Women and Children First

They survived the Titanic, but their lives were changed forever…

Gill Paul

Copyright

The facts surrounding the sinking of the Titanic are portrayed accurately in this novel, but otherwise it is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

A Paperback Original 2012

Gill Paul asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST. Copyright © Gill Paul 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

ISBN: 9781847563255

EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007453306

Version: 2018-06-05

Dedication

For Ana, Rhuaridh, Barnaby, Harvey and Florence

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Reg’s hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t hold the…

PART ONE

Chapter One

It was one in the morning and first-class victualling steward…

Chapter Two

Lady Juliette Mason-Parker knelt on the bathroom floor, acid scorching…

Chapter Three

Annie McGeown sat on the edge of a bunk and…

Chapter Four

Reg lay awake mulling over what he’d seen on the…

Chapter Five

Next morning at breakfast, Reg couldn’t meet Mrs Grayling’s eye,…

Chapter Six

After breakfast Margaret Grayling found a deckchair on the promenade…

Chapter Seven

At luncheon, first-class passengers could choose from a set menu…

Chapter Eight

The stewards were free from the end of lunch service,…

Chapter Nine

By dinner time on Saturday evening, Juliette was restless in…

Chapter Ten

Most tables in the first-class dining saloon seated eight people.

Chapter Eleven

After breakfast on Sunday morning, Annie McGeown went with her…

Chapter Twelve

As passengers began arriving for breakfast on Sunday morning, Reg…

Chapter Thirteen

John was worried about Reg. He seemed distracted on this…

Chapter Fourteen

‘I hope there isn’t some kind of illness being passed…

Chapter Fifteen

The engines had stopped almost immediately, and the silence that…

Chapter Sixteen

Annie McGeown was lying in her bunk unable to get…

Chapter Seventeen

As Reg walked along B Deck, passengers were beginning to…

Chapter Eighteen

When she woke, for a few seconds Juliette couldn’t remember…

Chapter Nineteen

‘Annie? It’s Eileen.’ The words were accompanied by urgent knocking.

Chapter Twenty

Reg walked over to the port side of the boat…

Chapter Twenty-One

A surge of third-class passengers arrived on the boat deck,…

Chapter Twenty-Two

The water came faster than Reg had expected and he…

Chapter Twenty-Three

Annie sat huddled on a bench in Lifeboat 13, so…

Chapter Twenty-Four

As she watched the Titanic sliding beneath the water, Juliette’s…

Chapter Twenty-Five

Reg was shivering convulsively and if it hadn’t been for…

Chapter Twenty-Six

‘Was that a shooting star?’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Throughout the night, Annie sat still and silent, her chest…

Chapter Twenty-Eight

In the doctor’s consulting room, Reg was stripped of his…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Annie stood on deck watching until the last lifeboat had…

Chapter Thirty

Juliette found that she couldn’t stop crying. It was humiliating…

Chapter Thirty-One

Reg was badly shaken by his conversation with Annie. He…

Chapter Thirty-Two

The first-and second-class areas on the Carpathia were much smaller…

Chapter Thirty-Three

When Reg opened his eyes, he was momentarily confused to…

Chapter Thirty-Four

Mildred persuaded Annie to share her first-class suite, which had…

Chapter Thirty-Five

Reg returned to the doctor’s surgery to have the bloodied…

PART TWO

Chapter Thirty-Six

Reg was wakened by a man’s voice, an American. ‘If…

Chapter Thirty-Seven

On arrival at New York’s Pier 54, Robert Graham led…

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Reg poured his heart out in the letter to John’s…

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The apartment that Seamus had found for Annie and his…

Chapter Forty

When Juliette told her mother that Robert wanted to take…

Chapter Forty-One

On Sundays, when Reg wasn’t working, he explored the city…

Chapter Forty-Two

‘My goodness! What brings you here?’ Mr Grayling looked startled…

Chapter Forty-Three

A date was set for Juliette and her mother to…

Chapter Forty-Four

Annie found life in Kingsbridge a struggle. The practicalities were…

Chapter Forty-Five

The night following Mr Grayling’s offer of employment, Reg lay…

Chapter Forty-Six

‘It appears to be about two carats.’ Lady Mason-Parker eyed…

Chapter Forty-Seven

Reg was astonished but pleased when he saw a story…

Chapter Forty-Eight

The morning of her departure for Saratoga Springs, Juliette woke…

Chapter Forty-Nine

A couple of days after starting work for Mr Grayling,…

Chapter Fifty

Reg liked to keep busy and there wasn’t much to…

Chapter Fifty-One

Mr Frank came into the kitchen holding a newspaper. ‘Your…

Chapter Fifty-Two

A sign announced ‘Welcome to Saratoga Springs, district of Saratoga…

Chapter Fifty-Three

Reg had very mixed feelings about his flirtation with Molly.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Annie hadn’t realised how hot it would be in New…

Chapter Fifty-Five

Reg let everyone think the cut on his hand was…

Chapter Fifty-Six

‘This is John,’ Molly said, to fill the stunned silence…

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Mr Grayling was in his office. Mr Frank tapped on…

Chapter Fifty-Eight

In Saratoga Springs, the temperature shot up into the nineties…

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Mr Frank insisted that Mr Grayling’s chauffeur drove Reg downtown…

Chapter Sixty

Annie couldn’t stop thinking about the séance and analysing everything…

Chapter Sixty-One

Reg completed the letter to his mother – a simple…

Chapter Sixty-Two

Mr Grayling hadn’t been to the house since the previous…

Chapter Sixty-Three

The days when Juliette could wear a corset were long…

Chapter Sixty-Four

From the first day at the summer house, Molly started…

Chapter Sixty-Five

Father Kelly knocked on the door one morning and asked…

Chapter Sixty-Six

In early August, a storm blew up the Atlantic coast…

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Somewhere in the depths of his brain, Reg became aware…

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Juliette couldn’t stop torturing herself with visions of Robert escorting…

Chapter Sixty-Nine

When Reg awoke, it was daylight outside and the storm…

Chapter Seventy

Juliette scribbled a very simple note: ‘Am in New York…

Chapter Seventy-One

It was getting dark as Reg walked over Brooklyn Bridge.

Chapter Seventy-Two

As soon as Juliette woke the next day, she rang…

Chapter Seventy-Three

Juliette didn’t have time to be nervous as Robert dashed…

Chapter Seventy-Four

Reg didn’t know where to find a police station. In…

Chapter Seventy-Five

Reg had a lot of time to worry while the…

Chapter Seventy-Six

Later that night, George Grayling sat at his desk with…

Chapter Seventy-Seven

As arranged, Robert came to the hotel at six and…

Chapter Seventy-Eight

After the newspaper story about her appeared, Annie was alarmed…

Chapter Seventy-Nine

When Reg turned up at the Cunard Line office to…

Epilogue

Reg and Florence got married a week before Christmas 1912…

TITANIC

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Enjoyed this book? Read on for the start of Gill Paul’s new novel, Another Woman’s Husband.

