The Lifeboat: A Novel

by Charlotte Rogan

  Mr. Hardie had removed the top of one of the water barrels and was holding it before him like a shield. Hannah had crawled forward and was clawing at it, trying to push it out of the way, but she lacked the strength to do so. As she approached, Mr. Hardie pushed the shield outward, ostensibly to hit her with it, but his injured arm was all but useless and he was so weak that he fell backward against the side of the boat.

  “Grace! Mary Ann!” shouted Mrs. Grant. “Go to help Hannah!” To this day, I don’t know why I was chosen, but she looked at me in that familiar appraising way she had and called my name softly, as if she were certain of my loyalty. I was the only one who had failed to cast a vote, and it has occurred to me that it was her way of implicating me, of making me vote with my actions whether or not I would vote with my words. Her round face and amethyst eyes were aimed at us like beams of purple light as I followed Hannah through the swirling seawater in the bottom of the boat, which was still awash with pieces of bird bones saved for their marrow and stray wing feathers and the last bits of rotting meat. I closed my eyes and tried to bring order to my thoughts. I was cold to the core now that Mary Ann was not pressed in against me. Mr. Hardie was saying, “Ye won’t get me, ha! Not if I get ye first!”

  Hannah said, “He’s insane! He’ll kill us all! We must save ourselves! Grab him!”

  I opened my eyes, as much to restore my balance, which had faltered without the aid of sight, as to ward off any threat. I think if Mr. Hardie had looked straight at me or called out my name or made any show of recognition, I might have sat down next to Greta and moved no farther toward him. But it was Hannah who was watching me, and it was Mrs. Grant who called my name, followed by soft words of encouragement. As I made my way closer, crouching and clutching at the shoulders of the others in order to keep my balance in the rocking boat, my ears pulsed with the sounds of the Italian women, who were moaning and shrieking behind us. I steadied myself against the Colonel, who was shrinking into his seat as if to avoid detection. Something large and black was flapping in my peripheral vision. I thought it must be the angel of death, but it was not at all clear at that point whom the angel had in its sights. Only when Hardie lashed out at Hannah did the angel stumble forward and take the shape of one of the Italian women, who was brandishing the wing of a bird and stumbling forward to poke it into Hardie’s eyes. I think I called out Mr. Hardie’s name, giving him one last chance to assert himself. His eyes grazed over me, but they were unseeing marbles and he seemed to be beyond sensible speech.

  Mrs. Grant was suddenly beside me, her solid presence giving me strength. The moment ballooned and time stopped, allowing me to take in the metallic surface of the water and the dull glint of the sun on it. It seemed to me that anyone forced onto that icy tundra would merely pick himself up and walk away, relieved to be free of the boat and the stinking humanity it contained. I do not know what the others were doing—it was as if I alone controlled the strings of destiny. I know now that it was the height of egotism to think that I held any power at all, but for that moment, I was sure I was standing up for the forces of good. Somewhere I even heard a voice that might have been Mrs. Grant’s croon, “Good girl,” but I can’t swear she said anything. I only know that for several seconds that seemed to have been excised from the day, I stood unaided in the boat and faced Mr. Hardie one to one and saw nothing of humanity left in him.

  Then the gears caught and time again ticked forward. I can’t tell you what I was thinking or if I was thinking. I only know that whatever dangers we had faced had coalesced into something bigger and more menacing, and it seemed up to me to decide, not if Mr. Hardie would live or die, but if the rest of us would live. Hannah’s face was a terrible sight, bloodless except for the crimson gash where the knife had sliced into it, the colorless eyes, the black snakes of her hair. Hannah and Mrs. Grant had each grabbed hold of one of Hardie’s arms and Hannah shouted, “Grace, grab the bloody bastard’s neck.”

  I did. I put my two hands around Hardie’s thin neck. It was as cold as a fish, hard and stringy, like naked bones. In the instant before I tightened my grip, I felt the cloud of his breath on my face. The smell seemed evidence of what he contained within him: only death and decay. I squeezed as hard as I could; I felt the windpipe convulse beneath my fingers and the Adam’s apple twitch like a grizzled heart.

