The Glass Ocean

by Beatriz Williams

  “Think what?”

  “Think you’re going to trap me. Idiots have been cooking up conspiracies about Lusitania from the moment it went under. Wasn’t my idea.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, “but take a look at this. The luncheon menu. The note on the back. No more betrayals. Meet me B-deck prom starboard side.”

  “Yes?”

  “Come on, Langford. You know the torpedo struck right after lunch on the starboard side.”

  “Robert Langford’s name isn’t anywhere on that menu.”

  “No. But it was found on my great-grandfather’s body. So something funny was going on, maybe something more than just funny, and I want to get to the bottom of all this. I need to get to the bottom of this. I need to find out what really happened. I need to find out if Patrick Houlihan was a good guy, was a traitor, was none of the above.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? Because it’s the truth.”

  “And you want to profit from it. You’re a journalist.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He was drinking from his coffee cup. He set it down, and at last he smiled at me. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I can smell it on you,” he said. “It smells like money.”

  I sat back in my chair and started shoving the articles back into my tote bag. “Well, you’re wrong. I’m not a journalist. I’m a historian. I’m writing a book.”

  “So I’m not wrong. You are in it for the money.”

  “Okay, fine. Yes. I have to earn a living, unlike you, Mr. Langford, with your handy-dandy family fortune and your God-given privilege. But I also happen to think there’s a story here that needs to be told, even if it means finding out my ancestor was a traitor and a murderer, because the truth matters, okay? The truth sets you free.”

  Langford took another drink of his coffee and checked his watch. “Oh, look. It seems your time is up, Miss Blake.”

  “Are you serious? That’s it?”

  “I’m perfectly serious. I don’t like to waste my time, especially not with money-grubbing Americans eager to rewrite history. Nor can I quite shake the notion that your intentions aren’t so honorable as you insist. Given the circumstances.”

  “That,” I said, “is about the most stupid, prejudiced, asinine thing I’ve heard in—in forever. You don’t even know me.”

  “I don’t need to know you. I know your type. You damned journalists, ripping apart people’s lives for the sake of sensation. The truth? You don’t give a toss for the truth. Just your grubby paychecks.” Langford’s eyes shifted to a point over my right shoulder. He gathered up his laptop bag and his coffee and rose from the chair, so immediately tall I found myself addressing his waist. “Just as I thought,” he said.

  I turned around to follow his gaze and saw a pair of men—no, three—barging through the doorway, cameras in hand. Langford drew down his cap and swept past me, shoulders hunched, while the men shouted questions at him, overcoming the noise of the espresso machines. As if the room had plunged into some kind of war zone.

  I jumped up and tried to follow, but the cameras got in the way. I shouted, “Please! I’m at the Camelot Hotel in Shepherd’s Bush! Just—please!”

  Langford turned his head over his shoulder. “This conversation is over,” he said, and he pushed the door open and turned left down Argyll Street, around the corner to Bond Street, dodging past a motorbike to hail a black cab that had just come conveniently to rest by the curb, the way it always did for men like him.

  By the time the photographers stumbled back out after him, the taxi had zoomed away, leaving nothing behind except the faint smell of exhaust, filtered through a modern catalytic converter.

  * * *

  I walked back to the hotel, taking my time. For one thing, I loved London, and for another thing, the Tube was expensive. The drizzle had lifted, and the sky lost some of its dreariness as I tracked my way back down Oxford Street, looking wistfully in the shop windows, and ambled through Hyde Park. As I crossed into Kensington Gardens, the clouds parted, and the sunlight briefly poured in around me, making the trees sparkle. I took off my coat. My empty stomach expanded to fill my entire torso, until I was one big yawning void of hunger. The coffee had long gone. Somewhere along Notting Hill Gate, I found a Gregg’s and bought a tuna mayonnaise sandwich and a yogurt smoothie, which didn’t much help. The sky closed again when I reached the hotel. A few raindrops pattered against my sleeves.

  Nice omen, I thought. Thanks.

