Mirror Image, page 33
"What happened to you today? " he asked as she pirouetted happily and grinned at him. I got my sister back, she wanted to say. She's alive.
She's fine. She's in Queenstown. She didn't die on the Lusitania.
"You sure look happy."
"I am. It was a lovely day, " she said, beaming at him. "What about you?
Good day at school? "
"No, " he said matter-of-factly, "pretty boring.
Where's Dad? "
"He's not home yet." She left him then to get into the tub, and she came down to dinner wearing a new dress and looking like a new person.
Charles had just come in the door and he looked tired and grumpy.
But he washed his hands and came straight in to dinner.
"What are you so happy about? " He looked at her unhappily, and glanced at Geoff, as though he expected an explanation.
"I just feel better, that's all."
"Have your intuitions calmed down?"
"Maybe, " she said, embarrassed at the nightmare the weekend had been, and relieved beyond belief that it was over, but of course Charles didn't know that. "I just feel better, that's all." Looking at her, he wondered what she'd been up to, and if she really was having an affair, but she was very pleasant to him, and even sweet to Geoff that night, and he was somewhat mollified by the time the cook poured coffee after dinner.
"I spoke to an investigator today, " he said quietly, when Geoff went upstairs to finish his homework. "He'll start looking for her in California next week. He says he has some very good contacts there, " he reassured her, and she thanked him. But each time she looked at him, she could not stop smiling.
"What on earth did you do today, Victoria, to put you in such good spirits? I'm afraid you're making me very suspicious." But she looked so pretty and so young that night that he didn't have the heart to be angry at her, although he wondered if he should have been.
"I just feel better. I feel relieved, " she tried to explain it to him to the extent that she dared. "It is as though I know she's all right now, although I can't explain it." But he had great respect for the telepathy they shared, although he didn't understand it.
"Maybe you're right, " he said quietly, "I hope so." He was happy that she felt better at least. The weekend had been a nightmare, he had really begun to think she was having a nervous breakdown.
"I'm sorry I was so much trouble."
"Don't worry about it, you weren't. I was just worried about you, " he said almost shyly, glancing at her. She seemed so much more open with him than she had before, he wondered if Olivia leaving so abruptly had changed her, or if the doctor was right, and she would take on more of Olivia's personality after her disappearance. In Victoria's case, it would have been a definite improvement. And in the time that Olivia had been gone, Victoria was more dependent on him than she ever had been, more willing to reach out to him than before her sister's disappearance.
He remembered Friday night, when she had clung to him and told him she was frightened. It had made him look at her now a little differently, although he didn't want to be too optimistic. They had been mar II ried almost exactly eleven months by then, and he had all but given up on their marriage.
"I'll try not to be a nuisance again, " she said quietly, and went upstairs to write some letters. She wished she could write to Victoria, but of course she couldn't. Not yet anyway, she would when her twin reached her final destination in the trenches. And she hoped that Victoria would write to her, soon preferably, at her father's house on Fifth Avenue, as they had agreed to. Olivia wanted to know all about what had happened on the Lusitania.
Charles read for a while before he went to bed that night. They had both kissed Geoff, and he came back into their bedroom and said something to her about the Lusitania. "It's a dreadful thing, the Germans sinking that ship. It sounds as though they've had a huge loss of life, worse than the Titanic. I didn't want Geoff to hear too much about it, I thought it might remind him of his mother." She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded.
"And you, Charles? " she asked quietly. "Are you all right ..
.
did it remind you of her too? " Her kindness struck him like a blow, and for a moment he couldn't answer. He hadn't expected that of her.
Theirs was such an adversarial relationship, that it was odd to get a gentle touch from her, and not a tart word or an angry answer.
"It did, " he said finally. "I had a hard time with it all weekend." While she was suffering, so was he, and she hadn't even known it.
"I'm sorry, Charles, " she said, and he turned away and nodded.
He didn't say anything to her again, and a little while later, they went to bed, both careful, as usual, to keep on their own sides, with a vast distance between them.
"That was nice of you, " he said suddenly in the dark, and surprised her. "Asking about how I felt, I mean .. . about Susan ..
. and the ship that went down. It's so odd how those things come back sometimes.
It was so incredibly awful waiting to hear, desperate to know. I drove them absolutely mad at White Star, and they still didn't know, and then waiting on the dock in the rain for the Carpathia to come in ..
.
I didn't know till then if either of them were alive, " he said, sounding choked. "I thought neither of them had survived .. . and then I saw him .. . one of the crew members was carrying Geoff ..
.
and I looked everywhere behind him for Susan. But she wasn't there.
And I knew. I took the boy from him, and we went home. It took Geoff months to talk about it. I don't suppose you ever forget that." Just as Victoria would never forget what she had just been through.
"I'm so sorry you had to go through that, " she said softly, and gently reached out and touched his shoulder. "It's not fair, for either of you.
You didn't deserve that." She was so sorry for both of them, it tore at her heart, and as he looked at her in the dim light from the moon outside, he saw something in her that would have frightened him before, but suddenly it didn't.
