The Memory of Eva Ryker

by Donald Stanwood

  Scattered figures rose from the boats.

  The fifty-five passengers in Number Fourteen stood uneasily, tottering and jumping one at a time to the other boats.

  Mumbled words and the low clunking of oars drifted into the ears of Eva Ryker as Boat Fourteen cast off on its errand of mercy. Sitting in the lap of a woman, unseen in the darkness, she didn’t move. Her face was upturned to the bright dispassionate stars overhead.

  The boats floated on through the night as the passengers scanned the horizon.

  “Be on watch for two lights,” said Trimmer Hemmings in Boat Number Four, “one just below the other. That’ll be the mast lights of a ship.”

  Everyone intently watched the sharp line between sea and sky.

  “Over there!” Jason Eddington pointed southeast.

  Hemmings turned and examined the sparkling light. It slowly drew above the water, but no second light appeared beneath.

  “A star,” he said dully.

  Through the still air the cold bit into Eva’s marrow. She clutched the blanket and bit the corner to keep her teeth from chattering. Her hair crackled with every move, the strands frozen stiff.

  “Keep a lookout for icebergs,” Quartermaster Perkis was saying.

  Icebergs … icebergs … icebergs … icebergs …

  His voice waned into blackness as Eva slumped against the woman’s breasts.

  She awoke with a jolt. Breathing heavily, Eva stared at the gray-black shadows surrounding her.

  “Ssh … ssh,” the woman whispered, tightening her embrace. “Be still. It’s all right.”

  A fuzzy patch of light glowed on the horizon. Mrs. Astor pointed. “The sunrise. It’s morning.”

  The light grew, then faded, only to flare again.

  “No.” Hemming’s voice was cold. “It’s the Northern Lights.”

  Eva watched the glow fan across the northern sky, faint streamers stretching toward the Pole Star.

  The night wore on as the passengers huddled together to escape the cold. Far in the distance Fourth Officer Boxhall fired flares. Green sparks reflected in long streaks across the water.

  Ghostly white shapes of other boats materialized, only to be lost again. Boats Four, Ten, Twelve, and “D” were still strung together like trinkets on a bracelet. The last wild cries in the night faded like the buzz of a dying fly. Officer Lowe and Boat Number Fourteen had been swallowed in the darkness.

  A crewman lay in the bottom of Boat Four, looking up pleadingly at Mrs. John Thayer, the woman holding Eva. “One of you ladies wouldn’t happen to have a little drink handy, would you?”

  No one replied. Eva smelled a strong brandy breath.

  The air grew colder and everyone on board hugged themselves against a rising breeze. Timbers creaked as they wobbled on a newly choppy sea.

  A light flashed in the southeast, followed by a distant explosion. Eva shuddered and clung to Mrs. Thayer.

  A pinpoint peeked over the rim of the water. Then one below it. Jason snapped to attention, eyes trained on the distance.

  Lights rose row upon row over the edge of the world. Firing rockets, the big steamer throbbed toward the boats. Cheers and cries of relief echoed among the boats as the ship hove to, three miles away, revealing deck after deck of lighted portholes.

  A band of gunmetal gray shimmered to the east and a soft golden glow spread in all directions. Thin clouds stretched along the horizon, growing pink as Eva watched them.

  The stars faded as if their power supply was failing, leaving Venus gleaming low near a pallid new moon.

  Gold and pink rays shone across the bright blue sea and revealed an incredible scene. Throughout the night the survivors imagined themselves floating in limbo. But the lights now sparkled off a vast field of surrounding icebergs ranging from icy handfuls to two hundred-foot mountains looming over the boats.

  Five miles away solid field ice stretched to the north and west horizons. The ice gleamed in the sunlight—white and pink where the beams caught an outcropping; purple and blue in the shadows.

  The Titanic’s eighteen lifeboats were little dwarfed specks among the bergs as they rowed toward the steamer. Lisa Eddington watched the rescuing ship come into view as Boat Thirteen steered around an icy mountain.

