The Captain's Daughter

by Leah Fleming

  93

  Frankie Bartolini loved the Christmas midnight Mass: the candles, the shuffle of the congregation round the adoration of the Magi on the Christmas crib. He felt important in his white robes as a high altar boy, set apart, holding the candles on poles as a priest solemnly intoned the Mass.

  It was snowing outside, thick flakes, like a scene on a Christmas card. He could see his mother in her best hat, her red hair now tinged with silver at the sides. Patti was staring round trying to find her friends. Unsurprisingly, Jack was nowhere to be seen. He never came to church.

  It was going to be their first Christmas without Papa. Everyone was putting on a brave face, trying to pretend his absence wasn’t leaving a huge hole in their family life. He’d been so excited to go back to Italy and had sent postcards home, but he’d been away for over a month now and Mamma was missing him badly.

  There was no money left over for treats this year. Work was tough and Mamma needed every penny, but soon there’d be one less mouth to feed. Frankie was going away to the seminary to study, to test his vocation. It felt like a desertion until he saw Mamma’s proud face.

  ‘You were put on this earth to be God’s servant. Like Samuel, Hannah’s boy, who heard the voice calling in the night. We’ll manage fine. Patti’s troupe show brings in a little and your papa will be home soon so don’t you go having any ideas about packing in your new college. We start another year fresh over.

  ‘It doesn’t seem minutes since your papa and me met in the basement of St Patrick’s Cathedral, brought together by sorrow and finding joy. Who knows what’s ahead for any of us. To be sure, that’s not for us to be worrying about now. It’ll be a happy Christmas, Frankie, I know it will.’

  ‘Can we go home and get cookies? You promised,’ Patti whined. She was always hungry.

  Frankie pulled up his vestment and fished in his pocket for two quarters. ‘You can call in at the bakery and we’ll have a feast.’

  ‘Frankie,’ his mother flushed, ‘that’s your choir money. You’ve been saving that.’

  ‘So? It’s Christmas. Everyone should have a treat.’

  He’d taken so much from the family pot by not leaving school. This was only a token but it felt good to be giving it back. Jack would roll up in the small hours loaded up with wine, candy and treats. No one would ask where he’d gotten them from. He was a survivor, more man of the house than Frankie was already, an alley rat who’d not see his family starve. But that thought gave Frankie no satisfaction at all.

  One day he’d have to prove that all their sacrifices on his behalf had not been in vain. One day when he took his vows he’d have to cut the ties that bound him to his family for good. His life would not be his own, but that was a long way off yet. Tonight it was Christmas and they must all have some fun.

  94

  There was a tension at the dinner table that the usual Boxing Day jollities didn’t soften. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t played all the usual games, and dressed up for charades, but Ella still had such a pained look about her. She’d taken herself off to her freezing studio shed, wrapped in layers of woollies, and Selwyn had slipped back into his old drinking haunt, the pub next door. Celeste was beginning to feel she’d made all this annual fuss for nothing. Even Archie was lost in his own thoughts as she brought him a glass of sherry and sat down.

  He looked up. ‘I want to marry you. It’s time we made a proper life together. I’m sick of being the secret lodger, the lover hidden in your cupboard.’

  ‘But you’re not,’ Celeste protested.

  ‘Hear me out for once,’ he argued. ‘This arrangement has gone on for so long, almost ten years. I think we should see a solicitor and get advice. If anything happened to me, I want to know you are provided for.’

  ‘I am provided for . . . well, sort of,’ she replied.

  ‘No, you’re not . . . you live in your brother’s home, living off your father’s legacy, which must have shrunk to nothing by now. I want you to live with me, share my name.’

  ‘Aren’t you happy here?’ she asked, seeing the determination on his craggy face. What on earth had brought this on?

  ‘Of course, anywhere you are, I’m happy, but what about you, living with all these stresses? It’s not easy bringing up another woman’s child. Ella’s not exactly been easy to live with these past few months.’

  ‘She’s just young and confused. I think of Ella as my own. I know she’s at that awkward stage but she needs a woman to guide her.’

