The Glass Ocean

by Beatriz Williams

“There have been stories,” said Robert conversationally, “of survivors being washed ashore far from the site of a wreck. When the Armada smashed on these shores back in the reign of Good Queen Bess, there was many a small town that found a ragged Spaniard in its midst. It’s why so many Irish have dark hair and eyes. Black Irish, they call them.”

  Tess wrinkled her nose at him. “It sounds like a tall tale to me. You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Stranger things have happened.” They paused in the shadow of the cathedral. The tower was still covered in scaffolding, the building under construction, but no one was at work today. Everyone who could be spared was down at the docks. Robert looked down at Tess, all the mockery gone from his face. “When Jamie died—I refused to believe it. I pictured him clinging to a spar, like something out of The Tempest, blown to a strange shore, fighting to make his way home. I thought . . . I thought if only I waited long enough, he would come home again. I fought like the devil when they tried to ship me back off to school in the fall. Our housekeeper says I was like a wild thing, kicking and clawing.”

  Tess rested her head fleetingly against his arm, aching for the boy who had been. “Did it work?”

  “No.” Looking away, he said abruptly, “I had some news from home today.”

  His expression was as stony as the façade of the cathedral. “Not good news.”

  Robert gave a humorless laugh. “It depends on who you ask.” His lips pressed tightly together. Tess waited, tamping down the urge to pepper him with questions. “My father is dead.”

  Tess didn’t know what to say. The spring sunlight seemed a mockery. Death, so much death. “Robert . . . I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I,” said Robert flatly. “He killed himself. When he got news of the ship going down.”

  “Gosh all fishhooks,” said Tess, reverting to the idiom of her youth. She felt her cheeks heat. “I mean—goodness.”

  “I think you had it with the first one,” said Robert, his hands locked behind his back, standing as rigid as the carved saints on the side of the cathedral.

  “He must have thought he’d lost both his sons to the sea,” said Tess softly. She could picture her father, in his more maudlin moods, gathering her and Ginny in his arms, telling them he couldn’t bear to lose them, too. Usually right before he dosed them with one of his experimental nostrums, his attempts at immortality. But for love, always for love. Love and fear of loss. “To know that he’d lost you . . .”

  Robert made a snorting sound. In another person, Tess might have suspected a sob. “Lost me? That’s not why he did it. It wasn’t losing me that killed him. It was—”

  “What?”

  Robert looked down at her, his eyes bleak, the skin around his lips white. “There’s no harm in telling you now, is there? He’s gone.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “That you weren’t the only one with a traitor in the family.” As if he couldn’t bear to be near himself, Robert began pacing, his booted feet kicking up dust from the construction site.

  “But I thought—” Tess hurried after him, coughing in the dust.

  “That he was the very epitome of John Bull with a roar louder than the British Lion? For he is an Englishman, and all that. Oh, yes, all of it. But . . .” Robert lifted his hands to his temples. He looked at Tess and said flatly, “My father loved another man. I don’t know how you Yanks deal with such things, but at home, here . . . It could have ruined him. And when he had to choose between his name and his country . . .”

  “He was being blackmailed?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I may never know. But—why in the bloody hell else would my father be so eager to keep me off that ship? Those telegrams he sent—he knew something, something he wasn’t supposed to know.”

  Tess stared at him with dawning horror. “My sister said—”

  “Yes?” Robert whipped around.

  “I can’t remember exactly. But something about your father. Something about your not even being able to help yourself.”

  Robert gave a short, bitter laugh. “True enough. I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t help him. Bloody hell, Tess. If he’d only told me . . .”

  Without thinking, Tess went to him, wrapping her arms around his waist, resting her head against his chest. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said fiercely. “You couldn’t help him if he wouldn’t let you.”

  “Because I wasn’t there. I ran away, Tess. I ran away, years and years ago. I wasn’t there. . . . And now, all these people. All these people dead . . .” He was trembling in her arms and Tess could feel a suspicious moisture on her bare head. “What if I’d stayed, Tess? What if I could have stopped this?”