"Maybe things happen in life for reasons. You wouldn't be here if that hadn't happened, " he said kindly, and she smiled sadly at him, well aware of what they'd been through.
"And you'd be a lot happier if I weren't." She was still angry at her sister for leaving him and Geoffrey, particularly after all that had just happened. It certainly proved the trip was dangerous. And her flippant "off with a bang" was no exaggeration.
"Don't say that, " he said generously. "Maybe Susan was taken from us for a reason. I've thought that sometimes. It's impossible to know why some things happen."
"I feel very lucky to know you, " she said kindly, and meant it, not realizing that it was an odd thing to say to her husband. Olivia was still so innocent, and he saw that in her as he looked into her eyes that night and it surprised him.
"That's a sweet thing to say, " he said gently, wondering if he'd ever really known her, or only thought he did. She seemed suddenly so different. And without saying another word to her, he slid slowly closer to her and kissed her. He held her face carefully in his hands and kissed her ever so softly on the lips, afraid to scare her. He didn't want to start the old problems between them again, he just wanted to tell her that he was grateful for what she had said to him, and if nothing else, for her friendship. But when he kissed her, he felt something stir in him that she had never brought out in him before, though he didn't know why, and he kissed her again, and tried to tell himself that he shouldn't. "Should we be doing this? " he whispered hoarsely to her and she shook her head, but she didn't want to stop, although she told herself that she had to. But as he I kissed her repeatedly, she forgot everything she knew about their relationship, and felt her arms go around his neck and her body press against his, and he sprang to life instantly as he held her.
"Victoria, I don't want to do anything you don't want, " he said huskily.
They had been through this before, though not for months, and always regretted it. Their sex life had done nothing but make them both very unhappy.
"Charles, I don't know .. . I .. ." She wanted to tell him to stop, she knew how wrong this was, he was her sister's husband, and yet Victoria had come back from the dead, and she had moved on to her own life, and Olivia was there in his arms with the man she had loved for so long. She couldn't stop now. "I love you, " she whispered. She had never said that to him before, and he looked at her in tender amazement.
"Oh sweet girl, " he said, feeling his heart go out to her, giving her everything he had tried to keep from her, and suddenly he knew what had been wrong between them. He had never dared to love her. "How I love you, " he said almost in spite of himself, and then, as though for the first time, which it was for her, and he didn't realize, he made love to her ever so gently. In spite of the pain it caused her at first, she gave herself to him completely and without reserve, with total abandon, and as he looked down at her afterwards, he felt as though he had been reborn. For both of them, it was a new beginning, a new life, the honeymoon they'd never had and each of them had longed for.
He lay for hours in her arms, stroking her, caressing her, discovering her all over again, he thought, but in fact for the first time, and at last he slept, nestled next to her, as she held him, wondering what they would do when Victoria got home. Charles was the greatest joy she'd ever had in her life, and at the same time the worst betrayal.
She had no idea what she would say to her sister when she got home, but she knew at that moment, that she couldn't leave him.
Chapter 24.
After Wesley Frost, the American consul in Queenstown, found her a dress and a pair of shoes to wear, Victoria took a train from Queenstown to Dublin on Sunday. She was met by a Cunard representative there, and then took the boat train to the Lime Street Station in Liverpool.
There were a number of other survivors on the train with her, and she was startled to see members of the press waiting to interview them at the Lime Street Station. Vance Pitney of the New York Tribune had already been to Queenstown by then, and then on to Liverpool after that, and from there he would go on to London. It was the biggest story any newspaper had had since the Titanic. And this one was even bigger because the giant ship had been torpedoed by the Germans. This was not only a tragedy, which had cost more than a thousand lives, it was war news. But Victoria was careful to avoid the press as she left the station and went to the Adelphi Hotel, where she tried to figure out what to do next. When she got there late Sunday afternoon, she was still very badly shaken.
And the dress she was wearing looked awful. As she checked into her room, she lit a cigarette, and as she sat down and looked around, she started to cry, wishing she were home in Croton. It wasn't too late to turn back, but it had been one hell of a beginning.
The hotel sent a tray to her room that night, they knew who she was, and why she was there. There had been whispers in the lobby when she arrived. She had explained her situation to the desk clerk, even her bank draft and her British currency was wet, as well as her letter of credit, and she was going to have to go to the bank on Monday to change them. But as much as possible, she tried to avoid any undue attention.
But no matter what she did that night, she couldn't get the grisly images out of her head of the ship going down, bow first, and the faces of the people who had died all around her. She still remembered the face of the young crew member who had told her to grab a deck chair, fast, when she couldn't get into the lifeboats, and his advice had saved her.
She was awake all night, and she looked a mess when she got up the next morning. But after she'd had something to eat, and a big cup of hot coffee, she felt better. She went to the bank after that, and got her money sorted out, and then she went to the nearest shop, and bought a few dresses, some sweaters and a pair of slacks, and two pairs of shoes, and even a pair of boots she could wear when she got to the trenches.
