“Looks like I get around. What’s so important about Astor?”
“He’s the linchpin. His survival is what sent my world to its doom.”
“Forget about it. He dies.”
“I need to be certain of that.”
“He dies.” Wells ashed the cigar. “All the American millionaires die tonight.” He was in strange spirits now. He added, “How much are you worth, Kennedy?”
Kennedy snorted.
Wells said, “I’ve got no idea what you have in mind, but I’ll tell you something for free. There are twenty lifeboats on this ship, four are already gone. The rest are going to fill fast. When this ship goes ass up, fifteen-hundred people will end up in the water. Only fifteen of those will get taken into the boats. We’re talking a one per cent return here.
“Now, you’re in reasonable shape—better condition than most of the passengers—so I’ll be generous. I’m going to give you a one in twenty chance of clawing your way out of the water. Thing is, you’re also a sentimental bastard. I have no idea how you made it as far as you did. Taking that into account puts you back squarely behind the eight ball. I suggest you put aside any crazy notion you’ve got fermenting in there and get into a lifeboat. That’s your only way out of here. That’s where you’ll find me.” He glanced at the clock perched behind the bar and stubbed out his cigar. “Adios.”
Someone was standing beside them. He’d approached silently and was regarding them over a pair of oval glasses.
The blood drained from Kennedy’s face.
Wells felt a slight shudder sweep his body, feet lightly tripping over his grave. Things were going to take a little longer than he’d expected. He said, “Hello, William.”
Stead smiled back. “Good morning, Jonathan.”
Wells continued, impelled by some unknown power. He said, “This is Joseph Kennedy. Major Kennedy.”
“I know.”
“Of course you do.” Kennedy extended a hand.
Stead shook it politely. “So many times,” he said, “but never like this. Never like this. Only two of you, but two will suffice. Where is the girl?”
“She’s safe,” Kennedy replied.
Wells reached for his drink and held it with unsteady hands.
Stead indicated the fireplace with a nod. “Take your time, gentlemen. We’ll talk because we always talk.”
Wells glanced at Kennedy.
Kennedy placed the stub of his cigar on the counter.
“We can leave right now,” Wells said. “We’ll take the next lifeboat. We don’t need to hear this.”
“Really?” Kennedy was miles away. Years, perhaps.
“We don’t need to hear this again,” Wells said stridently. His outburst seemed to have come from somewhere else. He didn’t dare utter another word, for fear of what might be loosed.
Kennedy reached for his drink and rose from his seat.
Wells gazed at him despairingly. He drained his glass and made for the exit. Each step was a momentous endeavour against the imperious force of Stead’s announcement.
We’ll talk because we always talk.
He was drawn back in a decaying orbit to where Kennedy had placed a third chair by the hearth. The fire was a low flicker dancing on the wood. He took his place.
“Usually this is an exchange of information,” Stead began. “Understanding for wisdom. But not tonight. Am I mistaken?”
Patricia Marie Kennedy might be safe and gone, but her words still haunted Wells.
Other attempts.
Spurred by the catalyst of Stead’s arrival, they tripped a switch in his head. A curtain parted somewhere for him. Suddenly he was in the wings and looking on, and he saw it all for what it was. The faded backdrop, the dusty set, and all the actors weary beyond measure.
The horrors mounted upon themselves, vertiginous; burgeoning in the mystic’s presence. They crashed over him—not as revived memories, but as previous encounters, here, on the ship. They stretched out before him now, diverging into two strains. One found him in a pool of his own blood, lying at Gershon’s feet; the other found him in the water. They alternated, twining about themselves, but always knotting at the end—in his death. It was as immutable and assured as the loss of the ship itself.
He understood that the notion was completely insane, just as he recognised it as being the absolute truth. This was closing night.
“You’re not mistaken,” Wells said.
Kennedy’s expression hinted at his own insights. He said, “An infinite number of possibilities. The revision of a thousand decisions.”
