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Salvation Army Hostel
New York
Kate Royston
Kate waited on a hard wooden chair in the drafty hallway. She attempted to control her impatience. Major Sullivan had made it very clear that no one would leave the hostel until tomorrow, so it didn’t really matter how long she had to sit here. At least she now had clean clothes and she’d bathed and washed her hair. She picked at the ugly green dress she’d been given—donated by some New York matron with more money than fashion sense. Kate had inherited her mother’s innate sense of style, and she knew very well that green was not her color and ruffles were not her style. In fact, ruffles were no one’s style. This dress was ten years old at least.
She fidgeted restlessly. The dress was at least made of a good-quality fabric, but the donated underwear was stiff and scratchy, and had most likely been starched. She sighed. It seemed as if a lifetime had passed since she’d been a girl who owned silk underwear and fashionable dresses. Nothing was left now to remind her of that life, except for her useless vanity, which made her unwilling to even look at herself in a mirror in this hideous travesty of a dress. Worst of all, she still didn’t have a plan for what she would do when she was released tomorrow. The major had said something about giving the survivors a little money and a ticket to an onward destination, and that would certainly be useful to everyone except Kate. Kate was not a survivor of the Titanic. Kate was in a mess of her own making.
The door opened, and Kitty McCaffrey emerged and slammed the door behind her. “The cheek of it,” she said. “Never in all my life have I been treated like that.”
“Why?” Kate asked. “What did they do to you? I thought they were just going to ask your name and your destination, and check your health.”
“Check my health indeed,” Kitty fumed. “Do they think I’m a cow in a barn? If they think they can do that to my little Maeve, they have another think coming.”
“What happened?”
“You’ll find out,” Kitty said as she flounced away, a furious figure in a baggy black dress several sizes too large that trailed on the floor as she walked.
The door opened, and Captain Veronica poked her head out. She smiled encouragingly from beneath her Salvation Army bonnet and then raised her voice in an alarming shout. “Do you speak English?”
“I do,” Kate shouted back.
Captain Veronica’s voice resumed its usual, good-natured tone. “Oh, good. You’re next, my dear. Come in and take a seat.”
Kate entered a large room, empty of all furniture except for a small desk and two chairs just inside the door and an arrangement of screens in one corner.
Captain Veronica sat at the desk and indicated that Kate should sit in the other chair. She consulted a dog-eared sheaf of papers set on one corner of the desk. She smiled and picked up a pencil. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Kate.”
“Kate what?”
“Katherine Elizabeth Royston.”
“I see.”
Captain Veronica studied a list she had selected from the file. “Your name is not here.” Her kind smile remained unchanged, although she cocked her head to one side curiously. “This is the list of survivors we have from the radio operator on the Carpathia. It seems he overlooked you.”
“No, he didn’t. I talked to him.”
“You talked to him?”
“Yes. I was there when the radio message came from the Titanic and—”
Now Captain Veronica was frowning. “No, that’s not right, dear. You’re confused. You could not have been with him. You were in a lifeboat, weren’t you?”
“No, I wasn’t. I was never on the Titanic.”
“Oh dear,” Captain Veronica whispered, “you really are confused. Have you had a bump on the head?”
“Yes, I have,” Kate confirmed. “I was seeing stars for a few minutes, and I can still feel it.”
“Well, there you are, then,” said Captain Veronica. She shuffled the papers on her desk. “Now, here’s a list of all the passengers on the Titanic. Let’s find you on that list, and we’ll see what to do about you. You said your name is Katherine Elizabeth Royston?”
“Yes, I did, and—”
A loud female voice rose from behind the screen and interrupted Kate’s answer. “Next! Send in the next woman.”
Captain Veronica stood up and placed her hand on the small of Kate’s back. “That’s you,” she said. “Go on in and do what the nurse says, and while you’re in there, I’ll look through the passenger list. We’ll soon have this sorted out.”
She moved her hand to Kate’s elbow. “Go along and don’t make a fuss. All the ladies have been through this inspection.”
What am I going to do? Kate asked herself as she walked reluctantly across the room. Tomorrow morning, come what may, she would walk out of the doors of the Salvation Army hostel and onto the streets of New York. Then what?
“Everything off down to your shift, and unpin your hair.”
The nurse’s voice barely registered with Kate. She heard the words, but they meant nothing as Kate frantically weighed her very few options. Where could she find a friendly face in New York? Perhaps Eva Trentham—
“Come along, girl. Take off your dress, or I’ll do it for you. Don’t you speak English?” This question was asked in a loud, hectoring voice and broke through Kate’s whirling thoughts.
