The Girl Who Came Home

by Hazel Gaynor

  “Good evening to you, sir.”

  Harry stood for a few moments longer, observing the normality going on around him. The looks on Bride’s and Phillips’s faces had told him everything. Titanic wasn’t just taking on water, she was sinking and they were radioing for help.

  As he watched, more and more finely dressed passengers appeared on deck, interested to see the iceberg for themselves. He recognized the theater singer whose dog he had walked that first day aboard.

  “We were playing bridge,” he heard her say to a colleague, “and then all this commotion occurred on deck, so we came out to see what all the fuss was about. I see now it is only a bit of ice. I’ve seen bigger lumps in my gin and tonic! Come along, ladies, let’s go back in. It’s freezing out here.”

  Harry remembered seeing her earlier that day, when he and the Irish girls had crept up the ladder and spied on the upper deck. It suddenly occurred to him that while these passengers were joking about the ice and returning to the warming blaze of the fires to finish their nightcaps, Peggy and Maggie and Katie and all the other passengers down in steerage would have no clue about what was happening. It was also their cabins that would be closest to the damage.

  As he turned to make his way back down to E Deck to alert them, Harry passed a crew member who was starting to uncover the tarpaulin from one of the lifeboats.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “What is it, boy?” the man snapped, working the ropes as quickly as he could, frozen as they were with the cold and his numbed fingers unable to grasp the fastenings.

  “How long before she goes down?”

  The crewman stopped then and looked at him, shocked by the directness of his question. It was a look of absolute fear that chilled Harry to his core.

  “Two hours they say, lad.” He continued to fiddle with the lifeboat ties. “The nearest boat won’t be here for four,” he added, unable to look Harry in the eyes.

  There was nothing else to say.

  Harry turned and ran as quickly as he could, his heart pounding in his chest, his mind racing, his mother’s words ringing in his ears, “And mind that you look after those third-class passengers just the same as you would any of those wealthy Americans.”

  He had to get to Peggy and the Irish girls. He had to get them to the lifeboats.

  PART FOUR

  Marconigram message sent from Mr. Franklin, White Star Line, to Captain Smith, Titanic, on April 15, 1912

  CHAPTER 22

  RMS Titanic

  April 14, 1912

  Peggy. Peggy. Pssst, are ye awake?”

  Silence.

  “Katie. Katie Kenny. Aunt Kathleen?”

  Silence.

  Maggie sat up in her bed, stooping her head and shoulders so as not to hit the low ceiling. The electric lights had gone out. The darkness in the cabin was so intense she couldn’t see her own hand as she waved it now in front of her face. She could hear her blood pumping through her ears.

  “Psssst, wake up,” she hissed into the black silence, raising her voice a little now. “Is anyone awake?”

  Her heart was pounding. She had never felt more alone in all her life. Too terrified to try to climb down from her bed in such darkness, she sat still, unable to ignore the sense of panic rising in her, the cold and adrenaline causing her to shiver in her thin nightdress.

  The lights flickered momentarily on and off again.

  She could hear running overhead.

  The baby started bawling in its suitcase in the cabin next door.

  She sat stone still, her ears straining to catch any noise from the corridor outside the cabin: occasional shouts, thumping on doors, footsteps pounding. Her thoughts returned to Joseph Kenny’s tea leaves, Pat’s dropped sovereign, and the strange man who had spoken to Peggy at Queenstown. Something was wrong. She was sure of it.

  The bang on the cabin door made her jump, knocking her head on the ceiling.

  “Peggy! Maggie! You in there? It’s me. Harry.”

  There was an urgency to Harry’s voice, an edge that Maggie didn’t like.

  “What the feck was that?” The bang on the door had woken Peggy.

  “Peggy, thanks be to God . . .”

  Another bang on the door.

  “Girls, you in there?”

  “Harry, yes, yes,” Maggie was shouting now. “We’re here.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Maggie Murphy, what the devil has you shoutin’ in the middle of the night? What time is it? Who turned off the lights?”

