On a Cold Dark Sea(33)
“Tell me,” Teddy said, shifting abruptly into the blunt manager’s voice he used in meetings. “You. Van Hausen.”
“We were in the same lifeboat,” Charlotte said.
The revelation obviously delighted Teddy. “You don’t say?”
“We barely spoke.” Best to quash his hopes and any further questions. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know, except it was sudden. He had to be about our age, don’t you think?”
Charlotte nodded. He’d seemed so much older back then. It was the money, she supposed. He’d grown up being waited on, his very name conjuring up admiring nods and bows. He’d been bred with the confidence it had taken Charlotte years to build for herself.
“I’d rather not write the obituary, if that’s what you were going to ask,” Charlotte said.
“Oh, this calls for more than that,” Teddy said. “It’s a big story. One of the richest men in America, notorious Titanic survivor, unable to shake the suspicion that hovered over his all-too-brief life.”
“Sounds like you’ve already written it.”
“I could do,” Teddy said. “But think how much better it would be with your personal touch. What was he really like? And his wife—was she in the lifeboat as well?”
Charlotte nodded. She remembered Esme in the front of the boat, swathed in fur, clutching Charles’s arm. Snapping at Charlotte to be quiet, her face twisted into an expression of affronted alarm.
“Think she’ll talk to you?” Teddy asked.
Charlotte shot him her coldest glare. “We’re hardly friends.”
“There’d be good money in it. The New York Express will pay through the nose for the American rights to an interview, and I’d see you were properly compensated. You’d get a free trip to New York, besides. Why not make a holiday of it? I could get you a few weeks off, if you like.”
“The Titanic’s old news. No one cares.”
“Our readers love to revisit a good scandal. You know that better than anyone.”
Scandals, after all, were Charlotte’s specialty. She had a talent for simultaneously celebrating and castigating society’s upper echelon, turning the ups and downs of their domestic lives into melodramas worthy of grand opera. If it had been anyone other than Charles Van Hausen who’d died, Charlotte would have a column finished within the hour. Already, her nebulous thoughts were arranging themselves into sentences: “The handsome heir to a Boston banking fortune, Van Hausen miraculously survived the sinking of the Titanic, a fate that would haunt him in the years to come. For even as Van Hausen’s rescue led him into the arms of love, he could never escape the question that shadowed the rest of his life: Why did he live when so many others perished?”
But this wasn’t the sort of story Charlotte could assemble into her usual confection of clichés and trite sentiment. Writing about Charles Van Hausen would mean boarding a ship and crossing the Atlantic, something she’d avoided ever since she returned to England in the spring of 1912. It would mean confronting Esme and asking her to relive one of the worst nights of her life. Still, Charlotte couldn’t help wondering what had become of them. Had Charles and Esme been happy? Had they made peace with their past?
For twenty years, Charlotte had purposefully avoided thinking about the lifeboat, but now, fragments of the past reached out, cajoling her to glance back. She thought of the Swedish girl, Anna. Mrs. Trelawny and her terrified children. Mr. Healy, the sailor, whom she’d always meant to thank properly but never did. What had happened to them?
Perhaps, at last, it was safe to remember.
“All right,” Charlotte said. “Best I go without writing to Mrs. Van Hausen first. Take her by surprise. But mind you, she may very well slam the door in my face.”
“Not you, my dear,” said Teddy, beaming. “I have faith in your powers of persuasion. I’ll have McClaren set you up at the Express.” Teddy and his New York counterpart often shared sources and tips and encouraged the occasional plagiarism by their underlings. “How soon can you leave?”
If Charlotte was really going to America, there was one obligation she’d have to face first.
“I’ll need a few days to get things in order. Let’s say Monday.”
“Very good. Have Agnes make the arrangements.”
Charlotte stood, preparing to leave. But just before she reached the door, she paused and turned back.
“You’ll have to make up a good reason for sending me. I don’t want anyone knowing I was on the Titanic.”
The only reason Teddy knew was that he’d been there, on that desolate April night when the Carpathia reached New York. The rain and cold kept most of the Titanic survivors below deck, but Charlotte and a few others gathered at the rails to watch the journey’s end. The city’s illuminated skyline was no match for the weather, which dimmed the lights into an indistinct haze. It was hardly the inspiring arrival Charlotte had once imagined. And she could no longer fend off the question that had stalked her for the past four days: What now? She needed money, she needed a plan, but she’d depended on Reg for all that. What would she do without him?
As the ship neared the piers, a huddle of motorboats sputtered toward the Carpathia’s hull. Camera flares shattered the darkness, and voices shouted out from the shadowy figures on board.