Unspeakable (6 page)
Authors: Caroline Pignat
“And yet here you are,” I said, revelling in catching him off guard. “Hounding people in their grief. Heroic, indeed.”
He blinked a few times and I could almost see the shift in his eyes. A tightening intensity, like the slight turning of a telescope lens as he refocused upon his purpose.
“The paper sent me to do a feature on the British army,” he said. “War's brewing, you know.”
I didn't, actually. My personal hell had overshadowed all else.
“I saw the obituary. Thought I'd pay my respects at the funeral. Turns out G.B.'s grandniece is the mysterious Ellie Ryan.” He took another sip, eyeing me over the rim. “You're a hard woman to find, Miss ⦠Ellen.”
I swallowed, rattled by how easily he'd tracked me. “Well, now you've found me. Good for you. But you've wasted your time. I have nothing to say.” The words gushed as though it was myself I was convincing. He unsettled me, so he did. With his swarthy looks and arrogant swagger, he may look like Garrett Dean, I'd give him that, but to me he felt more like the lion's roar in the black beyond. Circling. Closing in. As if he knew I was wounded and the fire was dwindling.
I grabbed the poker and rattled the embers. They flickered to life for a few seconds then throbbed orange.
“You are the only surviving stewardess of the sunken
Empress of Ireland
, Miss Ellen. As I said on the train, like it or not, you are famous. Readers want to know your story. And
I want to be the one to tell it.” His eyes gleamed. “A profile piece like this, and I'd be a shoo-in for the editor's chair.”
I shook my head as he spoke. Wasn't he listening?
“I don't want to talk to anyone about the
Empress
!” I just wanted to forget. To stop the flashbacks, the relentless nightmares. To never speak of it again. My heart thudded in my chest. “What makes you think I'd want to tell you anything?”
“Because I have something you want.”
My laugh echoed in the stillness of the dead room. I sounded like a madwoman. Perhaps I was. Perhaps insane people don't even realize they truly are.
“You flatter yourself, Mr. Steele.” I tried to give my voice more of the confidence I lacked. “I assure you, you have nothingâ”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black notebook. The edges were frayed now and the pages rippled with water damage, but I'd know it anywhere. Jim's journal. The leather spine creaked as he opened the book and thumbed through the yellowed pages to where the thin red ribbon lay.
January 23, 1914
What sort of a fool stoker falls into his fire? I was so riled from the lads taunting me, I barely noticed how badly my arm was burned. I wish they'd just leave me alone. I didn't even want them to bring me to Dr. Grant. But I'm glad they did. If they hadn't brought me, I never would have spoken to her
.
I saw her. Up close, and not from the shadows along the ship's rail. I don't know why she stands there each night all
alone. I don't know why I could never find the courage to talk to her. All I do know is that she's even more beautiful than I thought
.
And her name. It's Ellie. Ellie Ryan
.
I sank onto the edge of my seat, wordless, breathless, as Steele read from Jim's journal.
He glanced up at me and turned the page.
She rubbed the ointment into my arm and I swear it hurt like the dickens. I nearly fainted with the pain of it. Still, I'd endure a thousand burns to have her look at me like that, to feel her touch me again. She warned me (like Mam would) to be sure to use the ointment Dr. Grant left. Said otherwise the burns would leave me scarred
.
If only she knew the scars I have. Ones that no ointment will remove. No, she'd want nothing to do with me then
.
I'd often wondered what he wrote in that small black book as he stood jotting at the rail while he waited for me at the end of our shifts. I swallowed and looked at Steele through my puddled tears. Jim carried that book with him always. How could it be here in Steele's hands?
“Is heâ” I couldn't say it. As though voicing it made it real. It had been three weeks since the sinking. Three weeks since I saw or heard from Jim, but something in me refused to believe he was gone. He couldn't be.
We sat in silence for a few moments as my mind raced.
“Miss Ellen, we each hold a story the other desperately
wants.” Steele closed the book and held it like a winning ticket. “You tell me yoursâand I will give you Jim's.”
“How did you get the journal?” I blurted. “Did you see him? Do you know where he is?”
Steele smiled. “You have the mind of a journalist.”
“And you have the heart of a devil.”
“The choice is yours, Miss Ellen.” He shrugged. “You may have your privacy or your answers, but you can't have it both ways.”
How could he? How could he sit there holding my heart as ransom? What kind of man does that?
No, there was no way I'd trust him with any of my secrets. Clearly, he had every intention of exposing them on the front page of the
New York Times
. My life would be ruined.
Sensing my hesitation, Steele slipped the journal back into his jacket pocket and stood.
But this was Jim, my Jim. My life already was ruined. I needed answers, and though Steele was obviously a poor excuse for a man, he was a skilled journalist. If there was any information to be had, he'd find it, as surely as he'd found me.