Kate finally took note of the sturdy middle-aged woman who confronted her with hands on ample hips.
“Yes, I speak English.”
“Well, that’s a mercy. Now take off your dress and let me look at you.”
“I’m all right. I don’t need a nurse.”
“I’m not here to nurse you. I’m here to make sure you’re not bringing any of your foreign diseases into the United States.”
“I’m not an immigrant. I don’t need to be examined.”
“None of that nonsense. Take off your dress, or I’ll do it for you.”
“I’m not an immigrant,” Kate repeated.
Captain Veronica peeped around the screen. “She says she had a blow to her head.”
The nurse stepped closer and studied Kate with cold indifference. “Sit on that chair and let me look.”
The instruction was accompanied by a fierce shove that propelled Kate onto a wooden chair. The nurse’s fingers scrabbled through her hair, pulling out pins and releasing Kate’s heavy braids. She spoke over Kate’s head. “You’re right, Captain. She has quite a bump.”
Captain Veronica’s voice was sympathetic. “Well, then, it’s no wonder she’s talking nonsense.”
“I’m not talking nonsense,” Kate insisted.
The nurse’s fingers continued the exploration of Kate’s hair. “That’s not for me to decide. At least you’ve no head lice. Now let me look at the rest of you. You’ll not leave this room until I’ve examined you, so take off that dress.”
Kate gave in to reluctant acceptance. Talking to the nurse would not bring any results. The nurse had no power to release her. If she wanted to go free, she would have to accept the indignity of the health inspection. She would have to allow this nurse, with her cold, calloused fingers and suspicious scowl, to examine her. She stood up, unbuttoned her dress, and let it fall to the floor.
“Underwear,” the nurse said.
“What about it?”
“If you have any drawers on, take them off.”
“Why?”
“Venereal diseases,” the nurse said. She turned to the table behind her and snapped on a pair of yellow rubber gloves. “Syphilis, gonorrhea, and the like.”
Kate clutched at her shift. “Don’t touch me.”
The nurse stood with folded arms. “Do you want to be released from here or not?”
Because she could think of no alternative, Kate lifted her shift, untied a ribbon, and stepped out of her underwear.
As she submitted silently to the kind of indignity that she had not imagined possible, Kate thought of the other women in the hostel—the women who had cried all night. They, too, had been marched into this room and faced this formidable nurse. Apparently, this was normal. This was what the immigrants would have faced at Ellis Island. This was what it took for them to be admitted to the United States.
At last the inspection was over. Kate buttoned her dress and followed the nurse’s instruction to return to Captain Veronica. Unfortunately, Captain Veronica was not alone. A stern-faced man, resplendent in a navy-blue uniform with bright brass buttons, stood beside her.
“This is Sergeant Cassidy of the New York City police,” Captain Veronica whispered apologetically. “I had to tell him.”
“Do you still insist that your name is Katherine Elizabeth Royston?” Cassidy asked.
“I do.”
“That name is not on the passenger list.”
“That’s because I was not a passenger. I was not on the Titanic.”
“Hmm.”
The sergeant studied her intently, and she returned his gaze defiantly, examining him as he examined her. If he was going to study her in her ugly dress and unpinned hair, she was free to study him. She could find nothing reassuring or welcoming in his pale, suspicious eyes or in the set of his mouth beneath a thin gray mustache.
“And you say you were a passenger on the Carpathia.”
“I was.”
“Katherine Elizabeth Royston was indeed a passenger on the Carpathia,” he said, “but that is not who you are. Katherine Royston came ashore and was passed through by our officers last night. You, however, came ashore with all the other immigrants two hours later. I don’t know who you are, but I know what you are.”
With the indignity of the nurse’s examination still fresh in her mind, Kate could not control her fury. “You know what I am?” she repeated. “Let me tell you, Sergeant Cassidy, you do not know what I am. I have friends in high places, and ...” She stammered to a halt. She had once had friends in high places but not now. Now she had no friends, no permanent address, and no place to go. She stared back at Cassidy’s cool, appraising eyes. “You think that just because I was picked up from the street, that I’m a ...” She hesitated again as her mother’s disapproving face took shape in her mind. Katherine Elizabeth, we do not use such words. She finally said the word. “You think I’m a prostitute.”
