Women and Children First (43 page)

After the newspaper story about her appeared, Annie was alarmed by the sheer quantity of requests for readings from the relatives of
Titanic
survivors. Many of them made the journey to the church to implore Father Kelly in person, while others sent pleading letters. She hated to disappoint anyone who was recently bereaved but it would have been physically impossible to see them all and, for her own sanity, she wanted to stick to the limit of one séance a week.

It was Father Kelly who came up with a solution: she would write a brief letter to each, explaining that she did not have time for individual readings but that she knew their loved one was at peace. If there was some personal detail she could add, all the better. She perused the letters carefully and found she could usually read between the lines and work out what they wanted to hear.
He didn’t suffer. She is with her grandparents. He wants you to be happy.
Sometimes she’d ask Finbarr, ‘
What shall I say to this one?’
and the words would flow into her head. Although her notes were largely formulaic, Annie knew from the replies that the recipients found them very comforting.

Shortly after the newspaper item was published, the Church authorities were alerted that Father Kelly was involved in spiritualism and he was told in the strictest terms that he must cease any connection with séances, and should encourage his parishioner to do the same.

‘I think they’re wrong to close their minds to it,’ he told Annie ruefully, ‘but I must follow their orders. We will have to stop holding séances in my house. Still, there’s no harm in me simply acting as a mailbox if you want to continue replying to letters.’

Annie agreed that she would, because whatever the Catholic Church said, she knew in her heart it was doing some good. She spent an hour a day writing letters in her big, loopy handwriting, before she settled down to her embroidery. It made her feel strong, to be in a position to help other people. She felt part of a network of
Titanic
survivors, and flattered that people trusted her enough to tell her their stories. Most days, it helped to ease the acuteness of her own grief.

She no longer had time to sweep the church, but she continued to take responsibility for the floral arrangements. After dropping Patrick at school and picking up her groceries from the market each morning, she would drop in to pray, then wander round the church weeding out any blooms that had passed their best and changing the water to make bouquets last longer. It was while she was occupied with this one day, that Reg came into the church and spotted her.

‘Mrs McGeown?’ he said tentatively, lurking behind a pillar as if he were afraid of disturbing her.

‘Will you look at that! If it’s not Reg Parton. My, but it’s good to see you.’ She meant it. She’d often thought of him and felt grateful that Finbarr had been so well cared for in his final minutes of life. ‘How did you get here?’

He spoke quickly, nervously. ‘I came on the Rapid Transit. Have you tried it? It goes through tunnels part of the way, and it’s fast. Much faster than a streetcar.’

Annie smiled. Finbarr would have been equally enthusiastic about the new-fangled kind of underground train that linked them with the city. ‘Did you come to see me?’

‘Yes, I wanted to say goodbye. I’m going back to England. And I wondered if I might have a talk with you, if you have a minute to spare. I don’t want to bother you.’

He wants a reading. Probably about his friend John. I suppose I can do that for him.
Out loud, she said, ‘It would be much appreciated if you would help me up the steps to my house with my bags of shopping. My old knees have been giving me trouble so I like to take it slow and easy, but you’re a young fit lad.’

Reg carried everything up for her and waited at the top as she hauled herself up the step street, flinching at the jabbing pain that afflicted both knees now. ‘We’ve found a new apartment down on the main street but it’ll be a month before we can move in. I can’t wait.’

She led him into her sitting room and he was immediately struck by the sight of some embroidery lying on a table by the window: a stunning oriental pagoda fronted by cherry blossom trees and a lake with a bridge over it that she was stitching onto a pale pink silk dressing gown.

‘Aren’t I the lucky wan, getting such a lovely job as this? Will you look at the gorgeous colours of those threads!’

Annie made some tea then sat down opposite him. ‘Now did you come about your friend John?’ she asked. ‘Do you want me to try and contact him?’

‘No … It’s not that.’ He seemed troubled by something, so Annie waited for him to spit it out. ‘There were some first-class passengers on board called Mr and Mrs Grayling. He survived and she didn’t. I think he might have killed her and locked her in their suite. I’ve been to the police but there’s not enough evidence to charge him. I suppose … I just hate to see him getting away with it.’

Annie nodded. ‘You want me to try and speak to her.’

‘I don’t really know why I came. I’m not even sure I believe in all this.’ He waved his hand in the air.

