by Lucy Lambert
The train's wheels screeched as the conductor brought us to a halt. The usher opened the door and porters waiting on the platform unfolded the stairs.
My body felt numb as I tugged at my other bag, trying to get it down. The soldiers worked their packs free, and a great stream of people moved down the aisle towards the doors as officers and sergeants shouted for their men to sort themselves out on the platform.
I jounced and bumped along with them, unable to see anything ahead or behind due to my height. Men poured out onto the platform, and they bore me down the stairs. I tried pausing at the door, but the usher took my bags from me with a smile and handed them down to the porter.
A private already on the platform offered me his hand and I stepped down into a salt-laden breeze that tugged at my hair.
Outside the car, the sounds of the city were much clearer. A bell tolled the time somewhere nearby; it was six in the evening. Still plenty of daylight left.
Big trucks with long, flat beds sat parked in the street outside the station. More sergeants and officers stood there, yelling and pointing at men to throw their bags up and climb in.
The harbor didn't actually seem so far from the station as I'd first thought. My breath caught in my throat when I peered in the direction I thought it lay and saw a set of giant smokestacks poking out over the roofs of nearby warehouses. There were four, and I could just see the tops of them.
Did they belong to the Olympic? I didn't think that many other ships had that many smokestacks. No smoke issued from them now, which was a shame. Like on the Titanic, I knew, the fourth and final stack was a false one. Installed by White Star so as to not be outdone by Cunard and its liners.
The area around the train station buzzed with activity. The trucks had started pulling away, all the soldiers yelling and talking to one another. A few wagon teams loaded boxed supplies, the horses flicking their tails about and stamping their hooves against the pavement.
I walked by one of those teams, the big, dun-colored beasts following me with their big, watery eyes and whinnying. I resisted the impulse to go over and stroke at their shiny, beautiful flanks. The Mennonites and those unable to afford a Ford used horses back in Kitchener, and it reminded me of home.
All the vehicles had blocked the street on one side, keeping me from hailing a taxi. I gripped my hat and pushed it down against my head, dislodging some of my hair so that it fell down around my ears. The wind kept picking up in little bursts, threatening to tear the hat from my head and send it into the street.
I gripped the ends of my shawl in front of my chest to keep it from blowing away.
I had on one of Marie's old dresses. It was a plain grey thing, with a bit of fancy stitching at the very conservative collar that went all the way to my neck. Like most of her dresses, this one was a little short on me. The breeze kept ruffling the hem about my ankles, and some of the soldiers sitting on their trucks whistled to me.
My lips pressed into a line as hunger panged in my stomach. The train had stopped before breakfast was served. The soldiers would no doubt have rations or something of the sort to keep them going.
But I didn't want to get any food yet. The Olympic wasn't leaving the harbor until dark, in an attempt to escape the notice of any U-boats trying to stem the flow of Canadian troops to European battlefields. That left me several hours to get to the harbor and find Jeff.
I couldn't find any taxis to flag down in the area. Perhaps they figured with most of the rail traffic dedicated to the military, too few people would require their services to make it worthwhile to wait there.
So, picking up both bags in one hand to leave one free to hold my shawl down and pull my hat back into place, I started towards the harbor. Why hadn't Marie or I thought of finding a map of the streets of the city? Perhaps, I thought, we labored under some romantic notion of Jeff somehow waiting at the station for me.
I stopped at an intersection as a police officer in the middle of the street held his hand out flat towards me, a whistle hanging from his lip. He stopped traffic so that the convoy of soldiers could make it through as one long, snaking unit.
Perhaps it wasn't hunger that I felt, even though I last night's supper was the last thing I ate. Perhaps some part of me had realized the foolishness of all this. Of course Jeff wouldn't know to meet me at the train station. How could he?
That same part of me insisted that he'd gotten on the Mauretania and that even now he sped along the trans-Atlantic shipping lanes towards Liverpool.
