Chapter 5
5
The following week, Olivia was mortified to be caught trying on one of Her Ladyship’s silk evening dresses the afternoon before a large dinner party. It had been an impulsive act – the young girl imagining what it might be like to be the lady of the manor, as she’d walked past the open bedroom door and seen the gown lying across the bed. Eyes closed, and waltzing around the room in the arms of an imaginary Persian prince, she had been jolted from her daydream by the older woman’s voice.
‘Olivia! What on earth are you doing?’
‘I… I was attending a masked ball in the hope of stealing a priceless jewel…’
How ridiculous it sounded spoken aloud.
‘Play-acting? I don’t understand. You have lots of pretty dresses of your own. You really shouldn’t be in my room, touching things that don’t belong to you.’ Her tone wasn’t unkind but she was certainly peeved. ‘And my pearls too? They aren’t toys, child; they belonged to Sir Hugo’s grandmother. If the string should break, I would be quite distraught.’
Olivia bowed her head. She’d made a mistake and got carried away with the romance of it all. What she needed in that moment was a pair of forgiving arms to wrap themselves about her, so that she could learn her lesson and move on, but they were not forthcoming, and she’d slipped out of the dress and run from the room in tears.
Sobbing into her pillows up in the tower, she reflected that the Fairchilds were very different to her parents, and the formality of their opulent lifestyle was unsettling. It seemed to the lonely young girl that the more money you had, the fewer emotions you were allowed to display. No one had embraced her since her arrival, and it was clear Lady Fairchild was not going to encourage her imagination as her own mother had done.
This contrast to her own family was brought home to her even more when, at the end of the week, the remaining Fairchild offspring returned from their various educational establishments, curious about the little orphan that their parents had taken in. Benji, who had become surprisingly chatty over the two days they had spent together, immediately became more withdrawn and Olivia, as an outside observer, wasn’t surprised. Within the first few hours, Howard had ambushed his brother with a squirt gun from his hiding place in the boathouse, and Clarence had shouted at him for asking a visiting young lady whether she was hoping to marry the future heir to the manor.
Because the household was overwhelmingly large, and there were so many bodies bustling about, she initially didn’t encounter the boys very much, despite Lady Fairchild’s optimistic endeavours to engage them all in games of croquet or suggesting they walked to the back fields to fly kites. It was only at mealtimes that Olivia found herself with Benji and Howard, as Louis and Clarence were deemed old enough to dine with their parents. After a few initial gawps across the dinner table, Howard found it easier to say nothing at all, rather than skirt around the very obvious and very large elephant in the room, and she missed more than ever the lively discussions of home.
The ‘sinking of the unsinkable’ news story, however, simply would not go away, and the British Wreck Commissioner’s inquiry was concluded at the end of July. It had been set up to examine the circumstances surrounding the biggest maritime disaster, outside of a war, to befall the nation, scrutinising the actions of the crew, and interviewing nearly one hundred people. The findings were widely anticipated and Olivia knew her emotions would overwhelm her again when they were published, especially as it would surely highlight that the disaster was avoidable.
The horror of everything she’d gone through in April returned. There had been so much confusion in those first few hours and it had taken days to establish the full list of survivors. When the death of her parents was finally confirmed, people stopped talking about the Titanic in front of her, but it had been easy enough for Olivia to get hold of the newspapers. The dramatic language used in the articles, the vivid artists’ impressions of that fateful night, and the harrowing eyewitness accounts had only added to her distress.
It was inevitable then, that summer, that her nightmares would return – images of a huge, upended ocean liner and lifeless bodies bobbing about in a black sea, as her mind repeatedly played through a long list of what-ifs. What if the iceberg had been spotted sooner? What if there had been enough lifeboats on board to save everyone? What if the Carpathia had been closer and could have reached the distressed vessel before she slipped quietly to the bottom of the ocean? So many factors had been against those on board that night, from the arrogance of the ship’s designers, to a catalogue of human errors that could so easily have led to a different outcome.
Unfortunately, Louis, the second eldest Fairchild, was the only brother who failed to recognise the need for discretion. Olivia came across him in the library one evening, long after she should have been in bed, but Ruth had allowed her to return some volumes to the great library and choose something else to read.
‘Sorry about the ship thing,’ a voice said as she entered the long room. It made her jump and she nearly dropped the heavy, leather-bound volumes on the floor. She hadn’t even noticed the gangly, blond lad seated by the middle window because she’d been wondering what it might be like to possess so many books, and was imagining herself to be a scientist or a doctor, perhaps in a world where women were welcomed in these professions.
‘I rather liked your father,’ Louis continued. ‘He was a good sort. I didn’t particularly take to his novels, though,’ he added with a shrug. She thought it wouldn’t have hurt him to pretend that he had, especially as the poor man had died such an awful death. She slid the books onto an empty table. ‘I generally don’t get on with fiction,’ he offered as an explanation. ‘It’s so often distinctly lacking in facts.’
She frowned at him, wondering if he was teasing her, but his face reflected his earnestness and Olivia knew Lady Fairchild had high hopes for Louis. He was studying law and his mother had talked of his future career as a barrister, utterly convinced he would end up as a high court judge. He was, she insisted, the studious sort.
