On a Cold Dark Sea(35)
Charlotte shook her head. The Englishman, who must have guessed she was lying but didn’t let on, waved his colleague back with a gesture both dismissive and possessive: Leave her alone; she’s mine. He sidled up to Charlotte and followed when she gave him a brief nod of acknowledgment. If he’d started asking questions then—if he’d pushed her in any way—she would have increased her pace and left him behind. But his respectful silence allowed her time to think. Charlotte remembered the spark of envy that ignited when she saw the newspapermen calling out from the water. This man offered a way into that world.
Charlotte stopped at the end of the block and spoke without looking at the reporter. “I’ll talk to you. But not at the hotel. Somewhere else.”
“There’s a café round the corner,” he said. “Would that do?”
From the word “café,” Charlotte expected a tea shop, with subdued conversations taking place at dainty tables topped with equally dainty china. The establishment they entered sounded almost as raucous as a nightclub. The clientele was a cross section of New York working folk, from shop girls to traveling salesmen. Everyone seemed to be laughing or exclaiming, their conversations consisting of sounds as much as words. The reporter led Charlotte toward a back corner, where his nod to a waiter made it clear he was a regular customer.
“Let’s get the niceties out of the way, shall we?” he said. “The tea here is dreadful; it will only make you homesick. The coffee’s tolerable, and the lemonade’s rather nice. I’ll order some buns as well. I’m not sure about your appetite, under the circumstances, but I’m ravenous.”
His words streamed out with barely a pause for breath. After the waiter took their order, the reporter leaned forward, giving Charlotte his full attention.
“My name’s Theodore Ranger,” he began, “Teddy to my friends and to you, if you’d like. I’m the New York correspondent for the London Record. The owners want every Titanic account I can get, with no limit on my expenses. If I deliver what they want, it’ll be the making of my career.”
Teddy might look like a schoolboy, his cheeks so smooth that he barely needed to shave, yet Charlotte saw in him a kindred soul. He made no bones about what he wanted and didn’t pander to her with false sympathy. She was familiar with the Record; her mother used to take it, back when they could afford newspapers. Charlotte knew exactly the sorts of stories the Record would run about the Titanic: glowing accounts of first-class heroes who died bravely on deck, maudlin celebrations of their wives and children, gleeful descriptions of the treasures that sank to the bottom of the sea. The ideas came easily, almost without effort.
Perhaps she really was suited for this sort of work.
“I can pay fifty dollars for your story, if it’s a good one,” Teddy went on. “More, if you saw what happened to the captain or one of the millionaires.”
It wouldn’t be hard to come up with a convincing lie. Charlotte could tell Teddy that she’d seen Captain Smith save a baby from certain death, or heard the last words of Mr. Guggenheim. Fifty dollars would be enough to change her life, for a time. But once it ran out, she’d be back where she started: alone and adrift.
“I doubt my story’s worth much,” she said apologetically. “I boarded a lifeboat, and we floated about for a few hours until we were rescued.” Not once did she consider telling him the rest. “But there’s another way we might help each other.”
Teddy looked at her blankly, waiting to be convinced.
“The women I’m staying with at the hotel are more likely to talk to me than you. I could write down what they say, then you could put it in one of your stories. I think they’d agree, if I made it sound noble. I could tell them it would honor their husbands’ last hours, to share their memories. Though it wouldn’t hurt to offer a payment as well.”
“And you’d charge a fee for your services?”
“Yes, but it’s more than that. I want to do what you do. Take me on as an apprentice. Teach me.”
Teddy looked doubtful. “It’s not that easy . . . ,” he began.
“You’ve got nothing to lose by trying me out.”
Charlotte gave Teddy her most flirtatious smile. Not the most appropriate response for a young widow, perhaps, but it seemed to soften Teddy’s resolve.
“Show me what you can do first,” he said. “If you get me something good by three o’clock, it’ll be in time for tomorrow’s paper.”
“I’ll meet you in the lobby of the hotel,” Charlotte said as she stood, already pulling on her coat. She mustn’t allow him time for second thoughts. “Thank you very much, Mr. Ranger.”
That heady first day, Charlotte convinced three fellow passengers to talk. Despite the lack of first-class names, Teddy was pleased with the stories Charlotte brought him. One woman had seen an officer fire a gun to prevent a rush on a lifeboat; another had been reunited with her son on the Carpathia after thinking him drowned. That afternoon, Charlotte accompanied Teddy to his office—a gloomy room equipped with a desk, a typewriter, and a decade’s worth of dust—and watched as he intertwined the words she’d taken down as a knitter twists yarn, melding single colors into an intricate pattern. Teddy’s frenzied fingers turned stark facts into heart-tugging dramas, and when he was done, they dashed to the telegraph office. He transmitted his cable to London in a shorthand-like code, but Charlotte was still staggered by what it must have cost. The whole tumultuous process entranced her. This is what I’m meant to do, she thought.