I wondered how I would go about booking a ticket on the train back to Kitchener, or even Toronto. Both those cities were hundreds upon hundreds of miles away. I saw some passersby looking at me strangely. It was strange that I was there. I could see myself as if through their eyes: a young woman, all by herself, strands of her hair blowing freely in the wind, clutching at two heavy suitcases with one hand and a bewildered expression on her face. I didn't belong here. They knew it. So did I.
Why, then, did I walk across the street when the officer blew his whistle to stop traffic in one direction and wave his hand to start it flowing from the other way?
A couple of blocks farther down the street, I stopped and put the bags down on the sidewalk to flex my fingers. The cool wind off the water chilled my nose and face.
A cab pulled up along the curb, probably attracted by my luggage. A man with a large, drooping mustache and a bowler cap leaned out and looked at me, one elbow resting on the door.
"Can I take you somewhere, miss?" he asked, calling out loudly to make sure I could hear him over the sounds of traffic.
I nodded and he got out of the car. He opened the door for me, piling the suitcases in first before offering me a hand and then closing the door when I sat. A glassless window separated the passenger section from the driver's bench. My body complained at sitting again, but I was mostly out of that wind so I forced myself to sit still, my hands folded in my lap.
"So where am I taking you?" he asked.
I told him to take me to the harbor. The car's gears whined as he manhandled the shifter into position. He pulled a sharp turn around two lanes of traffic, earning him a few honks that he responded to by waving his hand out the window. I'm sure my knuckles were white under my gloves as I grasped desperately at the leather loop in the ceiling to keep myself from falling over.
Thereafter, I resolved to just stay quiet until we reached the harbor. But then a question occurred to me. So much of this trip hadn't gone as expected, and I knew that such a hasty departure from home had kept Marie and me from really planning anything out. It was like trying to find your way through an unfamiliar house in the middle of the night, trying to keep yourself from falling down the stairs or banging your shins against the furniture.
"Excuse me? Sir?" I said, leaning forward as much as I dared. That cold wind washed over me so close to the open window separating us.
"Yes, love?" he said, cursing under his breath as he blew his horn at a single-horse carriage going too slow for his liking. The car's tires screeched as he quickly checked for oncoming traffic, shifted gears, and hammered down on the accelerator to pass that carriage.
"Do you have any idea how I might get a look at the passenger manifests for the Olympic?"
"Dunno. Got a boy waiting to board, do you? It's such a fine and pretty ship! Took my son down there yesterday for a peep at it. Probably best to check with the army people set up on the dock. Don't worry; I'll drop you right by it!"
I smiled and thanked him, though my words got drowned out as he yelled at a pair of pedestrians trying to cross the street. Leaning back, I closed my eyes and gripped the seat as tightly as I could. My stomach seemed to lag several seconds behind every lurch of the car, so at least I no longer felt hungry. I prayed that I might get there and find Jeff waiting for me. Or, at the very least, confirm that he was to board the Olympic.
The cab jerked to a halt some ten minutes later, throwing my suitcases against the seat and nearly sending me through the dividi
ng window. We'd stopped on the street beside a large building, so I couldn't see the harbor. The sound of the water was louder here, and the salty smell more pronounced. It mingled with certain less pleasant smells that I assumed were the exhaust from the engines and the rot of old piers.
The driver deposited my bags on the sidewalk, and helped me over a large, mud-clouded puddle between the car and the curb. I paid him his fare, doing my best to hide the bundle of cash in one of the cases.
"The army shares this building with the port authority and the navy. Just ask around at the desks and I'm sure you'll find your man.”
Soldiers in uniform walked up and down the sidewalks, and big trucks carrying in more rumbled past the parked cab. Cranes operated in the distance, moving large skids between warehouses and ships. Overhead, gulls circled, crying out and swooping down to tear at bits of garbage. Some clouds had rolled in as well, turning the sky a uniform grey and leaving the evening prematurely dark.
