Remembering the t.i.tanic.
A Novel.
Diane Hoh.
Prologue.
THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN, where the icebergs are, is still, a navy blue satin blanket covering the earth for endless miles. Barely a ripple breaks the surface, and then only in the wake of a ship.
But that stillness is deceptive. A dark, painful history lies beneath that placid water. Only those who were part of that history know just how painful.
There are secrets lying deep below the ocean"s surface. Unheard ... unseen ...
But never forgotten.
Chapter 1.
ELIZABETH FAIR WAS COLD. And she was angry. She was angry with her mother for insisting that Elizabeth wear one of the new, lightweight spring suits, ordered from their dressmaker. It was pretty enough, the color a deep shade of rose, and of course it was the latest fashion, with its hobbled skirt and narrow waistline. The wide-brimmed, veiled hat matched perfectly. Nola would never settle for anything less. She would have fired Madame Claude-Pierre in a second if the woman failed to keep up with the latest designs from Paris. As if to compensate for a full year of wearing somber black mourning apparel, Nola had ordered enough spring fashions to fill every wardrobe in the house to overflowing.
Elizabeth cared little about fashion now. What seemed far more important was warming the ever-present, painful chill in her bones. She missed the heavy woolens she"d worn all winter, although they hadn"t helped much, either. It was April again, a full year from that terrifying night out on the cold, black sea. Shivering with both fear and cold, Elizabeth had watched in horrified disbelief from her lifeboat as the great ship t.i.tanic raised upright in the ocean, pointing toward the sky like an arrow, before breaking in two and sinking forever. To Elizabeth, it still seemed like yesterday. The long, painful vigil in the lifeboat, her limbs and face so cold she could scarcely feel them, could have taken place the night before, so clear were those hours in her mind. Now, try though she would, she could not banish the constant chill in her bones. Nor could she silence the remembered screams of victims as they flailed helplessly in the frigid ocean, realizing, in those agonizing last moments, that no one was coming to their rescue. No one.
One lifeboat ... only one ... had searched for survivors. But by then, it was much too late. Her mother and Max, the two people she loved most in the world, seemed to have recovered better than she had. How, she wondered, had Max put the tragedy so easily behind him? That night had been far worse for him. She"d been safe in a lifeboat while he, flung into the ocean when the ship finally slid beneath the surface, struggled in the dark, numbing water. Yet even at Christmastime, in the penetrating cold, and when the threat of snow was in the air, Max had arrived at the Fairs" Murray Hill mansion wearing only an overcoat. No scarf, no hat, no gloves. Elizabeth envied that, too. How did he shrug off the cold when she, even in April, shivered with it?
"It"s been eight months, Elizabeth," he had said on Christmas Eve after presenting her with a beautiful gold locket and the sheet music for a new song she liked, "and you"re still cold all the time. Maybe you should see a doctor."
A doctor? She had looked at him skeptically. How could a doctor help?
She had not gone to a doctor. She had simply piled on more clothing. On evenings when her mother wasn"t dragging her to yet another boring dinner or concert or play, she lay on the pink brocade chaise lounge in her room with one woolen lap robe wrapped around her chest and shoulders, another tucked around her legs while she read for the third time Gene Stratton Porter"s Girl of the Limberlost. And always, always, there was a fire blazing in her fireplace.
None of it helped. Spring was in the air on this day in April when so many people had gathered at the Seamen"s Church Inst.i.tute in New York City for the dedication of the t.i.tanic Memorial Lighthouse. Wrapping her arms around her chest in an effort to keep warm, she tried to focus her attention on the ceremony. Her mother was at her side, Max in the crowd somewhere, sketching. The mood was grim. Some present were openly crying, their anguish still raw. Others wore bleak expressions as they recalled receiving the news of a loved one"s death on the great, "unsinkable" ship.
Elizabeth had often thought how painful it must have been for the relatives and friends waiting on sh.o.r.e. Doubly painful because the initial newspaper reports falsely stated that all on board had been rescued. On the contrary, fifteen hundred people had died when the ship sank. How bitter that later news must have been for those who had been rejoicing, believing their loved ones were safe.
