On a Cold Dark Sea(82)

“Oh yes! The indoor fox hunt Lady Darlington arranged for her husband’s birthday.” Charlotte was surprised he remembered; it had to be more than ten years ago. “Hounds careening up the stairs and knocking over the family china. It was utter madness.”

“I was chuffed to think of you swanning around with all those peers,” Mr. Healy said.

“I was only half a step up from the help,” Charlotte said. “Lady Darlington always invites society columnists to her house parties. She’s desperate to cultivate a reputation for outrageousness.”

“Sounds entertaining.”

Everyone thought it was. They saw Charlotte’s life as a series of amusing escapades, not knowing the drudgery that each daily column required. For what felt like eons, Charlotte had faked friendliness and pretended to find insipid bores fascinating. She’d wasted years of her life—and much of her talent—chronicling the childish antics of the upper classes. Yet that work would be her legacy.

“I used to enjoy it,” Charlotte said. Mr. Healy’s curious look encouraged her to go on, to acknowledge the doubts she hadn’t allowed herself to examine. “I like meeting new people, and I like telling stories. I’m good at it. But it feels as if I’ve been running toward a prize that was always just out of reach, and it’s only recently I’ve realized there isn’t one. There’s no mountaintop to conquer. Simply more of the same.”

The despondency of her admission struck Charlotte only once she’d said it aloud. It was certainly more than she’d meant to share.

“Your turn,” she said brightly. “I ought to address you as Captain Healy, oughtn’t I?”

Mr. Healy nodded, but with none of the roosterish pride Charlotte was accustomed to in military men.

“It was very brave of you to go back to sea afterward. I avoided sailing for years.”

“My father was a sailor, and my grandfather before him,” Mr. Healy said. “I had no choice.”

Of course he didn’t. Charlotte’s social circle was filled with people who’d struck out on their own, reinventing themselves as poets or actors or aristocratic daredevils. She’d forgotten, momentarily, that most people didn’t have the will or funds to defy family expectations.

“I was there for your testimony, at the American hearings,” she said.

“Were you?” Mr. Healy’s eyes crinkled in surprise. He hadn’t seen her, then. She’d never been sure.

“It must have been difficult,” Charlotte said.

“It was, rather.” Mr. Healy’s hands cradled his teacup, the fingers interlacing. “I hadn’t a penny to my name, and there I was, in front of that crowd, in a charity suit from the Seamen’s Friend Society.”

Charlotte remembered how the too-large jacket made him look like a schoolboy playing dress-up in his father’s clothes. How his voice shook when he tried to put the unexplainable into words.

“Seeing what they ran in the papers was worse,” Mr. Healy said. “One minute I was the hero who’d pulled a drowning girl from the water, and the next I was the villain who’d left others to die.”

Charlotte immediately understood what his eyes were asking. “I never wrote about you. Or anything to do with the lifeboat.”

“The attention wore me down,” Mr. Healy said. “I was sick for a time—needed a bit of rest, more than anything else. I stayed with my parents for a few months. Kept to myself. Then, when my pa was down to his last shillings—God bless him—I went back to the White Star Line. I was on the Atlantic crossing two days later.”

“Oh my,” Charlotte murmured sympathetically.

“There’s no time for moping, if you’re doing your job. I put my name in for extra watches or whatever needed doing. Then the war came, and I joined the navy and made supply runs to the Mediterranean. Thought I was missing out on all the glory, but it worked out for the best. And I was second officer on the Olympic afterward.”

The Titanic’s sister ship. How could he have borne it?

“Now you’re a captain,” Charlotte said, with a nod of respect.

“The Meridian. She sails twice a month to the Caribbean.”

Mr. Healy leaned forward and offered more tea. He poured with deft confidence, but unease lingered in their shared silence. Charlotte found it odd that he’d said nothing about his marriage. He could be widowed, but he hadn’t seemed particularly sad when he mentioned his wife in that offhand way.

“Do you remember Esme Harper, from the boat?” Charlotte asked. “I should say Esme Van Hausen. You did know she married Charles, not long after?”

“Oh yes.”

How could he not? The “Titanic sweethearts” had been inescapable.

“I was in New York last year, and I paid her a visit,” Charlotte said.

Mr. Healy’s eyes widened, just a bit.

“Mr. Van Hausen died last autumn, in an automobile crash. I went to pay my respects. She was rather a mess, which was understandable given the circumstances. The rotten thing is, she’d been unhappy for quite some time, long before he died. They were very much in love when they married—you could see she adored him in the boat, couldn’t you? But they were never able to stop those rumors that he’d snuck onto the boat dressed as a woman or paid off the crew, even though it was complete nonsense. From the way Esme spoke, she and Charles never really escaped the sinking.”