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Breathing deep, Rose clasps her hands on the railing and leans out over the black sea. Wisps of her hair spiral out behind her as she hangs, self-suspended, before death.
She remains frozen there like a grieved statue until exertion wears down her arms and she turns her back on escape. She winds her arms around the metal and sobs until a pair of officers catch the sound and retrieve her. They escort her back to her stateroom, their demeanor understandably awkward. Mother’s scandalized face follows Rose into her nightmares.
Cal stares at her throughout the next morning as if she had spat in his face.
-
Dinner is carefully unremarkable. It begins with praise for the night air followed by inquiries after nephews and colleagues and closes with a cheerful anecdote about a count and his four mistresses. Only Mother addresses Rose directly, and only then to insist that she indulge in another glass of water lest she catch a dizzy spell and worsen her condition.
This is Mother’s transparent curtain to cover the truth: exhaustion. However, Rose is blessed with a healthy constitution, and she is assuredly on the mend.
Naturally, no one believes it.
At the end of the evening, Cal escorts her and Mother back to the stateroom. They go slowly, Mother on his right and Rose trailing slightly behind. When they reach the door, Mother removes her gloved hand from his arm and exchanges pleasantries on Rose’s behalf. Then, with slight reluctance, Cal departs in the direction of the smoking room.
Once the door is closed Mother slips off her gloves and silently retires to her room. She shuts the door with a quiet and resolute click. Rose stands by the chaise, her fingers braced on the sloping back, until Trudy emerges with tea.
“Something to warm you up, Miss Rose,” Trudy says, setting down the tray. She doesn’t look up from her hands as she pours amber into china.
Rose accepts the cup with a small nod.
“Pardon me, Miss Rose,” Trudy says. She bobs a curtsey and ducks into Rose’s room to turn down the bed.
The tea scalds her tongue. Her ribs feel close to broken.
“Miss Rose?”
Rose carries her cup into the half-lit bedroom. There, Trudy unlaces the corset, takes the cold cup, says good night.
The sheets have been warmed, but her pillow is cold. Goosebumps cover her arms and legs.
When Mother opens the door, Rose closes her eyes until she leaves.
-
“I wouldn’t mention it.”
“No, of course not. Though one does wonder. Unusual timing, so close to the wedding.”
“Yes.”
“But she is young.”
“Sixteen, isn’t she?”
“Seventeen. The engagement closely followed her birthday this past August.”
“What a blow for young Hockley.”
“He’s carried himself admirably in spite of the circumstances.”
“Very much so.”
“Though he does seem agitated.”
“A bit of guilt, perhaps.”
“But surely he can’t be held responsible.”
“Responsible? Of course not! He didn’t push her over, did he?”
“No, but—”
“Come now, enough of this schoolgirl prattle. We’ll hear more than is reasonable from our wives in the days to come.”
“Did Caledon mention if he’d be joining us?”
“He’s escorting the women to their stateroom.”
“Too right. Good man.”
“I imagine he’ll be slow on his way here, if he comes at all.”
“Poor soul. Terrible omen before a wedding.”
“Terrible, yes.”
“Has anyone visited the gymnasium on this voyage?”
-
One of the positive things about a ship like Titanic is the smug attitude of its officers. They prowl around the upper decks, their faces buried in tea cups or handkerchiefs. Confident. Arrogant. See these railings? They’re like electricity, they are. No one would dare ever cross a railing. Saints preserve us, no.
“Here, Tommy, grab this one. No—the middle rail. The bottom one’s loose for some reason.”
Tommy crouches on the top of the rail, scanning the deck for officers. “Sure you haven’t done this before, Jack?” he asks. Satisfied with their relative safety, he drops down onto wood so smooth it’s probably been polished with the tears of orphans. Pampered fuckers.
“Not sober,” Jack admits. He grins, holding onto the rail for balance.
“Then you won’t be breaking that record tonight,” Tommy says.
“Indeed I won’t. Now, which way to the—”
Footsteps.
“Shit, go back!”
