Page 54

I gaze around in wonder. Every detail is gripping to me, coming as I do from the future.

Motor cars and trolleys are just becoming the norm, and horses and carts still prevail; the clip-clop of hooves blends with the ticking of engines, the tinkling of bells and the screeching of whistles.

There are no traffic lights, so people cross the streets where and when they want.

Nothing moves very fast, however. There’s a languor that doesn’t exist in my time.

It’s pleasant to be a part of it, this gentle, unhurried pace.

The air does not smell of fumes, and I get occasional whiffs of hyacinth and gardenia, which are carried from the park on the warm spring breeze.

Birds clamour in the trees among delicate, phosphorescent green leaves that have only recently unfurled.

Women walk arm in arm in long skirts and elaborate hats, but I’m struck by how many more men there are in the streets than women.

And there’s a marked uniformity to their dress that’s so different from my time.

Three-piece suits, white shirts, ties and hats.

It’s easy to spot a gentleman from a builder and a lady from a maid; the way people dress says everything about their status in society.

Alice is right about that. It cannot be disguised.

The pavements teem with people. I notice a uniformed nursemaid pushing a pram down the pavement, two young children skipping hand in hand, and a one-legged man hobbling on wooden crutches.

While there is colour, there are no brash tones and there are yet to be giant billboards advertising merchandise in flashing lights.

The advertisements that currently exist are muted and seem to be written on the flat sides of buildings: Washington Crisps and Cross, London. Leather Goods and English Gloves .

Cavill is quite transformed from the serious man he was on the Titanic .

There’s a lightness to him now, as if he’s appreciating everything around him with renewed vigour.

He’s more the young man I fell in love with at St Sidwell.

He even looks at me in a different way. With affection.

Perhaps, because we have shared such a dreadful experience, he feels bonded to me as well as Lester.

Or is it something else? Is he beginning to see the real me behind the disguise?

‘May I call you Constance?’ he asks after a while, and he looks at me askance and his lips curl into a knowing smile. ‘After all, you did call me Cavill.’

I laugh. ‘I might remind you that you called me Constance on the ship. But I’ll permit you to go one step further. You may call me Connie.’ I smile back flirtatiously.

‘Very well, Connie. I’m happy to have some time with you alone.’

I recall telling him that he was dear to me. Now I know that Constance feels the same, I need not be so restrained. ‘I’m happy to be alone with you, too,’ I reply, and I feel startled by my candour. I have been so restrained, until now.

‘May I be direct with you, Connie?’

‘I would be disappointed if you were not.’

‘When we met last year, I was grieving for my wife,’ he says. He turns to me and frowns. ‘I didn’t see you.’ He runs his eyes over my face, as if he really is seeing it afresh.

I catch my breath. ‘And you see me now?’ I ask, barely daring to hope.

He nods slowly. ‘That evening when you came out onto the deck, and I lent you my coat. Something changed.’

‘It did?’

He nods and again frowns, as if he can’t quite believe it himself.

‘I saw you with different eyes, Connie. It sounds mad, I’m sure, but I felt, that night on the deck, that I knew you.

I don’t mean in the way two people meet socially.

Of course, I knew you like that. I mean that I found in you something I hadn’t seen in you before.

’ He smiles diffidently now and holds my gaze.

His eyes fill with tenderness. ‘I liked it.’

He reaches across and takes my hand. ‘I liked it a lot.’

I look down at my hand in his. It’s small in his large one. I feel the tears stinging my eyes and blink to hold them back. I can’t believe that I have been given another opportunity to love him, and to be loved in return.

‘When I said you are dear to me, I meant it,’ I tell him softly.

He squeezes my hand. ‘I never believed I would say this again. But you are dear to me too, Connie.’

Then he lifts my hand and, with gentle fingers, slowly unbuttons the glove, exposing the skin on my wrist one button at a time. It looks quite naked with the kid leather peeled away, and I catch my breath. He doesn’t say a word. He brings my wrist to his lips and presses them against it in a kiss.

