Eleanor

by RA Williams

  Women shrieked as a cabin steward was dragged over the gunwale. Elle realised, with a certain faraway horror, that his left arm was ripped away nearly to the shoulder. As he was gently laid in the bottom of the boat, she took a scarf off a crewman to make a tourniquet.

  To her surprise, the steward’s wound didn’t much bleed. Either he had bled out already or the frigid water had slowed his heart. Tying the scarf tightly around the remains of his upper arm, she looked to his ghost-white face, recognising it.

  ‘Steward Swinburne,’ she muttered.

  His eyes moved lazily towards her. ‘Is it Miss Annenberg?’

  Incredibly, Steward Swinburne was not dead. She tried hard to offer a comforting smile. ‘By now, you should call me Eleanor,’ she replied gently.

  ‘By now, you should call me Tony.’

  ‘I’m setting a tourniquet for your arm.’ Focused on keeping at least him alive, she searched for something to tighten it with. There weren’t many sticks to be had in a lifeboat.

  ‘Here, use this.’

  Next to her, Mother tossed the handle of a parasol aside, handing her the shaft.

  Sliding it into the scarf’s knot, Elle began to twist, tightening the tourniquet. Swinburne didn’t so much as wince. Having stemmed the bleeding, Elle knew he would die from exposure if she couldn’t warm him. ‘Mother, give me your coat.’

  ‘What’s wrong with yours?’

  ‘It’s not for me. It’s for Steward Swinburne.’

  ‘What’s wrong with yours?’ Mother repeated.

  ‘It’s wet. Now give me your coat.’

  Slipping Mother out of her chevron mink, she wrapped it about the steward. The crewman stinking of brandy produced a flask. Unscrewing the cap, he then pressed it to Swinburne’s lips.

  Returning to her seat next to her mother, she noticed her own hands. They were slick with blood. Leaning over the side of the lifeboat, she dipped them into the icy water, rubbing them together and washing them clean. Something bumped her hand. She took hold of it. A tennis ball. R.F. Downey & Co stamped into its white felt. Without thinking, she stuffed it into her pocket before retrieving a silk handkerchief to dry her hands. Something came with it, pinging between the feet of a woman cradling a baby next to her. The woman picked it up and handed it back to Elle.

  Elle knew her. She was the woman Elle had directed up the stairs from E-Deck. ‘Where is your husband?’

  ‘Lost,’ she replied bleakly, tears streaking her face as she held her baby close. ‘Titanic lost. He lost.’

  ‘Franklyn’s lost,’ Elle’s mother sobbed.

  Staring at the thin pall of coal smoke lingering over the strangely calm sea, Elle wondered if the horrors she’d witnessed in Titanic’s hold had been real or imagined. She looked at what the woman had returned to her. A talisman. A talisman Elle had inadvertently pulled off Balthasar. A skull atop a human form stared through her, an apophthegm in Latin springing from the death symbol’s mouth.

  ‘Expect the resurrection of the dead.’

  ❖❖❖

  30 APRIL 1912

  BANANA, BELGIAN CONGO

  In short, the child, belonging to the mother’s side, is the channel through which the goods of the maternal kin are exchanged against…

  —Mauss, ‘The Gift’

  Moise Makombo wandered out from the steamy jungle canopy, fishing pole on his shoulder, his outsized shorts held up by a bit of twine. Congo’s sun was merciless, but Moise was a smart lad. Though only twelve, he knew to keep to the shade of the corkwood and mangrove, where the sand beneath his feet remained cool.

  Wild waves pounded the beach, depositing all manner of debris each morning. Knotted together with the kelp and dead horseshoe crabs, he often found fishermen’s nets and glass bottles, and even, on one occasion, an unopened tin of Big John Tobacco from a place called Saint Louis. Walking parallel to the shoreline, he found a green rubber boot, its toe torn open. He’d found lots of lone boots before, but never a matching pair. He thought there must be many one-legged sailors.

  This boot was of no use to him with a hole in it. Leaving it behind, Moise shifted the fishing pole the Belgian missionaries had given him to his opposite shoulder. It was they who had explained he was named after Moses. Moise didn’t remember who Moses was exactly, only that he had the strength to part a red sea. Moise had only seen the Atlantic. It was blue, except where it met the Congo River. There, it was brown. A red sea must have been a long way away.

