The Wild Dark Flowers (18 page)

Across the room was her little bureau: her eyes lighted on it and she went over to it, turning the key on the lid and running her fingers along the drawers inside.

At the farthest end, on the right-hand side, was a tiny lever. She pressed it, and a secret drawer slid out. Inside were the letters of John Gould. She slowly reached out and took the first. She had put it here only yesterday, and the very act had flooded her with guilt. She drew the letter from the envelope, gazing at the postmark. New York City, and the letter was on marked stationery, the name of a shipping company.

All the way down in the train yesterday she had kept the letter in her handbag, and the handbag close to her side. It had arrived just as they were leaving, and Amelie, having intercepted the postman, had pressed it quickly into Octavia’s hands once William’s back was turned.

It was disgraceful, of course—disgraceful even to have involved a servant in such apparent intrigues. She was sure that Amelie thought that a grand passion was being conducted between herself and Gould across the Atlantic. Weeks ago, seeing the little smile on her maid’s face, Octavia had softly reprimanded her. “Mr. Gould is receiving no replies from me,” she had commented. Amelie had nodded. “Of course not, ma’am.” But it was quite plain that Amelie did not believe a word of it, for the complicit smile was still there every time a letter from America found its way to Octavia’s dressing table.

And this letter . . .
this
letter.
My God, my God.

Her hands trembled as she unfolded it and read it for the twentieth time.

“
I can’t stay here any longer
,”
he had written two weeks ago. “
I am coming on the
Lusitania
. I hope that you will let me come to see you, darling. I arrive in Liverpool on May 8.”

She bit her lip, full of anxiety.

John Gould would be here, in England, tomorrow.

*   *   *

I
t was a dazzling vessel.

All the way across from New York, the weather had been beautifully calm. Every morning, John had taken a turn about the deck before breakfast, and the verandah deck was wide, gleamingly clean. The
Lusitania
was a “wet ship,” because her delicately flared bows cut deep into the sea and sent up almost vertical walls of water that were flung onto the decks. And so, despite his determination to keep a straight line, John walked with an inadvertent slight roll: the decks had a distinct camber to let the spray roll off.

There were lifeboats all along the ship, and collapsibles. Standing now at the rail and looking back along the line of the ship, John decided that the
Titanic
had done that for every sea passenger—it was the only decent legacy of that tragedy—there were lifeboats aplenty. Collapsibles, too.

He wondered, without very much concern but rather out of idle curiosity, when the passenger lifeboat drill would be. The crew had come up here at five o’clock in the morning—it was what had woken him today. He had peered out of his door and seen them milling about, looking disorganized. Eventually, an officer had got some of the men into a boat and they sat there holding the oars for a while, and then simply got out and were sent on their way. They had been a motley collection of cooks and stewards and officers of various ranks, and among them a few coal-stained stokers, but nobody looked to have the slightest idea how to lower the boats. John had gone back to bed bemused.

The ship as a whole was much less busy than he expected. When he had asked the steward if there would not be more people seated at dinner on the first night, he was told that first class was only half full. Second class was oversubscribed because a discount had been offered on the tickets, and because the
Lusitania
second was generally thought to be just as good as any other ship’s first; but, lower down in the ship, third class—so the steward insisted—was “nearly empty.” Three hundred or so, anyways, when it could carry over a thousand down there.

There were a lot of children, however. He liked the little brats, but it wasn’t the same for everyone. One of the ladies had asked for her stateroom to be changed because she couldn’t stand the hollering of the six children next door, their fractious nursemaid, and the wearied parents.

The weather was fine, however, despite the spraying of the waves. John stood on the deck and felt a balmy, almost tropical breeze come rolling over the Atlantic. There were few whitecaps on the ocean; it was actually calmer than the Hudson on a summer afternoon. Enormous well-being flooded him. He could now count the hours until he was in England. He would go straight to Rutherford, William Cavendish be damned. He
would
see Octavia. Nothing and no one could stop him.

Not everyone seemed to be as happy as he on board, however. There was some spiritualist woman, the archaically named Theodate Pope, and, as he had sat in the Verandah Café after breakfast on the second morning, she had unceremoniously lumped down beside him in a wicker chair. “We’re a quiet shipload of passengers,” she remarked. “Don’t you think so?”

