‘Then there isn’t a problem,’ he beamed. ‘We won’t need you until the autumn – we might even have a small job for you in the office in the meantime, which should give you plenty of time to get settled in. Where are you moving to, by the way?’
Suddenly embarrassed, I cleared my throat. ‘Waterloo, sir.’
He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Not Marine Crescent? Nice little houses,’ he allowed as I nodded, ‘and I must say fine views! Mine, as you probably know, is just a little way along from there…’
Of course I did. Our new home was barely a stone’s throw from his large stuccoed villa overlooking the estuary.
~~~
After Spar Cottage we had resided for a short while in a pleasant enough part of Liverpool. But Eleanor hated being hemmed in. Waterloo, on the other hand, was ideal for its sea breezes and healthy, open aspect. Even better, it was a short journey by rail from there to Liverpool’s Tithebarn Street Station and the Landing Stage. Added to which Eleanor would know when my ship was coming in, because she’d be able to see it from the upstairs windows. See it and hear it, since Thomas Ismay liked his Masters to blow the ship’s whistle when they passed his villa.
‘Not as a salute to me, particularly,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye on the day I was appointed. ‘A good long blast lets me know you’re back safe, and your wife will know you’re on your way!’
Ellie and I had fallen in love with the row of white-painted cottages. The long front gardens, the formal park they faced, and something about the windows gave Marine Crescent a Regency look. Elegant, attractive, bathed in sun for most of the day, it would be a good place for…
Refusing to put hope into words, to even listen to the superstitious whispers of new house, new baby, we had agreed with the landlord to rent the property for a year, with an option to extend the lease.
Ours was one of the smaller cottages near the end of the row. Happy there from the outset, we took long walks along the beach, identifying the occasional steamer amongst all the barques and brigantines passing in and out. We’d been there a month or so when Ellie paused while dressing to look out of the bedroom window. ‘I do like being here,’ she said contentedly. ‘Just seeing all those ships sailing back and forth, means I’m thinking about you all the time.’
‘Didn’t you think of me before?’ I teased.
‘Of course I did, silly.’ She gave me an affectionate smile. ‘No, what I mean is, inland I felt cut off from you. It was too easy to forget what you were doing. And in town, well,’ she shivered, ‘in town I lost sight of myself, never mind you and me…’
I felt humbled by her words, realising, perhaps for the first time, just how closely her life was centred on mine, how much she depended upon me. The robust and healthy girl I’d married seemed so fragile after all the illnesses she’d suffered, I felt guilty for leaving her. Drawing her into my arms, I kissed her hair, inhaled her fragrance. I wished I could make her happy. Wished I could give her a child. A healthy, full-term child. She would not be so lonely then.
~~~
Our marriage, which had been suffering, began to mend in the four months I spent working in the White Star office and living at home. We met Mrs Thomas Ismay at our local church. That generous lady took Eleanor under her wing, introducing her to other White Star officers’ wives. Through them she became involved in the general welfare of crew families. As she often remarked, we were fortunate, whereas those deprived of a breadwinner for any reason were quickly reduced to difficulty. Rapidly gaining in health and confidence, Eleanor took on a bloom I hadn’t seen since the earliest days of our marriage. The cloud of doubt and guilt I’d felt hanging over me began to lift.
To my mind, the most important thing of all was that Mrs Ismay introduced Eleanor to a lady painting instructor. During the year I was away aboard Coptic, Eleanor started painting, from the dunes when the weather was good, from the spare bedroom when it was not.
She’d had lessons years ago with the girls at the Rectory, but she said she wasn’t any good – watercolours were difficult to control, and she didn’t think she’d ever master them. Nevertheless, she enjoyed her weekly lessons. When I came home, the spare bedroom walls were covered in half-finished pictures of the dunes and the sea with ships skimming by on the breeze. I knew nothing of art but I could see her progress. I thought she was good.