It sounded like a recitation to Wells. The litany of all of Kennedy’s nights, spent chasing him throughout eternity.
“One way or another,” Stead said, “it ends tonight.”
“Till the next time,” Wells replied wearily.
“I know that you’re seeing this tragedy in a new light, Jonathan, now that you find yourself backstage. But you’ve been watching the cast and the props with no consideration for the theatre itself. Joseph didn’t say anything to you about this, because he can scarcely credit it himself. Yet it’s the fear of it that spurs him on.”
Kennedy said, “There is no next time, Doctor Wells.”
“That can’t be true.”
“Jonathan, there are things that even the experience of a thousand lifetimes won’t teach you, and you’ve had many more than that. The seams are already showing. The cracks are there. The device that sent the two of you back and forth is at odds with reality. In its own way, it is the greater force of the two. It is set to prevail.”
“Nothing is carved in stone,” Kennedy said.
“True enough,” Stead replied. “And what follows the dawn is closed to me. The night, however, may be plainly read.”
“What happens?” Wells asked.
“I feel like Sisyphus and this rock has grown too heavy.” Stead was looking at the fire.
“What happens?”
“The same thing that always happens, Jonathan. Death by water.”
“I wasn’t meant to make old bones.” Kennedy’s voice was a murmur of acceptance.
Stead threw him a piercing glance. “You, sir, weren’t meant to exist at all.” He rose from his seat. “There are dreams that lie fathoms below our waking thoughts. I once wrote a book wherein an ocean liner struck an iceberg in the Atlantic. There was so much loss, so much terror. I entertained the thought that by consigning the story to paper, I might keep it bound there. The arrogance of that deed binds me to this night. I don’t dare imagine the retribution your earlier acts might warrant.” He tendered a slight bow. “If it is any consolation, you should know that this is where you belong, gentlemen. Good night.”
He retrieved his glass, rinsed it out, and returned it to the bar. He left the smoking room in silence.
“It’s not carved in stone.” Wells was staring at the embers. “It’s writ on water. There are a few lifeboats left. We can leave any time we like.”
Kennedy nodded, absently.
“I’m usually dead by now. Gershon usually kills me in this timeline.”
“He shoots you in your cabin,” Kennedy replied.
“We’re never here, talking like this.”
Kennedy remained silent.
“There’s a man travelling in second class by the name of Lawrence Beesley,” Wells said. “He gets on a lifeboat within the hour and lives to write an account of the sinking.”
Kennedy turned to regard him.
“In the fifties, there’s a resurgence of interest in the Titanic,” Wells continued. “They make a movie about it and Beesley is one of a few survivors called upon as a consultant. But he only knows the end of the story through hearsay. Only by what he saw from the safety of his lifeboat. When they begin filming the actual sinking, he forges an actor’s union card and slips onto the set.”
“He gets on the ship?” Kennedy had a strange smile on his face.
“He gets on the ship. Stays while all the lifeboats are f
illing. Thing is, the director spots him just at the last moment and tells him to leave.”
“He gets a second chance and chooses the water,” Kennedy mused.
Wells asked, “What is it about this place?”
“I’m not sure,” Kennedy replied.
Wells reached for a poker and stirred the coal. The fire hissed and the cinders danced. He said, “I think I know why this kept happening to us.”
Kennedy nodded slowly. “It’s what Stead was trying to tell us.”
“We have to get off the ship right now.”
“It’s okay, it’ll be taken care of,” Kennedy replied. “I already knew. I told Patricia.”
“Will she be able to handle it?”
“She took care of you, didn’t she?”
Wells smiled. “I wonder if we got it right this time?”
“We?” Kennedy gazed at him for long moments. He said, “I think it’s as close as we’ve ever been.”
Wells considered the experiences of his untold nights on this ship. It didn’t have to end in the water, but he’d be damned if he left the Titanic before Beesley, or Ismay.
