Eleanor

by RA Williams

  ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist when I say this, Elle, but sometimes you really are a stroppy bitch.’ Titch shook her head, lighting a Baron’s before stuffing it into her cigarette holder. ‘And, despite the attire, you’re still a snob.’

  Elle glanced towards her mother, who replied with a disapproving stare. ‘Mother thought shipping me off to Hampstead would turn me into a lady.’

  ‘Do you mean like me?’ Titch replied coyly.

  ‘Exactly like you. She hadn’t a clue I’d hop the wag the moment I got there.’

  Elle sat forward, taking the cigarette from Titch’s holder, smoking it bare. ‘Sorry, darling. Mother keeps flushing mine.’

  ‘Why must you frighten away all the men?’

  ‘Oh, come now, Titch. We both drink from the same bottle of spite.’

  ‘Don’t we just?’ Titch said, and she laughed.

  ‘Tell me, what could be worse than a man drunk on champagne? Snorting devil’s dandruff? How vulgar boys like that are.’

  ‘Matron would be pleased,’ said Titch, lighting another Baron’s. ‘All the girls let their knickers down once, at the least. Even the hideous ones. You though? You were the prettiest girl in the school. And yet I never once heard you having a tryst.’

  All of Elle’s school chums had been in and out of love – or at least a man’s bed – already. ‘The British think I’m a cheeky American gold-digger.’

  ‘You aren’t.’

  ‘While Americans think I’m a stuck-up Anglophile.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Titch blew her a kiss in reply.

  ‘We’re just four days out of Southampton and I’ve had to dodge Titanic’s rather homuncular squash pro, a dull-as-ditchwater doctor, a dead-from-the-neck-up yachtsman, a loathsome banker from Detroit, and that ongeshtopt-mit-gelt Benji Guggenheim.’

  ‘Hell’s an onge-whatever-you-said?’

  ‘Just something my Jewish grandmother used to say. Sort of means considerably wealthy. But not in a good way.’

  ‘What’s so bad about considerably wealthy? I’d happily shtup him for some of his loot.’

  ‘Conformity is what’s so bad about him. And the rest. I’ve no interest in becoming a trophy, paraded about for the amusement of my husband.’

  ‘You’ve not had a shag yet, let alone a husband. Still, I can’t fault your veracity, but aren’t you taking noblesse oblige rather too far?’ Titch took a long drag and exhaled slowly. ‘If you don’t take care, you’ll end up a dowdy old maid painting landscapes in an atelier filled with mad cats.’

  Elle watched the cigarette smoke above her head find its way to the open windows of the promenade, dissipating into the night sky. Her eyes wandered among the glittering parade of wealth. Lord and Lady Mucks, ordinarily confident, now unsettled by lifeboats and orders for women and children to take to them.

  Her eyes were drawn to a passenger then: a man descending the narrow stairs from the Boat Deck. Crossing the promenade, he stood alone by an open window, a feather of breath appearing with each exhale before his fresh, if raffish, face. His eyes swept the promenade. Elle found his silently observant attitude chilling, given the fervent activity all around him. Nobody apart from her paid him any attention as lifeboats were lowered from above. Nonchalantly, he brushed his mop of dark brown hair back, revealing eyes as dark as the North Atlantic the lifeboats were being lowered into. There was something ruthless about his eyes – all confident – and yet lacking in cruelty.

  As he rubbed a hint of stubble on his chin, he appeared at first glance like any university boy gone to seed. From the heavy duffel coat draped over his unstarched collar to the wellington boots on his feet, he was an unpretentiously bound book giving no inkling of what lay within its pages.

  Instinctively, Elle knew better. This was someone not to be trifled with.

  Her eyes were drawn again to his boots. They were wet.

  When she looked up, he was staring directly at her. Her first impulse was to turn away – but to her surprise, she found she could not. The same could not be said for him as, after one last look around, he returned to the metal stairs. Grasping the stair rail, he ascended to the Boat Deck.

  Just before he disappeared from view, Elle noticed something more. Something out of place. A shotgun muzzle poked out of the bottom of his coat. Definite fuckery afoot. Glancing to her mother and father, Elle stood up. Now would be the moment for prudence. But the intriguing man offered her a most curious charge, such as she’d never felt before.