‘I’ll tell you a secret: I’m not sure I believe myself.’ She smiled conspiratorially. ‘But I can tell you it helps. I know it has lifted me out of blackness in the moments when I thought I was going mad, and other people tell me it has helped them to pull through. Well, we will try to contact your Mrs Grayling, but no promises, mind.’

She pulled a small table between them, lit a candle then indicated that Reg should give her his hands. She closed her eyes and began to concentrate. The first words that came into her head didn’t sound as though they came from an upper-class woman.

‘What are you doing here, man? You’re the one who always said religion was a load of codswallop.’

‘It’s John,’ Reg breathed. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck.

‘Why don’t you get yourself back home, marry some nice girl and have children before you get too long in the tooth? Call your handsomest boy after me.’

‘I will,’ Reg agreed, close to tears. It was uncanny. Annie’s voice was still hers, but to his ears it had the ring of John’s about it, a very slight Geordie inflection.

Next she spoke in her own voice. ‘Is there a Mrs Grayling who was on the
Titanic
?’ She paused for a long time, trying to hear something, but all she felt was a deep sense of exhaustion. It was a while before she realised that tiredness might be a message in itself. ‘I think it means she was sleeping when the ship sank,’ she said out loud, and then she began to hear a very distant voice. ‘Tell Reg not to worry. I’m happy now. I’m glad to be here.’

‘Is she with her daughter Alice?’ Reg asked.

‘Of course. Mothers always meet their children on the other side.’

‘Can you ask if her husband killed her?’

Annie focused hard. ‘She says, “My husband is foolish but he is not a bad man.” I think that’s your answer.’

Reg gave a deep sigh. If it were true, he could stop worrying. It sounded like the kind of thing Mrs Grayling might say. He hoped it was.

Annie listened a while longer but there was nothing more so she opened her eyes and let go of his hands. ‘Was that what you needed to know?’

‘I think so. Thank you.’

‘It’s good to see you, Reg. You’re quite the hero, I believe. My husband said he read about you in the papers recently. You were in a car that crashed into the sea and you kept diving down, trying to save the girl who’d been in the passenger seat. It made us remember how brave you were in trying to save our son.’

Reg blushed to the roots of his hair. ‘Please don’t say that. I’m no hero. Officers Lightoller and Lowe, and Captain Rostron of the
Carpathia
– they’re the real heroes. I only managed to save myself.’

‘And yet you
are
brave. I can see it in your soul.’

On his way back on the transit, Reg wasn’t sure why he had gone to see Annie. Spiritualism had to be nonsense. How could there be some vast place called heaven where souls went after death and met up with their loved ones again? It would be hugely overcrowded if it contained the souls of all the people who had ever lived throughout the centuries, and it would have to keep expanding every day as more people died. Besides, if it were possible for souls to pass messages to those back on earth, why weren’t they constantly in contact? They would be poking their noses in, pestering their families with advice and requests. Murderers would always be caught because their victims could point the finger. It couldn’t possibly be true.

Yet it had definitely sounded like John’s voice. He felt better for going. He felt as though he’d done all he could.

When Seamus got in from his work that evening, Annie told him about Reg’s visit. He remained firmly sceptical about her contacting the spirits but sometimes she chatted to him about a séance to get his pragmatic point of view.

Seamus listened to her description of the conversation as he ate his chipped beef and mash. ‘He didn’t come here to talk to spirits,’ he said when she’d finished. ‘He came to check that we don’t blame him for Finbarr dying. The spirits were an excuse.’

Annie remembered that Reg had looked nervous in the church when he first arrived, and how relieved he’d seemed by her greeting. ‘I’ve never blamed him. Well, maybe just for a second after I got the news but not once I’d heard his story.’

‘No, but he’s a good lad and if I put myself in his shoes, that’s what I’d worry about. He can go home to England now knowing he has your blessing.’

Annie was suddenly overwhelmed by love for Seamus. He was so good and steady and wise. She got up and walked round the table and embraced him from behind, sliding her arms right round his waist and burying her face in his neck. He’d had a wash when he came in from work and she could smell the soap on his skin.

‘There’s something I’ve never told you, Annie,’ he said in a low voice, so the children didn’t hear, ‘and I should have. I’ve often thought about what happened on the
Titanic
that night and gone over things in my head again and again, and I want you to know that in your place I’d have done exactly the same as you did. That’s all.’ He raised his fork and carried on eating.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

She thought about the choice she had made fourteen years earlier when she’d seen Seamus standing in the seed shop and asked her friend to introduce them. You never knew the kind of journey life was going to take you on, and she’d been a frivolous slip of a girl back then, but somehow she’d got that decision spot on. No matter the tragedy that had come her way since, she had an awful lot to be grateful for.

