Daughter of the Titanic
Cauchi’s fictional biography introduces Helen Melville (Mel) Russell Cooke in 1973, when researcher, Dr Catherine Haynes, having come across a 1959 David Rolt portrait, requests an interview with the sitter she presumes to be Mel. Eleven interviews, recorded at Pratt’s, Mel’s Oxfordshire home, represent the heart of this compelling fiction.
Captain Edward Smith drowned with his ship, Titanic, in April 1912. Mel is 14, his only daughter. Her dearly beloved father becomes a headline, one that fluctuates with news titbits from survivors, from Halifax and elsewhere. There is no body, no grave, and endless questions. A small suitcase of news articles, obituaries, memorials, letters, tips and pictures is how Mel keeps her father with her, in a reality where she can imagine a future she can’t otherwise have. She is the living embodiment of how history remembers its notable dead, as the world casts her ‘unlucky/cursed’ family into its own version of myth. She marries Sidney Russell Cooke in 1922 – a marriage of convenience, love, absences, betrayal and deafening silences. Twins Simon and Priscilla are born in 1923.
The book title and frequent ‘Mrs Russell Cooke’ honorific are a testament to Mel’s belief that women become a footnote to their men. Cauchi proves this self-assessment to be wrong. Mel is vibrant and courageous: a licensed pilot who revels in fast cars, a society gentlewoman who refuses to be hemmed in by public perception. She rejects a life prescribed by media and makes sure her children are not doomed to that fate. Soul searing grief runs parallel with performative grieving, the former speaking to Mel’s truth whilst the latter is forced upon her. She’s accomplished at both. Her story is one of unapologetic raw honesty and vision, a convincing voice of reason complete with sharp observations converting cliché to truth, in this elegant literary novel.
