Titanic Ashes (12 page)

As he turns to go back into the dining room at last, he
promises himself it will be his last time here, the last time
in London or in any English city, his last appearance
among the crowds. He feels the tramp of the Connemara
turf beneath his feet, damp but solid enough, more firm
than anything under the souls who perished thirteen
Aprils ago. Oblivion wants him and the desire is mutual.
He has outlived his time.

HE SMILES AT EVELYN
as he sits, notes the battle
of emotion there—worry, relief, and urgent need to
know—and feels the profound peace of a man who knows
a war to be finally over, and the only chore remaining to
be the announcement of the fact. The waiter slides dessert
plates before Evelyn, then before Ismay.

“Most efficient, thank you, ” he says. The waiter’s face
twitches and he hurries off.

“Father.” Evelyn leans toward him. “What happened?”

“What happened?” Ismay echoes, raising his dessert
fork. “About fifteen hundred people died on one of my
steamships in 1912.”

Evelyn stares, open-mouthed. She seems suddenly so
young, this daughter of his, in her fashionable loose-fitting dress, with the pink in her cheeks. He’s become
used to thinking of her as a wise old woman in the body
of a girl, and wonders whether it’s because he’s always felt
so shielded, so taken care of, in her presence. It seems an
injustice to her now. She is indeed as young as she looks.

Evelyn hesitates, lifts her own fork, and stops again.

“Father, what do you mean?”

Her eyes are intent upon him, aware that there
is
a
meaning, that this is not merely the prelude to a nervous
breakdown.

“I mean, my dear, that the only thing that should ever
have mattered is the disaster and what caused it.” He taps
with the side of his fork on the hard sugar coating of his
crème brûlée.

“Isn’t that the problem, Father? People seemed to think
that
you
caused it, and we have to put them right.”

“It was my ship, Evelyn. There were design flaws and
there were not enough lifeboats. Someone has to take the
blame.”

Despite the calmness in his voice, he sees disquiet in
her eyes. He lays his fork down.

“Evelyn, there comes a time in everyone’s life when
after years of building, of pursuing some goal or other,
one simply has to say: enough; I’ve done my part for good
or ill. I was at that point in 1912, ready to retire, to move
gracefully off into the file drawers of the White Star Line.
But the
Titanic
prevented me. It couldn’t be the last word,
this appalling disaster, this unthinkable loss of life, the
shame of it all.”

“Yet you did resign within a few months.”

A cloud seems to pass over Evelyn, the shadow of a waiter
perhaps. Ismay wonders if she’s afraid his memory is going.

“I physically left the workplace, yes.”

“And against the wishes of your colleagues, ” she
prompts quickly.

“Against the wishes of
some
of them, yes. They understood me, just as you do.”

A flicker of gratitude comes into Evelyn’s eyes.

“But I never left the deck of the
Titanic
. And why
should I? Others weren’t allowed to.”

Her lip trembles and he sees her wrestle with something.

“You blame yourself, Father.” She nudges forward in
her chair, a coil of energy about to be released, and he can
feel it coming, the same arguments against his guilt. He
knows them all by rote. He took no one’s place in the
lifeboat. It would have been a pointless act of self-sacrifice. He hadn’t influenced the captain on that night, had
no say at all in navigation. He holds up his hand to stop
her, hushing her like a child.

“And who else is there to blame?” he asks quietly.
“Fifteen hundred people, Evelyn. Some of them never
even made it to the boat decks until the lifeboats had all
gone—steerage people.”

Evelyn catches his eye, then looks down and presses
the base of her glass to the tablecloth as though they are
on a dining car of a train and she is preventing the motion
of the tracks from making it spill. “Thomas Andrews
designed the ship, Father.”

“And who hired and directed Thomas Andrews?”

She looks up at him again, eyes damp.

“No more arguing, ” he says, “no more stating of my
case, either to myself or to others. You freed me of it all
tonight, Evelyn. You showed me again how futile it was to
go through it over and over, to try and face out your
accuser. After tonight I shall finally leave the
Titanic
.”

“Leave?” A hint of alarm sparks in her eyes.

“Nothing drastic.” He picks up his glass and holds it
toward her. “Tomorrow, I return to Liverpool to pick up
your mother and thence to Ireland, where I shall live the
life of a country squire.”

Evelyn sighs and he can feel the warm breath of her
relief.

“From now on you’ll have to visit me, you and your
Basil. He will have to do the building from now on.”

She gives him a shy smile. He’s well aware that Evelyn
tries to rouse him by suggesting how similar her intended
is, in character, to himself. Ismay often sidesteps the
intended compliment as Basil is a decorated war hero and
the contrast is too painful, the flattery too undeserved.
This reciprocation will, he hopes, reassure her.

“I’m glad we came here tonight, Evelyn, ” he tells her,
raising the fork to his mouth.

He sees sadness behind her smile, as well as acceptance, and a quiet breeze moves over them, swaying the
heavy leaves of the palm.

