by Hazel Gaynor
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 dinin’ 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 then.
‘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 her.’
Kathleen could sense 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 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?’
‘Coats and shoes – and hats. It might be chilly up there.’
‘It will be OK 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’ and get to the dining room. I’m going to wake the others.’
From cabin to cabin, Kathleen moved quickly, efficiently and calmly, passing on the information about the iceberg and the need to get up on decks. As ever, she was purposeful and pragmatic, reminding the others in her group to take their cases and to put on their lifejackets.
As the minutes passed, she could feel the sense of 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 manoeuvre 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 realised it was becoming chaotic, and 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 onto 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, realising that the water was already flooding the forward cabins at the front of the ship. Splashing through the ankle deep water, she shouted ahead, an urgency in her voice. ‘Girls, come along now. We must hurry.’
Pushing open the door to cabin 115 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 which met the three girls as they arrived to the dining room with people sitting about with their luggage as if they were waiting for a train. What was usually a room full of neatly ordered rows of tables, the relaxed chatter and the clink of cutlery on china filling the space between them, was now a room full of tension and praying and anxious conversation.
Maggie watched as men paced the floor, rubbing their stubbled chins in thought and nervousness, feeling as if they should be able to rectify this situation. Some were bent down on their haunches, asking others what they had been told, trying to glean whether they knew any more than they did before returning to their own families and relaying the latest information and rumours. The only certainty was that nobody really knew what was happening. Some had been told there was nothing to worry about while others had been told the ship was sinking. What they all seemed to agree on was that they should wait there for further instruction from the crewmen or Officers. They were familiar with awaiting instruction in their life, so that is what they did now.
Amongst the men, women sat in groups reciting Hail Mary’s, mother’s wrapped blankets around their small, confused children, soothing them, trying to dispel their fears, although Maggie could tell by the look in their eyes that their own fears were as real as those of their children. Those who could not understand or speak English sat in huddled, private groups unsure of what to do or who to ask. Someone was playing the piano; others were taking advantage of the confusion and taking a drink from the bar. It struck Maggie that the tables were all laid out neatly for the morning breakfast service; the crisp, white linen tablecloths and the neatly arranged place settings at odds with the confusion and disorder going on around her. She had admired all of these small attentions to detail over the last few days – now it seemed ridiculous that a ship which was sinking with thousands of people on board still looked so neat and tidy.
It was Maura Brennan who saw them first. ‘Maggie! Girls! Over here,’ she called, standing up on a table so they could see where the voice was coming from.
‘Oh thanks be to God girls, look. It’s Mrs Brennan and the others.’
They pushed their way through the gathered groups of people, stepping over cases and trunks which lay scattered around on the floor, weaving in and out of people who blocked their path. Maggie passed the young English girl, Elsie. She was sitting with her family, cradling her baby brother in her arms. The two girls looked at each other and smiled a desperate smile. She saw the Uilleann piper talking rapidly with a group of other men. It struck her how familiar these stranger’s faces had become in the few days they had shared this space on this magnificent ship. She wondered what would become of them all.
‘Where’s Aunt Kathleen?’ Maggie enquired, immediately scanning the familiar faces of the Ballysheen group, but not seeing her aunt’s face among them.
‘She’s been waking everyone Maggie. Just like your aunt, organising us all, walking up and down those corridors until every one of us was woken and dressed with our coats and shoes. She told us all to wait in here – that she’d join us.’
Maggie glanced around again. ‘But, she’s not here Mrs Brennan? I don’t see her.’
‘Well, she must have gone back to fetch ye girls. She’ll be here soon. Don’t be worryin’ child.’
‘We shouldn’t have gone without her. She’ll be wonderin’ where we’ve got to. Maybe she’s waitin’ for us in the cabin? Should I go back?’
‘Good Lord girl. You will certainly not go back. The ship is sinking. If we need to go anywhere, it’s up to the decks.’
‘Ah Jesus, Mary and Joseph – my hat. I forgot my feckin’ hat.’
Peggy was already turning to walk back for it.
‘Wait! Peggy, wait,’ Maggie cried. ‘I’ll come with you.’
And with that, before anyone could stop them, the two girls started to push their way back through the crowds, out into the corridors, running where they could and excusing themselves to push past people when they couldn’t.
As they approached the cabin, they saw the water creeping ominously along the corridor.
