TITANIC: A STORY TOLD
Chapter Ten
The gleaming white superstructure of Titanic
rose mountainously beyond the rail, and above that the buff-colored funnels
stood against the sky like the pillars of a great temple. Crewmen moved across
the deck, dwarfed by the awesome scale of the steamer.
Southampton, England, April 10, 1912. It was
almost noon on sailing day. A crowd of hundreds blackened the pier next to
Titanic like ants on a jelly sandwich.
A gorgeous burgundy Renault touring car hung
from a loading crane. It was lowered toward hatch number two.
On the pier horse drawn vehicles, motorcars,
and lorries moved slowly through the dense throng. The atmosphere was one of
excitement and general giddiness. People embraced in tearful farewells, or
waved and shouted bon voyage wishes to friends and relatives on the decks
above.
A white Renault, leading a silver-gray
Daimler-Benz, pushed through the crowd, leaving a wake in the press of people.
Around the handsome cars people were streaming to board the ship, jostling with
hustling seamen and stokers, porters and barking White Star Line officials.
The Renault stopped and the liveried driver
scurried to open the door for a young woman dressed in a stunning white and
purple outfit, with an enormous matching hat. She was seventeen years old and
beautiful, regal of bearing, with piercing eyes.
It was the girl in the drawing. Rose. She
looked up at the ship, taking it in with cool appraisal.
"I don't see what all the fuss is about.
It doesn't look any bigger than the Mauritania."
A personal valet opened the door on the other
side of the car for Caledon Hockley, the thirty-year-old heir to the elder
Hockley's fortune. Cal was handsome, arrogant, and rich beyond meaning.
"You can be blasé about some things,
Rose, but not about Titanic. It's over a hundred feet longer than the
Mauritania, and far more luxurious."
Cal turned and gave his hand to Rose's
mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater, who descended from the touring car behind him.
Ruth was a fortyish society empress, from one of the most prominent
Philadelphia families. She was a widow, and ruled her household with an iron
will.
"Your daughter is much too hard to
impress, Ruth." He indicated a puddle. "Mind your step."
Ruth gazed at the leviathan. "So this is
the ship they say is unsinkable."
"It is unsinkable. God himself could not
sink this ship."
Cal spoke with the pride of a host providing
a special experience.
This entire entourage of rich Americans was
impeccably turned out, a quintessential example of the Edwardian upper class,
complete with servants. Cal's valet, Spicer Lovejoy, was tall and impassive,
dour as an undertaker. Behind him emerged two maids, personal servants to Ruth
and Rose.
A White Star Line porter scurried toward
them, harried by last minute loading.
"Sir, you'll have to check your baggage
through the main terminal, round that way--"
Cal nonchalantly handed the man a fiver. The
porter's eyes dilated. Five pounds was a monster tip in those days.
"I put my faith in you, good sir."
He nodded curtly, indicating Lovejoy. "See my man."
"Yes, sir. My pleasure, sir."
Cal never tired of the effect of money on the
unwashed masses.
Lovejoy pulled the porter back toward the
cars. "These trunks here, and twelve more in the Daimler. We'll have all
this lot up in the rooms."
The White Star man looked stricken when he
saw the enormous pile of steamer trunks and suitcases loading down the second
car, including wooden crates and a steel safe. He whistled frantically for some
cargo-handlers nearby who came running.
Cal breezed on, leaving the minions to
scramble. He quickly checked his pocket watch.
"We'd better hurry. This way,
ladies."
He indicated the way toward the first class
gangway. They moved into the crowd. Trudy Bolt, Rose's maid, hustled behind
them, laden with bags of her mistress's most recent purchases...things too
delicate for the baggage handlers.
Cal led, weaving between vehicles and
handcarts, hurrying passengers (mostly second class and steerage) and
well-wishers. Most of the first class passengers were avoiding the smelly press
of the dockside crowd by using an elevated boarding bridge, twenty feet above.
They passed a line of steerage passengers in
their coarse wool and tweeds, queued up inside movable barriers like cattle in
a chute. A health officer examined their heads one by one, checking scalp and
eyelashes for lice.
Cal guided them out of the path of a
horse-drawn wagon loaded down with two tons of Oxford marmalade, in wooden
cases, for Titanic's victualing department.
Rose looked up as the hull of Titanic loomed
over them...a great iron wall, Bible black and severe. Cal motioned her
forward, and she entered the gangway to the D Deck doors with a sense of
overwhelming dread.
It was the ship of dreams...to everyone else.
To Rose it was a slave ship, taking her back to America in chains.
Cal's hand closed possessively over Rose's
arm. He escorted her up the gangway and the black hull of Titanic swallowed
them.
Outwardly, Rose was everything a well brought
up girl should be. Inside, she was screaming.