My Clarity

Chapter thirty

A week later.

26th April 1912.

The testimony was given. Signed and sealed. Written in his own penmanship and sent via the Postal Service to Senator Smith in New York City. Despite an invitation to personally attend, Jack Dawson had still to fully recover from the extent of his injuries after his arrival in Boston on 19th April, the day which the inquiries started into the sinking of the Titanic. It was a strange sense to return to the city which had somehow become his home, complete with walls and ceilings over the last few years—or at least the place which he would politely tell others was his rooting spot, as he conversed with them at dinners or other endless social events. Upon arriving at the City which he had returned to a handful of times since his uncle's death, it felt almost as though it was another foreign city, although one that wasn't quite as welcoming as Florence or London had been.

The house though, was still very much left the way Eric Dawson had. It was nicknamed the 'Oak House' because every single room was both panelled and floored with the dark wood. When his uncle had first arrived in the city famous for its College, he was seen as a raving mad small-town boy who knew nothing but how to secure and cut timber and so as time went on, his hand in building the house had ensured that his touch was left upon every surface of the three-story mansion which sat just a little way back from the road beside the Arlington Street entrance to the public gardens. It was a light brick, swamped by growth of violets due to Eric's wife who was a lover of the lilac flower. There were even touches of Jack's father here and there; a very rare photograph of them together a few months before he died. A home-made piece of wood which they had collaborated on as boys. It was only upon arriving back at the nondescript place which had never truly felt like a home that Jack finally saw with a better clarity; this home was personal. It was made to be the best which Eric could and his dedication to his wife was unmistakable but then, he had also been dedicated to his work. One could say that he had been considerably more devoted the to latter than the former.

Jack Dawson had never been a man dedicated to anything in his entire twenty years of living, but as he had arrived in Arlington House, with a woman in tow who had agreed to become his wife of convenience, it dawned just how easy it was to become ravelled up within something; money, art... love.

Dawson Steel's office sat on the corner of Huntington Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue across from the Symphony Hall. The riot of a noise had never changed and now, since the sinking, interest in the place seemed to have double or tripled. Jack had arrived at the office one smoky Monday morning and found nothing but mail stacked about the cold office as though it was a dammed post office.

"It's because of your involvement." Charlie Thompson explained, exhaling smoke from the third consecutive cigarette. "Besides they expected you in New York on the Wednesday night with the Carpathia, not in Boston on the smaller steamer."

''Yes, what a surprise that must have been.''

''It certainly gave the rumour mill a scare to find you not amongst the living.''

Running a hand through his heavy head, Jack slumped back into his chair as carefully as he could. "I don't want to be involved in any of it. I replied to the testimony and that is all there is to be said."

"But these are offers, potential investors and those needing stock."

"Dawson Steel was on the Titanic, Charlie. Who would wish to invest in the stock which people are saying potentially had a hand in sinking the largest ship ever built?" Laughing as he spoke, he sunk further into his chair, it was almost a cruel and twisted joke.

"That's only the damned media, you know how the circus works. Whilst it's still fresh meat, the vultures circulate until the right time and then attack when they think you're unprepared. Unprovoked. You're the hero of the hour. You saved how many men's lives? So, they'll attack you somehow and the only damned way is to find loopholes in the most successful steel business in the United States!"