EXCERPT LEO DEPARTS Southhampton, England, 1912
Leo uttered a deep sigh, the sigh of a man whose relief knows no bounds. He held in his hand a ticket to New York on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. He had been contemplating the move for a long time. It was finally precipitated by the Rothschilds disastrous shooting party, from which he emerged the proverbial skunk.
After returning to University he couldnt seem to keep his mind off his frustrations. Not bad enough that his own father didnt appreciate him and preferred his half brother, and that he was fighting day and night the urge to commit incest, but now the indication that he never would be accepted by the establishment had goaded him to quit his native land.
In Britain any chance of success was based not on what you knew or what you could do, but strictly on social position. The trick was to have money without being seen to make it, a clever ploy of the aristocrats to demoralize energetic up-and-comers. He was fed up with it. How could he ever gain his fathers admiration unless he had a fighting chance to prove himself.
When his roommate, Clive got back to school a few days after the shooting party, he had assured Leo that none of the Rothschild familynot Clive himself nor his uncle nor his father was in agreement with the Duke of Bedfords stand on sportsmanship. Old-fashioned, Clive called it. Everyone knew that personal rivalries were rife among shooters in certain houses. Common practice in those houses was to keep track of how many birds each shooter had taken. Even where strict rules of sportsmanship are practiced, it is unreasonable to ostracize a guest like Leo, who isnt aware that local practices forbid it.
Clive reported that his father, Lord Rothschild, and his Uncle Leopold had been impressed by Leos drive and energy. They offered him a job as summer beekeeper at Tring. For two long vacations the job worked out like water running down hill. He had an opportunity to experiment with the influence of genetics in the various strains and populations of honeybees and to earn enough money to support his expenses on the trip to the New World.
When Leo finally had his engineering degree in hand, Lord Rothschild, as Chairman of the War Board, arranged a commission for Leo to go to Canada to run a coke plant for Algome Steel Corporation in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. At his farewell dinner in Beckenham Leo promised his mother he would return frequently. Soon they will be flying the Atlantic faster than Bleriot flew the channel, he told them. The world will shrink, youll see.
His father seemed bewildered by Leos impending departure. It never occurred to him that he had any part to play in the decision. If Adam had shown the slightest interest in Leos well being, perhaps Leo could have been persuaded to give it a try in Britain. At the moment his father and his fathers favorite son, Egbert, were wrapped up in the pending National Insurance Bill, and could think of nothing else. Leo listened to their droning on about it like two bumblebees in a bottle.
With their pacifist leanings, both Egg and Adam had trouble approving of Leos involvement in the war effort. Even though aware that war with German was inevitable, the idea of his managing a coke plant affected them like an explosion of virulent cells.
Leo had hoped that his family would journey to Southhampton to cheer him off on the Titanic, but he saw that was the farthest thing from their minds. Chloe, who had taken his clapperclaw sister, Fawn, under her wing lately, suggested that the three of them take the milk train down from Waterloo Station to Southhampton. They might breakfast at the famous South Western Hotel where the rich and famous stopped overnight before their ocean voyages.
All the night of March 9, the three of them jammed into a banquette for two in the crowded carriage. Leo was conscious the whole time of Chloes body next to him and her scent in his nostrils. He wore his blue blazer and blue crew socks as though out for a Sunday stroll, and he felt thoroughly uncomfortable in a carriage packed with working class blokes from the East End. After rattling along in the dark through Woking, Winchester, and Eastleigh they managed to pull in Southhampton before the hotel restaurant opened its doors to the public.
Leo and his sisters stood at the dockside rail with their mouths open, staring at the spectacle of what appeared to be an entire city brilliantly illuminated against the black sky. Leo had seen the ship in Belfast before it was completed, wrapped in monstrous iron enclosure eleven stories high and four city blocks long. The impression heightened when the rudder came into view, looming over them as big as a mature oak tree. A melange of unidentifiable sounds emanated from the ship.
Shortly after sunrise the first class train from Waterloo chugged up the tracks on West Road. Leo and the girls slipped in front of the stream of train passengers making a beeline for the restaurant. Many of the hotel guests were already breakfasting. The headwaiter quickly seated them at a small table near the window. Leo settled into the velvet Louis XV armchair and gazed across at Chloe. Now that he was on the verge of parting from her, perhaps forever, he allowed himself to fully drink in her beauty. Chloe was so different from the rest of the family, with her golden hair and violet eyes that he always had trouble holding it in his mind that she was his half sister. Good job he was leaving, he thought, as his body responded to his wandering thoughts.
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