Titanic -The Heart Never Lies HL Griffiths
Who am I? - Chapter Ten
Jack
I stayed on in St Jude's Charity Mission, long after I recovered physically but my brain stubbornly refused to release any memories. The hospital staff were very kind and offered me a low paid position as a orderly in return for hard work fetching and carrying and rudimentary accommodation.; I had nowhere else to go.
I did not who I was, if I looked in the mirror I saw a slim, young man of about 19 with sleek blonde hair, very blue eyes and a firm mouth. My hands and fingers surprisingly long and tapered and not work worn for one of a steerage class but did not yield what I had done as a living before. I felt like a walking enigma. I could not even remember being on Titanic, the unsinkable ship, How had I got tickets for such a grand liner? Was I married?, where was home? Just blanks, no nearer to discovering anything.
I worked hard all day, cleaning, pushing patients around, lifting them. I collapsed into my small cot at night in the store room exhausted
Six long weeks had passed, slowly I discovered that by picking up the newspaper I could read, and read well, I scanned the list of the dead and the alive off the Titanic lists and nothing rang a bell.
The hospital laundry one afternoon returned the home spun rough clothes I had been wearing that night after discovering them by accident in the spare pile of clothes they held. I had been wearing borrowed stuff.
I put my hand in the trouser pickets and pulled out a screwed up piece of paper. Opening it frowning I saw it was thick paper and there was a partially washed out (the charcoal had smudged ) small picture of the head and shoulders of a girl, with wide haunted eyes, a wry smile on her full lips and tumbling rich curls, her dress was one of a upper class girl elaborate. She was very beautiful. Was she a key to my past? There was also a smudged signature on the piece of paper, I could make out the initials J something, was this my artwork?
Trembling I ran back to the Nurses station and asked for pencil and paper and went back to the store room. I started to let my mind wander and the pencil skimmed across the paper. I looked down and saw I had drawn a single flower, a rose! I could draw. That was something new I had discovered. I could draw.
"Boy, Boy" I heard one of the Nurses calling me, I came out to find her.the drawing in my hand still. The Nurse stood in the corridor, stood next to her was a portly woman, obviously money. In a warm stylish gown with a hat worn jauntily to one side. "This is Mrs Brown" the Nurse said in awe "She has kindly agreed to be a benefactress of St Jude's, this is a young boy who came off titanic with Amnesia, he gives us a hand"
Mrs Brown did not say anything she was starring at me with large wide brown eyes.
"Jack, she said "Jack Dawson, you're alive? I thought you'd drowned?"
We sat in a side room and talked. She was concerned about me. She seemed like a generous caring lady. And she knew me as Jack Dawson.
"What do you remember Jack?"
"Nothing I said. "I have only discovered that I can draw" and I passed her the smudged picture of the girl
She looked at it intently, tears filled her eyes "Jack " she said simply "this is Rose"
I looked at her in puzzlement, "I don't remember any Rose I wish I could" I said.
She took long hard breath and announced that I would have to come back home with her and she would take care of me she wanted to and could explain what had happened on Titanic.
So I left St Jude's with the Doctors blessing and went home with Molly Brown.