Read The Lifeboat: A Novel Online
Authors: Charlotte Rogan
Hannah kept looking at me throughout that afternoon, and one time she said, “Grace.” Only that one word—my name—with no message attached to it, simply “Grace.”
But on the mail packet, I joined the others in thanking God and credited him with the ability to save Henry just the way he had saved me. Gradually, we gained strength, and on our last evening before reaching Boston, instead of her usual prayer, Isabelle insisted that we remember the deacon and Mr. Sinclair, who had willingly sacrificed themselves for us. In the deacon’s memory, she led us in a recitation of the “Song of the Sea,” which he had taught us what seemed a lifetime before so that we might recite it when we were rescued. The only part I remember now is this:
And with the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were piled up, The floods stood upright as a heap; The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea.
It seems a fair description of what we experienced, and I was glad Isabelle thought of it, for the rest of us would certainly have forgotten. The ship we were on was carrying ten other passengers, and now they gathered around as we recited what must have seemed to them a bloody and partisan account where God saves Moses and the Israelites and drowns everybody else. But I suppose it is in man’s nature to feel special, and we were no different than the Israelites in that regard.
The land rose from the water almost magically, and while the others flocked to the railing of the boat, I hung back, wondering if anyone had come to meet me. The captain of the mail steamer had been in constant communication with the authorities, and by that time we had a good idea of who had survived the shipwreck and who had not. Mary Ann’s mother had been rescued nearly two weeks before, but there was no mention of Henry Winter or Brian Blake. Even though I knew that Henry’s name was not on the list of survivors, part of my mind was obsessed with the idea that he would be waiting for me when I got to shore.
The land was blue-green, obscured at first by a thin haze. Then the blue-green resolved into colors that included the red of a lighthouse and the bright hulls of anchored boats. All around me were exclamations: “Lord have mercy!” shouted someone, and Mrs. McCain, who had brushed past me in her haste to stand at the rail, shouted, “At last, civilization!” But what I saw before me were not social structures and cultural achievements. I saw something more natural and inexplicable, not some opposite of the sea, the way solids and voids are opposites or the way life is the opposite of death, but some extension of it. Perhaps I had a premonition about what was to come, or perhaps my perceptions were merely colored with worry about what might await me: Was I to be accepted by Henry’s family or rejected outright? If I were to be rejected, where would I stay? I imagined I could go back to the house where I had lived with my mother, and while I could hardly think of that without a profound feeling of dejection, I steeled myself with the thought that at least I wasn’t dead, and that with life came hope. But hope had always seemed to me like a weak emotion, a kind of pleading passivity or entrenched denial; and as the tree-lined beach neared and spread before us like Moses’s promised land, I determined not to become a victim of it. We had been told that rooms had been reserved for us at a hotel and that doctors were available to examine us, so I knew I had a day or two to plan where I would go and what I would do, never imagining the turn events would take.
I was the last of the survivors to make my way down the gangway to stand on the wharf in Boston Harbor. The first step onto the graying and weathered timbers was like stepping onto a rocking boat, so unused were we to walking on a firm surface. The sight of my fellow passengers trying to keep their balance was comical, and our laughter was as much an expression of our joy at being on land as of our awareness of how unsuited we had become to walk on it. I stopped once, halfway down the long incline, to look back at the glimmering lagoon of the harbor. Above me, the captain of the mail packet was standing at the railing before turning his attention to his crew and to whatever preparations needed to be made for wherever he was going next. He stood with his hands on his hips, squinting into the morning sun that streamed in golden bursts from between the clouds, and gazed after us—after me, I liked to think. We looked at each other for a long moment, and in him I saw Mr. Hardie, though the two men were nothing alike. Where Hardie had been dark and slight, the captain of the mail steamer was tall and had an air of substance and refinement that Mr. Hardie lacked. Our eyes met. I lifted my hand partway and he, in return, lifted his and gave me a kind of salute. It was exactly the gesture Mr. Hardie had given Henry the day the
Empress Alexandra
sank and Henry had approached him on the deck and he and Hardie had exchanged words, which I didn’t hear except to ascertain that some kind of transaction had taken place, for Henry had that look of fixed concentration he had adopted in the London shops where he had bought me the jewels and dresses that were now lost. Then Henry had backed off and raised his hand the way I was raising mine now, and Mr. Hardie had saluted with one hand while he tucked the other inside his jacket. The gold buttons of his uniform glinted in the sunlight. His seaman’s cap sat firmly on his head. His cheeks, clean-shaven at the time, were hollow even then, and his deep-set eyes were dark and inscrutable.
