When Olivia watched Geoffrey and Charles eat breakfast on Monday, May tenth, she thought she would scream if they took a moment longer. She was still feeling ill, and she had had a fierce argument with Charles about reading the paper.
“The doctor said you weren’t to upset yourself,” he reminded her, taking the paper away from her, and she grabbed it from him.
“Give it to me, Charles!” she shouted at him in a voice she didn’t recognize herself, and he looked at her in surprise and then handed it to her as she apologized. “I’m sorry, I’m not myself. I just want to read about something and get my mind off Olivia, that’s all.”
“I understand perfectly,” he said curtly, and finally, mercifully, left for the office.
Even Geoff seemed to drag his feet going to school that day, but the moment he was gone, Olivia grabbed her hat and purse and ran out the door, hailed a cab and gave him the address of the Cunard office on State Street. But she was totally unprepared for what she found there. There was a veritable human sea of wild, shouting people, screaming, throwing things, calling names, crying, begging for information, and when they didn’t get it, they got ugly. Officials from the shipping line did what they could to stave off the crowd, with the help of the police, but in the end, it was obvious that they had very little information. They had staggering numbers of losses by then, well over the thousand mark they feared, perhaps more, and Frohman’s body had been found, floating near Queenstown, but other than that, there were only bits and pieces of information, and mostly terrifying rumors. There was also word that there had been celebration in Germany over the victory of the U-boat, which enraged the crowd even further.
But after seven hours of standing there, Olivia still did not have what she had come for, the list of survivors. They had promised it for the next day. And her heart felt like lead as she walked back outside at four-thirty. She had been on her feet all day, eaten nothing at all, and had done everything she could to grasp at every scrap of information. There were a few names, some lists of casualties. One young man had said the line was taking photographs of the bodies in Queenstown in order to identify them later. Just the thought of it made her shudder. And yet, when she stood very quietly, it was as though she could hear Victoria talking to her. She didn’t feel as though she were dead, whatever that felt like. Perhaps she would die too then. Maybe that was how she would know. She was so tired she was numb, as she walked all the way back to the house on the East River.
And as she walked up the front steps, her body aching as much as her mind by then, she happened to see a young boy in uniform, approaching. He wore the uniform of Western Union, and as she looked at him, she felt her heart stop, and hurried back down the stairs to him. She grabbed his arm without thinking, and looked like a madwoman as she clutched him.
“Do you have a telegram for me? Victoria Dawson?” She knew that was the name it would come to if Victoria dared send it to her there, but she was sure Victoria wouldn’t be cruel enough to leave her in silence if she were alive, and she was grateful she was right as he nodded.
“Yes … I … here,” he said, and almost ran away from her. She felt like a witch as she snatched it from him and ripped it open. Her hands shook so terribly she could hardly read what it said, and she felt herself gulp great sobs of air as she read it. The girl was crazy. Absolutely nuts. But she was alive in Queenstown.
“Trip began with a bang. Stop” it said. “Thank God for Mr. Bridgeman. Stop. All well in Queenstown. Stop. I love you always. Stop.” Mr. Bridgeman was their old swimming teacher in Croton. And Olivia stood whooping and crying on the steps as she read it, and she didn’t care who heard her. There was no other information, no address, nowhere to reach her or find her. But Olivia knew her twin was alive and well and had survived the sinking of the Lusitania. It was all she needed to know now. And she crushed the message in her hand, and then hurried into the house, and burned the paper in the oven, although she suspected she probably should have saved it, but it was too dangerous to keep. Someone might have found it and figured out where she really was.
It had been the worst three days of Olivia’s life, and she hoped she never had to go through anything like it again. She was so exhausted, she decided to take a bath, and filled her tub with hot water and bubbles. She didn’t know what to do to celebrate, dance or sing or cry. Instead, she ran into Geoffrey’s room and hugged him, which he found unusual. He thought Victoria was definitely going crazy. His father had said something to him about her nerves, but he was beginning to think it was her mind that was all messed up now. But he had never seen her in such good spirits.
