“Now we’re going out for the wedding—imagine our Kathleen marrying an American! He must be someone important; he paid for passage for the three of us.”
“That’s all you have in your family?” Dan asked incredulously. “There was sixteen of us—same as me age. That’s counting me brothers and sisters in Heaven, of course.”
“Oh, I have an older brother and two younger sisters, but they’re staying home with my Auntie Norah.”
“And where would home be?”
“A farm near Clarecastle.”
“I thought people in Clarecastle starved to death during the Famine.”
“Many did,” Ned agreed. “People in Newmarket-on-Fergus were so desperate they ate the blighted potatoes and died of the illness. But my great-grandparents were tenants of Sir Lucius of Dromoland, who later became Baron Inchiquin. His Lordship fed people from his own stores.1 During the worst of the hunger he even set up a soup kitchen between two ash trees; they’re there to this day. The trees, I mean.
“The Hallorans survived the Famine on bacon and meal from Dromoland, and since then we’ve done our best to repay the kindness. My father works for the present Lord Inchiquin as his land bailiff.”
Dan made a face. “Sure and there’s never an end to repaying the bloody English.”
“Lord Inchiquin’s an O’Brien, a descendant of Brian Boru, so he isn’t really English.”
“Anglo-Irish, then. The Ascendancy,” Dan retorted, spitting out the term. “They think they’re better than we are because they surrendered to the English and married Englishwomen and learned to talk with their noses all stopped up. I know about your Lord Inchiquin. Amn’t I from Ruan, less than a day’s walk from Dromoland Castle? The O’Briens turned Protestant so the English would let them keep their lands. Better Irishmen held on to the true faith and lost everything they had,” he added sourly.
Loyalty dictated Ned’s reply. “If the O’Briens had not kept their lands, who’d have fed my family during the Famine? The Hallorans would have starved or emigrated. Instead, in ’04 we finally were able to buy land of our own. Now we even have a tenant ourselves.”
“Your Da’s a strong farmer, then,” mused Dan, using the common term. He ran his eyes appraisingly over Ned’s Donegal tweeds. The redhead’s own clothing was homespun and threadbare, his boots tied on with string.
Ned had the grace to be embarrassed. “We’ve been lucky.”
“God’s been good to you,” Dan corrected him.
Ned had smiled. Mama often said the same thing.
He smiled now, remembering.
The ship, which had listed slightly to port throughout the voyage, now had a slight list to starboard. The temperature seemed to have dropped since midnight passed.
As Ned hurried on, scanning passing faces for a familiar, merry grin, another conversation came back to him. Dan had said almost with disbelief, “You’ll be coming back to Ireland?”
“After the wedding? Kathleen will stay in America with her husband, of course. Papa thinks that’s one of the reasons she’s marrying him, so she can be an American too. But we’ll come home surely.”
Dan had given a slow, fatalistic roll of his shoulders. “It took all me parents could raise just to buy the one ticket over, they even sold the pig. They’re counting on the money I’ll be sending back but I won’t be coming back meself. Before I met you I never knew anyone who was coming back.” His irrepressible grin resurfaced. “But it’s not so bad. They were after giving me a wake when I left. An American Wake, they call it.”
“As if you was dead?”
“Young ’uns who go out to Amerikay are as good as dead to the ould ’uns at home,” Dan had replied. “So I enjoyed meself, I drank poitín and danced with all the girls. Made the most of every opportunity and didn’t tell the priest,” he added with a meaningful wink, digging his elbow into Ned’s ribs. “There’s nothing like a merry wake!”
Dan Duffy was a true son of the peasantry, while Ned Halloran belonged to the emerging Irish middle class. “Strong” farmers, shopkeepers, and tradesmen now formed a social order quite apart from either the truly poor or the Anglo-Irish gentry.
But Ned was more comfortable with Dan Duffy than with the other passengers of Middle Deck F, and on this April night he wanted to be with his new friend to share whatever adventure might befall them.
Meanwhile bells continued to ring throughout the ship. There was a sound of running feet and voices began shouting orders.
On the dock at Queenstown, Ned and Dan had agreed to meet again once they were aboard ship. This had not proved easy; third-class was strictly quarantined, as if poverty were contagious. But within hours of sailing Dan Duffy had joined Ned at the rail of the second-class promenade.
“How did you get here?” Ned had asked in astonishment.
The redhead winked. “Och, I have me little ways. I’ve had plenty practice ducking and dodging.”
In the April twilight the two boys had leaned on the rail together, watching Ireland fade into the distance.
“If I had me choice,” Dan had remarked after a time, “I would stay in Ireland, ye know. If I had me choice.”
Ned was surprised by the passion in his voice.
They had met several times after that; on each occasion it being the resourceful Dan who came to Ned. Now Ned must reverse the process and find Dan. Ned had his parents, but Dan—with an independence Ned had formerly envied—was traveling alone. “Me berth’s above the place where they put the motorcars,” he had said with a strange pride.
That meant he was somewhere forward. As Ned searched for a way to get to him he heard the first creaking of the lifeboat davits.
