by Anne Doughty
Life was full of danger, she told herself, as she dropped the paper by her chair and leant forward to stir the fire. There was nothing new in that. It was just that sometimes it came so close, as it had on her thirtieth birthday, the day of the excursion to Warrenpoint, the day dear Mary Wylie threw her youngest son out of the window of a train with locked doors, as it ran backwards down a steep gradient into an oncoming passenger train. Ned had survived unscathed. He’d married a local girl only last summer.
For years she had been haunted by dreams of that awful morning, the sun beating down remorselessly as she tried to get the children home across the fields without them seeing the devastation, but the dreams had passed. She thought of Mary often enough, but until last night she had never dreamt of her.
They’d bought all the newspapers then too, looking for news of the injured, and details of the Board of Trade inquiry, but their own information had been more accurate than anything in the papers, for they heard immediately who had died overnight from injuries and who still lay critically ill in the infirmary in Armagh.
All the people involved had been friends or neighbours, or the friends and neighbours of someone they knew. This was different. So many, many people. People of all sorts and conditions. Millionaires and film stars. Owners of big American companies. Poor people emigrating with only a suitcase. Only some of these people were known, even indirectly, but it seemed the fate of each one became a personal matter because the ship they’d sailed in, confident they were safe, had been built by thousands of work people in Belfast.
She sat silent for a long time, just gazing into the warm glow of the stove and asking herself, over and over again, what could anyone do.
For the rest of the week no one talked about anything else but the loss of the Titanic. Each day brought new information to set against the rumours and speculations which had circulated as freely as the newspapers themselves. There was now no doubt about the cause of the disaster. The Titanic had hit an iceberg which had opened one side of the ship allowing the sea to flood to the so-called water tight compartments. Only some 680 people, had been accommodated on the lifeboats, mostly women and children. They were rescued by the Carpathia some hours after the big ship went down. One hundred and ninety bodies had been found and taken to Halifax for burial. The Americans had opened an inquiry and the surviving crew members and passengers were giving evidence.
Despite the claims of the White Star Line, there were already questions being asked about the speed of the ship and the route it had taken. It was now known that Titanic had received many warning messages about ice and icebergs and at least one passenger had ‘smelt ice,’ a distinctive smell familiar to crew who sailed in these waters. Why had the ship not altered course or reduced speed? Why was the Captain not on the bridge? Why the delay in responding to the iceberg warning?
Every new detail to emerge from the American inquiry and the interviews with survivors was read and considered. For the people who built the ship and the families of those who’d sailed on her, it seemed as if understanding precisely what had happened would ease the pain. But it didn’t. It only provided a way of expressing some of the hurt and grief.
On Sunday morning, Rose and John attended a memorial service for the 1,500 victims in Holy Trinity, Banbridge. That afternoon, Sarah joined them and they went up to Belfast to the cathedral service, so that John could add to the collection for the widows and orphans of the Belfast crew members the contribution from the four mills.
To Rose’s great surprise, Sarah wore black. Quakers did not hold with this sign of mourning and when Hugh died, she’d not given a thought to mourning dress. Now, standing in the packed cathedral, a small dark figure, she looked pale, ravaged and heartbroken, though she held herself erect and composed and managed to sing ‘Nearer my God to Thee,’ without crying, which was more than Rose was able to do.
‘Hello, Ma. How’s your back?
Rose looked up from her book some days later, surprised there’d been no sound of a motor.
‘I can’t complain. It was entirely my own fault. I should know better than to garden for more than an hour or two, but the day was so lovely,’ she replied ruefully, getting awkwardly to her feet and kissing her.
‘Have you time for a cup of tea?’ she asked automatically, for Sarah had seldom time for more than a short visit these days.
‘Yes, I think so,’ she replied, dropping her document case by the door and slipping off her jacket.
Surprised, but pleased, Rose drew the kettle forward on the stove.
‘Did you get Helen and Hugh safely back, yesterday? I’m sure they didn’t want to go,’ Rose said, looking over her shoulder as she crossed to the dresser.
