Remembering the Titanic (2 page)

Forgotten? Katie had been shocked and furious. How could it be forgotten? Hadn’t it been the worst night of their lives? She’d forget her own name before she’d forget a single moment of that night.

As if the nightmares weren’t bad enough, she could no longer bear to be in small, enclosed spaces. Elevators in the city were an endurance test for her. If it was at all possible to take a flight of stairs instead, she did so, though her aunt insisted staircases were not safe and Katie should never use them. “You don’t know who might be lurking in a stairwell,” she would say. But to Katie, even an enclosed stairwell was not as terrifying as the four walls of an elevator. Besides, she had argued, why couldn’t someone be “lurking” in an elevator as well?

She knew why the closed-in feeling haunted her. ’Twas was a reminder of the suffocating moments she had spent in the depths of the ship, after the
Titanic
struck the iceberg, and she tried to find her way up from the steerage lower deck to the top of the ship where the lifeboats were stationed. Accompanied by two small children whose governess had abandoned them, she had navigated the puzzling twists and turns of the narrow subterranean corridors in vain, trying to find a way to escape the water rushing into the ship at an alarming rate. The passageways were so narrow, the corridor so deep in the bowels of the ship, she had felt as if she were suffocating. Panic had risen within her steadily.

If Paddy hadn’t found them ….

But he had. He had taken them up top, where they had eventually gotten into one of the few remaining lifeboats. Then there had been that terrifying moment when Paddy had been required to stay behind, as Katie climbed into the lifeboat. Only women and children were allowed to board. If, at the last moment, he hadn’t been ordered to help crew the lifeboat, she’d have lost him, too. Bad enough to lose one Kelleher, let alone the Kelleher she loved so deeply. She had loved Brian, too, but not in the same way. Her passion for Paddy was the deepest, truest feeling she had ever known. And she missed him now just as passionately, so busy was he with his new, exciting life. He had had better luck in America with his dreams than she with hers.

“What time are ye meetin’ with that agent?” her aunt Lottie asked loudly. “His Nibs gets testy when his dinner isn’t ready on time. You know that as well as me.”

Katie nodded. Her uncle had a temper, and he liked things to be just so. Still, he’d been good to her, taking her in and giving her a home. “We’ve plenty of time. But you needn’t come with me. I can get there on me own.”

Her aunt shook her head. “You’ll not be wanderin’ around the city alone. What would your uncle say, was I to let you do that? I’ll come. I’m just sayin’, we can’t be hangin’ around that office all day, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

“I know.” Katie fell silent, lost in unhappy thought. Her aunt was fretting for nothing. When had she ever been in an agent’s office for more than a few minutes? She was always hurt and puzzled by how hastily she was shown the door. She was certain it wasn’t her attire that was the cause. The ruffled, bright pink dress she’d had Lottie make for her was the prettiest dress she’d ever owned. Katie had seen it in a magazine and thought it just right for impressing agents. Another magazine article had showed her how to arrange her hair in a fancy ’do. She had even persuaded her aunt that if she was going to succeed, she simply had to wear makeup. So she was certain it couldn’t be her appearance that led agents to interrupt her in mid-refrain while she was belting out the latest songs just as she’d heard them on John Donnelly’s phonograph. It had to be something else that led them to mutter an insincere, “Very nice. We’ll call you,” and rush her to the door.

Of course they never called. Her aunt and uncle had a telephone. Katie was always very careful to write the number down clearly and legibly, but to no avail. Not so much as one agent had called on the telephone to say they wished to further Katie Hanrahan’s singing career.

But she wasn’t giving up. If only this new agent would be pleased with her voice ….

And if only Paddy were here to meet the agent with her. As she had gone with him to meet his publisher, Edmund Tyree. She’d been nervous about meeting such an important man, but Paddy had insisted, saying he needed her with him. Well, now she needed him. But he wasn’t here. And truth to tell, she didn’t know exactly where he was. She knew only, as she did so often now, that he wasn’t with her.