When Reg turned up at the Cunard Line office to see if Mr Grayling had left him a ticket as promised, he was astonished to find there was a first-class reservation in his name.

‘Are you sure there’s no mistake?’ he asked.

The clerk checked. ‘Reg Parton, that’s right. There’s a letter here for you as well.’ He handed over an envelope with no stamp but with Reg’s name on the outside.

Reg went to sit on a bench in the shipping office and tore it open. Two sides of the paper were covered in small, neat handwriting and the signature at the end read ‘Algernon Frank’. His first thought was that Mr Frank had written to say goodbye, and how kind that was, but then he started reading.

The letter began with an account of Mr Grayling’s confession about his part in his wife’s death. ‘
In vino veritas
,’ Mr Frank wrote, and Reg realised it was the truth. Everything fitted into place at last. That’s why he’d had the key. That’s why she hadn’t been seen on any lifeboat.

‘
He was very ill the next day from the aftereffects of his indulgence
,’ the letter continued, ‘
but I insisted that he had a responsibility to look after you, that his wife would have wanted him to, and that is why you’ll find he has bought you a first-class ticket for the voyage. Please don’t be too proud to accept it because you deserve it after all you’ve been through. Think of it as a last gift from Mrs Grayling, God bless her soul.

‘On reflection, I have decided that I can no longer continue in Mr Grayling’s employment. His wife was a wonderful woman, and I was forced to bite my tongue when he brought Miss Hamilton into the house so soon after her tragic death. I followed his orders and asked the staff to pack away his wife’s belongings and refrain from mentioning her name any more, even though it felt wrong that we weren’t all in formal mourning for her. But now I know the full circumstances, I cannot contemplate staying in the service of such a man. Mr Grayling understands and says he will write me a reference for my next position.’

The letter finished by wishing Reg all the very best for the future, whatever he decided to do.

He folded it and put it back in the envelope, deep in thought. He hoped Mrs Grayling had slept throughout the sinking because the alternative was unbearable. If only he had knocked harder on the door, or insisted that the room steward open it and check, then he could have saved her. But the room steward on B Deck told him the Graylings must have gone already. It wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t Reg’s fault; it was her husband’s. Mr Grayling wasn’t evil, but he was weak and selfish and, from the sounds of it, self-pitying. And Miss Hamilton was every bit as shallow as he had always thought.

Reg decided that if Mr Frank thought he should accept the ticket, then that’s what he would do. For a moment, he pictured himself sitting in the first-class dining saloon being served filet mignon by someone just like himself. He’d enjoy sleeping in a four-poster bed and luxuriating in his own private bathroom – but it was ridiculous. He didn’t have the right clothes. He wouldn’t be able to make conversation with anyone in first class. He didn’t belong there.

He went back to the counter and asked the clerk: ‘How much was this ticket, and how much is a third-class cabin?’

The difference between the two was four thousand dollars, which was about eight hundred pounds in British money. There was a lot he could do with that kind of cash. It was enough to start a serious business venture back in Southampton. But what kind of business?

The idea came to him straight away. He’d been thinking of opening a British-style restaurant in Manhattan, but why not open an American one back home instead? He could serve hot dogs and Pepsi-Cola. If he liked them, surely other English people would?

On his last day in New York, Reg got up early. The first thing he did was go into a soda fountain and ask who supplied them with Pepsi-Cola. He took a subway to the address he was given and asked if he might speak with the manager. The fellow that came to talk to him was roughly his own age and that gave Reg courage.

‘I’m starting my own café in Southampton, England, and I’d like to import some Pepsi-Cola,’ he said.

Instantly, the manager fetched some requisition forms, a list of prices, shipping costs and import licences. ‘I’ll do you a good deal if you order at least a thousand bottles,’ he promised.

Reg agreed a price for a thousand and paid cash on the spot. He’d pick up the shipment from Southampton docks in three weeks’ time. He caught a subway back uptown and next he bought some popcorn and Oreo cookies and a few bags of potato chips with a free toy inside, none of which he had ever seen back home. He asked the store owners for details of their suppliers but decided to see how popular they were before ordering in bulk. And then he stopped to chat to a hot dog seller in Times Square about the key to his success.