‘Actually, they were quite keen when it came to it,’ Sarah replied thoughtfully. ‘I think all this Titanic business upset them and Mrs Beatty wasn’t herself at all till we got the good news about her niece.’
‘Has there been anything further from her?’
‘No, just that one word, ‘Safe’. I expect she’ll have to stay for the American inquiry, but the Americans have been very kind. I read that complete strangers were waiting at the docks with clothes for the survivors when the Carpathia arrived.’
‘Yes, I read about that too. And they paid the fares of the steerage passengers to wherever they’d been going. It’s some comfort to see such kindness,’ said Rose, as she collected china mugs and a jug of milk and came back to the stove.
‘It is, indeed,’ Sarah agreed. ‘It makes up for the likes of Sir Bruce Ismay getting off in the first lifeboat with his wife and secretary and enough empty places to have saved three or four whole families,’ she said bitterly.
Rose looked round quickly from spooning tea. She thought she saw Sarah flick something out of one eye as she sat staring fixedly into the orange glow of the fire.
‘Did you read about the Straus’s, Ma? Isador and Ida. They own Macy’s, the big store in New York.’
‘No, love, I don’t think so. Was it in the papers you brought yesterday?’
‘Perhaps it was today’s,’ Sarah replied uneasily. ‘I’ve brought them for you,’ she added flatly, as Rose handed her a favourite mug decorated with delicate sprays of forget-me-not.
There was a look on her face that Rose could not read. She seemed quite in command of herself, but then, she always did. The last time Rose had seen Sarah upset was more than a year ago, after a particularly bad accident at Ballievy. A machine guard had not been replaced after cleaning and a girl had been caught by her hair and died from her injuries.
They drank their tea in silence.
‘What happened to the Straus’s, Sarah?’
‘They went to the lifeboats and said “Goodbye” and Mrs Straus got in and sat down,’ began Sarah coolly. ‘And then she got up again and climbed out of the lifeboat and went back to her husband. She said they’d been together all these years and they weren’t going to be parted now. Then they went away along the deck together.’
Her tone remained steady almost to the last word, but when she said ‘together’ her voice broke into a choking sob and tears streamed down her cheeks. She covered her face with her hands, her narrow shoulders shaking as she rocked back and forth in her father’s fireside chair.
‘Sarah, Sarah, love, what is it? Tell me what it is?’ Rose whispered, jumping to her feet and putting her arms round her.
She stroked her hair and kissed her neck and the small piece of forehead that emerged as Sarah wiped her face ineffectually.
‘Sarah, love. Tell me. Is it Hugh?
‘No, it’s me,’ she gasped, as she pulled out a handkerchief from her skirt pocket. ‘I wish I could have gone with Hugh. That’s wicked isn’t it?
‘The Straus’s were old and their children grown up. If Hugh and I had been on the Titanic, he’d have made me go because of Helen and young Hugh. But I wouldn’t have wanted to go. Not even for them. And that’s all wrong, isn’t it? I ought to love my children and I don’t.’
&n
bsp; ‘Oh Sarah, Sarah, you’re not wicked, you’re bereft. You’ve lost the man you loved. You’ve loved him all your life.’
‘I still love him. I’ll never love anyone else,’ she sobbed. ‘Whatever he says, I’ll never love anyone like I loved him.’
‘Of course, you won’t. You can’t love any two people in the same way. You can’t love the children like you loved Hugh, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love them.’
‘Doesn’t it? Sometimes I can hardly bear to look at them because they’re so like him. Hugh even sounds like him when he’s trying to be grown up,’ she went on, her voice stronger, though the tears still flowed.
‘I simply cannot imagine how I can go on living without him. Without joy. Without comfort. Just work and the children. No motor coming into the yard. No footstep in the hallway. No warm arms at night or in the morning. Never, ever again.’