Other Books by Gill Paul

About the Publisher

Prologue

Reg’s hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t hold the newspaper still enough to read. He sat on a bunk and smoothed the pages open on the shabby grey blanket, ironing the creases with his hand. Lists of names in tiny type covered the surface, organised into uneven columns of surnames, forenames, the class in which each person had travelled, and finally their country of origin.

Straight away he saw an error: Luigi Gatti was listed as Spanish rather than Italian. How could he trust this list if they could make such a simple mistake? Was anything in it reliable? Abbing, Abbott, Abelson … Ernest Abbott. That must be Ernie who worked in the mess, but they had him down as a third-class passenger. Poor old Ernie.

His finger scrolled down the page. There was Colonel Astor, with the same number of words by his name as anyone else. All that money couldn’t buy him a place on the other, shorter list, the list of survivors. There was Bill, who had slept in the next bunk, and Ethel from the pantry, the one they called Fat Ethel. If only they’d been kinder …

A couple of columns across, at the ‘J’s, his stomach turned over and his heart began pounding hard. It was a most peculiar feeling to see yourself listed as dead. He looked away and refocused his eyes just outside the window where he could see unfurling buds on the topmost branches of a linden tree. Someone was moving around in a greystone office building opposite. He couldn’t make out if it was a man or a woman, but they were holding some papers, which they put down then disappeared from view. For a few minutes he breathed quietly, keeping his head empty, until he felt able to look at the newspaper again.

The first name that appeared before his eyes was ‘Grayling, Margaret, 1st class, American’, and his eyes filled with tears for the generous old woman who had been his favourite passenger. Not even that old: she was probably only in her forties, about the same age as his mum. Then into his head came the peculiar scene he had witnessed between her husband and a striking young girl on the boat deck. Everything in his mind was now divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’, and that had been before: exactly forty-eight hours before the unthinkable happened.

PART ONE

Chapter One

It was one in the morning and first-class victualling steward Reg Parton should have been asleep in his bunk, but a restlessness took him to the ship’s galley where he knew Mr Joughin would be pulling steaming trays of bread out of the ovens. Joughin was a good sort and always ready to slip you a fresh roll or two, especially at this time of night when he’d had a few whiskies. Chief baker was the right job for him, because he liked feeding people.

The ship was almost twelve hours out of Queenstown, on the southern tip of Ireland, and gliding her way across the Atlantic. There was less swell than with any other ship Reg had been on. She was as steady as if you were in your own parlour at home, with only the muffled roar of the engines indicating that you were on the move. The Titanic was a beautiful beast, with everything brand new and sparkling. It was nice being on a maiden voyage – there was the sense of every surface being untouched and pristine, and this ship was the most magnificent he’d ever seen. Woodwork gleamed, chandeliers shot pinpricks of light around the vast salons, and every surface that could possibly be decorated was clad in gilt, mosaic or milky mother-of-pearl.

Reg had been on board for two days and he’d spent all his off-duty time exploring. There were ten separate decks, each almost 300 yards long, joined up by elevators and staircases in hidden corners. Every deck had a different layout of interminable corridors with faceless doors and he’d got lost more times than he could count. It would take months to get to know this ship properly. He doubted anyone knew it from bow to stern, except maybe the designers. Mr Andrews, the chief designer, was on board and was often seen wandering the decks making notes in a little notebook.

Reg burnt the roof of his mouth on the hot roll and swore.

‘That’s what you get for being a gannet,’ Mr Joughin remarked in his broad Birkenhead accent.

Reg ran to the sink to pour a glass of water, and while he was drinking, Second Officer Lightoller put his head round the door.

‘Tea and biscuits for the bridge, Mr Joughin.’ He didn’t so much as glance at Reg.

‘Right you are, sir.’

Lightoller disappeared and Mr Joughin began to set a tea tray. ‘Where’s that bloody Fred when you need him? He went for a fag half an hour ago and hasn’t come back. Who’s going to take this tray?’

‘I’ll do it!’ Reg nearly jumped with excitement. ‘Please let me.’ He was dying to see the bridge with all its gleaming, state-of-the-art equipment. Maybe Captain Smith would even be there.

‘It’s not your place,’ Joughin grumbled. ‘It should be Fred.’

‘But Fred’s not here. They won’t even notice who brings their tea. Let me do it.’

‘Go on with you, then.’

Reg took the elevator up to the boat deck and walked to the short flight of steps that led up to the bridge. The moon was waning, the night was so black there was no dividing line between sea and sky, and the few stars were distant dots in some other galaxy. Onboard lights had been turned to a dim glow as the 1,300 passengers slept below. The steps were slippery with salt spray and Reg took them slowly so as not to slosh tea from the pot.

When he entered the bridge, he was disappointed to see that it wasn’t the captain on duty but another officer, one he didn’t recognise, who was standing alone by the wheel gazing out at the ocean ahead.

‘Put it down there,’ he said, without looking round, just pointing vaguely.

Reg had hoped he might be able to get into conversation and ask questions about the function of all the fancy modern buttons and levers and dials, but there was no encouragement to friendliness in the square set of the officer’s shoulders.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Reg said before turning to leave. If it had been Captain Smith, he could have asked his questions. He’d sailed under the captain two years earlier, had been his personal dining steward on the voyage, and he’d found the grizzly-bearded old man to be a genial, fatherly sort. Whenever he was dining on his own, he’d been happy to answer questions about the propellers and bulkheads and top speed of the ship. He loved his ships, and encouraged Reg’s boyish curiosity.

Reg stopped just outside the bridge to examine the sextant, with which the captain checked the ship’s position at noon every day, then he gazed down the length of the vessel, past the huge funnels and towards the stern. It was a floating hotel, like the Ritz at sea. Of course, he’d never been to the Ritz Hotel, never even been to London, but he’d read all about it in the papers when it had opened six years earlier. The upper classes went there to sip tea in the opulent Palm Court, among real palm trees. Even King George was sometimes glimpsed there. One day Reg would like to visit, he thought, but in the meantime, they had their very own Palm Court and Verandah Restaurant on the Titanic and it too had real palm trees in exotic wooden tubs. No detail had been spared; there was nothing but the best for their well-heeled clientele.

A movement caught his eye and he turned to see a girl standing behind one of the lifeboats, right next to the railing. Her back was to him but he could see that she was very slim, with copper hair secured by a diamond clasp, and wearing a shimmery white dress. She was holding something bulky and brown and, if he wasn’t mistaken, furry. Could it be an animal, perhaps a pet dog? It seemed rather large for that.

