Chapter 8 #3
Although Manchester society was small and all the mill owners knew each other, Bert and Victoria managed to avoid the Wheatons whenever possible. Bert was kind to everyone, but he found Ed insufferable, and Jane insipid, and Victoria agreed.
They went to Bert’s little cottage in Yorkshire whenever they had time on weekends. He bought another wool factory there, in Leeds, and she went with him frequently to see it. He was spread thin at times between all his factories.
The anniversary of her father’s death in April was a hard day for Victoria.
They went to London for the weekend, and it was a somber day remembering that horrendous night in April when the Titanic sank.
It was hard to believe it had been a year.
So much had happened, it seemed much longer.
Bert suggested another trip to Italy in June to celebrate their first anniversary, and she was looking forward to it.
They’d had no time to travel all year. Bert was too busy, and she was still spending two or three days a week at the office with him.
Having learned a lot from him, she made excellent suggestions for improvements, most of which he adopted.
She had gained a great deal of knowledge in the past year about his work and the textile industry in general, although the men in the factories continued to be suspicious of her and ignored her, particularly the Swedish foreman, Thor Lindqvist.
She and Florence West were fast friends by then, and Florence found it incredible that Victoria went to the office with her husband, allegedly as a silent observer. She made copious notes at every meeting and gave them to Bert afterward, and he read them avidly.
“I can’t even imagine going to the office with Johnny,” Florence said one afternoon when they were having tea.
“I have no interest in cars whatsoever. I can’t even drive and don’t want to.
” Florence and Johnny had a very pretty house, and many servants, but Florence still hated Manchester and how industrial it was.
She wanted to go to Paris to go shopping, and then complained she had no place to wear the elegant clothes she bought there.
She thought the women in Manchester dowdy and boring.
She was pushing Johnny to ask for a transfer to the New York office.
But he had a higher position with the company in Manchester, and wasn’t moving.
Between going to the office with Bert as an “observer,” trying to develop a social life for them, keeping his house running smoothly, and occasional trips to London to check on her house there, Victoria was enjoying her new life and didn’t miss her old one.
The only thing she missed was her father, but she was deeply in love with Bert, and enjoyed their frequent passionate nights.
He said she had given him his youth back and he was making up for lost time.
It was a side of married life she had known nothing about and hadn’t expected to enjoy as much as she did.
He was a warm, caring, loving, affectionate, sensual man, and she loved being married to him.
Their union was just as successful as her father had hoped when he entrusted her to Bert.
It had turned out to be his greatest gift to her along with so many others over the years.
Victoria and Bert spent a long weekend at her home in Hampshire in May.
She was happy to see it again, and they were planning to spend August there, although they would have no social life since no one would see them.
Florence was going to Grosse Pointe to see her family for the summer.
And Bert had made their anniversary trip to Italy a reality, and was busy making plans for them.
They were going to Florence and Venice, skipping Rome this time because he was busy and could only spare two weeks for the trip.
Victoria was packing for Italy a week before they were due to leave.
Bert was out at a meeting he went to once a month, with all the other mill owners, which included dinner, and she knew he’d be home late.
He was usually home by ten from those meetings.
She finished packing, and went to bed with a book to wait for him.
She was engrossed in what she was reading, glanced at the clock, and was surprised to see it was almost midnight.
She knew that some of the other mill owners had been facing strikes and were struggling to avoid them.
She couldn’t think of any other reason for the evening to go so late.
At twelve-thirty, she got up and walked to her small sitting room next to their bedroom, concerned but not panicked.
Maybe they were having fun and lost track of time, although Bert usually complained that the meetings were tedious, and he hated to miss an evening with her.
At one o’clock, back in bed, she heard a car on the gravel driveway, and was relieved.
She waited to hear the heavy front door close, and for Bert to come up the stairs.
She smiled in anticipation of seeing him, and instead, the front doorbell rang.
She looked out the bedroom window and saw a police car, and two police officers standing at the front door.
She flew down the stairs to meet them, thinking Bert must have had an accident. She opened the front door to them, and they stood awkwardly looking at her for an instant. She was too worried to wait before asking them what had happened.
“Has there been an accident?” she asked them, her heart was pounding as she saw the look in their eyes.
“Mrs. Banning?” the senior officer asked her.
She led the way into the house and they stood in the front hall with her.
“Yes, there’s been an accident. Your husband was at the Union Club for dinner, and a truck hit his car as he was leaving.
” She wanted to scream when she heard the words and stop the officer from saying more.
“Where is he?” She cut him off before he could finish. She wanted to rush upstairs to dress and go to Bert.
“I’m afraid…it was a heavy truck. He was killed on impact.
We’re very sorry. The driver has been arrested.
We believe he’d been drinking. Your husband’s body was taken to the Manchester Royal Infirmary morgue.
Is there anything we can do? Would you like us to drive you there?
” She shook her head. She didn’t want to see Bert dead in the morgue.
“Are you sure it was my husband?” She didn’t want to believe it.
It couldn’t be. They were so happy. She felt like the Titanic was sinking all over again.
She couldn’t breathe for a minute…couldn’t think.
She stood in the front hall with the officers and thought she was going to faint.
The room was swirling around her. One of the officers pulled a chair up for her and she sat down.
“We’re very sorry,” she heard him say again, through a gray haze of distant voices.
She just kept shaking her head and saying no.
Seamus had heard them arrive, had glanced out his bedroom window and seen the police car.
He hurried down to the front hall in a bathrobe to make sure everything was all right, and saw Victoria sitting with the two police officers standing next to her.
He knew as soon as he saw her face, and came toward her with a glance at the officers.
“Would you like us to drive you to the hospital?” the senior officer repeated, which gave Seamus hope Bert was alive, and she shook her head.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” she asked them with tears in her eyes and Seamus’s hopes died as hers had. Tears filled his eyes too.
“Yes, we’re sure,” the officer said. Seamus went to get her a glass of water, and she sat holding it. She was shaky when she stood up and set the glass down on a table near her.
“Thank you for coming to tell me,” she said, and Seamus took them to the door.
Victoria was as pale as a ghost. She couldn’t believe what had happened.
It couldn’t be. Bert couldn’t be dead. He was such a good person, they had such a great life ahead of them.
They had only been married a year. It was almost their anniversary, and now he was gone.
She saw the future disappear with him. She was all alone again.
She was twenty-four years old and a widow.
Without thinking, she reached out to Seamus, and he held her while she sobbed.
Bert had been so good to her. Seamus took her up to her bedroom, sat her down on the bed, and went to get Mrs. Kelly.
The housekeeper came in minutes. She got Victoria to lie down, and she sat in a chair near her until morning.
Victoria didn’t sleep. They both cried for the nicest man Victoria had ever known, other than her father.
The newspapers called at seven in the morning, to confirm what they’d been told, and Seamus confirmed it.
Bert’s secretary, Mrs. Emerson, arranged to have Bert taken from the hospital to the funeral home.
Sometime in the haze of grief around Victoria, Florence West appeared and stayed with her all day.
She was in a fog of sorrow and confusion.
It felt like the Titanic all over again.
Bert was dead. And she knew her life would never be the same without him.