“Yer no use to me in that condition,” said the cargo ship’s captain, anticipating the heavier swells of the Bay of Biscay. He dismissed the lad with directions to a Merseyside pub frequented by ex-patriot Irish looking for work. Years of helping his da patch up horse tack and farm equipment led to a job with a firm of carriage makers. Charles later boasted that he built a ceremonial coach for the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, but already in the early years of the twentieth century, gilded carriages pulled by white horses were the stuff of fairy tales. By that time, Charles was blessed with a wife, Eva, a local girl with middle-class aspirations. At eighteen month intervals, three more blessings arrived.

Charles continued to dream of a new life in a foreign land. He seized upon the idea of emigration to Canada, and he would not let it go. Eva resisted. While she recognized that life in Liverpool did not offer all she could have hoped, she remained cautious. At least here she knew the rules, knew her place and the place of everyone else, what was possible and what was not.

Charles worked on her constantly, using all his Gaelic charm. “Evie, me darlin’, just think of the opportunities for the children: a new world. No steppin’ aside when the gentry pass. We’d be the gentry.”

Eva was unimpressed by his hyperbole. “Stepping aside” was not the problem—money was. Money translated into status. Status meant moving up, looking down, and having someone to look down on. In Liverpool, she had people to look down on. Not a huge population, it was true, but in Canada, who knew where the social lines were drawn?

She protested that her widowed mother could not spare her. When Charles insisted her mother could come too, knowing the old lady would fly to the moon before she would leave Merseyside, Eva came up with another excuse: she was with child again, their fourth. But Charles was on a mission. He laid siege with a determination he rarely sustained in other endeavors.

The Liverpool press covered the fitting out of the Titanic, the new star of the White Star Line. Her maiden voyage to New York was scheduled for April 1912. Charles brought home a brochure describing the Grand Staircase, the Turkish bath, the saltwater swimming pool, and the Promenade Deck at the bow, glassed-in to protect passengers from the spray.

Eva sniffed, “Hmm. I don’t expect the steerage passengers have such luxury. They’re probably stacked on top of each other; no chance to see the sky or breathe fresh air for the whole voyage.”

Charles countered her argument, drawing attention to the pictures of the third class promenade decks, fore and aft. “See! She’s first class from top to bottom!”

Eva pointed out that the Titanic was to set sail from Southampton, not Liverpool, bound for New York, not Canada. Charles perceived a weak spot in her position. “Ah, well, if that’s all ye’re worried about! Won’t it be worth a little train ride at either end to enjoy the maiden voyage of the Titanic!”

“What about your seasickness, Charles?” A low blow: Charles’s brief career as a sailor was famous. Although happy to tell the tale against himself at family gatherings, he balked at having it brought up now.

“Evie, this ship is so advanced in design that you won’t even know ye’re at sea. Ye’ll be as comfortable as if in yer own parlor.”

“I wasn’t thinking of my comfort,” she responded dryly.

Charles did not give up. He dropped nuggets of information about the Titanic or Canada into conversation, no matter the topic. Eva would sigh, but not respond.

Charles earned enough to cover the essentials: rent, food, clothes, and the occasional treat like a day out to the seaside. But they had little left over. Eva, a careful housekeeper, took possession of his Friday wages, handing him back five shillings to do with as he pleased. She deposited anything she could save into a Post Office Savings Account, each payment and the slowly increasing balance dutifully recorded in the “Book” which she then hid away in the kitchen table drawer. These savings were for a rainy day, the disaster Eva expected from one moment to the next.

One evening in March, Eva proudly showed Charles the new balance: thirty-three pounds! He was impressed.

“How do you do it? Ye’re a marvel! Just think what we can do with that much money!”

“It’s not for spending!” Eva sternly replied, and tucked the Book out of sight before Charles could come up with ideas on how her hard-won safety net could be frittered away.

Charles already knew what to do with the money. Tickets for two adults and three young children in third class on the Titanic cost eighteen pounds, leaving more than enough for the train fares either end and to see them set up in Toronto. Or, if they sold their furniture, and anything else they couldn’t take with them, he could spring for second class tickets at twenty-seven pounds. Yes, that would be best! Eva would never go for the segregated sleeping quarters in steerage, women and children separate from the men. And going second class would be a symbol of their new beginning: moving up in the world!