“What happened to you today?” he asked as she pirouetted happily and grinned at him. I got my sister back, she wanted to say. She’s alive. She’s fine. She’s in Queenstown. She didn’t die on the Lusitania. “You sure look happy.”
“I am. It was a lovely day,” she said, beaming at him. “What about you? Good day at school?”
“No,” he said matter-of-factly, “pretty boring. Where’s Dad?”
“He’s not home yet.” She left him then to get into the tub, and she came down to dinner wearing a new dress and looking like a new person. Charles had just come in the door and he looked tired and grumpy. But he washed his hands and came straight in to dinner.
“What are you so happy about?” He looked at her unhappily, and glanced at Geoff, as though he expected an explanation.
“I just feel better, that’s all.”
“Have your intuitions calmed down?”
“Maybe,” she said, embarrassed at the nightmare the weekend had been, and relieved beyond belief that it was over, but of course Charles didn’t know that. “I just feel better, that’s all.” Looking at her, he wondered what she’d been up to, and if she really was having an affair, but she was very pleasant to him, and even sweet to Geoff that night, and he was somewhat mollified by the time the cook poured coffee after dinner.
“I spoke to an investigator today,” he said quietly, when Geoff went upstairs to finish his homework. “He’ll start looking for her in California next week. He says he has some very good contacts there,” he reassured her, and she thanked him. But each time she looked at him, she could not stop smiling.
“What on earth did you do today, Victoria, to put you in such good spirits? I’m afraid you’re making me very suspicious.” But she looked so pretty and so young that night that he didn’t have the heart to be angry at her, although he wondered if he should have been.
“I just feel better. I feel relieved,” she tried to explain it to him to the extent that she dared. “It is as though I know she’s all right now, although I can’t explain it.” But he had great respect for the telepathy they shared, although he didn’t understand it.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said quietly, “I hope so.” He was happy that she felt better at least. The weekend had been a nightmare, he had really begun to think she was having a nervous breakdown.
“I’m sorry I was so much trouble.”
“Don’t worry about it, you weren’t. I was just worried about you,” he said almost shyly, glancing at her. She seemed so much more open with him than she had before, he wondered if Olivia leaving so abruptly had changed her, or if the doctor was right, and she would take on more of Olivia’s personality after her disappearance. In Victoria’s case, it would have been a definite improvement. And in the time that Olivia had been gone, Victoria was more dependent on him than she ever had been, more willing to reach out to him than before her sister’s disappearance. He remembered Friday night, when she had clung to him and told him she was frightened. It had made him look at her now a little differently, although he didn’t want to be too optimistic. They had been married almost exactly eleven months by then, and he had all but given up on their marriage.
“I’ll try not to be a nuisance again,” she said quietly, and went upstairs to write some letters. She wished she could write to Victoria, but of course she couldn’t. Not yet anyway, she would when her twin reached her final destination in the trenches. And she hoped that Victoria would write to her, soon preferably, at her father’s house on Fifth Avenue, as they had agreed to. Olivia wanted to know all about what had happened on the Lusitania.
Charles read for a while before he went to bed that night. They had both kissed Geoff, and he came back into their bedroom and said something to her about the Lusitania. “It’s a dreadful thing, the Germans sinking that ship. It sounds as though they’ve had a huge loss of life, worse than the Titanic. I didn’t want Geoff to hear too much about it, I thought it might remind him of his mother.” She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded.
“And you, Charles?” she asked quietly. “Are you all right … did it remind you of her too?” Her kindness struck him like a blow, and for a moment he couldn’t answer. He hadn’t expected that of her. Theirs was such an adversarial relationship, that it was odd to get a gentle touch from her, and not a tart word or an angry answer.
“It did,” he said finally. “I had a hard time with it all weekend.” While she was suffering, so was he, and she hadn’t even known it.
“I’m sorry, Charles,” she said, and he turned away and nodded. He didn’t say anything to her again, and a little while later, they went to bed, both careful, as usual, to keep on their own sides, with a vast distance between them.
