Mirror Image (39 page)

Victoria screamed, reaching for her, but it was too late, and the child
tumbled down and drowned as Victoria watched her.

"Oh my God .. . oh my God .. ." she said, turning away from the horror
of it as the blonde curls bobbed for only an instant and then the child
lay facedown in the sea beneath her, and a voice behind Victoria told
her to get into a lifeboat. Oddly enough, it sounded like her sister,
but she never knew who it was, and there was a terrible roaring sound as
she headed toward them. It had only been five minutes since they'd been
hit, but the ship was going down rapidly, as Victoria reached the
lifeboats. For a moment it looked as though there wouldn't be room for
her. There were only two boats left and there seemed to be children all
around them.

"Take them, not me, " she shouted at the young officer helping them into
the lifeboat, swinging crazily.

"Can you swim? " he called out, and she nodded and he called back to her
again. "Grab a deck chair, we'll be down in a minute, " he said, and
with that, took off without her, and she followed his advice and grabbed
a chair and literally slid off the ship as it went down only an instant
later, and she suddenly found herself in a sea of bobbing mattresses,
bits of wood, statues, deck chairs, and bodies.

It was a hideous conglomeration of things that were literally shooting
up from the ship as it hit the bottom, with a series of dull, terrifying
explosions, and she screamed as two corpses bumped into her.

Everywhere she looked were people screaming, dying, crying, children
floating past her, women calling out, and she watched a woman drown as
she clutched her dead baby. It was beyond unimaginable, and she went
down beneath the surface more than once, but she always seemed to come
up again to see one more horror, until finally her deck chair floated
next to another one with a little boy in a blue velvet suit Lying on it.

He looked like a perfect little prince, sleeping there, except that he
was dead, and so was his mother. It was the worst thing Victoria had
ever seen or dreamt of. She kept closing her eyes and wanting the
nightmare to end, but it wouldn't. And she couldn't believe it when she
finally saw Captain Turner clinging to a chair, and Lady Mackworth,
nearby, clinging to another. And in the distance there were a ship's
officer and an old woman sitting on a grand piano.

But all around them people screamed, and everywhere they were drowning.

Victoria couldn't bear it anymore after a while, it was just too
horrible, her legs were cold, she couldn't breathe from the shock of it
all, and people all around her were dying. She held on to her deck chair
as long as she could and then, finally, mercifully, she slipped under
the water.

Chapter 22.

She could hear terrible scraping sounds, and people shouting, and birds
screeching overhead, the sounds of hell, as she felt someone drag her
along by her feet, her head bumping with each step. She wanted to scream
but she couldn't. She knew she must be dead, but then she wasn't so
sure, because every inch of her was hurting. She opened her eyes
painfully to see who was pulling her, and found herself looking into the
face of a man who was pulling her legs and about to drop her into a
coffin.

"Oh my God, Sean, this one's alive .. . she's moving." She gave a
horrible cough, and vomited what felt like gallons of water. Her hair
was matted to her head and her lips were cracked. Her eyes ached, and
her lungs felt as though they might explode, and as she looked around,
it was nighttime and all around her were coffins, and the smell of death
and the ocean. There were birds circling overhead, and Victoria didn't
even have the strength to sit up as the man helped her. "We thought you
were dead, " he said apologetically. "You looked it."

"I feel like I am, " she said and retched again, wondering what had
happened to the others. But it was easier to see than she wanted.

What looked like thousands of corpses were laid out all around them,
mostly children. It broke her heart to see it. They looked so sweet,
still so beautiful even in death, some of them with their eyes open,
others closed, and here and there sobbing mothers "The Jerries got your
ship, " the man called Sean explained.

"Fair blew out the bottom. She went down in eighteen minutes.

That was five hours ago. We picked you up just outside the harbor, my
brother and I. We've all gone out to get them. But there are damn few
survivors, " he said with a brogue that would have enchanted her at any
other moment.

"The subs have been out there for weeks, you know, rotten bastards.

They hang around the mouth of the harbor." She couldn't help wondering
if Captain Turner had known that.

"Come on, " he said, "let me help you up, you're a lucky girl, " he
said, pulling her gently to her bare feet. Her silk stockings were
completely gone, vanished, along with most of her dress. She was wearing
only what looked like a slip and panties, and a red blouse under her
life vest above her waistband, but when she felt for it, she still had
her wallet.