Glancing around to see where Max might be, she noticed with interest a few young working women. She envied them their independence. Along with the typical secretary"s uniform of serge skirt, white shirtwaist, and inexpensive, tailored jacket, some wore the yellow flowers of the suffragette movement. Elizabeth hoped her mother didn"t see the flowers. She was sure to comment. Nola despised the efforts of women to secure the vote, hated their highly publicized marches through the city, their "strident voices" raised "all across the country." With no interest of her own in politics, she failed to understand the needs of other women to have more of a say in such matters.
When she located Max, a rush of warmth flooded Elizabeth, as it always did when she looked at him. Sketch pad in hand, his head was down as he concentrated furiously. His light brown hair needed cutting, as always, though that didn"t take away from his attractiveness. What she loved most about him were his eyes, a deep blue. Navy blue when he was feeling most intense or excited.
Still, as much as Elizabeth loved Max, she felt strongly that he shouldn"t be sketching the faces, and she decided to say so. Telling her mother she"d be right back, she hurried over to him. He smiled when he saw her, but continued to draw.
"I wish you wouldn"t do that," Elizabeth said, touching his arm.
He raised his head then, a look of surprise on his lean, handsome face. "Do what?"
"Sketch people. Not now, not here. They"re grieving, Max. You"re invading their privacy."
He frowned. "They don"t even know I"m doing it."
"It"s still an intrusion." She pointed toward the brown-suited men armed with cameras moving through the crowd. "Isn"t it bad enough that the press has arrived? We"re here to remember the loved ones we lost a year ago, and it"s wrong to take advantage of that. Our privacy should be respected."
"Privacy? Elizabeth, this is a public place."
"I don"t care. Please, Max. Not now." She was disappointed in him. It wasn"t like Max to take advantage of the pain of others. He was kinder and more sensitive than that. What had gotten into him?
Max didn"t put his sketch pad away. But he said, "I"ll sketch the Lighthouse memorial instead," and began to do just that.
Elizabeth had to admit this new memorial was intriguing. The Lighthouse mounted on the inst.i.tute"s roof was topped with a black ball that would drop each afternoon at one P.M. (though Elizabeth puzzled over why they had picked that specific hour since the ship itself had sunk in the wee hours of the morning). A light had been put inside the ball. It was green, the color of hope. It all seemed more impressive than a simple bronze plaque.
Although she was still shivering slightly, Elizabeth concentrated on the words being spoken in memory of the father she still missed fiercely and in memory of the fifteen hundred other people who had perished in the disaster.
Far from where Elizabeth stood, on the fringes of the crowd, Katie Hanrahan fidgeted restlessly. Though she, too, had spent that long, frightening night in a lifeboat, she was not plagued by an incessant chill as Elizabeth was. Frequent nightmares and a fear of dark, enclosed s.p.a.ces were her legacies. The nights were the worst. During the daytime hours she was usually busy enough to keep from thinking about the ill-fated journey from her home in Ireland. There were household ch.o.r.es in her aunt"s roominghouse, and trips into Manhattan for auditions and meetings with theatrical agents in hopes of establishing a singing career. That career, though it had yet to get off the ground, had been her goal in traveling to America. Her days were very busy.
But she had no control over the dark dreams that stalked her sleep. She woke from them in a state of panic, drenched in a clammy sweat, convinced that she was still trapped in the belly of the sinking t.i.tanic.
Still, she could handle the nightmares. A cup of warm milk, a chapter or two read in a favorite book, and sleep would return.
What was harder to handle was Paddy"s stubborn refusal to attend a single memorial for victims of the t.i.tanic. She needed him with her during these painful ceremonies. Did he not miss his brother Brian, who hadn"t been as lucky as they? Where was his respect for his older sibling? If it hadn"t been for Brian, neither one of them would have made it to America. It was Brian her da trusted, not his younger brother. Everyone in Ballyford liked Paddy well enough, but that didn"t mean they trusted him with their daughters. On the contrary, he had left behind a string of broken hearts.
