The Master's Tale--A Novel of the Titanic

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  ‘The telephone kept ringing – but no one was there. Marianne said she woke to see a figure at the end of her bed – and then Eloise heard the piano playing in an empty room. There were other things, I forget now. But they’ve been so distressed by having to return home with this mystery hanging over them, it’s almost all they’ve talked about. Well,’ she smiled a little at my expression, ‘it may sound unlikely, but they’ve been so kind to me, I simply wanted to help. So,’ she added with a gesture of appeal, ‘when I saw Mr Stead was aboard, I offered to speak to him.’

  ‘I imagine he was eager to oblige?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘He was reluctant at first. But I’m afraid the ladies and I were rather persuasive.’ After a moment, with a quick glance, she asked, ‘Do you dislike him?’

  ‘I think he’s…’ I stopped to amend my words. ‘What he does, I think, is dangerous.’

  Her cheeks suffused with colour. ‘Again, sir, I can only apologize.’

  ‘Mrs Carver,’ I said gently, leaning towards her, ‘I attach no blame to you. The matter’s been dealt with now, so it’s unlikely to raise its head again. I ask only that you do not discuss it with other passengers.’

  ‘Of course. I understand.’

  I sipped my coffee. She sipped hers. I could see she felt rebuked. In an attempt to bring the conversation round to less distressing subjects, I said, ‘You were just visiting London?’

  She relaxed visibly, her mouth curving into a smile. ‘Yes, I have family there. But I married an American – and now I’m going home to New Haven and my little girl.’

  ‘You must miss her,’ I said with sympathy. ‘Have you been away long?’

  ‘Just a month – but it feels like forever. I can’t wait to see her.’ She looked down, half-shy, half-amused. ‘She’s only two. I hope she hasn’t forgotten me.’

  I smiled and shook my head. ‘I doubt it. I have a daughter – ever since she was born I’ve been away for weeks at a time. She never forgot me, not even when she was very small.’

  We talked about our daughters, her little Daisy, and my Mel. The conversation moved on to New England. She’d been living in Connecticut for four years, and I had come to know something of the area in my time, so it was pleasing to discover we liked the same places for similar reasons. But then, in telling me how she’d met her husband, a lawyer, she mentioned her family in London.

  When she said they were bankers, the Langs sprang to mind. Aware that time was pressing and there might not be another opportunity to ask, I was more direct than polite. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Carver,’ I began, ‘if I seem to stare – but you remind me of someone I used to know…’

  ‘Really?’ In her flush of pleasure I saw the resemblance afresh.

  ‘The surname was Lang.’

  She exclaimed with surprise. ‘No! But that’s my family name too!’

  The moment seemed to stretch itself. As I struggled for words, she looked up. I turned my head and there was Bruce Ismay, one eyebrow cocked quizzically, bowing to Mrs Carver and begging to be introduced.

  I found my professional self from somewhere. Civilities over, I checked my watch and said I must go to the bridge – the ritual of the noon sight. She must have sensed something, because Mrs Carver excused herself too, saying she’d arranged to meet her friends for lunch. I bowed as she left us, too stunned to think straight.

  17

  Leaving Bruce to make of it what he would, I caught up with my guest in the atrium. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Carver – I really do have to get to the bridge. But, would you – would you care to…? I mean, it would please me enormously if we could talk later?’

  ‘Yes, Captain,’ she said warmly. ‘If you have time, I’d really like that.’

  ‘After lunch?’ She nodded, surprise and pleasure in her eyes. ‘Here, then, at two o’clock?’

  Buoyed by the prospect as we parted, the day seemed brighter, my fatigue a thing of the past. Indeed, my body seemed not to belong to me. As for my mind, it was so elsewhere I was barely aware of the daily ritual. While Murdoch and the juniors set about calculating the sun’s height against the stars taken that morning, I was staring at the horizon, thinking about Lucinda Carver.

  She had to be Nicholas’s daughter: she would know something of Dorothea. Excitement turned to apprehension. What had happened in the years between?

  I finished checking the calculations, noticing the boy on the starboard side. The one who was going to go to sea one day. I knew he was waiting to catch me again, but there was time to stand and chat to him for a few minutes. He asked how far we’d travelled, so I told him our position, and that we’d covered 519 nautical miles since noon the day before.