Cassidy shook his head. “No, I don’t. I think you’re something else entirely. We’ve been told to be on the lookout for someone like you. It stands to reason on a big ship like the Titanic that someone could slip on board and hide. You had it all worked out, didn’t you? You knew there’d be a great crowd waiting for her to dock and you could choose your moment to slither away, and you might have gotten away with it if the Titanic hadn’t gone down.”
The sergeant’s jaw tightened, and his voice held cold malice. “You took the place of some honest woman, letting her drown while you stayed dry.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Stowaway,” Cassidy said.
“I’m not a stowaway. Don’t be ridiculous.”
Cassidy ignored her protest. He seemed to be dredging up an idea from the back of his mind. His eyes were now cold stones. “No, not just a stowaway—a spy.”
Kate and Captain Veronica spoke in unison. “Spy?”
“Yes. I think we’ve caught ourselves a spy. This explains everything.”
“I’m not a spy,” Kate protested. “What on earth could make you think that?” Her mother resurfaced in her mind as Kate cast off the last vestiges of the humility that had been forced upon her. She was a lady again, heir to a fortune, daughter of the most powerful man in the county. Her tongue dripped contempt. “My good man, that is an absurd notion. If I am a spy, on whom do you think I am spying?”
“I’m not your good man,” Cassidy replied, “and I think you were spying on Major Archibald Butt.”
Kate shook her head. “I don’t even know who he is.”
“Oh, yes, you do.” Kate could see that Cassidy was warming to his theory. “It’s been in all the papers. Major Butt was on a diplomatic mission on behalf of the president. The official word is that he was on a mission to the Pope, but that’s not what the papers say. They say he was on a mission to the German kaiser.”
Kate heard Captain Veronica’s sharp intake of breath followed by a soft whisper. “Sergeant Cassidy, you are going too far.”
Kate turned her head. “He’s making this all up. I was a passenger on the Carpathia. I can produce all kinds of people to prove what I say.”
Captain Veronica bit her lip. “Well, my dear, we saw you coming down the gangplank with the Titanic immigrants.”
“I was not coming down. I was trying to get back on board.”
“And why would you do that?” Cassidy asked.
Kate was silent. What answer could she give? Because I’m penniless? Because I had nowhere to go? Because I no longer have a job? Because I can’t face my father’s shame? She had held those words prisoner for so long in the back of her mind that it was a relief to finally release them as thoughts, but she was not ready to say them aloud. She thought that she would never be ready for that.
Captain Veronica tugged at her arm. “Say something, Kate. You have to explain yourself.”
“She can explain herself at her trial,” Cassidy said. His pale face was now flushed, and his eyes were glittering in excitement.
He’s just a fool, Kate thought, an ambitious nobody, but he has the upper hand at the moment. She appealed to Captain Veronica. “I know people who will identify me,” Kate said. “If someone could go and talk to Senator Smith at the Waldorf Astoria—”
Cassidy shook his head. “I’m not going to interrupt that man’s important work, although ...” He hesitated, his eyes narrowing to slits as he looked at her. “If I can bring him a spy ...”
“That’s right,” Kate said urgently. “Take me to him.”
“No,” Cassidy said thoughtfully. “That’s not the way to do this. For all I know, Senator Smith is up to his neck in this business. He’s a politician, and I don’t trust politicians.”
Cassidy reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of handcuffs. Kate felt a cold shiver run down her spine. This was no longer a stupid misunderstanding. This was real. He was going to take her to jail unless she could bring herself to tell him who she was, and who her father had been.
“There are other people who can identify me,” she said. She never wanted to see those people again, but she had no choice. “I come from Royston, Pennsylvania. Anyone there can tell you who I am.” And what I am and how far I’ve fallen. “They know I’m not a spy,” she said.
“But that’s the whole point of being a spy, isn’t it?” Cassidy said with a hint of satisfaction at his own wit. “You can’t be a spy if everyone knows you’re a spy—stands to reason. I’m taking you with me.”
Captain Veronica stepped in front of Kate. “That’s enough, Sergeant. You have no evidence that this poor woman is a spy. You don’t even have any evidence that she’s a stowaway.”
“You’d do best to stay out of my way,” Cassidy said, “and let me do my job.”
“It is not your job to harass poor confused women.”
“She’s not confused. She knows just what she’s doing. She may have fooled you, but she hasn’t fooled me. I’m locking her up, and she can stay locked up until she comes in front of the judge.”
He reached out with a sudden, practiced movement and grabbed Kate’s right hand. She felt the cold metal of the handcuff and heard the click of the lock. She flung herself away from him, with the handcuff dangling from her wrist. As Cassidy lunged toward her, the outer door banged open, and three women tumbled into the room and tangled themselves around Cassidy’s feet.