She turned and Reg shrank back, not wanting to be caught staring, but she didn’t once glance up towards the bridge. She was gazing beyond the lifeboat towards the entrance to the Grand Staircase and shifting her weight from foot to foot as if she were agitated about something. Suddenly she turned back towards the ocean, lifted her brown bundle and tossed it high into the air, right over the railing. Reg jumped in horror and opened his mouth to yell, the thought that it might be a dog foremost in his mind, but as it flapped in the air he saw that it was a coat. A fur coat. It seemed to float in slow motion, caught on an ocean breeze, before disappearing from view.

Why would anyone do that? It was a gesture of such extravagant abandon that he was struck dumb.

The girl glanced over her shoulder, presumably to check whether anyone had witnessed her bizarre behaviour. In the lamplight, her face was small and exquisite, like a flawless china doll. She had diamond earrings to match her hair clasp, and her robe plunged open at the front in quite the most revealing manner Reg had ever seen on an upper-class lady.

Yet, there was no doubt that she was upper class. Everything about her seemed genteel and expensive, and the gown was cinched in around a waist so tiny Reg felt sure he could have linked his hands round it.

‘She’s perfect,’ he thought to himself. ‘Truly perfect.’ But what was she up to? She took a step towards the Grand Staircase, then turned back again as if not sure what to do for the best. She leaned against the railing and bent over to look at the ocean 75 feet below. Reg took an instinctive step towards her. Was she planning to jump? Or just trying to see where her coat had landed? Should he rush over and be ready to grab her if she started to climb the railing? She would die instantly on impact with the water. That tiny neck would snap as surely as if she had leapt off a ten-storey building and hit the pavement below.

He stood, torn by indecision. What if she leapt and he didn’t get there in time to stop her because he’d been too busy gawping? He’d feel terrible, knowing he could have prevented it. Should he make some kind of sound so she knew he was there? He could approach and ask if he might fetch anything for her. He rehearsed the words in his head. ‘Good evening, ma’am. May I be of assistance?’

She turned again and just at that moment, Reg noticed a figure coming up the Grand Staircase and emerging onto the deck. He walked past a lamp and Reg saw that it was Mr Grayling, an American gentleman whose table he waited on in the first-class dining saloon. He could easily have spotted Reg hovering on the steps to the bridge, but he didn’t look that way. Instead, he strode directly towards the lifeboat where the girl was waiting. As she saw him approach, she gave a little cry, ran towards him, and threw herself into his arms. Her tiny white figure was enveloped in his large, dark-suited one.

Mr Grayling held her close for a while then he leaned back to cup her chin in his hands. He said something to her, but Reg could only catch the word ‘sorry’, before he bent to kiss her full on the mouth. She raised her pale, thin arms around his neck, while he placed a protective hand in the small of her back. It was a posture so intimate Reg knew that they had to be lovers, and not just new lovers. There was a familiarity about their passion. Perhaps they had been apart for some time and this was their reunion.

An awful fact nagged at Reg’s brain as he stood watching. Mr Grayling was married to a woman Reg knew and liked, who was with him on this trip. He’d waited on Mrs Grayling on a Mediterranean cruise the previous year, when she’d been travelling with a woman friend, and they’d had several friendly conversations. Reg had been touched that she remembered him this time and professed herself delighted to see him once more. She was nicer than any other passenger in first class, where familiarity with the staff was somewhat frowned upon. How could Mr Grayling betray her? What kind of a man would bring his mistress onto the same ship as his wife?

The lovers slipped in behind the lifeboat, still caught up in their embrace, and Reg decided he had best get a move on before he was spotted. They wouldn’t be at all pleased if they thought they were being spied upon. He knew to his cost that if a first-class passenger made a complaint against a steward it would always be believed, no matter how unjust the circumstances. On his last voyage, an elderly gentleman had lost a silver cigar case and accused Reg of stealing it. His belongings were searched and of course it wasn’t found. It finally turned up under a table in the smoking room, but Reg knew the incident was recorded in his particulars at the White Star Line office. He’d seen it with his own eyes when he signed on for this voyage. There was an indelible shadow on his record because of it. He’d protested indignantly to the secretary at the employment office but was told it was just a record of an event, and nothing would make them remove it.

Reg stamped his foot on the step and walked down with a heavy footfall, so no one could accuse him of sneaking around. At the bottom of the steps he turned left towards the port side of the ship so as not to pass Mr Grayling and the girl, who were on the starboard. When he reached the Grand Staircase, he didn’t look back but hurried down. He caught the elevator to D deck, said good night to the night shift operator, then descended a further flight of stairs to Scotland Road, a corridor stretching half the length of the ship, where he had a berth in a dormitory with twenty-seven other saloon stewards. It was one-thirty, and he had precisely four hours to sleep before it was time to get up and prepare for breakfast service.

Chapter Two

Lady Juliette Mason-Parker knelt on the bathroom floor, acid scorching her throat and the taste of vomit in her mouth. The floor was tiled with a black and white diagonal diamond-within-diamond motif. Some diamonds had black centres while others were white. She counted the number from the toilet across to the bath: exactly fourteen. Who decided that? Was it calculated precisely to work that way? She supposed it must be. Everything on the Titanic seemed meticulously designed, nothing left to chance.

The bathroom fittings were real marble. It seemed remarkable to her that the ship could stay afloat with the weight of all its fixtures and fittings: the library full of books, the swimming pool, the extravagant cut-glass chandeliers in every public room, the carved oak panelling on the walls and the enormous pieces of mahogany furniture. It was much more luxurious than their draughty family pile in Gloucestershire. A student of decorative styles could learn all they needed on board, Juliette mused, as they wandered from the Jacobean dining saloon to the Louis XIV restaurant to the Georgian-style lounge. Their suite had a French feel, with tapestries in rococo frames on the walls and heavy patterned drapes closing off the sleeping areas during daytime.

In the next room, her mother slept soundly, occasionally snuffling and murmuring in her sleep. The last thing Juliette wanted was for her to awake and start fussing. If ever there was a woman who enjoyed fussing, it was Lady Mason-Parker. She had been irritating Juliette beyond measure on this voyage. If it wasn’t her endless advice on which hat to wear for breakfast, and which gown was suitable for walking on the promenade in the afternoon, then it was her lectures on how to ensnare a husband, with methods that Juliette considered had gone out with Jane Austen. Men nowadays liked women with a bit of conversation in them rather than smiling fools, but Lady Mason-Parker felt that Juliette’s forthright opinions scared them off. So far mother and daughter hadn’t argued outright but tetchy barbs had been fired back and forth.

Suddenly Juliette spotted the lid of her pot of cherry tooth powder in the gap between the washbasin and the toilet. Throwing up in the middle of the night had its uses after all. She squeezed her hand in to retrieve it, then considered whether the nausea had subsided enough for her to wash out her mouth and return to bed. She rose tentatively, holding onto the basin’s edge, and regarded herself in the mirror.