MIRANDA
’
S BEEN TRYING TO
fathom things
since her father returned. But the conversation, mainly
between Graham and Mother and about the benefits of
different areas of London, keeps distracting her. She has
to keep an eye on her fiancé to prevent Mother from
breaking through his wall. Graham seems dithery now,
and tired, and Mother’s probing is all the more intense.
The only sign that anything happened at all outside the
dining room is Father’s mildly fed-up sigh as he resumed
his seat, a quick look at the table and a tetchy glance at
his watch.

Mr. Ismay returned a few moments later and, despite
the expression on Evelyn’s face when her father left, he
seems relaxed enough. The conversation she’s spied
through the palm seemed a little intense, perhaps, but
calm. It’s a strange feeling. For thirteen years she’s
believed that her actions may well have caused untold
grief and fury. The feeling swelled to a dizzying height
tonight but has collapsed into this: two men who seem
hardly interested at all. That she should experience it as
an anticlimax causes real disquiet. Is this what she
wanted, and still wants now, to be noticed, hated, and
despised? It brings her back to her ten-year-old self sitting
alone in the dimness of her father’s study, surrounded by
the fragrance of embossed leather and bonded paper,
scratching hateful lines with her new fountain pen.

Mother breaks through the memory, her voice rising in
triumph.

“Belgravia! Not Chelsea! Oh, Miranda, I’m so glad.”

“What?” The word comes out in a gasp. She fires a
look at Graham whose neck is suddenly pink with embarrassment.

“My dear, the cat’s out of the bag! Graham has been
telling me your plans.”

She stares at her mother. Defeat, she is beginning to
realize, was almost inevitable but she’s amazed at
Mother’s powers of resilience, her easy recovery. The
tiredness has gone from her eyes, replaced by the malicious life and artificial poise that always seem to mark
family celebrations.

“Yes, you got it out of me, Mrs. G., you’re far too
clever, ” says Graham nervously, eyes darting toward
Miranda.

Miranda knows it shouldn’t really matter whether
Mother knows where they plan to live, and that she would
find out anyway in time. But her not knowing gave
Miranda a sense of security, albeit a symbolic one.
Graham’s leak of the information has likely given Mother
the go-ahead to descend upon everything, not only
wedding preparations, but the precise house as well. She
will surely pressure them both to buy a larger place than
is financially comfortable. She will advise about staff,
remind them both how she abhors the modern fad for
doing without. She will give her views upon the schooling
of their future children. In that word ‘Belgravia’ she has
achieved the first victory, always the hardest to win. Now
the precedent for Graham crumbling has been set, the
barriers that keep Miranda from being too much like her
mother will fall, one after the other, until one day in
twenty or thirty years time, Mother’s face will gaze back
at her from her mirror.

Graham continues to look desperate but Miranda is
drifting away into defeat, just as Mother was a few
minutes ago, sinking back into the recollection of Father’s
study, of coming to give him his tobacco, and feeling his
great meaty arms pull her onto his knee as he did every
once in a while when the mood took him, usually after a
long day’s work, some unexpected good news. She
remembers laughing along with him, being told to “run
along now.”

“
COME TO THE PARK
with us, ” Miranda says,
flushed with the moment.

“I’ll have to write a letter, ” he says shaking his head,
filling his pipe, “an important letter, Miranda.”

“Can’t you do it later?” she insists.

“Business first, pleasure later.” His low voice, vibrating
through the furniture, seems to embody the spirit of an
adult world that is beyond understanding, a world of
pipes, tobacco, embossed leather, urgent letters and no
parks, no swings, no outside at all. But the comfort it gives
Miranda is profound, a return to cast-iron certainty after
the strangeness of the
Titanic
, New York, and Mr.
Johnston. She can almost forget there ever was such a
man, that the summer in New York was merely part of an
eerie dream from which she has now awakened.

Miranda backs off but holds onto the doorknob. She
thinks about trying again. Father strikes his match and
sets it into the bowl of his pipe, puffing and pulling. “A
friend of your mother, Mr. Johnston in fact, has, through
contacts, helped to get us a very important deal with a
company in the United States. And I should not wait a
moment before thanking him properly. Run along now!”

Miranda feels a blight in the air as her short legs try to
keep up with Mother, watching from a yard’s distance the
breeze shivering through her mother’s stole. The pavement is still slippery underfoot from the morning’s rain,
and a wasp, lazy in the cooling air but persistent, buzzes
around her head. Early fallen leaves scattered around in
dry patches seem to whisper
Mr. Johnston, Mr. Johnston
,
and Miranda tries to remember the conversation in the
museum. She looks up at her mother, wondering how to
dip once again into those mysteries, but Mother has that
faraway look, the smile she reserves for stories of heroism,
for their evocations in art and poetry.
Selflessness and
sacrifice are true measures of nobility
—the phrase resurfaces, hauling many tangled strands of confusion. She said
at the time that Father needed help but didn’t know how
to ask for it. She also talked about discretion. And here is
her father, her kindly but fearless father, reduced to blind,
unknowing servility to Mr. Johnston at whom he, by
rights, should be outraged.

