Chapter 50

Chapter 50

Emma

American Beauty

Emma gives Alistair a potted history of her investigation and thanks him profusely for meeting her. As he swats away her thanks, she notices that the freckles on his hands run all the way down his long fingers to his neat fingernails.

Emma concludes, ‘So, I'm pretty certain there was an unofficial florist on board, possibly working part-time on the flowers, but there's no record of who arranged the flowers on the Titanic . It's a total mystery.'

Alistair grins. ‘And I expect you've discovered they had everyone else on board.'

Emma nods, reaching for her coffee. ‘I know. I wonder why, if they recorded people's jobs in so much detail, they didn't show The Florist.'

‘I'll tell you what I think, for what it's worth. I bet it was because it was a woman.'

Emma wants to reach out and hug him.

‘In 1912, a man's profession was what mattered– women were mothers and housewives. Although, actually, this was a load of shit and lower-class women were working their arses off to keep families fed. But it's not what the Victorians or Edwardians wanted us to believe. So when it came to recording a woman's job, they were hardly likely to go into a lot of detail. The women didn't matter as much as the men as far as they were concerned. You can bet if it was a man looking after the flowers, they'd have given him a proper title.'

For the first time, Emma can imagine Alistair teaching in a lecture theatre, gesticulating enthusiastically as he spoke.

‘Knowing I was meeting you, I looked up a few things about other ships and I found that the Aquitania , which was launched a year later, did have a record of a gardener on board. A man.'

Emma leans forward. ‘Well, the first florists were gardeners, so that makes sense.'

Since meeting Mrs Pepperpot, she has looked into the Bealings in more detail and found that in the 1881 census, Frank Bealing's occupation was recorded as ‘Gardener' but by 1891 he was described as ‘Florist'. She starts to explain to Alistair about the Bealings and their buttonholes. She then tries to articulate what she'd thought as she went through the exhibition. ‘These ships were showcases, right?'

Alistair nods.

‘No detail was overlooked. So it makes sense that the flowers were part of it.'

‘Emma, you're pushing an open door. Hey, the White Star Line built a seventy-metre tender, the Nomadic – real bit of class– and filled it with Champagne, just to take passengers the half-hour journey from the quayside at Cherbourg to the Titanic waiting at the mouth of the harbour. Of course they would have filled the Titanic with flowers.'

Buoyed by his enthusiasm, Emma continues. ‘I've looked at what flowers were in fashion in 1912. So, take American Beauty– that was a deep pink rose. It was popular with high-end customers and might well have been one of the flowers on board. It was a favourite of one of the passengers, Madeleine Astor. And there's lily of the valley, too. When Lady Duff Gordon boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg there was a huge fuss about the lily of the valley that was delivered for her stateroom. She was a very fashionable dress designer, so I bet it mattered to her to have the right flowers. When the Titanic sank, people gathered outside the flower shop that sent them, waiting for news of her.'

‘This is great stuff.' Alistair rubs his long fingers together. ‘You know, I could do a whole module on this: "Rearranging theFlowers on the Titanic".'

Emma thinks that wouldn't be a bad title for her book either. Alistair's animation intrigues her. ‘How come you got so interested in the Titanic ?'

‘Well, it certainly wasn't the film. Leo and Kate? Give it a rest. No, it was my grandad. He used to take me down the docks at Southampton when I was small. He'd been a porter there when he was young. He kept scrapbooks on the Titanic – it was a bit of a hobby of his. We'd sit by the fire on a Sunday, going over them with a cup of tea. Well, I got a glass of milk and I'm now pretty sure Grandad drank whisky.'

There it is again: family following family. Just like Les and his begonias.

Alistair looks around for a waiter. ‘Do you fancy another coffee?'

Emma shakes her head as Alistair orders himself another espresso. ‘Okay, so where were we?' Alistair asks.

‘Well, we think it's likely to be a woman, right? But I've been through all of the stewardesses' backgrounds and so far, nothing.'

‘Let's look at it a different way,' Alistair says. ‘You're thinking of the Titanic as one whole world. But there were countries within it. Continents, even.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, think of the variation between steerage and the other passengers– that would be like completely different continents. Steerage accounted for over half the passengers. No flowers there I'd say.'

Emma nods. She has thought of this, although it now occurs to her that Clem and she had based their calculations on the whole of the ship, which makes her uneasy.

Alistair continues, ‘Then, with the rest of the ship there were different sections and different people in charge of them. Different countries. Take the first-class à la carte restaurant– it was run by a guy, Luigi, and he owned that space. It may have been White Star Line property, but he employed the staff there, not them. That was his kingdom.'

