Unspeakable (7 page)

June 1914

Strandview Manor, Liverpool

Chapter Eight

THE NEXT MORNING
, I sat in front of the breakfast I wouldn't eat and grudgingly read Steele's Rimouski and
Titanic
articles. I skimmed the Rimouski piece. He'd captured the details and facts. But more than that, the people. I could hear Gracie in his retelling. Even the
Titanic
articles were top-notch. Clearly he'd interviewed dozens of survivors from third class. Heart-wrenching accounts. The man could write, I'd give him that. But that didn't mean I wanted to be his next headline.
I wasn't really going through with it—was I?
Just thinking about it made my stomach twist even tighter.

As promised, Steele arrived at ten sharp, eyes bright and keen. He seemed excited to be here. Lily sat him across from me at the dining table. I'd had her remove the drape cloth and polish the table before Steele arrived. It seemed more formal, but the truth was, I felt safer, less exposed, with the solid mahogany between us. Clutching the curved armrests in my white-knuckled grip, I anchored myself to weather whatever he'd throw at me.

“Let's get started,” he said, flipping his notebook to a fresh page. I felt hunted—no, worse than that. I felt trapped, about to be skinned and dissected.

Can I do this? Am I really going to talk about that night?

I'd put so much energy into staunching those memories as they bubbled up these past few weeks. Yet here I was, baring their very arteries to a stranger.

“So, Miss Ellen,” he said, looking at me as though I were a specimen. His pencil, ready for the first incision. “Tell me about the
Empress of Ireland
. When did you first meet?”

He spoke of her as the crew did—as though the ship were a woman and not steel and rivets. I released the breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. Though it had some pain of its own, that memory came easy.

“It was the summer of 1906, the year I turned ten. I spent time with Aunt Geraldine. My mother had been ill—she was dying, actually. And I suppose my parents felt it best that I be spared that goodbye. I was sent from my home in Ireland here to Liverpool, to Strandview Manor, which I hated, and to Aunt Geraldine, whom I liked even less.” I cleared my throat and focused on what I meant to say. “That was when I first saw the
Empress
. Mr. Gaade, the chief steward, was an old friend of my aunt's and had invited us to see the ship off on her maiden voyage. Just a short one, across the Irish Sea to Ireland.”

I was back there, then, looking at the
Empress
through my ten-year-old eyes. I could almost hear the band playing beneath the bunting, almost feel the long blast of her horn shake my heart as she pulled away. From her red-bottomed hull, up her sleek, black sides, past her white upper decks to
her black-rimmed golden funnels, she was a beauty. But I didn't care about all that, I didn't want to wave my hankie at a ship bound for Ireland—I wanted to take it. I wanted to go home.

I paused, but Steele, seemingly comfortable with the uncomfortable silence, waited for me to fill it.

“That's the first time I saw her,” I finally added, pulling away from the memory. “I never thought I'd sail, much less serve, aboard her.”

“What did you think when you boarded her for the first time as crew?” Steele prompted. He glanced at a side note. “In January 1914.”

It seemed like such a long time ago. Was it really only five months? “I didn't know what to think, really. I'd only recently recovered that winter from … an illness. I was tired and overwhelmed.”

He jotted something in the margin. “And Meg Bates, you joined together, didn't you? What was her first impression?”

“Honestly, you'd think she'd won a first-class ticket.” I smiled, remembering Meg's excitement. “She loved it. Meg loved every minute of that job.”

I SPENT THE BETTER PART
of the morning educating Steele on the life of a stewardess. Hardly newsworthy. But he'd asked, and so as we sat at the table in the front room, I told him all about it: league after league of making beds, cleaning cabins and alleyways, scrubbing toilets, drawing baths at the right time and temperature. Stewards and stewardesses existed for the comfort of the upper-class passengers. We were to be out
of sight and within call, summoned like trained dogs. Run my bath. Fetch my tea. Hang my clothes. Arrange these flowers. Each stewardess was assigned to about a dozen cabins—enough to keep you hopping, all right. And we worked six straight sailing days from five thirty in the morning till eleven at night, squeezing in our meals when we could, second-class leftovers hastily scarfed where we stood in the corners of the steamy pantry. If we were awake, we were on duty one way or another, and always under the watchful eyes of Gaade and Matron Jones. Nothing roused their fury more than stupidity. As a stewardess with absolutely no experience, I had more than my fair share of stupid mistakes on that first voyage: dropping teapots, constantly getting lost in the maze of halls, botching the errands I did remember. I'll never forget the look on old Colonel Ripper's face when I mixed up his laundry delivery with Lady Featherton's extra-large unmentionables. My eyes smiled even now as I recounted the incident to Steele.