They scramble over the railing and temporarily return to steerage. Idle chatter, the sound of boot soles clomping on rich wood. When silence returns, they promote themselves back onto the second class deck with double the caution.
Tommy rolls his shoulders back and cocks out an elbow to lean on the wall. “This might not be worth the trouble,” he says.
Jack nods, a glint in his eye. “Probably not,” he agrees.
Tommy cracks his knuckles with a chuckle. “Well, if we’re going to be kicking the legs out from under decorum tonight, I say we make the most of it and visit the lords and ladies above.”
They make two laps around the first class deck before they come across anyone else. Young lord, hair slicked back, glass and bottle huddled close together by his feet.
“Keep walking,” Jack murmurs. “Pretend you’re the heir to a tweed fortune.”
“Soon as we’re clear of him, you’re going into the sea.”
The lord doesn’t budge, not to look up nor not even to breathe, so it seems. Jack and Tommy exchange a shrug and move on. They claim a spot by the starboard railing, where the cold air quickly claws them back to sobriety. Jack hands him a cigarette and they add clouds to the clear black sky.
“What’s your plan?” Jack asks. “Staying in New York?”
“Family’s in Boston,” Tommy says. “It’s me alone stayed in Ireland so long. All the rest of them put down roots in Massachusetts years back.” He exhales slow, savoring the taste of heat and ash as it skates across his tongue. “Might become a barman. What about yourself?”
Jack shrugs. “No plan. I’ll head home for a while. Go out to California, maybe.” He lifts his chin suddenly. “Hang on.”
Footsteps.
“Bloody fuck.”
Tommy flings his cigarette out to sea, but Jack keeps his as they make for a quick getaway.
“You’re givin’ them smoke signals,” Tommy hisses.
“Excuse me!” someone calls.
“Shit, shit, shit, run!”
“You’ve still got the fucking cigarette?”
“I don’t get these by magic, all right?”
A whistle blares, startling both of them into sprinting. “Shite, shite, fuck fucking fuck!”
An officer rounds the corner they’re heading toward. Jack turns on his heel and runs at the wall. He lands a foot on a deck chair and leaps up onto the edge of the roof.
“Mary and Joseph,” Tommy exhales. Still, it’s a better idea than his own of taking on three officers, so he jumps and catches Jack’s hand. He’s hauled up and the three officers are now below, shouting up at them and brandishing flashlights.
“You might try that with a gun,” Tommy suggests.
They round the roof to the port side of the ship and climb quickly down. They’re off for the railing again when Jack runs headlong into a stodgy man with steel-gray hair and a mean twist of the face.
Their drunk lord is leaning on the rail they’ll need to escape, a glass pressed to his mouth.
“What’s this?” the stodgy man says.
“Um,” Jack says. “Excuse me, gentlemen.” Without further preamble, he jumps over the railing. There’s a pretty significant drop between the decks without the assistance of stairs, but Jack manages to land without any apparent broken bones, so Tommy once more follows him.
They’re hidden in an alcove deep in the ship’s belly when Jack pats down his pockets and curses. “I dropped my sketch up there.”
“Sketch of what?”
“Girl I saw earlier. It’s nothing. C’mon.”
-
“This more than slightly resembles Miss Rose.”
“What does?”
Lovejoy passes the paper to Hockley, who studies it with an expression both fascinated and repulsed. He folds it and tucks it in his pocket.
“I’ll accept it as payment for spoiling the evening’s calm.”
-
A quiet afternoon alone follows a dismal breakfast with Cal. Sitting in the gymnasium away from prying, pitying gazes, Rose remembers the silence of their meal and Cal’s bewildered eyes when she said, “I didn’t jump because of you.”
“I was led to believe that you didn’t jump at all.”
She let his casual tone wash over her, let it add to the fury building under her skin.
“That’s right,” she said, and under the table she slipped off her ring. She placed it beside her plate with a quiet sound.
He stared at it.
She explained, “It’s difficult to hold my fork wearing it,” and spent the remainder of the meal sipping tea and ignoring her cutlery altogether.