Emma frowns; she is not sure she likes where this is leading. ‘But I've looked at Luigi and there's not a florist on his team.'

‘Doesn't mean one of the team didn't arrange the flowers. No, the more I think about it, the more I think, that's how it would have been handled. Different areas of the ship, different people. Not one florist, at all, but a number of individuals with flowers just being part of their job. Instead of looking for one florist, I think you could be looking for several people.'

Emma is reminded of the time she made an error at the start of her PhD– a simple slip that left her feeling sick and glaringly exposed. Now, not only has she probably overestimated the work involved she has not considered how the ship was organised.

Meanwhile, Alistair repeats slowly, ‘Yes, different countries.' He is smiling at her like she should be pleased.

She is left hanging, one hand still holding on to the tail end of hope. She cannot move in case she falls. She cannot say anything in case she cries. What had she been thinking? How could she have been so stupid, so na?ve?

She thought she could solve the mystery of The Florist on the Titanic – really thought she would uncover something historians had missed.

What if there was no one special person with the gift of flowers?

She should have acted like a scientist and let the evidence lead her. Instead, she has fixated on one idea, without even undertaking a rudimentary background check on the organisation of the ship. She flushes with shame. She thinks of Betty, Les and Tamas who have arranged to meet her for lunch tomorrow to hear her news from this evening.

Her image of The Florist is dissolving in front of her eyes, and all she is left with is a photo on her phone of The Nurse, who in reality is probably nothing more than a woman who reminds her of someone she used to know.

And now she wants to cry in earnest, put her head on the table and say, ‘That's it, I give in. I give up'. She concentrates on Alistair's bag on the chair beside them, counting and recounting the stiches in the leather.

Something in her stillness seems to percolate through Alistair's absorbed abstraction. ‘Don't look so worried,' he says. ‘I think we're getting somewhere.' He sounds almost jolly.

She turns away, keeping a wall of red curls between them, watching the rest of the room as if absorbed in the people she finds there.

‘Emma?' He sounds uncertain.

When she doesn't reply, he hesitates for a few moments, then continues, more slowly this time. ‘Look, let's assume the folk in the restaurants sorted their own stuff out and provided a list of what they would need to someone who did the flower ordering. That still leaves the flowers for the passengers, their cabins, and … well, what else is there?'

Eventually the silence forces her to turn back.

‘Jeez, Emma. Are you okay?' He sounds concerned, confused.

She hadn't realised her face would give her away so completely. The thought of trying to explain pushes her down the only other path open to her– just keep going. ‘Buttonholes, corsages, flowers sent as gifts to the passengers, and arrangements for the first-class lounges,' she rattles this off, not quite looking him in the eye.

‘There you go then,' he says encouragingly, as if reassuring a child. From the bemused look on his face, Emma can tell he has no clue what just went on.

‘Now, flowers for passengers would have definitely come under the purser,' Alistair continues, still watching her closely. ‘I've always reckoned he was the one person on board I would've liked to meet. No one seemed to have a bad word to say about the guy. He had a table in the restaurant like the captain did, for a few chosen guests: the purser's table. Everyone wanted to be on his table, and apparently Captain Smith would give him the most difficult passengers because he could always bring them round. Just sad he went down with the ship, like the captain…'

As he talks, Emma feels a flicker of hope. Alistair seemed to think there is something worth pursuing– and after all, isn't he the expert here? He talked of ‘worlds', but the purser would still have been overseeing what would be a large ‘country'– a country that needed to be filled with flowers. She thinks back to the description of the Titanic scented with fragrance ‘like the Riviera'.

Alistair grins. ‘And another thing I can tell you about our friend the purser– he was the bloke in charge of the stewardesses.' He sits back, an expectant look on his face.

‘So, you think stewardesses were working for the purser on the flowers?'

He nods.

Okay, not The Florist, but three or four stewardesses who arranged the flowers. Emma considers this. It couldn't have been just anyone. After all, it wasn't as simple as that– not everyone has a gift with flowers. Her mother, for instance, was terrible at arranging flowers. This thought dawns on her with an immense feeling of pleasure.

She looks at Alistair and manages a smile.

‘Look, Emma, I think we could both really do with a drink. Do you fancy getting out of here? I know a great cocktail bar nearby.'

She pauses– thinking of her train– but it is still early.

‘Go on, Em. You know you want to.' He grins at her. And she realises he is quite right.