Her blonde hair was pinned into waves, which were supposed to hold it in the style of the moment once the pins were removed in the morning. Whoever designed it had paid no regard to the fact that ladies had to attempt to sleep while being stabbed in a dozen different spots on their heads. Her eyes had bruised circles underneath and her skin without makeup had a faint greenish tinge. She would never get a husband looking like this, certainly not the rich American one her mother had in mind. And there was the added complication that it had to be done within a couple of months, from first meeting to proposal to marriage ceremony. The problem was that Juliette was pregnant. It was only eight weeks since the one and only time she’d had intercourse, but the signs were unmistakable. When she first caught her daughter throwing up and prised the truth out of her, Lady Mason-Parker had swung into action like a military commander.

‘We need to find you a husband straight away. English men dither so, but a rich American would be ideal. They would be over the moon to get themselves a real English Lady for a wife, and they tend to be more impulsive than Englishmen when they fall in love.’

Juliette was horrified. ‘Mother, you can’t be serious! I’m not interested in tricking some poor Yankee dupe into holy matrimony. It’s hideously immoral.’

‘What you did to get yourself into this condition was immoral. Getting married is the way to fix it, and your husband will be delighted to have a child so soon. It will prove you’re good breeding stock.’

‘I’m not a farm animal! And I refuse to cooperate with your schemes.’

Juliette’s protests were in vain. Her mother booked them a passage on the Titanic’s maiden voyage, calculating that the ship would be overflowing with eligible American millionaires. Since they sailed, she had occupied herself making enquiries of crusty dowagers in the lounge and arranging introductions to crass Americans who sold automobile components or garden fencing. Juliette had no choice but to converse with the men in question, but at some stage she would find a way to put them off. Mentioning her support for women’s suffrage seemed a foolproof method.

‘Have you chained yourself to the railings at Parliament yet?’ one gent had asked tentatively at dinner that evening.

‘No, but I rather think I might some time,’ Juliette had replied. ‘It looks fun.’

‘She’s joking, of course.’ Her mother leapt in to try and salvage the relationship, but the merest hint was usually enough for them to take fright. No man wanted a suffragette for a wife.

Quite apart from the dishonesty of tricking someone into marriage, Juliette didn’t want to be legally entwined for eternity to an American millionaire. She had a strong suspicion she wouldn’t like living in America, even though she had never been there before. She liked Gloucestershire and her horses and her friends; she enjoyed the fundraising she did for charity, which she knew she was good at. If only this whole unfortunate pregnancy could be over as quickly as possible then life could go back to normal.

She favoured Plan B, which was that, in the event her mother failed to entice some rich gent to propose to her during the crossing, they would rent a small house in upstate New York, sit out the remainder of the pregnancy then have the baby adopted through a Christian adoption society. Juliette could return to England and the life she’d known before with no one any the wiser. Even her own father and brother had no idea about her pregnancy; they thought she and her mother were simply visiting some distant American cousins. And as for the baby’s father, he would never find out.

Charles Wood was their local member of parliament, and quite high up in the Liberal party. Juliette had been introduced to him because of her charity work, and one weekend he had invited her to a house party on his estate. It was there, after an invigorating evening of discussion with distinguished guests who even included the prime minister’s daughter, Violet Asquith, that Juliette had allowed Charles to come to her bedroom while the others slept. She had been flattered by his interest in her. Her head was turned. She had heard whispers of other girls who had done ‘it’, but not of any who got caught out. It was her own stupidity to develop a crush on a married man and get carried away without the least thought for the consequences.

There had been no point in telling Charles. What could he have done? In the unlikely event he offered to divorce his wife and marry her, he would have destroyed his parliamentary career. In 1912, no one would countenance a divorced MP. Besides, her mother would never have allowed the marriage. She had much grander plans for her eldest daughter. Juliette must either marry money or she must marry landed gentry, as her younger brother would inherit the Mason-Parker estate. She had been born to a titled family and must uphold the standards set by her own upbringing, which meant no commoner was good enough (unless he happened to be sufficiently loaded to make such criteria insignificant).

Juliette dabbed a little cherry tooth powder onto her brush and scrubbed her teeth, then rinsed and spat. She wouldn’t let herself think about the creature growing inside her belly because she knew it would be the undoing of her. Their Labrador Tess had given birth to five puppies just last Christmas – little blind pink wriggly things – and they had given away four of them as soon as they could. Her baby would be the same. It would go to decent people and have a happy life, and one day in the future when Juliette was married to a man she loved, she would have children of her own.

She crept back into bed and pulled the satin coverlet up to her chin. Why was it always women who had to do the hardest things? How much easier it must be to be a man. Juliette wished with all her heart that she could fast-forward time to seven months from now when they would be on the return voyage to Southampton, footloose and unencumbered.

Chapter Three

Annie McGeown sat on the edge of a bunk and watched her four children breathing. They were so peaceful now, like little angels. Shame it hadn’t been that way earlier. They’d only been on the ship for twelve hours since boarding at Queenstown, but the eldest boys were running riot, feeling cooped up in the limited space. Back home she could kick them out into the fields between meals, but here there was just the third-class outdoor deck and the long corridors where they bashed into other passengers and got told off for making a racket. Her oldest, Finbarr, had already kicked his ball over the railings into the Atlantic and they had nothing left to occupy them except a set of quoits provided by a friendly deck steward.

Oh, but they were lucky, though. Look at this place! They had a cabin of their own with six bunk beds, two of which were empty since the baby shared with her. There were real spring mattresses and clean pillows and blankets. There was a tiny porthole and even a washbasin crammed in between the beds. And the food! It was the best she’d eaten in her life, no question. She’d felt so grand, sitting with her brood in the restaurant, each in their own places and a highchair for the baby, and waiters serving them with three courses at dinner. A lovely soup and bread, roast meat and potatoes and then a plum pudding for afters. She was stuffed to the gills. And the menu for the next day had been pinned on a notice board, promising ham and eggs for breakfast. Any more than a week of eating like that and she’d be the size of a house when she got to America and met up with Seamus again.

It was a year and a half since she’d seen her husband, and even that was only for a month when he’d managed to wangle a cheap passage and come back to Cork for a visit. He’d never met his youngest, didn’t know any of the children well, because he’d been out in New York for five years, working on the railways and saving enough money to afford a good home there. And now at last he was ready for them to be reunited. He’d written that he had leased a three-room apartment in a place called Kingsbridge, a suburb of New York City where there were lots of other Irish. There was a Roman Catholic church and good Catholic schools, and the people were friendly and welcoming. The local priest was helping him to find some furniture so it would be all homely when they arrived. In that last letter, he’d sent the money for their tickets: thirty-five pounds and five shillings, a vast sum. But in America, Seamus earned two pounds a week, which was unthinkable back home in Ireland. Annie didn’t even know anyone who got two pounds a month!