  ‘Why do you always say, nautical miles, sir?’ he asked. I liked this boy, and thought him old enough – he was about twelve – to understand the difference between land miles and sea miles.

  ‘Well now, if you make a circle on the surface of the earth, and divide it up into degrees, you’ll find – once you’ve done the maths – that a degree measures 60 nautical miles. A minute is one sixtieth of a degree, so a minute equals one nautical mile. And that nautical mile measures 6,080 feet. Rather longer than a statute mile, which is…?’

  ‘1,760 yards,’ he answered.

  ‘Or, 5,280 feet,’ I added, watching him consider the maths.

  ‘And knots,’ he said triumphantly, ‘are nautical miles travelled in an hour!’

  ‘Exactly,’ I agreed, delighted to hear yesterday’s lesson repeated back to me. ‘So we have travelled 519 nautical miles, in the last 25 hours. Remember, we gain almost an hour each day, travelling westwards, so our average speed has been a little over 21 knots.’

  He beamed. ‘Thank you, sir!’

  I ruffled his hair. ‘You’ll go far, young man. Now then – get along. Your mother will be wondering where you are.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir – she knows!’

  I chuckled, pretty sure she did know. And then, feeling like a boy myself, I went down to have my lunch.

  ~~~

  Light from the glass dome cast a radiance around her as she came towards me. Aware of how lovely she looked in her velvet coat, I smiled with pleasure. ‘Mrs Carver.’

  ‘Captain,’ she said warmly, extending her hand, ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you could spare the time to talk.’

  I assured her the pleasure was all mine. As we reached the Boat Deck I donned my cap firmly while she tied a pink chiffon scarf around her hat. Stepping out into the sunshine, she said lightly, ‘If you knew Dorothea – and I imagine she’s the person you were referring to over coffee – I’d love to know more about her. You did mean Dorothea,’ she added, ‘when you remarked on the resemblance? Uncle Nicholas says I’m the image of her.’

  My step faltered. ‘Yes – you are indeed.’ I moved towards the rail, leaned against it, turned my eyes to the distant horizon. Uncle Nicholas? I was suddenly confused. If he wasn’t her father, then what was her relationship to Dorothea?

  ‘So you knew her!’ she exclaimed happily. ‘I can scarce believe it after all this…’ But whatever she meant was covered by a gesture. ‘Never mind,’ she went on quickly, ‘do tell me how you met? If you knew her as Dorothea Lang, I imagine it must have been in Hong Kong? Lang’s the family name, of course – her married name was Curtis.’

  ‘Curtis – yes.’ I was nodding like a donkey, unable to take in what she was saying. I cleared my throat. ‘Yes – Curtis – I met him once.’

  At that she seemed equally taken aback. Gazing frankly, we shook our heads at the same moment. As the wind whipped pink chiffon across her face, she looked out over the dappled sea. Grey-green waves, a grey-blue horizon. ‘Ah, so you met Mr Curtis. When was that, do you mind my asking?’

  Something in her voice had changed. I wondered why. ‘Well now,’ I said slowly, pretending that time wasn’t etched on my mind. ‘It must have been ’82 or ’83, when I was on the Pacific route. We were in and out of Hong Kong regularly then.�
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  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘But I first met Dorothea,’ I went on, gathering myself together, ‘back in ’70, when she was serving tea at a mission hall.’ At that, Mrs Carver stared in surprise. ‘I met her father, that same afternoon. They talked about Nicholas,’ I added, deliberately bringing him back into the conversation, ‘but I never met him.’

  ‘Uncle Nicholas worked in London. He was my guardian.’

  ‘Your guardian?’ Confused, I said, ‘But who was…? Forgive me, I don’t understand. What is your relationship to Dorothea?’

  She studied me. After what seemed a long pause, she said gently, ‘Dorothea was my mother. Sadly, she died when I was young.’

  My shock must have been obvious. I felt winded, in need of a hiding place. I bent forward, shielding my eyes. When I had my voice under control, I said, ‘I didn’t know. To be honest, I didn’t even know she had children.’

  ‘Just me.’ As I looked up she smiled. A rather tight little smile. She looked exactly like Dorothea then. ‘I was the only one.’