From the time he arrived until the time he left, Cal didn’t look at or touch her at all.
When a young couple and a photographer come in to investigate the gymnasium, Rose returns to their stateroom. Mother and Trudy are nowhere to be seen. She stands in the open air of the deck outside their suite, bare arms slicked with cold wind. She watches the sun dip into the sea, her white fingers clenched around a blue rock meant to buy her submission.
-
Music crowds Tommy’s mind. The whirl of a tin whistle and the rumble of drums mix and soar above the stomp of feet and the swell of laughter. The air is thick with the smell of ale and sweat and salt of the sea, ever present regardless of where a body goes. Someone brings bagpipes into the fray, and the tune shifts effortlessly into triumphant song.
In the back of the room, Fabrizio and Jack lean on the wall. Fabrizio’s eyes follow a smiling blonde girl while Jack with his damn sketchbook ignores everything but the charcoal scribbling madly on paper. He’ll spare glimpses up at the dancers every now and then, but his attention is hard to earn.
Eventually, Tommy and Jack catch each other’s gaze. Tommy toasts him and Jack nods amicably.
The party continues long into the evening.
-
Lovejoy follows Hockley from an acceptable distance to the first class promenade deck. There Hockley roughly seizes one of the folded deck chairs and brings it to the railing. He sits down and sets his elbows on his thighs, his shoulders high and tense around his neck. Lovejoy stands behind him, two fingers curled around a cigarette in the pocket of his trousers. Hockley has his lighter.
As usual, Hockley doesn’t speak to him. He rubs his hands together after a while, coaxing back warmth. He exhales slowly, breathes in deep.
Lovejoy shifts his weight silently from one foot to the other.
It seems as though Miss DeWitt Bukater will not be content with her lot in life until she’s made herself a spectacle on this ship as much as she can before her mother locks her up in their suite. She spent today wandering the ship without her engagement ring. Its absence, it turns out, is more of a beacon than the gem itself.
Hockley got too far into the bottle tonight. By the time Lovejoy found him, he had his head in his hands and the steerage rogue’s sketch flattened on the table before him.
Now he stares out at nothing, his jaw tensing and relaxing at random intervals.
Lovejoy sees a shadow cover Hockley, and then the iceberg tears into the hull of Titanic.
-
Tommy and Jack rip a bench from the wall and along with several other men, ram it through the gate separating them from certain death and a narrow chance at survival.
Rose steps into the lifeboat, Molly’s hand steadying her elbow. She sits between Mother and Molly, the rock heavy in her hand. As the lifeboat lowers, Rose stares up at Cal and holds the rock tighter until the cut edges bite into her skin.
-
Lovejoy pushes into the crowd fleeing the rising water and trying to get to the stern railing. Hockley struggles after him, but someone’s suitcase catches him in the mouth and he falls out of sight. Lovejoy slugs the carrier in the neck and takes his suitcase, wielding it harshly until he finds a place at the railing. He doesn’t see Hockley again.
“Keep kicking,” Jack says again and again.
“Fuckers,” Tommy rants. “Fucking fuck-arsed—”
The sea fills his mouth, and not until Jack punches him does scalding sensation return to Tommy’s body. He kicks, even though his legs feel broken.
It’s quiet.
“I’m not dying out here,” Tommy says. “If God stands for any kind of justice, he’ll give me life long enough to see me break a bottle over the head of every bastard who dreamed up that bloody boat.”
Jack’s lips are blue. “Just one bottle?”
“Big fuckin’ bottle,” Tommy says.
Jack exhales sharply, a frozen laugh. Then he grips Tommy’s shoulder and says, “I have an idea.”
-
The Carpathia appears against a bloodied sunrise, her likeness so different from Titanic that Rose grimaces.
Once aboard, the ragged survivors disperse, stark contrasts to the orderly crew of the Carpathia. Rose walks with Molly ahead of her Mother, who hasn’t spoken a word since Titanic gave in to the sea.
