Page 22 - Titanic: Forbidden Stories Hollywood Forgot

8 Jack Fritscher

“Some men should,” Edward said.
Molly pealed with laughter. I’d have punched her, but
she was a suffragette and I heard they punched back.
“May this then,” Edward said, raising his glass in a
champagne toast, “be the start of a great tradition.” He
grinned. “To Queen Michael!”
“I’ll drink to that,” Molly said. “To Queen Michael.”
Decorum overcame my anger at the feminine sugges-
tion. In America, I had worked since boyhood to make my
gestures and voice as masculine as my body, and found
in England less pressure for a comfortable compromise.
“Ha!” I said, “Ah-ha!” I lifted my own glass. No better way
to squelch a joke than to join it. “To Queen Michael,” I
said, “and don’t you, my subjects, forget it.” I snatched
Molly’s diamond tiara from her head and crowned myself.
They all laughed.
“Keep it,” Molly said. “That glass looks better on
you than it does on me.” “That glass” was twen ty-two
10-carat Hapsburg dia monds. “Sooner or later everyone
needs a tiara, my dear. You may need it someday.” She
put her hand on mine. “My sweet young man, let Molly
bring you luck.”
The second night out, promptly at 11, Felix led us
down five flights of backstairs to the hold. The noise
of the engines, only a purr in our stateroom, drowned
out the sound way above of the orchestra playing the
“Varsouviana.” The roaring, re volving engines drove
their long steel pistons deep into Titanic’s guts like huge
copula tion machines. The maze of cat walks was lined at
both rails with sailors, coalmen, cooks, mechanics, and
blackamoor masseurs from the Turkish steam room. The
hot red tips of the crewmen’s rolled ciga rettes and the

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