‘I only read The Mystery of the Broken Violin because one of the chaps at college had it in his room and I belatedly made the connection to Father’s old school chum. It was better than Jules Verne’s stuff and nonsense about travelling to the centre of the earth, or that Wells fellow and his time machine, because I do struggle with things that aren’t, and can’t possibly be, real. It’s why I couldn’t study the Classics like Clarence – all that claptrap about the gods.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I only deal in science and numbers, reassuringly reliable, and find the possible existence of God a ridiculous idea. Confirmed atheist, myself, but don’t tell Mother.’
There was still no trace of a smile. He was a solemn and humourless individual, Olivia decided, as she quickly slid the first book back onto its correct shelf, desperate to return to the tower.
‘Where exactly do you stand on God?’ he asked, leaning forward slightly and raising his eyebrows. ‘Have you been sucked into the nonsense of a divine being, creator of the universe and source of all moral authority?’
‘My faith has been of great comfort to me since I lost my parents.’
He frowned, and then flicked over the page of whatever he was reading.
‘I guess you need to believe they are in some heavenly plane, watching over you, but frankly, I don’t think He’s got much compassion if He let all those innocent people drown in the first place. If there is a God, He’s pretty damn selective over whom He saves, that’s all I can say. Because I have come to the conclusion that when people do not have the necessary scientific knowledge to understand a thing, they simply invent a god to explain it. Like Zeus and his thunderbolts. Greek gods aren’t even particularly moral.’ His eyes remained focused on his book and he didn’t look up at her, almost as if he was talking to himself.
Olivia felt a lump rise in her throat. She didn’t want to get involved in a theological debate and certainly didn’t want to contemplate that the sinking of the Titanic had been merely on the idle whim of the supreme creator of the universe. Louis wasn’t saying these things to be cruel, but she didn’t want her faith challenged at this most difficult of times. She hastily returned the other two volumes to the shelves and started to walk towards the door.
‘And that’s another thing… I wouldn’t have minded the east tower, away from Clarence’s spiky temper and Howard’s childish pranks, but you get given it because the unfortunate death of your parents somehow entitles you to special treatment.’
Olivia was mortified. In her shock, she turned, open-mouthed, as tears started to form in her unbelieving eyes. Finally, he noticed the horror across her face.
‘Look here, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m not terribly good at dressing my thoughts up with fancy words.’
‘No, you really aren’t,’ she agreed, as she stomped out the room, trying to blink the tears away.
Ruth, who had been waiting for her on the ground floor with two mugs of cocoa, immediately realised something had upset Olivia, but the young girl didn’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t what Louis had said; it was the matter-of-fact way he’d said it.
It was only tucked up in bed a little while later that she felt overwhelmed by the return of the Fairchild sons and everything that the inquiry into the sinking had dredged up. She was clearly an object of curiosity and pity all at once, embarking on the journey to womanhood without her mother, and trying to navigate strange emotions and changes to her body that she didn’t understand. Lady Fairchild meant well but she was confused by the orphan girl who was now part of her household. Her mother would have laughed had she found her daughter prancing about in an oversized dress, swept her up from the floor and waltzed with her. Now she had no one to waltz with.
In the tiny wrought-iron bed, under her single sheet and snow-white candlewick bedspread, facing the rows of red bricks that divided her bedroom from her dressing room, in the tower she’d chosen as her refuge, it was suddenly all too much. The Fairchilds were well meaning but this wasn’t her family. She’d been slotted into the busy life of an enormous household and would never be the focus, like she’d been with her parents. The very nature of their deaths would follow her around for the rest of her life – a sensational story that would never go away. The garden lad and Lady Fairchild had both made her feel silly for using her imagination, and now Louis was suggesting that there wasn’t even a heaven. It was the tipping point.
What started as a few sobs punctuating the night quickly escalated to a crescendo of desolate misery. She could only find the sunshine for so long and, now that everyone was reminding her of the rainclouds, she’d lost her way. Once the tears started in earnest, she couldn’t stop them falling. Either the ever-sensible Ruth couldn’t hear her weeping from the room below or, more likely, she knew that comfort was the last thing Olivia needed in that moment. Sometimes, a good cry was cathartic and absolutely necessary, and she was grateful not to be disturbed. There were definite benefits to being away from other people in the sanctuary of the tower.
So, it came as a shock to realise that she was not alone on the first floor that evening, and someone not two foot away from her didn’t seem to share Ruth’s compassion, because as she continued to lament her misery at full throttle, a stern male voice came from the other side of the bedroom wall.
‘For the love of God, who’s in there?’ There was a stomping of feet that faded away, and then the voice returned. ‘Where are you hiding? Show yourself.’ There was another pause. ‘Either you leave or you stop making that racket. I need my sleep.’
The startling revelation that there was someone in the adjoining room halted her tears. No one but herself and the housemaids had access to the tower. How had someone got past Ruth, and more importantly, why?
Now extremely angry herself, she threw back the bedding and ran to the adjacent room to give the perpetrator a piece of her mind. Where was his understanding of her situation? She didn’t care what she looked like, with her bed-ruffled hair, in her long, cotton nightgown, and her face blotchy and swollen from the crying. How dare someone tell her to be quiet in the privacy of her own bedroom and pretend to be the injured party. How dare someone even be in the tower. She had personal items in that dressing room – undergarments and such – things she didn’t want someone looking through.
She flung open the adjoining door but, apart from a small hanging rail and a split chest of drawers (which had been the Devil’s own job for the footmen to get up the spiral staircase), to her utter bewilderment, there was absolutely no one in the room.