Chapter 19 #2
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope this helps. I really must be off, though.”
“Thank you,” she said a third time, as he clipped away.
CLOTHING BE DAMNED, she ate first. A traditional Irish fry-up at a pub well off the main road, bacon and sausage, a sunny egg, tomatoes and soda bread and beans, sliced mushrooms swimming in butter.
Hashed potatoes, perfectly crisped. A waitress of about fifteen served the meal, still bubbling in its skillet.
Rita hunkered over her food and tried not to shovel it into her mouth as she wanted to, aware of the stares aimed at her from the local patrons.
She used her knife and fork, Pauline’s court manners still in force, but manners could only push back so far against trauma and deprivation.
Rita never looked up, never paused, never slowed down.
When she finished, the waitress brought her a plate of oat flapjacks, drizzled with honey.
“Compliments of the owner,” she said, unsmiling. She eased back on her heels, redhaired, stern. She tucked her hands behind her, her apron worn and spotless. “God bless.”
Thank you had begun to sound like nothing to her ears, but Rita said it anyway, and the girl nodded, brusque, and moved off.
SHE HAD SLIGHTLY less luck at the dressmaker’s shop the Cunard man had sent her to.
“Sorry, miss,” said the young shop girl, wringing her hands.
“We’ve been plucked clean since afore noon.
All the ready-mades are gone, most of the underthings as well.
We have some woolen stockings left, if you’re interested, and garters.
Some waist laces and chemisettes. There’s a pongee wrapper in the back, and some fine sweater coats, knitted local.
Excellent quality, very thick. Keep you warm no matter the wind. ”
Rita took the wrapper and two sweater coats, thinking one would probably fit around Lady Allan’s shoulders, at least, even if she couldn’t get her arm through the sleeve.
She also took two pairs of stockings, although, to be honest, she doubted they would be as comfortable as the socks she was wearing.
She returned to the hotel to find that the kitchen had been taken over by the staff, who’d broken the locks off the larder and begun to serve herbed omelets and sautéed potatoes. Urns of hot tea sat out in the lobby.
Rita brought a plate and cup to the room for Lady Allan, who was sitting up in bed but still feverish. The other two ladies were absent, their bed neatly made; she’d never even known their names.
A local doctor had come and gone, Marguerite Allan told her, prescribing aspirin powder and rest.
“And hot food,” Rita said, trying to sound cheerful. “Everything’s better when you’ve had a good meal.”
She handed her the plate, placed the teacup on the nightstand nearby, and sat down in the room’s lone chair. Lady Allan’s hair was loose now, her fine tortoiseshell comb gleaming on the nightstand, the row of pearls lining the top all amazingly intact. She hadn’t asked about her daughters.
They sat in silence. Lady Allan kept her gaze on the plate on her lap, the carefully cooked and folded eggs slowly cooling in a smear of butter.
Rita said, “You mustn’t give up hope. I’m not done looking.”
The other woman nodded. She picked up her fork with her good hand and sliced off a bite of omelet. But she didn’t eat it, only pushed it around the plate.
RITA WENT BACK out. She rechecked the list of Known Saved first—Josephine Brandell’s name had been added; she felt a measure of relief at that—then spent another two hours searching, still fruitless.
All day long, she’d deliberately avoided the wharf, because it was clear what was going on down there, what had to be happening down there, and she didn’t want to see it. She’d already seen enough of the dead.
But as the air grew warmer, a putrid stink billowed and undulated over the town, up the quaint lanes, across flowerbeds, and into rooms, even with the doors and windows shut. It was carried along by the ocean breeze, and that breeze seemed to never stop.
No one knew anything of George or Charles. No adolescent girls answered to the surname Allan.
She realized, finally, she was going to have to go down to the wharf after all. She was going to have to join the long lines of people queueing up at the makeshift morgues, trying to find their loved ones among the dead.
But once on the quay, she only hung back, not joining any line yet, only watching.
The Cunard pier lurked nearby. People shuffled toward it with their heads lowered, with tearstained faces.
Rita was wearing her new sweater coat, belted at the waist, but still couldn’t shake the chill that was creeping over her.
Sailors trudged past the queue, cradling babies as still and white as dolls in their arms. Disappeared inside.
She joined the line. As it crept forward, they passed six of Lusitania’s lifeboats tied up and jouncing in the water, all that had been successfully brought ashore. The rest, she supposed, were splinters along the waves, or else still roped and bound to the liner at the bottom of the sea.
She entered the shed. Immediately, she cupped her hand over her mouth and nose, and then her knitted sleeve, trying to block the smell.
It was dim inside compared to the day, shadowy, so at first she couldn’t discern what exactly was in front of her: a procession of shrouded bodies laid out on the floor, the sheets covering them patchy dark with seawater.
Hands poked out from under the coverings, fingers curled.
Long, damp locks of women’s hair spread along the floor.
The line crawled along. She reached the first body, a torn scrap of paper pinned to the sheet with a rough “1” inked on it. Gingerly she took hold of the edge of the sheet and drew it back.
A young woman in rags. Her face contorted, her eyes bulging, her mouth open as if in a scream. Dried blood crusted her lips and stained her chin. Rita looked down at her in horror.
Not them, she told herself, but her fingers wouldn’t unclench from the sheet. Let go, look away, it’s not them, any of them.
