CARPE DIEM
Chapter Nine
During the long months and then
years in which Belfast hosted the Titanic, built her up from the keel to the
upper decks and the great smokestacks from which steam and coal dust would
eventually pour in strips along the water from one continent to the next, the
city’s pride in constructing such a massive vessel was somewhat overlooked. The
city did not dislike the endeavor, did not embrace it either, much to my
brother’s dismay. The Titanic’s maiden voyage would be the event of the age, he
would tell me, and wonder aloud why these goddamn Micks didn’t understand that.
I would shrug, say something about them being too busy building the ship to be
excited about other people enjoying its completion.
Mary Catherine, do you think
before you speak at all?
Then, suddenly, in the weeks
before the departure, the city came alive, realized the gravity of their
accomplishment, laughed in the streets, pointed at the shipyard, muttered
amongst themselves, "They’ve built something God himself could not
sink."
This came to mind as I stood
before Thomas, as he took my arm without thinking, bade me stay in his
stateroom while he went to the bridge for a moment, while he made sure…
I watched him go, remaining
still, rooted to the floor. The vibration had ended, the wine now still, the
glass fixture quiet. But…
This was still early April, in
the North Atlantic…and ice wreaks havoc against iron and steel. I pressed my
fingers to my lips, thinking. Trying to push calculations from my head, the
duration of the vibrations and the length of the ship, the compartments, the
rivets, the number of lifeboats. The lack thereof. This was early April,
flowers would be coming up around the house in London, primrose and phlox,
daffodils and daisies.
On April 2, 1903, Thomas Andrews
brought me a bouquet of wildflowers. He picked them on the road from Manchester
to London, stopping by some roadside, telling his driver God-knows-what for an explanation.
He came to my brother’s house around ten in the morning, where I had resided
with my brother’s family and my invalid mother since my father’s death four
years previously. Inès, my brother’s chambermaid, young, raven-haired, and late
of Marseilles, answered the knocking at the door. I know because I stood at the
railing of the staircase on the second floor landing, waiting to see who called
at this hour. I had been on my way up, with the mail from the day’s post in my
right hand.
"Is Miss Ismay at home,
Inès?" Thomas Andrews asked the girl. She was clearly pleased that he
remembered her name, answered his inquiry swiftly and with an amiability that
she had thus far reserved for…well, no one at all, actually. She was a bitter
soul, acrid in her every day manners, routinely ignored my mother’s calls, and
accomplished my sister-in-law’s demands sullenly, though…efficiently. Much
later, her manner towards my brother adopted at least that same amiability, if
not a doting tone, which I’m afraid suggested an intimacy to even the most
objective outside observer. Mademoiselle Inès was dismissed two days before
Christmas by Julia, my brother’s wife, with little pretext and no apologies for
the severance.
"I’m here, Mr.
Andrews." My left hand released the banister. I set the letters on the
hall stand haphazardly and descended the staircase. His gaze lifted at my
voice. He grinned when his eyes met mine. Inès shut the door behind him. Thomas
Andrews took off his coat, handed it to the little French maid, whose expression
had returned to its perpetual scowl. She left our presence with a subservient
nod of her head to Thomas Andrews, not even a glance towards me. Inès and I
were never destined to be in one another’s confidence.
"You’ve come to see my
brother?" I asked softly.
"Yes," he answered,
handing me the bouquet of wildflowers. "But always you first, Mary
Catherine." Surprised, but not unhappily so, I took them graciously,
tilting my head slightly, giving him a half grin of amusement and gratitude.
I was twenty-one years old, had
yet to learn how to effectively circumvent one’s true emotions, I suppose. I
spent most of my days writing Bruce’s letters and taking care of Mother, who
remembered my name rarely, but knew my face more often than not. I had long ago
been introduced into London society but had yet to be influenced by it. My
eyesight was poor, but not yet failing in any drastic manner. I never wore my
dark, small-rimmed glasses past three in the afternoon. My brother’s children
were still young, and filled the house with unguarded laughter and childish
adventures. It was spring, and the dogwood trees had bloomed with white and
pink-colored petals. My brother’s new shipbuilder, the thirty-year-old Irishman
from Belfast, with his soft voice and kind brown eyes, frequented the house
several times a month. I was never happier.
Months later, my brother forbade
my attachment to Thomas Andrews. He said it unexpectedly, without provocation,
while he read the morning newspaper at the breakfast table, while I helped
five-year-old Evelyn, his daughter, my niece, cut an apple into six slices. I
turned to him sharply, handing a slice to Evie, who took it eagerly with little
fingers and stuffed it into her mouth.
"What did you say?" I
demanded.
"I said you’re not to get
any ideas about becoming Mrs. Andrews, Mary Catherine. I won’t have my sister
marry a shipbuilder, certainly not an Irish one." He barely looked up from
his paper. Seized by a sudden tightening in my chest, a dreadful feeling of
four walls closing in on me, I reached out my hand and brought the paper down
from his face.
"Bruce, he’s your
friend!" I spoke firmly, meeting his gaze directly. "You have no
right…"
"I have every right, my
dear. Every right," he answered in a low, menacing voice that made me realize
he’d already done something. He set the paper aside now, of his own volition.
"I told him you were a girl prone to flights of fancy, and that his
ability to hold that fancy has passed."
Furiously, I pushed back the
chair and rose from my seat, despite Evie’s protests, her clamoring for more
apple slices at my side. I would have left the room, would have left the house,
ran to Thomas’s apartment, denied my brother’s vicious lies, but Bruce’s next
words restrained me.
"The day Thomas marries you
is the day William Pirrie will deny his status as construction manager. He will
never design another ship, he will be put back in the drawing office. You have
my word on that, Mary Catherine." I turned back. Thomas had spent years in
that drawing office doing menial tasks that wasted his talent and sapped his
creative strength. For years, he had waited patiently and worked endlessly to
be given his current position as head of the design department. There was
nothing in the world that he had ever wanted more.
"His uncle would never do
that…"
"His uncle is a man of
business. He would be remiss in doing anything else."
I had stood still, silently,
ensnared by my inability to move from the dining room floor, much as I did now,
on the wine-colored carpet in Thomas’ stateroom. Couldn’t think what to do,
wanted to scream, wanted to tear out my hair, weep at my brother’s feet, and
say why? Why have you done this to me? That day I should have ignored his words
and run to Thomas’ side anyway, the consequences be damned. I didn’t. I
returned to the table, finished slicing that apple for Evie, then went upstairs
to my mother’s bedroom, wept on her bed sheets as she stroked my hair and
murmured softly, "Hush now, Annabelle."
These memories were painful and
my subconscious mind remained unnerved by those fixations I had pushed away now
many minutes before. The vibration, the ice, the length of the ship, the
rivets, the lifeboats, the number of passengers. All those passengers. I
suddenly felt overwhelmed by the quietness of the room and could stay there no
longer.