“There he was, standing in his dinner uniform in the middle of his cabin intent upon the large white flag he held in one hand. With the other, he scratched his bald head, confounded by what was, in fact, an enormous brassiere dangling on the tip of his cane. ‘Good Lord, Ellen,' he'd finally said, red-faced and wide-eyed, when it dawned on him what he'd retrieved from the laundry bag I'd left him, the one that was clearly not his. ‘It's like the billowing sail of a double-masted brig!'”

Steele laughed.

“And whenever Meg and I saw Lady Featherton's great girth coming down the deck, I'd only to lean in and whisper, ‘Thar she blows!' to send poor Meg into a fit of giggles. Oh,
Meg.” I shook my head and smiled, lost in the mist of a good memory. “I wouldn't have survived it all without her.”

The truth of my words echoed in the dining room, tolling through my fog like a ship's bell. I
survived
because of Meg. That horrible night, she'd given me her life vest. Insisted upon it. Her last great act of service to me.

A dry lump lodged in my throat as I took my hankie and dabbed my stinging eyes, uncomfortable under Steele's scrutiny. I swallowed and shifted in my seat. “I'm sorry.”

He nodded, but the apology was not for him. Not really.

“Take your time.” He scanned his questions. For a man who made a profit on words, he was surprisingly stingy. Had he any words of comfort, he kept them to himself.

Unready to continue, and unwilling to sit still, I stood and rang for Lily. Twice. Where was that girl? My throat was parched. I turned to stare out the window while I waited.

In all the weeks that I'd been at Aunt Geraldine's before we sailed, I'd never truly appreciated all that Meg did. Or how well. To be honest, I hardly noticed her at all. My aunt had hired Meg the year before, I believe. Most of the time a cup of tea would appear on the end table before I'd even realized I wanted it. Earl Grey, milk and two sugars. My bed was always turned down and warmed up no matter what hours I kept. My clothes neatly pressed. Meg was simply a part of the house, really. If I rang a bell, I knew Meg would run as surely as I knew water did when I turned the tap. “You just have to get to know them, is all,” she'd said, when I'd returned to the second-class galley a third time because Lady Featherton's soup was too cold, then too hot, and eventually too late. “They're people just the same as you and me, Miss Ellen.”

I had my doubts about Lady Featherton, but for the most part, the passengers were patient with me, and I improved over the winter as we crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool to New Brunswick and back each month. Six days at sea, serving passengers from dawn to dark; six days at dock to clear them out, clean her up, and board again; and six days back to Liverpool. With Meg's help, I learned how to serve hot soup, steep strong tea, and carry five plates at one time just as well as she could, though I never got the ten-shilling tips Meg did when the passengers docked. Many even offered to hire her for their personal staff. But she never even considered it. “I couldn't leave you, Miss Ellen. I made a promise to Lady Hardy, so I did. And I don't break my promises.”

I wasn't too keen about having my aunt's spy watching me day and night; still, you couldn't help but like Meg. She lived to please, and it seemed to please her to live that way. Getting paid for it was a bonus. Though, truth be told, we weren't paid all that much; we relied on those tips. Once we paid for our uniforms and our laundry bills, not to mention all my broken dishes, there wasn't much left. But there was always enough for us to treat ourselves when we docked in Saint John, New Brunswick. Freed from the rule of Aunt Geraldine, the demands of Gaade, and the disapproving eye of Matron Jones, we'd kick up our heels in Saint John, sharing a pilfered bottle of stout on the pier, sharing the adventures of stealing it, the recent melodrama of the passengers, and the longing for that look from those two young men we fancied. Just two girls having fun. I didn't realize it then, but not only was she by far the best maid, Meg Bates was the best friend I ever had.

Chapter Nine

STEELE SAT IN HUNGRY SILENCE
at the table behind me, waiting to feed on whatever I might reveal next: more of my life aboard the
Empress
, more about Meg, more about all that I had lost. I'm not sure how long I stood staring out the front window at Aunt Geraldine's garden, lost in thought as I watched Bates putter around in his rubber boots.

My mother brought me here a few summers before she died. She always made time for Aunt Geraldine, her husband's aunt who never seemed to have time for us. But Bates always had time for me. I'd often sit on the garden wall and watch him prune or weed or water. Ask him a million questions about why he plucked at the plants.
Oh, just making a space for the new buds
. He'd always been so gentle with the flowers, so patient with my many questions. Back then, he'd answered every
but why, Bates?
Yet even Bates couldn't answer that question now.