And she wasn't even embarrassed as the young seaman half dragged, half
carried her into the local pub, where they were taking the survivors.

They had opened the church too, and the Queen's Hotel, the Town Hall,
and the Queenstown and Royal Naval Hospitals. And there was a hot tea
stand at the station. They were doing everything they could for the
survivors, and Cunard had ordered two thousand coffins.

As Victoria walked into the bar, assisted by Sean, she looked around and
saw one or two familiar faces, among them the captain. He had come into
Queenstown on a small steamer called the Bluebell, which had also picked
up Margaret Mackworth.

"Nice dress, " one woman said wryly, looking up at her. She was one of a
few who still had both her children with her, but all three of them were
naked. And in other corners of the room, women sobbed for their lost
husbands and babies. They had seen them slip right out of their arms on
the deck, watched them fall, or be hit by debris, or simply drown in the
cold water. It was beyond belief, beyond anything Victoria had ever read
about, or dreamt of. And all she could think of now was sending a
telegram to her sister. She knew it was dangerous contacting her, but
she also knew she had absolutely no choice. She had to tell Olivia she
was alive, and had survived the disaster.

At midnight, the American consul, Wesley Frost, made the rounds of all
the locations where the survivors were being brought and asked what he
could do for each of them. She gave him Olivia's name and address and a
cryptic message. She knew she would understand what it meant, and she
asked him to confirm to her when he had sent it, and he promised.

He had more than his hands full that night. There had been 189

Americans on board, and there was no way yet of telling how many of them
were dead, but he had hysterical people around him everywhere, of all
nationalities, many of them severely injured. And all those who had
survived were desperate to contact their relatives and reassure them.

"I'll take care of it as soon as possible, Miss Henderson, " he promised
her, and handed her one of the blankets the local women had left them.

There were people all around them in rags, some of them completely
naked, and no one even noticed.

"Thank you, I appreciate it, " she said, her teeth were chattering
violently, and she still found it hard to breathe. She had taken in a
lot of water. And as she sat leaning against the wall in the bar,
sitting on the floor in her underwear, she thought about what had
happened, all she had seen, the sheer horror of it, and wondered if
Alfred Vanderbilt had made it. So far, she hadn't seen him. But it made
her think too of Geoffrey who had survived a similar disaster on the
Titanic, and watched his mother go down with her. Suddenly she had far
more sympathy for what he'd been through and wished she could have put
her arms around him at that moment, and her sister. She closed her eyes
then, as though to shut out the images, especially of a woman,
screaming, saying she was giving birth, just as she had become
unconscious. But all she could see when she closed her eyes was Olivia
sitting on the bed in her bedroom in New York and Victoria wished she
could reach out and touch her. And with every ounce of her being she
tried to concentrate and tell her she was all right, and prayed with all
her soul that Olivia would know it.

Chapter 23.

When Olivia watched Geoffrey and Charles eat breakfast on Monday, May
tenth, she thought she would scream if they took a moment longer.

She was still feeling ill, and she had had a fierce argument with
Charles about reading the paper.

"The doctor said you weren't to upset yourself, " he reminded her,
taking the paper away from her, and she grabbed it from him.

"Give it to me, Charles! " she shouted at him in a voice she didn't
recognize herself, and he looked at her in surprise and then handed it
to her as she apologized. "I'm sorry, I'm not myself. I just want to
read about something and get my mind off Olivia, that's all."

"I understand perfectly, " he said curtly, and finally, mercifully, left
for the office.

Even Geoff seemed to drag his feet going to school that day, but the
moment he was gone, Olivia grabbed her hat and purse and ran out the
door, hailed a cab and gave him the address of the Cunard office on
State Street. But she was totally unprepared for what she found there.

There was a veritable human sea of wild, shouting people, screaming,
throwing things, calling names, crying, begging for information, and
when they didn't get it, they got ugly. Officials from the shipping line
did what they could to stave off the crowd, with the help of the police,
but in the end, it was obvious that they had very little information.
They had staggering numbers of losses by then, well over the thousand
mark they feared, perhaps l more, and Frohman's body had been found,
floating near Queenstown, but other than that, there were only bits and
pieces of information, and mostly terrifying rumors.

