Chapter 2
2
TUESDAY 16 APRIL 1912
It was beyond beastly. Olivia Davenport was stuck in her bedroom recovering from a rotten case of the measles, and under the care of a woman called Ruth, whom her father had hastily employed before his departure. The highly efficient and no-nonsense young lady had contracted the disease in her youth and so was well placed to supervise the convalescence of the irritable and somewhat overdramatic child.
Olivia had been running a dangerously high fever the previous week, and everyone had been genuinely concerned, almost to the point of her mother cancelling their trip. Thankfully, however, she was now out of danger, but isolated from the remainder of the household, and was under strict instructions to continue with a period of bed rest. The only thing that had seen her through the mind-numbing boredom and crushing disappointment of being unable to travel with her parents was escaping into swashbuckling adventure novels, Gothic novelettes and her father’s collection of penny dreadfuls. The result of such reading matter, however, was her tendency to lean towards the melodramatic.
‘I am utterly convinced that I witnessed a heavenly host of angels sweep to earth in my darkest moment to take me to heaven, because I heard their sweetly singing voices call to me,’ Olivia said, from her sickbed.
‘I’m not sure you were quite that ill, young lady.’ Ruth adjusted the pillows and raised a serious eyebrow. ‘In all probability, you heard Bessie humming to herself as she went about her duties – and she strikes me as no angel. Come now, miss, drink up. You must have plenty of fluids.’ She passed her charge a small glass of water.
Ruth was kind enough but Olivia was heartily sick of eating nothing but ‘restorative’ broth and enduring tepid sponge baths – although the latter had succeeded in bringing down her temperature.
‘If only I hadn’t caught this wretched disease, I might be with my parents now and have met with my future husband on the voyage. Perhaps some rich, young American who found me engaging and we might have begun an exchange of correspondence over the next few years, until he returned to this country only to find me all grown-up and breathtakingly beautiful…’ Olivia was convinced that she would grow into her looks ‘…and now he shall meet someone else and I will be destined to remain a spinster for the entirety of my life.’ She threw her hand across her forehead in her misery.
‘You’re rather too young to be thinking about husbands, miss,’ Ruth scolded. ‘I strongly suspect being an only child has necessitated such a vivid imagination. Cook says you had a make-believe friend when you were younger. I am one of eleven and had no time for such frivolous nonsense.’
‘Sophie,’ Olivia confirmed. ‘And she wasn’t make-believe; it was simply that no one else could see her. Had she still been around, I know she would have agreed that they should have postponed their trip until I was well. Fancy having such a grand adventure without me when I was so looking forward to travelling to a whole new continent. Catching measles is absolutely and unequivocally the worst thing in the world that has ever happened to me.’ And with that dramatic pronouncement, she collapsed back into her pillows.
Ruth smiled and swept up the young girl’s wrist to check on her pulse as her patient wittered on.
‘It’s really quite the thing to see the names of the passengers printed in the newspaper, and the tragedy of it all is my name isn’t there. Think how jealous the girls at school would have been.’ She sighed. ‘Life is so dreadfully unfair. Daddy promised to write letters but it’s hardly the same.’
The sound of a motorised vehicle drifted through the open window and the nursemaid stepped over to look out at the driveway.
‘Who on earth can this be?’ she muttered. ‘The housekeeper will have to inform them that the Davenports are away.’
Olivia slipped out of bed to join her and peered outside. It was such a grey afternoon and she couldn’t think why someone would be calling on them. But when the smartly dressed figure stepped from the shiny, black motor car, she recognised him. As he placed a silk top hat on his ginger head, she wondered what had brought Sir Hugo Fairchild, her godfather and a baronet no less, to their Suffolk home.
The ladies had a good enough view from the first-floor window to see the deep frown across the man’s forehead as he tucked a newspaper under his arm and headed for the front door. Olivia was confused. Surely, Sir Hugo knew that his dearest friend, Jasper, was currently sailing to America and so would have no reason to visit them, especially when there was a case of measles in the household. The pair exchanged a nervous glance as the doorbell rang.
* * *
It was Ruth who broke the news to Olivia twenty minutes later, having been summoned downstairs by the housekeeper. She returned to the bedroom, closing the door behind her slower than Olivia had ever seen anyone close a door in her entire life, but the girl was old enough to know that an unannounced visit from her father’s oldest friend was a portend of bad tidings.
It was headline news – the possible sinking of the RMS Titanic in the early hours of the previous day – but reports were conflicting and details few. The ship had collided with an iceberg, and the fate of the passengers and crew remained uncertain. Everything was still such a terrible muddle and, with the Carpathia still en route to New York with the survivors on board, it was almost impossible to get accurate information. Sir Hugo had already sent numerous telegrams but so far had been met with unsatisfactory answers.
All they could do was wait.
And, as a distraught thirteen-year-old girl lay curled up in the white cotton sheets of her sickbed, her mind racing with a million possibilities, and very few of them cheery, she reflected that perhaps getting measles hadn’t been the worst thing in the world, after all.