Read Online The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Charlotte Rogan
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my hair and arrange things alone in our cabin before Henry came to bed. I liked to gaze out of the porthole and watch the moon on the water, and I liked to savor my good fortune at having met Henry just when I thought I might have to become a governess. From the safety and solitude of my stateroom, with its Belgian linen and porcelain washbasin, I could look back on the events of the previous year and try to make sense of them; but in the end, the only sense I could make of my parents was that they were weak.
The business partners who had defrauded my father had also effectively ended his life, for when it became clear that he did not hold the patents on which his business relied and for which he had mortgaged not only his offices but also the house where we lived, he shot himself. What had Papa imagined a wife and two daughters would do without him? What my mother did was throw up her hands and let her hair fall down around her face so that when she made her erratic way to and from the shops, the beggar children scurried into the gutter, pointing and afraid. My sister Miranda immediately rolled her sleeves up and managed to get work as a governess, but when she encouraged me to do the same, I resisted. It might have been a manifestation of my mother’s passive streak that tempted me to throw up my own hands and hope to be rescued, but I also had some of Miranda’s decisiveness in me—perhaps the same decisiveness that had persuaded my father to shoot himself rather than face the humiliation of poverty, which goes to show that admirable traits are often exactly the same as negative ones, only expressed in a different way. Whatever it was, the trait hadn’t taken root in me in the same way as it took root in my sister, and I will admit that my mother often called me stubborn when I was a child. No sooner had Papa been buried than Miranda went straight to brushing up on her French grammar and arithmetic, and off she went to Chicago, whence she sent frightening letters filled with excruciating details about the children’s daily life and academic progress. Or maybe I wasn’t decisive at all. Maybe I was a hopeless romantic like my mother, just one who was lucky enough to avoid madness by finding the romance and security her heart desired.
Just as Henry and I were embarking for London, the archduke and heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated by Serbian nationalists while visiting the Bosnian capital, and when Austria-Hungary threatened to declare war on Serbia in retaliation, we were advised to cut our visit short and return to New York as soon as possible. Most of the people traveling on the Empress Alexandra had booked their passage at the last minute in order to leave Europe quickly, which added to the sense that some global force had taken us in its grip and that we had been powerless to resist. Even before the shipwreck, the grand strategies that were playing themselves out on the Continent lent an urgency and gravity to our homeward journey that only served to heighten the stark contrast between the luxury and purpose of the ocean liner and my precarious circumstances of a few weeks before. Penelope Cumberland and I listened to the serious talk of the men with one ear, but the other ear we turned toward each other as we tried out opinions on things we knew nothing about. The captain was receiving regular wireless dispatches, which he reported on at dinner, prompting much discussion and posturing among the men, who liked to pontificate about the events of the previous month for the benefit of the ladies. When Penelope and I learned that the archduke’s wife Sophie had been shot, too, right through her pregnant belly, we felt entitled to proclaim our horror to the table at large, for we were women and this was a rare mention of a woman in political affairs. But the talk soon surged on to the invasions and declarations of war that were happening in quick succession.
“Imagine, all that fuss about one
The business partners who had defrauded my father had also effectively ended his life, for when it became clear that he did not hold the patents on which his business relied and for which he had mortgaged not only his offices but also the house where we lived, he shot himself. What had Papa imagined a wife and two daughters would do without him? What my mother did was throw up her hands and let her hair fall down around her face so that when she made her erratic way to and from the shops, the beggar children scurried into the gutter, pointing and afraid. My sister Miranda immediately rolled her sleeves up and managed to get work as a governess, but when she encouraged me to do the same, I resisted. It might have been a manifestation of my mother’s passive streak that tempted me to throw up my own hands and hope to be rescued, but I also had some of Miranda’s decisiveness in me—perhaps the same decisiveness that had persuaded my father to shoot himself rather than face the humiliation of poverty, which goes to show that admirable traits are often exactly the same as negative ones, only expressed in a different way. Whatever it was, the trait hadn’t taken root in me in the same way as it took root in my sister, and I will admit that my mother often called me stubborn when I was a child. No sooner had Papa been buried than Miranda went straight to brushing up on her French grammar and arithmetic, and off she went to Chicago, whence she sent frightening letters filled with excruciating details about the children’s daily life and academic progress. Or maybe I wasn’t decisive at all. Maybe I was a hopeless romantic like my mother, just one who was lucky enough to avoid madness by finding the romance and security her heart desired.
Just as Henry and I were embarking for London, the archduke and heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated by Serbian nationalists while visiting the Bosnian capital, and when Austria-Hungary threatened to declare war on Serbia in retaliation, we were advised to cut our visit short and return to New York as soon as possible. Most of the people traveling on the Empress Alexandra had booked their passage at the last minute in order to leave Europe quickly, which added to the sense that some global force had taken us in its grip and that we had been powerless to resist. Even before the shipwreck, the grand strategies that were playing themselves out on the Continent lent an urgency and gravity to our homeward journey that only served to heighten the stark contrast between the luxury and purpose of the ocean liner and my precarious circumstances of a few weeks before. Penelope Cumberland and I listened to the serious talk of the men with one ear, but the other ear we turned toward each other as we tried out opinions on things we knew nothing about. The captain was receiving regular wireless dispatches, which he reported on at dinner, prompting much discussion and posturing among the men, who liked to pontificate about the events of the previous month for the benefit of the ladies. When Penelope and I learned that the archduke’s wife Sophie had been shot, too, right through her pregnant belly, we felt entitled to proclaim our horror to the table at large, for we were women and this was a rare mention of a woman in political affairs. But the talk soon surged on to the invasions and declarations of war that were happening in quick succession.
“Imagine, all that fuss about one
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