  Among its pitifully few virtues, the Camelot did have Wi-Fi. I found a seat along the empty bar—another Camelot virtue, an on-premises liquor license—and opened my laptop. I was working on the proposal for my Lusitania book, which I’d tentatively titled Small Chance: How an Irish Steward and a British Aristocrat Conspired to Bring Hurl America Into the First World War, in the wild hope that my current working theory would prove true. Into this proposal I’d already inserted considerable background on the Langford family—Each generation had its own impact on British history, from the Edwardian spymaster to the postwar statesman—based on everything I’d Googled during the past week, and the suitcase full of books I’d brought with me on the airplane. But I needed more. I needed original sources. I needed private documents. I needed things I could only get from a Langford descendant.

  A Langford descendant who liked me.

  A Langford descendant who wasn’t mired in a scandal of his own.

  A Langford descendant who wasn’t a complete and utter wanker.

  I glanced at the battered clock above the bar—one thirty in the afternoon—and considered pouring myself a drink from the array of bottles on the shelves. The bar didn’t officially open until five, and I needed alcohol now. The room was unlit, the bottles dusky and promising in the dull glow from the small, rain-splattered window overlooking the basement steps. I listened for the sound of footsteps creaking upstairs in the lobby, but there was nothing. All the guests were out enjoying London. Just me and the clerk in the office, and she wasn’t going to leave her post and venture down here, was she?

  Besides, I’d charge it to my room.

  I disengaged my legs from the stool and walked softly around the end of the bar. I’d never stood behind one before. It felt strangely powerful, like I owned everything on the shelves and the cabinets, like I could decide who drank and who did not. Normally I sided on Team Grapes, with preference for something bubbly or else something red, but when I bent to examine the paltry vino collection underneath the bar, I decided I was better off upstairs. “Upstairs” meaning the vodka lined up in tantalizing profusion above my head.

  Or gin. I was in London, I was a historian. I should drink gin.

  I pulled a glass from one shelf and a bottle of Beefeater from another. What was the proper proportion of gin to tonic? Who knew. Who cared. I filled the glass halfway and found the tonic on tap. Sipped. Coughed. It was strong, extremely strong. On the other hand, I needed strong.

  I sipped again, and that was more tolerable. Funny how your mouth and stomach adjust themselves to suit the occasion. I finished the glass and turned to pour another.

  “As long as you’re serving,” said a voice behind me, “make it two.”

  I whipped around to find the tall figure of John Langford filling the doorway, head bent slightly under the lintel to avoid concussion. A sense of giddy wonder started in my chest, spreading outward into my belly and my arms and legs. Or maybe that was the gin. The gin spreading outward. I leaned back against the counter to save myself from collapsing and waved the bottle, which remained in my hand.

  “It’s going to cost you,” I said, and I was proud of the fact that my words neither slurred nor shook.

  “I more or less expected that.” He stepped forward into the room and swung his extensive frame atop the stool next to my laptop. “I came to apologize.”

  “I more or less expected that, too. Gin and tonic all right for you?”

  “Yes. And no, you didn’t expect me to apolog
ize. You thought I was a complete wanker. I could see it in your eyes.”

  “The way you could sniff my money-grubbing ways?”

  “Look, I’m sorry. You’ve caught me at rather a bad moment, I’m afraid. Not that it’s any excuse for bad manners.”

  I set down the gin and tonic on the counter in front of him. “Cheers. To bad manners.”

  He lifted the glass, clinked it against mine, and tilted his head for a drink. “Ah,” he said. “Now that’s better. I like a woman who pours a strong G-and-T.”

  “You might say I needed it. I had a really crappy morning.”

  “Did you really? Some run-in with one of those arrogant English blokes?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. He was kind of my last hope, you know? I’m trying to write this book, this second book I’ve been trying to figure out for five or six years, because I’m all tapped out from my first book, and my mom has Alzheimer’s, and—and—I’m sorry.” I turned away and started to pour another drink.