He made his plan. He’d withdraw the money from the Post Office and purchase the tickets on Monday, sorting out the rest of the details—the train to Southampton, a place to stay there before boarding the ship—as soon as he could. He’d announce the voyage as a fait accompli the following Friday, leaving more than a week to work out his notice—he was confident the chaps at work would organize a whip-round for him. Then they’d sell off their furniture, and say good-bye to friends and family before boarding the train for Southampton on April 9th.

The clerk at the White Star ticket office was helpful. He provided Charles with a copy of the railway timetable so that he could work out the times of the trains to Southampton. He even gave him the name and address of a respectable boarding house near the docks where they could spend their last night on English soil. Charles wrote to reserve a room immediately.

Things might have gone differently if Eva had not decided to make a deposit into the savings account on Friday, instead of Saturday morning when she customarily made the trip to the Post Office. Or if Charles had not stopped off at the pub for some Dutch courage before coming home, knowing he had an uphill job ahead of him. He was unprepared for the storm of shrill invective that greeted him at the front door. Eva didn’t care for once what the neighbors might think.

“You stupid, lying, drunken piece of shite! You’ve pissed away your children’s future. Everything I’ve slaved for!” She waved the Book in his face, then beat him around the head with it.

It took Charles several seconds to regroup. He had never heard such language from his wife, and the buffeting prevented him from responding. Eventually, he secured her wrists and brought her face to face with him.

“No, I’ve saved the children’s future! I’ve bought us a passage to America on the Titanic!” If he thought this would calm the storm, he was, as in virtually everything, mistaken.

“I know what you did!” she snarled, and, freeing a hand, pointed at a letter lying on the hall table. The boarding house in Southampton had responded promptly, confirming a reservation for one night. “We are not going!”

To the neighbors’ satisfaction, the row continued into the night, but the winner was a foregone conclusion. Before she would let him into the bedroom, Eva extracted a promise from Charles that he would obtain a refund for the tickets. They fell asleep exhausted, back to back, clutching the outer edges of the mattress in an effort not to accidentally touch each other in the night.

When Charles re-entered the White Star office, the clerk, so helpful before, adopted a superior air. “You’ve left it too late for a full refund. I can only give you 10% back.” He softened a little when he saw Charles’ despair. “Look, why don’t you hold on to the tickets? There are boats leaving for America all the time, and from Liverpool too. I can work out some kind of exchange, a passage on the Adriatic, the Teutonic, even on the Titanic herself, later in the year when the weather’s better, and you’ve had a chance to settle things with your wife.”

Thus, Charles secured a shred of hope, a dream of restored pride: he would gradually reintroduce the idea of emigration, and perhaps, when the baby was born, he could persuade her.

As he put up his tools at the end of the week, he thought of how he had imagined his co-workers slapping his back, wishing him luck, and envying him as he left the carriage works for the final time. It was hardly surprising that instead of returning to the house where all that awaited him was a scowl and a sharp inquiry about the ticket refund, he stopped at the pub instead.

Charles purchased his Guinness and looked around the room. He hailed the men he knew, and they hailed him. He was glad that, uncharacteristically, he had not boasted about his plans to sail to America on the Titanic. He pulled out the ticketing receipt and read it through again, before refolding it with a sigh and replacing it in an inside pocket. Staring into the dregs of his second pint, reality set in. Evie would never agree to emigrate. He could continue to dream, but could no longer delude himself that dreams came true.

Eva experienced her own epiphany while waiting for Charles to come home. She continued to nurse her week-long resentment as she readied the children for bed, but once she had them settled and sat down in the kitchen, she suddenly felt afraid. What if he went to Canada on his own? What if she had driven him away with her penny-pinching, her bourgeois pretensions, her fear of what others thought? His adoration of her, his amazement at her mundane accomplishments, elevated her from ordinary to exceptional. She could not do without him.

When Charles arrived home, she met him inside the front door, proffering her cheek for a kiss. Charles beamed and started to speak but Eva talked over him. “Come and get your tea. I’ve been keeping it warm for you.”
***
Eva heard about the Titanic first. On Tuesday, April 16, she left the children with her mother for the afternoon while she went shopping. A newspaper placard shouted “Titanic sinks! Thousands drown!”

She bought a paper, and hurried to the carriage works, where she waited outside the gate until Charles emerged at half past five to see her tear-stained face. He took the paper from her wordlessly and read it as they walked home together.