  In the space of a few moments, I felt the world had changed. Dorothea, who had sworn to me she could not have children because of a botched miscarriage – or deliberate abortion, I was never sure – did have a child after all. But whose child was she? What about Curtis?

  I couldn’t ask. Mindful of being in a public place I suggested we move on. Perhaps Lucinda Carver was nervous too, because as we walked she started talking about her childhood. Clipped, rapid words that I found hard to take in – and hard to bear.

  ‘I didn’t really know either of my parents, Captain. Dorothea left me in London with Uncle Nicholas and his family – the climate in Hong Kong, you understand. At least, that was the reason given. She came back for a few months each year until I was – six, I think.

  ‘After that,’ she went on sadly, ‘I didn’t see her again. She died in Hong Kong when I was seven. Fever, they said. I imagine it was malaria.’

  Hearing it like that gave me a queer sensation in the pit of my stomach. I had never thought of Dorothea gone, always imagined her continuing to live as she had when I knew her, with strings of lovers and quite invulnerable. In my imagination she had never suffered, never grown old.

  ‘Oh, forgive me,’ her daughter apologized, ‘I’ve put it badly.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I’m a little shocked, that’s all. And so very sorry.’ With a mote of soot in my eye I stopped to find my handkerchief. Struggling to keep my voice even, I said, ‘Like her mother. Her mother died of Hong Kong fever too.’ I took a deep breath. ‘And your father?’

  Lucinda drew back at once. ‘Curtis?’ she said, just as Dorothea had, and shrugged in the same way. Curiously, I’d seen in Dorothea only a couldn’t-care-less gesture; in her daughter I suspected it hid a wealth of pain. ‘He came to see me,’ she went on, ‘a few months later. I’d not met him before.’

  As I stared, aghast, she shrugged again. ‘You say you met him. Didn’t you know he had a Chinese family?’ As I nodded, she asked bleakly, ‘What would he want with me?’

  ‘He only came to see you? Not to take you back to Hong Kong?’

  ‘Oh, no. He’d come to contest the Will. My mother had left her share of the business to me, but he was claiming it, you see.’

  I nodded, said I was aware of both business and domestic arrangements. Despite the stiff breeze along the Boat Deck, more and more people were coming out to stroll in the sunshine. Ahead, two ladies in black were passing the funnels and coming towards us. Recognising the Enderby sisters, I knew we had to speak to them.

  They looked enquiringly at my companion, but – like her mother before her – she seemed able to dissimulate without effort. I was a little stiff, I’m afraid, and they may have thought I was still displeased with them. Anyway, after a brief exchange of platitudes we each walked on.

  After a few yards, aware that she was having difficulty with her scarf, I said, ‘Why don’t we have some tea?’ And so we found ourselves a corner in the pretty Palm Court, shielded from casual gaze by fronds of greenery.

  ‘You were saying that Curtis contested your mother’s will,’ I reminded her as we were served.

  ‘Yes, and it might even have gone his way. In law, you see, Curtis was entitled to his dead wife’s estate.’

  Understanding the difficulties of such a situation, I nodded and waited. When she’d poured the tea, Lucinda said, ‘But it transpired that he’d installed his Chinese son as manager out there. Uncle Nicholas – as you can probably imagine – was afraid Lang’s would lose control of the Hong Kong end, which was where his father had started the business. He wasn’t going to let that happen.’

  ‘No, I can imagine. What happened?’

  ‘He fought Curtis and won,’ she said with satisfaction. But then, raising her brows, she added, ‘Not that there was much left of Dorothea’s estate after that…’

  I knew enough about the law – and the situation out there – to understand that it must have been a dirty fight. ‘Oh what a tangled web,’ I murmured, shaking my head, thinking back on how the bank and bullion business had been the top and bottom of all that was wrong about that marriage – and also between Dorothea and me.

  ‘That must have been hard for you…’

  ‘It was.’ She paused, considering, her blue eyes veiled. ‘Very unpleasant.’ I noticed how tightly her hands were clasped.

  Wanting to take those slender hands in mine, I said, ‘And you were just a child…’ With a dozen questions on my tongue, I forced them back. Rarely had I felt so constrained. ‘A strange man,’ I added, with possibly more feeling than I intended. ‘To think more of the business than he did of your mother…’