Glancing around as if he might be lurking somewhere in the crowd, Katie gasped when she glimpsed a young man with a sketch pad in his hand. She blinked in surprise, and peered more closely. Did she not recognize him as a passenger on board the
Titanic
? A very special passenger, at that. She would never forget him. The young man had risked his own life to deposit the two young charges in her care into a lifeboat. He had had to stand outside the ship’s rail to reach, and had nearly fallen into the sea in the process. The pretty girl standing with him had called him “Max,” and was clearly very fond of him. This “Max” had lived? He had survived and returned to New York safely?

Katie’s heart flooded with warmth. How wonderful for both of them! The saints be praised!

She glanced around again, this time for some sign of his companion on the
Titanic
. A very pretty first-class passenger, she’d had great difficulty leaving him behind as she and her mother boarded a lifeboat. Katie had felt sorry for her, watching her being torn from both her father, a handsome man with kind eyes, and the young man she clearly loved.

Were the pretty girl from the ship and this Max still in love, as they’d seemed to be on the ship? Perhaps not, since they were not together today. Might they have discovered, once on shore, that the closeness they’d shared on the
Titanic
was gone, as if it had tumbled into the sea and disappeared along with the fine china, the pianos, the luggage, and the jewelry lost forever to the deep, dark water?

Ever the romantic, Katie hoped that hadn’t happened. They had seemed to be so much in love. And they were so fortunate that the young man was still alive, for her own lifeboat had been one of the last to leave and he hadn’t been in it. How had he survived the sea?

She spied the girl then. Dressed in a smart-looking suit the color of a summer rose, she was standing next to the beautiful woman from the ship. Her mother. No father, sad to say. He had not been, then, as lucky as the young man. The girl looked thinner, and she was shivering visibly, her arms around her chest, as if to keep warm. Quiet tears ran down her cheeks.

Katie felt a sharp flash of annoyance at the artist. Was he too busy with his drawing to put a comforting arm around the girl’s shoulders? She had been forced to leave her father behind on the sinking ship, and must have a broken heart. Clucking her tongue in disgust, Katie turned away. What earthly good did it do to have a fellow if he wasn’t around when you needed him? Might as well get yourself a tabby cat. They’d sit on your lap for hours if you wanted and all they asked in return was a nice dish of milk now and again.

“We’d best leave now,” she told her aunt. “The speeches could go on for quite a while. I don’t want to be late to the agent.”

As they departed the memorial ceremony, she glanced back once more over her shoulder. The young man from the ship was still sketching. And the girl, looking very much alone in spite of her mother standing alongside her, was still shivering.

W
HEN
E
LIZABETH AND HER
mother had been chauffeured away to yet another appointment with the dressmaker, Max stayed behind to put the finishing touches on his sketch of the new memorial. He hadn’t planned to draw it. It was unnecessary. Every newspaper in the world would carry at least one picture of it in tomorrow’s issue. Why create yet another?

But Elizabeth’s request had changed his mind. He had to draw something and if it wasn’t to be faces, it had to be the memorial. Besides, the drawing would fit in nicely with the new paintings scattered all over his apartment. Elizabeth hadn’t seen them yet. Her mother had strong opinions about a young woman visiting a young man’s apartment. He had invited Mrs. Farr, too, once or twice, knowing how difficult it was for Elizabeth to get away. But he hadn’t really expected the woman to appear on his doorstep. Though she was a born-and-raised New Yorker, he suspected that Greenwich Village was far more foreign to her than Paris and London, which she had visited many times.

The avenue on which he lived wasn’t bad. Better than some. It was neat and clean, and boasted a few moderately sized trees here and there. His parents refused to support him financially until he “came to his senses” and joined the family’s business. But the death this past winter of his grandmother, whom he still missed, had provided him with a generous trust fund. He used the money sparingly, preferring to make his own way for the most part. Still, it had allowed him to rent a decent apartment in a fairly safe neighborhood, where no gangs of young thugs roamed, looking to pick a pocket or two.