There was also word that there had been celebration in Germany over the
victory of the U-boat, which enraged the crowd even further.

But after seven hours of standing there, Olivia still did not have what
she had come for, the list of survivors. They had promised it for the
next day. And her heart felt like lead as she walked back outside at
four-thirty. She had been on her feet all day, eaten nothing at all, and
had done everything she could to grasp at every scrap of information.

There were a few names, some lists of casualties. One young man had said
the line was taking photographs of the bodies in Queenstown in order to
identify them later. Just the thought of it made her shudder.

And yet, when she stood very quietly, it was as though she could hear
Victoria talking to her. She didn't feel as though she were dead,
whatever that felt like. Perhaps she would die too then. Maybe that was
how she would know. She was so tired she was numb, as she walked all the
way back to the house on the East River.

And as she walked up the front steps, her body aching as much as her
mind by then, she happened to see a young boy in uniform, approaching.

He wore the uniform of Western Union, and as she looked at him, she felt
her heart stop, and hurried back down the stairs to him. She grabbed his
arm without thinking, and looked like a madwoman as she clutched him.

"Do you have a telegram for me? Victoria Dawson? " She knew that was the
name it would come to if Victoria dared send it to her there, but she
was sure Victoria wouldn't be cruel enough to leave her in silence if
she were alive, and she was grateful she was right as he nodded.

"Yes .. . I .. . here, " he said, and almost ran away from her.

She felt like a witch as she snatched it from him and ripped it open.

Her hands shook so terribly she could hardly read what it said, and she
felt herself gulp great sobs of air as she read it. The girl was crazy.

Absolutely nuts. But she was alive in Queenstown.

"Trip began with a bang. Stop, " it said. "Thank God for Mr. Bridgeman.

Stop. All well in Queenstown. Stop. I love you always.

Stop." Mr. Bridgeman was their old swimming teacher in Croton.

And Olivia stood whooping and crying on the steps as she read it, and
she didn't care who heard her. There was no other information, no
address, nowhere to reach her or find her. But Olivia knew her twin was
alive and well and had survived the sinking of the Lusitania. It was all
she needed to know now. And she crushed the message in her hand, and
then hurried into the house, and burned the paper in the oven, although
she suspected she probably should have saved it, but it was too
dangerous to keep. Someone might have found it and figured out where she
really was.

It had been the worst three days of Olivia's life, and she hoped she
never had to go through anything like it again. She was so exhausted,
she decided to take a bath, and filled her tub with hot water and
bubbles. She didn't know what to do to celebrate, dance or sing or cry.

Instead, she ran into Geoffrey's room and hugged him, which he found
unusual. He thought Victoria was definitely going crazy. His father had
said something to him about her nerves, but he was beginning to think it
was her mind that was all messed up now. But he had never seen her in
such good spirits.

"What happened to you today? " he asked as she pirouetted happily and
grinned at him. I got my sister back, she wanted to say. She's alive.

She's fine. She's in Queenstown. She didn't die on the Lusitania.

"You sure look happy."

"I am. It was a lovely day, " she said, beaming at him. "What about you?

Good day at school? "

"No, " he said matter-of-factly, "pretty boring.

Where's Dad? "

"He's not home yet." She left him then to get into the tub, and she came
down to dinner wearing a new dress and looking like a new person.

Charles had just come in the door and he looked tired and grumpy.

But he washed his hands and came straight in to dinner.

"What are you so happy about? " He looked at her unhappily, and glanced
at Geoff, as though he expected an explanation.

"I just feel better, that's all."

"Have your intuitions calmed down?"

"Maybe, " she said, embarrassed at the nightmare the weekend had been,
and relieved beyond belief that it was over, but of course Charles
didn't know that. "I just feel better, that's all." Looking at her, he
wondered what she'd been up to, and if she really was having an affair,
but she was very pleasant to him, and even sweet to Geoff that night,
and he was somewhat mollified by the time the cook poured coffee after
dinner.

"I spoke to an investigator today, " he said quietly, when Geoff went
upstairs to finish his homework. "He'll start looking for her in
California next week. He says he has some very good contacts there, " he
reassured her, and she thanked him. But each time she looked at him, she
could not stop smiling.