  “Squeeze harder, dear,” said Mrs. Grant in an oddly soothing voice. She had none of Hannah’s cold fury or the mad hysteria of the Italian woman who was again jabbing at Hardie’s face with the bird’s bony wing. There was a crazed look in Mr. Hardie’s eyes, and I was afraid to let go, for if I did, he would surely kill me.

  Hannah was standing tall and straight beside me, and Hardie seemed to shrink in her presence. I felt a surge of strength infuse my limbs. To this day, I can summon up the feeling without the attendant power. Somehow, we were able to keep our balance in the wildly pitching boat. I don’t know if it was the waves or the struggle that gave the boat such instability, but it seemed that the two things were only various aspects of the same life force that must play itself out as long as human beings draw breath. Mr. Hardie’s spectral face loomed closer as together Hannah and I pulled him to his feet. I could feel his beard scratching my face, smell his breath over the stench of the rotting birds, over my own putrid smell. The Italian women were still singing and shrieking behind us, and someone was bending over the prostrate form of Mary Ann, who had fainted, and was stroking her hair and kissing her cheek. I saw this, so I must have lost track of Hardie for a moment, and only when I heard Mrs. Grant shout my name did I turn, just in time to ward off a blow that would surely have sent me flying into the sea. “Kick his legs!” shouted Hannah, and as if we were one person, we kicked in unison. Hardie toppled forward onto us, his weight on our straining shoulders. He was surprisingly insubstantial, or I was stronger than I thought, though the source of my strength was discontinuous: it came in little bursts, it sputtered and caught, allowing me to reach inside his jacket for the box I thought he might be hiding, but, as I later swore to my attorneys, it wasn’t there. Then, with a great concerted heave, we threw the only person among us who knew anything about boats and currents into the boiling sea.

  We watched him for several minutes. He flailed around. He sank and rose again more than once, spewing water and invective each time he breached the surface. He cursed us. I think his words were “Die like dogs,” and then he gurgled and went under, into the sucking sea. We stared at that hole in the ocean until a large wave rolled over it. Our little boat rose up onto the back of the same wave, up into the graying light of the premature dusk, but we kept staring, possessed of a common urge to know what it was we had done, or perhaps to justify or forget it; and we might have done so. We might have turned to check on Mary Ann, to join in with the Italian women, who were now singing some sort of aria or hymn, or we might have remarked to each other that the sky did seem to be getting a little brighter in the—was it east?—could it still be morning?—where the clouds were now billowing up and out of the gray in sun-gilt shapes, if Mr. Hardie had not reappeared, head and arms bobbing out of the water, close enough to the boat that we could see the water pouring from his mouth around the yellowing tombstones of his teeth. If he had long before stopped resembling anything human, he now resembled the hellish creatures depicted in ancient religious texts for the purpose of scaring children into being good.

  Then, thank God, he was gone; and we did turn to face the others. As we did so, our personalities seemed to separate from the clot of our purpose. Mrs. Grant emerged into a businesslike rationality; Hannah made a show of busy concern for the other occupants of the boat—after all, we had just killed someone for them, and wasn’t that evidence of how much we cared? But I didn’t wish to talk to anyone or even to think about what we had done. Instead, I started to pick up the mess of old bird pieces and throw them over the side of the boat.