  ‘That young lady is quite capable of earning her own living. Before long a fellow will whisk her away from here, but not, I hope, before you tell her what she should know.’

  ‘I can’t, not yet. You’ve seen the state of her. I could shoot that Keir Walsh, playing with her feelings like that. He picks her up and drops her like a glove. We have to wait. You can see Ella’s upset.’

  ‘I can’t wait, Celeste. I feel I’ve been patient long enough. It’s time you made a life yourself. Selwyn’s quite capable of living here on his own and Ella should know how things lie too.’

  ‘So you’ve got it all sorted then, just like that. I won’t have my life mapped out for me, not by you, not by anyone. Why is all this Ella business so urgent? She can wait.’ Celeste felt herself flaming up with frustration. This was not a conversation to have at Christmas.

  ‘I just want you to think about what I’m saying. I’m not a door mat. I have feelings too.’

  ‘I know, it’s just . . .’ she sighed loudly.

  ‘It’s always just . . . with you, you put everyone before yourself. Why can’t you take charge of your own decisions? Ella must know what we know. It doesn’t feel fair for us to hold out on her.’

  ‘What difference will it make to her to know?’ she snapped back. ‘Some secrets are best left undisturbed, like a wreck at the bottom of the sea. All women learn to keep secrets deep inside themselves. This one is best left buried.’ Why was Archie being so stubborn?

  ‘Because it’s the honest thing to do. It’s just as dishonest to keep May’s secret as it is to pretend that I am just a lodger here. It’s insulting to our friends’ intelligence.’

  ‘Don’t keep going on about it.’

  ‘Don’t go on about what?’ Ella had been standing in the doorway, watching them arguing. ‘What have I done wrong now?’

  ‘Nothing dear, just a difference of opinion.’

  ‘I heard you keep mentioning my name. What’s all the arguing about?’

  ‘Archie wants me to ask for a divorce from Grover, so we can marry.’ Celeste blushed at her cover-up.

  ‘What’s that got to do with me then?’ Ella was standing with her arms folded defiantly ‘You were talking about me. I heard you.’

  There was silence and Celeste looked for support from Archie, who just shrugged. ‘I think Celeste has something to say to you.’

  ‘Not now, dear, we’re all a bit tired and fractious.’

  Still Ella did not budge. ‘What have I done wrong? I know you didn’t like Keir, but I did.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that.’ Celeste felt herself shaking. ‘It’s got nothing to do with him. It’s just . . .’ she paused. ‘Come here. Archie, can you fetch the sherry? Make yourself useful for once.’

  He nodded and left the room, leaving her alone with Ella, cornered now into trying to deliver her news in the least upsetting fashion.

  ‘Come upstairs with me,’ she said, rising quickly before she lost her courage. She went to the linen cupboard on the landing and opened the door to pull out an old bag stuffed at the back. ‘You remember this? We brought it from Lombard Gardens.’

  Ella shrugged, disinterested. ‘It’s just a pile of baby clothes.’

  ‘I told you then they were yours. Look at the pretty lace.’

  ‘So? I haven’t touched them, they smell,’ Ella replied, wrinkling her nose. ‘What’s this got to do with anything?’

  ‘Your mother never told you they came from the Titanic, did she?’

  �
�No, why should she? I know you were on the ship. Roddy told me once.’

  ‘And so were you and your mother . . .’ Celeste paused hoping for a reaction.

  ‘Really? The famous ship that sunk? Is that where my father drowned? Why didn’t she tell me? I don’t understand.’ She was fingering the clothes now, frowning.

  ‘It’s not quite as simple as that, you see . . .’

  ‘Wait till I tell Hazel. I was on the Titanic, in a lifeboat, saved from the sea. So that’s how you met, then? Mum never said. I often wondered how you and her . . . Why didn’t she tell me?’

  ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Ella, but when your mother died, she told me something else, a secret concerning you. She said that the night she was rescued, the night her husband, Joe, was washed into the water clutching their baby, Ellen, she was rescued and put in my lifeboat. Then a baby was rescued, saved by Captain Smith, and the baby was given to her. You were that infant. Only when it was daylight did she realize you weren’t Ellen but another baby. And by then she couldn’t let you go.’