‘Oh Jesus Peggy, look. It’s already goin’ down!’
Without thinking for a moment Peggy strode through the water, pulling Maggie with her, the cold
making them both gasp and shriek, the bottom of their coats dragging through the water. ‘Yes Maggie. It is goin’ down. And I, for one, am not plannin’ on goin’ down with it.’
Entering the cabin, they quickly realised Kathleen wasn’t there. Maggie felt frightened for her and hoped that she would be among the others by the time they got back to the dining room.
Reaching up to her top bunk bed, Peggy grabbed her hat and the gloves which she always kept inside them. Turning to clamber back down, hardly able to bear the thought of putting her legs back into the freezing water, she noticed Maggie’s small black case sitting at the foot of the opposite bunk bed.
‘Are ye plannin’ on leavin’ that here or d’y want to take it with you?’ she said, pointing up at the case.
‘Jesus Peggy – I forgot about it completely,’ Maggie replied as she stood on the edge of Kathleen’s bed, the bottom bunk, and reached up, feeling around until she grabbed hold of the case.
Stepping hesitantly back down into the water, she instinctively reached into her coat pocket, the reassuring bulk telling her that the packet of letters were still there.
They then left the narrow room which had become their home for a few brief days, splashing back up the corridor.
‘We had some fun in there, didn’t we?’ Maggie commented, remembering their giggles after Harry had smiled at Peggy and the chats they’d had late into the night about what it would be like to live in America and the look Kathleen had given them when she’d caught them deciding what Maggie would write in her telegram message to Séamus. They’d gone up the ladder to the upper decks then to spy on the rich and famous. She briefly wondered what was happening up there now; their after-dinner drinks and restful slumber rudely interrupted no doubt by the noise being made as the crewmen got the lifeboats uncovered.
‘We did, didn’t we.’
Peggy stopped, turning to face her friend. ‘Maggie, I can hardly believe this ship is sinkin’ and with us drenched in water from the freezin’ Atlantic Ocean. I’d think I was dreamin’ if I wasn’t so scared out of my mind. We will be alright y’know. That fella in Queenstown said I would survive – and I’m not survivin’ without you, y’know.’
The two shared an uneasy smile and grasped each other’s hands.
‘Come on Peggy. I don’t like the look of that water at all. We need to get up to the lifeboats.’
Shivering from the icy chill of the water which seeped out of their shoes, their feet squelching inside, the bottom of their coats and nightdresses soaked and clinging around their knees, they made their way back to the dining room as quickly as they could.
Within the few minutes they had been gone it was transformed into a scene of total panic and confusion. There seemed to be twice as many people in the room as there had been before and the two girls made their way back to the area where they’d left the others. They were still there, but there was still no sign of Kathleen.
Harry struggled as he pushed his way through the crowd which had gathered on the staircase to the upper decks. It was almost impossible to get up with the cases and lifejackets impeding everyone’s movements. It was becoming a desperate situation and he knew that time was running out. It was almost an hour now since the ship had struck the iceberg. He knew that there could only be an hour left for them to get off the ship.
He was trying to get a group of around twenty five passengers up from the steerage accommodations, but it was virtually impossible. As he finally emerged onto the deck, the noise and the icy chill of the bitterly cold night air hit him with surprising force. It was a very different scene to the one he had left an hour ago when a strange calmness had clung around the ship. Now, there was anything but calmness as a frantic attempt to get people into the lifeboats was well underway, crewmen shouting orders to each other across the intermittent hiss of steam rushing to escape from the funnels; a deafening, shrieking noise which made him place his hands over his ears.
Relieved to have got the group of passengers safely up on deck, he moved them towards the portside aft of the boat, where he knew the lifeboats would be lowered first. Officers were shouting instructions as passengers hesitated, unsure of climbing into the wooden lifeboats which were being slowly lowered over the side of the ship to begin the terrifying seventy foot descent to the freezing ocean below.
‘I’ll not get in John, I’ll not,’ he heard one woman pleading to a man who was coaxing her to get into the lifeboat. ‘I’ll not leave without you.’
‘I’ll be in the next boat,’ he assured her. ‘When all the women and children are safely in, then they’ll let the men go. Now, get in. You’re holding up the others and we don’t want to cause a fuss.’
