The Offering

Nights the band played the same ragtime tunes but the dead danced differently on land. By the light of the fire, the women's hair floated translucent as they dipped and spun across the library. The men were equally languid, their black coattails fluttering behind them as their arms windmilled and their legs kicked out in slow motion. Sometimes one of the third-class passengers broke into an Irish jig and everyone joined in, whirling and clapping until Ismay got so dizzy he nearly passed out.

In all the years he had been coming to Costelloe, the musicians never once played hymns and for that he was grateful. Give him a jig any day of the week. Leave God to the church.

The dancers never spoke, never sang, though once a wispy blonde in a sequined dress glided across the room and sat next to him on the couch. Her lips glowed blue in the darkness and her pearls were all the moons that had set since the ship went down. She leaned toward him and for one horrific moment he imagined she might kiss him. Her eyes gleamed like ice as she threw back her head and laughed.

Then she was gone. He'd sat alone, as usual, a cold sweat beading his forehead. His hand unsteady around his whiskey glass. At dawn he slept the fitful slumber of the spared.

Tonight there was no music. Instead the air was alive with locusts—the screams of the night that refused to die.

He leaned back and closed his eyes, as if darkness could blot sound. It wasn't guilt he felt, he was sure of it. His conscience was clear. Hadn't he done what any other man would have done? The deck had been empty. Hadn't it? And Carter had done the same, jumped into Collapsible C at the last possible moment right alongside him. If Ismay hadn't looked back as she plunged to the bottom of the sea, who could blame him? If he hadn't rowed as the women did—

If only Marian were with him. She alone understood. Her letters lay scattered across the desk, her elegant script his only company. She had promised to visit one day and when she did, at last, they would meander through the cottage gardens hand in hand. Only that morning he'd walked them himself. Instead of the sweet scent of roses, the salt from the Cashla filled the air. In place of petals, dry leaves crunched beneath his boots.

At the inquiry, the ill-tempered senator had pummeled him about the conversation he'd had with Marian and her friend Emily on the afternoon of the disaster. He had been so eager to impress her he'd fished the Marconigram out of his coat pocket and thrust it toward them.

"We are in among the icebergs," he told them.

He had expected fear, even craved it. If anything, the two women had been bored by his news. Why not? The Titanic had seemed as omnipotent as its name. Ismay mumbled something about orders to fire up the extra boilers and hurried below deck.

It didn't matter that she was married and a mother of four. He had wanted Marian to see him as everything he wasn't. As someone capable, unflappable, brave. Later, he simply wanted to convince her he was no different than any other survivor. That he wasn't the chairman and managing director of the White Star Line but only a passenger. Not the man responsible for her husband's death. For any death.

She pretended to believe him. It was, he supposed, enough. Better than his wife's decree that no one should speak the word Titanic in his presence ever again. Florence might as well as have hung a placard around his neck labeled Coward. Or, better yet, Murderer.

Yet his wife loved him still.

He loathed the very sight of her.

Luckily, Florence didn't care for this wild place so far from London's madding crowds. She was happy to leave him be while she raised the children as she saw fit. He was, in a manner of speaking, free. If not for the servants and Marian's letters, he would be entirely isolated.

Well, were it not for the not-so-small matter of his evening guests. And the distant roar of the waves hitting the Irish shore. His manservant assured him it was quite impossible to hear the Atlantic from the house.

But hear it he did. And dance they did. Die they did. Over and over and over again.

Sometimes he wondered if he really had gone down with the ship and this was hell. Surely, it would be no different.

Ismay refilled his glass and took a long swig of the amber liquor. It burned on the way down and the heat radiated through him. The whiskey warmed him in a way the fire in the grate never could but he still felt waterlogged after all these years. He was tempted to go off in search of the clippings file he kept of the tragedy but lacked the motivation. Anyway, he had it all in his head.

He never forgets a thing, Ismay's mother had boasted when he was a boy.

The locusts went quiet and the musicians struck up a tune. More dancers flitted through the window, their plumed hats and shiny shoes impervious to glass. They paired off and began to jump and twirl in fantastic formations. They seemed more festive than usual, as if some great change were in the air.

Ismay picked up his napkin and lay it flat across the coffee table before him. He sprang to his feet—suddenly full of immense energy—and grabbed his fountain pen.

Just as he had that fateful night at Lord Pirrie's decades earlier, he began to sketch. His hand moved of its own volition. The four funnels emerged from the deck, the portholes winked into existence like a thousand bright eyes, the enormous hull took shape, the side anchors appeared. The ship was as beautiful as it had been at the dinner--a 43,000-ton candlelit dream that would put the owners of the Cunard Line in their rightful place. Unmatched in speed and elegance. And unsinkable, unsinkable.

