The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic

by Hazel Gaynor

  Grace had been thinking about this for the past week. After she’d struggled to find an original angle for a feature when Professor Andrews had first told her about the opportunity with the Chicago Tribune, one had now landed right in her hands.

  “Yeah. Maybe. I’m not sure I want to write Maggie’s story, though, Mom. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do justice to her and to the memory of all those people. I’m not sure I’m ready to tackle a story as big as Titanic.”

  “Nonsense,” her mother replied, looking at her seriously. “Now you look here, Grace Butler. All your father ever dreamed of for you and Art was to do something you loved in life. He didn’t care about fancy qualifications or fancy clothes or cars, just that you were both happy and fulfilled. He was so excited about your dreams for a career as a journalist, and he would be so proud to see his daughter’s name in print. You’re a great writer, Grace. If you want my opinion, which I realize as my daughter you probably don’t, you should take this opportunity that has fallen into your lap and use it to write Maggie’s story. Nobody will ever be able to bring those poor people back, but we can certainly remember them through your wonderful words.” Her mother paused for a moment, refilling both their glasses before adding, “You would make her incredibly proud, you know.”

  Grace was quiet. She hadn’t heard her mother talk so forcefully or passionately about anything for years—another sign, perhaps, that it really was okay for her to move on.

  “So?”

  Grace smiled at her and wiped away a tear. “Yes, Mom. You’re right. I will. I’ll call Professor Andrews tomorrow, and I’ll think about contacting Jimmy, I really will.” She placed her hand on her mother’s and squeezed it. “Thanks, Mom. For everything.”

  “No, Grace. It should be me who is thanking you. I know you’ve made a huge sacrifice being here with me these last few years, and I want you to know how much I love you and appreciate what you’ve done for me. You deserve some time to yourself now.”

  Gathering the dishes from the table, she walked over to her daughter and gave her a tender kiss on the top of her head. Grace remembered her doing this when she was a small child. It was a comforting, reassuring gesture.

  “Oh, and there’s something else,” her mom added. “I want to turn your bedroom into a guest room—it’s about time those awful posters came down and that dreadful wallpaper was taken off, don’t you think?”

  The rain continued to fall softly outside, bringing a refreshing scent of camellia through the open door. A plane flew overhead. The cat ran inside, shaking itself to remove the raindrops from its fur. The timer on the oven rang to signal that the apple crumble for dessert was ready. Everything’s good here, Grace thought, everything’s as it should be.

  For the rest of the evening, Grace sat in her bedroom surrounded by Maggie’s journal and the bundle of old newspaper clippings, listening to the rain falling on the decking outside. She looked around her room. Her mom was right. Her bedroom hadn’t changed much in recent years; the posters of her teenage pop idols were still on the back of the door where she’d stuck them as an impressionable high schooler. She still had the same faded pink-and-white-checked comforter cover she’d loved as a kid. It was kind of reassuring to have these familiar things from her childhood around her, and neither she nor her mom had been in a rush to change things, both of them subconsciously wanting to leave things as they were before her dad died. Her mom’s suggestion that she start reorganizing and decorating must be a sign that she had really turned a corner.

  With a notebook by her side, Grace pored over every detail of the press reports from Maggie’s small black case. THE TITANIC SANK AT 2:20 THIS MORNING. NO LIVES WERE LOST, stated the headline of one newspaper, and another said, CARPATHIA REFUSES TO GIVE ANY DETAILS OF TITANIC’S LOSS AND AS FRUITLESS HOURS GO BY, SUSPENSE GROWS MORE MADDENING. She wondered how the Irish travelers’ relatives must have felt, waiting for news of the disaster, reading these mistaken headlines and having hope, only to see them replaced in the following hours and days by the terrible truth. 1,302 ARE DROWNED OR MISSING IN TITANIC DISASTER, LATEST REPORT, and the final details: TITANIC’S DEATH LIST, 1,601; only 739 lives are saved. Other pages reported strange details; one paper claimed, as vessel plunges to her fate, band plays “nearer my god to thee,” and another bore the shocking headline foreigners who refused to obey orders are shot down.

