Titanic Ashes
NaGeira
“Butler's prose is smooth and clean; the story moves
forward vigorously, with patches of poetry.”
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Stoker's Shadow
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cast no shadows, the author and the book certainly do.
In
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ELIZABETH MILLER
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Butler, Paul, 1964-
Titanic ashes / Paul Butler.
Issued also in electronic format.
ISBN 978-1-926881-52-2 ISBN EPUB 978-1-926881-53-9 ISBN KINDLE 978-1-926881-64-5
1. Titanic (Steamship)--Fiction. I. Title.
PS8553. U735T582012 C813'.6 C2011-906524-X
© 2012 by Paul Butler
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Edited by Marnie Parsons and Annamarie Beckel
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Culture and Recreation.
For my parents,
Anne Frances and John Frederick
EVEN THROUGH THE STAR
-
SHAPED
gap in the
foliage, Mr. Ismay’s face is unmistakable. Dark eyes glisten
like those of a man freshly wounded; his brow furrows;
his mouth hides behind a grey moustache. Miranda peers
through the leafy opening, feeling protected for the
moment, the way an audience member feels shielded by
the relative darkness of the stalls and the sense of invisibility. But this is a restaurant, she reminds herself, not a
theatre. He could turn to her any time, and no doubt will,
if she doesn’t tear her own gaze away.
Her mother has been talking about curtains, how the
modern vogue for sheer makes her think she is entering a
harem. This is rich, Miranda thinks. Clinging to the late
Victorian fashions of her girlhood, Mother insists on
mauve and indigo drapes in her own home, surely the
signature hues of ill-repute.
It is, in any case, a ruse. Mother is merely trying to
probe into Miranda’s plans, but she’s trying too hard,
using a barrage of noise when a simple question might
yield more information. Mother wants to know where
Graham and she will buy and how she intends to decorate
her first marital home.
Married life is Miranda’s escape, and Graham is under
strict orders to keep mum. She wants to preserve at least
the pretence that everything will be quite different, unsullied by parental influence. But Graham is a chivalrous
man and his expression becomes more desperate each
time he is compelled to give an evasive answer.
It was the
clink
of ice within a water jug that made
Miranda turn to an adjacent table a few moments ago.
Her gaze moved into the middle distance, and then
beyond, where an image claimed her attention. Through
the star-shaped gap, cigar smoke parted like the haze one
sees around the subject of an old portrait photograph. He
had paused, soup spoon halfway toward his mouth, listening to someone with an interest that seemed not quite
sincere. He nodded, crinkled his eyes and gave an upward
twitch of his moustache—as though reacting to a funny
story—then took his food and chewed.
Miranda suspected it was him straightaway. She knew
from experience that only when one is most desperate to
be mistaken, only then does one’s first instinct turn out to
be spot on. The floor tipped beneath her. She held the
cool stem of her champagne flute and felt perspiration
from her fingertips mingle with condensation from the
glass.
Before she saw him she was wishing her mother would
shut up. Now she is glad for the incessant stream of
words. It means no one will notice the change in her. Poor
Graham nods inexhaustibly and even tries the occasional
interjection, only to agree of course. Father is off somewhere else, cutting grimly with his knife as though searching for his cutlet’s most profitable seam.
“You are so lucky, you two, ” Mother continues, “beginning your young lives in London.” She gazes regretfully at
her husband who, deserting his meat for the moment,
begins to forage through his cabbage. “For our first several
years of married life we were stuck in the provinces. And
you will be ensconced here from the very start!” A sparkle
in the eyes now, a promise to her soon-to-be son-in-law
about the wonders that await him; the irritation is enough
to make Miranda forget her panic.
“Mother, Graham has lived and worked in London for
more than five years. London isn’t adventure to him, or to
me. It’s just life.” She keeps her voice low. The last thing
she wants is to draw attention to her table.
“Life changes when one marries, Miranda dear. The
world opens up.”
The phrase sends a new terror through her, and she
wishes she hadn’t spoken. Reminiscences of transatlantic
voyages are now only two or three exchanges away. A
quick glance through the palm shows Mr. Ismay’s face
more clearly than before. All he has to do is turn his head
and she, and possibly her whole table, will be easily visible to him.
