He swiveled to look out the window. To the west he had a slot view of the Hudson between the buildings. He hoped to glimpse the Josephina when she passed by later on her way to the Chelsea Piers. He thought he would like to have a drink with Addison Graves.
It was a bother, Lloyd’s Germanness. His middle name, Wilhelm, now seemed incriminating, an act of corporate sabotage on the part of his father. But this war might offer new opportunities. There might be a role for him, a part to play. He was not his father.
Here the memory of Henry quietly closing the study door behind him intruded and was pushed away.
* * *
—
“How is your wife?” Lloyd asked Addison. He couldn’t bear to inquire about the new babies, who had arrived only a few weeks before Leander’s death, an unjust windfall of life.
Addison studied his whiskey. “Only God knows, to tell the truth. She seems to spend all her time in bed. The day nurse told me she takes no interest at all in the babies, doesn’t wash or feed them. The nurse said sometimes new mothers have difficulties but none have ever frightened her like Annabel. She called it a ‘terrible gloom.’？”
“The gloom’s in our house, too. They should mark the doors, like for the plague.”
“I’m sorry. Did you receive my condolences?”
“Oh, probably. I don’t know.” Lloyd preferred gin to whiskey. He took a gulp. “None of that matters, I’m afraid, condolences and so on, but thanks all the same. What has Annabel got to be down about? Is something wrong with the twins?”
“No, they’re perfectly healthy.”
“Is she ill?”
“She won’t see a doctor. She hates doctors. But I don’t think illness is the problem, at least not of the body. She seems to be almost mourning the birth, as though…well. I don’t understand it.”
“Make her see a doctor.”
“Yes, maybe I should.”
“You’ve been at sea too much.”
“On the ship I know what to do.”
The bones in Addison’s face seemed more pronounced than ever, the skin hanging hollow between his cheekbones and jaw, his brow shadowing his eyes. The dark spirit stirred in Lloyd, spiteful toward Annabel, who lolled in bed, burdening her husband, neglecting her infants, surely unable to imagine the suffering endured by himself and Matilda. He yearned suddenly to be home, to feel Matilda stroking his hair. He had never told Addison, but, before they married, Lloyd had encountered Annabel a few times at society dinners, had heard rumors about her so seamy as to seem implausible.
“You’re too patient,” he said to Addison. “Tell her to get up, make herself useful. Women like to be useful. Remind her how lucky she is. Give her a change of scene. Remind her she’s alive.” He felt himself going red in the face. His voice grew harsh. “Scrape her out of that bed with a shovel if you have to.”
Addison looked up, something unreadable in his expression. Reproach? Concern? Quietly, he said, “Maybe you’re right.”
North Atlantic
December 1914
Six weeks later
The Josephina Eterna burned. A floating pyre, a raft of flames. It listed to starboard—slowly, slowly—as though easing over to douse itself in the sea.
Smooth black water. A dense blue dawn fog, diffusing the fire’s glow.
Under the surface: a frill of ragged steel and busted rivets, water in the boiler rooms, extinguishing the furnaces and drowning the stokers, flooding the forward holds, rising through the plumbing and pouring from sinks and tubs and toilets, running down passageways and up elevator shafts, water that—slowly, slowly—pulled the ship onto her side, tugged her bow down. Her engines were dead, her propellers still. Smoke billowed from the stairwells, and passengers in white nightclothes billowed with it, already ghosts.
Addison intended to drown. He would stand stoically on deck, wait for the water to rise up the buttons of his coat, submerge his gold epaulettes, sweep him away. When he’d imagined such a moment, he had always known he would take the honorable course, but he’d never contemplated having a wife on board, certainly not two infants. He had been the one to insist Annabel come on the voyage. He’d almost needed to scrape her out of bed with the shovel Lloyd had suggested, but something had to be done. “You can’t be this miserable forever,” he’d told her.
“I don’t see why not,” she’d replied.
Fresh sea air would do her good, he’d said confidently, feeling no confidence. He’d issued his orders: the ship, the air. She had yielded. No nurses, he’d said. She must care for the children herself. She had yielded. She had come aboard like a piece of baggage, silent and passively unwieldy.