“Fine,” I exhaled in defeat. “I'll do it ⦠on one condition. You can't use any of Jim's journal in your piece.” It was bad enough Steele had read Jim's private thoughts and I would be reading them too. I owed it to Jim to protect his innermost self, even if that meant exposing mine.
Steele considered the request. “
All
of your story?”
“Yes.” I held out my hand for the journal, willing to tell him anything, everything, just to have it. “Whatever you want.”
He pulled it from his pocket and flipped it open to the ribbon. In one quick swipe he ripped out the yellowed page he'd just read. The sound tore my heart as though it were Jim himself we were dissecting. I suppose in some way we were.
He laid the ragged page in my palm, a drop of water to someone dying of thirst. “Surely you didn't think I'd give you the whole book up front?”
“Surely you can give me something I don't already know.” I looked at him, desperate for more.
Turning to the front pages, he tore out the first entry and handed it to me before slipping the book back inside his jacket. “Consider it a down payment. But you owe me, Miss Ellen. Remember that.”
He pulled a few newspaper clippings from his satchel and laid them on the table. “Some samples of my work for the
Times
. One on the
Empress
based on my Rimouski interviews and a few on the
Titanic
from a few years ago.”
Then, donning his hat, he tipped it to me like the gentleman he was not. “I will be back tomorrow at ten for our interview.”
I didn't see him leave. Didn't notice the fire die or even hear Lily until she put Aunt Geraldine's throw over my shoulders and eased me into the chair. I don't know how long I'd been standing alone in that room staring at Jim's cramped scrawl. Seeing, but not reading, his words as they slowly faded with the light.
Chapter Seven
COLD RAIN TAPPED AT THE WINDOWS
as I sat in bed, the torn pages trembling in my fingers. Jim's journal. His private thoughts. It felt wrong to read them and, yet, impossible not to. Perhaps they'd have the answers I longed for. If nothing else, they were at least Jim's words. As Steele read them earlier, I could almost hear Jim's deep voice speaking them inside my heart. A flicker of himâjust enough to dispel the dark thoughts that threatened to pull me under.
I brought the papers closer to the bedside candle's light. I'd been so struck by seeing Jim's journal, at hearing my name read from it, it was only now as I reread that first entry that I realized the weight of Jim's secret shame. What burdened him so? What had left him scarred long before the marks on his skin? Perhaps the journal had some answers. And even though I knew Jim wouldn't have wanted me to know what he'd long kept hidden, I turned to the next page.
May 28, 1913
The lads on this ship all call me Lucky. I wish they wouldn't. I'm not luckyânot by a long shot. It's cursed, I am. Bloody cursed. They want to hear all about itâall the gory details. So I just keep to myself most of the time
.
Mam bought me this book on my last layover at home. Told me to write in it, though I don't see the point. She thought it might help with the nightmares, might give me something to do when I wake up in a cold sweat and can't sleep. You were the smart one, Da. Not me. You always had a way with words. She told me to write about how I am feelingâbut all I ever feel is angry. And the more I try to stop, the hotter it burns
.
The last place I want to be is at sea again. But I suppose I belong in the boiler room. I've shovelled my way cross the pond four times now. Liverpool to Quebec City and back again twice. The company men brag about the Empress taking only six days to cross from dock to dock, but it's the firemenâthe trimmers and stokersâthey should be bragging about. She might have two engines three decks high, but where do they think she gets that 18,500 horsepower to turn the twin screws? What do they think propels all of her 14,000 tons?
The sweat of the Black Gang, that's what. While the hobnobs sip their brandies and marvel at her speed, eight levels down, men blackened by soot drive the ship by their muscle and sweat. It's like some bloody Roman galley. The Black Gang shovel tons of coal into the white-hot furnaces. A hundred or so of us, taking turns, labouring non-stop
until we reach port. Gruelling work, and hotter than hell's bowels. But I deserve no better. Mam wanted me to get on as a bellboy, not a stoker. Work my way up to assistant steward and, like you, maybe even smoke room steward someday
.
But I'm not you, Da. As badly as Mam needs me to be, I'll never be you
.
I sat in bed and read both entries a few more times, though I knew them by heart now. Despite the hot water bottle and extra blankets Lily had given me, I couldn't stop shivering. There were things about Jim that I never understood. Maybe the other entries yet to come had answers. Or better yet, maybe Steele would tell me where Jim was so I could go and ask him for myself. I could wipe his brow and help him heal. Maybe, I could finally tell him how I really felt.
I set the pages on my nightstand and snuffed the candle stub, but I wouldn't sleep. I couldn't. A part of me was still on the
Empress
. Trapped. Drowning. Sinking deeper and deeper in regrets. And so I lay awake as I had each night for the past three weeks, listening as the house creaked and moaned, an empty shell settling in the darkness around me.
THE FIRST INTERVIEW