He had agreed with her, but found her a strange sort of bird, walking arm-in-arm everywhere with a man she called Edwin. She was an architect, but she and Edwin were traveling to England to the Society for Psychical Research. “We are fortunate enough to be seeing Sir Oliver Lodge,” Edwin had told John. “Have you met him?”

John had to admit that he had not.

“He wrote
Life and Matter
,” the man persisted. “An expert in magnetism.” Still, John had to admit ignorance. Edwin had given John a rather pitying glance. “A brilliant man, quite brilliant. An advocate for our everlasting souls.”

John made sure not to sit next to the couple again. They made him feel odd. The afterlife was all the rage—had been for years now, fanned by the Victorian love of a good séance—but personally he preferred not to think of eternity. Life was what interested him. Ghost-botherers made him queasy.

He took to others more; particularly a man called Charles Lauriat, seated next to him in the dining room on the second evening. Lauriat was a handsome man from Boston. John had held out his, saying, “I hear you’re in the book trade.”

Lauriat had smiled. “Family business. And you?”

“Newspaper. Though that’s
not
the family business.”

“That so?” said Lauriat. “And what is?” John named his father’s store. They spoke for some minutes about their respective trades, Lauriat pointing out others who were traveling on business. “Gauntlett there, and Knox. Shipbuilders. Armor plate.”

“I guess the war draws us together, one way or the other.”

“And . . . newspaper, you say. Writing for one?”

“Yes.”

Lauriat looked about him. “There’s another war correspondent on here,” he said. “Did you meet him yet? Forman. Justus Forman.”

“No. But then I’m no professional.”

“Neither is he. He’s a playwright. His last one flopped. Hence the journalism. He’s with Frohman—that impresario theater fellow—up in the suites.”

John shook his head to signify his ignorance of both man and stateroom.

“Not seen the suites?” Lauriat said. “All kinds of styles. The Regal, there’s a piece of grandeur. Marble fireplace and fine curtains and a drawing room modeled on Fontainebleau. Standing in there, it’s hard to believe you’re afloat.”

John laughed. “Too rich for my taste. You?”

“No, no. Plain old cabin. This is a regular trip for me. My twenty-third, in fact. But the first on a greyhound. I like to paddle across usually on a slower boat.”

John was impressed. “You like sea travel?”

“Certainly I do. You don’t?”

“I’m happier on dry land.”

Lauriat smiled. “Ah, hence the
Lusitania
,” he said. “To get there quickest.”

John admitted it, but Lauriat put his hand on his arm, and dropped his voice. “You’ll be disappointed then, this time.”

“Why is that?”

“We’re going slow. You hadn’t noticed?”

“Seems we’re going fast to me. Five hundred miles on the first day. That’s a fine speed.”

“It’s slow for the
Lusitania
,” Lauriat replied. “You know they have a pool every night, a game, to bet who can guess how many miles she’ll cover the next day?”

“Yes, I’ve seen the tickets being bought.”

“Well then, don’t waste your money,” Lauriat said. “This ship has got a boiler room closed. Number four. She’s doing no more than eighteen knots.”

John thought about this. “But they said we’d do full speed to outrun any submarines. They said that. I asked about it as we came on board.”

“And so did I,” Lauriat replied. “I asked in the Boston office when I bought my ticket if the ship would be convoyed and if she’d keep to the fastest speed. With all this talk . . .” He lowered his voice still further so as to not concern the ladies nearby. “All this talk of being a target. And I was told, ‘every precaution will be taken.’” He sat back in his seat, regarding John levelly. “What do you make of that?”

“Then every boiler room should be working, shouldn’t it?”

“Precisely old boy, precisely.”

“Well, why isn’t it?”

“Who knows? Saving money, maybe. Or they couldn’t get the men, the stokers. Did you know that a hellishly fair number jumped ship in New York? Came over from England, and vamoosed? Not everyone wants to fight for king and country, it seems.”
You won’t read that in the newspapers
, John thought.
Especially not in England
.

“Then there’s the Irish and Germans, stirring up bad feeling. The workers boycott British ships.”

“But not in sufficient numbers to close down boilers for want of men, surely?”

