Women and Children First (32 page)

‘This
is
John,’ Molly said, to fill the stunned silence in the kitchen.

‘No, John Hitchens, I mean. He was on the
Titanic
. White Star Line told us he was working at Sherry’s and Sherry’s told us he was working here.’ The woman had an edge of agitation in her voice.

Everyone turned to look at Reg and for a moment he considered running out the back door, and keeping on running for as long as he could.

‘He’s my son,’ she explained, ‘but I haven’t heard from him since the sinking, even though I know he survived. He’s on the list of survivors.’

Reg couldn’t speak for the colossal weight of shame. How could he have been so stupid? What had he done to this poor woman?

‘
This
is John Hitchens,’ Molly said carefully, ‘and he was on the
Titanic
.’ She turned to Reg. ‘Did two of you have the same name? It would be terrible if it turns out they’ve come all this way for the wrong guy.’

At last Reg found his voice. ‘Alphonse, Molly, do you think you could leave us alone for a while? I need to talk to Mrs Hitchens on her own.’

Molly didn’t want to leave. She wanted to be part of this conversation, which promised to be juicy, but Reg insisted. Alphonse warned that he would need to come back in twenty minutes, no more, to check on some meat that was roasting. As the door closed behind them, Reg slumped heavily in a chair and leaned his head in his hands. He couldn’t bear to look the visitors in the eye.

‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I wrote to you. Didn’t you get the letter?’

‘What letter?’

‘I sent it to you at West Road, Newcastle, but I didn’t know the number. I was sure it would get there.’

‘West Road is one of the longest roads in the city. We never got any letter from you. What did it say?’

Reg could barely speak for his shame. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I’ve done something unforgivable and I didn’t even realise it till now. John was my best friend and I took his name after the sinking. I’ve been pretending to be him. But I’m not. My name is Reg Parton.’

The woman was shaking her head in bafflement. ‘I don’t understand. Why would you do that?’

‘I wanted to get work in New York and John had a clean record while I didn’t.’

There was a pause while she took this in. ‘So where is John then? Whose record is he using?’

The girl spoke for the first time. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? That’s why you used his name. That’s what you wrote to tell us.’

Reg nodded slowly. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened to him when the ship went down but he didn’t make it onto the
Carpathia
.’

‘He
must
be here,’ John’s mother insisted. ‘We’ve come all the way from Newcastle to find him because White Star told us he was here. They were quite certain of it.’

‘That’s because they believe that
I
am John. I don’t know what I was thinking of. I can’t begin to explain this to you …’ What was wrong with him? John had said they weren’t close, but family was still family. It was unbelievably cruel to steal a dead man’s identity.

‘I’m his sister, Mary,’ the girl explained, and when he looked at her, he could see it was true because John’s features were there, albeit with a more feminine twist. ‘Are you absolutely sure he couldn’t be alive somewhere else? Maybe
he
took another name as well.’

‘I searched the
Carpathia
from top to bottom. I looked everywhere for him. I was devastated when I couldn’t find him. He was my best friend in the world.’

‘I know. He mentioned you in letters.’ The girl gave a huge sigh and it caught in her throat and turned into a sob. ‘He was very fond of you.’

John’s mother still couldn’t believe it. ‘White Star told us he was here. There must be some mistake. We’ve spent all the money we had in the world coming to find him. We thought he must be too shook up to get in touch. We wrote to him and sent the letters to White Star but he never replied.’

‘I didn’t get the letters,’ Reg told them. ‘If I had, I’d have written back and told you the truth. I’ll reimburse you for your fares. I’ll give you all my savings and I’ll keep sending you money until I’ve paid off everything you’ve spent. I promise.’

John’s mother was pale and her face tight, as the truth began to dawn on her. ‘I don’t want your
money
,’ she cried, her voice getting louder. ‘I want my
son
!’

Mary was crying silently, and Reg felt such a deep shame that he wished himself dead. If only he had gone down with the ship as well. Since then, nothing in his life had gone right and it was entirely his own fault. He couldn’t think straight. His head was full of fog and he’d made all the wrong decisions. He’d left his brain in the North Atlantic.

‘I wish there was something I could do, something I could say, to make this better, but there isn’t. I would do anything,’ he pleaded.

‘Bring me back my son!’ John’s mother shouted, angry now, and Mr Frank opened the kitchen door and stepped into the room. He looked from one face to another, trying to fathom the cause of the ruckus.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked quietly.

‘He’s impersonating my son John. We’ve come all this way and John is dead. I don’t know how he could do that.’ John’s mother started crying, with huge sobs that made her chest heave.

Her daughter tugged at her arm and said, ‘Let’s go back to the hotel, Ma. We need to be alone.’

Mr Frank barely glanced at Reg, just addressing them. ‘Ladies, please allow me to get our driver to take you to your hotel. You are too distressed to walk the streets. Come with me and I’ll show you out the front.’

The women rose to their feet and Reg watched them go. John’s sister gave him one last look of reproach, but he was frozen to the spot. Alphonse came in to check his meat. He gave Reg a searching look and patted him briefly on the shoulder but didn’t say anything.