‘Pile on the onions, let them help themselves to the ketchup or French mustard.’

Reg wrote everything down in a little notebook, beside addresses of all the contacts he had made. It wasn’t bad for a day’s work.

He was nervous getting on the
Lusitania
the next morning, carrying his boxes of goods. She was much smaller than the
Titanic
, and although she had only been launched in 1906 and took her first passengers in 1907, the design already looked old-fashioned. Third-class accommodation was smart and clean, though, with pine floors and walls. He had a washbasin in his cabin, and the WC wasn’t too far away. Everyone sat at long tables in the dining saloon and the food was standard fare but perfectly adequate.

The minute they set sail, Reg made his way up to the wireless room to send a Marconi-gram to his mother. He chewed the end of his pencil for ages trying to think of something appropriate, but in the end he just wrote: ‘Arriving Tuesday evening on Lusitania [stop] Your son Reg’. It cost twelve shillings and sixpence. Reg had to change his dollars into sterling at the pursers’ office.

He had thought he wouldn’t want to go out on deck, but in fact his feet led him there straight away. He stood at the railing and watched as they sailed past Governor’s Island, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty out towards the open ocean. It was a clear, sunny day in early September and light sparkled on the water, giving a festive feel. In his head was the song ‘Come on and hear, come on and hear, Al-ex-an-der’s Rag-time Band’. It kept repeating, over and over. He couldn’t think where he had heard it recently and then he remembered that it was one of the songs the orchestra had been playing on the boat deck as the
Titanic
sank. It was a spooky feeling, but he couldn’t get it out of his head.

At dinner on the second night it was announced that there would be a religious service the next morning as they passed close to the spot where the
Titanic
had sunk. Reg decided not to go. Nothing he’d been through had changed his opinion that there couldn’t be a God. It just didn’t make sense. Instead, as they passed the area he went out on the open deck and smoked a cigarette, while looking out across the water and thinking about all those who were lost.

‘Cheerio, man,’ he whispered to John. ‘I’ll always miss you.’ And to Mrs Grayling, he whispered a simple ‘Thank you’.

The crossing to Southampton took seven days. Reg didn’t socialise with other passengers but he wasn’t lonely. He sat with his notebook making plans for the new business, drawing sketches of the seating arrangement he’d like. Sometimes he wondered what reception he could expect from his mother. Now he was getting closer, he couldn’t wait to see his brothers and apologise to them for his lost five months. Was that really all it had been since he set sail on the
Titanic
? It felt like a lifetime.

He was standing on deck when the first glimpse of the English coastline came into sight. He’d already packed his belongings and planned to stay outside and watch as the tugs guided them into harbour. When he worked for White Star Line, he’d been rushed off his feet at this final stage of the voyage, clearing everything up so that they could go home as soon as the last passenger disembarked. Someone else could do the work this time.

The quay came into sight, the tugs chugged out to meet them and the ship’s engines were turned off. The air filled with the deafening sound of pent-up steam being released and it was only as it began to die down that he realised there was some kind of celebration under way on the dock. He could hear whistles being blown and see flags being waved frantically in the air. Maybe there was an important dignitary on board. He followed the noise to its source and saw a group of around thirty people jumping up and down, yelling and waving their arms. Some of the
Lusitania
’s passengers began to wave back.

Progress was slow as the tugboat captains manoeuvred round the buoys, steering clear of other ships. Reg was about to go below to collect his belongings, when something about the animated group caught his attention. They had a white banner with words painted on it in huge black letters and he couldn’t believe it when he got close enough to make out what it said: ‘Welcome home Reg’. Surely there must be some mistake, some other Reg on board? He focused hard, and gradually he realised the group were his family and friends. There was his mum, his brothers. None of them had seen him yet but they were making so much noise he couldn’t miss them.

Right at the front of the crowd, standing slightly apart, was a girl in a blue coat and with a lurch he knew who it was: Florence. Just as he realised that, she spotted him, even though they were still a hundred yards apart and the decks were lined with hundreds of other passengers. He could tell she’d seen him from the way she suddenly stood very still. There were a few seconds when it was just the two of them, and he held her gaze. In that magical moment, frozen in time, he knew as surely as he had ever known anything that he wanted to marry her.

Then she turned to the others and he saw her pointing towards him. They all began screaming his name and blowing their penny whistles even more frantically. The private moment was over for now, but he sensed with a warm, certain feeling inside, that there were going to be many more.