  Grace then unrolled a couple of smaller newspaper clippings, one of which was dated April 20, 1912, from the Connaught Telegraph.

  CHAPTER 14

  Grace continued reading late into the night, poring over the newspaper clippings and the scrawled pages of Maggie’s journal. She was so completely immersed in Maggie’s Titanic world she barely noticed day turn to dusk and eventually to the darkness of evening, absorbing every last detail as Maggie described life on board the ship: the linen tablecloths in the dining room; the friendly manner of the crew; the steward she referred to as Lucky Harry, who seemed to have befriended Maggie and some of the other girls in their group; the sounds of the uilleann pipes and fiddles played in the general room after dinner; the sparkle of the diamonds Maggie saw on the fingers of some of the first-class ladies. She read each page of the journal, lost in the thoughts of a seventeen-year-old girl, through whose eyes she saw this most famous of ships in an entirely new light.

  April 11, 1912

  Day 1 at sea

  . . . the third-class quarters are very nice. We have real mattresses on the beds and there is a reasonable amount of space—at least there is for the four of us sharing our cabin, number 115. The steward told us that there is a family of nine sleeping in the cabin next to ours and that it is exactly the same size. I asked him how they could fit everyone in. He told me there are two in each bed and the baby sleeps in a suitcase on the floor. I can hardly believe how cramped that must be and feel a bit guilty that we have this space just for the four of us. Peggy says she reckons you’d be able to fit one of our cabins into the first-class rooms four times over and still have space for a set dance. It is an unbelievably big boat—we’ve been wandering around for hours now and I don’t think we’ve even seen one whole side of it.

  . . . Peggy keeps talking about wanting to see the first-class quarters. Katie told us that she heard someone saying there are eight giant crystal chandeliers in the first-class dining room. I think my eyes would pop right out of their sockets if I saw such a sight!

  . . . I think about Séamus a lot and hope his da is getting better. I took the packet of letters from my coat pocket today and read the first one. It was so nicely written and the words were so kind it set me to crying. He says he has written one letter for each of the fourteen months of our courtship together in Ballysheen—the first letter is called “February,” and he has written about his memories of the first night we danced at the Brennans’ wedding. He says he thought me lovelier than all of the stars that shone in the sky that night. I wish he was here with me now. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain to him what this ship is like—maybe he will sail on it himself one day if he can ever come to America to join me.

  April 12, 1912

  Day 2 at sea

  . . . Peggy is complaining that the vibrations from the engines kept her awake last night. I think it’s quite a nice noise—a sort of humming sound like a big swarm of bees have set up a hive in the boiler room. Katie says Peggy should stop thinking about that English steward we met yesterday—she thinks it’s more likely him which is keeping Peggy awake at night and not the engines at all!

  . . . I was lost earlier today! I’d been for some fresh air on the bridge deck (insisting I’d be grand on my own for a few minutes, even though Aunt Kathleen frowned and said she really didn’t agree, but what harm would a few minutes be) and couldn’t find my way back to our cabin. I think I went down the wrong stairwell and ended up on D Deck instead of E Deck. Luckily there are always plenty of crew members around and I asked someone where I was. He walked me personally back to E Deck and all the wa
y down the crew passageway, which he told me is called Scotland Road, to the place where our cabin is. I was glad to be back but didn’t say a word of it to Aunt Kathleen. She tutted when I finally returned and said that time must work differently at sea because that was the longest “few minutes” she’d ever known. I gave myself quite a fright being separated from everyone like that. I think I’ll ask someone to come with me for fresh air next time.

  . . . The meals on board are very nice. We are already used to the call from the bugler, who signals that we can make our way to the dining saloon, where we sit at tables covered with white linen tablecloths! Today we had smoked herrings for breakfast, brawn for lunch, and corned beef and cabbage for dinner. I think I’ll be needing some new clothes in America if I keep eating at this rate. To think that there’s a whole army of crewmen peeling our forty tons of spuds and carrots and boiling our forty thousand eggs while we sit on our backsides! Tea and biscuits are served in the afternoon. Katie says they have the biscuits laid out in such neat rows on the plates it would nearly stop you taking one so as not to break up the pattern.

