by Evelyn Weiss
Bass shutting the door behind me. I’m alone in the corridor. I step forwards, and I see the Grand Staircase, but I don’t go up it. I need to look for Kitty. I go straight ahead, corridor after corridor, twists and turns. A maze.
There’s more space now. I’ve left the crowds and the corridors behind. I’m by myself, and the shouting on the Boat Deck is less, it seems to come from far away. I see an expanse of starlight and glittering water. The coldest, most beautiful night.
I know that Chisholm and Blanche are safe. I will make one last effort to find Kitty, then I will rejoin that awful melee to try to get into a lifeboat. I realize that I’m on the poop, the third-class Promenade Deck. And for the first time I see that the deck is tilting. I hear a distant sound: a booming voice carrying across the distant space like a bell. “Gentlemen! You have nothing to gain by crowding for this last lifeboat. The boat is full, and if any more people board it, it will sink and everyone will be lost. Please let it get safely into the water! Stay on the ship, and seek to save yourselves!”
I hear another sound, too. The Titanic’s band is playing. The tune is Sarah Flower Adams’ hymn – ‘Nearer my God to Thee.’ There is no singing, of course, only instruments: but the words run through my mind, as if I’m singing them myself.
“Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I’d be
Nearer, my God, to thee;
Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!”
I’m still curiously alone, and my fingers grip the cold ship’s rail, my eyes look blankly out across the ocean. The sea seems to have a phosphorescent, spectral glow in the unearthly starlight. I breathe air so cold I can taste it. A dead taste: the air of the Arctic wastes.
Cold. A cold hardness against my neck. I glance down, and I see a steely, dull shine in the starlight. A gun is held to my neck.
The hymn is in my ears now, and I feel the music running through my body. The final verse, I realize, are words of death: the singer is dying and being taken up to Heaven.
“There let the way appear, steps unto heaven;
All that thou sendest me, in mercy given;
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to thee;
Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!”
But among the words of the hymn, I also hear a rasping, insistent voice, as if a devil sits on my shoulder and pours his words into my ear. “Miss Frocester. This time, you will not escape from me. You will come with me, to the stern of the ship.”
The deck is tilted more now, and ahead of me, there are more crowds. But these people are not shouting and fighting: they’re standing, resigned to their fate, like an army of specters. If they struggle, it is only to maintain their footing on the sloping deck. I call out, and voices greet me. The accents are new to my ears: Irish, Italian, Greek, Polish. The poor third-class passengers have come up from the lower decks and are gathering on the very stern of the ship, as the Titanic begins to tilt down into the water.
I’m slipping and sliding on the tilted, varnished decking. Hands reach out for me, helping me, and as my feet scuff and slide on the smooth surface, my hands and arms are gripped and held. I’m pulled up into the mass of people who are clinging on here, holding on to the ship’s rail, to each other. The whites of their eyes shine in the moonlight. One man holds my arm, and as I slip again another holds me around the waist. I look down and I see water. The ship is vanishing below us: the waves are coming up, faster now.
The gun is still at my throat, shining in the moonlight. And we’re at the rail now on the very stern of the ship, looking down at the churning waters. I hear the voice again. A faultless English accent.
“Just below us are the propellers. You have been in the shaft tunnel, Miss Frocester. You have seen the steel shaft spinning at incredible speed. So you know how fast the ship’s propellers spin, like giant blades in the water.” I gasp, and I feel strong, merciless hands pushing me over the rail.
The waters are coming up towards us now. There are perhaps a hundred of us here, the last people alive aboard the Titanic, clinging on like a ball of ants to the stern rail of the ship, trying desperately not to slide down the steepening deck. And then one, two, several people slide. They hit the black water and disappear. And suddenly we’re all moving, a seething ball of tangled bodies, rolling and sliding. The stern of the ship is slipping straight down into the ocean. I’m sliding down the deck, and I hit the water, hard.
Blackness. I feel the cold going right into my bones.