I nodded. The captain of the mail packet tipped his chin in return, and that is the last I saw of him. I turned from him just as he turned from me; then I walked with the same uncertain steps as the others down the rest of the gangway. By the time I had traversed the wharf and put my foot on firm soil, my steps no longer faltered, and even when I realized that no one had come to meet me, I walked steadily toward whatever the future might hold.
ACQUITTAL HAS NOT
solved everything, though I suppose the situation is worse for Mrs. Grant and Hannah, whose sentences were commuted to life in prison. Dr. Cole has suggested I expand the notes I made for my defense, saying that what I need now is psychological acquittal. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t feel guilty!” I exclaimed, heartily sick of the good doctor. Of course there are things I want to forget, but I wonder if it is wise to continue to dwell on them. If only I could forget, for instance, the deafening roar of the wind and waves, the puny
slap slap slap
of the wooden boat against the boundless majesty of the sea, those sticks of oars that got us nowhere, the black-green immensity that ever threatened to engulf us. Forget the sight of Rebecca’s hair spread out over the water before she went under and the relief I felt when at first she failed to reappear. Forget, most of all, my own temptation to interfere with fate and the sick, dead weight of Mrs. Fleming on my lap and later of Mary Ann. Hannah and Mrs. Grant, at least, were capable of making a plan and seeing it through, but I could make no hard and fast decisions. More than once I wished Anya Robeson would hide me under her coat with little Charles.
As I write this, there is word that a transatlantic steamship called the
Lusitania
was sunk by German submarines that were sliding darkly beneath the waters of the Irish Sea. The news made me wonder if our ship had been an early victim of the war, but the authorities were quick to say it wasn’t, for both the timing and location were wrong; and even if it had been, would that have changed anything? I smile to myself to think how Mr. Sinclair would have answered with a resounding “No!” but I am not sure I agree with him. The authorities aren’t right about everything, and it still gives me a sense of importance to think my life was shattered because I was caught in the cross fire between powerful nations rather than because of carelessness or greed.
After I had wrestled Hardie out of the boat, it was my turn to lie, exhausted, with my head in Mary Ann’s lap. I slept fitfully and awoke with a start, thinking that Mary Ann was talking to me. “I only pretended to faint,” I heard her say. “I could never kill anyone, but of course Mrs. Grant never had any doubts about you.” Later in the night she said, “I’ll tell them who did it if we’re ever rescued. I’ll tell them it was you, and I’ll tell them about the jewelry and how you bought your way onto the boat.”
“There was no jewelry, Mary Ann,” I said or didn’t say, for such was the erratic nature of my thoughts that it was as likely to have been a nightmare as something that had actually taken place.
For nearly a year now Dr. Cole has been harping on the events of the lifeboat. He is beginning to sound exactly like the prosecuting attorney. I have told him I won’t talk about the lifeboat anymore. Of course it affected me, but not in the way he thinks! This he refuses to accept. I don’t see how reliving every day again in detail will reveal the source of my anxiety, which stems far more from the trial and worry about my future than from anything that happened out there. It was not the sea that was cruel, but the people. Why should any of us be surprised by that? Why did the jury sit there with their jaws hanging open and their eyes popping out? Why did the reporters follow us like hungry dogs? Children! I thought. I would never be a child again.
I have lost patience with the idea of an insignificant human being standing up above the rest of us—whether he is called Reverend or Doctor or Judge—and shouting at us all about this thing or that. As soon as someone starts to pontificate in this way, I am apt to cut him off or leave the room, or, if this can’t be done gracefully, I simply arrange that sweet vapid smile on my face that was so useful during the trial but that so infuriates Dr. Cole. After all, I have already taken the measure of my own insignificance, and I survived.
When I said something to this effect, Dr. Cole began lecturing me about guilt and saying that people are not responsible for the good or ill fortune that befalls them. I keep telling him I do not wonder “Why me?” any more than I wonder about the accident of my birth. Rather, I feel both lucky and unlucky about it, suffused with a sort of happiness as it has opened up a whole new world to me, one quite devoid of dependencies on other people, devoid even of the fear of death and belief in God, though this could be exactly what baffles him; and it occurs to me that Dr. Cole is as interested in curing himself as he is in curing me.
