The Midnight Watch

by David Dyer

  ‘The captain’s lying,’ I said. ‘I just know it.’

  Krupp looked at me long and hard. ‘You’d better be right,’ he said, and he sent my handwritten copy downstairs to the typesetters and their linotype machines.

  Overnight, hundreds of gallons of ink would be pressed onto virgin newsprint, and in the morning two hundred thousand Hearst newspapers would be sent out into the world proclaiming that this unassuming, polite British sea captain had left fifteen hundred people for dead. For the first time in this whole sad business I felt sorry for him.

  * * *

  The story ran with the headline SAYS HE SAW THE TITANIC’S ROCKETS, followed by an explanatory passage with strong verbs worthy of Bumpton – ‘rushed’, ‘tore’, ‘exclaimed’. I gave readers a straightforward and dramatic account of events. ‘The Californian of the Leyland Line was the ship which was sighted by the Titanic but which refused to respond to her signals of distress.’ Gill’s affidavit was set out in full. The report was simple and damning.

  Krupp, I thought, could not help but be pleased. But when I was seated opposite him and he stared at me with his small black eyes, his face seemed narrower and more disapproving than ever. He wore the same stale white shirt he’d worn the day before, with his tie loose, so that long, wiry tufts of red hair sprouted from behind its knot. He was eating bread and pickles for breakfast.

  ‘We are not running it in the afternoon edition.’

  I thought for a moment he was teasing me. But he wasn’t. ‘It’s a good story,’ I said, wondering what it would take to please this man. ‘You won’t get better.’

  ‘It is a good story. But it’s not an exclusive. That drunk over at the Globe has got the scoop on you.’ He slid a newspaper across the desk to me. DENIAL ON THE CALIFORNIAN was the headline, followed by a piece that reiterated details from the Clinton Daily Item story and went on to report the refutations of Jack Thomas and Captain Lord. ‘The Herald has it too,’ Krupp said, ‘down in New York.’

  ‘But they’re just relying on the carpenter’s story,’ I said. ‘They don’t have the Gill affidavit, and Gill saw the rockets himself.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who saw what. The story’s the same. The ship saw rockets and didn’t go. Even I’m beginning to tire of it.’ Krupp ate another pickle. For what seemed a very long time he looked at me in silence. He was, I think, wondering what do with me. I decided to help him along.

  ‘Shall I pack up my things?’

  Krupp gave a sharp, snorting laugh. ‘How dramatic!’ he said. ‘John, my friend, you underestimate yourself. I’m not going to sack you. I’m going to reward you.’

  I waited.

  ‘I want you to go back to doing what you do best. I want you to go to Halifax to meet the Mackay-Bennett. She’s due any day now, and she has hundreds of bodies aboard. I want you to go up there and take a look at them.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to Halifax.’

  Krupp dropped a piece of pickled bread on the floor. ‘Yes you do. Look at this.’ He passed me another newspaper. ‘That – there. See? Read that.’

  The headline was LINER BREMEN SIGHTS 100 OR MORE BODIES, and two or three paragraphs had been circled in red ink. The passenger ship, in mid-Atlantic on her way to New York less than a week after the disaster, had chanced upon the wreckage, and as she drew closer it became apparent that ‘the black objects bobbing up and down on the water and mixing with the wreckage were bodies of the victims’.

  ‘You see?’ said Krupp. ‘Your bodies make an appearance at last.’

  I read on. The Bremen’s passengers had seen a man in formal evening dress lashed to a door; a young man lying on a steamer chair; a girl tied to a wooden grating. Men and women clung to each other, others were still holding onto children. ‘The sight was an awful one to gaze upon,’ said one passenger. ‘I saw the body of a woman with a life preserver strapped to her waist and the bodies of two little children clasped in her arms.’ What must it have been like for these people, I wondered, in those dark minutes after the Titanic left them?

  I pushed the newspaper away.