  Ella stood staring at her, trying to take in this shocking news, shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘And you’ve known all this for months?’ she said. ‘She never told anyone but you? Don’t believe her. She was mad . . . She said I wasn’t her daughter once before. It can’t be true. She couldn’t steal a baby.’ Ella was running down the stairs now. ‘I don’t believe any of it. Why are you telling me this now?’

  ‘Because Archie said I should have told you straight away, as soon as I knew. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry? It’s that woman who should be sorry. How could she steal a baby?’

  ‘Don’t say that! May always loved you as her own. You were her baby from the moment she had you in her arms. No one claimed you on the Carpathia, the rescue ship, so she felt that she had been saved to give you a proper mother.’

  ‘So who am I then?’ There was a hardness in Ella’s voice and a fierce anger. ‘You tell me who am I. You’ve taken away one identity. So where do I find my real parents?’

  ‘I don’t know, somewhere within the Titanic’s passenger list perhaps. There has to be an answer. We could try to find out.’

  ‘How can we? Not after all these years . . . who cares about the Titanic now? Anyway, it’s not your place. You’re no relation to me!’ Ella snapped.

  ‘I never was. But you’re like a daughter to me nevertheless. I’m sorry. There was never going to be an easy time to tell you. I don’t know why I’m saying this now but Christmas is a strange time for families with so many memories. We all get so nostalgic for past times,’ Celeste offered, but Ella wasn’t listening.

  ‘You have a family. I have no one. You’ve just taken away everything I thought was mine. I hope you’re satisfied.’

  Archie came in at that moment with the silver tray, silently putting it on the table, looking up to see the two women glaring at each other. ‘Please don’t blame Celeste, Ella. This was my idea. It’s just gone on too long, and I’m glad it’s out in the open.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. Keep your bloody sherry. I’m going out.’ Ella stormed out and they heard the back door bang.

  Celeste sat down, winded. ‘Are you satisfied now, Archie McAdam, forcing me into a corner, confronting her like that? What a mess, an awful mess and all because you wanted answers because of your own insecurity. I hope you know what you’ve done.’

  ‘Be patient, all shall be well,’ he offered.

  ‘Don’t preach at me. It doesn’t suit you. The jack is out of the box now and there’s no shoving him back in. I’m off to bed . . . alone. You really can be the honest lodger for once. Good night.’

  Celeste tossed and turned for what felt like hours. She ought to go to Ella and comfort her. She ought to put a hot-water bottle in Archie’s cold spare bedroom, she thought. She ought . . . oh to hell with oughts. Tonight she’d think only of herself. She needed to sleep on all this but she was too tired and angry and frightened and uncertain about anything now. It would be a long night.

  Ella took the lamp out to the shed. This was her little bolthole, with its paraffin stove and chair and all her unfinished artwork. She felt nothing but a raging disbelief at what she’d just heard, a roar of denials in her ears, and yet she knew it was true. Ellen was the name her mother had called out in the hospital. ‘You’re not my child,’ she’d screamed at the seashore, all those years ago. It had to be true. Secrets and lies that had lain unspoken for years, making a mockery of all they’d done together. All that nonsense about Joe Smith the sailor lost at sea. Her mind was racing with incidents, conversations, half-broken sentences that had passed between them.

  It was as if all the stitches of her life were unravelling back into twisted, broken threads. With those few words Celeste had destroyed her history. Who am I? Who was I? Where did I come from? Was there anyone left who even knew?

  ‘You can’t think about this,’ she screamed out loud. ‘You’re a fake, a nobody, an impostor!’ She found herself flinging her papers across the floor, scattering her tools, a chisel in her hand battering down on the face of a carving she’d been working on, the face in the stone that had somehow become her mother’s face. ‘I hate you all!’ she yelled, hammering into the plaster. Months of work were destroyed in a fury that fuelled itself until she stood exhausted, weeping, looking round at the devastation she’d wreaked. ‘I’m not staying here . . .’

  ‘Oh yes you are, young lady. You’ll clear up this mess. All this good work destroyed in a tantrum.’ Uncle Selwyn walked in and focused his lamp over the chaos. ‘What a bloody waste . . . Feel good, do you?’