Today I told Dr. Cole I am going away, though I am not yet entirely sure where I will go. “But our work is not finished!” he cried. I said I was about to embark on a grand new adventure now that this one was done. “You’re getting married!” he exclaimed.
“How unimaginative you are! There are endless possibilities. There’s no telling what I might do,” I said, and I felt very free and relieved as I said it, but I fear that the world is as unimaginative as he and that I will have to accept Mr. Reichmann’s proposal of marriage for want of a better plan. Henry’s mother has been asking me to come to New York, and at some point I will visit her, but I keep putting it off. Is it strange that what had seemed a crucial element of my future no longer seems to figure into it at all?
“You’ll never find inner peace if you don’t resolve your ambivalence toward the lifeboat…towards me,” Dr. Cole started to say, but I replied that I had already found inner peace. Life at that moment again seemed like a game to me, a game I might even win, mainly because I had been acquitted and I hadn’t made any other irrevocable choices yet. No doubt I soon would. One couldn’t inhabit the knife-edge cusp of possibility for long without stepping off on one side or the other, as my experiences in the lifeboat had unambiguously shown. Did I get butterflies of happiness in William’s presence? No, but he professed to get them in mine, and it made me happy that he did.
I had heard from Greta again, who wrote that the women from the lifeboat were collecting money for Hannah’s and Mrs. Grant’s appeals. Did I want to contribute? Furthermore, they wanted me to use my influence to persuade Mr. Reichmann not only to take their cases, but also to reduce his fee. The previous day I had sat for a long while over my notebook, drafting a reply—several replies, in fact. In one, I offered them any assistance within my power and in another I asked how people who had not only implicated me in their crime but later turned against me could ask for my help. In yet a third, I politely and distantly wished them well and promised nothing. I told Dr. Cole about the three letters and asked his opinion about which to send. “Which one do you want to send?” he asked, as I had known he would.
“Of course, I have no money to give them,” I said. I honestly wished them well, but I did not want William spending the first year of our marriage immersed in the events of a time that was now behind me.
Unlike the dank prison room where we had met, Dr. Cole’s office was large and airy and had a bank of windows that overlooked the harbor. I spent the last minutes of our time together gazing out at the water, which was frothy with whitecaps. In the distance, a fleet of small sailing vessels scudded like graceful birds before the wind. “You’re smiling,” said Dr. Cole. “Yes,” I replied. “I suppose I am.”
I was wearing a new silk dress and it rustled magnificently when I stood up to go before the allotted hour was up. I said, “You will have to find your answers without me,” which made him tap his fountain pen so hard in frustration that it left a large blot of ink on his compulsive little page of notes. If I had not felt so sorry for him, I would have laughed out loud at his desire to pin everything down, at his naïveté, at his childish desire to know.
My love and thanks go to my family: to my parents, for giving me an appreciation of boats and oceans; to my siblings, for making the voyages fun; and to my husband and children, for cheering me on as I added pages to my collection of lidded file boxes even though they weren’t always sure what I was doing.
Without Sara Mosle, the boxes would have remained sealed. Sara was kind enough to read my work and introduce me to her wonderful agent, David McCormick. David, you are a hero for giving me guidance and support and, now, an audience.
Little, Brown, it was love at first sight. My editors Andrea Walker, Ursula Doyle, and Reagan Arthur were not only smart and insightful, but funny and a delight to work with. And to the many others whose enthusiasm and expertise helped to launch
The Lifeboat,
thank you: Marlena Bittner, Heather Fain, Zoe Hood, and Amanda Tobier for keeping me on task; Mario Pulice for generously sharing his expertise on all things ocean liner; Emma Graves for her spectacular jacket; Victoria Pepe and Deborah Jacobs for their superhuman copyediting; and Susan Hobson, Sarah Murphy, Bridget McCarthy, and Pilar Queen for their all-around facility with the metaphorical ropes.
I am enduringly grateful to my early writing mentors: Andrew Kaufman, Leonard Kriegel, Harold Brodkey, and Marshall Terry. Their words and wisdom resonate to this day. To my friend Angela Himsel: thank you for twenty-four years of encouragement. And to the writers through the years who, by example, taught me how to write: I wish you the same sort of inspiration you have given me.
Finally, my heartfelt thanks to Reagan Arthur and Michael Pietsch for giving me a chance.