"What on earth did you do today, Victoria, to put you in such good
spirits? I'm afraid you're making me very suspicious." But she looked so
pretty and so young that night that he didn't have the heart to be angry
at her, although he wondered if he should have been.

"I just feel better. I feel relieved, " she tried to explain it to him
to the extent that she dared. "It is as though I know she's all right
now, although I can't explain it." But he had great respect for the
telepathy they shared, although he didn't understand it.

"Maybe you're right, " he said quietly, "I hope so." He was happy that
she felt better at least. The weekend had been a nightmare, he had
really begun to think she was having a nervous breakdown.

"I'm sorry I was so much trouble."

"Don't worry about it, you weren't. I was just worried about you, " he
said almost shyly, glancing at her. She seemed so much more open with
him than she had before, he wondered if Olivia leaving so abruptly had
changed her, or if the doctor was right, and she would take on more of
Olivia's personality after her disappearance. In Victoria's case, it
would have been a definite improvement. And in the time that Olivia had
been gone, Victoria was more dependent on him than she ever had been,
more willing to reach out to him than before her sister's disappearance.

He remembered Friday night, when she had clung to him and told him she
was frightened. It had made him look at her now a little differently,
although he didn't want to be too optimistic. They had been mar II
ried almost exactly eleven months by then, and he had all but given up
on their marriage.

"I'll try not to be a nuisance again, " she said quietly, and went
upstairs to write some letters. She wished she could write to Victoria,
but of course she couldn't. Not yet anyway, she would when her twin
reached her final destination in the trenches. And she hoped that
Victoria would write to her, soon preferably, at her father's house on
Fifth Avenue, as they had agreed to. Olivia wanted to know all about
what had happened on the Lusitania.

Charles read for a while before he went to bed that night. They had both
kissed Geoff, and he came back into their bedroom and said something to
her about the Lusitania. "It's a dreadful thing, the Germans sinking
that ship. It sounds as though they've had a huge loss of life, worse
than the Titanic. I didn't want Geoff to hear too much about it, I
thought it might remind him of his mother." She looked at him for a long
moment and then nodded.

"And you, Charles? " she asked quietly. "Are you all right ..

.

did it remind you of her too? " Her kindness struck him like a blow, and
for a moment he couldn't answer. He hadn't expected that of her.

Theirs was such an adversarial relationship, that it was odd to get a
gentle touch from her, and not a tart word or an angry answer.

"It did, " he said finally. "I had a hard time with it all weekend."
While she was suffering, so was he, and she hadn't even known it.

"I'm sorry, Charles, " she said, and he turned away and nodded.

He didn't say anything to her again, and a little while later, they went
to bed, both careful, as usual, to keep on their own sides, with a vast
distance between them.

"That was nice of you, " he said suddenly in the dark, and surprised
her. "Asking about how I felt, I mean .. . about Susan ..

. and the ship that went down. It's so odd how those things come back
sometimes.

It was so incredibly awful waiting to hear, desperate to know. I drove
them absolutely mad at White Star, and they still didn't know, and then
waiting on the dock in the rain for the Carpathia to come in ..

.

I didn't know till then if either of them were alive, " he said,
sounding choked. "I thought neither of them had survived .. . and then I
saw him .. . one of the crew members was carrying Geoff ..

.

and I looked everywhere behind him for Susan. But she wasn't there.

And I knew. I took the boy from him, and we went home. It took Geoff
months to talk about it. I don't suppose you ever forget that." Just as
Victoria would never forget what she had just been through.

"I'm so sorry you had to go through that, " she said softly, and gently
reached out and touched his shoulder. "It's not fair, for either of you.

You didn't deserve that." She was so sorry for both of them, it tore at
her heart, and as he looked at her in the dim light from the moon
outside, he saw something in her that would have frightened him before,
but suddenly it didn't.

"Maybe things happen in life for reasons. You wouldn't be here if that
hadn't happened, " he said kindly, and she smiled sadly at him, well
aware of what they'd been through.

"And you'd be a lot happier if I weren't." She was still angry at her
sister for leaving him and Geoffrey, particularly after all that had
just happened. It certainly proved the trip was dangerous. And her
flippant "off with a bang" was no exaggeration.