Chapter 61

Chapter 61

Violet

Lily of the Valley

Everywhere she looks, there are boxes: boxes filled with liquor, chocolate boxes tied with sky-blue ribbons, cases stamped with the crest of great Champagne houses, squat boxes containing she knows not what– and in there, somewhere, are the boxes she must rescue.

This is the resting place of the latecomers, the last packages to be taken on board the Titanic . They must be scooped up and ushered to their rightful places, like tardy children loitering outside school. They have just set sail, and this square space must be returned to normal as soon as possible. People will come and go, dresses sweeping the tiled floor like desultory maids. Then the voices will lift and fall in undulating conversation. But for now, the voices are loud and urgent, words tossed across the boxes.

‘Bring the one to your right. No! the box of brandy by your foot.'

‘How many did you say were for Stateroom Six?'

‘How in damnation can I see who it's for if they won't address it properly!'

‘More chocolates for the family in Stateroom Three, sure they'll be as sick as pigs if they eat all this lot.'

She stands back to avoid being crushed by a man with enormous arms carrying what looks like a tea chest. She hears him mutter as he staggers by, ‘What in God's name can they want with this?'

She is glad The Purser Priest is not around to hear it. She saw him earlier today as dawn was breaking and they were scurrying up onto the upper decks– ants heading for work. He nodded at her as she passed and said, ‘Be so kind as to come and see me in my office when you've finished arranging your cabins.' He is a polite man, even at his busiest. Then he turned and was off, issuing more instructions, to the left and to the right. She could not see his face but imagined his eyes shifting, flicking, checking.

From where she is stood, her back to the wooden panelling, she catches the scent of something– not sweat this time, or Faithful Lover, or new paint, but something sweeter, more delicate. A fragrance is sneaking towards her through the piles of boxes.

She has only once seen lily of the valley growing wild. It was underneath a tree in the grounds of the orphanage where the boys lived for a time. The nuns were not women who lovingly tended flowers– if they had been, she thinks they would have known better how to care for the boys they grew. She remembers kneeling on the grass by the flowers and burying her face in their petals and leaves. If the nuns came, she planned to look them straight in the eye and say she was praying; she would say the water on her cheeks was dew from the leaves. She remembers the delicate white flowers tickling her face and the scent, so green and clean and sweet.

And now it is calling to her again across a field of boxes.