  There is one other moment that stands out in my mind. It occurred after Hardie went under and be
fore he reappeared. I was standing by the railing, filled with the exhilaration and horror of what we had done, watching the empty space where Hardie had been and where he would be again an instant later. Hannah was close by, on my left, and gradually I became aware of the sturdy presence of Mrs. Grant on my right, so that I was supported by those two staunch pillars in the same coveted position I had seen other women occupy over the preceding weeks but which I had never occupied myself. I dared to glance at Hannah, half-afraid that I was imagining her presence and that she would disappear when I looked at her and half-afraid I would be horrified by what I saw. But the cut side of her face was away from me. She had pushed her hair into a long and orderly twist, and the fire had gone out of her eyes, replaced by a cool and almost saintly glow. She gave me what I took to be a half smile, but which was more a pressing together of her lips than a smile. It seemed to signify approval or acceptance, and in that moment I felt the way a man might feel when he vanquishes an enemy for the good of his town. My senses were in a heightened state—almost the opposite of the senselessness I had felt as I approached Mr. Hardie only minutes before. Even as I was focused on Hannah, I was somehow also aware of Mrs. Grant’s matching nod of approval, but how I could have been looking to the right and left at the same time, I do not know. I felt their vibrant hands touch my shoulders and meet behind my back, and I knew I was about to be warmed and embraced the way most of the other women had at one time or another been warmed and embraced; and I understood then what it was that the others wanted from them, what Hannah and Mrs. Grant had to give, for I finally had it for myself. A flood of relief washed over me as the slight pressure of their hands increased, almost to the point of causing me to lose my balance and frightening me a little, but then Hardie’s head broke the surface for the last time and shocked us out of whatever shared state we were briefly in.

  We set to our tasks in a sort of frenzied domesticity. We cleaned, we bailed, we straightened the chains of the oarlocks, we coiled the frayed ends of rope we had used with the sail and stowed the life ring as best we could. I don’t know if we would have had the stomach to repeat the struggle with Mr. Hoffman, but when it occurred to me to wonder where he was, he was gone. When I asked about it, pantomiming by pointing to the men and pretending to count, the Italian women wailed and looked fearfully at the water. Mr. Preston and the Colonel sat silent and stupefied and had nothing to say about anything after that. And Mr. Nilsson, who had been Hoffman’s friend, looked like a hunter caught in a trap he had set himself and then forgotten about.

  While we were imposing order on the boat, Mrs. Grant set to work examining our provisions. Just as she was announcing that we had no water left, Hannah let out a happy cry and pulled a rolled oilskin from where it had been lodged behind the rear thwart, which is where Mr. Hardie had been sitting. She handed it at once to Mrs. Grant, who opened it to find several pieces of dried fish concealed in its folds. She sat in Hardie’s place and passed a portion to all of us, starting at the back of the boat and working up and down the thwarts, clockwise around the boat. Greta said, “He was hiding food after all!” and that was the prevailing opinion, but I wondered if he was hiding it for his personal use or if he was saving it for when we might need it most. Some of the women exhibited a weird hilarity, as if we had freed ourselves from a tyrant or come a step closer to being saved. I felt more quietly optimistic, but long before dark, our burst of inhuman strength had left us.

  Hannah led us all in a little prayer, but without the deacon to make the words legitimate, the ritual seemed decidedly pagan, a prayer of appeasement to the sea to which we had just made a blood sacrifice. But the sleep of the saved is the same as the sleep of the damned. When dawn broke, the surface was calm, the horizon was clear, and after using the oilskin to patch the hole, we were able to get most of the remaining water out of the boat.

  Part IV

  Prison

  AT THIS MOMENT I am sitting on my prison cot, surrounded by three gray walls. The fourth wall is barred and through the bars I can see across a corridor and into the cell of a woman named Florence, who suffocated her children rather than let them live with a father who beat them. “Why did you not simply take them to live with you?” I called out to her one day, by way of making conversation. “They were living with me, but how was I to feed them?” Florence called back in an angry voice, adding, “The judge was very happy to grant me custody, but not at all disposed to give me any of my husband’s money. ‘It’s the way the law is written,’ he declared in all his imperial majesty. ‘And who do you think writes the law?’ I asked him, but he merely banged his gavel and asked if I wanted the children or not.” She was filled with anger but not regret, and when I asked her if the children had been boys or girls, she convulsed with a chilling laugh and said: “Girls, of course! It’s just my luck to have had only girls!” Every time I’ve talked to her since, she asks, “And who do you think writes the law?” so I have begun to avoid her. Even when she stands at the bars and stares across at me, I pretend not to notice. My own mental state is fragile enough that I do not need to endanger it further by talking to the likes of her.