It was a new life for all of them. Their children would better themselves and get good jobs one day. The only bitter-sweet edge was the sadness Annie felt for the relatives she’d left behind: her elderly mam, her brothers and sisters and cousins. Would she ever see them again? Or would they just write letters once a month with mundane news about marriages and jobs and mutual friends and never be able to put into words how they really felt? Her mother couldn’t write, but one of her sisters had said she’d take dictation.

Look on the bright side, Annie, she urged herself. Here you are on the most luxurious ship in the world having a rare old time of it, and in five days you’ll be with yer man again. She felt excited at the thought. Married thirteen years and she still felt as much passion for him as the day they were wed. She hugged herself, thinking of the moment they’d walk down the gangplank with all their bags and there he’d be, grinning from ear to ear with his arms stretched wide.

The people in third class were friendly as well. Earlier that evening, after dinner, there had been a quick knock on the door of her cabin. She’d opened it to find three women about her age grouped outside.

‘I’m Eileen Dooley,’ one said. ‘This is Kathleen and Mary. We noticed you earlier with your brood. Aw, will you look at them all peaceful now, God bless them.’ The other women poked their heads round the cabin door for a peek. ‘Anyway, we’re going for a cup of tea and a chat while our menfolk are in the smoking room and we thought you might want to come along for a bit of adult company.’

Annie had been planning to spend the evening embroidering a blouse for her daughter while she had a bit of peace with them all asleep, but she was tempted. ‘That’s neighbourly of you, but I’m worried about leaving the little ones in a strange place. What if they wake up?’

‘Your eldest looks old enough to cope. What age is he?’

‘Ten.’

‘Sure and they’ll be fine. Turn the key in the door so they can’t run off and get up to shenanigans.’

Still Annie hesitated. ‘Am I dressed all right? Some folks looked so smart at dinner time. Maybe I should wear a hat?’ The woman called Kathleen had a hat on but the others didn’t.

‘You’re fine, love. Keep your hat for Sunday best.’

‘If you’re positive,’ she said, picking up her bag and searching through it till she found the cabin key. ‘They’re all out for the count here, so I’ll just come for a quick brew.’

They’d led her to the third-class general room, where there were polished tables and chairs, teak wall panels and white ceramic fittings. Kathleen turned out to be an old hand at transatlantic travel, and she kept exclaiming how much better the Titanic was than any other ship she’d been on.

‘Some of these ships just pack you in like cargo,’ she said. ‘And you have to take your own food along, so by the end of a week’s voyage everything is stale and the bread’s mouldy. This place is a palace compared to them.’

‘Aren’t you the brave wan travelling on your own with the children like that?’ Eileen told Annie. ‘We’re a big group. Fourteen of us, all from Mayo, so we’re company for each other. You’ll have to sit with us for your meals or those childrun will drive you to the demon drink by the time we reach America.’

‘I’d love to,’ Annie said. She’d been feeling a bit shy on the ship, not sure about the correct etiquette. Was there a dress code? Could she ask the stewards to heat a bottle for the baby? He liked his milk warm. Which bits of the ship were they allowed to wander in and which were off limits? Now there were some people she could ask, who had crossed on these ships before and could tell her what to do. They seemed a lovely bunch.

When she got back to her cabin, the children were still sound asleep, without a clue that she’d been gone a while. She climbed into bed, shifting the baby over beside the wall so he couldn’t fall out. Strange to think that on the other side of that wall were thousands and thousands of miles of ocean, all the way from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and up above them only stars. She said her prayers in her head, before dropping off to sleep.

Chapter Four

Reg lay awake mulling over what he’d seen on the boat deck. Of course, he knew that rich men had affairs. He’d sometimes see them sneaking shoeless out of the wrong cabins when he passed in the early morning on his way to the dining saloon. From the girls’ point of view, he could understand if they were short of money and a wealthy older man bought them jewels and fashionable gowns; that probably happened the world over. He knew from gossiping with the other lads in the mess that Mr Guggenheim had his mistress on board with him, a young French singer called Madame Aubart. They’d taken separate suites, but everyone understood that hers wasn’t occupied because she stayed with him. His wife was back home in New York. Perhaps she knew about the mistress and turned a blind eye? These things happened.

Was that the case with Mr Grayling and the girl? He had a large fortune made in South American mining. Did he buy her expensive gifts in return for her favours? Somehow it didn’t fit with the scene Reg had witnessed. The girl had an air about her as if she had grown up with wealth. Why would she need Mr Grayling’s money if her family had plenty of its own? She could obviously afford to dispense with a fur coat that had cost goodness knows how much … Reg couldn’t imagine what it might be worth but he knew it would be more than he earned in a year.

If it weren’t about money, why would a stunning girl like her be having an affair with a man who must be more than twice her age? Reg guessed she wasn’t any older than himself, and he was twenty-one. It certainly couldn’t have been physical attraction because Mr Grayling wasn’t a looker. He was a round-faced gent with sleek greying hair and a waxed moustache, who gave the impression of a sea-lion when first you met him. His figure was sea-lionish as well. It disturbed Reg to visualise his ample belly pressed against the girl’s slender frame. If truth be told, it made him feel a bit sick.

It wasn’t just the physical side that disturbed him, but also his loyalty to Mrs Grayling. She had been friendly to Reg from the first day of her Mediterranean cruise the previous year, complimenting him on his proficiency at silver service, praising the food, the views and the décor of the dining saloon. One afternoon she had eaten lunch alone because her friend felt poorly, and afterwards, while Reg was clearing the plates, they got into conversation.

‘Where’s home for you, Reg?’ she asked.

‘Southampton, ma’am.’

‘Do you live with your family? Or your wife?’

‘I live with my mum and three younger brothers. I’ve got a girlfriend, Florence, but we’re not married.’ He wasn’t usually one for opening up to anyone about his personal affairs but Mrs Grayling was so amiable he found himself confiding in her.

‘Do tell me how you met Florence,’ she urged. ‘I love hearing about the beginnings of relationships.’

Reg paused in his work and leant on the back of a chair. ‘It was just over a year ago,’ he told her. ‘I was down at the docks one afternoon because there was a German ship moored – the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm – and I’d never seen her before. Florence happened to be there with her friend Lizzie and we got talking about the ships.’

In his head he relived the scene. He had overheard the girls wondering where the Prinz Wilhelm came from so he called over to tell them. ‘She sails out of Bremen, and comes here first, then to Cherbourg and on to New York.’

‘Is it a passenger or a cargo ship?’ Florence asked, moving closer, and Reg explained that the transatlantic routes made most of their money ferrying emigrants to the States, but that they also took mailbags and a few tons of cargo. He told them he worked for White Star Line on their transatlantic steamers and was just back from a voyage on the Olympic.

‘Is that a fast one?’ Florence asked. The friend, Lizzie, was prettier but she seemed much shyer. All the questions were coming from Florence, so he found himself focusing his answers on her. They were easy questions, ones he could respond to knowledgeably.