“And will you be travelling to America with your new
bride, Graham dear?”
The subject opens even sooner than she thought. The
table seems to rock gently.
Graham coughs. This is the first real question, the first
at any rate to be followed by a pause long enough for
answering, but unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—
Graham has chosen this moment to take a bite of his wood
pigeon. He chews quickly and brings his napkin to his lips.
Miranda steals another glance through the leaves. Mr.
Ismay’s face is out of sight for the moment, the dome of
his balding head bobbing toward the table.
“We thought closer to home at first, ” says Graham.
“Honeymoon in Paris, that kind of thing.”
“Oh yes, I know about that, but afterwards? This is the
age of speed. America is the new Europe, you know,
Graham dear. In a year or two of married life you’ll be
simply yearning for adventure.”
Mother takes a rather sly look at Father, who reaches
for a tumbler of water. She won’t leave the subject alone
now. The one escape for Miranda is to excuse herself for a
few minutes, but this might be dangerous. Mr. Ismay
might remain unaware of her all evening if she stays in
her seat, but any movement might catch his eye. And,
curious or not, his eyes would then likely follow her back
to the table. Even if he doesn’t recognize Miranda, he
would surely remember her parents.
“Of course adventure is in my blood. My father was a
shipbuilder in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and there was always
romance in our family. I’ve tried my best to pass it on.”
Miranda hears a note of regret as Mother looks at her
wistfully. “We spent a glorious summer in New York when
Miranda was just ten years old. Do you remember, dear?”
“Yes, Mother. I remember.” She weighs the words carefully. If her mother were in a mood to notice she might
pick up on the undercurrent of warning, but Miranda
knows this is too hopeful. Mother is immune to any such
sirens.
In real terms, her mother should have more reason to
avoid the subject of the “glorious summer in New York”
than she, but it never seems to work out that way. While
immune to the emotion herself, Agnes Grimsden marshals
the threat of embarrassment with psychological insight
and ruthless efficiency. She knows Miranda is more afraid
of the subject than she, and there’s nothing Miranda can
do to change this fact.
“And there was that dreadful, tragic event from which
we all had to recover first, ” Mother says. “Well, I’m sure
Miranda must have told you, though I know she doesn’t
like to talk about it.”
Miranda wonders what she must look like. Part of her
skin is overtaken with a shivery coolness, part is blushing.
She imagines a patchwork of white and red, and shrinks
into herself, certain her reptilian appearance will draw
attention from everyone in the restaurant, including the
man beyond the palm.
She meets Graham’s gaze for the first time in ten
minutes, and only furtively. His grey eyes waver with a
mixture of sympathy and muted curiosity. She has told
him about the
Titanic
, of course, and alluded to doing
something in the aftermath of which she was ashamed.
She has hinted, also, of other troubles, not so much of her
own making, but still tangled up with her shame. It has all
been done with the mildest hints. Graham has that rather
wonderful, rare quality of picking up on nuance, silence,
and discomfort. He respects and keeps clear of tender
spots in Miranda’s memory. Miranda has told him next to
nothing. But it is enough, and in any case the suggestion
of a taboo is overshadowed by the event which preceded
it all. Silence must seem fairly reasonable in the circumstances.
What she saw, experienced, and how she reacted in
delayed panic, is locked away tight and will likely remain
so. Sensitive, respectful Graham knows not to delve or
prod. Mother, however, is not like Graham. Even if she
accepted the notion of a taboo, she would go blustering
through it.
“No, ” says Graham quietly, his eyes moving from
Miranda to Mother. “She doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Such an experience, so many lives lost!”
“Indeed.” Graham coughs as though nudging toward a
change in subject.
“Miranda’s father wasn’t travelling with us, ” says
Mother, as if her husband weren’t present at the table.
“Thank goodness, because John is noble and selfless. He
would have insisted on remaining behind on the ship, and
we would have been left destitute.”
Father coughs, his frown tightening as he takes
another sip of water.