  Kathleen was awake now, followed shortly by Katie, who rubbed her eyes sleepily as the lights flickered and, much to Maggie’s relief, stayed on.

  “Oh, thank the Lord,” Maggie exclaimed. “I’m coming,” she shouted to Harry, climbing as quickly as she could down the steps at the side of the bunk bed. Walking the few steps to the door, she flung it open to reveal Harry standing in the corridor, trying to catch his breath.

  Maggie shook, whether with the cold or anxiety she wasn’t sure. She squinted against the glare of the brightly lit corridor.

  “Harry. What is it? What’s wrong? Why have we stopped?” She was shocked by the look of dread and anxiety on his usually smiling, relaxed face.

  By now the three other women in the room were sitting up in their beds, their blankets wrapped around them against the cold, leaning out to hear what Maggie was saying.

  “Stopped?” Kathleen exclaimed. “We’ve stopped?”

  Maggie turned to her aunt. “Yes. Did ye not feel the shuddering? The lights have been off. I was callin’, but none of ye would wake.” She turned back to Harry then, looking at him seriously, intensely, as another steward ran along the corridor behind him. “Harry?”

  “You need to go up,” he announced slowly, trying to regulate his breathing and lowering his voice, not wanting to cause a panic. “There’s a problem with the ship and you need to go up now. Y’know. To the lifeboats.”

  Maggie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Lifeboats?” She said this louder than she’d intended to, loud enough for the others in the cabin to hear. “I thought they’d maybe run out of coal for the boilers or hit a whale, but . . . lifeboats? What’s after happenin’?”

  “What’s that you’re sayin’ about lifeboats?” Peggy had joined Maggie and Harry at the door.

  Harry looked at the two girls, wondering how much to tell them. Wondering what the words he was about to say would mean for their plans for a life in America; what they would mean for their lives, period. It was as if everything had suddenly changed for all of them, for everyone on this ship.

  “They’ve hit an iceberg.” He closed his eyes briefly, unable to look directly at these two girls whom he’d shared such fun with in the few brief days they’d known each other. He felt as if this were somehow all his fault.

  “An iceberg?”

  “Yes, Peggy. And it’s done plenty of damage, by all accounts. The ship’s taking on water.”

  He continued to tell them everything in a rush, suddenly relieved to be able to share his knowledge. “You’ve got to go to the upper decks straightaway—and put on your life jackets. It isn’t safe to stay here, girls. Honestly, you have to believe me. I heard the officers themselves saying. There’s ice all over the decks up there, and you should see the iceberg, it’s as big as a mountain and—”

  “You can still see the iceberg?”

  “Peggy, be quiet now.” Kathleen was up and had heard every word Harry said. “How bad is it?” she asked, pushing her way in front of the girls to talk to him directly, her blanket wrapped around her out of modesty before the young man. “How bad is the damage? Will the ship go down?”

  “Go down?” Peggy was horrified by what she was hearing. “But this ship’s unsinkable. I read it in the adverts in the papers.”

  Ignoring Peggy, Harry responded to Kathleen’s questions as he knew she needed him to, with stark, honest facts. “It’s the starboard side, miss. Too many of the watertight compartments are damaged. I heard someon
e say two hours.”

  Kathleen listened and nodded calmly. “Thank you. For coming to alert us. It was very good of you, sure it was.”

  Putting her shoes onto her bare feet and grabbing her coat, Kathleen turned then to the three girls. “I must go and tell the others. Wait for me here. I won’t be long.” There was a certainty to her aunt’s voice that Maggie had heard many times in her life, most recently on the morning just four days ago when they’d left Ballysheen. It is time, she’d said, the words sending a shiver down Maggie’s spine with their finality and purpose. It was the same finality and purpose she heard in her aunt’s voice now. “Gather your things together and be ready to head up on deck as soon as I get back.”