As Eleanor’s skills grew, the hobby absorbed her more and more. We had resigned ourselves to the idea of no children, doing our best to avoid distress. Even so, we gained a live-in maid and a housekeeper, largely to look after Eleanor when she was ill. That was how we termed it. We did not talk about miscarriages.
If we had no children, at least we were able to get away whenever we wished. The Lake District was almost on our doorstep and we enjoyed some delightful sailing holidays there. Eleanor was also keen to see the city I visited every few weeks, so I took her to New York. On our first trip together, one of White Star’s regulars – a widower who often visited his daughter in England – insisted on entertaining us to dinner in New York and a musical show.
Dear Ellie could not get over such generosity, but as I kept saying, Americans are like that: often demanding, frequently overbearing, but kind and generous to boot. It was an honour and a treat, but we did things for ourselves too, visiting the Metropolitan Museum, walking in Central Park, eating in some fine restaurants. We walked Broadway from Battery Park to Washington Square, and criss-crossed Manhattan as the mood seized us. We chuckled over her mother’s reaction to skyscrapers, laughing some more as we rode in an elevator. I told her what had gone through my mind the day we’d had tea at Uncle Tom’s, and by some weird coincidence the elevator stopped between floors as I was speaking. Only a minute or two, but long enough for me to kiss her and whisper a few sweet nothings.
Those voyages to New York drew us together in the best of ways. I felt she was sharing my life at last, much as I had shared hers in the early days of our courtship.
~~~
But then, in the spring of 1895, while going about his business in the middle of the day, Joe collapsed and died on Lime Street.
It was a terrible shock. He was still a fine looking man, and at 62 years old had rarely suffered a day’s illness in his life. A bit of indigestion now and then, Mother said, but nothing more. She was stunned. We all were. I’d just arrived home, hardly unpacked my bag when the news came. I couldn’t believe it. My brother had always been such a rock. I couldn’t imagine him not being there.
With Susanna and my nephews I helped to organise the funeral. It was held at the parish church in Wallasey, not far from where they lived. Mother, well over eighty, was lost to herself that day and for a long time afterwards. She kept saying distractedly it should have been her – she was old, why hadn’t she died? Why did it have to be Joe? Her eldest son – no age at all…
And he’d been her favourite. He was the firstborn, so I suppose it was natural. Not that I was jealous, only sometimes I longed to see honest affection in my mother’s eyes, rather than the critical gaze she generally bestowed. I couldn’t understand it. I’d followed Joe, had even outrun him in some respects, but even so, I seemed to fail in our mother’s expectations. I wanted to say she had me, she could lean on me; but she never had. Joe had been the one. I knew I could never take his place. It upset me more at that time than any other. I wanted to share her grief, comfort her, have her comfort me in my loss, but – inevitably, I suppose – it was to Susanna she turned, and with Susanna she remained.
As for me, burying my brother and closest friend, it seemed an arctic wind was blowing that mild May day. I felt it all the way down one side of me. How I grieved for him.
~~~
A few months later, a double-fronted house that we had long admired – midway along the Crescent – came up for sale. It had four bedrooms, attics and outbuildings as well as the usual offices, and – best of all as far as Eleanor was concerned – a glazed Regency awning over windows and door. I thought it rather grand; sh
e thought it rather elegant. Like two excited children, we decided to buy.
Having never owned a house before, I found it an extraordinary experience organising a mortgage and moving in, but becoming a property-owner was a wonderful feeling. I thought Joe would have approved – my father too. And Mother, being such a businesswoman, would surely be pleased by this step forward. But when she came for her usual week’s holiday in the summer, instead of admiring our new home – our own bit of freehold – she poured water on it.
‘Don’t know why you had to buy old property,’ she grumbled, ‘it’ll cost you more every year. Anyway, what d’you want with a place this size? Just the two of you?’
Before I could reply, she added querulously, ‘It’s time you had a family!’
With all the rage of childhood locked inside me, I couldn’t speak. She made me feel a failure as a man. What was worse, she made Ellie cry. And then, when I remonstrated later, pretended not to know what it was all about.