“If you’ll forgive me, Mother.” Miranda is unable to
contain herself. “The logic of that statement somewhat
eludes me. A selfless act surely doesn’t leave a man’s
family destitute.”
“Honour, my dear, ” Mother says, raising her glass in a
dark parody of a toast. “An old concept, I admit, but an
important one nonetheless.” There is harshness in her
expression now.
Perhaps she and Graham have gone too far in
stonewalling about their intended home, its location and
décor. People like Mother, who dominate conversations,
are like that sometimes. They take a long time to feel
offence, even to notice the lack of response, but once they
have taken umbrage, it’s too late; by that time they’ve
given too much of themselves, and they feel foolish and
shunned. Was it mean of her to say nothing to Mother
about the curtains, not to ask her advice about something
inconsequential? Was it meaner still to draw genial
Graham into being her proxy, to insist he brush her off too?
“Well, ” Miranda says, her face burning. “Thank goodness Father was never put in the position of deciding what
he must do.”
Father grunts and takes another sip of water, leaning
back in his chair and looking from one face to another.
Miranda wonders how they have managed to arrive at this
point in the conversation. All she has wanted to do since
glimpsing the face through the palms is to keep the talk
away from the subject of travel by sea in general, transatlantic liners in particular, and, in minute particular, the
Titanic
and the disaster of 1912. And here they are, not
only discussing the
Titanic
but the very heart of Miranda’s
current anxiety: notions of valour and cowardice as they
pertain to gentlemen going down with the ship or stepping into lifeboats.
“You would have insisted upon staying aboard the
doomed liner, would you not have, John?” her mother
asks.
Father lets his fingers dip absentmindedly into his
waistcoat pocket as though checking for a watch.
“Indubitably, ” he says with a slight sniff and quick glance
around at the company.
Not many people understand Father’s sense of humour,
but Miranda does. Buried beneath the gruff exterior is a
subtle and many-layered malice that lends the simplest of
gestures, the most straightforward-seeming of statements,
a contrary meaning. Mother is satisfied and gives Miranda
a cool nod of victory. But Miranda knows Father’s one-word answer refers not to honour but merely to the fact
he would have preferred to be free of his wife then and
there, even if death were the only option of escape.
Mother’s extroversion saves her from this knowledge. She
simply isn’t able to hide an emotion once it surfaces, and
can’t fathom people who can.
But while Father can obscure true meanings from his
wife, Miranda sees little chance of hiding anything. She
wanted to protect herself from any conversation of
transatlantic liners, and failed. She wanted to keep off the
subject of the
Titanic
, and failed. Already Mother has
peeled the subject down to the sore points of lifeboats and
honour. Only one creaking gate remains unbreached: J.
Bruce Ismay, White Star Line Chairman, and Director of
the International Mercantile Marine Company, one-time
acquaintance of Miranda’s parents—and the man sitting
beyond the palm.
“In any case, Miranda dear, you were not always so
disparaging to the traditional virtues of courage and
chivalry, ” Mother says, luxuriating in the moment, like the
soft breeze that touches the palm’s heart-shaped leaves
and sets them quivering.
“Nor am I now, Mother.” Miranda’s reply, firm and
final, seems to take the wind out of her mother’s sails. Her
expression drops, and her eyes cease to smile; she takes a
glance at her husband and then at Graham, as though
suddenly worried she has been caught misbehaving.
“Oh look, ” says Graham, “the band is back.”
With some relief, Miranda cranes her neck half circle
toward the dais, which is partially shrouded on both sides
by rather extravagant greenery, so that when the musicians take up their instruments it looks as if they have just
stepped out from a jungle into a clearing to find the
means of entertainment miraculously awaiting them.
They take position and briefly strike some notes to make
sure they are still in tune. The violinist nods to the bass
player. The cellist readies his bow before the strings, and
with a sweet high yap the quartet swings into a ragtime
number. A collective gasp of pleasure breathes through
the diners, and insulated by waves of sound and a single
focus for their attention, Miranda breathes more easily.
Mother, apparently forgetting the unpleasant undercurrents of the conversation, taps her fingers gaily and her
smile takes in everyone at the table, including Miranda.