She didn't know if they'd give her a uniform or not, but this way she had something to wear when she got there. She needed underwear, stockings, nightgowns, cosmetics, a comb. She had absolutely nothing left, not even the shreds of her red dress which she had left in Queenstown.
"You running away from home? " the woman in the shop asked her with a giggle, but Victoria wasn't laughing at anything yet. She just looked at her and shook her head.
"I was on the Lusitania when * went down, " Victoria said solemnly, and the woman gasped. Like the entire world by then, she had heard about it.
"You're lucky you're alive, dearie, " the woman whispered, and blessed her. And Victoria smiled sadly as she took her bundles and went back to the hotel, still haunted by the others. She wondered if she would see them all her life, especially the children with their sweet faces and unseeing eyes floating all around her. She kept thinking of the little boy floating dead on a deck chair in the blue velvet suit, with the commemorative Lusitania pin stuck on his collar. It was enough to make anyone hate the Germans forever.
But by late that afternoon, Victoria was slowly starting to revive, and she began thinking about how she was going to get to France. Her plans had changed to say the least, but the clerk at the hotel told her how to get to Dover, and what to do after that.
She had to take a small ferry to Calais, and that was risky too, there were U-boats lurking in the English Channel between France and England, and the thought of them now made her shudder.
"Maybe I should have just bought myself a bathing costume and saved myself a lot of trouble, " she said with a nervous grin and the desk clerk smiled at her spirit.
"You're a hell of a good sport, miss, " he said, "I'm not sure I'd try it again after what you've just been through."
"I don't have much choice if I want to get to France, do I? " she said pensively, and knew she had to do it. It was why she had come here, and no one had said it was going to be easy.
The Germans had introduced chlorine gas at the Battle of Ypres two weeks before, and from everything Victoria had heard, the battle was still raging, and thus far it had been a slaughter. The question was how to get as close to it as she could, and reach the contacts she had been given. They were based in Reims, and the best she could do was try to reach them when she got to Calais, if the phones were working.
That remained to be seen. It was all an adventure, a pilgrimage she had felt she had to make, and she hoped she hadn't been wrong in coming.
The signs, so far, had certainly not been propitious.
She left Liverpool on Tuesday morning, and thanked everyone at the hotel. For the past two days, people had brought her little things, small gifts, cakes, fruit, little religious objects, just to let her know that they were glad she had survived the Lusitania.
She went back to the Lime Street Station by taxi, and from there took a train to Dover and then on to the ferry when they reached the docks.
There were small ferry boats, and they looked harmless enough on a sunny day in May, but after the experience she'd just had in the Celtic Sea, she knew how treacherous the U-boats were and she wasn't anxious to encounter another.
She negotiated the fare with the captain of the ferry boat, and there were only a handful of other passengers when he took her over. It was a bright blue, cloudless afternoon, but she spent the entire voyage clutching the rail in total terror, prepared to die at any moment.
"Vous aver bien peur, mademoiselle." He smiled at her. He had rarely seen a girl as lovely or as frightened. He had commented on her being nervous on the trip over, and she only nodded and said one word to him, as she kept her eyes riveted to the water, watching for U-boats and the single white trail she had seen just before it hit the Lusitania.
"Lusitania, " she said, knowing he would understand it. The whole world did, as she knew from reading the papers. And each time she read another articles she cringed, thinking of poor Olivia and what she must have been thinking.
But the sailor on the little ferry boat had completely understood her.
He didn't say another word to her on the brief crossing to Calais, and when they got there, he carried her bags for her, and turned her over to a man with a car who drove her to the nearest hotel, and refused to take any money from her. There were several lengthy conversations.
She asked to use the telephone then, and called one of the names she'd been given in New York at the French Consulate. It was a woman who organized volunteers for the Red Cross in Paris, and she was going to be able to tell Victoria where to go from there, and where she would be needed. But as it turned out, she was out, and no one else spoke English.
"Rappellez demain, mademoiselle, " and all she got was "tomorrow." She sat alone in her room that night, smoking cigarettes and thinking of the journey she had made and what it had taken to come here.
She had deceived a husband, abandoned a father and a twin, had a ship sunk under her and survived it, and now God only knew what waited for her here. She had to marvel at her own determination. Nothing seemed to stop her.
Not even the unpleasant woman she reached in Paris the next day, who told her they were too busy to talk to her and to call back again the next day.
"No! " she shouted into the phone rapidly, determined not to be put off again. She was wasting her time here. "No, I need to talk to someone now .. . immediately .. ." And then she threw in the magic words, just to see what would happen if she did. "I've just i . w.
come off the Lusitania." There was a brief silence, and then she could hear muffied words at the other end. There was another pause and then a man took the phone and asked her what her name was. "Olivia Henderson.
I got your name, or the lady's, from the French Consul in New York.
I've come here to volunteer at the front. I'm American, and I'm in Calais right now."
"And you were on the Lusitania? " He sounded somewhat in awe and she was glad she had said it.