The wasp buzzes around her again, clumsily prods her
forehead close to her hairline. She almost wishes it would
sting. Like a dark, underground stream, the vaguest, most
terrifying feeling meanders through her: something has
gone terribly wrong. When that great steamship
foundered, it took the ordinary world, and all that is safe
and reliable, with it. Now she views the world through a
distorting mirror. Heroism has turned to treachery. Brave
strong men, like her father, have become obsequious.

The park comes into view and Mother takes her hand.
A rush of pity and regret floods Miranda. She looks up at
this elegant woman with her high cheekbones and her
proud air and knows she didn’t mean to betray Father. It’s
all a terrible mistake. The wasp touches down on her wrist
then flies off as Mother and she stand upon the curb, waiting for a motor car to pass. As she remembers the collage
she had made of the newspaper article, a new emotion
begins to rumble within Miranda; it’s a stark and fire-spitting feeling, and she no longer pities the Ismay girls. She’s
on her mother’s side, this time, fending off the snakes.
Something loosed evil upon the world that spring, and it
wasn’t Mother. Leaves skitter along the road and the name
they whisper changes from
Johnston
to
Ismay
as they cross
to the rolling trees and the dappled sunlight of the park.

The worst kind of villain is one who makes good
people act against their own judgment. It was Ismay’s
ship; Ismay, whom her father seemed to look up to in that
strange, silent way of his; Ismay who shattered Mother’s
notions of good and evil; and Ismay who should be made
to pay for it all. She thinks of her father’s study, his black
leather-bound address book, his stamps, and with a small
flutter in her chest, sets her plan in motion.

MIRANDA SEES SOMETHING BEYOND
the
palm, and this time there is a conclusive air about the
movement. Mr. Ismay comes around the table and puts a
thin shawl around his daughter’s shoulders. Evelyn stands
and straightaway turns to leave, but Mr. Ismay waits for a
moment and looks in Miranda’s direction.

She’s too numbed to notice properly at first; the illu
sion has returned that she’s at the theatre, and therefore
beyond being seen. But he holds her gaze until she
glances away, then back again. Her face gives a slight
twitch of apology. While she has no idea what this expression might look like, something about the way Mr. Ismay
meets her gaze once again seems to acknowledge this. He
turns and follows his daughter.

Miranda is left alone with Father, Graham, and Mother.
The talk now is of the best curtains and light fittings,
about Harrods, and Fortnum and Mason’s, and the horrors
of modern department stores with their low prices but
dubious goods. Miranda thinks of breaking in but knows
it’s far too late. Mother’s eyes are lively, reflecting the
chandeliers now, basking in the gentle breeze. This time,
Miranda realizes, it is curiosity rather than annoyance
that was behind her instinct to interrupt. She’s too
defeated to try to rebuild the defensive wall.

There have never been any relatives on Mother’s side,
or any long-term friends who might have known her in
childhood, who might have shed light on her extraordinary perseverance when it comes to upholding all that is
correct in taste and conduct. Yet it has been quite relentless, and she can right herself in minutes and steam ahead
as she has done tonight after any argument or unpleasantness. Even her breach of the basic vows of fidelity—the
veiled threat of discovery tonight—can’t bow her
indomitable spirit. It’s possible Father has remained igno
rant about it all these years—although he does manifest a
rather pointed dislike of his wife at times, which makes
Miranda wonder—but Mother herself has always seemed
quite untroubled by the subject of Mr. Johnston, even
laughs in a rather shrill and overly public manner at pleasantries still written on Christmas cards, which are
addressed, rather revealingly, only to Mother.

Somehow the notion of greater advancement, her
family’s place in the social sphere, must, for Mother, transcend any parochial objections. The values are as baffling
as they are distorted, but the sheer stoicism of it all astonishes Miranda. In recent years, Miranda has seen her
mother as something grand, powerful yet flawed; one of
the great steamships of the past transformed and personified. But suddenly she seems altogether harsher, more
enduring, and at heart, chillingly cold.

Since she became an adult, capable of arguing,
Miranda has merely taken the opposite view as a reaction
and has never learned a thing about what lies inside her
mother. She remembers the heated discussions of late—
The world is changing, Mother. Classes are merging. The
wealthy are being taxed. And most of them give in with a
grumble or two and admit it. Even if you are close to the top
of the sinking pyramid, you must realize it’s disappearing
—
and realizes her words were as inert as printed letters on
a page. What was there in any of it to provoke a reaction?
Where was the engagement? Now, for the first time, as
she watches the inexhaustible stars in Mother’s eyes, the
glint of light upon the gold earring chains, the dark pools
of onyx sewn into her mint green dress, she sees her
mother as a genuine mystery. She wonders what it might
be like to ask a simple, open-ended question of the kind
she complains her fiancé avoids. Such a question, calculated for greatest surprise, gathers on her lips:
Mother,
why is any of this important?

A pause opens up and Miranda is within a whisker of
speaking.

“Graham, ” Mother announces, “you must get Miranda
to hire a lady’s maid.”

Miranda gulps down the question, bites her lip.

Mother glides on, sparkling into the night, and the
moment passes.