Katie smiled, thinking how determined she had been not to join that sad group, in spite of Paddy"s charm and good looks. But those days on the t.i.tanic ... the happy days before the shocking end to the journey ... had changed all that. To her astonishment, she had discovered a side to Paddy that she"d never known existed ... a sensitive, caring side that had nearly kept him from leaving his brother on the sinking ship. If Brian hadn"t insisted that Paddy might be needed to help out in the lifeboats, both brothers would have perished.
Katie sighed. Why wasn"t Paddy here, at her side at this dedication ceremony, instead of her aunt Lottie? Lottie hadn"t lost a loved one in the disaster. She had accompanied her niece only because she disapproved of Katie traveling from Brooklyn alone and because she, a soft-hearted woman, felt deeply about the tragedy. Surely Paddy should feel the same. But he didn"t seem to.
"I don"t see the point to all of these ceremonies and all this fuss," he had said. "What good does it do? We need to be gettin" on with our lives here in America, not be laborin" the past. "Tis over and done with, and best forgotten"
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 s.p.a.ces. 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 t.i.tanic 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 pa.s.sageways 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 pa.s.sion for Paddy was the deepest, truest feeling she had ever known. And she missed him now just as pa.s.sionately, 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 pa.s.senger on board the t.i.tanic? A very special pa.s.senger, 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 t.i.tanic. A very pretty first-cla.s.s pa.s.senger, 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 sh.o.r.e, that the closeness they"d shared on the t.i.tanic 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.
Chapter 2.
WHEN ELIZABETH 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 t.i.tanic. 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 pa.s.senger and tried, kindly enough, to direct him to the third-cla.s.s faculties. He hadn"t corrected her, hadn"t even spoken, not wanting to embarra.s.s her. So she had a.s.sumed he was French and spoke no English.
Remembering, Max laughed aloud, attracting curious looks from people pa.s.sing on the street. She had looked so shocked later that day when she discovered him sitting in the first-cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 embarra.s.sing 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 pa.s.sionate, 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 t.i.tanic"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 ba.n.a.lity 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.
Eventually, he had tired of such a hectic life. Now his goal was to fill the apartment with new canva.s.ses. An idea had come to him, and his hands burned with the need to paint. So paint he did ... morning, noon, or night, good light, bad light, it made no difference. Nothing else seemed as important.
But he still missed Elizabeth and would rather have spent time with her than with anyone else. If she could find a way to free herself from the prison of her father"s promise ....
"Hey, Max!" An elbow jabbed Max in the ribs. "What are you up to?"
Max winced at the blow. Never heavy, he had lost weight recently from a combination of hard work and little attention to regular meals. "Watch it, Bledsoe. You don"t know your own strength."
Short, blond Norman Bledsoe shrugged. In an attempt to age his round, babyish face, he was striving to grow a beard. The fair hair barely covered his chin, and the effect, rather than maturing him, gave him a slight air of disrepute, though his gray pants and black overcoat were clean and neat enough. Without an invitation, he fell into step beside Max. "Are you ready to let us see your new work? We"re getting impatient, Max. Anne and Gregory are suspicious. They think you"re not working at all, that you"re just pretending to. You need to prove them wrong. Besides, you"re the only one with enough room in your place for a get-together, and we haven"t had one there in ages. I"m tired of having to fold myself up like an accordion just to fit in everyone else"s hovels."
Max shrugged. They rounded the corner into his avenue. As always, he felt a surge of satisfaction that this was his home he was returning to, not his parents". Instead of the enormous four-story brick house in which he had been raised, he was advancing toward a trio of small, but perfectly adequate rooms of his own. He and Anne Morrison, Bledsoe"s girlfriend, were the only two in their group who possessed more than one tiny, dismal room. But Anne"s was in a terrible neighborhood, under the elevated trains.