Kate had only a brief moment to assess the situation. Kitty McCaffrey and Private Elspeth were locked in a fierce tug-of-war, with Maeve as the prize. Private Elspeth had lost her bonnet; Kitty’s hair had become unpinned; and Maeve was apparently still wet from her bath. They were a tangled ball of wet hair, petticoats, curses, and prayers, alarming enough to stun even Cassidy into sudden stillness as they rolled around at his feet.
At last he found his voice, a loud, hectoring voice. “Now then, what’s all this?”
“You’re not to touch my sister,” Kitty shouted. “None of you are to touch my sister.”
“I’m not interested in your sister,” Cassidy complained. “Now get out of my way.”
Captain Veronica waded into the fray as Cassidy aimed a couple of vicious kicks at the struggling women. “That’ll be enough of that, Sergeant. That’s no way to treat these women.”
Kate realized that this was her one and only moment, and she dashed through the open door and along the corridor. She tried several doors before she found one that would open. She ran desperately into a small room dominated by a tall sash window that allowed light to spill in from the streetlamp outside. She tugged at the bottom pane and was relieved when it slid smoothly upward for a few inches. She tugged again. Obviously, the person who used this room was accustomed to cracking the window open for fresh air but not cracking it wide enough to allow an escaping spy to flee the hostel.
The dangling handcuff clattered against the window frame as Kate heaved again, gaining a few additional inches. Was it enough? Only one way to find out. As she poked her head and shoulders out of the window, it occurred to her that she did not know what floor she was on. Had she gone upstairs for her health inspection, or downstairs? Her panicked mind could not remember. She hung for a moment half in and half out of the window, looking at the top of the streetlight a few feet below. So she was not on the ground floor, and if she didn’t want to land on her head from a considerable height, she should have climbed out feetfirst so she could hang from the windowsill.
Did she have time to scrabble backward, turn around, and reinsert herself in the gap? Once Cassidy was free of Maeve and Kitty, he would come for her, and even he was smart enough to start trying doors to see which one would open.
She peered down at the dark, shadowy ground and thought she could discern shrubbery. With a quick prayer for a nice thick privet hedge and not a spiky barberry, she slithered forward and let herself fall, hoping she could manage to somehow turn in the air and land on her back.
She was only partially successful. She managed a slight turn to avoid diving headfirst into the privet hedge, and she took the brunt of the fall on her right shoulder. She bit her tongue to avoid screaming as her arm with the dangling handcuff became entangled in the branches. She felt as though it had been wrenched from its socket, but she had no time to give in to the pain. She tugged the bracelet free and stumbled to her feet.
Evening had already fallen across the city, but she was still trapped in the light from the streetlamp. She looked along the street. Gaslights blossomed at regular intervals, but side streets promised darkness. And what else or who else? Cradling her right arm with her left hand, she darted across the street and into the nearest alley.
––––––––
Mrs. John Stuart White’s Suite
The Waldorf Astoria
Senator William Alden Smith
Bill accepted Mrs. White’s offer of a whiskey and soda with some relief. He could see Will McKinstry looking enviously at the cut-glass tumbler. McKinstry was reaching the end of a long, hard day, and no doubt he would soon be suffering from writer’s cramp. It wouldn’t be for much longer. Bill wished he could take more time, ask more questions, call additional witnesses, but he was well aware that patience was wearing thin on the part of the survivors. He couldn’t keep them in New York forever. Taft would surely recover from his melancholy any day now, and Bill would face a political price for tweaking the tail of the British bulldog.
Mrs. White sat in a wingback chair with her leg propped on a hassock. Apparently, she had fallen while boarding the ship in Cherbourg. And yet, Bill thought, she had managed to get herself into a lifeboat. Miss Young, Mrs. White’s paid traveling companion, sat meekly in a corner, and a maid bustled through the sitting room and into the bedroom. All three women were survivors, but a young manservant who had traveled in Mrs. White’s entourage had been lost. Mrs. White had expressed his loss as a matter of course—of course he had been lost, being a man and not a woman or a child.
“I wonder,” Bill said, “if you could tell me anything about the behavior of the officers and the crew. Did you see anything bearing upon the discipline of the officers or crew or their conduct that you would like to speak of for the record?”
Mrs. White shot him a shrewd glance. “So you have found nothing in your own questioning? I have not been downstairs to listen for myself, on account of my leg injury, but rumor has it that the Titanic’s officers are proving difficult nuts to crack.”