‘Did you ask her for a date?’ Mrs Grayling asked, interrupting his reverie.

‘I invited them both for a cup of tea in the Seaview Café, then as soon as the words were out of my mouth I remembered I wouldn’t have enough money to pay if they both wanted cake.’ He grinned. ‘Fortunately, they just asked for tea.’

‘What did you like about her?’

Reg considered. ‘She was easy to talk to,’ he said. ‘She works in a stately home and we compared notes about how some upper-class folk can be a bit unreasonable. Not you, of course,’ he added quickly. ‘I told her about a lady I served on the Olympic who made a big fuss because we didn’t have strawberries in December, as if we should have altered the course of the sun to change their growing season just for her.’ Mrs Grayling laughed. ‘And then Florence told me she got so shy sometimes when serving drinks at the big parties where she worked that her hands would shake, and the posh folks would glower at her as if she had the plague. And I looked at her and felt I understood her somehow. Do you know what I mean? I thought we might be the same.’

He remembered that was the moment when he noticed Florence had a few tiny freckles on the bridge of her nose, and thought he might like to have a chance to count them. She saw him looking and smiled back and it was a nice feeling. She was well turned out, in a blue coat with loads of tiny buttons up the front, and she wore a little hat that had a fabric flower pinned on the hatband. She held her teacup nicely, like a lady, even though her accent was similar to his own. He liked everything about her.

‘So what happened next?’ Mrs Grayling was lapping up the story, completely absorbed. All the other stewards had left the saloon and they were on their own in the vast room.

‘I asked if we could meet again on her next day off, and said I’d bring my friend John. You know – the Geordie lad I work with?’

‘I know exactly who you mean – the steward with the red hair. I’ve seen you chatting to him.’

‘Yes, that’s him. Lizzie didn’t really hit it off with John, though. I don’t think he was enough of a looker for her.’

They’d paired off into couples and walked up to the public gardens, and Reg felt nervous at first. He wasn’t experienced at making conversation with girls and couldn’t think what to talk about apart from ships, but Florence made it easy. She chattered away, full of stories about her huge, chaotic family with umpteen siblings and cousins, and about all the staff politics at the stately home where she worked, then she asked a few questions about him. When Reg told her his dad had left home when he was eight, she squeezed his arm in sympathy, and he thought that was nice. Not too much of a reaction and not too little; just right.

Before she stepped onto the tram that evening, Reg took her hand and raised it to his lips, and she giggled, obviously pleased. She kept waving at him for as long as the tram was still in sight.

‘So you’ve been stepping out for more than a year now?’ Mrs Grayling asked. ‘Isn’t it difficult to see each other with you being away at sea so much?’

‘My trips are about two or three weeks each, then I’ve got at least a week off in between, sometimes more, and we’ll meet up on her days off. It works out all right.’

If she could get the afternoon off, Florence would be waiting at the quayside when his ship docked. It made him feel all warm inside when he saw her tiny figure standing there waving up at him. No one had ever cared about him like that before: not his dad, not his mum, and his brothers were all young and self-obsessed. Florence was smart and insightful and he liked talking to her, liked walking arm in arm with her, liked giving her a cuddle. He’d had dinner with her family, she’d met his mum, and now a year on there was a sense that everyone was just waiting for an announcement. Wedding bells, a baby within a year, a little terraced house near the docks and her bringing up the kids while he was away at sea earning the cash.

‘Do you love her? My goodness, listen to me,’ Mrs Grayling laughed. ‘I’m being so nosy. Please tell me to mind my own business if you don’t want to answer.’

‘No, it’s fine.’ For some reason, Reg didn’t mind the directness of her questioning, although he never talked to anyone else in this way. ‘I do love her, but I just don’t know if I’m ready for marriage and I think that’s what she wants. Her friend Lizzie got engaged recently and I could tell by the way Florence looked at me when she told me about it that she would like me to propose. Other people keep dropping hints or asking outright when I’m going to make an honest woman of her. It’s what you do round our way.’

‘Why don’t you feel ready?’

Reg considered. ‘I suppose I worry about the money. I want to have enough put aside to get us a decent place to live, and before I have kids I want to be confident that I’ll be able to put food on the table for them. Working on ships, you only get a contract for each voyage and you can never be sure you’ll ever be hired again. That worries me.’

There was more. Reg dreamed of bettering himself and being able to afford some of the luxuries his wealthy passengers enjoyed. Just one or two, nothing excessive.

‘I want to get my own car one day,’ he’d told Florence. ‘Have you ever seen a picture of a Lozier? They’re pure elegance on wheels. A bargain at only seven and a half thousand pounds!’

‘You admire the rich more than I do,’ Florence mused. ‘You’re more impressed by them.’

He suspected it was true. Not the ones who’d simply inherited their wealth but he admired the self-made millionaires from America, the ones who had started their own car dealerships and hotels and property empires. He wished he could make enough money to have a better life, but there was nothing he could do besides wait on table. And so they carried on as they were.

‘Marriage is a tricky thing,’ Mrs Grayling told him. ‘It’s hard work and sometimes it feels as though you are the only one trying.’ Suddenly she looked very downcast. Her grey-blue eyes had depths of sadness in them. ‘But it sounds as though you had better be careful not to let that girl slip away. Aren’t you worried she’ll meet someone else while you’re at sea?’

Reg thought about it for a moment then shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t ever mess me around. She’s an honest, straightforward girl, and that’s what I like.’

‘You should hang onto her then. Take my advice.’

A year after that exchange, Reg was overjoyed when he looked at the Titanic’s first-class passenger list and spotted Mrs Grayling’s name. He asked the chief steward, Mr Latimer, if he could wait on her table and as soon as she walked in to dinner on the first evening and saw him holding her chair for her, she exclaimed, ‘Reg! How wonderful you’re here. Tell me, how is the lovely Florence?’

He was touched to the core that such a grand lady would remember anything about his life. ‘She’s fine, thank you, ma’am,’ he said.

‘And are you married yet?’

‘Not yet,’ he grinned.

‘But still together?’ Reg nodded. ‘That’s good. I’m delighted to see you again.’

Then two nights after that reunion, Reg saw Mrs Grayling’s husband with the young woman on the boat deck and he felt simply awful about it. The knowledge weighed heavily on him. It was as if being witness to her husband’s infidelity had somehow made him culpable himself. Should he tell Mrs Grayling? Or do something about it himself? But what?

Chapter Five

Next morning at breakfast, Reg couldn’t meet Mrs Grayling’s eye, scared that something in his countenance might give away what he had seen on the boat deck. The situation was compounded when he overheard Mr Grayling being irascible with his wife. He seemed a bad-tempered sort, forever complaining about something: his food wasn’t hot enough, or the next table were making too much noise. That was forgivable, Reg supposed, but speaking discourteously to such a sweet-natured person was not.