Grabbing up my bags, I hopped out of the way to avoid being splashed when the taxi peeled out, gears grinding again. He cut in front of one of the army trucks and a soldier leaned out to say something I was glad not to catch.
A tall chain link fence separated the sidewalk from the harbor proper. Grabbing up my bags, I walked along it, irritated that I had to go so far out of my way and retrace my steps on the other side to reach my destination.
Near the entrance, a car horn bellowed and I looked back at it in surprise. A horse team had pulled up short, and a small, black car couldn't get around it. I hated driving, and hoped never to do have to do it. It always made everyone so impatient and angry, and they acted as though you couldn't see them through the windshield.
Shaking my head, I turned back to enter the harbor. Two soldiers stood guard at a small booth, operating large, white-painted wooden arms to allow traffic in and out.
One guard, a rifle slung on his back and the handle of a pistol jutting out of a black leather holster on his hip, stepped out of the booth looking like he wanted to speak to me.
But I didn't respond to his greeting. I nearly dropped my bags.
"Oh!" I said, too stupefied for any better expression of my surprise and awe.
The RMS Olympic rested at the largest berth. The men wandering around on the jetty looked like ants next to its bulk, and those wandering on the deck on top of the bow were mere flies. A few smaller ships were docked as well, and they looked like children's toys next to the ocean liner.
What startled me most, aside from the ship's sheer bulk and size was the paint. It looked like an artist had splashed streaks of blue, grey, black, and white in uneven strips and stripes all along its hull and superstructure. Depending on how I looked at it, the geometric patterns to the paint changed the shape of the ship itself.
In my mind I'd pictured the Titanic, with its black hull and red waterline.
"Miss?" the soldier said again. I'd ignored him the first time, not on purpose, just out of surprise and wonder, He sounded annoyed.
"Yes?" I said, barely able to tear my eyes from the spectacle. The soldier had a pointed nose and a set of eyes buried deep in his skull beneath a pair of thick eyebrows.
"If you're here to look at the Olympic, the observation area is inside and to your right."
"Oh! But I'm not here to look at it," I said, though I saw why people would. I glanced in the direction he'd indicated and saw the chairs set up. There were even a few painters dabbing at their easels, doing their best to capture the sheer magnificence of the manmade monster floating in front of them.
"Oh, well, take any issues to administration. It's the big building over that way."
I started to say that I knew, but the soldier turned away to yell at a car that had pulled to a sharp stop mere inches from the white rail.
Hefting my bags again, I walked inside the harbor. I kept looking over my shoulder at the Olympic. Other ships sailed by in the waters behind it, little tugboats bumping against them guiding them along, but none of them rivalled the liner. A yearning tugged at my heartstrings to board it. I wanted to see the grand staircase, to stand at the very tip of the bow and look down on the world.
A steady stream of foot traffic came in and out of the main doors of the office building. One man held the door open for me and even helped me squish my suitcases in. The doors closed behind me and immediately masked the noise of horns, the groan of the cranes, and the slosh of the water.
A thousand voices chattering away at once replaced them, and I even heard the ringing buzz of telephones.
Looking for some guidance, I saw the signs. They were in plain white block lettering with big arrows pointing in the direction to take depending on where you wanted to go.
The sign for the telegraph office caught my eye. Wading through the soldiers and the men in suits made me take longer to get there than I wanted. I was wasting precious time I could be spending locating Jeff. But I needed to let Marie know that everything had worked out thus far.
When I got there, I filled out a small card with the provided pen. I didn't mention Lawrence, or my frequent apprehension, just that I was well and in Halifax. The operator took the card and the small fee and I went back out into the hall.
The army office was on the next floor. Typewriters clicked away, and men stepped sharply on the polished floor ferrying reports back and forth.
I approached a likely looking desk. The papers were stacked neatly on it. The man sat behind it had slicked black hair like Lawrence, but no mustache. A pair of round spectacles perched on the end of his nose, and he had the speaker for a phone pressed against one ear as he muttered something into the tall receiver.
