Later, she hears Betty telling someone where Oxford is. ‘Yes, quite close to London.’
Later. ‘No, it’s not in London, but not far away.’
Years later she hears Betty again. She is saying, yes, she lives in London. Emma wonders why she is lying.
She swims in and out of time. When she is submerged, there is nothing; when she breaks the surface, there is heat. Through half-closed lids she can see the open door and the blue light.
Once she wakes in a capsule, machinery all around her.
Sometimes people circle her bed and move her– an arm lifted, a body rolled.
Afterwards, she settles back into the heat, watching the half-open door through lashes that blur her vision. When she sees her mother walk through the door, she knows she must be dreaming.
So she sinks back and lets the darkness take her.
Hours pass; it may be years. She tries to think the sheets off her burning legs, keep their weight away from her body. Nothing moves but the heat pulsing in time with her breathing. Breaths so loud she struggles to catch the doctor’s words.
Someone is crying.
Betty.
It is a soft and plaintive sound and makes something within her ache.
She thinks it is the sound of sorrow.
She cannot find Betty to comfort her; she cannot tell her it is all going to be all right.
For she remembers she is woman who no longer believes in happy endings.
Chapter 69
Violet
Scattered Orchids
She wonders if it is God or her father watching over her when she is called to one of the last lifeboats simply because she speaks Spanish. They need someone to help those who are struggling to understand English.
She hands the passengers into the swaying boat, but in truth, she needs their hands to steady her on the tilting deck as much as they need hers to guide them. There is a delicate, cool, scented hand, a plump hand that clutches hers too tightly, a manicured masculine hand that pulls away from her as if scalded by the shame of needing assistance– or maybe he knows he should be giving way to others. In among them is a firmer, broader hand, more calloused than the rest. And for a moment she thinks it is her father’s hand in hers, guiding her. When she looks to see who it belongs to, there is nothing but the backs of dark wool overcoats and the merging of fur wraps and worsted stoles.
When at last she joins the lifeboat, they hang suspended alongside the ship and she is caught between a world of warmth and light, and a world of chilling blackness. Despite the push and the shove of it, the warm world is yet enticing. She recalls theOlympic, The Purser’s assurance that the watertight doors would hold firm. The deep, still blackness holds no assurances– no moon to bring comfort, just high above, the brilliant, unblinking stare of thousands of indifferent stars.
She wraps the eiderdown she has borrowed off a stateroom bed more tightly around her. Her friend the second-class steward found her in her cabin and urged her to dress in her warmest clothes. Only as his normally respectful hands plucked garments from her wardrobe did she finally register his fear. When he brought forth her sweet pea hat from the cupboard, she took it gently from his grasp, telling him that it was not the hat to wear to a shipwreck.
He held her hands for a long moment and said softly, ‘You must wrap up warm.’ In that whisper, she heard her mother, the woman who is always right.
With her mother’s voice chivvying in her head, she made a detour into one of the staterooms. She thought how strange it was that she should be able to have her pick of these. All the doors were open, and clothes, shoes, cases, flowers, even jewels lay scattered on the carpet beneath her lurching feet. She stepped over a scattering of orchids and plucked an eiderdown from the bed. With no winter coat, she hoped no one would begrudge her this.
Now, suspended in the lifeboat between the contrast of light and dark, she imperceptibly leans towards the comfort of the light. A woman next to her rises and, shaking free of her companion, scrambles out of the boat– the light has won. The woman is swallowed by the swarm of bodies that swirl on deck. There are cries and shouts but there is also laughter. She thinks of the young men. She wonders if they had another nightcap; perhaps they think it will give them protection against the cold.
She feels the lifeboat sway beneath her. This way? That way? Then she sees the steward of the sweet pea hat rush by, and she remembers the persistent pressure of his hands. He is followed by The Purser.
She has never seen The Purser Priest run before.
And it is then that she knows she must stay where her father’s hand led her.
The winch beside them screeches, and a young engineer pushes them away from the side, shouting instructions to those behind him. Another figure appears close to her left shoulder; her head is now level with his knees. He reaches down– he clearly knows her, but she cannot see his face, and afterwards can never recall his name.
‘Here, you, Miss Jessop, take care of this.’
