The Second Mrs. Astor(62)
With only the barest undertone of impatience, Jack said, “If you don’t mind, Ismay, I’d like to get us settled in our rooms. The delay was rather unpleasant.”
“Of course. My apologies. Latimer will show you to your suite; he’s our best man.” Ismay lifted a hand, and the steward he had been speaking with instantly approached. “The Astor party, C deck, as I recall. Check your manifest.” He turned back to Jack. “I trust you’ll find everything satisfactory from this point on.”
“I trust we will.” He paused. “Perhaps later you might offer me a tour of your new ship.”
“Colonel,” said the chairman of the White Star Line, as the music soothed and the other first-class passengers laughed and gossiped and angled edgewise to look them up and down, “it would be my pleasure.”
*
The comment she overheard time and again on their way to their rooms was always some variation of, It doesn’t seem like a ship at all!
And it didn’t. Titanic’s interior (in contrast to her sinister dark and sharp exterior, at least what Madeleine had glimpsed of it in those minutes jolting along its base) was more like a fine hotel than anything else, as boldly sumptuous as any of Jack’s properties back in New York. The corridors were broad and freshly painted, pungent still, with extravagantly worked wood and plush, plush carpeting that muffled their every step.
There was a wait for the electric elevators, so they climbed the grand staircase instead. It was wide and open and graciously curved all the way to the domed skylight decks above, an inverted cup of lustrous glass and geometric iron fretwork. The repeating curves of the balustrades reminded Madeleine of the math of a nautilus, neatly sliced into pieces.
Their suite consisted of room after room of red-and-mauve silk-papered walls shot with silver, lacquered mahogany tables and chairs, Jacobean plasterwork unwinding in curls all along the ceilings and down the corners. The cushions and coverlets were shiny satin; the lights were either silk-hatted sconces or else ceiling fixtures of cut glass. There were so many chinoiserie vases stuffed with fresh flowers that Madeleine wondered who had thought it a good idea to put them all out. They perched, fragile and expensive, atop the tables and tall, spindly-legged stands.
She stopped in the doorway to her bedroom, taking in the opulence. It was such a far cry from the cabin they’d shared aboard the dahabiya that once again she could not move, awash in a sensation of deep tugging loss.
“It’s not one of the deluxe promenade suites, I realize,” Jack said, coming up behind her. He rested both hands atop her shoulders, pressed a kiss against her hair. “I tried to book either, but I was too late—or else Ismay was simply too greedy. He’s taken one for himself. Mrs. Cardeza is in the other.”
Madeleine closed her eyes and groaned. “Charlotte Cardeza is here?”
“She is, or will be tomorrow. I didn’t see her when we came in.”
Mrs. Cardeza, with her cold eyes and cutting words and splendid air of a disapproving sheep, on board with them for the entire voyage.
“It’s all right. I envision spending the next few days secluded in this stateroom, no matter what comes.” Without turning around, she lifted his left hand, held it against her cheek. His skin felt warm and dry, his wedding band cool. “Do you think they might bring us our dinner here tonight, instead of us having to change and go down to the dining saloon?”
“They will,” Jack said comfortably, “if I say they will.”
*
Among its other amenities, the suite featured two four-poster beds, with two fat feather mattresses.
They slept together in one, entwined in its plump middle.
CHAPTER 22
Beautiful boy, I have wrapped you in lace.
Right now it rests lightly over you, an ivory cobweb of slender spun silk, outlining your precious body, folded against your perfect cheek.
Light as a cloud, it was meant, perhaps, to adorn you in church for your christening. Or to be photographed in a formal portrait, for when you are presented to the world. But I decided not to wait that long.
This blanket of Irish lace was purchased from a lace trader who’d slipped aboard Titanic in Queenstown, the ship’s third and final port of call. As they did with all the liners calling, even by tender, the local souvenir sellers had greased the palms of certain officers to steal aboard, trafficking their wares for a brief while along the boat deck while the captain turned a hard blind eye. In Ireland, it turns out, the lace and blackthorn cane sellers are especially popular.
In that fleeting hour or so of that early Thursday afternoon, before Titanic weighed her anchor to sail onward again, Jack had walked among the traders, admiring this and that. By the time the vendors were all packed off again, he had found me a lace jacket and you this.
This blanket was your father’s first gift to you.
And it was the last thing I stuffed into my pocket before fleeing the ship.
*
A number of ill-mannered souls—reporters, of course—have dared, in these latter weeks, to ask me the best thing I remember about Titanic. About the ship itself. As if by telling them that, everything that followed might be negated. Rendered less.
My usual response is an incredulous stare, then to walk away. I have menservants now to accompany me whenever I go out, so the journalists and cameras do not hound me as easily as they used to do. I’ve learned, you see, since my days as a dewy débutante on your father’s arm.