‘Sarah, you’re too hard on yourself. It’s not a year yet,’ Rose said firmly, wiping her tears with her own handy. ‘You’ve done nothing but work. You’re tired out and everything’s worse when you’re tired. Do you remember when you were a little girl, how irritable you got? You were so cross the others used to be afraid of you.’
Rose paused, grateful for the sniff that might have been the ghost of a laugh.
‘But now you’re so good, so grown up, so sensible, you’ve forgotten how to be sad or upset.’
‘But isn’t that what one’s supposed to do? When one has children and responsibilities?’ Sarah countered, as she blew her nose loudly.
‘Oh yes, we have to try,’ said Rose, whose back was aching furiously with bending over. ‘But how can we be comforted if we don’t admit our pain and hurt?’
‘I thought comfort was only for children,’ Sarah came back at her again as she wiped her face with Rose’s drier hanky.
‘But we’re all children when we’re hurt, Sarah,’ Rose said firmly, taking up her stone cold hands in her own warm ones.
‘Did you never see Hugh cry?’ she went on softly.
Sarah nodded silently, swallowed and blew her nose.
‘He was always ashamed when he cried,’ she said awkwardly.
‘That’s a great pity, Sarah,’ Rose nodded. ‘But it’s common enough. It was years before I persuaded your father that tears are nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘Da?’
‘Da, and my brother Sam, and Thomas Scott,’ she said firmly, ‘and the messenger who came whose cousin the boilermaker was lost.’
Sarah stared at her, her eyes red and swollen, her cheeks still damp.
‘Ma, what am I going to do? Some days I think I’m going mad.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Sarah walked slowly back up the hill to Rathdrum, her gaze moving along the hedgerows and over the sloping fields as if she hadn’t laid eyes on them for a long time. The afternoon was sunny. Great patches of blue sky were scribbled with light cloud and the breeze was fresh but not chill. With the air clear, the mountains seemed so close, their familiar craggy shapes sharply outlined. She stopped on the steepest part of the hill and stared at them till her eyes blurred in the strong reflected light. Yes, that was it. It was as if a photographer had enhanced the outline with the slightest touch of Indian ink on a very fine brush.
To her surprise, she found herself thinking about the photographic studio in Belfast where she’d worked before she and Hugh were married. She could almost smell the sharp odour of fixer that greeted you at the top of the steep, narrow stairs and hear the voice of her boss, that awful man, Abernethy. Photographing the great and the good was the mainstay of his business. She hadn’t had much time for most of them, but she’d learnt a lot about portraiture. She had pictures of Hugh and the children she was pleased with, though she hadn’t looked at them since he died.
The big chestnut that stretched its lower branches over the road at the entrance to the driveway was beginning to leaf. The sticky buds had burst. Still a pale, downy, grey-green, the delicate leaves were beginning to unfold. The driveway was adrift with outer coverings, sepals of pale brown and pink mixed up with the fading white blossoms from the flowering cherries they’d planted five years ago to replace two elderly limes lost in a winter gale.
Snow in Springtime, she thought, as she walked slowly towards the handsome front door that no one ever used.
‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth, come quick. Ma’s ill.’
Suddenly, she saw herself, a schoolgirl, running along this same drive, ploughing through deep snow, her heart pounding, gasping for breath, intent only on reaching that same front door where a gleam of light spilt out through the fanlight into the darkness of a winter day.
‘So very long ago,’ she thought. ‘And in another life.’
She and Hannah had tramped up the hill after school and found their mother lying icy cold on the bedroom floor. Hugh had gone for the doctor, but she’d met the doctor herself the previous day. She knew he’d be no good. The only hope was Elizabeth. Dear, sensible Elizabeth, Hugh’s sister, who’d collected brandy and herbs and friar’s balsam in her basket and saved her mother’s life.
But Elizabeth couldn’t save Hugh. Neither she nor Richard had been able to do anything but watch and hope. They had been so loving and so good to her, knowing her distress, but as the days passed they had warned her Hugh was weakening, his body no longer strong enough to fight the fever, and their honesty had given them one last night together.
