The Dressmaker (10 page)

Then a hoarse cry—a sailor, the darkness lifting, had spied a ship. Tess peered in the breaking dawn and saw other lifeboats for the first time. People began to shout to one another, women shrieking names of husbands and children. Are you there? Please answer, please be there! One voice, over and over: “Is my Amy in your boat? Amy, Amy, answer your mother.” Tess waited to hear a child’s answering shout, but there was none.

And then, yes, there was a ship emerging from the dark, coming directly toward them. Tess squinted, barely making out the name on the ship’s hull—
Carpathia
. It wasn’t a fantasy. “We’ve made it,” Mrs. Brown said quietly. Tears of relief fell, then froze on her cheeks.

They were the second load of survivors brought on board. Canvas bags were lowered into the jammed first lifeboat, and mothers began stuffing struggling, frightened children inside them, trying to console them, then trusting them to the sailors above. Tess put Michel and Edmond in one bag at their insistence, wishing she could comfort them with her halting French. The exhausted women were next.
They hung limply, dangling from ropes looped around their waists, as they were slowly hauled upward.

When it was Tess’s turn, she fastened the loop around her waist, tightened the rope, and turned to the sailor who had first helped row. She nodded in the direction of the still figures at the bottom of the boat. “Help me, please,” she said. “Don’t let them be dumped over the side of the lifeboat.”

“Bring them up only to be buried at sea?” he said, surprised.

“Yes.”

“That’s a bit balmy. I’m not doing it.”

“Yes, you are,” she said calmly, not flinching. “I don’t want either of them abandoned. You’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, won’t you?”

He hesitated. “I’ll send them up last,” he promised.

Tess began rising in the air, swinging a few times against the hull of the ship, looking up to see dozens of people watching her progress, many with mouths gaping. How good it felt to look at them, to see their faces, their quick movements, their
aliveness
. Then, swinging free, up and onto the deck. When her numbed legs began to buckle, a woman in a moleskin coat grabbed her.

“There, dear,” she murmured. “You’ll be all right—we’re so happy our captain got here in time. These are your children? But they speak no English, just French.” She nodded at Edmond and Michel, clinging to her skirts.

“They aren’t mine, and I fear their father didn’t make it.”

“I’m French—I’ll take care of them, dear.” She looked past Tess and pointed curiously at the next boat now bumping against the ship’s hull. “The other boats were terribly crowded, but that one is almost empty. Odd, isn’t it? How did that happen?”

Tess glanced down at the sea, and felt her heart leap. There it was, the lifeboat holding the Duff Gordons—they were safe. A sailor was helping Lucile into one of the slings, and soon she would be on board. Tess trembled with relief.

And there was the sailor, the one named Bonney; he was safe, too. He glanced upward, and their gazes caught. She waved, and he broke
into a grin. She saw Jean Darling; was that her husband with her? Cosmo was holding on to a sailor’s shoulder, trying to steady himself. Lucile was on her way up, swaying back and forth in the sling. They were all saved; Madame was saved. Tess waved again, still dizzy with relief. As Lucile stepped onto the
Carpathia
, Tess rushed forward, hugging her impulsively.

“Oh, my dear,” gasped Lucile, patting her lightly on the back and quickly stepping away.

More lifeboats were unloading—more people were swung up high in the slings, then deposited onto the deck of the ship. Tess looked in vain for some sign of Jack Bremerton. Nothing. Just sad, stunned strangers who huddled together or stood apart. There was a stillness to them all, a loss of purpose.

Suddenly Lucile began clapping her hands, almost as if a particularly dramatic performance had just come to an end. “We’ve made it to safety, and we’re going to celebrate,” she announced to the small band from Lifeboat One. She called to the captain of the
Carpathia
and issued a blithe order. “Captain, I’m sure you will do me this
essential
favor, won’t you? This is something I must have. Will one of your men take a photograph of those of us who were in my lifeboat? You have a camera, don’t you?”

Taken by surprise, the startled captain nodded, beckoning to another officer. “The ship’s surgeon will help you, Madame,” he said.

Cosmo, looking gaunt and weary, murmured to Tess. “Lucile wants a little ceremony to celebrate our survival, and she wants you in the picture, too,” he said. “Put your life belt back on, will you?”

Tess stared at Cosmo and then at the sodden vest she still held in her hand. Put it on again? She looked over his shoulder and saw Madame beckoning, her eyes bright and smiling. But there was also something else. What? A tinge of panic? No, not Madame.

“I know it’s a shivery old thing, but put it on—it will be a wonderful picture,” she said. “Come, dear, this will be for the history books. Our stalwart little crew deserves remembrance.”

Lining up next to Lucile were the crewmen who had been in her
boat, all of them standing stiffly in their life vests. The tall, wiry one with bad skin, the one named Sullivan, who was in charge of Lifeboat One, was boasting of his own bravery, but none of the others were listening.

Tess glanced at the seaman named Bonney. He was standing to the side, observing the scene with a stony, unreadable expression. Deliberately, watching Lucile, he undid the ties of his vest and tossed it into a refuse bin.

“I’ll not be a party to this vain celebration, not when so many died,” he said in a strong voice that carried across the deck.

Lucile’s smile faded. “Your rudeness is surpassed only by your arrogance,” she snapped.

“No, that’s your territory.”

