On a Cold Dark Sea

by Elizabeth Blackwell

  “I phoned the house the next day, from the inn where I’d spent the night in town. The housekeeper answered, and I said, ‘It’s me, Master George, please let me speak to my mother,’ and she said she’d been told Lady Upton wasn’t taking any calls. I said, ‘Not even from her own son?’ and she said those were her orders, and I promptly broke into tears—proving my father right, I suppose. I still remember the click when the phone was put down. It was the sound that severed me from my family forever.”

  Georgie was still a performer; his glance drifted mournfully downward as he sighed. But that didn’t mean his emotions weren’t real.

  “Reg saved me,” he said. “That sounds foolish, doesn’t it, given what happened? But he took me in when I had no one else. I wrote to Mother a few times—when I told her I was leaving the country, I felt sure she’d write back, to say goodbye, at least. She never did.

  “I don’t know if Reg intended to take me, when he first planned his trip to America. We hadn’t talked much about the future—we hadn’t talked about it at all, to be honest. But when he asked me along and talked about all the adventures we’d have together, it felt like I’d been given a second chance at life. When he was lost”—Georgie took a momentary pause, swallowing down the pain—“I was shattered. But I couldn’t go back. I owed it to Reg to live a life of truth, the sort of life he’d have had if he survived. Begging my parents for forgiveness would have been a betrayal of Reg, and it would have been useless, besides. I’d no doubt my parents preferred to see me dead than a nancy boy.”

  “I think your mother would give anything to know you were alive,” Charlotte said.

  Georgie shrugged and looked down at the watch. “Six o’clock,” he said. “Julio will be serving the canapes.”

  “Julio?”

  Georgie grinned. “My butler.”

  “Good gracious. Does he serve in full livery?”

  “Poor chap, he’d roast.” Georgie stood and offered his hand.

  Below, by the pool, someone had turned on a gramophone, and voices were singing, “It don’t mean a thing! If it ain’t got that swing!”

  “I should be going,” Charlotte said.

  “Oh, please stay. I’d like you to.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t know”—how to put it delicately?—“I don’t know if it’s my sort of crowd.”

  “Afraid you’ll be corrupted?” Georgie laughed, amused by Charlotte’s reticence. “No orgies, I promise. Just dinner. I’d love everyone to meet you.”

  She’d assumed it was the other way around: I want to impress you by showing off all my dazzling friends. Charlotte was unexpectedly touched by the sincerity of Georgie’s invitation. It gave her a warm quiver of pleasure, followed quickly by thirst for another drink.

  “That’s very kind of you,” she said. “I accept.”

  They walked from the bedroom, Georgie leading the way. At the top of the stairs, he paused and asked, “You still go by Mrs. Evers?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said, “I never remarried. Well, I wasn’t married in the first place, but no one needs to know that.”

  “It’s just occurred to me that it makes for rather awkward introductions. Hello, everyone, I’d like you to meet . . . Mrs. Reginald Evers!”

  They both laughed, and Charlotte was struck by how quickly her earlier reservations had faded. At eighteen years old, Georgie had been like a castle on a movie set: a fine-looking façade with nothing behind it. Now, in his late thirties, he’d grown into himself, and Charlotte was genuinely enjoying his company. Perhaps she had changed as well.

  “You could introduce me simply as Charlotte—one of those exotic adventuresses with no surname.”

  “No, no. You have to be Russian or Italian for that. You’re much too British. Charlotte Evers will do. I’ll say you’re my cousin.”

  “We used to spend summers together, in the country,” Charlotte suggested.

  “And Nanny was always scolding us for running about and making a mess at tea.”

  “She was a wet blanket, wasn’t she?”

  How easily the imagined vignettes shook shape: Charlotte and Georgie as children, their clothes muddied, eating toast in front of a nursery fire. The two of them older, shoes flung aside, exchanging insults and giggles over a game of croquet. The invented memories came to Charlotte in such detail that they might as well have been real.