There would still be time.
He said, “Officer Lightholler is only loading women and children on the port side. It’s not going to be a popular decision, no matter what the storybooks will say. That’s where we’ll be the most use.”
Kennedy stirred at the officer’s name. He patted his coat pocket. The edge of the journal was just visible at the brim. He said, “We have to get rid of these first.”
Wells felt a sudden pang. The sensation passed swiftly. His eyes wandered up towards a painting that hung above the fireplace. It was titled The Approach of the New World.
Kennedy continued, “They can’t ever be found. This is where we break the circle.”
He removed the documents and tossed them into the fire. The journals flared briefly. The plastic coating dripped to cover both manuscripts in splashes of coloured flame and they burned as one.
XXIV
There was a glow on the horizon. It seemed to flicker.
“It’s a masthead light,” Wells explained to Kennedy. “Captain Smith has ordered a few of the lifeboats to row out to her. Some will try. It’s a safer bet than hanging around here, waiting to be swamped after we hit the water. All the accounts will say that she seemed to recede from their approach. Some will argue that she’s a whaler, trespassing and unwilling to reveal her presence. Most will decide that she’s the Californian. Personally, I could give a damn.” He turned away from the view. “She never comes to our aid.”
An officer stood nearby, operating a Morse lamp. He was repeatedly signalling to the far-flung light. Another rocket split the skies, raining shooting stars of bright white fire.
“Someone on the Californian does report seeing this, however.” Wells sneered contemptuously at the pyrotechnics. “They’re going to think we’re having a party on board.”
Kennedy was staring at the empty davits. “Which one’s next?”
“Lifeboat four.”
They descended to the enclosed promenade on A deck. The boat dangled tantalisingly out of reach beyond the thick glass windows. Crewmen worked at their seams, trying to pry them open. The deck’s list was more pronounced, keeling forwards and to port.
All illusions of rescue had been rapidly dispelled. Cries rose from the steerage passengers on the well deck, their fury hardly abated by the distance. Kennedy and Wells, loading the lifeboats, had already witnessed an attempt by some men to force their way through. The charge was held at bay by pistol fire. Kennedy himself had stood with gun drawn beneath his coat. Wells, catching the glint of the barrel, forced the Colt back out of sight.
After the brief mêlée they’d both watched as Ismay had slunk into the lifeboat. Wells had offered the Line’s chairman a parting gesture that Kennedy didn’t recognise, but couldn’t possibly be mistaken for “Bon Voyage”. Ismay had averted his eyes.
The gathering on A deck was small; a who’s who of America’s and Europe’s elite by Wells’ report.
Within minutes the windows had been cranked open. Glacial draughts seeped into the promenade. Kennedy organised the male passengers into a protective ring while Wells helped a woman adjust her lifebelt. Lightholler began loading the next boat. Astor was close by his side.
Kennedy stared at the two men, merging them into the apotheosis that had been his friend. He wondered how John might have handled the revelations this journey had brought.
Better than most, I suspect.
A frail-looking woman had just stepped into the boat. Lightholler was involved in a heated discussion with Astor as to whether her son should be permitted to join her. Astor snatched a bonnet from another woman and pressed it firmly on the young boy’s head. “There,” he pronounced firmly. “He’s a girl now. Put him aboard.”
Lightholler surrendered.
There was a faint irony in the fact that John’s character seemed closer to the ancestor he’d scorned rather than the one he’d cherished.
Kennedy glared at Lightholler and muttered, “The man’s a fool.”
“He’s following the only code he knows,” Wells said. “He doesn’t trust the lifeboat’s strength. He doesn’t know that only one of them will return after the sinking. He’ll refuse to leave the Titanic, given every opportunity to do so. Saved by blind luck, he’s going to be the last man to board the Carpathia.”
Kennedy softened his face and said, “I knew his great-grandson.”
“What was he like?”
“Chip off the old block.”