“Miss,” murmured a man behind her, waiting his turn.
Rita pulled the sheet back into place, blinking away the flecks in her vision. When they were gone, she took a closer look around the cavernous shed. She couldn’t count how many bodies stretched before her in the gloom, row after row.
Over a hundred. Over a hundred, at least.
But she didn’t have to bear witness to them all. She only had to reach body Number 24, still in that first, ghastly row.
Rita pulled back the sheet. It was Charles.
She sank to her knees beside him. She pressed a hand to his shoulder, his ruined jacket.
Unlike every other face she’d forced herself to see, his was peaceful. Almost smiling. He looked the same as he always did; he looked only asleep, and for a treacherous instant her mind told her that it might be true, he was only asleep, he only needed to wake up.
But he was cold, and he was dead. She stroked his shoulder and then his hair, something she never would have done were he alive.
She wanted to smooth it into place the way he liked it.
He was always so tidy, he hated to be unkempt, but her hand was trembling too badly, and the strands too stiff with salt, resisting.
The most beautiful adventure in life, he’d told her.
“Oh, my friend,” she whispered. And realized she was about to vomit.
Rita stood up and ran back into the sunlight.
She was blinded at once and had to cover her eyes, bent nearly double.
Then, right there in the open, in front of anyone and everyone, she went to her knees again, her poor bruised knees, hiding her face in both hands, fighting the nausea.
She wasn’t moaning, she wasn’t weeping, but she wasn’t able to stand either.
This could not be real. The sun could never feel this hot. The wind could never smell this foul. There could never be such a sacrifice of souls.
Minutes passed. People walked by her as if she wasn’t there, carrying on their conversations, no one pausing. She was merely one more person locked in her grief amid so many.
At last, she was able to brace her hands against the pavement and push herself to her feet.
Someone caught her arm from behind. Someone yanked her roughly around.
A strange woman stood before her, wind-whipped, ashen. Her hair lashed gold around them both; she dropped a bag at their feet. Rita could only stare at her, bewildered and mute, so it was up to Inez to pull her sister into her arms with a cry, holding her tight.
THEY RETREATED TO the Queen’s Hotel. There was nowhere else to go anyway, nowhere for the living, at least. Every available room in town was occupied, and the town was growing more crowded by the minute.
They went up to Rita’s room but Lady Allan was asleep, her cheeks flushed (the omelet unfinished on the nightstand), so they only left Inez’s valise by the spare bed and went back to the lobby.
Those urns of tea were still there. Inez poured them both steaming cups, lumps of sugar, a splash of milk each, and carried them to the round piecrust table they’d claimed, two sagging armchairs drawn close.
Rita spent the next half hour attempting to convince her little sister to go back to the room to rest, while Rita continued her search.
She was the strong one. George knew it, and so did she. It had to be her.
“No,” Inez said, and kept saying. “No. I’ve come all this way. I’m not hiding now. I’ve come to find him, and I’m going to find him.”
“But you don’t—”
“No.”
Rita got up and went to the curved walnut bar dominating the back of the room, a baroque monstrosity carved with curlicues and griffins.
There was no one minding it—God knew why; if ever there was a day when anyone needed a drink—so she reached over the top and helped herself to a bottle of whatever was nearest. Whiskey, as it turned out, the same as last night.
The wall behind the bar was lined with mirrors, etched shamrocks and vines frosting their edges.
She tried not to look at her reflection, but it was impossible.
Too many years of wondering what she looked like, maybe, if her hair and makeup were correct, if she was glamorous enough, beautiful enough, famous enough.
Ragged was the word that best fit her now.
Stricken. Red-eyed, destroyed—very nearly destroyed.
She doubted that a single person she’d ever worked with would recognize her.
It was a wonder the housekeeper had, but maybe Rita’s face was less common than she thought.
Or maybe someone had simply told the woman her name.
She returned to the piecrust table. Inez was watching her with her arms folded over her chest. She had that brittle, waspish expression that Rita was still learning to see on her, had hardly ever seen on her, but never forgotten.
Rita drained the dregs of the tea, looked pointedly at her sister’s cup until Inez did the same. She pulled the cork from the bottle of whiskey and filled both cups to the brim.
“Drink it,” she said, grim. “You’re going to need it.”
HE WAS NOT in the Cunard shed. He was not in the town hall.
He was in the abandoned chandlery.
It was clear the building had been in disuse for some time. The air floated with dust, motes whirling in the dirty light falling from the dirty windows. Beyond the walls and beneath the planked floors, the faint splashing undertone of the sea came nonstop.
The interior seemed yellowed with neglect; the windowpanes were all splintered. But otherwise it was very much like the shed, lines of the dead laid out, mothers next to children, saltwater seeping along the floor. The same shrouds splotched with water or blood or worse.
Rita and Inez linked arms as they filed along. One or the other of them would pull back the sheet; both would look.
About twenty minutes in, they found him. Inez was the one with her hand on the sheet.
Rita was the one who propped her up as she started to fall, but in the end, they dropped down to the floor together, taking in the waxen and comely face of the late George Vernon, his eyes mostly closed, a deep gash along his hairline, not a drop of blood to be found.
As her sister began to shake, Rita clutched her close, waving away the flies.