Danielle Steel: A Good Woman

For the next three days, she and Hortie roamed the house like ghosts. Hortie was the only friend she wanted to see or speak to in her shock and grief. Annabelle ate almost nothing, despite the housekeeper’s exhortations. Everyone was constantly crying, and finally Annabelle and Hortie went for a walk to get some air. James came and escorted them, and he was very kind to Annabelle and told her how sorry he was about what had happened. The city, and the world, could think of nothing else.

There was still relatively little news from the Carpathia, except the confirmation that the Titanic had indeed sunk, and the list of survivors was complete and firm. Only the unidentified babies and children were not on the list, and would have to be identified by family members in port, if they were American. If not, they would have to be returned to Cherbourg and Southampton to their anguished families there. Half a dozen of them belonged to none of the survivors and were too young to say their names. Others were taking care of them in the absence of their parents, and there was no way of telling who they were. But everyone else, even the sick or injured, was on the list, they’d been assured. Annabelle still didn’t believe it as Thomas drove her to the Cunard dock on the night of the eighteenth. Hortie didn’t want to go with her, as she didn’t want to intrude, so Annabelle went to Pier 54 alone.

The waiting crowd saw the Carpathia steam slowly into port, with tugboats, just after nine P.M. Annabelle could feel her heart pounding as she watched her, and the ship startled everyone by going to the White Star docks at Piers 59 and 60 instead. And there, in plain sight of all observers, she slowly lowered the remaining lifeboats of the Titanic, which was all that was left of her, to return them to the White Star Line, before the Carpathia docked herself. Photographers were crammed into a flotilla of small boats trying to get photographs of the lifeboats, and survivors of the disaster lined up at the rail. The atmosphere around them was half funeral, half circus, as the relatives of survivors waited in agonized silence to see who would come off, and reporters and photographers shouted to each other and jockeyed for the best positions and best shots.

After depositing the lifeboats, the Carpathia moved slowly to her own dock at Pier 54, and longshoremen and Cunard employees tied her up quickly. And then the gangway was finally let down. In silence, and with heartrending deference, the Titanic survivors were let off first. Passengers from the Carpathia hugged some of them and squeezed their hands. There were many tears, and little said, as one by one, the survivors came off, most of them with tears streaming down their faces, some still in shock from what they’d seen, and lived through on that awful night. No one would soon forget the hideous screams and moans from the water, the shouts and calls for help in vain as people died. Those in the lifeboats had been too afraid of picking people up, for fear they would capsize from the effort, and drown even more people than those who were already doomed in the water. The sights around them had been hideous, of dead floating bodies, as they waited for help to come and to be picked up.

As they came off the Carpathia, there were women with young children, a few women still in evening gowns from their last night aboard the doomed ship, with blankets over them. Some of them had been too shaken to change their clothes for the past three days, and had huddled in the space provided in the Carpathia ’s dining rooms and main salons. The regular passengers and the crew had done all they could to help, but no one could change the death toll and the shocking loss of life, in circumstances no one could have foreseen.

Annabelle felt breathless until she spotted her mother the moment she reached the gangway. She watched Consuelo coming toward her in the distance, with borrowed clothes, a tragic face, and her head held high in grief-stricken dignity. Annabelle saw it all on her face. There was no other familiar figure with her. Her father and brother were nowhere to be seen. Annabelle glanced one last time behind her mother, but Consuelo was entirely alone amid a sea of other survivors, mostly women, and a few men who seemed to look slightly embarrassed as they got off with their wives. There was a constant explosion of flashbulbs, as reporters recorded as many reunions as they could. And then suddenly her mother was standing in front of her, and Annabelle took her in her arms so tightly that neither of them could breathe. Consuelo was sobbing, and so was she as they clung to each other, while passengers and families eddied around them. And then, with Annabelle’s arm around her mother’s shoulders, they slowly walked away. It was raining, and no one cared. Consuelo was wearing a rough wool dress that didn’t fit her, and evening shoes, and still wore a diamond necklace and earrings from the night the ship sank. She had no coat, and Thomas quickly brought Annabelle the car blanket to put around her mother.

They were barely away from the gangway when Annabelle asked the question she had to ask. She could guess the answer, but she couldn’t bear not knowing. She whispered it to her mother, “Robert and Daddy?…” Her mother only shook her head, and cried harder as Annabelle led her to the car. Her mother suddenly seemed so frail and so much older. She was a widow at forty-three, and she seemed like an old woman as Thomas gently helped her into the car, and covered her carefully with the fur blanket. Consuelo just looked at him and cried, and then quietly thanked him. She and Annabelle held each other tight in silence as they rode home. Her mother didn’t speak again until they reached the house.

All of the servants were waiting in the front hall, to embrace her, hug her, hold her, and when they saw she was alone, to tell her how sorry they were. Within the hour, there was a somber black wreath on the door. There were many in New York that night, once it was clear who hadn’t come home and never would.

Annabelle helped to bathe her mother and get her into a nightgown, and Blanche fussed over her like a child. She had taken care of Consuelo since she was a young girl, and had attended both Annabelle’s and Robert’s births. And now, it had come to this. As she plumped Consuelo’s pillows up behind her, once they got her into bed, Blanche had to constantly wipe her eyes, and made little comforting cooing sounds. She brought up a tray with tea, porridge, bland toast, broth, and her favorite cookies, which Consuelo didn’t eat. She just sat staring at both of them, unable to say a word.

Annabelle slept in her mother’s bed that night, and finally in the darkest hours, when Consuelo shook from head to foot and couldn’t sleep, she told her daughter what had happened. She had been in lifeboat number four, with her cousin Madeleine Astor, whose husband hadn’t survived either. She said that the lifeboat had only been half full, but her husband and Robert had refused to get in, wanting to stay back to help others, and allow room for the women and children. But there had been plenty of room for them. “If only they’d gotten in,” Consuelo said in desperation. The Wideners, Thayers, and Lucille Carter, all known to her, had been in the lifeboat too. But Robert and Arthur had steadfastly stayed on board to help the others into lifeboats, and given up their lives. Consuelo spoke too of a man named Thomas Andrews, who had been one of the heroes of the night. And she made a point of telling Annabelle that her father and brother had been very brave, which was small consolation now.

They talked for hours, as Consuelo relived the last moments on the ship, and her daughter held her and cried as she listened. Finally as dawn streamed into the room, at last, with a sigh, Consuelo fell asleep.