  Drinks and nibbles extended into a five-course dinner. Georgie seated Charlotte at his right, and the conversation was lively and loud. Everyone wanted to talk to Georgie’s surprise visitor, and Charlotte was gratified by the attention. More than once, she was reminded of her escapades with Reg, as she and Georgie traded made-up stories of their childhood, playing off each other with the ease of experienced performers. After dessert, the gramophone was wheeled into the sitting room for dancing, and Charlotte never lacked for partners. In London, the onslaught of all that beauty and talent might have irritated her or made her sarcastically dismissive. That night, she felt more generous. Most of the people there were so young and eager for approval. It was the easiest sort of kindness to say something nice and watch them bloom, as if compliments were currency and Charlotte a benevolent ruler tossing out coins from her carriage.

  It was only at the end of the night—after the guests had made their way home in huddles of two and three, saying goodbye with elaborate European kisses on the cheek—that Georgie and Charlotte found themselves alone again. He insisted on driving her rather than ringing for a taxi and teased her about staying at the Sultan’s Palace, while she protested that she found it marvelously bohemian. The night had turned cool, and Georgie urged Charlotte to borrow one of his jackets. They paused by the front door as Georgie placed it over her shoulders, and Charlotte was suddenly overcome by a visceral memory of Reg. He’d stood behind her in just the same way, wrapping his coat around her and pulling it taut around her life belt. Putting her survival above his own.

  “I miss Reg so much,” Charlotte said. “I hadn’t realized, until tonight.” She felt the same looming dread she felt when on deadline, the urgency of putting words in the right order as the seconds ticked past. “I was beastly to him. And to you.”

  Georgie reached out a hand, and Charlotte stretched out her fingers to hold on. But no, he was only adjusting the back of the jacket. His eyes were turned away.

  “The situation, with me and Reg,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t tawdry. I was in love with him.”

  Charlotte wanted to tell Georgie she understood, but she hadn’t, not at all. When she met Georgie, her notions about sex were vague and based mostly on rumor; she’d never even seen a naked man. But she’d known with self-righteous certainty that what he was doing with Reg was wrong. She’d never allowed herself to believe that Georgie and Reg had real affection for each other, or considered how her constant disapproval might have hurt them. Charlotte had told herself no decent person would condone such behavior. But she was hardly an exemplar of virtue herself, given the things she’d done.

  No, Charlotte realized, it went deeper than that. She’d tried to deny Reg the happiness he deserved because she was jealous. Because he hadn’t chosen her.

  “Reg loved you, too, you know,” Georgie said.

  “Please,” Charlotte protested. “You mustn’t worry about sparing my feelings.”

  “I told you, didn’t I, that he thought of you as a sister? It was the truth. He never talked about his parents or where he’d come from; he said you were the nearest he had to family. That he’d even come close to marrying you.”

  “I wanted to marry him, very much,” Charlotte said. “He turned me down.” Ridiculous, really, how much that rejection still hurt.

  “Most men of our kind do marry,” Georgie said, “if they want a normal life. Things are a little freer here in Los Angeles, if you’re discreet about it, but I was married for a time myself, in New York. Sadie, a lovely little dancer. Very young, very naïve. It only lasted a year. Luckily for me, you’re not anyone in Hollywood
until you’ve had at least two divorces.”

  Charlotte wondered if Sadie blamed herself for the marriage falling apart. She hoped Georgie had been brave enough to tell her the truth.

  “Reg was more honorable than me,” Georgie said. “I know that’s a strange thing to say, given his past. He could have married you, and you’d have done his cooking and washing and raised children while he went off and enjoyed his little dalliances. In many ways, marrying you would have been the easy choice. He didn’t do it because he was too fond of you. He was afraid you’d find out who he was and hate him for it. Better to break your heart straight off, when you were young enough to recover. He hoped you would understand, in time. That you wouldn’t cut him out of your life.”

  “I didn’t know.” Charlotte’s chest pulsed with remembered pain. “I thought you’d come in and pushed me aside . . . oh, it all sounds so silly now.”

  “We were put in an impossible situation, weren’t we? Both in love with the same man, like a cheap melodrama! And Reg felt terrible. It’s a vile feeling, to know you’ve hurt someone you care for.”