True to his word, Cavill returns me to the house on Fifth Avenue in time for the dress fitting.

He helps me out of the carriage and bids me goodbye, bringing my hand to his mouth and brushing my glove with his lips.

I can barely climb the steps to the front door for the elation that causes my head to swim.

I’m full of excitement but also anxiety, for I know I’m heading down a familiar path once more, which can only lead to heartbreak.

I will have to slide back and leave him again.

Is a moment of bliss worth a lifetime of pain?

Am I so reckless that I will allow myself to suffer so?

And what of Cavill? Will he go on and marry Constance? Has that already happened, without my intervention? Or is it because I have embodied Constance that he has fallen in love with her? Have I altered history once again?

I force myself to think of Lester. But, oh, how I wish I could be here simply for Cavill.

Mrs Varga, the dressmaker, brings boxes of trimming, lace and ribbons, buttons, sequins and strappings, and a couple of young assistants to help her.

Alice greets her warmly but ignores the assistants as if they’re invisible.

The two girls carry the boxes into a drawing room I have not yet seen.

It is as extravagantly decorated as the others, with floor-length pale-blue silk curtains embellished with gold fringes and arranged in swirls and drapes and goodness knows what else over a thick wooden pole.

The walls are covered in paintings and the ceiling is adorned with white mouldings and an enormous chandelier, which hangs from a large rose in the centre.

The marble chimney surround is laden with ornaments and porcelain vases of white roses.

On the floor are exquisite rugs woven in blues, yellow and gold to match the curtains.

The girls lay things out on the table, which has been cleared for this very purpose.

They work like ghosts, saying nothing and moving about the room with a silent tread.

Mrs Varga is middle-aged with greying hair, an aquiline nose, and full, sensual lips.

She measures me and then, with Alice’s help, for she’s really an expert in this department, we choose the patterns from a book Mrs Varga has brought with her.

Mrs Varga has the weary, haggard look of a woman who works every hour God gives her.

She must have been beautiful once. From her accent I deduce that she’s an immigrant, from Poland or Hungary, I presume.

The contrast between her rough hands and Alice’s smooth ones is remarkable.

Alice delights in each decision as if the skirts, blouses and dresses are for her.

She demands that they are run up immediately and Mrs Varga reassures her that the first pieces will arrive the following morning, which is Saturday.

I imagine the workers are going to be toiling through the night!

I’m sure Alice Aldershoff is one of Mrs Varga’s most valuable clients.

When the women leave, I turn to Alice and sigh loudly, sinking onto the sofa – that really was a marathon! ‘How often does she make dresses for you?’ I ask.

Alice chortles disdainfully. ‘My dear Constance, I rarely employ her. I order most of my dresses from Worth in Paris at the start of each season. Don’t you?’ She frowns.

‘Oh, Bertha does, of course. But I have a wonderful dressmaker in London,’ I retaliate, not sure where Constance and Bertha get their clothes. ‘The tailoring in London’s West End is exceptionally good.’

Alice pulls a doubtful face. ‘I suppose the Paris salons have ateliers in London.’

‘They most certainly do.’ I’d love to tell her that in the future there will be a train that connects London to Paris, and online shopping with next-day delivery, plus a very efficient returns policy. That would wipe the superior look off her face.

A three-course lunch is served in the dining room at the long table, which is covered in glass vases of bright pink and white peonies.

We are joined by three other couples who are as hungry to hear about the Titanic as Walter-Wyatt and Alice are.

Lester and I are getting rather good at telling the story.

We’re a double act. It appears that Lester has forgotten his animosity towards me for he’s his usual jovial self again.

I notice that his story has been embellished.

He recounts how it was he who saved Cavill Pengower, and others besides, by clambering aboard an overturned lifeboat and pulling to safety those struggling in the water.

I bristle at the lie, for it was Cavill who saved him and not the other way around.

Whenever he mentions Cavill’s name, I can feel my cheeks burn. The words of the gypsy woman come back to me, louder than ever. Love will always bring you back.