We could not supply a family to order, not even to please my mother. Once she’d dried her tears, Eleanor refused to discuss it, pointing out instead that we could at least indulge our daydreams. In the new house she could have her painting studio and I could have the book-lined study I’d talked about for years. We could afford to expand a little.
23
As it transpired, expansion was a good word. My dearest Ellie, always neat-waisted, started to put on weight. After several weeks away I noticed that she was becoming plump. More than that, she was blooming, with rounded breasts and a rosy glow to her skin. She was 36 and she looked wonderful, just like the beautiful girl I married.
I hardly dared ask. I was enraptured by her beauty but so afraid. Coward that I was, I left the secret with her until she was ready to tell me.
We were in bed. I was curled around her with my arm across her waist, almost asleep when she turned, suddenly alert. ‘There,’ she said, ‘did you feel that?’
Drowsy, I struggled into wakefulness. She took my hand and placed it, very firmly, on the rounded bow of her stomach.
‘Our baby is kicking,’ she whispered, ‘isn’t it wonderful?’
I felt it then, a stirring beneath my palm, then a sudden movement under my fingers, like the tiniest of protests. Awake and overwhelmed, I felt myself grinning in the darkness. ‘Yes – I do feel it – just there…’
‘Oh, Ted,’ she turned, burying her face against my neck, ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you for ages, but… I’m so happy – and so frightened…’
Her words broke off in a series of little gasps. I kissed her cheek and tasted the saltiness of tears. ‘I know,’ I murmured, drawing her close against the length of my body, ‘I know…’
‘It’s been five months. The longest time, since…’
‘I know,’ I said again, not wanting this conversation to go on, yet understanding the need for it. Now the dam had burst she would be unable to stop going over the possibilities, the fears, the hopes, the anguish of this wonderful, incredible event.
How could I leave her, my dearest love?
~~~
I had to. It was my job. But Ellie was constantly on my mind. That year was our tenth anniversary; also the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, one of brilliant illuminations, of parades and celebrations everywhere. We joked about it, said how kind it was of Her Majesty to organise it just for us. As if drawn by magnets, visitors came from all over the Empire; and if the number of our Saloon and Cabin Class passengers was anything to go by, the majority came from the old colony of America. After fighting to be independent, it seemed they were prepared to fight again for the privilege of being dazzled by our Queen and the entire Royal Family.
Aboard my ship, the Majestic, we even carried the ambassador chosen to represent the United States at the official celebrations. Filled with patriotic pride that trip, I felt Majestic was singularly well-named.
Nevertheless, those of us in the Atlantic trade took a knock that summer. As though to upstage everything British, the first of Germany’s Atlantic liners, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, made the fastest eastbound crossing in under five and a half days. It wasn’t much consolation to us – or to our rivals, Cunard – to discover that this big, fast, luxury liner carried too much top-hamper; although her nickname, Rolling Billy, did go rather well with a sneer.
Thomas Ismay in his usual, down-to-earth fashion, reckoned the Germans had pinched the idea from our sister-ship, Teutonic. The Kaiser had been so impressed after inspecting the new liner at the Spithead review, he’d decided he had to have one too. Bigger and better than anyone else’s, of course.
Built to Admiralty specification, Majestic and Teutonic had strengthened decks and plating, and more efficient engines. The latest forced-draught system gave greater power, greater speed – and cut the fuel consumption by 10 tons a day. Such economies in a competitive market were important. But in addition to cold rooms for on-board provisions, these modern vessels had the best innovation yet. Refrigerated cargo space. Some 40,000 cubic feet of it.
Passenger liners had always carried general cargo in the holds, but the freighting of chilled food was a new and lucrative business. These two ships, with their huge capacity, transported quality meat from the United States to feed the growing number of mouths at home.