Lauriat gave an eloquent tilt of his head. “Eighteen knots,” he murmured, tapping his index finger on the tablecloth. “Speaks for itself.”

They finished their meal. It was certainly worth their attention—oysters, followed by beef and roast gosling normande
;
though the steward told them, as he poured the champagne, that German lager and Austrian claret had been embargoed. “Ah well,” a woman sighed opposite them. She raised her glass in a toast. “I prefer French any day.” She smiled at them. “Here’s to all the brave soldiers,” she said. “And seamen and flyers.” She drained her glass, looking a little tipsy.

John drank a sip, wondering if Harry had ever done as he had promised, and got his license. Had he gone to France, had he joined up? Was he flying there now, in those scratchy little machines? He’d seen the photographs and read the stories. If Harry really was in France, perhaps he would try to find him. Getting an airman’s view of the war would be something different.

And then he thought of Octavia sitting in Rutherford, thinking of her son. He couldn’t imagine what was worse—fighting out there, or staying at home wondering what the hell was going on. He hoped then, suddenly and fervently, that Harry hadn’t got his wings at all, despite the boy’s enthusiasm. He hoped he’d even taken some sort of knock, hurt himself training, or just grown disappointed with the experience, and was waiting at home to be called up. They’d make him an officer, train him. That would keep him away from the front for a while.
Don’t do anything stupid, Harry
, he thought to himself.
Keep your head down, and don’t be a hero, for your mother’s sake.

At John’s other side was Lauriat’s friend, Withington; an older man, a genealogist by profession, with a twinkling eye and a most manly and luxuriant moustache. They soon fell into conversation. “I’ve had an interest in English ancestry myself,” John told him. They spoke of various families and bloodlines, and the makeup of the English aristocracy.

“I spent part of last year at Rutherford Park,” John said. “That would interest you—the correspondence and the history.”

“Perhaps I should go there myself. Where’d you say it was?”

“Yorkshire. But they’re not always home.”

Withington was looking at him intently with a worldly smile. “There is an interest for you there beyond history, if I’m not mistaken.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’ve rarely seen a grown man blush,” Withington replied amicably.

As he went out of the door of the dining room at the end of the evening, Lauriat passed by him, smiling. “Don’t take the eighteen knots to heart,” he said. “I guess they’ll be as good as their word. We’ll pick up speed closer to Ireland, I’m sure.”

John wondered if he looked terribly young to the older man, that he should try to reassure him. “I’m not worried,” he replied.

“That’s good,” Lauriat said, and went on his way.

The voyage, it seemed to John, went quickly, despite all that Lauriat had told him about their speed. John took to walking for most of the day, pacing backwards and forwards, as if that could get him to Liverpool quicker. But everywhere he went, he heard conversations about submarines, and the preoccupation increased the closer they got to Ireland.

“When we see the Irish coast, we ought to have the Royal Navy alongside us,” one elderly gentleman opined. “You’ll see them coming. One destroyer, or two. They’ll keep us company.”

John wondered at it—surely the navy had better things to do than send two ships to a boat-load of civilians—but, on May 6 he did find himself looking ahead, and every now and again starting as he saw something in the water—vertical dark shapes that were soon revealed as pieces of wood, or simply the shape of waves. One of the men that Lauriat had identified as a shipbuilder caught him in this occupation, to his embarrassment.

“By the time you see a periscope, a torpedo would have hit us,” he had said, smiling. The man stopped alongside him, and lit a cigarette.

John realized that he had caught the onboard infection: a kind of subdued hysteria, certainly a distinct nervousness. “I guess I’m impatient to be on land,” he said.

“Impatient to see somebody?”

“I’d like to see someone before I go to France, yes.”

“Pretty lady?”

“Naturally.”

“Name of?”

“Ah, that I can’t say.”

“A pretty lady of some mystery,” the man observed. “Quite the best kind.”

John had turned to look at him seriously, leaning on the rail, squinting against the strong sunlight. “What are the odds?” he asked. “Frankly. Everyplace I go people talk of it. A submarine, I mean.” He inclined his head the way they had come. “Back in New York, on the dockside, there was a couple. She had to be persuaded. We all joked of it. Were we right to joke? Were we right to persuade her?”