The Company of the Dead (84 page)

He glanced towards the ship’s stern and watched as a young couple emerged from the aft stairwell, their burst of laughter cut short by the sudden cold. They huddled together and after a brief exchange returned to the warmth within.

Wells allowed himself a moment’s pride. They’d never know how cold this night could get.

Resuming his vigil, he was startled by the brittle clang of the ship’s bell. Three sharp reports issued from the darkness above. The final peal still rang over the waters as he reached for his watch.

Half eleven. Nodding slowly to himself, he replaced the timepiece. His hands shook violently.

“Steady,” he murmured.

His hands were still shaking.

Everything
shook. A tremble rose from the deck to rack his body.

How fast had they been going before the order had been given to change course? Somewhere, orders had been given and received. Calloused hands were straining against levers.

“Steady...”

He was almost certain he could sense the change. The flutter of butterfly wings that would herald a brighter, better world. He looked out to the flat, calm ocean, the moonless night. Beyond the ship’s illumination the dark waters rose up so that he felt as if he and the ship lay at the centre of a vast opaque bowl. Nearby, a mist had risen. Light, caught in some peculiar manifestation, twinkled like a chandelier suspended from the heavens.

He scanned the distance. Nothing broke the flat horizon. His eyes were drawn towards the stern of the ship.

It was close, very close. Two irregular peaks gliding black against the black night sky. He noted the smaller sheets of ice, mirror shards on the ocean’s counterpane. They drifted into the darkness.

The air glistened with shaved ice, a gentle flurry in the iceberg’s wake.

He was running now.

He sprinted back down to the second-class promenade, heedless of the few crewmen and passengers who were assembling on deck. He gained the aft railing. Beyond, the third-class promenade was spattered in ice. A few men gathered by his side to survey the scene.

The iceberg was lost to view.

Some of the steerage passengers had ventured out onto the rimed deck below, their subdued voices muttering uncertainties. A couple of them began to kick frozen blocks along the wooden floor. Their laughter rang false in the wintry night. There was an odd stillness to it all and he suddenly realised that the engines had stopped.

They were dead in the water.

He turned to the crewman beside him. “How?” he mumbled uselessly. “Why?”

Kennedy, masquerading in a White Star Line uniform, looked back at him sombrely. Gershon and Morgan stood alongside him, similarly garbed. Wells didn’t register any surprise. They all looked at him with the strangest sorrow, as if to suggest that he’d somehow let them down as well.

Kennedy said, “I kept Mr Fleet busy in the crewmen’s mess. You gave the binoculars to one of the firemen in his place. He gave them to me. No one will ever know.”

Wells watched the man’s lips move, but couldn’t grasp the words.

“They didn’t see the iceberg till it was too late, Doctor Wells,” Morgan said. “They’re not supposed to.”

“So that was your play,” Kennedy said. “What else have you got?”

Wells made a fist and jabbed Kennedy hard, just below the right eye. Kennedy slipped on the icy deck and caught himself against the railing. He straightened up and held his stance. Wells punched him again, catching his jaw. There was a slight cracking sound. Kennedy fell back against the rail and regained his footing shakily.

Morgan and Gershon kept still.

Wells looked at his hand. Two of his knuckles were distended. He was weeping, but voiced no sobs. Kennedy was bleeding from a gash above his cheek.

“You’ve drowned us all.”

“Destiny drowns us, Doctor.” Kennedy’s words stumbled over his swollen lips. “I’m just the middle man.”

Wells raised his bloodied fist.

Morgan stepped forwards.

Someone cried, “What’s going on here?”

Wells reeled towards the voice. He wiped his face. His hands dropped to his sides.

Marie repeated the question. “What’s going on here?” She wore a coat and shawl over her evening dress, and had a lifebelt under her arm. The promenade was otherwise empty now. Kennedy and the others said nothing, gazing at her unexpected intrusion with astonishment.

Wells started to laugh. In his anguish, he’d somehow forgotten all about the Marconigram. He turned on Kennedy and snarled, “I hope it’s just the loss of the ship that suits you, asshole. The
Californian
is on its way. No one dies tonight, fucker.”