“That was nice of you,” he said suddenly in the dark, and surprised her. “Asking about how I felt, I mean … about Susan … and the ship that went down. It’s so odd how those things come back sometimes. It was so incredibly awful waiting to hear, desperate to know. I drove them absolutely mad at White Star, and they still didn’t know, and then waiting on the dock in the rain for the Carpathia to come in … I didn’t know till then if either of them were alive,” he said, sounding choked. “I thought neither of them had survived … and then I saw him … one of the crew members was carrying Geoff … and I looked everywhere behind him for Susan. But she wasn’t there. And I knew. I took the boy from him, and we went home. It took Geoff months to talk about it. I don’t suppose you ever forget that.” Just as Victoria would never forget what she had just been through.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” she said softly, and gently reached out and touched his shoulder. “It’s not fair, for either of you. You didn’t deserve that.” She was so sorry for both of them, it tore at her heart, and as he looked at her in the dim light from the moon outside, he saw something in her that would have frightened him before, but suddenly it didn’t.
“Maybe things happen in life for reasons. You wouldn’t be here if that hadn’t happened,” he said kindly, and she smiled sadly at him, well aware of what they’d been through.
“And you’d be a lot happier if I weren’t.” She was still angry at her sister for leaving him and Geoffrey, particularly after all that had just happened. It certainly proved the trip was dangerous. And her flippant “off with a bang” was no exaggeration.
“Don’t say that,” he said generously. “Maybe Susan was taken from us for a reason. I’ve thought that sometimes. It’s impossible to know why some things happen.”
“I feel very lucky to know you,” she said kindly, and meant it, not realizing that it was an odd thing to say to her husband. Olivia was still so innocent, and he saw that in her as he looked into her eyes that night and it surprised him.
“That’s a sweet thing to say,” he said gently, wondering if he’d ever really known her, or only thought he did. She seemed suddenly so different. And without saying another word to her, he slid slowly closer to her and kissed her. He held her face carefully in his hands and kissed her ever so softly on the lips, afraid to scare her. He didn’t want to start the old problems between them again, he just wanted to tell her that he was grateful for what she had said to him, and if nothing else, for her friendship. But when he kissed her, he felt something stir in him that she had never brought out in him before, though he didn’t know why, and he kissed her again, and tried to tell himself that he shouldn’t. “Should we be doing this?” he whispered hoarsely to her and she shook her head, but she didn’t want to stop, although she told herself that she had to. But as he kissed her repeatedly, she forgot everything she knew about their relationship, and felt her arms go around his neck and her body press against his, and he sprang to life instantly as he held her. “Victoria, I don’t want to do anything you don’t want,” he said huskily. They had been through this before, though not for months, and always regretted it. Their sex life had done nothing but make them both very unhappy.
“Charles, I don’t know … I …” She wanted to tell him to stop, she knew how wrong this was, he was her sister’s husband, and yet Victoria had come back from the dead, and she had moved on to her own life, and Olivia was there in his arms with the man she had loved for so long. She couldn’t stop now. “I love you,” she whispered. She had never said that to him before, and he looked at her in tender amazement.
“Oh sweet girl,” he said, feeling his heart go out to her, giving her everything he had tried to keep from her, and suddenly he knew what had been wrong between them. He had never dared to love her. “How I love you,” he said almost in spite of himself, and then, as though for the first time, which it was for her, and he didn’t realize, he made love to her ever so gently. In spite of the pain it caused her at first, she gave herself to him completely and without reserve, with total abandon, and as he looked down at her afterwards, he felt as though he had been reborn. For both of them, it was a new beginning, a new life, the honeymoon they’d never had and each of them had longed for.
He lay for hours in her arms, stroking her, caressing her, discovering her all over again, he thought, but in fact for the first time, and at last he slept, nestled next to her, as she held him, wondering what they would do when Victoria got home. Charles was the greatest joy she’d ever had in her life, and at the same time the worst betrayal. She had no idea what she would say to her sister when she got home, but she knew at that moment, that she couldn’t leave him.