Women and Children First: Bravery, love and fate: the untold story of the doomed Titanic. Gill Paul

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СКАЧАТЬ but he knew it would be more than he earned in a year.

      If it weren’t about money, why would a stunning girl like her be having an affair with a man who must be more than twice her age? Reg guessed she wasn’t any older than himself, and he was twenty-one. It certainly couldn’t have been physical attraction because Mr Grayling wasn’t a looker. He was a round-faced gent with sleek greying hair and a waxed moustache, who gave the impression of a sea-lion when first you met him. His figure was sea-lionish as well. It disturbed Reg to visualise his ample belly pressed against the girl’s slender frame. If truth be told, it made him feel a bit sick.

      It wasn’t just the physical side that disturbed him, but also his loyalty to Mrs Grayling. She had been friendly to Reg from the first day of her Mediterranean cruise the previous year, complimenting him on his proficiency at silver service, praising the food, the views and the décor of the dining saloon. One afternoon she had eaten lunch alone because her friend felt poorly, and afterwards, while Reg was clearing the plates, they got into conversation.

      ‘Where’s home for you, Reg?’ she asked.

      ‘Southampton, ma’am.’

      ‘Do you live with your family? Or your wife?’

      ‘I live with my mum and three younger brothers. I’ve got a girlfriend, Florence, but we’re not married.’ He wasn’t usually one for opening up to anyone about his personal affairs but Mrs Grayling was so amiable he found himself confiding in her.

      ‘Do tell me how you met Florence,’ she urged. ‘I love hearing about the beginnings of relationships.’

      Reg paused in his work and leant on the back of a chair. ‘It was just over a year ago,’ he told her. ‘I was down at the docks one afternoon because there was a German ship moored – the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm – and I’d never seen her before. Florence happened to be there with her friend Lizzie and we got talking about the ships.’

      In his head he relived the scene. He had overheard the girls wondering where the Prinz Wilhelm came from so he called over to tell them. ‘She sails out of Bremen, and comes here first, then to Cherbourg and on to New York.’

      ‘Is it a passenger or a cargo ship?’ Florence asked, moving closer, and Reg explained that the transatlantic routes made most of their money ferrying emigrants to the States, but that they also took mailbags and a few tons of cargo. He told them he worked for White Star Line on their transatlantic steamers and was just back from a voyage on the Olympic.

      ‘Is that a fast one?’ Florence asked. The friend, Lizzie, was prettier but she seemed much shyer. All the questions were coming from Florence, so he found himself focusing his answers on her. They were easy questions, ones he could respond to knowledgeably.

      ‘Did you ask her for a date?’ Mrs Grayling asked, interrupting his reverie.

      ‘I invited them both for a cup of tea in the Seaview Café, then as soon as the words were out of my mouth I remembered I wouldn’t have enough money to pay if they both wanted cake.’ He grinned. ‘Fortunately, they just asked for tea.’

      ‘What did you like about her?’

      Reg considered. ‘She was easy to talk to,’ he said. ‘She works in a stately home and we compared notes about how some upper-class folk can be a bit unreasonable. Not you, of course,’ he added quickly. ‘I told her about a lady I served on the Olympic who made a big fuss because we didn’t have strawberries in December, as if we should have altered the course of the sun to change their growing season just for her.’ Mrs Grayling laughed. ‘And then Florence told me she got so shy sometimes when serving drinks at the big parties where she worked that her hands would shake, and the posh folks would glower at her as if she had the plague. And I looked at her and felt I understood her somehow. Do you know what I mean? I thought we might be the same.’

      He remembered that was the moment when he noticed Florence had a few tiny freckles on the bridge of her nose, and thought he might like to have a chance to count them. She saw him looking and smiled back and it was a nice feeling. She was well turned out, in a blue coat with loads of tiny buttons up the front, and she wore a little hat that had a fabric flower pinned on the hatband. She held her teacup nicely, like a lady, even though her accent was similar to his own. He liked everything about her.

      ‘So what happened next?’ Mrs Grayling was lapping up the story, completely absorbed. All the other stewards had left the saloon and they were on their own in the vast room.

      ‘I asked if we could meet again on her next day off, and said I’d bring my friend John. You know – the Geordie lad I work with?’

      ‘I know exactly who you mean – the steward with the red hair. I’ve seen you chatting to him.’

      ‘Yes, that’s him. Lizzie didn’t really hit it off with John, though. I don’t think he was enough of a looker for her.’

      They’d paired off into couples and walked up to the public gardens, and Reg felt nervous at first. He wasn’t experienced at making conversation with girls and couldn’t think what to talk about apart from ships, but Florence made it easy. She chattered away, full of stories about her huge, chaotic family with umpteen siblings and cousins, and about all the staff politics at the stately home where she worked, then she asked a few questions about him. When Reg told her his dad had left home when he was eight, she squeezed his arm in sympathy, and he thought that was nice. Not too much of a reaction and not too little; just right.

      Before she stepped onto the tram that evening, Reg took her hand and raised it to his lips, and she giggled, obviously pleased. She kept waving at him for as long as the tram was still in sight.

      ‘So you’ve been stepping out for more than a year now?’ Mrs Grayling asked. ‘Isn’t it difficult to see each other with you being away at sea so much?’

      ‘My trips are about two or three weeks each, then I’ve got at least a week off in between, sometimes more, and we’ll meet up on her days off. It works out all right.’

      If she could get the afternoon off, Florence would be waiting at the quayside when his ship docked. It made him feel all warm inside when he saw her tiny figure standing there waving up at him. No one had ever cared about him like that before: not his dad, not his mum, and his brothers were all young and self-obsessed. Florence was smart and insightful and he liked talking to her, liked walking arm in arm with her, liked giving her a cuddle. He’d had dinner with her family, she’d met his mum, and now a year on there was a sense that everyone was just waiting for an announcement. Wedding bells, a baby within a year, a little terraced house near the docks and her bringing up the kids while he was away at sea earning the cash.

      ‘Do you love her? My goodness, listen to me,’ Mrs Grayling laughed. ‘I’m being so nosy. Please tell me to mind my own business if you don’t want to answer.’

      ‘No, it’s fine.’ For some reason, Reg didn’t mind the directness of her questioning, although he never talked to anyone else in this way. ‘I do love her, but I just don’t know if I’m ready for marriage and I think that’s what she wants. Her friend Lizzie got engaged recently and I could tell by the way Florence looked at me when she told me about it that she would like me to propose. Other people keep dropping hints or asking outright when I’m going to make an honest woman of her. It’s what you do round our way.’

      ‘Why don’t you feel ready?’

      Reg considered. ‘I suppose I worry about the money. I want to have enough СКАЧАТЬ