  It shouldn’t matter, after all this time. But it made Charlotte’s heart swell. She thought of Reg as she’d first known him: bursting with life, always game for a laugh. The man who had changed her life. That Reg had been overshadowed by the man who drowned, the end darkening what had come before. None of that seemed to matter anymore. It was enough to know Reg had loved her. He always had.

  “Reg told me to be patient, that you’d come around in time,” Georgie was saying. “I was mad for Reg, so I did my duty and fawned all over you. No wonder you couldn’t stand me.”

  “I was wretched to you!” Charlotte managed a rueful laugh.

  “I made the same mistake actors do at auditions, when they’re desperate for a part. They talk too much and blast these enormous smiles, begging you to like them. It’s exhausting. Those are the ones who never get the roles.”

  How much of Charlotte’s cruelty had been driven by ignorance? I didn’t think it was possible for one man to love another, she wanted to tell Georgie. Or, I didn’t believe your feelings were real. Instead, she simply said, “I am sorry.”

  “Apology not necessary, but gratefully accepted,” Georgie said.

  “I’ve no doubt your mother would apologize as well, if you saw her.” Georgie shook his head quickly, rejecting this turn in the conversation, but Charlotte kept going. “It seemed to me she was very much under your father’s thumb. When he cut you off, she felt she had no choice but to go along.”

  “She was quite Victorian that way. In thrall to her lord and master.”

  “She regrets what happened, deeply,” Charlotte said. “I didn’t promise her anything; I only told her I’d try to find Reg when I came to America. If you could have seen her face . . . it’s as if that small hope is the only thing keeping her alive. I hope you’ll write to her, at least, but it’s entirely your decision.”

  “Is it?” Georgie asked with an amused scowl.

  “One letter. You could make an old woman happy, and no one else need ever know.”

  “And if I don’t write, you’ll be back on my doorstep, asking why I haven’t.”

  “I’ve train and boat tickets booked—I’ll be back in London next week. I won’t bother you again.”

  “Hmmph.” Georgie’s response was noncommittal. He held up his car keys. “Shall we?”

  They drove the ten minutes in silence, snaking first down an empty hillside road, then blending into the stream of cars traveling through Beverly Hills. Charlotte felt peacefully empty, cleansed of the anger and guilt that had always obscured her thoughts of Reg. Now, only the deepest, truest layer remained: affection, and gratitude, and a bittersweet tang of remorse.

  Georgie pulled up in front of the Sultan’s Palace and turned off the car. He turned to Charlotte and said, “I’ll do it. I’ll write.”

  She gave him a look of exaggerated, wide-eyed surprise.

  “I’d be a monster if I didn’t,” he said.

  Charlotte smiled, thinking how thrilled Lady Upton would be—if her heart didn’t stop from the shock.

  “Thank you,” Charlotte said. “I don’t think you’ll regret it.”

  “Ever since the sinking, I’ve been determined to have as few regrets as possible,” Georgie said. “I’ve made mistakes, more than my fair share, but I will never lie on my deathbed and think, ‘I wish I’d done that.’ I’ve done everything I wanted.”

  “Then you’re a lucky man,” Charlotte said.

  She wished she could say the same. There were dozens of things she’d meant to do or say but never gotten around to. She thought of Mr. Healy, and the letter she’d always intended to write. What a coward she’d been.

  “You know,” Georgie said, “they’re desperate for voice teachers here. The studios pay very well if you’ve got a posh accent and can teach farm boys how to talk proper.” He dragged the word out, in an overstated twang. “It’s not a bad place to live, Los Angeles. Sunshine year-round, fresh oranges every morning for breakfast.”

  Charlotte could envision it, briefly, but that future was a mirage. The girl who’d stepped off the Carpathia might have made a go of it. She was too far along to start over.

  “I’m afraid I’ve developed a taste for fog and rain,” she said lightly. “Awfully kind of you to suggest it, though.”

  “If I do come back to England—not that I plan to—but if I do, may I call on you?”