It seemed like a very considered conversation, considering the circumstances they were having it in. The woman relented finally, and climbed reluctantly into the lifeboat where she sat among forty or so other women and young children. At that, it was lowered down the side of the massive ship. It occurred to Harry that there seemed to be room for many more in the boat but he assumed the crewmen knew what they were doing. Perhaps the lifeboats could only take so much weight?
Having shepherded his own group of twenty-five or so towards the front of a group waiting to get onto the next lifeboat, Harry retraced his footsteps to get back to the dining room to collect more. He was especially keen to see Peggy and the others, assuming that they were all still down there, waiting for instructions as to what to do next.
Returning to the stairwell, he realised there was little point trying to make his way back down. It was, by now, a seething mass of bodies and luggage. Stewards and crewmen were standing at the top of the stairs blocking anyone from stepping onto the deck. It was clearly going to be impossible to try and get back down that way. Harry looked about him, from left to right. It was the same scene everywhere he looked.
‘Oi mate,’ he called across to one of the stewards who he recognised from the dormitory and who seemed to be in charge of the melee of steerage passengers trying to get up from the lower decks. ‘What’s goin’ on? Why’re you not lettin’ ‘em up?’
‘Officer’s orders mate. They’re creating a panic all rushing to the lifeboats and tryin’ to jump into them as they’re being lowered over the side. I’ve already seen one woman fall into the sea. They’ve gone crazy. And they’ve all brought their bloody luggage. Look at ‘em. Cases, trunks, the lot. You’d think they were trying to re-book themselves onto a pleasure cruise not get off a sinkin’ bloody ship.’
‘But you can’t keep them penned into the stairwells. How’s anyone else gonna get up?’
The two men looked at each other and the steward shrugged. ‘Damned if I know mate. Damned if I know. I’m just followin’ orders. That’s all.’ There was a sense of resignation in his voice which Harry didn’t like.
It was then that he heard a dog barking. Turning to the direction the sound was coming from he caught sight of the First Class woman whose dog he had walked on the upper decks a few days ago. She was standing in a white, silk evening gown, her fur stole around her neck, a fur hat on her head and her coat draped elegantly over her shoulders. The dog was in her arms, barking at all the noise and commotion. Her fiancée was fussing over her to put on her lifejacket.
‘Oh stop fussing so will you Robert, for goodness sake,’ she chided. ‘I am perfectly sure that the officer meant only for the lifejackets to be worn once people are in the lifeboats. There is absolutely no good reason for putting the damned thing on when we’re still standing around on the deck, it would just get in the way. They’re such ugly looking things anyway. I’ve no mind to wear it about myself any sooner that is absolutely necessary.’
‘Oh, on the contrary darling,’ her fiancée replied, trying to lift the lifejacket over her head. ‘They're the very latest thing this season. Everyone is wearing them now! Look around.’
‘Oh Robert, for goodness sake,’ she chastised, a look of absolute disgust on her porcelain face. ‘Don’t be so bloody facetious.’
> Harry watched the exchange in disbelief. She seemed to be in no hurry whatsoever to get into a lifeboat and was she really worried about how she looked at that particular moment? The ship was sinking for God’s sake. People were already dying in their efforts to save themselves and all Vivienne Walker-Brown was worried about was how she looked and whether her precious little dog was alright.
Harry recalled how he had taken an instant dislike to the woman from the minute he’d first seen her. She now appeared to him the epitome of selfishness and he wondered how the Irish girls could have been so impressed by her when he’d sneaked them up the ladder to the upper decks to spy on her and the other First Class idiots.
The ladder!
Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
Gathering his bearings, he ran around to the other side of the ship, past the gentlemen’s smoking room and the Palm Court, towards the crew ladder which he had brought the girls up earlier that morning. In his hurry, he barely acknowledged the fact that many of the First Class passengers were standing around in their lifejackets chatting pleasantly, finishing their drinks and smoking their cigars while the musicians played soothing music in the background. The iceberg still loomed ominously in the distance and people were still crowding around where the chunks of ice had been knocked off onto the deck.
Clambering down the ladder, which was empty, Harry ran then along the length of Scotland Road, weaving and negotiating his way along the, now familiar, labyrinth of corridors to the dining room, encouraging the people he passed to wait there. ‘I’m coming back,’ he shouted to them. ‘Wait here. The stairwells are blocked. I know a way up. Wait here.’
By now the dining room was completely chaotic. He shoved and pushed his way through the crowd, heading towards the piano where he had last seen Peggy and the Irish group.