I can still see. I’m looking out across a flat space. It’s the poop deck of the ship – but the ship has sunk. I must be seeing it in a dream. There’s a figure far away out there, a man, but he’s moving fast towards me. And the gun is still at my throat, and I’m being held in an iron grip by Daniel Carver, and he’s pushing me over the rail. I push back again him, but he’s too strong. I want him to shoot me, so someone at least will hear the shot, but his grip on my body is like iron. I’m going over the edge, into the water, and the propellers will slice me up.
In the distance, far away across the deck, I see the running figure, and behind it, two other, tiny figures, like black ants in the darkness. But the moving figure – it is closer now, running like an express train towards me and Carver. And the figure’s hands reach out, they take hold of Carver. I see the profile of Chisholm’s face in the starlight. Carver and Chisholm struggle and wrestle. We’re all leaning right over the side of the ship, crushed against the rail, looking down into the swirling waters around the propellers. Chisholm’s got Carver by the throat, and Carver’s gun is there, between them, and it’s moving up, into Chisholm’s face. They struggle, the gun barrel catching the light. And then the shining metal is gone, it falls, a dull thud on the planks, it slides across the deck. And something falls, like a heavy sack, down, down into the churning waters.
In the black water, in the darkness all around me, there are voices. Like me, they are dying. My skin burns with the cold. The wind is like knives in my face, and there’s something hard and cold below me. I can see nothing, but …if I can feel the wind in my face?... My face must be above the water. I feel around me: everything is wet and utterly cold, cold beyond death, but yet… yes, there’s something hard below me. The hard thing too is freezing cold. It makes no sense: there are waves all around me. Yet, I’m breathing.
I feel below me again. And then I realize that I’m lying on a tiny piece of ice. One of the growlers, the little low reefs of ice that are scattered across the ocean. The voices around me are less now, and I see human arms, backs, faces in the water, waving lifelessly in the flow of the ocean. All these people, I can now see, are dead. I’m utterly alone. The stars shine down on me, like they did when I was a little girl, out in the meadow with the fireflies. I’m seven years old.
‘There’s one in the water over here! Row this way! Over here! There’s a survivor in the water! A woman!’
The voice sounds familiar. I’ve heard it before – a booming voice, like a clanging bell. I heard it among the lifeboats. Looking up, I see arms reaching out for me. I’m looking into the face of the Titanic’s Fifth Officer, Harold Lowe.
I look round, and the other figures on the deck of the Olympic have come over to us now. I can see Professor Axelson, and Inspector Trench. They are here, at the stern of the ship, with Chisholm and me. I hear the Inspector’s voice.
“You escaped your imprisonment, Chisholm.”
“The Olympic’s Petty Warrant Officer wasn’t impressed by Lord Buttermere’s orders to imprison me, Inspector. As soon as I got free, I went to Agnes’ cabin. But she wasn’t there – and some instinct made me come up here to look for her.”
“Well, you’ve saved her this time, for sure. Are you all right, Agnes?”
“Yes. That man – Carver.”
“We saw him wrestling with you, Chisholm. He had a gun. But in the struggle – he fell over the
side. He didn’t stand a chance – the propellers…”
Chisholm is still breathing heavily. “Yes. A terrific struggle. Thank God you’re safe, Agnes.”
Inspector Trench looks at Chisholm. “Well, there is one thing I can do for you right now, Chisholm, to reward you for rescuing Agnes from that man. I can release you from the terms of this absurd arrest.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Inspector. Better late than never.”
I turn and face them: Chisholm, Professor Axelson, Inspector Trench. I ask a question.
“Inspector, can I ask you one thing? A favor?”
“Of course, Miss Frocester.”
“Can you – not terminate Chisholm’s arrest? Continue it, for just a few hours longer?”
Chisholm looks at the Inspector. “Agnes is in shock. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.” All three men are silently looking at me as if I’ve gone mad. Out here in the starlight at the stern of the Olympic, each moment is slowed to stillness, like time is frozen. Seconds pass in silence, as if they are hours. Then the Inspector speaks.
“I can’t arrest Sir Chisholm. There isn’t a shred of evidence on which I could arrest him.”
“I’m not asking you to arrest him. I’m just asking you to – not un-arrest him. I’m asking you to do nothing. Not release him – yet – from the arrest you made earlier. Because I do agree