Reg sat there without moving for more than ten minutes. He could hear Mr Frank talking to the women in the hall upstairs, then the front door opening. He was in a hole so deep that he didn’t believe he would ever be able to climb out again. How could he have been so thoughtless? He’d blithely assumed the postman would deliver that letter and hadn’t bothered to check. He could have written to them care of White Star in Southampton – that would have reached them – but instead he’d just put them out of his mind. It was evil, that’s what it was. He deserved to die. Just as soon as he could, he decided he would find a way to kill himself. That was the only solution. That way, he could put an end to all this misery.

Mr Frank was tight-lipped when he came back into the kitchen. ‘I think we’d better go upstairs and explain this to Mr Grayling, don’t you?’

Reg staggered as he stood up and would have fallen over if Alphonse hadn’t caught his arm.

Mr Grayling was in his office. Mr Frank tapped on the door and led Reg in.

‘Excuse me, sir. We have an unusual situation here. Can you spare a few moments?’

‘Of course. Sit down.’

Mr Frank pointed Reg towards a chair then sat himself and began his explanation. ‘Two women came to the house looking for John Hitchens. They are his mother and sister, recently arrived from England to look for him, but it seems that this is not John. He is someone else who has been using John’s name, and the real John is dead. Am I right?’ He turned to Reg, and Reg nodded, his head hung in shame.

Mr Grayling frowned and sat back in his chair. ‘What’s your real name?’ he asked sternly.

Reg told him.

‘And why in God’s name did you lie about it?’

In a shaking voice, Reg explained that a mistake had been made in the roll call on the
Carpathia
and he hadn’t corrected it because he wanted to start a new life with a clean sheet. He’d written to tell John’s family but the letter hadn’t arrived and it never occurred to him for one moment that they would try to track him down. He was devastated at the turn of events, he whispered. He didn’t know how he would be able to live with himself.

‘Tell me about your record with White Star,’ Mr Grayling demanded. ‘Was it so bad?’

Reg explained about his misdemeanours, and Mr Grayling exchanged a look with Mr Frank.

‘I see,’ he said, and tapped his finger on the desk while he considered the situation. ‘I should dismiss you on the spot for lying to us. Don’t you agree, Mr Frank?’

Mr Frank said nothing, but the two men continued to look each other in the eye.

‘However, I feel a sense of responsibility for you now. Everyone who was on the
Titanic
is struggling to come to terms with it, and I see you are having more trouble than most. But if you are to remain in my employment I need to be sure you will not tell me any more lies.’

Reg was trembling. ‘I … I can’t carry on, sir.’

‘You have to carry on, Reg,’ Mr Frank told him firmly, but his tone wasn’t unkind. ‘You have to keep working so you can repay these women every penny they’ve spent coming here, including the cost of their hotel and sustenance. I told them I will send you down there to talk to them tomorrow.’

‘I can’t.’ Reg’s eyes welled up. ‘They can have all my savings, all my wages, but I can’t face them again.’

‘It’s the very least you can do,’ Mr Frank told him. ‘When they get over the shock, they are going to want to hear the whole story and anything you know about what happened to John. You owe it to them to tell them every last detail.’

Reg covered his face with his hands and started to cry bitterly. He was crying for what he’d done to John’s family, and crying for himself, but most of all he was crying because he missed John so badly. The wound hadn’t begun to heal and maybe it never would.

Mr Grayling spoke to Mr Frank. ‘I think we need to keep an eye on him tonight. He’s in a bad way. To be honest, he’s not the only person I’ve heard about who took on a different identity on the ship. The Duff Gordons booked themselves under the name of ‘Morgan’ and there were supposedly a number of card sharps travelling under assumed names. I’m sure the survivors list has many errors in it because everyone on the
Carpathia
was in a state of shock and the chap going round with the roll call wasn’t the world’s brightest spark. Come, come, lad. Pull yourself together.’

Reg took out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes and struggled to regain control. How humiliating to cry in front of his employer. What must they think of him? Before the
Titanic
sank, the last time he’d cried was as a young boy. Now he couldn’t seem to turn off the waterworks.

Mr Grayling continued: ‘So, tomorrow you will go and visit these women and tell them everything they want to know. Make sure you get the correct address in England so you can send them some money every month until they’ve been reimbursed. You can’t ever make it up to them fully, but they will be able to see how remorseful you are, and that will help.’

‘Yes, sir. I will.’

‘Next week we are going to my summer house on Long Island for a vacation and I think the sea air will do you good. Tonight you may take the evening off your duties. Go to your room and rest. Someone will bring your dinner on a tray, and I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow.’

Reg went upstairs and lay on his bed, watching the sky gradually darken through the skylight. Molly came up with a tray of food and slammed it on the chest, snapping, ‘Here you go,
Reg
’ in a tone that showed she had heard the news and was furious with him. He could see how it must look to her. They’d been speculating about Miss Hamilton taking an assumed name, and all the time Reg had one himself. He had kissed Molly on several occasions, yet he hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her his name. No wonder she was cross.

He couldn’t eat, couldn’t take so much as a sip of water. Suicide was the most appealing of the options in front of him, but he couldn’t do that until he had reimbursed the Hitchens family. In the meantime, it looked as though he would have to go to Long Island with Mr Grayling, but that was a terrifying prospect as well. To get to an island he assumed they would have to go on a boat, and he still had a terror of water. Whenever he thought about it, he could feel the ocean gushing over his head, swallowing him up, and the burning pain in his lungs as he struggled for the surface.

I thought I had reached the depths of misery on the
Carpathia, Reg thought.
But that was nothing compared to how I feel now
.