I muster a smile, despite Jamie having sidestepped my question. I will beat it out of him later. “Mrs. Sloane died, and her son and his wife went to Scotland to tour her ashes.”
“Why didn’t they take you with them?”
“They wanted to, but . . .” My mind flies back to when Mrs. Sloane’s daughter-in-law launched a potted fern at me after I gave her my notice. Never mind that my main duty was to watch Mrs. Sloane and she no longer needed watching. I never told Jamie of the abuse I suffered there.
“But?” He cocks an ear toward me, as if trying to make my response come faster.
“But I quit. They didn’t need me anymore. See, I read your letter about your leaving on the Titanic, and with Mrs. Sloane departing and you departing, it all made sense.”
“What?” He shakes his head as if clearing his ears of water, and his eyes take on the grippy look he gets when he thinks I’ve swiped one of his biscuits. “What made sense?”
“That it was time for us to go to New York together.”
He wheezes out a laugh. “I can’t go to New York. They’re expecting all of us in Cuba, and I can’t stop for a jaunt.”
“I didn’t mean a jaunt.” I ignore the disbelief trampling his face. “Remember how Ba called America the beautiful country, where the air is always blue and fruit trees grow like weeds? And now here we are, going there together. You can’t tell me you’d rather spend your time”—remembering his mates, I lower my voice—“shoveling coal than making our way in New York.”
“Shoveling coal is hard work, good work. It’s good for me.”
“So we’ll find you some good hard work in America, something that won’t have you sticking your head in an oven every day.”
“We don’t stick our heads in the boilers.”
“Then why are you getting a vulture neck?”
He straightens his posture.
“You want to end up like those men in E-16, crabby and missing fingers?”
Bo nearly smiles. He pushes himself off the rail. “Hey, kumquats, let’s see the propeller.” Catching the reluctant Olly and Wink by their arms, he hauls them away.
We watch the lads stop in front of a couple of young men with plaid jackets tossing a strange oval ball. Back and forth it flies. Olly says something, and one of the plaid jackets shakes his head and grips his ball tighter. Bo pushes them along, taking one last glance at me.
Jamie sinks onto the bench and holds his head between his hands. “America doesn’t want us. They passed a law to keep the Chinese out.”
“But we’re not from China. We’re British. We write our letters better than our characters.”
“British subjects, not citizens. England’s only happy to be rid of us.”
I carefully smooth my skirts before sliding in beside him. “If everything goes according to my plan, New York will be throwing a ticker tape parade for us.”
His eyes narrow. “What are you on about?”
“I happen to know that Mr. Albert Ankeny Stewart, part owner of the Ringling Brothers Circus, is a first-class passenger here on the Titanic.”
“Stop there.”
But the barrel has already started rolling. “If we could impress Mr. Stewart, he could hire us as employees of his circus. Surely America would make an exception for an influential man like him. We’ve been talking about this since forever. Virtue and Valor, the Chinese acrobats. Come on, Jamie, you can’t tell me you don’t miss it. This is our chance!”
Before he contradicts me, I sweep ahead, the barrel picking up speed. “We can do the Jumbo routine and make sure he sees it. It’ll be just like in St. James’s Park. They loved us there.”
St. James’s Park was our stage of choice, with its wide expanses of green and constant stream of people. We’d make enough in one day to keep us fed for a week in the summer months.
“They didn’t always love us. Sometimes they called us pinch-eyed mongrels.” He twists his tricky wrist—the left one, which sometimes gets stuck in one position.
“Sticks and stones.”
“Yeah. They threw those at us, too.”
I watch the oval ball spiral in tight arcs from one plaid jacket to the other. A memory trickles in: a couple of college men, dressed in dark blazers and the distinctive red-white-and-blue neckties that marked them as Cambridge scholars. I had just climbed up Jamie’s shoulders, in preparation for our four-hand six-egg juggle act. One of the Cambridge men jerked his chin at us. “It’s a damn shame, all the litter filling our fine parks nowadays.” He reached down to adjust his sock. Or so I thought. The next moment, a pinecone hit me in the collarbone. I fell, rolling like Ba had taught us to let the ground absorb the impact. Jamie was so angry, he threw all the eggs at the blighters. After the coppers arrested us instead of the Cambridge pair, Ba had to pawn his silver belt buckle to get us off the hook.
I bump my knee against Jamie’s. “Let that go. We’re here now, no worse for wear, and we have our future to think about. Family has to stick together, Jamie. That’s you and me.”
He sighs. “How did you get here?”
“By train.”
“You know what I mean. Tickets aren’t cheap, and neither are those togs.” His eyes travel down my linen shirt to the silk jacket in my lap.
“Mrs. Sloane bought the tickets. She’d been wanting to visit her brother in America, but she hates—hated—sea travel. Then she heard about the new ship and decided it wasn’t going to get better than the Titanic.”
“How did they let you board without her?”
“They didn’t.”
He grits his teeth. “Keep going.”
“I snuck in.”
“Bloody snakes. You snuck in? Explain,” he growls.
I summarize my ride up to the cargo hatch. His spine seems to contract with my telling, as if each statement is a hammer blow, driving the nail farther into the bench. By the time I get to the part about my rescue by Miss Hart, he is back to holding his head in his hands.
“Have you got straw in your attic?” he huffs, finally straightening again. “They’ll figure it out. Then they’ll send you back, either in Cherbourg or Queenstown, probably in some fish hauler with a bunch of smelly old sods.”
“Cherbourg’s in a few hours,” I say of the French port where the Titanic will be taking on additional passengers. “The crew will be too busy to figure it out before then. And Queenstown isn’t until tomorrow morning.” The last stop before open sea. “I’ll keep my chin tucked until then.”