Authors: Caroline Pignat

Unspeakable (8 page)

I looked at him now, the stoop of his back, the tremble of his wrinkled hands as he reached his shears into the white
rose bush. He seemed so old. So frail. What would become of him, of us, without Aunt Geraldine's direction and Meg's help? He snipped a rose, dropped it beside the other two on the ground. They'd be on Aunt Geraldine's grave within the hour. She would have liked that. Then Bates turned his attention to the foxglove by the gate. Its vibrant purple bells rustled in the breeze, carrying its sweet scent through the open window. Meg loved foxglove. No doubt her grandfather would have cut her some, would have brought a bouquet to her grave, had he known where she lay. Like Jim, her body had never been recovered. I never saw either of them in a rough-hewn coffin, lined up among the hundreds of others. Husbands. Wives. Children. I closed my eyes.

No
.

I never saw them because they weren't there. Jim and Meg were listed as “lost at sea.”
Lost
â¦ not dead, and something lost might still be found. For weeks now, I had clung to the withering hope that there had been some kind of mistake. That one day I'd see Jim on the docks, see Meg coming through that gate. Bates had told me it was time to let go, but I just couldn't. I saw her struggle and gasp. No matter how my numbed hands tried to hold her up, no matter how I kicked my leaden legs, she kept slipping away, and all I could do was watch her terrified eyes disappear beneath the black water.

I wouldn't let go of her. Not again.

“âas a stewardess? â¦ Miss Ellen?” Steele's voice bobbed on the edges of my darkness and I gripped it like a lifeline, letting him reel me back to here and now.

“Sorry?” Once again, I found myself apologizing to the very man who was keelhauling me through the depths.

“Well â¦” He scanned the pages, flipping back through the many notes he'd made this morning. “We've got when you started, what you did, where, and with whom. Mainly Meg, right?”

I nodded, in slight shock at his callousness. Bloody journalist. His cold detachment contrasted with my wild emotions. He was calm and rational while my mind galloped and my heart bucked. Yet somehow he tethered me to the present. Gentled me, I suppose. I didn't know whether to be angry or grateful.

“This is good. Really good stuff.” He put his pencil to his lips. “But one thing I don't understand is
why
.”

“That's the question, isn't it, Mr. Steele?” I returned to my seat, drawn by his sympathy. “Why? Why do these tragedies happen? Why do we lose people we care about?”

He flipped the page. “No, I mean why were you even on the ship?”

Once again, his bluntness caught me off guard.

“You're Ellen Hardy,” he continued. “Daughter of Joseph Hardyâsole heir of Hardy Estates, one of the richest stables in County Wicklow.”

My face burned and I shut my mouth, only just noticing it was hanging open. Clearly, he'd done his homework. Any gratitude or connection he'd evoked in me were gone. How dare he? How dare he bring up my father! I wondered how much he already knew. Not all of it, not if he was asking.

“I don't see what any of that has to do with the
Empress
.” I tried to keep my voice neutral, though I knew my face betrayed me. My very thoughts flushed up my neck and across my cheeks. I'd never been a good liar.

“Why would someone like you be living a second-class servant's life?” He squinted as if trying to read me more clearly. “What made you do it? Now,
that's
exactly the kind of story that sells.”

My mind raced. “It was for a story, of course.” I scrambled for an answer to stop up the truth I didn't want to spill. If I let it out, even a little, I knew the whole of it would gush forth. “That's exactly it. Aunt Geraldine needed some research.”

His eyes darkened as a frown settled over them. He wasn't buying it.

“For her new book,” I added. “About a stewardess. Who works on a steamship.”

He tapped the pencil on his lips, sounding my story for truth. “It's just, I can't see G.B. writing about something that mundane. A stewardess adventureâI mean, come on, who'd want to read that?”

I arched my eyebrow and clenched my jaw. “Indeed.”

He smirked at the irony, and his eyes brightened once again. He relaxed into his chair. “So why not just send the maid, Meg? Why both of you?”

“Have you met my aunt, Mr. Steele?”

“I wish I had.”

“She was a perfectionist who lived and breathed her books. Her characters were more real to her than â¦ than I was.” The words came easier the less he doubted. Plus I spoke the truth. Aunt Geraldine simply wanted to write my life. To control me like some secondary character in her bloody novels. “I wanted to get away from her overbearing ways. I wanted â¦ an
adventure
of my own.” I chose my words carefully, using what little I knew about the man before me. If we were
going to play this game, I needed to know more about him, a lot more. “Besides, surely a writer such as yourself would know that two sources are better than one.”

Lily knocked and entered with tea. I'd made it clear before he came that Mr. Steele would not be staying. I'd given him the whole morning, enough for one day. She seemed embarrassed when he noticed the tray held tea, soup, and buttered soda bread for one. Aunt Geraldine would've been disgusted by my actions. But my lack of hospitality was the least of the many ways I'd disappointed her.

He caught Lily's eye and winked as he flipped his notebook shut. “Well, I guess that's my cue.”

Lily blushed and set the tray on the table before me. I don't know why, but her obvious adoration of him irritated me. He was toying with her. Didn't she know?

