CARPE DIEM
Chapter Eight
I stood in Thomas Andrews’
stateroom silently, arms crossed over my chest as I watched him dig through the
papers, the piles of plans on his desk, then search the closets on both sides
of the room looking for whatever it was he wanted to give me. I doubted that he
would ever find it, and the look on my face must have betrayed my skepticism
for, as he passed by me, he said reproachfully, "I did ask you if you had
a few minutes."
"You asked me if I had a
minute. One minute," I corrected. "Nothing more was agreed to."
I sighed and uncrossed my arms, moved over to his desk, rearranged the plans
back into the neat piles they had been in before Thomas had so haphazardly
swept them into disarray. I took the half-empty glass of red wine, perched
precariously and unevenly on his blueprints, and set it aside. His black book,
the journal that chronicled every move the Titanic was inclined to make, lay
open to a page marked by his careful script, familiar to me from ten year’s
worth of letters. The first line bore the date of this evening--April 14, 1912.
"My mother’s birthday was
yesterday," I muttered, more to myself than to Thomas Andrews. I had
forgotten, I realized, for the first time since her death, five years ago now.
"What was that?" he asked
from the closet, coming out finally with something the size of a medium
landscape painting or portrait, the face of which was turned from me, enclosed
by a dark wood frame, a length of wire attached to the back for purposes of
display. I was suddenly much more intrigued than I had been before. My
curiosity piqued, I tilted my head, narrowed my eyes. He turned it around
slowly.
"Oh, Thomas…" I
breathed, coming over towards him now. It was a painting, the painting that had
hung in his uncle’s office at Harland and Wolff forever and always, or at least
as long as I had found myself frequenting the place. The Mayflower, depicted on
arrival in Plymouth, sending the first party to shore, banks of clouds in the
distance, the sun rising, breaking above the horizon, small bits of shoreline,
parsed out here and there, quiet in morning hours, save oars from the rowboat
slipping into water and back out again. For whatever reason, I rarely found
myself enchanted by anything crafted by human hands. The painting Thomas held
was certainly an exception. I repeated, "Oh, Thomas…"
"William cleaned out his
office months ago, started giving things away. I was sure you’d want it."
Thomas smiled at my expression.
"Oh, I do!" I ran my
hands over the top of the frame, down its smooth sides, as he passed the
painting into my eager hands. He continued smiling as he went to his desk, sat
in the chair next to it, watched me indulge in a moment of girlish joy. It was
a silly thing to be excited over, but…well…I suppose we all should be allowed a
few idiosyncratic gestures. Besides, mine was brief enough. Thomas made sure of
that.
After I had stared at the lines
on the ship for a minute more, held it up to the light and decided exactly
where it should be hung in my bedroom in the house in London, he leaned back in
his chair, stated quite innocently, "A man would be jealous of the
attention you’ve turned on that painting."
The tone of his voice betrayed no
regret, no meaning beyond the frankness of the statement. But I was standing in
the presence of a man whose absence I felt more keenly than any other. Though I
would never have admitted such a thing, not in company, nor even to myself in
solitary moments, there had not been one day since I met Thomas Andrews that I
had not thought of him, whether in passing or in contemplation. His diversion
of my attention was woefully unmatched by anything else; not the least of which
was the painting I now lowered, leaned against the side of a mahogany dresser.
I had responded so uncharacteristically just now because it was he who
recognized my silly attachment to it and must have observed, at one time or
another, my glances towards it, my musings over it, during long and tedious
meetings in the office of William Pirrie.
Memory briefly overcame my thoughts,
of my brother’s voice distant and the sound of metal and iron and the calls of
shipwrights coming up from the docks, creeping in through the windows open wide
to the Belfast summer, my hands stilled in taking notes and relevant dictation,
my gaze diverted by the serenity of the scene hanging on Viscount Pirrie’s
wall.
Are you getting this, Mary
Catherine? Bruce had only
momentarily paused in his endless recitation of grand visions and petty
details, neither of which was useful to drafting the contract my notes
anticipated. Awakened from reverie, my attention turned back to the men’s
discussion. My brother was talking again, the Viscount balancing his fountain
pen on the long edge of a paperweight. Thomas Andrews had smiled at me briefly,
privately, before turning back to the plans laid out on the table. He had known
me only as Miss Ismay that day, the younger sister and inattentive secretary of
J. Bruce Ismay. His smile had been too affectionate, even then. Oh, God, he
must realize…
"Why did you say that?"
I asked quietly, near a whisper. Had we been in the presence of any mild
breeze, my words would have been carried off and forgotten as quickly. He said
nothing for a moment, sighed.
"Mary Catherine…"
The sound of my name falling so
familiarly off his lips affected me, and I assumed--from the sudden hardness of
his features--affected Thomas as well, unexpectedly. Not because it was
unusual, but rather…because it was not. He said no more, and neither did I.
I wish I had savored that moment
of silence, but I did not. I wish I had basked in the knowledge that on that
night, in that room, I was in the presence of a man who would have sold his
soul to ensure my well-being, who prayed every night that I’d be spared from
blindness, that my tribulations be mild, my happiness all-consuming. Instead, I
cursed my very existence, wished I’d never been born.
The wine stirred, as if the desk
had been jarred; the cut crystal light fixture above us shuddered. Thomas
lifted his eyes to it. There was a low vibration running through the floor of
the ship. Stepping to one side, placing my hand on the wall deliberately, I
felt a vibration there as well, constant, distant, scraping, as if…I narrowed
my eyes, alarmed, turned back to Thomas, rising from his chair, his hands spreading
over the desk, his gaze still lifted to the shuddering crystal. A few seconds
later, when he looked at me, the alarm in his expression matched my own.
The vibrations continued. The
Titanic had hit something, and continued brushing against it.