The obvious way forward along the boat deck was blocked by the barrier that separated the first-class promenade from second-class. In spite of increasing congestion people were keeping to their own spaces, with first-class in the middle of the ship and second-class farther back. Third-class was held to the stern or to the well deck near the bow.
Dan Duffy would not accept such segregation.
Of course! Dan was probably trying to get to him, and if they were both searching they could easily miss one another.
Best stay where he was, then, Ned told himself. Or go below—Dan knew the number of his cabin anyway—and be certain his parents were all right.
He turned and made once more for the second-class stairs, only to run into a solid wall of people. Encouraged by crew members, a few were putting on life jackets, fumbling with the straps and teasing one another about how fat the jackets made them look. They still seemed calm, but by now it was a superficial tranquillity, that of people determined to carry on as usual.
The crew was giving orders now. To Ned it looked as if they were directing a new sort of game, arbitrarily choosing players for the sides. First-class passengers were winnowed out and ushered toward the boats with grave courtesy; second-class passengers were also directed toward the boats, but with, Ned thought, a degree less politeness.
What about those like Dan? he wondered. Who is looking after third-class?
Overhead a white light flared. Startled, he looked up. A giant shooting star blazed into the sky, then burst into thousands of sparks that blended with the ice crystals dancing in the air.
“They’re firing off rockets,” a woman said in a wondering voice.
Foreboding turned to alarm. Ned forgot about Dan Duffy.
Mama!
He began to run, thrusting his way between people with rude elbows. Someone caught at him. “Here now, lad, don’t—”
But Ned whirled away and was gone.
April 15, 1912
TERRIBLE LOSS OF LIFE AS TITANIC SINKS
April 16, 1912
MORE THAN 1,500 LOST IN GREATEST
SHIP DISASTER EVER
Chapter Three
IN Boston, Kathleen Halloran had been preparing for the trip to New York to greet her family when Alexander Campbell arrived at her door. Her fiancé’s eyes were troubled,
and beneath his graying hair his blunt-featured face, usually so ruddy, was pale.
“Are you alone, Kate? Is there not someone here with you?”
“Please don’t call me that, Alexander,” she replied with a smile to soften her words. “I’ve told you I don’t like the name.”
“But are you alone here?”
“My cousins are paying their calls. I was invited to go with them, but I wanted to lay out my frocks for New York and…Why? What’s wrong?”
He tried to speak again but the words caught in his throat. Silently, he handed her the newspapers.
Kathleen would never be able to remember much about the frantic trip to New York. Alexander had wanted her to stay in Boston with her cousins and await news there, but she would not have it.
The train was cruelly slow, held up on one siding after another with various excuses. The American efficiency that she admired failed when she needed it most. Alexander patted her hand and said “There, there” whenever he could, but as a representative of the White Star Line he felt obligated to circulate through the coaches, offering what reassurance he could to other worried next of kin making the trip for the same reason.
When he left her side, Kathleen stared bleakly out the smudged train window, seeing nothing.
Although the majority of passengers had no connection with the Titanic, news of the disaster was the principal topic of conversation on the train. One stout woman swathed from neck to ankles in black bombazine announced for all to hear, “It is God’s judgment on John Jacob Astor and all those decadent aristocrats.”
The wizened man sitting beside her looked embarrassed and buried his face behind his newspaper.
At last the train pulled into the steel-ribbed majesty of the new Pennsylvania Station. Kathleen was indifferent to the dazzle of light from the corrugated glass roof arches and domes, the vaulted magnificence said to be a replica of the Caracalla Baths. The world seemed as dark around her as if she were in a tunnel.
Alexander wanted her to wait at the hotel while he went directly to the office, but she refused. “I have to know,” she kept saying. “I have to know. I’m staying with you.”
Looking at her white face and stubborn chin with the dimple he found so beguiling, he relented. “Come with me, then.”
The red-brick building at 9 Broadway that housed the White Star offices was under siege. Police had been compelled to set up barricades to hold back the crowds. When intimations of trouble had first reached New York, A. S. Franklin, vice president of the line, had declared unequivocally, “We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable.”1
Subsequently, the Evening Sun announced that there had been a collision but all were saved, and the city had breathed a collective sigh of relief. Soon enough, however, wireless operators listening in on Atlantic ship traffic began overhearing disturbing transmissions. Then confirmation arrived from the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic.
The unsinkable liner was lost. The Carpathia was returning to New York with 675 survivors aboard.
For a time White Star tried to downplay the scale of the disaster, but by the time Alexander and Kathleen reached 9 Broadway it was obvious that a death watch had been mounted. No list of survivors had yet been posted.
Followed by Kathleen, Alexander shouldered his way through the crowd and was admitted into the building. A man at the door tried to turn Kathleen aside, but she shoved past him. “You would not dare lay hands on a lady!” she hissed. Her blazing blue eyes drove him back, abashed.
Alexander found a small cubby-hole with a rolltop desk and a pair of red leather chairs and left her seated there, twisting her handkerchief, while he went in search of information. Beyond the frosted glass door Kathleen could hear quick footsteps on polished floors, tense voices, frenetic clatter. After a time a worried-looking young man appeared at the door and gave a discreet cough by way of seeking admission. He carried a pot of tea and two cups—bearing the White Star emblem—on a tray, which he set down on the small table between the two chairs. Then he departed as gently as he had come.