Max sighed as he stepped across a large puddle, a souvenir of the previous night’s spring rain. He saw so little of Elizabeth now. Things were not at all as they’d expected … as
he’d
expected … when they had first discovered their feelings for each other while crossing on the
Titanic
. Remembering their first encounter, he laughed softly to himself. While Elizabeth and her family had boarded the huge luxury ship in Southampton, he had not embarked until Cherbourg. He had fallen in love with France, but after spending a full year there, he knew it was time to go home and begin forging his own art career. When he boarded the ship, he had needed a haircut, had carried his own luggage on board, and his jacket, he had to admit, could have used the ministrations of a good tailor. So he shouldn’t have been surprised when Elizabeth mistook him for a steerage passenger and tried, kindly enough, to direct him to the third-class faculties. He hadn’t corrected her, hadn’t even spoken, not wanting to embarrass her. So she had assumed he was French and spoke no English.

Remembering, Max laughed aloud, attracting curious looks from people passing on the street. She had looked so shocked later that day when she discovered him sitting in the first-class dining room.
He’s
not supposed to be here, said the expression on her face. She’d been even more shocked a moment later when her own father, Martin Farr, introduced Max as the son of family friends … in other words, belonging to the same social class as Elizabeth. Her cheeks had turned as red as an ocean sunset, and she’d clearly been furious. Max hadn’t been sure whom she was angrier with … him, her father … or herself, for making such an embarrassing mistake.

Whatever her first impression had been, his had been of a lovely but spoiled, headstrong girl who seemed to be forever storming out of one of the ship’s many rooms at one point or another. When he learned how diligently she was fighting to escape a debut she didn’t want and a marriage she wanted even less, to a very proper but, she said, “dull as dishwater” banker, he changed his mind. She
was
, of course, spoiled. He hadn’t been wrong about that. Most young women in her situation were. But there was more to Elizabeth than he’d first thought. Her feelings were passionate, her opinions equally so, her ambition fierce. At least, it had seemed so then. She had wanted desperately to go to college, earn a degree, “
do
something with my life,” she had cried as she stood with Max at the
Titanic
’s rail, watching the flat, black satin sea glide by. Her parents, however, were insisting that she make the planned debut and then marry Alan Reed, who sounded to Max like an unsuitable mate for a young woman with Elizabeth’s fire. It was a stormy crossing for the Farr family.

Max frowned. That fire he’d seen in Elizabeth … if it wasn’t gone, it had at least been dampened. She spent most of her time now being the devoted daughter, attending concerts and plays and dinners, always in her mother’s company. If he complained, as he had more than once, that he saw too little of her, she would put her hand on his arm, look into his eyes, and say, “But Max, I promised my father!”

That promise, on board the ship … Max wished fervently Martin had never asked it of Elizabeth. Would he really want his daughter living the staid life of a society matron? She was only eighteen. On the ship, she had complained often about the banality of her mother’s life. She had spoken heatedly of how she would hate such a life, how she would
never
follow Nola’s example. How could she stand it now? And with so little complaint.

Max understood why she was doing it. Her father’s last request before Elizabeth and her mother left the ship without him had been to “take care of your mother.” She had taken that request seriously and was doing everything in her power to fulfill it. She had loved her father very much. Small wonder that his death had changed her, perhaps forever.

Elizabeth, too, had come close to dying. Had the rescue ship
Carpathia
not come along when it did, no one would have survived. Instead of fifteen hundred deaths, there would have been closer to twenty-five hundred.

There were times when she tried to talk about that night. But he couldn’t. He didn’t know how. At least, he didn’t know how to talk about it in a way that would make Elizabeth feel better, restore her to her former self, and push her out of the Farr mansion and into a life of her own.

A life which would, of course, include Max Whittaker, in a way that it now did not. With Nola monopolizing Elizabeth’s time, Max had been forced to create a social life of his own, make new friends, most aspiring artists like himself. For a while, he’d been incredibly busy. Coming so precariously close to death had given him a new taste for living. He slept very little those first few months after the rescue, intent on filling every minute with new and interesting things. He was studying with a well-known painter and when he wasn’t studying or working on his own paintings, he was exploring every inch of New York City, finding it even more fascinating than he had before. He sought out new restaurants, new plays, explored new buildings as they sprang up, hung out in Tin Pan Alley long enough to hear the latest songs … there never seemed to be enough time to gulp in as much life as he needed to. Elizabeth almost never came with him. She was too busy accompanying her mother, usually on shopping trips.