  Following the contours of the shoreline, he continued north to the place his father had shown him – the rocky spit jutting far into the surf. At low tide he could stand at its point and snare fish for the orphans of the mission to eat. Mostly he hooked stumpnose. The missionaries liked rock cod. When he brought those, they gave him Belgian chocolate.

  The shore north of Banana was sparsely populated, but Moise picked out the sound of someone groaning among the mangroves. He knew there was a Belgian rubber plantation not far inland. Leaving the fishing pole against a rock, he crept along the sand to peek through the twisting branches of mangroves.

  A trap and donkey stood in a clearing. The donkey was still, munching on corkwood leaves. He heard the groaning again. Beside the trap, a big woman he recognised from the market square squatted on her hands and knees, her dress pulled up. A colonial, face orange like the sun, bumped her from behind, fat fingers fussing with her swaying breasts. With each bump, the woman groaned. Moise watched for a little while. He knew what they were up to. Congo’s natural resources weren’t the only thing Belgian colonials took advantage of.

  The woman looked up at him, her eyes resigned to her fate. In that moment, Moise decided she needed his help. Searching around, he found a stone and hurled it at the man. It struck him in the face. Toppling back, trousers about his ankles, he cursed.

  ‘You little zwarte. I’ll flay you alive.’

  Moise ran and ran and ran. Even when he was out of puff, he ran some more. Zwarte, the Belgian called him. He knew what it meant. A horrible word. Moise remembered the first time he had heard it, when the colonists cut off his father’s hands and left him to bleed to death. Moise wished he could have thrown a larger stone. He would have crushed the colonist’s huge, ugly head.

  The Belgian’s curses faded into nothingness, replaced by the squawking of seabirds. Moise slowed to a walk, sweat pouring down his shirtless body. After a little while, the landscape changed until it looked as if nobody ever ventured along that stretch of shoreline. He knew that wasn’t true. A long time before the Belgians arrived, Arab slave traders had populated the region.

  The Loango tribesmen ate them.

  Then came the white missionaries; many of them were eaten too.

  Soon, there were too many white men, and their guns drove the Loango into the interior. The colonists followed, the coastline now filled with white men carrying Bibles. Moise had never heard of Christianity before his father died. He never knew his mother. A Belgian mission in Banana opened an orphanage, and Moise got rounded up. Unlike the white men with guns, the missionaries brought beds, Bibles and fishing poles. He didn’t understand how God could save him, nor why. He told the missionaries to give him a fishing pole; it was better than wading into the chaffing surf with a discarded net to catch fish.

  Then he remembered: his fishing pole! The missionaries would punish him if he returned without it. He was about to turn round to fetch it when he stopped in his tracks.

  A big iron ship sat beached on the spit of rocks the Belgians named Widow’s Point. Moise had seen large ships many times. They traversed the River Congo en route to Matadi. Occasionally, the sailors would give boys a ride, sometimes even letting them stand in the wheelhouse.

  Cautiously, Moise approached the beached ship. It was not a pretty one like the passenger steamers bringing the Belgian colonists. This was an ugly cargo steamship with a single buff-coloured funnel. The ship’s port-side bow was staved in by the rocks and listing heavily. Above the damaged hull was a name: Schwalbe
. Underneath, in smaller lettering, was the word Hamburg. He didn’t have any inkling what it meant. All he knew was it was not there the day before.

  Moise looked about pensively. As far as he could see along the shoreline in either direction, there was no one.

  Cautiously, he moved down the beach. The missionaries would have his balls for conkers for skiving off, but curiosity drew him towards the ship. Stopping in the shadow of the monstrous hull, he felt like a mere prawn, to be swallowed by the beached whale above him. The front of the hull was already drying, spots of rust growing around the rivets of the exposed iron plates. He circled the ship from the safety of the sand, scared of venturing too close to the waves still battering the stern lest he be dragged into the water.

  He found a hatch on the hull ajar, and moved closer, keen to know what was inside. It was dark within, cool, dank air filtering out. Losing his nerve, he backed away. It would be wiser for him to run and tell the missionaries. But curiosity told him that if there were riches inside, he would have them before the Belgians – they were stealing quite enough already. Scrambling up the rocks with deftness only small boys knew, he climbed into the ship’s belly.