“How dare you say that to me?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

Lucile turned away, her eyes glittering now with hard determination. “Tess?” She beckoned to the girl to join the huddled, wary-faced crew, some of whom were looking uncomfortably sheepish about Lucile’s mandate.

“Go ahead,” Tess said quickly. “I wasn’t in your boat, after all.”

“Very well.” Lucile turned away, taking her place at the center of the group. The surgeon of the
Carpathia
, with some diffidence, but out of respect for the famous Lady Duff Gordon, stood now, holding a camera. A silence fell over those on the deck as they watched.

“Now, everybody—smile,” Lucile ordered.

The camera clicked—a harsh, loud sound. His job done, the ship’s surgeon quickly hurried away.

Sir Cosmo spoke then with each crewman in turn, murmuring, walking down the line, a slap on a shoulder here, a handshake there. Gratitude, solidarity, of course. Small murmurings to each man.

“He thinks it’s his personal rowing team,” muttered a man from the watching crowd. “Gentry, managed to snare a private boat.” Tess turned in the direction of the voice, but it had merged into the crowd’s murmuring sighs.

Lifeboats were still arriving, and the crowd on the deck was
growing, a potpourri of survivors. The shabby and bedraggled, the famous and glamorous, and somehow they all looked alike to Tess right now. Their faces were as pasty and blank as hers, she was sure of that. She looked for Jack Bremerton. A man as confident as he would have found a way to get off that ship. And then again, perhaps not.

Peering over the side, she saw Mrs. Astor, looking faint and ill, her hair loose and snarled, swinging back and forth in a boatswain chair. Sailors were cutting life belts off some of the almost comatose passengers, and stewards were passing out mugs of hot coffee and brandy. The
Carpathia
’s passengers looked at them all in some horror, but mostly with pity, as mothers clung to the side of the ship, crying, hoping with each unloaded lifeboat that a missing child or husband would emerge.

One woman stood very still, without tears, her face strong and hard. She was the wife of one of the
Titanic
’s cooks, someone whispered. “There is another lifeboat,” she said calmly to whoever was listening. “My children are on it.” Refusing warm clothes, refusing a hot drink, refusing food, she stood rigid, watching the horizon.

Tess slumped down on the deck, exhausted. She did not want to talk with anyone. The world she inhabited yesterday was gone. There were no beautiful clothes to unpack or iron. No silver tea service, no strolling on the promenade—none of the vanities that had seemed to matter so much. Was it only yesterday?

A shadow fell between her and the light.

“I don’t even know your name,” Bonney said quietly.

Startled, she glanced up and, for the first time, really looked at this man who had shared the last carefree moment of her life. A rough, dark stubble covered his face, deepening every line and crevice, making him look much older than the village boy she had met on deck yesterday. He wore a dry flannel shirt but no sweater, as if scorning the cold, and he was smoking, drawing on a cigarette with concentrated ferocity. She was struck by the uncompromising, hard set of his chin. How different he looked. There was no lighthearted grin, no easy set of the shoulders, but then they were both different people from the pair who had met on the
Titanic
’s promenade.

“Tess Collins. And yours?”

He flicked a long ash off the cigarette in his right hand and gazed down at her a bit uneasily. “Jim. Jim Bonney. I was afraid you weren’t going to make it off the ship last night.”

“Me, too,” she said, smiling bleakly.

“Something I have to ask—”

“Yes?”

“A sailor from your lifeboat says he hauled up a couple of dead bodies for you. You want to speak over them, is that it?”

“I just want to see them.”

“All right, come with me.”

She scrambled to her feet, too stiff and cold to stand straight.

A room had been set aside for the dead. Across the floor were the shrouded forms of a dozen people, all waiting now for a few quick words from the captain, then a quiet sliding into the sea. Bonney pointed at one figure. “I put the baby back in her arms,” he said.

“Good. That’s where it should be.”

“I can’t help you pray or anything. I’m not a religious man.”

“You cared enough to come get me for this.”

“Are you going to pray? If you are, I’ll leave.”

“I just want to say goodbye. I’ve helped bury a sister; I know how to do this.” Her lip trembled. She was so cold, so tired, so close to tears.

“I’ll help with that,” he said more gently.

“It’s just that no one who loves them will ever be able to.”

“I’ll start if you want.”

She nodded.

He cleared his throat. “We wish you well and would give you life if we could. But at least you’re both together for whatever journey lies ahead.”

“That’s close to a prayer,” she said, looking gratefully at his set face.

“Your turn.”

“I turn my face to the rising sun,” Tess whispered, the words coming from somewhere in the recesses of memory. “O Lord, have mercy.”

The room was dark; more bodies from the lifeboats would be brought in soon. Bonney turned to go.

“Wait.” Tess knelt down by the woman’s body, folding back the towel draped over her face. Plain, strong features, long, dark eyelashes.

“We should—”

“I want to remember her face.”

They stood together for a quiet moment more, then turned and left the room, closing the door tightly behind them. Bonney’s hand, in a gesture of awkward tenderness, briefly cradled her shoulder.

A muddled, drifting order was settling over the survivors on deck. They were breaking into clusters, like tribes, all adhering to their own. Voices muttering, sobbing—recounting close calls and instant decisions.

A hoarse chuckle from Jim Bonney. “Now the accounting begins,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll see how it plays out. Nothing to do about it. I’m glad we met again, though not like this.” And then he strode away as Lucile approached, casting him a malevolent glance.

Uncertain, Tess stood watching, then moved to Lucile’s side.