  ‘Strange,’ said Krupp, ‘don’t you think? With hundreds and hundreds of bodies floating about, your man found none of them?’

  I could only agree. It was a mystery.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘they’ve turned up now. Halifax is perfect for you. The Mackay-Bennett’s got Astor and Straus and maybe Butt too. We’ll get you a special pass.’

  I sat for a moment. I remembered how, only days earlier, I had searched the Californian’s holds, desperate to find these men. But now I did not care about Astor and Straus and Butt. The newspapers of Boston and New York had been filled with nothing else: tributes and double-page spreads and memorial services and toasts in university halls. The whole of America was in grief for them. But this story – of what the Bremen had seen – was the first I’d read of the dispossessed, the poor, the children. And now they were in the hold of a cableship on its way to Halifax. In a day or so I could see them, if I wanted, laid out on the piers for identification and collection, just like the Shirtwaist girls.

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘Good,’ said Krupp, taking another pickle.

  ‘But not today.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Nor tomorrow, either,’ I said, rising to leave. ‘The Californian has two days left in Boston. I must try again – I need to know what happened.’

  ‘Oh John, enough about that ship! Why are you bothering yourself with it? You’ve written your piece and the captain has shut up like a clam. You’ll get nothing more from him.’

  He may have been right, but I wasn’t thinking of the captain. I was thinking of the second officer, with his wide eyes and honest face. I had seen, the night before, that he was unable to lie. The chief officer had been forced to lie for him. If I could get to him alone, he would tell me what happened. He would answer my question: why didn’t they go?

  I could not leave Boston now. Not while that strange and tantalising ship lay so close across the harbour. She was, in a way, the cause of all that lashing and tying and clasping of children in arms. To tell their story, I needed first to understand the Californian’s.

  ‘I’ll go on Sunday, but not before,’ I said, leaving Krupp to his pickles and walking out into the Boston sunshine.

  * * *

  Harriet was at home alone when I visited in the early afternoon. She threw her arms around me with such power my hat was knocked to the floor. When she picked it up, she put it on her own head at a jaunty angle.

  ‘Come,’ she said, leading me into the parlour, ‘look at mine.’ She took an old derby from a nearby table and held it up for my admiration. I saw that she had sewn onto its front – a little crookedly – white, purple and green spangles in the shape of the letter V.

  ‘V for…?’

  ‘The vote, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And victory!’

  Her hair was a blaze of fiery red. Around her neck hung a necklace of fresh flowers. She was very beautiful, but when I looked upon her more closely, I was surprised to see that her crisp white shirtwaist was tucked into a pair of pants – oversized pants seemingly made of some type of rubberised canvas.

  ‘They’re pit brow pants,’ she said, extending a leg stylishly. ‘English girls wear them when they work in the mines. Did you know English girls work in coalmines? Well, they do. They tuck their skirts in, here – see – so they don’t get caught in the wheels of coal wagons. Skirts are forever pulling women to their deaths in English coalmines. So, I’m going to wear them in the New York parade. I don’t care what anybody says. Better to wear clothes that save our lives rather than make us pretty – that’s what my outfit will say.’

  My daughter really was a wonder. But when we sat together on the sofa I sensed that something troubled her, and it did not take me long to find out what. Olive, it seemed, would not allow her to wear her pit brow pants in the parade. ‘She says it’
s enough that we leave off our corset covers,’ Harriet explained, ‘so the men can see the threads and seams of our bondage.’

  ‘But you want to go further.’

  ‘Yes. And I told Mother I was going to wear my pants anyway, no matter what she says.’

  ‘That’s a courageous stance.’

  ‘Yes, it is. But now she hates me.’

  ‘You and me both,’ I said, putting an arm around her shoulder.

  It is a feature of young women that they can switch moods without warning, and Harriet now drew away and turned to me stern-faced, as if she had just remembered something.

  ‘Your story – this morning in the newspaper.’

  ‘You liked it?’

