutter. The moon glinted on the ocean and he saw that he wasn’t far from shore, but the coastline was rocky and the heaving ocean was threatening to wash him onto some jagged outcrops. A current was dragging him away from the automobile and he fought against it, treading water, trying to work out what to do for the best.

At that moment a terrible thought occurred to him: had Molly been in the automobile with him? Had she been hit over the head as well? She had seemed unnaturally still and silent when he called to her from the garage door, and he hadn’t heard her voice once they were on the move. Could she be trapped unconscious in the wreckage? Was that the unyielding obstacle he had felt to his left? He had to go back and check.

The road ran at least twenty or thirty yards above the water at that point and he peered up, trying to make out the spot at which the automobile might have crashed down. He focused on a likely headland, swam back against the current towards it and dived down. The water was only around ten feet deep but it was rough and he couldn’t find any sign of wreckage. There was no visibility underwater.

He swam further out and tried another spot, then another. The current kept sucking him down the coast and each time he had to swim hard to get back to the point where he thought the wreck might be. He dived ten, twenty, thirty times, all around the area, until his arms were leaden and he had no strength left. If Molly was still down there, she couldn’t possibly be alive. There was no more he could do, so he turned on his back and let the current pull him along, past the sharp black rocks and further up the coast.

Once he stopped swimming, he began to shiver. It wasn’t cold in the way the ocean off the
Titanic
had been cold, with a heart-stopping shock that you could feel sucking the life out of you. This was just a few degrees below comfort. It was August, after all, and the water wasn’t deep.

He saw a glint of pale shingle and used the last of his strength to swim towards it before the current could sweep him past. He couldn’t see any lights that would indicate there were houses nearby, but he needed to get on dry land. He crawled through a swamp of slimy seaweed that had been washed up into the shallows by the storm and staggered out onto a stony beach.

It was still raining, but not so fiercely. At the edge of the shingle, there was a wooden beach hut. Reg hurried up to it and yanked the door open, ripping it partly off its hinges. Inside there was a big pile of musty-smelling towels. He removed his jacket and trousers, and that’s when he noticed his shoes were missing. They must have come off in the automobile. He rubbed himself down with one towel then wrapped himself up in some of the others and lay on the floor. Within seconds, he was sound asleep.