  The encounter with Florence disturbed me in another way. Her talk of money brought home to me certain realities of my own situation that will need to be solved if I succeed in proving my innocence before the magistrate. A week ago, my attorneys brought me a letter from my mother-in-law that has given me reason to hope, but has also given me no indication about how I would be received should I be acquitted of the charges before me. Neither did she explain her long delay in contacting me, and I can only surmise that she wanted to obtain independent proof of my marriage. I wondered again about the telegram Henry said he sent to her. Pretrial evidence has shown that the wireless telegraph equipment on the Empress Alexandra was in fact broken at the time of the shipwreck, but whether that had happened before or after Henry tried to send his communication, I could not ascertain. I also found out that the operator of the wireless was not an employee of the ship, but had worked directly for the Marconi Company, which led me to believe that Mr. Blake was not engaged in sending distress signals at the time of the explosion. I did not dwell on this. What I did think about was that if Henry had not been able to send the telegram, Mrs. Winter’s first inkling of her son’s marriage would have come when she read the list of survivors in the newspaper. In spite of the implications of the situation for me, I could only smile to think of the shock that must have disfigured what I imagined as her cold and haughty face.

  My mother-in-law revealed little of her thinking in the letter, only suggesting that my attorneys might arrange for us to meet. I sent word to her through Mr. Reichmann that I would not feel right about troubling her as long as this prosecution casts a shadow over me, for I did not want that shadow to fall upon her or anyone in her family. I must admit that I was also thinking of myself to a degree, for I do not want to enter the presence of anyone in Henry’s family with my head bowed or with any expectation on their part that I should feel an ounce of guilt or shame. I feel neither, but I want our first meeting to be completely free of any doubt about my innocence. If she is paying for my defense, which I can only think she is, I am deeply grateful, but I do not want gratitude to be the sole foundation for any relationship we might develop. Of my own family, only Miranda seems aware of my circumstances. She wrote to say that due to our mother’s fragile state, informing her of my predicament was out of the question. At some point I will write her back, but for now it is a relief to be free of family obligations.

  Mr. Reichmann came today and I gave him the notebooks containing my written account of our days in the lifeboat. He thanked me, and in exchange he handed me a new, blank notebook and a fresh supply of ink. I was surprised and pleased, for I find that I look forward to sitting and recollecting, as Aristotle would have called it. I don’t remember everything right off, but one idea will lead to another, and in this way, I have remembered far more than I thought possible when I set out to fulfill Mr. Reichm
ann’s request. When he passed the new notebook across the table where we were obliged to sit, our hands touched, which seemed to startle him so much that he drew back suddenly and sought to divert attention from the incident by telling me something of what I could expect as my case makes its way through the courts. “Justice can be slow,” he said, to which I replied, “If it exists at all.” I made my voice sound very stern and certain, which seemed to startle him again. Then I laughed to dispel the impression my seriousness had imparted and was rewarded to see a fleeting shadow cross his brow, which indicated that this supremely confident man was not completely sure of himself in every regard. The laughter drew a disapproving look from the matron, who had stationed herself in a far corner of the room, and the look caused us both to laugh quite merrily, which restored Mr. Reichmann’s features to their usual state. No doubt it is frowned upon to show any sort of humor in prison, but I couldn’t help but think how stupid it was to treat adults like children, to chastise and incarcerate them, and to try to construct a narrative that makes their actions fit neatly into either the virtuous column or the criminal one.

  Of course, not a day goes by when I don’t think about the lifeboat and ask myself if I would rather be there than here, but it is not a harping or morbid obsession of mind, as would suit Dr. Cole’s purposes. I enter that blue-vaulted chamber of memory rather the way one would enter a church: reverently, with awe in my soul. The church is filled with light, too—not the usual gaudy sort filtered through lurid images of Christ on the cross, but sea light, murky and green and as cold as Satan’s heart.