  “No,” said Tess, pulling back. She stared into his eyes, forcing him to look at her. “Do you think anyone could stop this? You don’t know that your father was involved. And even if he was . . . It’s not on you, Robert. None of it. I refuse to let you blame yourself.”

  “Christ, Tess,” said Robert, choking. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be bloody terrifying? All you need is a chariot and to paint your face blue and you could conquer kingdoms.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” said Tess, poking him in the chest. “You are not to drink yourself to death out of guilt. I forbid it.”

  “You forbid it?” Robert raised an eyebrow at her, then shrugged. “My flask sank.”

  “That’s one good thing to come of this,” Tess muttered.

  “Good thing?” said Robert. He held out an arm to Tess and they began walking again, side by side, their shadows joined on the path. “I thought you liked my whisky.”

  “I like you more,” said Tess. She hadn’t meant to say it. But since she had . . . In for a penny, in for a pound. She looked up at him, cursing the lack of a hat to shade her face and hide her expression. “Promise me, Robert. Promise me you won’t kill yourself over this. If not for me—for her.”

  She saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down. After a long moment, he said, “Gilbert Hochstetter didn’t make it. He died last night.”

  “Well, then,” said Tess. “Have you spoken to her?”

  “No. The clerk at her hotel told me.” Robert kept his eyes on the street, looking straight ahead. “She’s taking him home to New York to be buried.”

  Tess followed suit, not looking at him, but painfully aware of his every movement, every nuance. “When?”

  “Monday. An afternoon train, and then a ship from Liverpool the next day.”

  “Have you thought of booking—” Tess began, but Robert cut her off.

  “Aren’t we meant to be looking for your sister? I suggest we try the hotels again. You might have missed one.”

  * * *

  Saturday bled into Sunday and still the bodies piled onto stretchers. Tess knew because she viewed every one, going from morgue to morgue with Robert at her side, inspecting the new arrivals, as though they were a macabre sort of catch of the day. There were stories, stories that lifted the spirits, of survivors washing up on far shores, startling fishermen at their work. Some of them were even true. But for every story of survival, there were a hundred more bodies beneath blankets, some so battered as to be barely recognizable.

  But none was Ginny. At least, none was recognizably Ginny.

  She couldn’t stay here forever. And she couldn’t keep leaning on Robert. He had his own affairs to attend to. The telegrams had kept coming; there was a funeral to plan for his father.

  And Caroline Hochstetter was due to leave on Monday.

  Alone in her room at Mrs. O’Malley’s on Sunday night—the room Robert had paid for—Tess borrowed two pieces of notepaper.

  Meet me at the quay. R.

  Meet me at the quay. C.

  Not exactly inventive, but the best Tess could muster under short notice. She wasn’t worried about the handwriting. It was time, after all, that her talent as a forger be put to some good use. Expiation, that was what it was. And, maybe, in a childish way, a bargain with God, jus
t as she used to try to bargain with Him when she was young, offering to give up her stolen marbles in exchange for her mother back. It hadn’t worked then, but old impulses died hard.

  Robert for Ginny.

  There was an eerie hush over the town on Monday morning as Tess dispatched her messages. Today was the day when the bodies from the ship were to be buried. Not the first-class passengers; they were to be embalmed and sent home, wherever home might be. But the others. The ones like her. And Ginny.

  Throughout the town, the shutters were closed. No smoke rose from the roofs of the factories. There was only the sound of the army band playing something mournful and vaguely familiar.

  Robert would know what it was, thought Tess, as she joined the mass of mourners at the back of the procession. Robert and Caroline. She wondered if they were together, right now. They could play their duets together, fall in love again. That was what she wanted for him, wasn’t it? She tried to make herself be glad for them, but the slow, heavy footsteps of the mourners reverberated through her; the grim thrum of death and grief encompassed her.