‘Will you try out the gymnasium today, George?’ she asked. ‘You could have a Turkish bath afterwards. It’s supposed to have glorious mosaics.’

‘Have you taken leave of your senses? When have you ever known me go to a gymnasium or a Turkish bath?’ Mr Grayling’s tone was impatient, and as Reg arranged the cutlery for their chosen dishes, he couldn’t help noticing the hurt look on Mrs Grayling’s face. He remembered her commenting that marriage was hard work and watching her with Mr Grayling, Reg could imagine why she might feel that way.

‘I plan to stroll along the promenade this morning, then perhaps I shall write some postcards in the reading room,’ she told her husband. ‘How about you, dear?’

‘I haven’t made up my mind yet but when I do, I’ll be sure to inform you.’

His tone was heavy with sarcasm and Reg flinched. Mr Grayling seemed to be in a particularly foul mood, which was rum considering that, from what Reg had seen, he was having his cake and eating it. What right did he have to be bad-tempered, when he had both a charming wife and a willowy, goddess-like mistress?

He wasn’t the only grumpy one that morning. At one of Reg’s tables there was a young Canadian couple, Mr and Mrs Howson, and the wife was a silly, giggling girl who kept making eyes at Reg right under her husband’s nose. It was a game to her. Maybe she was trying to show hubbie that she was attractive to other men, but it put Reg in a very awkward situation. He tried to be strictly formal and avoid any eye contact, but Mrs Howson insisted on clutching his arm and asking inane questions.

‘What’s the difference between a herring and a haddock, Reg? I only like fish that don’t have any bones.’ She clutched his arm and peered up at him with doe eyes.

He felt like telling her that jellyfish were the only fish without bones and they didn’t have any on the menu. He also wanted to ask her to let go of his arm, but he did neither. ‘The herring have tiny bones throughout so you might be better with the haddock, ma’am.’

‘You always look after me so well,’ she purred, and her husband snorted. It was embarrassing, and Reg moved away from their table as quickly as he could.

As he worked, he kept an eye on the saloon door watching for the girl from the boat deck to arrive. He was curious to find out whether she was travelling with a husband or, if she was unmarried, who was chaperoning her. They certainly weren’t doing a very good job. Women like her would never travel alone. It simply wasn’t done.

First class was full of beautiful women. Some had looks that owed a substantial debt to artifice, but others were natural stunners. Even at breakfast, they wore fancy gowns in expensive velvets and silks with lace trimmings, and they all had hats with feathers and bows pinned to their heads. Every lady in first class wore a hat for breakfast and lunch and some kind of headdress for dinner. It was a regular fashion parade. Florence would have enjoyed looking at the clothes, he thought. She liked nice clothes. He’d gone with her a few times to browse through the rails in Tyrrell & Green’s department store, although she could seldom afford to buy more than a new pair of gloves or a length of lace to trim a petticoat.

Breakfast service ended at 10.30 and there had been no sign of the girl from the boat deck. Maybe she was having a lie-in, or perhaps she had chosen to dine at one of the ship’s cafés or the à la carte restaurant. He cleared the last plates from his tables and set them for luncheon, then caught his friend John’s eye and motioned with two fingers to his lips that he would meet him down in the mess for a fag. John nodded, but he had a table who were being slow to finish their meal, so Reg went on ahead.

He stopped in at the dorm to pick up his fags and wrinkled his nose at the vegetable smell of farts and feet and armpits; the twenty-seven men who slept there wouldn’t have a bath till they reached New York so it was sure to get worse each day. There were only two baths for the eight-hundred-plus crew members, and a separate one for the officers. Reg opened a couple of portholes and jammed them ajar with iron shoots from the store cupboard. That should help. Then he took the fags and matches and made his way to the stewards’ mess, where he sat down and waited for John to arrive so they could light up at the same time.

Reg wasn’t a big smoker. Some stewards were always nipping off for a fag and getting antsy when they were forced to go too long without one, but for Reg it was just a punctuation mark in the day, a chance to put his feet up and socialise. He collected the cigarette cards for his little brothers, and they’d never forgive him if he gave up, but generally he could take it or leave it.

‘You’ll never guess what I saw last night!’ Reg told John after they’d both exhaled the first drag. ‘One of my passengers, Mr Grayling, fooling around on the boat deck with a girl less than half his age while his wife is in their suite just a couple of decks below.’

John was unsurprised. ‘Goes on all the time with these people. They have different rules to you and me. It’s not just the men either. The women do it as well.’

‘Get away with you.’ Reg frowned.

‘Colonel Astor’s first wife had an affair and the whole of New York knew about it. They say his daughter isn’t really his. Now he’s got divorced and married again and they’re all pointing the finger and saying he shouldn’t have remarried, but if you ask me his wife was the one that started it.’

Reg had heard something of the kind before but hadn’t paid much attention. ‘They sit in your section, don’t they? What do you think of the new wife?’

John wrinkled his nose and gave it some thought. ‘Bit of a mousy thing. She’ll let him be the boss, though. She won’t be running off with fancy men, not like the last one.’

‘She’s only young. Eighteen, I heard, and he’s nearly fifty. I don’t know why a girl would want to do that.’

John rolled his eyes comically. ‘Hundred million dollars in the bank? I’d marry him for that!’

‘I don’t think you’re his type somehow.’ John would never win any beauty contests, but he was the nicest chap you could ever hope to meet.

They’d become friends on Reg’s first voyage after some of the other lads played a practical joke on him. He’d been working flat out from five in the morning and got to the dorm at eleven that night so faint with exhaustion that he was hoping to fall straight into his bunk. But as he walked in the door, he heard stifled laughter and sensed something was up. Sure enough, there was a huge metal object jammed into the space between his bunk and the one above: a dessert trolley from the dining room. It was about five feet long, two feet wide and felt as though it weighed a ton.

‘You bastards!’ Reg swore and the room erupted into laughter. He grabbed the trolley’s handle and tried to yank it out but it was jammed in tightly and hard to manoeuvre. ‘Bloody hell, I don’t believe it.’

‘Here you go, man. I’ll give you a hand.’ John skipped round the other side of the bunk to push from behind, while Reg pulled, and soon they had the dessert trolley back on the floor again.

‘Thanks, mate,’ Reg nodded, and from then on they were pals. They covered for each other on the ship and watched each other’s backs when their shipmates were fooling around. It was like having a brother on board.

Reg had hoped John would have some advice for him regarding Mr Grayling’s infidelity, and in particular if there was anything he should do about it. ‘You should have seen this girl who was with him on the boat deck,’ he reiterated. ‘She was the bee’s knees. I’ll point her out at luncheon. It didn’t make sense somehow.’

It was only afterwards he realised he’d forgotten to tell John about the fur coat, in some ways the strangest part of the scene he had witnessed. He made a mental note to mention it later.