  She turned then, and Maggie watched her stride purposefully along the corridor. It struck her how much less imposing Aunt Kathleen looked in just her nightdress and coat. No swishing, fashionable skirts. No carefully styled hair. Her aunt looked, for the first time in Maggie’s life, like the middle-aged woman she was. The vulnerability frightened her.

  “Girls, listen.” Harry stepped into the cabin, pushing the door almost closed behind him. The three girls huddled around him, all previous thoughts of flirting and playfulness gone from their minds. “This is really serious. The ship is going to sink, and the nearest boat is too far away to reach us in time.” The girls stood in shocked silence. “As soon as she comes back,” he added, nodding in the direction Kathleen had gone, “make sure you go up to the decks. And put your life jackets on. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Harry.” Maggie spoke in barely a whisper. “We understand. Will ye be goin’ to tell the others, so? There’s a family of nine in the cabin next to us and they’ve a small baby.” He nodded. “It sleeps in a suitcase,” she added, a fact that had troubled her every night, especially since she’d seen the opulence of the first-class decks.

  Harry turned to walk out, pausing for a moment as if wanting to say something else. He looked at Peggy. She returned his gaze. There was an unspoken understanding between them, even though neither one said a word.

  With Kathleen gone and the sounds of Harry pounding on the door of the cabin next to theirs, and then the next and the next, the three girls quickly put on their life jackets and then sat together on Katie’s bed, trying to take in what they had heard, the unspoken recollections of predictions in the tea leaves and of strangers in railway stations hanging ominously in the air between them.

  Peggy spoke first. “Well, let’s be gettin’ our things ready then, girls. Kathleen will be back soon with the others and then we’ll all be wantin’ to go up them stairs to the decks.”

  “They’ll have opened the gates, won’t they?” Katie’s question was left unanswered. None of them knew. “Well, maybe we should say a prayer first,” she suggested. “Y’know, for all our safety like.”

  They looked at each other and nodded in agreement. Maggie grabbed the rosary beads that Séamus had given her as a parting gift, and together the three girls sat on Katie’s bed, the White Star Line blankets they had admired so much when they first saw them wrapped around their shoulders for warmth. They recited their Hail Marys with more sincerity than they had ever recited them before.

  Their prayers complete, they sat in silence, holding each other’s hands, afraid to let go.

  Harry ran from cabin to cabin, pounding on the doors until they were opened and telling the occupants that they needed to put on their life jackets and make their way to the upper decks immediately. Other crewmen and stewards were doing the same.

  Many of the occupants didn’t speak English and couldn’t understand what Harry was saying, throwing their hands upward in frustration. Those he did manage to rouse barely took him seriously, assuming it was the drill that had been canceled earlier that day. They said that they would put on their life jackets, before closing the door and returning to their beds. Others didn’t even respond to the banging on the door, too stupefied from a night of drinking in the bar to hear Harry or any of the commotion that was now building in the corridors.

  After rushing around the cabins for forty minutes or more, getting occasionally lost among the endless maze of corridors and companionways, Harry noticed a definite list in the ship, having to walk up an incline as he made his way along Scotland Road and using the walls on either side of him for balance. He was relieved to bump into his friend Billy.

  “Christ, mate. Have you heard? We’re bloody sinking.”

  “Y’don’t say. She’s almost totally underwater in the first five compartments. Christ only knows what’s gone on in the boiler rooms. They’ve closed the watertight doors—with the stokers still inside, I reckon. There’s men down there trying to keep the generators going so at least we’ll have some light to watch ourselves drown by.”

  “Christ, Billy, don’t. It’s terrifyin’. Did y’see the size of that iceberg?”

  “Yeah. I went up. There’s fellas up there drinking their brandy being serenaded by the violinists. You’d think it was a special bleedin’ iceberg cruise or somethin’. There’s a whole gang of Irish in the dining room. Have you seen them? Some are already at the booze and others are sittin’ around prayin’ with those beads they have—fat lot of use they’ll do ’em at the bottom of the ocean. Captain Smith’s ordered the lifeboats to be swung out.”