  . . . We are all in good spirits, even though it feels like we are a very long way from home now. We’re always talking of the people we’ve left behind, though—one of us will remember something somebody said or a time they made us laugh, and we try to get the time of day right in our heads so as to imagine what they are doing while we steam farther away from them across the ocean.

  April 13, 1912

  Day 3 at sea

  . . . The general recreation room is for steerage passengers to use for reading or playing cards or a bit of dancing. It’s a big room with a piano for us to play whenever we like. Some French fella plays most of the time; he’s very good. He likes to play some of the ragtime music I’ve heard a little. I think John O’Dea back home would have mighty craic with that piano; it would put the small yoke he plays in O’Connell’s pub to shame! The man with the uilleann pipes plays a fair bit too. He’s very good and gets a good old singsong going among us Irish—there’s plenty of us; I’d say we take up at least half of the steerage if not more.

  . . . Today Peggy and me played with some of the young ones. One woman has seven children with her and is traveling all alone, God love her. I think she might be Italian or something, none of us can understand a word she says, but she’s nice and her kids are sweet little things. I played with the baby a lot. He likes to drop things and watch you pick them up again.

  Maura Brennan was talking with a family from a place called Wiltshire in England. The mam and da are taking their five little ones to join relatives in Philadelphia. The youngest is just two years old, and the eldest is turned sixteen. She’s a nice girl, Elsie is her name. She told me about her home and it sounds a bit like ours with the fields and the lake.

  . . . Ellen Joyce has found another woman who is to be married when they arrive in America so they are all talk about wedding gowns and veils and admire each other’s rings all the time. There are four other newlywed couples in our section of the ship who are headed out on honeymoon, and Maura has been talking with another woman who’ll be having a baby soon. It’s quite the social gathering altogether! Peggy and Katie have taken to fanciful talk again about what they’ll do when they are in America and what the fancy homes they’ll live in will look like.

  . . . There are some sad stories of people who are unhappy to be leaving loved ones behind, or who are traveling to visit a sick or dying family member. I heard someone say there are over two thousand people on board this ship, so I would imagine in all of that there are plenty of sad hearts as well as many happy ones.

  . . . The English steward Harry (Lucky Harry is his nickname) is very sweet on Peggy. He talks to her at any opportunity and makes up all sorts of excuses to knock on the cabin door, or to fuss over her at dinner. He admired her hat yesterday, and she was practically married to him then! He’s a nice fella and is great craic altogether with the stories he tells us about how Titanic set sail from Southampton with bands playing and people standing on the quay to cheer and wave as she slipped her moorings. He swears he saw five grand pianos and a motorcar being loaded onto her before she left Southampton—but I think he’s pulling our legs about that.

  He says that the stewards on the upper decks wish they were assigned to third class—they have a pain in their arses with all the fussing and complaining of the first-class passengers. Some of them can be awful rude apparently and demand that their rooms are cleaned several times a day and grumble about the wrong sort of linen on their beds! He told us that one of the stewards says he wouldn’t be surprised if they asked him to wipe their arses for them next! Peggy told Harry all about the tea leaves and the strange man at Queenstown. He told her not to be worrying because he had personally seen a priest blessing the life jackets so we couldn’t be anywhere safer!

  . . . It’s nice to walk on the deck in the sunshine and breathe in the fresh sea air, although it is chilly up so high and with the ship going along at such a rate of knots there’s a fierce cold breeze blowing all the time. Pat fancies himself a bit of a crew member, giving us daily reports of speed and iceberg warnings. These are posted every day outside the dining room, and we let him tell us the latest news because he enjoys it, although if the truth be told, we’re not a bit interested! Peggy, Katie, and I have found a place on the bridge deck where we can catch a glimpse of the first-class ladies as they promenade. Peggy says that silk dresses and elegant hats are far more interesting than Pat’s dull talk of “rate of knots” and icebergs.