  Engrossed in conversation, neither of her parents would even notice her go. Titch, however, did.

  ‘Where on earth are you going?’ she asked, stubbing her cigarette end on the wooden decking.

  ‘Have a little yomp around up top on the Boat Deck,’ Elle replied curtly, keen to follow the man quickly.

  ‘Don’t leave me.’ There was an earnestness in her friend’s face she’d rarely seen before.

  ‘I know you’re being brave, Titch. But right now, a lifeboat is the great equaliser.’

  ‘From fear?’

  ‘From drowning. Promise you’ll get in one?’

  ‘It’s serious, isn’t it?’

  Elle nodded.

  ‘I promise,’ Titch answered.

  Elle smiled, giving her friend’s arm a squeeze. ‘I’ll be back.’

  Turning, she followed the man up to the Boat Deck, where seamen swarmed over Titanic’s lifeboats, pulling up gripes and canvas covers. First Officer Murdoch ordered the men to the lifeboat davits. Pulleys squealed as lines paid out, and slowly the little boats swung away from the deck. The chaos and this distraction cost Elle valuable seconds – she moved to continue her quest, but the man had gone. Crossing to starboard, she caught a glimpse of him again, moving forward with some speed, the ship’s list more apparent now.

  Pushing through the throngs of passengers and crew, someone grabbed at her arm. ‘Have you seen my husband?’ Vera Dick shivered as she held on to her Pomeranian, a lifebelt about its furry little body. The same age as Elle, Vera had danced in the Café the night before without a care in the world.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ Elle replied distractedly, keeping an eye on the man as he moved quickly forward. ‘But get yourself in a lifeboat.’

  She spotted the maître d’ of the ship’s restaurant, standing nearby in a top hat. ‘Monsieur, kindly make sure Vera gets to a boat.’

  ‘Oui, Madame,’ he replied, doffing his hat before laying his shawl across Vera’s shoulders.

  A rocket shot into the sky, illuminating the deck. Passengers, stewards, chefs and stokers surged aft as Titanic continued to sink at the bow. Fighting her way through the crowd, she saw the man turn into the forward First Class entrance. She couldn’t articulate what it was, but something about him quickened her pulse and piqued her curiosity. She followed.

  Passengers in nightgowns and fur coats sleepily ascended the First Class staircase. But not him. He descended.

  Elle gazed at the carved-wood allegorical figures of Honour and Glory flanking a grandiose clock on the staircase landing, and made a mental note of the time.

  Four minutes after midnight.

  She descended the stairs after the man and found herself alone at the reception landing on E-Deck. To her right, stairs led to the Turkish bath and swimming pool. Next to it, a door – one she had been cautioned by Second Officer Lightoller, during her tour of the ship, not to enter. And yet she opened it and peeked around. The long corridor nicknamed Scotland Road continued fore and aft, innumerable adjacent companionways and doors leading to cargo stores, Third Class kitchens, cold storage and crew quarters. She knew that, somewhere ahead, the ship must be flooding.

  She continued forward, adrenaline surging through her now, and was startled when a door suddenly opened beside her. A man and a woman carrying a child spoke nervously to her in an Eastern language she didn’t understand.

  ‘Go that way,’ she told them, pointing to the door she’d jus
t come through. They stared at her blankly. Grasping the woman by her hand, she tugged them to the door. Opening it, she took off her lifebelt, tying it round the child.

  ‘Go!’

  They nodded, making their way up the stairs.

  She returned to Scotland Road, the ship shifting beneath her feet. She hustled to the top of the passage. A stewards’ stairway led down. Following it to F-Deck, she paused on a landing near the ship’s squash court, looking down a companionway towards a closed watertight door at its end. She recalled the tour again, remembering Lightoller telling her the doors were designed so that, should a watertight compartment be breached, a lever could be thrown from the bridge, automatically lowering the doors and sealing off the bulkhead to isolate the flooding and keep Titanic afloat. But while the watertight door on the aft bulkhead remained sealed, the forward one was bent upwards violently. It looked as if it weighed a ton. No one man alone could have done such damage. Passing under it, she entered a companionway, its bare riveted walls sparsely lit. To the right was a staircase.