Liverpool alone had doubled in size since I’d first gone to sea. And to please the up-and-coming middle classes, these liners were the first to carry three-tier accommodation – Saloon, Cabin Class and Third – instead of the old two-tier system. Most impressive of all, they carried no sails. Majestic was my first command of a ship driven purely by steam. I thought of Joe and smiled, albeit wryly. He’d have shaken his head while I took over with a grin that rivalled the Cheshire Cat’s.
~~~
After all our tribulations, Eleanor came through her pregnancy with barely a hiccup. Had I been a betting man, I’d have put odds on my being away when baby was born, but I was lucky. I came home on the last day of March 1898, and our daughter, Helen Melville, hurried into the world two days later.
She was a little early – only two weeks, but it meant she was tiny and red and rather cross, and seemed to spend her waking time shaking a threatening fist in my direction and howling for her mother. She had a good pair of lungs, I can testify to that, and a grip like a sailor aloft. But when she paused to view her surroundings she was really rather beautiful with her seal grey eyes, silky brown hair, and pretty little mouth. I was besotted from the start.
Ellie was the most adoring mother ever. I hardly got a look-in to begin with, but I didn’t mind, I knew she had a lot of catching up to do. And she was so determined to do everything right, I worried about that. ‘Babies survive,’ I declared heedlessly, at which she promptly railed at me and burst into tears. I realized then how afraid she was that Little Mel would be taken from us. Having got her baby at last, Ellie’s next anxiety was that our darling child wouldn’t survive infancy.
I looked into my daughter’s eyes, I listened to that demanding yell when she was hungry, and I knew she was here to stay. Difficult, however, to convince Ellie of that. We hired a nurse to give her some respite, and I’m glad to say that as the months passed and our little one thrived, gradually Ellie stopped being quite so anxious.
It was a rarity for me to be in Liverpool over the festive season, but for Little Mel’s first Christmas, heaven be praised, I got home with a couple of days to spare. By then our baby girl had blossomed into a rosy-cheeked angel with glossy curls and eyes just like her mother’s. She was still imperious and demanding, but we were so proud of our little beauty we had a family photograph taken and sent to all our friends and relatives.
~~~
The last year of the old century blew in for me on the wings of a storm, but that was nothing new. I was feeling good and the future looked fair. Especially with new ships on the horizon.
For decades, British shipping had dominated the transatlantic market, but the German line, Norddeutscher Lloyd, was posing something of a threa
t. In response, Thomas Ismay placed orders with Harland and Wolff for two additions to the fleet, managing to attract a government subsidy by having these new ships designed with gun platforms, ready to be transformed into ’armed merchant cruisers’ should the need arise. War was in the air.
Perhaps surprisingly, it did not break out as a result of European rivalries. Not directly, anyway. It came from southern Africa, where trouble with the Boer farmers had been simmering for years. In October an armed and united force from the Transvaal and Orange Free State invaded the British province of Natal. Our side did not fare well in the exchange. A month later, while the question of troop transports was being discussed at high level, the second of the White Star liners on order from Harland and Wolff was cancelled. Not because of the war, but in deference to the death of our Chairman, Thomas Ismay.
All unknowing, we were returning from New York, cock-o-hoop because we’d heard Majestic was to be one of the first liners to go to the Cape. And then, as we took the Mersey pilot aboard, we heard of Mr Thomas’s recent demise. His health had been poor for some time, but the news of his death came as a shock. It was like losing a revered relative, one whose wisdom and benevolence has long been taken for granted. To me, his passing left a chilly emptiness at the helm just at a time when we needed his experience to see us through. As Managing Director, his son Bruce Ismay was perfectly capable, but, as Ellie and I often remarked, he lacked his father’s touch.
The funeral was barely over before we were preparing for South Africa. Majestic had been requisitioned for the transportation of troops and equipment to Cape Town. Guns were fitted, floors boarded over, bulkheads which created cabins both forward and aft were taken out to make way for mess accommodation. A hospital was equipped and, even though officers were lodged in the staterooms, the most vulnerable fittings and furnishings were removed for safe keeping. The whole job took two weeks.
The Master's Tale--A Novel of the Titanic Page 21