  ‘Of course. I like all your stories. But Papa, why didn’t the captain come up to see the rockets? You didn’t explain it. You didn’t say why.’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ I said.

  ‘Then you should find out. Write a longer piece. Get beneath his skin, deep down into his psyche – find out what sort of man he is, and then tell us why he didn’t go.’

  ‘Psyche?’

  ‘Yes. You know, his subconscious mind, something in his past, a suppressed memory.’

  Harriet, at seventeen years old, was mistress of all the latest notions. But, I thought, perhaps she was right, and for the next few minutes I let the idea settle and grow. It would make a nice Boston story, this exploration of the ‘psyche’ – a subtle, Henry Jamesian tale, perhaps, of secret, shifting motivations. What Lord Knew …

  My thoughts were interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. It was a messenger boy from my office, breathless from running. He handed me a piece of paper. ‘Go to the ship now,’ it said. ‘Captain Lord is about to be arrested. File something tonight.’ This last word was double-underlined.

  At last, I thought as Harriet helped me with my hat and coat, Gill’s affidavit was beginning to do its work.

  * * *

  It was dark by the time I got to the ship, but the pier was lit by large electric working lights. Gasoline generators hummed and sputtered, longshoremen hauled sacks of grain. The Californian seemed smaller than I remembered her, but as I drew closer I saw it was because she was now sitting much lower in the water. Her main deck was barely above the wharf’s timber fenders and the shore gangway sat almost horizontally. Loading was nearly complete. In two days the Californian would haul her cargo out into the Atlantic, and I would go to Halifax.

  The watchman at the gangway waved me on without question and once again I climbed the internal stairs to the chartroom. I stood at the doorway. The room was full of men. Lord sat upright at the far end of the settee with his arms folded across his chest. Next to him stood a tall, muscular man who seemed far too large for this small space. He was young – American-young, with white teeth and eager eyes. His jacket bore on its lapel a six-pointed silver star and handcuffs hung from his belt. Three pressmen leaned against the chart table, including old Frank from the Globe. No one spoke.

  I beckoned Frank to come out into the alleyway. As he walked towards me I could see he was drunker than usual; he steadied himself by holding my arm. I drew him away from the door a little and asked him whether the captain was going to jail.

  ‘Jail? Oh no. Worse. Washington!’ Frank giggled. ‘The marshal’s got a warrant. He says the captain and the wireless man have got to go to Washington tonight and if they don’t go the marshal will put the handcuffs on. But the captain says it’ll delay the ship, and it’s a British ship, and he won’t go unless the company says so. So your fat girlfriend’s gone ashore to try to sort it out on the telephone.’

  ‘My girlfriend?’

  ‘Fat Jack. The captain’s in a sulk. Won’t say a word till Fat Jack gets back.’

  We didn’t have to wait long. I heard heavy breathing and felt a movement of air. Thomas appeared at the top of the stairs, swaying and sweating.

  ‘I thought you’d turn up,’ he said when he saw me. He squeezed past into the chartroom and Frank and I followed. ‘You’ve got to go,’ he said to Lord, trying to get his breath. ‘Tonight. Franklin says so. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

  Lord stood up. ‘Very well,’ he said, turning his back to the marshal, ‘if the company wishes it, then I am perfectly willing to go. Perfectly willing.’ Franklin’s permission seemed to empower him. ‘I will go to Washington and tell the good senators how I had stopped my ship while the Titanic was rushing along under full speed. That is what I will tell them.’ He emphasised key words with a dramatic point of his finger, but he seemed to be addressing an audience in his own mind, for he made no eye contact with anyone. ‘And Mr Evans will say how we warned the Titanic of the ice with the wireless equipment, how we told her, “There is ice all around!” – and how she ignored us.’ Lord stopped for a moment, then gazed at me, Frank, and the two other reporters who were there. ‘That,’ he said, softening his voice in conclusion, ‘is why we have been subpoenaed, and that’s what we will say. I expect it will take us about ten minutes.’