Astor was helping his own wife into the lifeboat. There was little evidence of her condition. The boat was now two-thirds full. Astor spoke to Lightholler again, but in gentler tones. It was to no avail. Lightholler wasn’t going to permit him to board, despite his wife’s delicate state.
Kennedy’s eyes played over the lifeboat’s occupants, settling on Astor’s wife, as well as the children who sat clasped to their mother’s chests. There were no men.
Lightholler ordered two of his crew into the boat. He issued the command to lower away.
This was where Astor would bid his bride farewell before descending to the cargo hold on F deck. He would be seen again briefly with his beloved Airedale. He’d be found in a few days with the side of his head caved in.
A snatch of rhyme returned to trouble Kennedy.
Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
“What are you thinking?” Wells asked.
“I’m thinking about the path to hell, and how well it’s paved.”
“Be that as it may, it’s time we made our move.”
Yet Kennedy’s attention remained fixed on Astor. He said, “You go on ahead. I’ll be up in a moment.”
He felt someone brush against him. An alarmingly familiar voice said, “There you are.”
Kennedy spun around to face Morgan. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t find a lifeboat that was to my taste,” Morgan replied, shakily. His gaze slipped away from Kennedy’s pained eyes.
“Jesus, Darren.”
Wells said, “The pickings are getting slim.”
Lifeboat four, creaking down towards the water, seemed to punctuate his assessment.
The ocean’s stealthy advance loitered by the Titanic’s bow. Lightholler had departed for the boat deck and the remaining men were milling about the opened windows. One suggested a hand of bridge and four of them began trudging slowly towards the stairwell.
Astor remained with his valet by the railing. He was smoking a cigarette.
Morgan had thrown away his last real chance of escape. His beaten stance called for some meaning to it all. There wasn’t much on offer.
Kennedy said, “Looks like you�
�re just in time, Darren.”
Morgan gave the scene a swift review. His eyes came to rest on Astor. “Has he been down to the kennels yet?”
“Perhaps all he needs is a little push in the right direction.”
Wells placed a hand on Kennedy’s arm. “There’s one lifeboat left. Collapsible D. It’s just above us, on the boat deck.” He checked his watch. “We can still make it.”
Morgan said, “There are two more lifeboats.”
“They don’t get released till after she goes down. It’s going to be a shit fight climbing aboard. You don’t want that.”
“Can I get down to the kennels and be back in time?” Kennedy asked.
“She founders in twenty-five minutes, and I doubt you’ll make it back by then,” Wells said. “Below decks will be awash.”
“Astor made it.”
“That’s just a story,” Wells said. “We don’t really know what happens.”
Kennedy bared his teeth. “Not knowing what happens will be a pleasant change.”
“For God’s sake, man, you’re going to be a father.” Wells leaned in close. “You’ve got a family now.”
“And I know they’re safe. That’s a better hand than most people have been dealt tonight.”
“Let it go. I told you—Astor dies.”
“I need to see for myself.”
Wells shrugged and turned to Morgan. “Can’t you make him see reason?”
Morgan laughed darkly. “Nothing’s less likely.”
“If you come to your senses, I’ll be on the boat deck.” Wells’ face was a pall of hopelessness. “Don’t be too long. I’ll try to hold them off launching the lifeboat.”
“Don’t interfere,” Kennedy said firmly.
“Speak for yourself.” Wells reached out a hand to grasp Kennedy’s. “I’ll see you topside.”
Kennedy nodded. He approached the railing with Morgan in tow.
Astor had his hand in his coat pocket, and he pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He turned at Kennedy’s advance and said, “Well, and what now, I wonder?”
“You’ve seen to your wife, Colonel?”
Astor nodded glumly.
“As have I mine.” Kennedy offered his hand. “Major Joseph Kennedy.” He watched Astor wince in his grasp. “Tell me, Colonel, didn’t you bring your dog along for the voyage?”
The Company of the Dead Page 68