  ‘You saw that?’ Under her earnest gaze I felt my opinion was being weighed against something else. Suddenly, she said, ‘He was not my father, was he?’

  Startled, at a loss for words, I shook my head. Before I could speak she took it for confirmation. ‘No, I don’t think so, either. There was too much – I don’t know – talk, cruelty, accusations.’ Her voice was suddenly husky with emotion. ‘Oh, Captain Smith, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t be saying such things, involving you in all this ancient family history. You don’t know me…’

  I reached across to pat her hand, but the gesture seemed to worsen the crisis. As she reached for a lacy handkerchief, I drew back. ‘It’s all right, my dear, think nothing of it…’ She was Dorothea’s daughter. Now she’d begun I wanted to know everything. ‘Do you mean Curtis? What could he accuse you of? You were just a child.’

  Gathering herself together, she said tersely, ‘It was the day I was taken in to the drawing room to meet him. He drew me close – I thought to bestow a kiss. He was, after all, supposed to be my father. Until then I’d regarded Uncle Nicholas as my father, so it was a difficult moment…’ For a moment she stumbled, but then went on, ‘I didn’t like the look in this man’s eye. I tried to pull away, but he held my shoulders, stared hard at me. And then he said, Oh, yes, I can see whose child you are. ’

  Shocked, I could hardly speak. ‘What on earth did he mean?’ I got out at last. That she was the by-blow of one of his friends?

  ‘He didn’t say. That was it. I was dismissed.’

  Stricken for her, I hung my head. When I could trust myself, I looked up. ‘But my dear, you are the image of your mother…’

  With a wry little smile, she said, ‘You’re very kind, sir, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. Later, when the estate was being fought over, my cousin David said I wouldn’t inherit a penny, because I didn’t have a father and my mother was… a tramp, I think was the word he used. He must have been listening at doors.’

  With a huff of disgust, I shook my head. ‘She was never that.’

  ‘I’m afraid things came out at the court hearing which were hard to misinterpret.’

  ‘My dear, believe me, courts are places where things are deliberately misinterpreted! Folk swear on the Holy Bible and proceed to lie through their teeth!’<
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  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so!’

  Leaning towards her I proceeded to do a bit of falsifying myself. I couldn’t bear to think of her burning with shame and sorrow over an accident of birth. Lucinda Carver was Dorothea’s daughter: that was enough for me. So I gave her my view of the situation between her mother and Curtis, and told her that David Lang was the one to blame for it, with his insistence on putting trade and money above all else. Way above his only daughter’s happiness.

  ‘But it rebounded on him in the end! I swear, if Curtis blackened your mother’s name, it was for his own gain.

  ‘And it’s ironic,’ I went on, ‘when you think David Lang married for love – a Portuguese beauty from Macau. Her portrait was still hanging in the main room of the bungalow when I was last there. He should have known better than to talk his daughter into a marriage of convenience.’

  ‘Portuguese? I didn’t know that – Uncle Nicholas never said.’

  ‘Another little secret,’ I commented dryly.

  She viewed me keenly. ‘But you know so much…’

  ‘Yes. Too much, perhaps.’

  Afraid of what she might see, I turned away, studying the surrounding tables through the veil of palm fronds. ‘When we first met – and it was only briefly, though I never forgot her – your mother was a girl of 18. I was less than a year older – 3rd Mate on a sailing ship out of Liverpool. I thought Dorothea was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen…’ Swamped by memories, for a moment it was hard to go on. ‘I was over 30 when we met again, and by then she was married – still beautiful, of course, but life with Curtis had changed her.’ I paused, searching vainly for words to explain the sudden passion that had flared between us.

  ‘Did you marry for love?’ I asked, knowing she had from her warm response. ‘Well, my dear, you’ll understand how powerful such feelings can be.’ As she agreed, I cleared my throat, suddenly shy, finding it difficult to say that I had loved Dorothea, and she had loved me – I’d never been sure of it anyway. ‘Perhaps it was wrong, but…’