  An angelic staccato rose briefly from below and then ended as abruptly as it had begun. Clearly, something was happening down there. Checking herself, Elle realised she had been holding her breath. Taking a few deep breaths, she took stock. It would be wise for her to take caution; the nagging sense of fear she fought off told her nothing good was happening deep down in the bowels of Titanic. If she returned to deck, she could easily enough hop on a lifeboat with her parents. They had Ribs to look out for them.

  She descended.

  The stairway ended at G-Deck. On the planked floor was what looked like fresh droplets of blood. Cautiously following the trail, she turned a corner. The drops ended at cabin 247.

  The ship lurched to port, hull groaning. Elle’s heart threatened to escape her chest and she placed her hand against the wall to steady herself. The groaning ceased, but the floor was now askew. Mustering up her courage, she turned the handle of the cabin, cracking the door. Inside was darkness.

  Pushing it open just enough to squeeze through, she skidded on something wet, almost falling to the floor. The cabin door swung closed behind her, leaving her in the dark. Feeling for the door again, her hand landed upon the light knob. She twisted it, gasping at what she saw.

  Mattresses thrown from the bunks had been torn to pieces. Arterial spray and bloody handprints were smeared across the white walls. The tinny taste of fresh blood filled the air. She was in a slaughterhouse.

  Whatever had happened here, she’d thankfully missed it. The arcs of spray and massive loss of blood saturating the mattresses suggested a ferocious attack. Her breath escaped in a rush as she finally exhaled. And she couldn’t get it back, such was her fright. Her hands trembled. She thought to flee, but her feet were cemented to the floor, back flat against the wall. Brave as she might like to think she was, she fought to regain her calm.

  Then she put it together. This couldn’t be the work of the man she’d shadowed. Elle had fired enough shotguns with her father to know the odour of gunpowder lingered in a confined space for hours. There was no such odour. Nor was there any splay from shotgun pellets in the walls, or blood congealed on the planked floor. Most disturbingly, there were no bodies. The question being begged: what could do such a horrendous thing? And did she really want to find out?

  Hesitantly, she nudged a mattress aside with her boot and something rattled across the floor. She picked it up. It was a tiny compass, like a prize from a Cracker Jack box. The dial vibrated, pulling in the direction of the cabin door. She gave it a shake, and the dial spun wildly as the melancholy treble of the choir now cracked the silence again. Echoing along the companionways, it ended at the other side of the cabin door.

  ‘Balthasar!’ a voice close by shouted in warning. ‘Wilderzeichen,’ Elle then heard.

  Balthasar. Was this the name of the man she had shadowed?

  Just as she reached for the handle again, something landed against the door with a thump. Instinctively, she leaped back and, in doing so, fell onto the torn mattresses.

  Boom. Clack-clack. Boom.

  A shotgun fired five times in quick succession, the .33-calibre buckshot perforating the door. The man was clearly trained; holding the trigger back, he fired another five shots while pumping the action. Slamfiring was a special skill. Only someone practised with a shotgun could pull it off. Elle had watched her father fire with such effect at his hunt club. Properly done, slamfiring was devastating.

  ‘Where is she?’ another voice demanded. British accent. Not posh. But educated. The curious singing became a bayonet-sharp howl. ‘Where is Siobhan?’ Iron clanged, followed closely by footsteps frantically descending.

  Rising to her feet, adrenaline coursing through her veins, Elle slowly opened the door. A haze of gunpowder hung lazily in the companionway and, with it, a fresh blood trail. To others, the situation screamed ‘bugger right off’. But to a girl like Elle, this was an invitation crying out for her to follow. She rounded a corner. An iron grating in the floor was thrown open, an emergency escape ladder beneath, leading to darkness.

  Had the crew made their escape? And did this mean the deck below was flooding?

  More gunshots, distant now. Climbing down the ladder with a vigour that surprised even herself, she descended to the Orlop Deck, the very bowels of Titanic. She could clearly identify the greasy smell of lubrication oil. But there was something more in the air – something filling her with dread. The unmistakable odour of cold brine.

  The ladder below disappeared into rushing seawater.

  Gripping a rung to steady herself against the listing of the ship, she considered her perilous situation. She was far below deck, alone, as the ship flooded. She dared not continue.

