“They didn’t always love us. Sometimes they called us pinch-eyed mongrels.” He twists his tricky wrist—the left one, which sometimes gets stuck in one position.
“Sticks and stones.”
“Yeah. They threw those at us, too.”
I watch the oval ball spiral in tight arcs from one plaid jacket to the other. A memory trickles in: a couple of college men, dressed in dark blazers and the distinctive red-white-and-blue neckties that marked them as Cambridge scholars. I had just climbed up Jamie’s shoulders, in preparation for our four-hand six-egg juggle act. One of the Cambridge men jerked his chin at us. “It’s a damn shame, all the litter filling our fine parks nowadays.” He reached down to adjust his sock. Or so I thought. The next moment, a pinecone hit me in the collarbone. I fell, rolling like Ba had taught us to let the ground absorb the impact. Jamie was so angry, he threw all the eggs at the blighters. After the coppers arrestedusinstead of the Cambridge pair, Ba had to pawn his silver belt buckle to get us off the hook.
I bump my knee against Jamie’s. “Let that go. We’re here now, no worse for wear, and we have our future to think about. Family has to stick together, Jamie. That’s you and me.”
He sighs. “How did you get here?”
“By train.”
“You know what I mean. Tickets aren’t cheap, and neither are those togs.” His eyes travel down my linen shirt to the silk jacket in my lap.
“Mrs. Sloane bought the tickets. She’d been wanting to visit her brother in America, but she hates—hated—sea travel. Then she heard about the new ship and decided it wasn’t going to get better than theTitanic.”
“How did they let you board without her?”
“They didn’t.”
He grits his teeth. “Keep going.”
“I snuck in.”
“Bloody snakes. Yousnuckin? Explain,” he growls.
I summarize my ride up to the cargo hatch. His spine seems to contract with my telling, as if each statement is a hammer blow, driving the nail farther into the bench. By the time I get to the part about my rescue by Miss Hart, he is back to holding his head in his hands.
“Have you got straw in your attic?” he huffs, finally straightening again. “They’ll figure it out. Then they’ll send you back, either in Cherbourg or Queenstown, probably in some fish hauler with a bunch of smelly old sods.”
“Cherbourg’s in a few hours,” I say of the French port where theTitanicwill be taking on additional passengers. “The crew will be too busy to figure it out before then. And Queenstown isn’t until tomorrow morning.” The last stop before open sea. “I’ll keep my chin tucked until then.”
“You’ll have to keep it tucked longer than that. Bollocks,what are we going to do?” He whacks his cap against his knee. “This is so typical. Plans always half-baked.”
“So I’ve had to improvise.”
“You wouldn’t have had to improvise if you had thought things through. You can’t just”—he throws out his hands—“waltz into first class without your mistress. They’ll catch you eventually.”
I primly smooth my skirts. “Aren’t you a nelly naysayer?”
“Better than a Jack the lad,” he shoots back, calling me a show-off.
“Simple Simon.”
He twists away from me and pounds a fist to his mouth. Clearly the naming game is not filling his nose with the perfume of brotherly love.
“All right, Jamie. I guess I could’ve planned it better. But the stars must have aligned, because here we are, together. This is our Halley’s Comet. We’ll find Mr. Stewart and show him our Jumbo act. He’s our ticket into America.”
“You’re cracked. What makes you think a man like him will even see us, let alone employ us? You’re starting to worry me.”
“Because I dream of a better life for us?”
“No. Because you’re reminding me of Ba.”
I hiss in air, which feels cold against my teeth. “Ba was a visionary.”
“If you say so.”