"So?" Norman pressed. "When can I tell the others you"re ready for the unveiling of your new work?"
"I"ll have a get-together when I"m ready to show my work. At my place. Maybe I can even talk Elizabeth"s mother into letting her come. Just the one time. You"ll have to wait until then."
The need to return to his painting overtook him then. Impatient and anxious, he quickened his steps.
Norman followed suit, but at the same time, he let out a grunt of disbelief. "Elizabeth"s mother won"t let her come, Max, you know that. Not with a bunch of down-and-out aspiring artists hanging out at your place. But the rest of us will be there. How soon, do you think?"
"How do I know when I"ll be ready? You can"t put a timetable on art, Bledsoe." They had reached Max"s building. His mind already back in his apartment with his canva.s.ses, he waved, ran up the steps, and disappeared inside.
Norman watched him go, shaking his head sadly. To a pa.s.sing stranger in a tweed overcoat, he said, "You"d think a best friend would want to spend time with you, wouldn"t you?"
The stranger, shaking his own head, hurried away.
On the other side of the city, a tall, dark-haired, handsome young man awkwardly holding a delicate porcelain cup in one hand while shaking the hand of an older gentleman with the other, found himself wishing he had skipped this particular event. I should have spent the afternoon with Katie, Paddy Kelleher was thinking even as he gifted the older man, a well-known literary agent, with the smile that had broken so many female hearts back in County Cork, Ireland. He used the smile more often these days to charm the countless publishers, literary agents, established writers, and newspaper columnists paraded before him by Edmund Tyree.
Paddy was grateful to Edmund. The publisher, a kind, warm-hearted man very much like Paddy"s own grandad back in Ballyford, had taken notice of the single article Paddy had sold to a magazine six months after his arrival in America. Paddy had t.i.tled it, "Surviving the Sea." It was a first-person account of the sinking of the t.i.tanic. The magazine"s editor had changed the t.i.tle to "Surviving the t.i.tanic," saying that would catch the attention of more readers since the subject was still on everyone"s lips six months after the tragedy. Then he had bought and published the article.
Paddy didn"t care about the t.i.tle change. The editor probably knew best. Paddy hadn"t used the ship"s name because the subject wasn"t on his lips. He had a difficult time even saying the word "t.i.tanic." He couldn"t talk about it.
He"d been able to at first. He"d talked about the sinking of the great ship like everyone else, mostly to Katie"s aunt and uncle, who had listened with wide, horrified eyes.
But then somewhere along the way it came to him, that while he was walking the streets of Manhattan, New York, America, while he was being given the red carpet treatment by Edmund Tyree, who had read his article and now wanted Paddy to write a full-length book about the tragedy, while he was being chauffeured here and there in Edmund"s grand Pierce-Arrow automobile, his brother Brian was dead. While Paddy was attending parties and dinners and meetings, and resting as comfortable as a hen in a nest in the fine apartment Edmund had found for him and was paying the outlandish rent on, while Paddy Kelleher was doing these grand things ... his older brother Brian was lying, stone-cold, at the bottom of the black Atlantic Ocean. Hadn"t even been found to be given a decent church funeral and burial.
The very thought of it, when it hit him as if someone had socked him in the chest, made Paddy sick, sick as a dog. He shook. Nausea hit him in wave upon wave. His vision blurred, and icy chills pa.s.sed up and down his spine. These things refused to pa.s.s until, with great effort, he banished all thought of Brian and the great ship t.i.tanic and the North Atlantic Ocean from his mind. But he knew if he allowed the thoughts to return, the illness would as well.
No one knew. Not even Katie.
From that moment on, it was as if he"d been stricken mute about the tragedy. He was afraid to say a word about that long, terrible night, and that was the truth of it. After a while, he even became frightened of writing about it, though he had not yet shared this news with Edmund, or Belle, Edmund"s niece, who was tutoring Paddy in grammar and spelling. They still thought he was trying. In a way, he was. But it wasn"t doing any good.