Every Man for Himself (8 page)

‘Steady on,’ he hissed.

‘One big unhappy family,’ I concluded gloomily, and got up and left. I guess poor old Charlie was relieved.

Once in the foyer I sped up the stairs and out on to the deck. Here I walked furiously up and down, muttering aloud, taking the part of both prosecution and defence. I can’t recall what case I was arguing, beyond it had something to do with the transparency of men and the inscrutability of women, but I reckon I must have sounded fairly unhinged.

I was on the point of returning to make my peace with Melchett when I heard a peculiar cry, high and fierce like a cat caught by the tail. It came from the shadows cast by the overhang of a life-boat. Then I heard Scurra’s unmistakable voice. He was tussling with someone reclining in a steamer chair. For a wild moment I feared it might be Wallis, then he dodged to one side to avoid an outflung hand and I saw it was Rosenfelder’s woman.

‘Her friend didn’t board at Queenstown,’ I said.

‘It would seem not,’ he replied breathlessly.

At that instant the woman got the better of him and leaping to her feet made a dash for the rail, yowling horribly. Scurra and I fled in pursuit and succeeded in seizing her by either arm. He and I were both a little under six foot in height yet she towered above us. Wrestling to restrain her I couldn’t help thinking we resembled those tugs at Southampton endeavouring to drag the
Titanic
out of the path of the SS
New York
.

‘Have you a cabin on B deck?’ Scurra panted, the woman thrashing back and forth in our grip like a tree caught in the wind.

‘I’m a deck below.’

‘Fetch Rosenfelder,’ he ordered, and I let go of the woman and scooted towards the gymnasium. No sooner had I hurled myself through the doors than I collided with Thomas Andrews.

He said, ‘There appears to be some fault with four of the dormitory bath taps in E accommodation.’

‘It will be the washers,’ I replied and raced on.

Rosenfelder wasn’t in the saloon or either of the restaurants. Nor was he to be found in the Café Parisien. Wallis was there. She called out to me but I ignored her; it gave me pleasure.

I ran Rosenfelder to earth in the smoke-room, playing cards in pretty unsavoury company. I said, ‘Come with me. It’s urgent.’

‘I’ll be along presently.’

I went so far as to tug at his sleeve. He was holding the cards close to his chest, a foolish indication that he’d been dealt a good hand.

‘He didn’t board at Queenstown,’ I hissed, which did the trick. He rose instantly, still clutching his cards, and followed me from the room.

When we arrived on deck it was to see Scurra on his knees, clinging to the woman’s ankle. She was dragging him behind her.

‘Aie, yi, yi,’ wailed Rosenfelder.

I’m ashamed to say I giggled.

Between us we coaxed her indoors. Mercifully she’d gone quiet, and beyond a few curious glances in the foyer and the kindly interference of a steward who enquired if the lady was in need of the ship’s doctor, we got her safely to Rosenfelder’s stateroom. Here Scurra guided her towards the bedroom but Rosenfelder insisted on the sofa in the sitting room, out of delicacy I supposed. Having made sure her head was comfortably supported on a cushion he lit a cigar and stood at the dressing table, smoothing down his hair with a silver-backed brush. He patted the cards stuffed into his top pocket. ‘Such a good hand,’ he sighed.

‘Are you sure she doesn’t need a doctor?’ I asked.

‘And what would he tell us?’ said Scurra. ‘Everything is already diagnosed. It’s simply that we can’t see the whole picture.’ Taking off his jacket and hanging it carelessly on the edge of a painting screwed to the wall, he retired to the bathroom to clean himself up.

The woman lay perfectly still, eyes closed, feet propped up on the arm of the sofa. She was dressed as I had seen her in the hotel. From my perchon the stool beside the writing desk I could see the soles of her shoes were worn into holes. Puffing on his Havana Rosenfelder switched on the electric fire and circling the sofa sank cross-legged to the floor, gazing intently into the woman’s smoke wreathed face. He wore a beatific smile and looked like a Buddha. Neither of us spoke; we were both waiting for Scurra to return and give us instructions.

I studied the painting, of which only a corner was to be seen, the rest obscured by the folds of Scurra’s coat. I made out a scarlet brush stroke and reckoned it was a flower, possibly a detail in some pastoral landscape. It was very quiet, save for Rosenfelder inhaling on his cigar and the faint thrum of the engines far below us.