She walked round to the kitchen door, pushed it open and called out a greeting to her housekeeper. Then she remembered she’d sent Mrs Beatty to Belfast to spend a night or two with her sister, to comfort her if her only daughter should have been lost with the Titanic. The house was silent. Even more silent than usual.
She put down her document case in the dining room where the big table was covered with neat piles of papers. Across the hallway, the door to the sitting room stood open, a pleasant room with its well-polished furniture and marble fireplace, now filled with sunlight, the grate laid ready with sticks and fir cones. She moved back into the hallway, and stood for a moment, looking at the spill of brightness from the fanlight and the pattern it made on the carpet, unsure of what to do.
In all these months, she could not recall being completely alone in the house before. Elizabeth had stayed with her for a few days after the funeral. She herself had honoured the entertainment of Friends from various parts of England to whom Hugh had already offered hospitality. The children had come for holidays. Mrs Beatty had remained, steady and reliable, saying little, ensuring that she ate what she put in front of her.
Sarah made up her mind and walked quickly upstairs. She crossed the landing to the bedroom she and Hugh had shared, kicked off her shoes and lay down on her own side of the large, high bed. She closed her eyes, felt tears press through the lids and trickle past her ears.
The August night had been dark and airless, the windows open wide to catch any breath of air. Hugh lay motionless, beads of moisture on his forehead, his breathing shallow.
‘Now, Mrs Sinton, you must go and get some rest. I’ll come for you immediately if there’s the slightest change.’
The night nurse Richard had found for Hugh was both efficient and kind. Neither she nor Elizabeth ever tried to send her away when she sat through the long hours of the day with Hugh. They just encouraged her to walk in the garden when he was deeply asleep and to eat her meals downstairs while they washed his fevering body and changed the sheets.
But that warm August night, despite her weariness, she could not sleep at all. Hugh was slipping away. Even without Richard and Elizabeth’s cautious words, she could see that for herself. His body was weary, flagging, bathed in sweat. There was nothing anyone could do. Nothing. No magic potion. No miracle.
She’d got up and dressed, gone to their bedroom, pushed open the door and seen the white-clad figure sitting by the bed, reading in a tiny pool of light. To her surprise, the nurse said nothing when she appeared, merely got up from her chair, nodded to her and left the ro
om, closing the door quietly behind her.
Very carefully, so as not to disturb him, Sarah had climbed on to the bed and moved herself slowly across till she was close enough to put her ice-cold hand on his hot, damp forehead.
‘Sarah, my love …’
‘Hush. I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep,’ she said softly.
‘I don’t think I was asleep. Or perhaps I was dreaming of you. I was thinking of you. I’m so glad you’ve come.’
His voice was weak but perfectly clear. She sensed that each word was an effort, but an effort he chose to make.
‘Sarah, I have been so happy since we married,’ he said, turning his head slowly to look at her, as she took his hand. ‘I can hardly believe how happy. There is only one darkness on my spirit. Were it gone, I could go in peace, though it is not my will but God’s.’
‘What’s that, Hugh? What darkness?’ she asked quietly, as she gazed at his worn and ravaged face.
‘Your grief, Sarah,’ he said steadily. ‘I cannot bear the thought of your grief, but I cannot ask you not to grieve for what we have lost.’
He paused, as if to gather the little strength he had. ‘I would be so happy if you could promise me to live in hope,’ he continued, his voice now a whisper. ‘To love again wherever love is to be found.’
He stopped, totally exhausted by this longer effort. Sarah leant across his body to the bedside table, dipped her fingers in a glass of water, moistened his lips and then wiped the sweat from his brow.
‘I can never love anyone as I have loved you,’ she said honestly.
He pressed her hand weakly.
‘I know that,’ he said steadily. ‘But you are young and may have a long life ahead of you. Think of Elizabeth. Think of me. We neither of us expected to find joy in a loved one. Please, my darling, promise me you will not turn away from what could bring you joy.’