“Mr Wells?” Marie’s voice was strained. She looked wretched.

Kennedy and his men stared at her. Faced with this first outwards sign of the disaster, he supposed, they might have been suffering their first feelings of remorse.

“Mr
Wells
,” she pressed.

He pulled away from Kennedy, triumphantly “I’m sorry, Marie. My language. It’s just that—” He was stopped short by her expression.

“Marie is my middle name.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name is Patricia Marie Kennedy, and here is your Marconigram.” She let the document flutter to the damp deck. “I’d also appreciate it if you’d stop hitting my husband. He’s had a very difficult day.”

Wells stared at the slip of paper. Moisture spread across its cream-coloured surface like a stain.

Kennedy stepped forwards and placed an arm around her shoulders.

“You’re his...” Wells gazed at her uncomprehendingly. “You didn’t send it?” He felt his legs giving way beneath him.

Suddenly Morgan and Gershon were by his side. Supporting him. Restraining him. They seemed as stunned as he was by her disclosure.

“You used your
wife
to bait me?”

Kennedy had both his arms on Marie’s ... on Patricia’s shoulders. He was staring into her eyes. “No,” he murmured. “I had no idea she was aboard.”

She said, “You told me not to come aboard because I was never with you on all those other attempts. But that was all the more reason for me to be here.” Her cheeks were slick with tears.

Other attempts?

“It doesn’t matter now.” Kennedy’s voice was coaxing. “We have to get you off this ship.” He turned to Morgan and Gershon, who indicated their assent. Wells found himself agreeing with them.

“I’m so sorry, Joseph.” She was shaking in his arms. “I only realised that the boat was
supposed
to sink today. After he had given me the wireless message.” She cast Wells a grief-stricken look. “You understand now, though, don’t you?”

He was back outside the Flamingo’s lobby, peering at the black Oldsmobile.

He was in the desert, following Gershon into the sandy depths.

He was face to face with the carapace in the heart of the Waste Land.

Other attempts? The images merged into some fractional offering of meaning, but there was nothing here to understand, save the imminent loss of fifteen-hundred lives. He gazed past her to Kennedy, and saw Jenkins’ eyes staring back at him.

It was over. Kennedy’s expression told him so. He didn’t bother to struggle as they led him down to D deck. Their cabin was on the starboard side of the ship, just beyond the corridor’s entrance.

Three decks below, the mailroom would be filling with water.

Kennedy opened the door and nudged him into the room, a small suite. The movement was gentle. There was no attempt to pay him back for the swings he’d taken. Kennedy offered him a drink. He declined. Kennedy indicated a chair and he sat down heavily.

His eyes strayed to the carpet. It was completely dry. A journal, the water-damaged alternative of his musings, was opened on a table. The fresh account of his memories lay closed beneath it.

Patricia and Kennedy sat on a lounge. Gershon took another chair and Morgan leaned up against the wall between Wells and the entrance. They spoke amongst themselves as if he wasn’t there.

No one knew she’d stolen aboard. Neither Gershon nor Morgan had known that she and Kennedy had eloped two weeks earlier. Once embarked, she’d secured a berth on C deck and pursued her own agenda, keeping watch over Wells. She explained that they’d shared a common steward.

Crawford must have found her as charming as he had. The steward had supplied her with an accounting of Wells’ movements up to his escape on the previous day.

She asked Kennedy, “When did you realise that the ship was supposed to sink?”

“Two nights ago,” he replied.

“So why did it have to come to this?” She was inspecting Kennedy’s injuries. She finally turned her attention back to Wells. “Why didn’t you let him convince himself?”

“We tried talking to him,” Morgan said.

“You held me prisoner in my own room,” Wells protested.

“We were having trouble dealing with the news ourselves.” Gershon spoke with surprising civility.

Wells looked at him and nodded slowly. He turned to Patricia and said, “How was I supposed to convince myself?”

“The last entry in your journal made no sense. Less than the rest of it, in any case. But something occurred to me after you gave me the letter.” Her voice assumed a contrite tone, as if only now realising that she was discussing the private entries of his personal diary.