Someone drops a blanket over her shoulders and she huddles into it. Her hand aches from the hours she’d held the rock. She doesn’t let go
-
Nathan searches the unfamiliar flock of ashen-faced survivors for his son. He looks for Caledon’s dark hair and young face. His stomach begins to twist when he realizes what he may have to report to his wife. Perhaps he should have brought her, had her seen for herself that Caledon isn’t among the survivors. She will never believe it from Nathan or anyone else.
It is the single most horrifying moment of his life.
And then behind him, Caledon says, “Where’s Mother?”
-
A woman named Rosalie looks after them. She gives Jack her blanket and gets Tommy a bowl of soup from one of the officers. Jack doesn’t wake up for hours, but Rosalie assures him his heart is still beating, so Tommy tries to set his fears aside and sits with Rosalie’s boys. He tells them about the lifebelts they found in the water, the wreckage they managed to hang off of. Kept their torsos above water. Kept complaining.
When Jack wakes up, the six-year-old hands him a drawing of Jack and Tommy as ice cubes with frowning faces.
Jack laughs despite the bitter edge tugging down the corners of his mouth.
-
Nathan holds an auction for the sketch. It goes for less than the price of one first class ticket, and Nathan thinks they might have done better to have waited a few years, but it’s good to see the thing gotten rid of civilly. He’s never seen Caledon so morose, and that sketch is half to blame.
The wedding is called off quietly, and Caledon spends the promised day in the study with a flask.
-
The DeWitt Bukater estate is paid off anonymously.
Rose watches Mother react to the news, her face stunned and horrified. Her confusing pride bruised purple. To get something for nothing is sinful, she says.
Rose sends Cal the engagement ring. She keeps the rock.
Mother calls for a tea setting, but Rose isn’t thirsty or hungry.
She blames her condition.
She walks through the front gates and keeps going.
-
Tommy sees Jack off at the station. Jack has an army bag slung over his shoulder, a gift from Rosalie, and he’s about to board his train. Tommy’s leaves from another platform in two hours. Tommy clasps Jack’s shoulder and Jack claps him on the back once.
“Look me up, I’m serious,” Jack says.
Tommy nods. He tosses Jack a lighter, freshly bought down the street with a coin he’d had stashed in his shoe before the sinking.
“Thought yours might have gotten wet,” Tommy says, shrugging.
Jack grins. “You’re a good man.”
Tommy touches a salute to his forehead.
He doesn’t see Jack again.
-
In 1919, the anonymous sketch of a young Titanic passenger appears in a New York art gallery. Rose follows her own charcoal contours with curious eyes, marveling at the artist’s insight. People around her say the girl looks beautiful and serene, but Rose sees the pout of her lips and the slant of her eyebrows and knows it’s sullenness.
A flicker of black alerts her to turn aside.
Cal passes her. Rose watches his shoes pause some feet away before continuing on.
When she looks again at the sketch, someone new is observing it. Blond hair, sharp jaw, cheap clothes.
The well-bred girl can’t be entirely removed, it seems.
Suddenly—“You’re the one who sold this, aren’t you?”
“I am.” Cal’s voice.
“Jack Dawson. I thought you might want this.”
“What’s…?”
“The drawing. If you’re going to sell my work, you might want actual art instead of chicken scratchings I did on a damned boat.”
“I see.” Rose hears amusement in Cal’s voice. “Well, then, Mr. Dawson, I’ll see this finds its proper place.”
“See that you do.” Dawson claps him on the shoulder. “Thanks, pal.”
Rose catches the confusion on Cal’s face.
“But—”
Dawson turns around, eyebrows up. “Hm?”
Cal shakes his head. Speaking of money is obscene. “Nothing. Thank you.” He lifts the drawing.
Dawson grins. “Sure. I’ll look for you if I find any more chicken scratchings.”
Cal stands still for another moment, then leaves with the drawing carefully braced in both hands.
Rose scans the raw lines of her sketch once more before returning to the daily calamity outside.