“They are very careful in what they say,” Bill agreed, “as are the company officials.”
Mrs. Smith sniffed contemptuously. “Well, I have no need to be careful. I can speak the truth.”
“Of course you can.”
“But,” Mrs. White continued, “let me first say that I have every praise for the Carpathia’s captain and crew. They were kindness itself to each and every one of us.”
“We are preparing a commendation for Captain Rostron,” Bill said. “We understand what he did.”
“Unlike Ismay,” Mrs. White said.
Bill glanced at McKinstry to make sure that he was still taking notes. “Do you wish to say something about Mr. Ismay?”
“I know of many women who slept on the floor of the smoking room on the Carpathia,” Mrs. White said, “although I was not one of them. However, that man occupied one of the best rooms on the Carpathia, with a sign on the door saying ‘Please do not knock.’ Please do not knock indeed. Who does he think he is?”
“And what of the crew?” Bill asked.
Mrs. White settled herself more comfortably in her chair. “I’ve read the newspapers, Senator, and they speak of the bravery of the men, but I don’t think there was any particular bravery, not at first, because none of the men thought the ship was going down. We were not properly informed. We were told that we should row a short distance away to the light we saw, and while we were away from the ship, repairs would be made, and we could return.”
“And you had no notion that the ship was sinking?” Bill asked.
Miss Young spoke softly from her seat in the corner. “Not until the end, and then it was dreadful. So quick. There one moment and gone the next, and people in the water screaming.”
“Is there any more you can tell me about the crew and the officers?” Bill asked.
“I can’t speak about the officers,” Mrs. White said, “because I did not see them. There were no officers in my lifeboat, only crewmen, but they were not sailors. They had no notion of how to row. I had to tell one of them how to put the oar in the oarlock. He said he’d never had an oar in his hands before. When I suggested we go back and pick up more passengers, he refused. He said we would be overwhelmed.”
“How many were in your boat?”
“Only twenty-two. We could have had so many more.”
Mrs. White was still speaking, but Bill’s thoughts were elsewhere. He imagined himself in that lifeboat. It was a boat built to carry sixty-five or even seventy passengers but somehow it had been launched with only twenty-two people on board. He thought of the people, maybe as many as a thousand, struggling in the freezing water. The sailor, for all his ignorance of how to handle an oar, had made the right decision. If they had approached and offered hope to the drowning people, they would have been swamped, and another twenty-two people would have been added to the list of victims.
“It was a dreadful thing,” Miss Young said quietly. “We heard the yells of the steerage passengers as they went down. To think that on such a beautiful starlit night, and with all those Marconi warnings ...”
“What do you know of the Marconi warnings?” Bill asked, dragging his mind away from the dreadful scenes playing out in his head.
“We read what was written in the newspapers, but really, even without the Marconi, the captain should have known,” Mrs. White said. “Everybody knew we were in the vicinity of icebergs. It was terribly cold. I made the remark to Miss Young on Sunday morning, didn’t I?”
Miss Young leaned forward to speak. “She said we must be very near icebergs to have such cold weather.”
Mrs. White flapped her hands angrily. “If I, using nothing but my own common sense, could tell we were in the vicinity of icebergs, how could the crew not know?”
“How indeed?” Bill said.
He drained his tumbler and heaved himself to his feet. McKinstry followed him from the room, and the two men stood together for a moment, gathering their thoughts. Bill was tired, not physically but emotionally. He could no longer find a way to organize his thoughts. He had begun the day filled with righteous indignation and every intention of breaking through Ismay’s reserve and showing him to be the coward he undoubtedly was. He imagined himself as a heroic figure pointing the finger of blame squarely at the chairman of the White Star Line, proving negligence and obtaining compensation for the suffering of so many.
Now, after all that he had heard, his sense of righteous indignation was wavering, replaced by a secondhand vision of the ship sinking and the hundreds of people struggling in the water, their screams fading as their breath froze in their lungs.
Tomorrow he would depose the Titanic’s one surviving radio operator, a young man who had stayed at his post after all hope had gone. He would call the surviving officers, and no doubt they would all be cast from the same mold as Lightoller, with stiff upper lips and shadowed eyes that concealed the nightmare within. What would he even ask? What was left to say?
His questions felt like insults. He had not stood on the deck of the doomed ship and watched the last lifeboat being rowed away, or chosen to dive from the roof of the officers’ quarters into the frigid ocean. He was not one of the men who had stepped back to allow women and children into the lifeboats. He had not joined the orchestra to play music to drown out the terror or stood beside a stoker while water rose around his feet. He had not even joined in the drinking in the salon among those who had hoped to allay their fears with alcohol.