  “A real sob story, is it?”

  “Yes.” I sniffed. “Anyway, it’s not your problem. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

  There was no answer. I heard the soft sound of his glass coming to rest on the counter. I wondered if my laptop had gone to sleep, or if the book proposal still lay bright and open on the screen, a few feet away from John Langford’s sharp hazel eyes.

  “I bought your book,” he said. “Small Potatoes. Went into Waterstones after I escaped and found the last copy on the shelf. Read the first few chapters. It’s quite good.”

  “Gosh. Thanks.”

  “I did sense a certain amount of antipathy toward English aristocrats and their careless, high-handed ways.”

  “Hey, I’m Irish. What can I say?”

  “You see, that’s another funny thing about you Americans. I mean, you personally, Sarah Blake, are not an Irish citizen. Your family’s lived in America for generations now. You spout all this seductive, patriotic rubbish about melting pots and so on. And yet you still wear your shamrock badge of Irishness.”

  I turned around. He wasn’t looking at my screen, thank God, and it occurred to me that he probably wouldn’t, even if he could. His face was much softer now than in the coffee shop, almost handsome. He’d taken off his coat, revealing a worn green sweater over a collared shirt, and his thick shoulders hunched a little around his drink. He watched me steadily, with great interest, like an anthropologist studying a member of an unknown tribe. Which was probably pretty close to the truth.

  I stepped forward and leaned my elbows on the counter, a foot or two away from him. “So are you going to hold it against me?”

  “Your Irishness? No. Your Americanness? Maybe.”

  “What exactly have you got against Americans? I mean, it seems to me your biggest problem speaks Russian, at the moment.”

  He lifted the glass. “Touché.”

  “So you’ll help me? At least let me take a look at the family papers?”

  “Miss Blake, do you realize that nobody has ever been allowed to look at the family papers? That we’ve refused every single request, over the years, by journalists and historians and money-grubbing Americans to peek inside the Langford vault?”

  “I realize that. I was hoping you might make an exception.”

  Langford glanced at my laptop. Reached over and closed the lid, as if shutting himself off from temptation. He’d almost finished his drink. I wrapped my fingers around his glass and made to pour another, but he stopped me. Put his hand over mine. For a second, I thought he was making a move, but when I looked at his face it was anything but amorous. Dark and stormy, and not with lust. With something else. Some other storm.

  “You have to promise me one thing,” he said.

  “Anything. Almost anything.”

  “You have to promise me you won’t—”

  A flash of light exploded in the room, followed by another. We snapped our heads toward the doorway, which was blocked by a tangle of jostling arms and legs and a series of bright, irregular starbursts, like the Fourth of July.

  Chapter 5

  Caroline

  New York City

  Saturday, May 1, 1915

  Caroline blinked from the flash of a camera as their driver stopped near the terminal at Cunard’s Pier 54. He held open the door of the Rolls-Royce as Gilbert took her hand and helped her out of the car. She hoped her mother would see the photograph. Annelise would pretend to be embarrassed to have Caroline’s face appear in a newspaper, but secretly she’d be proud that her daughter had reached such a high echelon of society. It had been Annelise’s dream since Caroline was a baby, if not Caroline’s.

  But she’d dressed the part today, with Jones’s help, who assured her that Caroline would be the most fashionable lady on the entire ship. Caroline appreciated Jones’s straightforward nature and the way she’d begun to anticipate Caroline’s needs. Jones had already selected the entire outfit and had it steamed and waiting in her dressing room before Caroline had even awakened. Jones was on her way to making herself indispensable, and Caroline felt grateful and even optimistic. Perhaps she wouldn’t be as lonely on this voyage as she’d originally feared.

  She wore a pale cream traveling dress with a waist-length fur-covered shawl and long dolman-style sleeves. Her brown and cream button boots with pointed toes hurt her feet, but Jones said they were necessary to complete the perfection of her outfit. At least the large straw hat she wore, a pretty one with a wide wired brim trimmed with striped ribbon and a feather, was comfortable. It also allowed her to hide her face with a tip of her head whenever a camera was pointed in her direction.