Ismay studied his drawing then took in the ghastly crowd. One by one, they stopped dancing. The musicians, too, lay down their instruments. They stood before him, a sea of transparent statues.

The clock struck the hour. Once, twice, three times. He counted to twelve.

Then nothing. Only the crackling of the fire. The impossible roar of the sea out of earshot for once. The servants gone home for the night.

They stared at him with their iceberg eyes and their blue lips. The blonde mouthed something he couldn't decipher. Had he met her on board? Was she someone in particular to him?

He fixed his gaze on her and tried to read her lips. He could not.

“What is it you want from me?” he implored her.

She threw back her head and laughed.

A few of her friends joined in and before he could cover his ears the whole room was laughing, laughing uproariously at him. A heavyset man slapped his knee and howled. A steward who looked vaguely familiar braced himself against the nearest wall and bent double.

Their laughter crescendoed. A symphony of disdain. It was unbearable.

“Leave me!” he shouted across the vacant air. “I beg you, leave me in peace!”

He stared at the monstrous ship on the napkin. Picked up his pen and sketched as quickly as he could. The lifeboats materialized until there were 23 from end to end. In his mind, he turned the great vessel and filled in the remaining 23 until there were 46 in all. Not the measly 16 he'd authorized so there would be money to spare for the grand staircase, the gymnasium, the smoking room, the squash court, the library, the cafe, the hall of mirrors, the swimming pool. . .

The drawing on the napkin, he realized, was nothing but a black spot.

He crumpled it in his fist and flung it onto the fire. Grabbed another napkin. Began again. This time his strokes were slow, deliberate, certain. His hand was steady now and he took his time with the lifeboats. He broke off once to take a sip of whiskey. Unstoppered the decanter and refilled his glass. Took another sip and plunged onward.

Ismay's veins lit all at once. His cheeks burned and his skin tingled from head to foot. He forced feeling from his mind and went on. His imagination flew as it had flown that first night. It soared out of the room, straight through the slate roof, past the withered gardens and the glassy river until he was flying high above the Atlantic. The wind buoyed him ever higher and he felt himself at home among the stars. Their sharp tines pricked his shoulder blades but there was no pain. No limitation.

He could climb forever.

It was the kiss that brought him back. The embrace of a corpse.

Ismay used both hands to push her away. But he was manhandling air. After a moment, she pushed a strand of yellow hair behind one ear and took his face in her own slim hands. In his frenzy to distance himself, he knocked his glass to the floor. It shattered and the mosaic skittered across bare wood. Golden liquid pooled at his feet.

He realized he had stumbled into the dead center of the room. The girl stayed where she was. Around him, on every side, the others swayed on their feet ever so slightly. Their souls pressed against him, on every side of him, until he could hardly breathe.

He collected himself. No point in panicking, no need to lose his wits. He had, after all, the napkin. The exquisite ship, sinkable, sinkable, but impeccably complete, perfectly rendered. Perfectly safe. His talisman.

Ever so carefully, Ismay edged his way toward the coffee table where he'd left the napkin. They let him pass. Within seconds he seized the white square and lifted it above his head. He held it as high as he could, turning and turning, as if he were offering up a Vermeer for their perusal. An alternate ending.

Their expressions didn't change. No one spoke. No one mouthed words for him to try to translate. One at a time, they faded back to where they'd come from. Until the next night, when it would begin all over again. Too late.

He remained standing in the empty room. When he turned the sketch toward himself, he saw it for what it was: a black smudge, a mote of soot, an indecipherable scribble. A failure of imagination.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the sun set red in the sky.



***

Thanks for reading my "Ship of Dreams" tale. This has been one of my favorite Vocal prompts and it's been a dark pleasure to research the Titanic's tragic voyage. Much thanks to Francis Wilson for her informative and fascinating book, How to Survive the Titanic: Or, the Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay, which draws parallels between Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim's and Ismay's destinies. Both men made split-second decisions that destroyed their lives, not to mention the lives of hundreds of others. What if Ismay had posted the Baltic's Marconigram on the board below deck for the crew to see? What if he had pressed Captain Smith to slow down? What if he hadn't jumped? What if he had told others, who believed they were safer on board, that the ship would most certainly sink? Perhaps most importantly, what if Ismay had sacrificed luxury for safety and added more lifeboats?

