Free Titanic Ashes by Paul Butler

arrows from
outside and from within. Without them, without the
scorching heat of distraction, he would have gone insane.
    Still, while he is inured to the arrows, Mrs. Grimsden
and her type mystify him. The individual’s role in creating
blame is distasteful somehow, like a leer before the scaffold, the pull of the condemned’s feet to hasten strangulation.
    For the second time tonight he doesn’t take his eyes
from her, and for the second time tonight her stare seems
to grow in indignation. And then something happens
which is both new and unexpected, an emotion rising on
the heels of his memory of Mrs. Grimsden’s friend and her
“general impression.” The feeling gathers strength and
sensation—the taste of April 15, the ice whiskers in the
air, the hubbub, the growing panic and confusion upon
the deck, and the odd, elongated silence after a flare
hissed into the crystal black sky.
    Ismay laughs.
    It’s merely the physical response to absurdity, unfiltered by logic or intellect. The silly, pointless lie from Mrs.
Grimsden’s friend, the stare he’s confronting now from the
lady herself seem akin to scavengers picking over a battlefield. One bends to remove the gun from a severed hand
as cannon smoke drifts and curls. Another tugs upon an
ammunition belt, trying to loosen the strap. What’s a
hostile stare to fifteen hundred lives lost? The impulse in
the diaphragm which caused his laugh returns, but this
time the emotion scatters in many directions, and he can
feel the nudge of tears and the sting of rage as well.
    He’s not surprised that Mrs. Grimsden’s eyes now burn
more sharply than before, and he even sees some colour
in her pale cheek. But still, he can’t take his stare away,and subtly his body begins to move as though in obedience to some unconscious desire, his back shifting to
make his view of her less awkward, his elbow hooking
over the back of his chair. Into Mrs. Grimsden’s eyes have
come real horror now, and if he is not mistaken, some
sparks of fear. If he retains his position, he suspects, she
will look away soon enough.
    He can feel Evelyn’s concern trying to distract him, but
he’s taken control, at least for the moment. Mrs. Grimsden
and her plain accusing stare have brought him back to the
night where his old life ended and a new one—of scorching dreams and sleepless worries—began. He wonders at
his own survival once more, feels the alternative, the icy
waters slooping inside his cuffs, rushing up his trouser
legs, filling his lungs and belly. How long would death
have taken that night? he wonders. Five minutes, perhaps
ten. Yet here he is, thirteen years later, still on board the
listing deck of the Titanic, making his way through the
barging crowds to the officers in charge, trying to find
order, trying to scrape up hope and reassurance from the
chaos. He settles on a moment. He’s helping the crew at a
lifeboat station, slowly turning a handle of the winch that
lowers a lifeboat boat which is only slightly more that half
full. His cold-numbed fingers against the metal seem
hardly his own. The reality skims through his mind that
all of it—the lifeboat swaying from the ropes as it’s
lowered into the abyss, the winches, davits, the plankingunder his feet, the great funnels billowing steam, the very
handle he turns—are part of his plan. The very same pink
fingers he sees belong to the hands which inherited from
his father the empire of the White Star Line. He and only
he, he realizes, can be the architect of whatever disaster
he is about to witness.
    A petty officer yells across the deck and a cluster of
seamen follow his command; he feels the vibrations of their
footfalls. Sweet tobacco from a group of gentlemen close to
the lounge entrance wafts over him. He catches something
of their murmured conversation about Royal Ascot.
    Time is suddenly a dreadful thing. He knows it is the
sole diminishing barrier between himself crouching at the
winch handle overhearing details of