  A motion-picture camera had been set up just outside the entrance to the terminal, capturing the images of passengers as they moved in and out of view. Caroline dipped her head, an unwilling subject, recalling something Robert had told her once about the series of stories he’d written about the Indian situation out west. How many of the natives were unwilling to have their images captured on film, afraid their spirits would be held captive there forever. Caroline clung to Gilbert’s arm as he led her toward the looming black hull of the great ship, the word lusitania emblazoned on the side in white block lettering, trying to shake the image of her spirit frozen in sepia for all time.

  She forced a smile as they moved forward, reminding herself that she and Gilbert were embarking together, sharing what she was sure would be a new beginning for them. She tried not to think about Robert and the night before, or how warm his hand had been on her back as they’d danced. She told herself that she’d been wishing her partner was Gilbert, dancing with her instead of locked away in a smoky study with business associates. That it had been her husband looking at her with eyes that burned. Yet when Caroline saw the arm her hand rested upon now, she was surprised to see the large muscled forearm of her husband, and not the lean, elegant arm of Robert Langford. Yes, she told herself as she forced another smile and tilted her head back to look into Gilbert’s face, this was a new beginning for them. She was sure of it.

  They nodded and smiled at their new acquaintances from the party the night before, commenting on the weather and the general excitement of boarding such a luxurious liner, a star of the Cunard fleet. The recent heat wave was already a memory, with heavy clouds and a drop in temperature that allowed the boarding passengers to wear their heavy coats. Porters bustled about, taking trunks and luggage from arriving vehicles and moving them into the vast ship and myriad corridors before storing them safely in the cabins and staterooms.

  Jones, traveling separately with their luggage, had disappeared and presumably would already be unpacking by the time they’d reached their Regal Suite—one of only two on the ship, and the only suites to contain two bedrooms, upon which Gilbert had insisted. As at home, they had separate bedrooms, due to Gilbert being afraid that his size would interrupt her sleeping. Despite her reassurance that it wasn’t necessary for the trip, and that Alfred Vanderbilt had reserved a smaller, one-bedroom Parlor Suite,
Gilbert had pressed his point and, as usual, Caroline had capitulated.

  She could only imagine how much it had cost, but when she’d tried to tell Gilbert that she would be perfectly happy to spend the voyage in a less opulent and less expensive suite, he’d simply patted her hand and told her that she wasn’t to worry about their finances. She’d bristled at his dismissal, and had wanted to argue, but then realized that she couldn’t. She knew absolutely nothing about their finances, and she had no one to blame for that except herself.

  Caroline held a scented handkerchief—supplied by the ever-helpful Jones—to her nose. The briny scent of the water mixed with the odors of too many bodies crammed together seemed to congeal with the dark smoke belching forth from the funnels of the ship. She took a deep breath through the fine linen of the handkerchief, silently congratulating herself on her astute judgment in the hiring of her new lady’s maid.

  “Are you all right, darling?” Gilbert leaned toward her, his look of concern calming her, reassuring her that they were of like mind about the journey.

  She tilted her head to look up at him. “How could I not be?”

  He met her eyes for a long moment, filling her with hope and warmth. He pressed his hand against hers as it lay on his arm, then escorted her up the ramp and to the Promenade Deck, where porters and stewards bustled around directing people and luggage to their proper places. A middle-aged gentleman, dressed in the smart white uniform of a steward, introduced himself as Patrick Houlihan, who had been assigned to their stateroom and would make himself available to them for the journey. He had the ruddy complexion of a redhead, his nose and cheeks deeply freckled from exposure to the elements. He was small-statured, and spoke with a lilting Irish accent, reminding her of what a leprechaun might look like if they were real. Except instead of having a jolly sparkle, his green eyes were sharp and piercing, making Caroline believe that this was a man who missed nothing.

  “I’d be happy to take you to your rooms and see you settled now,” he offered.