“What was the last entry?”

Morgan spoke up without needing to examine the text. “It’s a single word, written in the margin on the last page. It says, ‘Santayana’.”

Patricia rose from the lounge and approached the journal. She turned it to the last page and pointed to the word. “You pressed the pen harder here. You might have been resting the journal against your hand, or up against a wall. You were in a hurry.”

“Santayana.” He repeated the word.

“I think you wrote this after you realised that you’d failed, the last time you were here. I think you wrote it as a reprimand to yourself.”

“What does it mean?” Kennedy asked. “Is it a place?”

“It’s a person. He was a philosopher,” Wells explained.

Gershon asked, “Why him? Is he aboard?”

Wells shook his head dismissively. There was only one strong association he could make with that name. Only one reference he could attribute to the thinker. He quoted, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”

As he spoke, Patricia studied his expression. She must have read something there. An odd look of comprehension crossed her face. “Those were Santayana’s words?”

“Yes.”

The last time you were here.

“Not a reprimand then,” she said. “A warning. A warning to yourself.”

“I don’t understand,” he replied, but that wasn’t entirely true. For all his bluster, he’d hardly bother to make an entry like that—not just for the sake of scolding himself. Not once he was aware that he’d failed.

“I asked you, Doctor, when we met, why you sank the ship and then left the record of your crime behind,” Kennedy said. “I accused you of tempting fate, but I was wrong. You were appealing to it.”

“Now do you understand, Doctor Wells?” Patricia spoke slowly and forcefully.

“We have to get out of here,” Wells said. “We don’t belong.”

Kennedy eyed him sadly. “I think he gets it.”

Doc slipped back into his civvies. Morgan dragged a sweater over his shirt. Their uniforms formed a small heap on the bed.

Morgan surveyed his trunk. There was nothing there he’d miss. He kicked it shut.

Kennedy and Patricia stepped out into the corridor to play catch-up while irate passengers flurried past them.

They returned to the sitting room to confer with Wells. Journal in hand, subjugated by his own discovery, he’d said nothing more to the group. He was talking now though, and Morgan heard the exchange of low voices through the thin partition of the separating wall.

“I never really thought this far ahead.” Doc was looking out the porthole.

It was hard to say if they were sitting any lower in the water.

Morgan said, “The first few lifeboats will be undermanned.” He remembered Kennedy’s words. “We won’t be taking anyone’s place.”

“I was just thinking about Ismay and those other men; those who managed to escape early in a lifeboat. I don’t want to be tarred with that brush.”

“No one’s going to know.”

“We’ll know.”

“We’ve lived with worse.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier.”

Morgan nodded. He returned his attention to the wall.

“Patricia and the major,” he said, after a moment.

“Go figure.”

“It’s shaping up to be quite the honeymoon for them.”

Doc loosed harsh laughter.

The door opened.

Kennedy had a hoard of lifebelts under his arm. He said, “We’re set to go.”

They forged their way through the entrance to the first-class reception. A crowd was forming by the elevator doors, near the Grand Staircase. Wells hesitated at the vestibule.

Kennedy looked at him and said sharply, “Everything
we
know about the ship from here on in is fiction. We need you to guide us, based on your own knowledge of the
Titanic
. You need to stay focused, Doctor Wells. Can you do that?”

“Sure.”

“We don’t change a thing, and we don’t interfere.”

Wells nodded dully.

“It’s twelve-ten. What’s happening?”

“The crew will be mustering on the boat deck, standing ready to uncover the lifeboats. The first distress call goes out any minute now.” He turned to Patricia. “There won’t be any trouble getting you away at this time.” There was an urgency behind his words. He seemed quite accepting of her new status as Kennedy’s wife. “They won’t separate newlyweds this early on,” he added.

“We’ll part for now,” Kennedy said. “Is that okay, Patricia?”

Her nod was demure. She made no protest. A far cry from the woman who had snuck aboard ship at Southampton. Some dynamic seemed to have changed. What had transpired between them? Morgan tossed Doc a questioning look. Doc shrugged it off and returned his attention to Wells.

There was the slightest slant to the carpeted floor.