“I'd stay,” he continued, as if he'd been invited, “but I want to get back to my boarding house and pound out a bit of this while it's still fresh in my mind. My editor said he wants a draft as soon as possible.” He shoved his pencil and pad inside his leather satchel before standing and shrugging it over his broad shoulder. “Same time Monday?”

“Aren't you forgetting something?” He was going to make me ask, make me beg again. But I wouldn't. He couldn't play me as easily as Lily.

“Oh, right.” He pulled out Jim's journal and ripped out another few pages. He tossed them on my tray.

His indifference infuriated me and I bolted to my feet, driven forward by emotion. “Damn you, Steele. Can't you just give me the whole story?”

He held my stare. “Can't you?”

The tension crackled blue fire between us, hot and electric like a Tesla-coil globe. I'd seen it at London's 1912 World's Fair, a great orb of electricity exploding into a hundred blue veins when the scientist brought the wand closer. As Steele's intensity was somehow doing now. It lasted seconds, but in that moment I knew. I knew he held the wand and all its power. I knew he could, and would, draw whatever he wanted from me and I could do nothing to stop him. We both knew it. Without a word, he left, and my energy went with him. All my anger and outrage. My fury and purpose.

All drained away, leaving nothing but a transparent globe, empty, ready to shatter.

June 14, 1913

I hear it gurgle in the dark, spilling under my bedroom door. It's come for me again. The sea. Even back home in Liverpool, in my own bed, it stalks me. Water swirls around my boots in the corner, dragging one toward my bed in its growing current. In truth, it's no deeper than a puddle in the back lane after a storm. But I know what's coming
.

“Da!” I call to the bed on the other side of my room. His dark form doesn't move from where he lies, as always, facing the wall. There isn't much time. Already the water is lapping round our mattresses, tugging our blankets. “Da, please! We have to go!”

I want to get up, to shake him, to get us the hell out of here, but I can't move as the freezing water breaches my bed. It surges under my back and around my legs, rising farther and farther up my pounding chest. A steady stream spurts from the keyhole and the door groans in defeat before
exploding in a gush of whitewater and splinters that floods the room. Water swirls around my head, fills my ears, and climbs my cheeks. I can't breathe even though I know I've only moments left to take that final gasp
.

And then it's too late
.

As the surface closes over my face, I sink deeper and deeper into its darkness. I'm not afraid of dying. In fact, I want to. I wish for it every day. I deserve this. And so I make myself look at what I can't bear to see
.

My heart hammers and my lungs burn, yet I am numb to everything but the sight of my father, in the darkness, just out of reach. He drifts closer, the strings of his life vest trailing behind. His steward uniform is torn, his brow still cut. But it's his eyes, always the eyes, milky, vacant in his bloated white face that make me scream as my father drifts over me in a dead man's float
.

“Jim! Jim!” Strong hands shake my shoulders. “Wake up! That's enough!”

I'm back in my bed. Mam is rattling me something fierce
.

“Stop your screaming, boy. Must you wake the whole of Liverpool?” She stands and pulls her shawl close. “Enough now. You're upsetting the girls.”

My heart is thudding like a steam engine and I'm sweating like I've shovelled two tons of coal. Libby is behind her, candle in hand. In its dim light I see the door is sound, the room is dry, and the spare bed is empty
.

Once again, I'd woken the house
.

“Just another bad dream.” Mam nods at Libby, who takes Penny's hand and leads her back to their bed
.

But it isn't a dream. Da is dead
.

“I'm sorry, Mam,” I say, sitting up and holding my head in my hands. It's my fault he's gone. My fault
.

She strokes my hair like she did when I was a lad. “I know, Jimmy. I know, love. I miss him, too.”

But she doesn't know the half of it. And she never can
.

I wipe my nose on the back of my hand. I can't stop trembling
.

“Things will look better in the morning, son.” She doesn't sound convincing or convinced of the lies she tells herself each night. “You've been having more nightmares lately. Are you nervous about sailing? Is that it, do you think?”

Maybe. Or maybe it's being home again. Seeing how much they need Da's pay. As the only son, now it's up to meâand a stoker's wage is nothing compared to a top steward's. It doesn't matter how I feel about the work or that I am only seventeen. I owe it to my family
.

“I'll be fine once I'm on board â¦ once I'm working again.”

“Would you not rather work here on the docks?” she says. “I'm sure we could find you something. Maybe Mr. Carroll might needâ”

“No, Mam. It's already set.” I can't stay. Can't see her pining for Da day after day, her sighing, the way her eyes linger on his empty chair
.

“Why him? Why my Davey?” she often whispers. And I know what it means: Why Davey â¦ and not you, instead?

I haven't got an answer for her. Lord knows, I've asked the same question every day
.

“I like the work,” I lie, as she turns to leave. I'd already done one voyage from Liverpool to Quebec and back. Hot. Noisy. Endless shifts shovelling coal until my body and mind were numb with exhaustion
.

Only then can I escape the nightmares
.

FOUR MONTHS BEFORE