  ‘Go away!’ she snapped.

  ‘So you know the truth and you’re angry. Quite right too . . . Everyone holding out on you . . . So you’re not who you thought you were?’

  ‘You don’t understand, how could you?’ Ella was feeling small and stupid now.

  ‘Don’t you tell me what I can or can’t understand. I thought I was a gentleman and a lawyer, a fine upstanding man of the city, but when I stood on that trench ladder to go over the top, I found I was just another man: a beast, a killer, an unthinking automaton leading men into carnage, seeing them blown to shreds of bone and sinew. I am a man who bayoneted strangers in a fury of rage. The man who came back from no man’s land to roll call was not the man who went over the top. I’ve spent years trying to find out who I am and more besides.

  ‘So you were given life, given a home and love by a stranger? Did you ever consider her a stranger? Didn’t May give you her last penny? She may not have been your blood mother but don’t you dare say she didn’t care for you . . . You’ve had a shock, a terrible shock, and it’s changed a lot of things. You can’t unlearn this knowledge. Sure, it’s a reason to feel sorry for yourself, a reason to sulk and take it out on all of us for what we withheld. Or, Ella – and this is the hard bit – you can get on with what you are good at, knowing someone somewhere gave you a wonderful gift: the observing eye and hands of an artist.’ Selwyn paced up and down, his eyes fixed on her. ‘While you work with these gifts, they live on. Destroy them and they die too. Is that what you want?

  Ella had never heard Selwyn make such a long speech.

  ‘But I want to know who I am. How can I not know who I am?’

  Selwyn shrugged. ‘Fair enough but not tonight. There’s no one who can tell you all that on Boxing Day, now is there? It’s cold out here. Everyone’s gone to bed. I’ll make you some cocoa.’

  ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘Thanks, I’ll do it myself. You always scald the milk and I hate the skin.’ She looked up, seeing him holding out his hands.

  ‘We were never related but you’ve always been special to me, and May too. Time for bed . . . Things will look better in the morning for all of us.’

  They picked their way down the frozen path by torchlight. Ella was feeling foolish, exhausted and empty. Selwyn was right. Finding who she really was would have to wait for another day. Yet shocked as she was, th
ere was a tiny bit of her that had always known she was different in some way, that when she looked at her mother she’d wondered how she could have once belonged inside her body. It had made her feel so guilty and she’d learned to ignore that niggle in her head. Now she knew the truth and felt an odd sense of vindication.

  She stopped to stare up at the winter sky and the moon. Who am I? Where will I find out? Is there someone somewhere in the world who knows about me?

  95

  Italy

  Maria’s mother was dressed in black from head to toe as she examined the baby shoe but her eyes were filmed over. ‘I can’t see. It is a pretty shoe but, I don’t know, every baby has shoes like this. The lace is fine but do not pin your hopes on such things.’

  ‘But Maria made such good lace,’ Angelo argued. Her words were giving him no comfort.

  ‘So do most of the girls in Anghiari and Sansepolcro. We have the Marcelli sisters to thank for that and their little scuola di merletto. Lace may only be thread and pins, but we’ve made so many beautiful pictures with it over the years: stars, animals, flowers, snowflakes. I remember how Maria used to sit with me at my cushion and watch how it was made. Now she is taken from us. It was God’s will.’

  This was not what he wanted to hear. ‘I thought you would know these things,’ he said, shoving his offering back into his pocket, embarrassed. It was never going to be an easy meeting. ‘I wish we had not given her the ticket,’ he sighed.

  ‘You wouldn’t have stopped her. She wanted to join you. For months she spent her spare hours making lace for the baby’s clothes, and collars and cuffs, extra work that she could sell. Look, you can see the smile on her face in the picture, and the fine lace of Alessia’s gown. She was so proud of her work, and the little one so dark like you.’

  Angelo knew every grain of that precious photograph by now but he stared at it again as Maria’s father filled his glass with rough wine. ‘Get that down your throat, son. We bear you no grudge. You did not sink that ship. It was too big for the ocean and it swallowed it. She was on the wrong vessel.’