He turned to McKinstry. “You’re free, Will. Go on down to the bar. I won’t need you again tonight.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure, Will.”
“And what about tomorrow? What should I prepare for?”
“Radio messages. We’ll see who was saying what about the ice.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we’re done.”
“But Ismay—”
“We’ll have to let him go. We’ll have to let them all go. I can’t justify keeping them here. All we’re doing is providing gossip for the newspapers. We’ve heard nothing useful. It was a tragedy, Will, and I don’t know if it could have been avoided.” He sighed. “I think that maybe this inquiry insults the memory of hundreds of brave men and women.”
He extended his hand to McKinstry. “I’ll see you in the morning, Will. I’m going to phone my wife.”
McKinstry nodded. “Good night, sir.”
Bill unlocked the door of his suite, kicked off his shoes, and sat down on the bed. He placed the call to his home and went to the small drinks cart to mix a whiskey and soda. He would have to be careful. One more drink would buoy him up enough to talk to Nana, but any more after that, and the black dog of depression would show up uninvited, tail between its legs, hounding his every thought. He could not afford to let that happen. He imagined that the black dog’s littermates were already camping out in the president’s office, but they could not both play host to the unwelcome hounds.
The telephone jangled. “Senator, I have your wife on the phone.”
“Thank you.”
Nana’s voice sounded distant and tinny. He wished she had come with him to New York. Well, maybe not. She would not have liked listening to the testimony. She would not have wanted to be among the doyennes of New York society occupying the front seats at the hearing. On the other hand, he had good news for her.
“Did you receive McKinstry’s telegram?” he asked. “He thinks he’s found two girls from Molly’s family.”
“I did,” said Nana, “but I’ll say nothing to Molly until we’re certain. And if they’re not in fact her relatives, I’ll find a place for them somewhere. One way or another, I’ll take care of the poor little mites.”
“It’s a tragedy all around,” Bill said, knowing that tragedy was not a strong enough word but unable to find another word. For something like this, there were no words. “I’ll be finishing up tomorrow, and I’ll come straight home.”
“What do you mean?” Nana asked. “Surely you’re not finished already.”
“No, I’m not finished, but it’s all the time I’m allowed,” Bill said.
“Allowed?” Nana repeated. “Since when do you do only what you’re allowed? Shame on you, William. People are waiting for answers. What happened? Why did it happen? What’s to prevent it from happening again?”
“Nana—”
“No,” Nana said angrily. “You are not finished. You have letters, Bill, from your constituents and from all over the country, and even telegrams.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when Richard LaSalle went into your Senate office this morning, he could hardly open the door for all the sacks of mail stacked up beside it.”
“Sacks,” Bill repeated. “Sacks of mail?”
“Yes, Bill, sacks of mail from people who are cheering you on. They want you to see this through. They’re not satisfied.”
“But—”
“I don’t mean wealthy, important people,” Nana said. “I mean ordinary, everyday voters—immigrants who are now citizens and know what it’s like to come across the Atlantic. Everyday people who want to see justice done.”
“I’m not sure what justice would look like.”
“Then make yourself sure,” Nana snapped.
For a moment, he heard nothing but crackling on the line, and then Nana spoke again. “Bill, are you feeling depressed?”
Even though she could not see him, Bill sat up straighter. “No, Nana, I am not depressed. I have been asking questions and receiving very little in the way of answers. I am not at all sure that I can pin this on Ismay and—”
“No one says you have to pin it on Ismay.”
“Apart from Eva Trentham.”
“Eva Trentham is not president of the United States,” Nana declared. “Now, Bill, it would be good if you could find someone to blame, or at least someone who the general population can despise, but the important question is, what can you do to make sure this doesn’t happen again? Think about it, Bill. We are populating this country with immigrants from all over Europe. They all have to cross the Atlantic to get here. I don’t care so much about floating palaces like the Titanic; I’m thinking about people like Molly, who just want their families to arrive safely from Ireland, where they are currently starving to death. What can you find out about this tragedy that will prevent it from ever happening again?”
“Ships have always sunk,” Bill said.
“Yes,” Nana agreed, “but we didn’t always know about it. This is a new age. Instead of just disappearing and nobody knowing anything, the Titanic sent messages, and Cape Race picked them up, and then the New York Times picked them up, and then everyone knew what was happening. It was as though we were all watching, Bill. This great ship was going down right in front of us. We have to know why.”