  Something within Harry sensed that he needed to go to the dining room. “Right, keep banging on the doors and waking people up. I’m going to the dining room to shift everyone up the stairs.” He started to make his way back along the corridor. “Oi! Billy,” he called back to his friend. “I’ll see you up there. Right?”

  Billy turned and gave him a thumbs-up with his trademark cocky grin. “Not if I see you first, Walsh!”

  Before going to the dining room, Harry returned to cabin 115, where he found the three girls still waiting patiently for Kathleen to come back.

  “Harry,” Peggy gasped when she saw him. “We can feel the ship leanin’. We don’t know where Kathleen is.”

  “You’ve got to go, girls,” he urged. “There’s a lot of Irish gatherin’ in the dining room. She’s probably gone there to find everyone in your group. You should go there. Now. It’s not safe to hang around here. The corridors are getting busy with people movin’ their cases, and the stairs are getting blocked. Go on, go and wait for her in the dining room. You can come back for your cases when you find her. I’ve got to go and keep helping others.”

  He left them alone again.

  “Right then,” Peggy announced, standing up and grabbing her coat. “You heard what he said. Let’s go.”

  Maggie was anxious. “But she said to wait here.”

  “I don’t care what she said, Maggie. She might have got held up somewhere, or caught in a crowd. Y’heard what Harry said about the corridors getting blocked, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the way this ship’s leanin’. There’ll be water creepin’ in here soon, and I’m certainly not plannin’ on hangin’ around just so as I can say I touched a bit o’ the Atlantic Ocean. Come on, we’ll find your aunt Kathleen. I know we will.”

  Kathleen could see the look of panic on her friend Maura Brennan’s face and noticed how she instinctively placed her hand on her swollen belly.

  “We’ve got to gather our things, Maura,” she explained to her again, “and make our way to the upper decks. I’m tellin’ everyone to meet in the dining room first, so we know everyone’s accounted for. Y’know, like we did on the train journey down.”

  “Should we dress?”

  “There’s no time. Just coats and shoes—and hats. It might be chilly up there.”

  “It will all be all right, Kathleen, won’t it? They’ll be sendin’ a boat to rescue us?”

  “I’m sure they’ll be doin’ their best, Maura, yes. Now don’t be standin’ here chattin’. Get to the dining room. I’m going to wake the others.”

  From cabin to cabin, Kathleen moved quickly and calmly, passing on the information about the iceberg and the need to get
up on deck. As ever, she was purposeful and pragmatic, reminding the others in her group to take their cases and to put on their life jackets.

  As the minutes passed, she could feel the panic spreading throughout the ship. Raised voices, orders being shouted, people crying, others calming them, children being soothed as they tried to understand why they had been taken from their beds in the middle of the night. The corridors were becoming crowded with people trying to carry their luggage, cases of all shapes and sizes and entire trunks being pushed along. Bodies were pressed against the walls to let others pass. Kathleen realized things were becoming chaotic. It made her nervous.

  Having passed on the instructions to the Ballysheen group and sure that they were moving to the dining room, Kathleen returned to her own cabin to collect the girls, holding on to the walls as she walked down the noticeable slope.

  Her feet felt the water first, the shock of the icy cold causing her to jump.

  “Oh, good Lord above,” she cried out, realizing that the cabins at the front of the ship were already being flooded. Splashing through the ankle-deep water, she shouted ahead, an urgency to her voice. “Girls, come along now! We must hurry!”

  Pushing open the door to the cabin, she stopped dead. It was empty. The girls had gone. Just Peggy’s hat and Maggie’s small black case remained on their beds.

  CHAPTER 23

  It was a strange scene that met the three girls as they arrived at the dining room, with people sitting about next to their luggage as if they were waiting for a train. The room, which was usually full of neatly ordered rows of tables with relaxed chatter and the clink of cutlery on china filling the space between them, was now filled with tension and praying and anxious conversation.