Will it always ?

Lester doesn’t disclose the fact that his valet donned his master’s clothes in order to be given a place in one of the lifeboats.

There’s already growing public disapproval of the men who saved themselves when there were still women and children awaiting rescue.

Viscount Ravenglass, who didn’t rob anyone of a place, is deemed a hero, and he’s milking every ounce of admiration.

He certainly won’t allow the truth to interfere with a good story.

They wouldn’t consider him a hero if they witnessed what I witnessed in his cabin the night before the ship sank. How well he hides who he really is. How sad that he has to.

‘The cries and screams of hundreds of drowning people will haunt me for the rest of my days,’ he says gravely, and the room goes quiet as they appreciate how truly terrible it must have been.

That afternoon, Alice takes me shopping.

She changes her clothes, donning a primrose-yellow dress of such splendour one could be forgiven for thinking she’s off to a ball.

Diamonds sparkle on her earlobes and around her neck.

I’m sure, if she wasn’t wearing gloves, they would sparkle on her fingers too.

I am like a thrush beside a very beautiful parrot, but I don’t really care.

As far as my mission goes, it doesn’t matter what I look like and it appears that Cavill likes me just the way I am.

Alice takes me to a milliner to buy hats and gloves, and then by chauffeur-driven car to Saks on Herald Square.

I’m well enough informed about New York to know that Saks later becomes an enormous department store on Fifth Avenue.

Others will mushroom, like Bloomingdales, Barney’s and Bergdorf Goodman.

But right now, Saks is one of the very few to exist and Mrs Aldershoff is obviously a very extravagant client for they welcome her as if she’s the Queen.

We are escorted around the floors by the manager, an obsequious man with a tidy moustache and greased back hair, and a retinue of young boys in livery who scurry about like hounds at a hunt.

The store appears to have come to a standstill just for Alice.

She waves her gloved hand here and there, and items are carried away and wrapped up in tissue paper and tied with ribbon.

I realise how very important she is. Everyone stares at her as if she’s a movie star – if they had iPhones they’d be taking her photograph and asking for selfies, but she ignores them like a horse ignores flies.

She’s focused on what she’s doing and clearly enjoying herself very much.

In the end she doesn’t pay, she just sweeps out leaving the parcels to be delivered straight to her home.

I assume a monthly bill is sent to the house.

She probably doesn’t even see it. God knows how much she’s spent.

I’m on the point of climbing into the car when I spot Emma Livingstone walking up the pavement towards me with a woman I assume is her chaperone. ‘Miss Livingstone!’ I exclaim.

Her face lights up when she sees me. ‘Miss Fleet! What luck!’

I hurry to her and take her hands in mine. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I have nothing to wear,’ she replies with a shrug. ‘I’m having to buy clothes or I’m not fit to be seen in public.’

‘Likewise,’ I reply. ‘Everything we owned is at the bottom of the sea.’

She lowers her voice. ‘I’m glad I’ve bumped into you,’ she says quietly, glancing around furtively.

‘You remember Mrs Gilsden? Her son didn’t make it and she’s desperate, poor dear.

I wonder, would it be presumptuous of me to ask whether you might be able to give her a seance, with that spirit board?

Like you did for Josephine. I think it would give her comfort to know that he lives on. ’

I could give her a seance without the Ouija board, but I must stay true to Constance.

‘Of course.’ I tell her to wait while I consult Alice, who is sitting in the back of the car fiddling impatiently with her purse and watching keenly the people in the street, probably making sure no one is more elegantly dressed than she is.

When I mention the board, her eyes sharpen and she seizes upon the idea with enthusiasm.

‘This evening at six,’ she says. ‘We will hold a seance in the library. How thrilling.’ I can see her mind whirring with the names of people she will invite.

‘I will come with Miss Pengower,’ Emma says when I tell her, and I hope that Josephine will bring her father.

I climb into the car beside Alice. For the first time, I’m actually grateful that I will have something nice to wear.