  . . . Lucky Harry is friendly with the radio operators who work for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in the radio room on the ship. He told us that the first-class passengers can pay to send messages from the ship to loved ones back in England or France or in America! Apparently some singer has been sending messages to her mother in New York telling her how much she and her fiancé are looking forward to setting a date for their wedding when they are back home, and then she sends other messages to her sister telling her about a handsome millionaire she’s got friendly with and that she has “confused feelings”! Peggy says that only someone who works in the theater would be able to lead such a strange life and that she doesn’t understand what’s to be confused about when there’s a handsome millionaire involved! She’s so wicked sometimes, but she makes us all laugh and her silly chatter stops my mind from wandering back to Ballysheen too often. I’d love to be able to send a message to Séamus. I don’t even know how the messages work, though, because he doesn’t have a wireless in his house. I’ll ask Harry about it all.

  Grace scribbled frantically in her notebook as she read Maggie’s words, the detail and ideas rushing at her faster than she could capture them on the page, anxious to get them written down before they slipped away again. Then she reworked the notes into legible, ordered paragraphs, mindful of the journalistic mantra of story first, detail later as she mapped Maggie’s revelations into words that flowed as easily as the water she had sailed over.

  The rain was still falling and the early light of dawn was spreading from the east when she eventually turned out her light and slipped into a peaceful sleep, with visions of Maggie, Peggy, Harry, and Titanic drifting through her dreams.

  PART THREE

  Marconigram message sent from Leila Meyer, Carpathia, to Saks & Company, New York, on April 17, 1912. Edgar Meyer was married to Leila Saks of Saks & Company. He was lost when Titanic went down.

  CHAPTER 15

  RMS Titanic

  April 13, 1912

  Harry watched the Irish girls closely as they made their way from the dining saloon, Peggy’s laughter clearly audible from the other side of the room. She really was a stunning girl, with those bewitching green eyes that could warm any man’s heart and that smile that could melt it completely. His own heart skipped a beat as she and her friends made their way over to him and wished him a good night.

  “Good night, ladies,” he replied, his cheeks flushing. “Enjoy your da
ncing down there.”

  “Ah, sure, don’t we always,” Peggy replied. “And you make sure those gates are good and locked tonight, Lucky Harry,” she called over her shoulder as the three girls reached the top of the stairwell that would take them down to their cabin. “We don’t want any o’ those first-class folk comin’ down to be botherin’ us with their shiny jewels and fine shoes, givin’ us some posh disease with a fancy name now, d’ye hear?”

  The girls giggled. They were in a fine mood after another hearty meal and were looking forward to the postdinner singing and dancing deep in the bowels of the ship.

  Harry drew the gate across the top of the stairwell, as was the regulation at night. “But what if some of those rich American bachelors want to come down, Miss Madden?” he called back. “What should I do then?”

  Peggy turned at the bottom of the stairwell, placing her hand on her hip, an expression of mock consideration on her face. “Well, then, tell ’em that they should ask for a Miss Peggy Madden on arrival in New York, where she would be delighted to consider their offers of marriage. Now, please excuse us. We’ve to show these borin’ folk from England how to sing a decent song.”

  Returning to his own dormitory, Harry lay on his narrow bunk bed, his hands behind his head. He had been on his feet since 6:00 A.M. It was now nearly 11:00 P.M., and he was exhausted.

  His thoughts turned to home, wondering whether his father was feeling well enough yet to return from Devon and how his mother and sister were coping without them both. He imagined his mother sitting quietly in the living room, reading a newspaper or darning his father’s socks, getting up every few minutes to adjust the tablecloth or straighten a cushion or poke the fire. His mother was a restless woman, and without her two men to fuss over she would be finding small, insignificant ways to occupy her time. Harry knew that she was always anxious when he was at sea. No matter how many times he sailed, she was fretful until he walked through the front door again, safely back in the family home. He imagined she would have been to church to pray for his safe voyage.