  Stranger things, Robert had said. Tess tried to picture Ginny, unleashed on some small Irish town, the dye washed from her hair, her fingers still adorned with jewels. She might have lost her memory. She might have woken thinking herself born from the sea, like a mermaid.

  A Roman Catholic priest and Anglican minister were pronouncing words that Tess didn’t hear; incense blurred the air from the altar boys standing by the side of the mass grave. Any moment now, Ginny would appear, walking out of the crowd, eighteen again, with her hair in braids around her head, grabbing Tess by the arm and pulling her, half-running, toward the train station. Tess could almost see her through the mist, an old carpetbag over her arm, saying, C’mon, Tennie! Hurry! as they fled yet another town with the law on their heels.

  Running and running, running all the way across the Atlantic.

  Drums rumbled all around as the soldiers beat a tattoo. Incense like mist and drums like thunder, but Ginny wasn’t there, striding in out of the storm.

  “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide / The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide . . .”

  As the hymn began to swell around her and the sailors lowered the unmarked coffins into the grave, the sobs began to tear out of Tess’s chest, great, gulping, ugly sobs. It didn’t matter; no one could hear her. She was just one among many, lost in the singing and the sobbing. She cried for the sister she remembered, the one who had held her in her arms and sung German songs to her. For the sister who had taught her to steal marbles and cheat at cards. For the sister who had held her up and pushed her down and loved her as best she could.

  For the sister who might be in an unmarked grave or at the bottom of the sea or lost on a far seashore decked in stolen jewels, but who would never, ever come to Tess again.

  Was this how their father had felt, why he had tried and tried to come up with some magical elixir to bring their mother to life again? Why he had run and run as though by running he might catch up with all he had left behind?

  A multigun salute shuddered over the gravesite. Tess could feel the reverberation straight through to her core, as if she were disintegrating, crumbling into dust.

  “Tess.” Robert wrapped an arm around her, moving her away, away from the other mourners and the guns and the dust.

  “Go away,” said Tess, but he didn’t, he wouldn’t. He just held her and held her as she cried all over his brand-new jacket.

  A long, long time later, when the guns had stopped and the other mourners had gone, and the sobs had run out, leaving her feeling limp and tired, Tess said, “It’s over, isn’t it? It’s really over. She’s gone. Like your brother.”

  Tess felt Robert’s chin press briefly against the top of her head. “I could say something soppy, about their still being here as long as we remember them. It might even be true.”

  “Or I might have to hit you.” Platitudes weren’t the only problem. Wiping snot on the back of her hand, Tess pushed ineffectually against him. “You aren’t supposed to be here. You should be with—”

  “I was. And now I’m here. With you.”

  “But—”

  “Tess. Stop. Let me take you back to town.” He led her like an invalid, supporting her steps back down the long road from the cemetery into Queenstown.

  Tess shook free. “But what about Car—”

  “When she said goodbye, she meant it.” In a gentler voice, Robert said, “And she was right. We couldn’t. Not now.”

  “Why not now?” It was absurd, Tess knew, to fight for her rival, but wasn’t that the point? They’d never been rivals. It had always been Caroline. And someone deserved to be happy out of this. One selfless act, one truly good act to make up for all the wrong she’d done. “There’s no more husband to contend with. You don’t have to worry about divorce or scandal. . . .”

  “I don’t want to share my bed with a ghost,” said Robert bluntly.

  Tess looked up at him in shock.

  Robert looked faintly sheepish, but didn’t back down. “You were the one who told me not to mince words with you. You saw how she looked at him at the end. If he were alive . . . If he were alive, I could compete with him fairly. But now? I haven’t a chance.” A wry expression crossed his face. “If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I would have won, even then. For whatever reason, she loved the bas—She loved him.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think she loved you. In her way.”

  “In her way?” Robert smiled crookedly at her. “That’s my Tess. No false consolation.”

  “I didn’t mean—oh, never mind. Will you go home now?”