  “Of course,” Charlotte said. Then, more warmly, “I do hope you will.”

  They smiled at each other, and Charlotte felt Reg’s spirit with them, nudging them closer together. He’d rest in peace, Charlotte thought with uncharacteristic sentimentality, if he knew we were friends.

  Georgie’s voice and bearing were still British, but he’d adopted an American forthrightness that Charlotte admired. He openly admitted his faults and wasn’t afraid to speak honestly about the past. If he’d stayed in England, the dutiful son of Lord Upton, he’d never have become the man sitting next to her, a man at ease with himself and proud of the life he’d created. Charlotte handed Georgie one of her cards. She didn’t know if he’d make the effort to correspond, or if they’d ever see one another again. If not, she’d understand. London and The Oaks would feel very far away tomorrow, when he woke up and looked out at the mountains from his mammoth bed.

  But Charlotte hoped this wasn’t the end. Georgie, she realized, had reawakened a long-buried part of herself. He’d given her back Reg.

  “I never asked you,” Charlotte said, tentatively. “Were you near the ship when it went down?”

  Georgie nodded.

  “It must have been awful.”

  Georgie immediately understood what Charlotte meant by “awful.” “We had to push a few men away from our lifeboat,” he said. “We’d have tipped over otherwise.”

  Charlotte put all her effort into breathing steadily. There was no reason to get into all that, not now.

  “I imagine you had an easier time of it,” Georgie said. “You took a seat and rowed away, eh? Any millionaires in your boat?”

  “Charles Van Hausen. And Mrs. Harper. They married afterward, as you might have heard.” Charlotte intended the words to be carelessly amused, but they came out wrong. There was some sort of catch in her throat. “And Mrs. Dunning, and Mrs. McBride. There was a Swedish girl, absolutely drenched . . .”

  She needed to be clearer. To explain what happened in a logical way. Charlotte remembered the hotel manager giving her a mischievous smile and telling her he had bottles of whiskey in the back, available for the right price.

  “There was a man, in the water,” Charlotte declared, reckless with the elation of honesty. “Would you like to come up for a drink? You’re the only person I know who might understand.”

  PART THREE: THE LIFEBOAT

  APRIL 15, 1912

  1:55 a.m.

  The sailor grabs the top of Anna’s life belt and pulls. The shift in weight t
ilts the boat, and the old woman’s cane slips from her fingers, landing with a clatter at her feet. The woman across from her gasps and clutches the boy and girl at her side. Anna kicks her legs wildly, uselessly, as the edge of the boat presses against her chest. Every breath is a struggle.

  There are fifteen people in this lifeboat built to hold sixty-five. They sit on four wood benches, in emotional states that range from nervous distress to uncomprehending shock. The passengers are American, British, and French; eleven adults and two children. The two crewmen are English and not accustomed to maneuvering on the open sea. They have no training in sailing or navigation, and a lifeboat drill scheduled for that morning was cancelled; they owe their survival to the unknown officer who added their names to the emergency muster list. Slightly more than two hours have passed since the iceberg scraped the Titanic’s hull, and it has been one hour since the first lifeboat was lowered. Lifeboat 21, one of the last to leave the ship, has been in the water for five minutes.

  The sailor shifts his grip to Anna’s waist, tipping the boat farther to the side. Esme braces herself against the bench where she sits between Charlie and Sabine. The maid’s face is pinched tight with fear. In the back of the boat, a trio of middle-aged women unleash a Greek chorus of protests as the feathers on their hats swirl. Esme is pressing Charlie’s handkerchief to her face to staunch the bleeding from her cut cheek. It’s not painful; the cold air has numbed her skin. But she wonders if it will cause a scar and if she is a terrible person for worrying about her looks at such a time.

  The Titanic is sinking. The tip of the bow is already submerged, and the water continues to progress inexorably upward, leaving a scatter of flotsam in its wake. The passengers of Lifeboat 21 watch the tiny, distant figures still aboard attempt to stave off the inevitable, scurrying upward as the tilt of the deck grows ever steeper. Even as they see it happen, it seems impossible.