I also loved Hazel Gaynor's The Girl Who Came Home, a historical novel that chronicles the life of an Irish immigrant who survived the shipwreck, and Beryl Bainbridge's Every Man for Himself. In addition, I greatly appreciated L.A. Beadles' "Unsinkable: The Titanic Podcast," which I found on Spotify, as well as the exhaustive Encyclopedia Titanica, not to mention a handful of articles online, including one on IrishCentral.com that describes the lodge J. Bruce Ismay retreated to after the disaster.

I hope I have several more Titanic stories to tell, but J. Bruce Ismay came to hold an almost hypnotic power over me as I read about the disaster. I still haven't made up my mind about him, but have tried to stay as close to facts as possible here (well, aside from the dancing ghosts . . . ).

Ismay's father Thomas was a cold disciplinarian who founded the White Star Line and left his son Bruce with a sense of inferiority that he never shook. Following his father's death, Bruce sold the line to J.P. Morgan in 1902 but stayed on as its managing director. It was he who supposedly sketched the Titanic and two other ships at Lord Pirrie's dinner party in 1906, just as it was he who made the decision to reduce the number of lifeboats to just 16, the minimum required by law.

Likewise, a number of witnesses testified during the two inquiries--one in America and one in England--that it was Bruce Ismay who urged Captain Smith to increase the Titanic's speed to full capacity during the voyage. Ismay denied this, but did not deny jumping into Collapsible C of his own free will (despite some witnesses stating that Bruce had either been thrown or, at the very least, ordered into the lifeboat). At the time, the policy was to board "women and children first" so for any man to get into a lifeboat was controversial. According to testimony, officers tried to turn a boy as young as 13 away from a lifeboat and only his father's insistence led them to change their minds.

For the man responsible for the lack of lifeboats, not to mention the ship's speed, to save himself was. . .a problem. In addition, Bruce failed to inquire about the condition of other officers and passengers when rescued by the Carpathia. Nor did Bruce warn several people close to him that the ship would go down after it struck the iceberg on the night of April 14.

Marian Thayer, however, he did try to save. He had never met her before the voyage but the pretty Philadelphia socialite made an indelible impression on him. At some point he fell in love with her but she appears not to have returned his feelings. It was Marian's son Jack, who survived by jumping off the ship, that described the screams of the dying as the sound of "locusts." It was he who would commit suicide decades later.

For the rest of his life, Ismay denied responsibility for the tragedy, which condemned him to the world's scorn and to ostracization from polite society. Perhaps more importantly, his first real love--for ships--was forever destroyed.

Labeled a coward and nicknamed J. Brute Ismay, he retreated to his cottage in Connemara. He bought the place sight unseen and had it rebuilt after the IRA burnt it to the ground in 1922. After his initial testimony in the United States and Britain, he never again spoke of the tragedy publicly.

His wife Florence did indeed ban anyone from raising the topic in her husband's presence. Bruce never again sailed for the United States, though his wife returned to New York after his death. He spent a good deal of his time involved in paying out insurance claims to victims of the disaster and donated a significant sum to the widows of the Titanic.

The public never forgave him but, despite his refusal to admit blame, I suspect he did blame himself. Relatives who saw Bruce after 1912 described him as a "shipwreck" of a man. Always a solitary type, he became positively anti-social after the Titanic sank. If he went to the theater, he bought two tickets and lay his coat and hat beside him in an empty seat. He fished alone, took the train alone, dined alone.

As for his children, he spent little time with them. The same goes for his wife. The sole exception seemed to be Marian, to whom Ismay wrote long, emotional letters. The widow never did visit him, though she sent him many letters, some books, an Emerson essay and a signed photograph of herself. Eventually she stopped answering his letters.

As for the story's subtitle, it's a reference to "Songe d'Automne," which several passengers recalled the musicians playing on the night Titanic sank. The band began with ragtime tunes but later shifted to hymns, including "Nearer My God to Thee."

Some background info from Encyclopedia Titanica:

"Songe d'Automne (Dream of Autumn) was composed by Archibald Joyce (25 May 1873 to 22 March 1963). Joyce, popularly known as the "English Waltz King", had considerable success in England with this piece which was included in the repertoire for White Star Line orchestras.

Harold Bride's recollection of "Autumn" playing as the Titanic foundered has led to speculation that he was in fact referring to Songe d'Automne with which he would undoubtedly been familiar and which was included in the White Star Line repertoire booklet."

My father taught history for 30 years, so I guess you could say my fascination with the past comes from him. Instead of arranging regular vacations, he would pile the family into our beat-up station wagon and head for Independence Hall or Fort Ticonderoga. My brothers and I didn't see this state of affairs as ideal, especially when our friends were flying off to Disney World. As the years passed I ended up taking vacations a lot like the ones I took when I was growing up. I've still never been to Disney World--something my daughter holds against me to this day. :)