  “I suppose I shall have to. There are affairs to be put in order—secrets to be hidden for another generation.”

  I’ll miss you, Tess wanted to say, but couldn’t. With an effort, she mustered a smile. “Well, you made it home in the end. You just had a bit of a dunking along the way.”

  Robert didn’t return the smile. Pausing by the side of the road, he said, “Come with me.”

  “Back to town?”

  “To Devon.” He raised a brow. “It is your ancestral home, after all.”

  He was teasing her, and, somehow, that hurt worse than all the revelations and loss. She could bear him serious; she couldn’t bear him flirting with her, not when this might be the last time she saw him. “You know I was lying about that.”

  “I know. You told me.” Putting a finger beneath her chin, he tilted her face toward his and said softly, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a very honest liar, Tess Schaff?”

  Too honest to pretend she didn’t care. “And if I came with you?” she said, knowing everything she felt was in her eyes, and hating herself for it. “What then? Will you find me a place in the scullery, scrubbing pots?”

  “No, Cinderella,” said Robert, with exasperated affection. “As my wife.”

  “This isn’t a fairy tale.” Or if it was, it was one of the darker, more gruesome ones. “You can’t turn a goose girl into a princess.”

  “Is this your way of saying you don’t want me?”

  “What do you think?” said Tess, and rose on her toes and kissed him.

  He tasted of dust and breakfast kippers, but she didn’t care. It was Robert, kissing her back, kissing her with a desperation borne of grief and loneliness and goodness only knew what else. His lips were on her lips, her cheek, her throat, kissing away her tears, making her forget herself, until someone shouted from the road and they fell apart in embarrassment and confusion.

  Robert shoved his hands in his pockets and took a step back. “My original offer still stands if you prefer,” he said raggedly. “I can introduce you to my friends at the papers, get you set up as a satirist. My house in Devon is a quiet place—but there’s a great deal to paint. And money to hire you teachers.”

  Tess didn’t know whether to kiss him again or hit him. “You don’t have to bribe me with oil paints.”

  Robert looked at
her with naked eyes, not the man about town anymore, but just Robert, the man whose father never wanted him, whose lover turned him down for a ghost. “I’ve precious little else to offer.”

  You have yourself, Tess wanted to say, but she knew he wouldn’t believe her. Not now. Not with the sting of rejection still on him. Instead, she said, “Why me, Robert? Why now? If it’s because you’re trying to help me—I’ve told you before, I don’t need rescuing.”

  “No. But I begin to think I do. Need rescuing, that is.” He swallowed hard, saying with difficulty, “When I’m with you . . . the shadows on the wall don’t seem so monstrous. You argue my demons into trumpery things, nursery goblins. I—I’m not sure I can fight them on my own.”

  She could tell how much the admission cost him.

  Before she could say anything, he went on, quickly, “You know the worst of me—the worst of my family—and you haven’t run screaming. What do you say? Will you save me from myself?” He cast her a sidelong glance. “If it’s not you, it will be the whisky.”

  “That’s blackmail,” said Tess, stalling.

  “I mean it, Tess. Not the bit about the whisky, but the rest of it. Would it be so terrible to marry me?”

  Quite the contrary. And that was what made it so hard. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a lady,” said Tess huskily.

  Robert bent his head, murmuring, “Don’t become too much of a lady. I rather like you as you are.”

  They weren’t exactly words of love, but . . . Tess shivered as he did something very interesting and rather naughty to her ear. He might not love her, but he needed her. That was enough. It could be enough.

  Breathlessly, she said, “A diamond in the rough, that’s me.”

  “Nothing so dull as a diamond,” said Robert. “I see you more as a ruby.”

  Tess could picture Caroline Hochstetter’s rubies around Ginny’s neck, wrapping her around, dragging her down. Rubies glinting in Caroline’s ears as she played the piano in the grand saloon that now hosted concerts only for the dead.

  “Not rubies,” said Tess hastily. “I’ve never liked rubies.”