When he saw me standing there, he hung up and spun in his chair to face me.
"May I help you, ma'am?" he asked, putting one hand on top of the other on his desktop.
This was it. The moment I'd been longing and dreading. This man might hold the answer to whether or not my Jeff was still in Halifax, and where I might find him.
"Yes," I said, realizing that I was just standing there, looking down at him with a fake smile stretching my lips. My foot tapped on the floor, sending little, jarring vibrations up my back.
"How?" he said, his face twisting in an expression that showed that he thought starting this conversation was a mistake.
"I need to know whether a man boarded the Mauretania, or whether he's still waiting to board the Olympic," I said, putting my suitcases down and flexing my fingers.
"And you are?" he asked, reaching into a stack of manila folders. He looked at the labels, squinting at the scratchy handwriting, and pulled two out.
"Oh. I'm Eleanor Winters."
"That's nice. What I meant was: what is your relation to this man?"
"My relation?" I said, frowning. Then I realized it. He probably couldn't give information about soldiers away to anyone but relatives.
Quickly, I blurted out, "I'm his fiancé; we're engaged."
"That's nice to hear, Miss Winters. What is the boy's name, may I ask?"
"Jeff, Jeffrey Beech, from Kitchener, Ontario. He just finished training in Quebec a few days ago, and his last telegram said he'd be boarding a ship in Halifax, but it didn't say which."
"Just a moment," he said, choosing one of the folders and opening it. The pages had long columns of alphabetized names. I leaned over to get a better look, but he pulled them away. His lips moved silently as he drew one finger down a page.
"Here we are," he said, sending my heart pounding. I leaned forward, eager to hear.
"Yes, Private Beech, Jeffrey, of Kitchener. He boarded RMS Mauretania yesterday. Is there anything else I can help you with, Miss Winters?"
"No... No thank you..." I said. My voice sounded strange in my ears as a peculiar and cold numbness worked its way out from my chest.
It really had all been for nothing. Jeff was gone. Out of my reach somewhere in the cold waters of the Atlantic. I felt the soldier looking at me. He didn't know what to say, I guess. Normally, when
someone says there's nothing else required, they turned and left. But I just kept standing there, squeezing the fabric over my right hip into a tight ball dampened by my clammy hands.
I knew that this was going to happen. I'd felt it back in Kitchener. But I'd let Marie bully me into it with her hugs and smiles. Now I was a third of the continent away from home with nothing to show.
I looked down at my suitcases. They were old, brown leather things. The handles had lightened from many years worth of hands clutching them. Inside were Marie's clothes, lent to me, and Marie's money, also lent to me. Enough money to maybe buy a berth on the Olympic, and to get me a modest place to stay in England.
"Wait!" I said, slapping my hands down on his desk. The phone receiver dropped from his fingers as he jerked back.
"What in God's name...?" he said.
"There is something you can help me with... I want to book passage on the Olympic. I have money..."
The soldier leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his clean-shaven jaw with one hand. He glanced down at the still-open file and then up at me.
"The Olympic has been requisitioned by the government for military use only. The only people boarding are soldiers and crew. Look, Miss Winters, I know it's hard to have a boy go over there, but you can't help him. Just think how he'd feel if you did get onboard the ship and some German submarine torpedoed it. You wouldn't want him coming home only to find out that his girl drowned trying to see him, right?"
I wanted to open up the suitcase and show him the money, to count it out on his desk. I didn't care about Germans or torpedoes, I just wanted to get to Jeff. I knew I was getting hysterical, and by the redness in his cheeks I could see he knew too. But it had all gone so wrong.
"But I have the money!" I said.
"It's impossible. Soldiers and crew only. Miss Winters, would you like me to get a man to drive you to the train station? I'm sure we can spare a car..."
"Eleanor! There you are, my dear!"