  Moise shivered as the cold air inside washed over him. It smelled of lubricating oil. Distant sunlight filtered down from a stairwell at the end of a companionway, and he couldn’t resist climbing the stairs to the upper deck. Somewhere aft, through the maze of dark corridors, he heard the sloshing of waves against the hull. A hose lay uncoiled from its spool. He lifted the shiny brass nozzle, refracting sunlight from above, but gave up attempting to pull it off after a few tries.

  A cautionary shiver stabbed his spine. He did not like this place. Ahead, more stairs led into the light. Up the stairs he padded, rejoining bright sunlight as he arrived on the main deck. He looked both forward and aft. It was strewn with debris, but there was no one about. Small boats remained lashed to the deck. One was different from the others. Larger. Its wood was splintered, white paint flaking away. It had a pretty red flag on its bow, with a white star in the centre and a word above it: Titanic. He looked inside the open boat. It was empty save for a coil of rope, bits of torn fabric and odd shoes. It was of no interest to him.

  Beyond, he saw stairs leading up to the wheelhouse. He knew there was a lot of brass in a big ship’s wheelhouse. Climbing the stairs, he found the room itself similarly abandoned. Bright sun poured in through its large windows. White signs with red lettering on them were attached neatly to the walls. Although he could read, the words were too long and strange. Another green rubber boot lay on the floor. Perhaps it was mate to the one he had found on the beach.

  Intrigued by the ship’s wheel, its brass-capped wooden handles worn from use, Moise tried to turn it. It held fast. In front stood the binnacle – another word he’d learned from the Europeans – its wooden body polished, the brass compass housing glinting in the sunlight. He twiddled and fiddled with the clinometer inside it, fancying taking it with him, but was displeased when the housing wouldn’t budge.

  Next to it, he spied a brass telegraph used for communicating with the engine room. He grasped the handle and found he could shift it with ease. A bell within the housing clanged. Leaping back, his bare feet slipped along the cockeyed floor. He looked down, heart hammering.

  Blood. It was smeared across the worn green flooring. Something had been dragged across it.

  He followed the blood trail to a door at the back of the wheelhouse, a bloody handprint smeared on the fascia. The missionaries would be cross with him if he found trouble. He gazed at the door handle. He couldn’t resist.

  The door creaked as he opened it. It was dark within. Pushing the door open a little more, he peered in. The round windows were smaller and fewer, curtains drawn across them, maps strewn about the floor, a chart table flipped onto its side. Moise pinched his nose. The room reeked. Beside the table lay the remains of white men. He was familiar with dead bodies – he had seen many in his short life – but never like these.

  The remains looked like game carcasses hung after being dressed. The head of one of the men was panned in, skin mummified, mouth locked in an agonised grimace. His dark blue tunic was torn, his stomach cavity opened up and scooped out. It looked to Moise like a giant forest hog’s kill.

  Movement caused him to stop dead. He listened. It came again. Scraping. Hesitantly, he pulled back the curtain over a porthole. A block and tackle hanging from its line slowly scraped along the glass. He sighed, relieved. Then he heard something else: like the mission choir singing hymns.

  He turned. Barely discernible in the semi-light, he saw a ghostly white woman standing in the far corner. He stared at her. For a long time. She stared back, eyes wide and unblinking.

  Moise was beginning to wonder if his mind had gone, when she moved. She came towards him, wraith-like, long, dark hair filled with waves.

  He thought her beautiful – until she moved closer. Ringed with crusted sores, her mouth parted, revealing teeth like the jaws of a goliath tigerfish. Frozen with fear, Moise thought of a story his father had told him about these fish. Sometimes evil spirits entered one, making it attack people.

  ‘Mbenga!’ he yelped.

  The hymn ended with a hyena-like howl.

  ❖❖❖

  12 JULY 1915

  CAPE HELLES, GALLIPOLI

  A parachute flare drifted from the night sky, casting the ravines of Cape Helles into quivering shadows of silver and green. The landscape flickered and went black as the flare waned. Shelling followed: highly explosive lyddite.