Presently Scurra came out of the bathroom and dusted down his trouser knees with the silver-backed brush. His hair stood up in damp tufts and he was beaming. ‘Good boy,’ he said, turning to me and squeezing my arm. ‘Good boy. You behaved very well.’ I blushed quite as fully as Melchett. He had such an extraordinary warmth of manner that it was like lying in sunshine. You have to understand that the sort of men I mixed with, unless they were decadent types, kept each other at a distance, however involved by events or kinship. It wasn’t that I thought of Scurra as a father figure or looked up to him – how could I, seeing I scarcely knew him – simply that in his presence it was possible to attach the word love to what one felt, and not wriggle at its implications. All the same, I went on blushing. When he retrieved his coat I saw that what I had taken to be the petal of a flower was in fact a splash of blood on a canvas depicting the bloodiest of battles. Later I was to remember that moment; I had mistaken a part for the whole.

‘What do we do now?’ I asked. ‘Shouldn’t we wake her?’

‘She’s not asleep,’ said Scurra. ‘She’s composing herself, don’t you think?’

So we waited, Scurra attending to his toilette and Rosenfelder reducing his cigar to a wet stub. The top buttons of the woman’s coat had been torn off in the struggle on deck, exposing the dress beneath. I glimpsed her white throat and watched the bodice of her gown as it rose and fell. Though I was happy to be in Scurra’s company I was beginning to wonder if I would ever eat again, and tortured myself with an image of a breast of duck dolloped with sweet apple.

‘Rosenfelder,’ I whispered. ‘We have an engagement for dinner tonight with Lady Duff Gordon.’

‘Me? I have not heard of such a woman.’

‘She’s travelling under an assumed name,’ said Scurra. ‘She’s a couturier. It could be useful for you to know her.’

Rosenfelder looked impressed, but not unduly so. His attention lay entirely with the woman.

It seemed an age before she opened her eyes; when she did so she appeared neither startled nor embarrassed. ‘A little brandy, perhaps?’ suggested Scurra, and Rosenfelder bounded to his feet and opening a three-cornered cabinet fetched decanter and glasses. Pouring a generous measure he handed it to her. I could have done with a drink myself, if only to quieten the rumblings of my empty stomach, but he thought only of her. She sipped, gave a little cough, swung her feet gracefully to the floor and sat bolt upright. She was still beautiful in spite of her red-rimmed eyes and even more so when she took off her hat, for her hair was amber rather than gold, though that may have been the reflection of the fire.

She took things very calmly for one who had caused so much trouble. She didn’t apologise though she expressed gratitude for the concern we had shown. Her voice was cultured, resonant. For all her threadbare shoes she was very much the lady.

‘Doubtless you know my story,’ she said. ‘It’s not uncommon and of little interest, except to myself.’ Even so, she proceeded to tell it in some detail. Her name was Adele Baines and she had been born of a French mother and English father under the Opera House in Paris. She had sung in the courtyard when hanging out the washing. At the age of twelve no less a personage than Madame Adiny had offered to train her voice. At nineteen she had come to London, and, unable to find work as a chanteuse, sought employment as a model at Fenwick’s in Bond Street.

‘God is telling me something,’ exclaimed Rosenfelder.

After three years she had caught the eye of a director of the firm – he was married, naturally – and they had become lovers. She had accepted the nice meals in expensive restaurants and there had been three or four weekends at an hotel in Dieppe, but when he had wanted to set her up in an apartment in Manchester Square she had refused. She preferred her own room above a butcher’s shop in Somers Town. It gave her independence. Then something happened, something that changed everything – Here she broke off and staring down at her left hand gave a little mew of annoyance.

‘My nail,’ she said, ‘I’ve broken my nail.’

‘The something,’ Rosenfelder demanded. ‘What is this something?’

Frowning, she continued.

The man’s small son had fallen sick and almost died. She had made no demands and was always there when he needed her. For many nights she waited, with his permission, outside the hospital to comfort him when he stumbled out, the tears still wet on his cheeks. When the child was better they discovered that what had begun as merely an affair of passion had turned into true love. Two months ago he had arranged to take her to New York and introduce her to a man who had business connections with the Metropolitan Opera House. He had bought her a ticket, steerage passage so as to avoid scandal, and was to have joined her at Southampton. ‘The rest you know,’ she said. ‘And have taken part in.’