Kathleen poured a cup of the steaming beverage, but her hand was shaking too badly to carry the cup to her lips. With a rattle of china she replaced it in the saucer.
The wait seemed interminable.
When Alexander at last returned, his expression was somber. “The worst is confirmed, Kate. The Titanic is lost, but we’ll have no details until the Carpathia arrives. That won’t be until Thursday night or possibly even Friday, although she will be sending the list of survivors on ahead. In the meantime, let me take you back to your hotel and—”
She glared at him. “I’m here and I’ll stay here until we know about my family.” Lifting the cup, she drank the stone-cold tea and then poured herself some more, establishing territorial rights to the chair and room.
She was still there at ten-thirty, when Vincent Astor arrived and was personally ushered into the vice president’s office, only to emerge shaken and weeping.
The first survivor list was posted. No Hallorans were on it.
“There will be more coming,” Alexander assured Kathleen.
At the White Star booking office, the names were read aloud by a chief clerk standing on top of the counter while the crowd surged back and forth.
The world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting.
At last, overcome by exhaustion, Kathleen let Alexander escort her to the hotel where rooms had been booked for her family from Ireland. They had been meant to rest there for a few days before going on to Boston.
The windows were closed against the chill of the April night, but that did not explain the faintly acrid smell.
A large arrangement of flowers on the table—a tribute from Alexander to his future in-laws—inexplicably had begun to wither.
THE Carpathia sailed into New York Harbor on Thursday night, arriving in an icy rain. Tens of thousands lined Manhattan’s western shore from the Battery to Fourteenth Street to see her come in. Countless flashbulbs, like fitful lightning, followed her progress, but there was no cheering. The massive crowd was mute.
Kathleen Halloran joined the throng of relatives waiting at Pier 54. She carried a priority pass that Alexander had arranged, and had his own strong body beside her. Never had she been more thankful for him. For his sake she would face the storm that was bound to come when her parents learned…if her parents learned…if they were on board the Carpathia, as she hoped and prayed.
Surely there were survivors whose names were not on the lists!
It seemed an eternity before the tugs nudged the Carpathia into her slip, and another eternity before the gangplank was lowered. In unspoken courtesy, the regular passengers of the Carpathia stood aside and let the Titanic survivors leave first.
Some tottered wearily down the gangplank; others marched head up, as if from a normal voyage.
But every face looked strained and haunted.
Standing on tiptoe, Kathleen scanned each one in turn. When at last she saw him, a lifetime’s training in reticence deserted her. “Ned!” she screamed. “Thank God!”
DURING the cab ride from the docks his sister refrained from asking him any questions. The conversation to follow was best held in privacy. Kathleen and Alexander sat together with Ned facing them, but they had the curious impression he did not really see them. His gaze was inward.
For a time there had been no coherence to his memories. Lacking a linear narrative, they appeared instead as bits and flashes; vivid, unconnected scenes surrounded by darkness. Try as he might, he could not penetrate the blackness on either side of some stark image. Was that, Ned wondered, what life was like, bracketed between the state of being unborn and that of being dead?
SOMEONE had removed the withered flowers, but no fresh ones were in their place. Mechanically, Kathleen unpinned her hat and laid it on the table. Alexander Campbell hovered beside her while Ned shrugged out of a coat he had been given aboard the Carpathia, then gazed apathetica
lly around the small suite.
He did not really see the hotel rooms. Over them like an obscuring shadow lay a memory of the cabins of the Titanic.
“Mama and Papa…” Kathleen began.
Ned nodded but did not meet her eyes. “Mama and Papa. Our steward from the Titanic told me he’d seen them. He tried to direct Mama to a lifeboat but she…but she…”
Kathleen, who knew her mother, finished for him. “She would not leave Papa.”
“Women and children first,” Alexander Campbell interjected. “It is the rule, of course.”
The boy nodded again.
“Were they found at all?” the white-faced young woman asked.
Ned’s husky whisper filled the silent room. “They’re with the Titanic.”
He had had four days to absorb the blow, but it struck Kathleen as if her parents had died moments before. Her knees buckled. With an effort of will she straightened and made her way to a chair, where she sat stiffly upright.
Alexander ordered tea. A porter brought a tray, and the familiar ritual of pouring and drinking provided a brief respite. Cups clattered in saucers, napkins were pressed to lips. Alexander ate a few of the sugared cookies arranged on a paper doily.
Ned could not even look at them. He had taken little food since the Titanic sank. It seemed monstrous to him that he still needed to eat and drink when his parents were dead.
Kathleen turned again to her brother. In a voice that was—almost—steady, she asked, “How did you get off the ship?”
Ned knew she really meant How did you manage to survive when our parents did not?
He had asked himself the same question and found no answer. Any thought of his parents stirred up a storm of emotion within him. There were times when he passionately wished he had been with them—and other times when he was guiltily thankful to have escaped their fate. He could not express either feeling. The first seemed like being ungrateful to God for the gift of his life; the second was deeply humiliating.
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