  Harassing fire was aimed at the rabbit warren of British second-line trenches and rear areas. While Tommy sheltered in his dugouts, a head popped up from the Turkish lines, cautiously looking around as the shells whizzed overhead. An onbaşı crept from the safety of his trench. Here was Johnny Turk, defender of the Ottoman Empire. The arrogant British thought they would overcome him easily, but they could not. Rather than smashing his defences and banging on the gates of Constantinople in a matter of days, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force still occupied a wretched scrap of the peninsula a mere 1,600 yards deep. Johnny Turk was proving himself far more tenacious than the British reckoned.

  Two nefer engineers timidly followed the corporal, worming their way stealthily towards a wire entanglement blown to bits by a British naval shell. A pioneer party, they dragged corkscrew pickets and a spool of concertina wire with them. Coming to the shell crater, they went to work screwing the iron pickets into the ground. They had learned to cease work every little while and listen. Reassured the British were tucked away in their burrows, the engineers continued their chores, stringing the wire across the new pickets. The onbaşı ordered one of the nefers to go forward twenty yards with his rifle and keep a keen eye.

  Although the artillery fire was deafening, the pioneers worked in silence. Attaching pull-rings, they tugged gently on the wire; it was important not to make it too taut nor too loose. Satisfied, they removed their gloves and began crawling back to their lines. The onbaşı paused. His private had not returned.

  A rifle snapped, somewhere beyond Fir Tree Spur. The onbaşı looked into the darkness. It was of no concern. The shot was distant.

  ‘Imshi,’ he muttered, turning to his nefer.

  Raw flesh glistened where the private’s throat had just been slit.

  The Turkish corporal looked frantically about. Nothing; only darkness and the whoosh overhead of shells from the Turkish batteries in the rear. He was a scant forty yards from his trench. Climbing to his feet, he ran. He had not gone twenty paces before a pile of souring corpses squirmed to life. Reaching for the engineer’s hatchet in his belt, he yelled for this devil to go away.

  ‘Yalla imshi, şeytan!’

  A corpse, impossibly alive and impossibly vital, sprung on him. It smelled of earth and carrion. A blistering pain shot through the base of the onbaşı’s skull. Silence followed death’s cold breath.

  ❖❖❖

  Hamish Taggart prowled
beyond British lines. Creeping along Fir Tree Spur, the wiry second lieutenant watched the British naval shell fall short, blowing a section of Turkish barbed wire to bits. There was no chance the Turks would let a gap in their wire obstacles remain. Waiting for night, they would slip into no man’s land again and patch it up.

  A distant thump was followed by a whistle as enemy artillery sailed overhead, signalling the start of his nightly chores. Sliding over the parapet of an abandoned trench, he made his way into the land where no man dared go.

  Taggart learned quickly the enemy didn’t waste their precious shells where there weren’t any Tommies. He’d learned all manner of other things too. His itch began on the troop ship from England. Nothing much at first – just a tickle in his brain. By the time the troop ship sailed by Alexandria, this son of a Pimlico actuary was suffering from an endless pounding in his head. Then came dreadful urges. During the Fusilier Brigade’s landing at Cape Helles, he brained his first enemy, and the pain immediately subsided – if only for a short while.

  The landings were stillborn, the British ill-prepared for the Dardanelles expedition. His regiment – the 2nd Royal Fusiliers – was one part of the 29th Division led by Major General Hunter-Weston. The Butcher of Helles, as he came to be known, commanded the landings from his luxury steamship three miles offshore. He ordered the 2nd to land on the Aegean side of the Gallipoli peninsula, the first day’s objective a village called Krithia in the heights of Mount Achi Baba. Just four miles from the landing beaches, it loomed over the entire peninsula. From its heights, the Turkish effectively repelled the invaders with enfilade artillery fire. Achi Baba might just as well have been the summit of Mount Everest.

  Three months later, the Allies had yet to conquer it.

  Achi Baba was part of a plateau like the palm of a giant’s hand, called Kilitbahir. Its fingers – the gullies and ravines the Turkish called nullahs. Cut into the hilly terrain by winter rains, these nullahs formed narrow stone-strewn beaches where they drained into the sea. The Butcher of Helles had chosen the least suitable terrain to land an offensive force. In the maze of scrub-covered ravines and ridges, Empire’s youth were being annihilated by cleverly entrenched Turkish defences. Forcing the Dardanelles was nigh on impossible.