Chapter Six

After breakfast Margaret Grayling found a deckchair on the promenade and sat staring out at the ocean with a huge lump in her throat, her eyes watering in the salt breeze. George, her husband, had been more than usually difficult during this voyage. He’d always been a cold man but his rudeness to her had previously been confined to their moments alone. He would never have spoken discourteously to her in front of the servants at their Madison Avenue home, yet he was prepared to do so in front of a steward on the Titanic, when all around them sat the cream of New York high society, no doubt listening in.

In private, George had renewed his demands that she should divorce him, but the idea was anathema to her. It was against every religious principle she held dear. They had been married in the sight of God and the minister had clearly said, ‘What God hath joined together, let no man cast asunder.’ How could she go against God’s commandment?

George didn’t share her religious beliefs and seemed to think she was merely worried about what society might say. In 1912, divorce caused a scandal and there was no question that both parties were stigmatised by it, even when one was blameless. But Margaret had never given much weight to the opinions of society. She didn’t engage in the complex sets of social rules that dictated the parties and dinners to which you were invited, the box in which you appeared at the opera, or which ladies left visiting cards at your door. She had more or less stopped appearing in society seven years earlier, after great tragedy had rent her life apart.

Theirs had never been a passionate marriage but it had produced a daughter, a gentle, artistic girl called Alice, who was the sun around which they both revolved and the cement that kept their marriage civil and sometimes even happy throughout the seventeen years of her life. When Alice died of scarlet fever in February 1905, everything had collapsed inwards. In the cruellest of all the cruel things George had ever hurled at her, he screamed that it was her fault, that she had been responsible for killing their daughter, and from that fatal wound their marriage had never recovered.

Rationally, Margaret knew it was simply not true. She and Alice had visited friends of hers and two days after the visit, it transpired that one of the friends had succumbed to scarlet fever, despite showing no signs of it when they were there. And then Alice developed a sore throat and pink cheeks and a sand-papery rash on her chest and neck. Her friend recovered within a week but Alice’s condition had continued to deteriorate. She struggled for breath and was rarely fully conscious during her last days. George paid for the advice of every specialist in New York and beyond, throwing money at the problem, but to no avail. In the small hours of the night, Alice’s breathing became fainter and fainter, then stopped altogether.

A solitary tear trickled down Margaret’s cheek. Grief like that never left you. It abated sometimes, just for a while, then returned to thump you in the gut and knock you backwards when you least expected it. It was something she would always live with. But George turned all his grief into anger directed towards his wife. All the intimacy of their marriage, such as there had been, mutated into cold silence or bitter recrimination. She missed the days when they used to be a team, lying in bed together discussing Alice’s small triumphs. She missed the occasional gesture of physical affection. Even a simple peck on the cheek would mean so much now but there was no chance of that. Never again.

She’d hoped this trip to Europe could achieve some kind of rapprochement. She’d begged him to bring her along, hoping that the unfamiliar surroundings might re-ignite some companionship at least, but to no avail. He had left her on her own for several weeks in a hotel in Bologna, claiming that he had business to conduct, then insisted on cutting short the vacation and rushing to catch Titanic’s maiden voyage. Nothing had been gained by the trip. They were returning to the aching loneliness of the mansion where they lived separate lives under the same roof.

Should she go against God’s will and give George his divorce so that each had a chance of happiness in the future? The more she observed other marriages, the more she believed that women seemed most content who lived on their own.

There was a Canadian couple in the dining saloon, the Howsons, who were a terrible advertisement for the institution. Married less than a year, they were already disappointed in each other. Neither had fulfilled the other’s expectations. Margaret knew them slightly and could see where the fault lines lay. She hated that he gambled or, more particularly, that he gambled and lost. He hated the money she spent on clothes and fripperies. He’d been a bachelor throughout his twenties and had never realised quite how much a new gown cost, nor how many were required to see a fashionable woman through the season. On the Titanic, first-class women would never dare turn up to dinner in a gown they had worn before. Each evening required a lavish new creation.

There was something more, Margaret mused. They had moved to New York after their marriage and he had hoped to gain immediate acceptance in high society through his wife, who came from a better family. He had no concept that to reach the inner circle of the kind of high-society grandees travelling on the ship would take careful calculation and manoeuvring over at least a year, and even then they might never get there since he worked in property. Being Canadian stood against them as well. They might be endured for the course of the voyage but no new invitations would be delivered to their butler on their return.

Margaret could view all this from a distance and see the futility of their ambitions and desires in the context of a life. So many other things were more important, but the young could never understand that. To them social position was everything, since a wag had said back in the 1880s that there were only four hundred fashionable people in New York (the exact number that would fit in Mrs William Astor’s ballroom). The term ‘The Four Hundred’ had been coined and instantly everyone began scrabbling for their place in the hallowed ranks. The irony was that the harder you tried, the less eligible you appeared, and she knew the Howsons would never get there. Would that prove a rupture that would tear their marriage apart?

Mrs Howson’s flirtatiousness with Reg was awkward for the boy. He dealt with it professionally, but it couldn’t be easy when you are trained to be polite to all passengers. You can’t take sides between husband and wife.

She wondered if marriage would be easier when you came from Reg’s class. Surely things would be simpler without all the rules about status that bedevilled her own class? His girl, Florence, sounded like a sweetheart, but Reg had intimated that he was hesitating about taking the step of getting engaged. Maybe it was hardly surprising given all the bickering couples he saw on the ships where he worked. He didn’t want to make a mistake. He was a good person, and wouldn’t have led her on for – what was it? – two years now if he didn’t genuinely love her.

Margaret had taken a liking to Reg. He had the looks of a moving picture star but seemed unaware of it. There was no trace of the vanity that afflicted many handsome men she had met, who checked their appearance in every reflective surface and strutted arrogantly into rooms, watching for a reaction. Reg seemed modest and introspective, and an all-round good sort.

During the Mediterranean voyage, she had witnessed an incident that he didn’t know she had seen. His friend John had been looking very queasy during breakfast service one morning, as if he had a stomach upset, and he had suddenly rushed off, leaving a pile of soiled plates on a table near the entrance, where arriving guests would see them. The chief steward noticed them and became instantly enraged. His eyes swept the room looking for someone to blame, and in an instant Reg was by his side. Margaret was close enough to overhear their exchange.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I only put them down for a moment. It won’t happen again,’ Reg said, and relayed them quickly to the pantry, letting John off the hook.

That’s one of the reasons he was Margaret’s favourite steward, but she also liked a sense that he had hidden depths. He was a sensitive person, who thought about the world and all that he saw of it. When they talked, he really looked at her and seemed to see beneath the surface.

There was something else, as well. Reg was an independent type. Deep down, despite his bosom friendship with John, she sensed a loneliness in him, and that’s what attracted her. They were alike in that, for she was herself perhaps the loneliest woman in the world.

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