It seemed to me that her speech had been well rehearsed. Truth to tell, my sympathies were with her vanished lover. When a woman declares she has made no demands one can be sure she believes she’s owed something. I wanted to ask what on earth she’d been doing roaming about on the upper decks, but held my tongue. It might have sounded as if I thought she should have chosen to jump from a third class rail rather than a first.

Rosenfelder’s face was wreathed in smiles. From the way he looked at her he was already taking measurements. Embarrassed, mostly on my own account, I said, ‘It is most distressing for you, but hardly worth dying for.’

‘Few things are,’ observed Scurra, and laughed heartily. To my astonishment she joined in, though whether it was to keep him sweet or because she was hysterical I couldn’t judge. He seemed to think she was in her right mind, for he offered to escort her back to E deck. Foolishly, I blurted out that it would look pretty rum if one of the stewards saw him with a steerage passenger.

‘What an extraordinary chap you are,’ he said. ‘What does it matter what anyone thinks?’

I was mortified at having let myself down. I wanted his approval even more than my dinner and became wretchedly unctuous, offering my assistance to the woman, boasting of my connections, my influence aboard ship. When I’d finished making a show of myself she thanked me, the way one thanks a small child who offers to shoulder a bag it can scarcely lift. Rosenfelder, meantime, had fetched needle and thread and sewn her coat together. He addressed her as Adele and promised that in the morning he would find her some buttons. Then she covered that glorious hair with her hat and went off with Scurra.

We were late sitting down at the Duff Gordons’ table. Rosenfelder was all for grovelling until I explained it wasn’t good form to apologise. The Carters and Bruce Ismay were there, together with an English journalist called Stead who appeared to command respect. At President Taft’s invitation he was on his way to make the closing speech at a convention bent on inducing businessmen to take an active part in religious movements.

‘Great God,’ murmured Ismay when he caught Stead’s drift.

I knew how he felt. My uncle was a regular, even fanatical church-goer, as were most of his associates on Wall Street, and they too would have considered it sacrilege to mix scripture with commerce.

I began to enjoy myself, which I hadn’t expected. I found Lady Duff Gordon entertaining – I soon forgot to call her Mrs Morgan – and forthright to an extent that might have passed for coarseness in a younger woman. She had a long thin face and a haughty expression, but that was just her style. Almost the instant I sat down she said she was glad to see I hadn’t inherited the Morgan nose. I couldn’t see any point in telling her there was no reason I should have; instead I dwelt on the trouble my uncle’s notable facial protuberance had caused him in his younger days, meaning he’d suffered agonies of self-consciousness over its size.

‘It’s not the only protuberance that’s given him trouble,’ she dryly remarked.

She was extremely good at dealing with people. Twice she adroitly punctured one of Ismay’s more impatient utterances, without being offensive. And she took a positive shine to Rosenfelder, which endeared her to me. He, poor fellow, though delighted, perspired copiously under her attentions. He was having no luck with the barber’s miracle lotion, his hair curling more wantonly by the minute.

‘I am head of the dress firm of Madame Lucile,’ she told him. ‘You may have heard of it. You must come and visit me in New York.’

‘Mrs Duff,’ I heard him reply, evidently confused by the multiplicity of her names. ‘That I should be given such an opportunity!’

I spent five minutes engaged in a stilted exchange with Bruce Ismay, whom I knew quite well and didn’t care for. Unlike most Englishmen, he lacked apathy. He asked me if I had enjoyed my time at Harland and Wolff.

‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. He had put the same question many times before and received the same answer. I asked him whether he thought we were going to break any records on our maiden voyage, and he replied something to the effect that heads would roll if we damn well didn’t.

Outwardly he appeared confident, harsh almost, a demean-our which many held to be a deceptive covering developed to protect the sensitive man beneath. In my opinion this was so much baloney. He did have layers, but like an onion they were all the same. Now chief executive of the White Star Line, he had once owned it. My uncle, determined to dominate the transatlantic route, had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse; though the company had made huge earnings from Boer War contracts, my uncle coughed up ten times its value.