  Lined with thick pipes, the narrow passage below sunk down towards the head of the ship. Sealed lights continued to burn beneath the flooding waters; it didn’t look terribly deep.

  She couldn’t say where her nerve came from then, but without another thought she stepped off the ladder, landing waist-deep in freezing water. Stunned by the cold and before she could decide if she’d just made a terrible mistake, there came splashing from ahead, followed by another sharp treble. It sounded different this time: less adolescent choir, more wounded rage.

  Pushing her way through the deepening water in her alpaca coat was slow going. It kept her warm, though – from the waist up. Coming to a watertight hatch forced back by the strain of murky seawater, Elle slipped inside. The rank odour of putrefaction greeted her sharply. Ahead, neatly lashed-down crates emerged from the gloom.

  She found herself in one of Titanic’s forward holds. Water rained down through cracked seams in the ship’s starboard hull, splashing onto a motor car lashed to a pallet.

  The iceberg had dealt the ship a mortal blow. Strangely, aside from the invading torrent, there was a sepulchral silence in the hold.

  Something bumped her numbing legs. Looking down, she stifled a scream. There, floating up from the dark waters, was the body of a man. A ring of keys jingled just above the waterline as the corpse bobbed like a cork in the freezing waters. Vacant eyes stared at her through spectacles. A crewman. His chest and podgy stomach were ripped open. Keeping the scream down, she couldn’t, however, do the same with the vomit, and the First Class dinner she had eaten earlier that night hurled up and out of her before she could do much to stop it. A grinding groan from somewhere far aft took away the sound of her vomiting. Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she stole a second glance, and realised the poor man bobbing in the flooding wasn’t just grossly mutilated – he was gutted.

  A stab of light and the desire to move away from the dead man, as far and as quickly as possible, drew her to another hatch at the forward end of the hold. As she made her way towards it, a sudden increase in the floodwaters forced it open.

  Bodies washed out towards her from inside. Scores of them. Some in their nightshirts, others in ship’s uniform. She put a hand over her mouth to keep in a scream. None of th
e dead looked drowned. They looked eaten.

  Terror gripping her, she had just made up her mind to take flight when the flooding swung the forward hatch open fully, offering her an unobstructed view within.

  Another hold, rapidly flooding. In the waist-deep water, Elle made out the forms of two men, leaning intently over an opened crate. It seemed suddenly clear to her that this was a conspiracy. One she herself had unwittingly entered into.

  A bespectacled boffin in a bowler hat pointed a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun into the crate, a weapon incapable of slamfiring. With the hood of his duffel coat up, the other man, whom she now knew as Balthasar, hunched over the crate, wielding something resembling a railway spike in his extended arm.

  Curiosity once again getting the better of her, she edged closer. Inside the crate, she could just make out the shape of an open sarcophagus. Something quasi-human struggled within, held down at the neck by Balthasar’s other hand. Ashen and ribby, the fiend’s body wept foetid fluid from innumerable sores. Clumps of grizzled hair shed from its swollen head as it shrieked a secular knell. This was the boys’ choir she’d heard. The strain became primal as Balthasar savagely rammed the spike into its chest. Viscous gunge purged from the beast as it went berserk, twisting into a seizure within the sarcophagus. A final thrust of the spike, and it went quiet. Skin bronzing with rot, its anaemic body caved in on itself.

  Balthasar’s assault on the beast was vile. And yet, strangely stately. An unholy banshee howl reverberated from somewhere behind Elle, causing Balthasar to suddenly turn towards her. She saw his face clearly beneath his raised hood. Despite the grotesqueness of the act, his disposition remained calm and dispassionate, his black eyes seeing through her.

  Rivets popped, and the starboard hull plates heaved as a wave of water burst through. She knew she needed to get out of there. Pushing through the rapidly deepening flood, she only just managed to grasp the hatch handle before a thundering wall of seawater slammed into her. Gulping for air, she was sucked into a foaming cauldron, the weight of her coat pulling her under. Colliding with objects as she tumbled, she was dashed against something immovable, the air forced from her lungs. She reached out, grasping for anything she could hold on to in the pounding blackness. Fumbling against a smooth-sided object, she took hold of it, finally able to raise her head from the foaming water.