  No one in the room moved. I looked at Frank, he looked at me, and the two pressmen at the chart table looked at each other. Thomas’s breathing remained loud and gaspy. Lord had, I think, surprised us all.

  Thomas spoke first. ‘Right then, gentlemen,’ he said, trying to usher us towards the door with a sweep of his hand. Still no one moved.

  ‘But what about the rockets?’ It was old Frank who spoke now, with sudden clarity. ‘Do you deny what this engineman says?’ It was only then that I noticed he was holding a folded page from the Boston American – my story setting out Gill’s affidavit – which he now held up for the captain.

  ‘I have absolutely nothing more to say about that,’ Lord said. There was the hard edge of anger in his voice. ‘I told you fellows my story the other day – here, in this very room – but now you are all putting stock in what that fellow says.’ He gestured dismissively towards the newspaper page. ‘It is all lies and I will not say one more word about it.’

  ‘But do you deny it, Captain?’ asked Frank, shaking the page. Liquor was giving some heat to his frustration.

  ‘It denies itself! I don’t know why this fellow would tell such a story – I don’t know why he would admit such unsailorlike deeds. He says he saw the rockets but didn’t tell anyone. Do you suppose that any man – of any race whatsoever – would see signals of distress and not report them to the bridge? Every officer and every man of my crew is an Englishman and a white man, and I tell you, none of them would stand by and see anybody in distress without trying to help. I have heard he received five hundred dollars for his story. Five hundred dollars! There is your answer. That is the reason he is talking such poppycock.’

  Once again I had a sense of the irresistible will of the man and of his unassailable belief in the force of his own words. For him, to say something was enough to make it so.

  ‘Captain Lord,’ I asked, ‘may we put some questions to your second officer?’

  Lord turned to me. ‘You may not,’ he said. ‘I have said all that needs to be said.’

  ‘But,’ I persisted, glancing at Thomas to try to enlist his aid, ‘wasn’t it your second officer who was on watch at the time? Can’t we ask him what he saw?’

  ‘You may ask me what we saw, and I will tell you.’

  ‘But the second officer was on the bridge. Did he report rockets to you, Captain?’

  ‘I have told you —’

  He stopped suddenly. He was no longer looking at me, but beyond me. I saw him give a slight shake of his head. I turned and saw, framed in the open door of the chartroom, the second officer. The alleyway behind him was dark, and he must have been standing there listening. But now, as he stepped forward, the light from the chartroom fell full on him so that he had a strange luminescence. He seemed almost angelic. I was struck again by his prettiness; he had such high cheekbones and such dark, knowing eyes. He looked at us calmly; he was not the darting, nervous man I’d seen days earlier eavesdropping in the
alleyway. I thought, He has resolved to do something noble.

  We fell silent and waited.

  ‘I will answer, if you like, Captain,’ Stone said, in a voice soft but sure.

  Lord stared straight ahead – a hard, crystalline stare. One hand, held palm outwards, pushed slowly at the air. ‘There is no need, Mr Stone,’ he said.

  But Stone did not retreat. ‘Truly, Captain. I will answer their questions.’

  The other reporters held their pencils still. They were looking to me and waiting, as if they understood: this was my story, this man was my discovery, and it was only right that I should ask the question.

  So I asked it. ‘Mr Stone, did you see any rockets during your watch and report them to your captain?’

  The question was simply put and simply answered.

  ‘I did not.’

  I gaped at him. I had not thought he had the courage for such a lie. Indeed, so innocently and convincingly did he speak that I thought I might, after all, have been mistaken. Perhaps he hadn’t seen any rockets. The rumours from the carpenter might be false. Gill might be lying. Perhaps the pilot was right. I tried to read Stone’s face. He appeared serene. Years at sea had not roughened his skin; it was as white and smooth as a woman’s. His eyes were steady. He seemed to radiate the truth.