  A crewman pointed at the bands on the ship’s single funnel. “It’s a Cunarder.”

  Lisa could already see other boats reaching the liner’s gangway.

  Four miles away men balanced precariously atop Collapsible B, rolling in the roughening surf. It sank lower with every wave.

  “Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!” the men on the overturned collapsible yelled, but no one responded.

  Feet spread catlike on top of the hull, Second Officer Lightoller dragged his whistle from his pocket. The sharp piping blew across the water, turning the heads of crewmen in Boats Four and Twelve.

  Trimmer Hemming wheeled around at the noise, then jabbed the shoulder of the Quartermaster, who jumped to the bow and pulled off the mooring ropes.

  The two boats drifted from the others, oars splashing in the water. His back bent from rowing, Jason Eddington squinted at the twenty little figures standing in the middle of the sea.

  They were on a cake of ice … no, it was some sort of wreckage, a lifeboat. Didn’t look like they were doing too well …

  As the boat closed the distance he could make out faces. Lightoller was easy to spot … Jack Thayer …

  His face tightened as he saw John McFarland near the stern of Collapsible B. Jason watched him shivering in the cold as the boats drew close, nearly tossing the men overboard in their wake.

  The collapsible wallowed as each man flopped into one of the rescuing boats. Jason stared down at the floorboards, hoping to look inconspicuous. Eva watched the men scramble next to her, shadowy figures flashing before her eyes.

  Jack Thayer fell into Boat Twelve, not noticing his mother eight feet away in Number Four, as McFarland jumped and landed next to him.

  Lightoller was the final man off the collapsible, dragging a corpse with him onto Boat Twelve. He grabbed the tiller as the boat drew away, rowing toward the still distant ship.

  As Boats Four and Twelve parted, McFarland spotted a familiar face.

  “Eva!” he yelled across the water.

  She didn’t answer. She merely shook in Mrs. Thayer’s arms.

  Scanning the passengers in Boat Four, McFarland’s face went slack.

  “Eddington! Eddington, you bastard!”

  Jason met his eyes, the distance growing between them.

  “Grab that man!” McFarland pointed. “He’s …”

  “Sit down!” Lightoller yelled, pulling him off his feet.

  “You don’t understand. That man …”

  “McFarland, any quarrel you have can wait.”

  No further words were spoken as the white boats drew apart.

  At about eight-fifteen A.M. Boat Number Four nestled alongside the gangway of the Cunard liner. Jason looked up the side of the ship at the letters on her bow: CARPATHIA.

  A long line of people leaned over the Boat Deck railing. He spotted Lisa in the crowd. They didn’t smile. Or wave. They warily appraised each other as the Carpathia’s crewmen lowered a rope ladder.

  Hands reached out to Eva from the descending ropes. Voices swirled around her.

  “Grab her there … careful …”

  “… she looks dead to me …”

  “… almost … get her to the doctor … here, get her arm … that’s it …”

  The sky and ship flipped end over end.

  “Watch it! Don’t let her fall …”

  “… I’m trying …”

  A strong hand grabbed her waist. A rough wool shirt bristled her face. Puffing lungs mixed with the tang of sweat. Feet clomped the deck.

  “Here. Get her to Dr. McGhee. Quick.”

  Passed from hand to hand. Sky, rigging, and faces reeled about her; then wood, electric lamps, stewards, and cool hands.

  “Easy. Keep her head up
.”

  Smooth white table linen brushed Eva’s cheek. A walnut-creased face peered from above, lifting her eyebrow.

  “Get her clothes off and into something dry. And get some bandages.”

  The Carpathia turned and steamed a snaky course between the bergs, smoke from its funnel trailing a black strand across the sky.

  Churning away, its wake fanned over the sea. Aqua bubbles and pale gold foam bubbled under the rising sun. In orderly waves the wake spread, splashing feebly among the ice, jostling the chair cushions, the abandoned lifeboats, and the hundreds of corpses. The famous and unknown drifted together, buoyed by life jackets.

  Two weeks later the MacKay-Bennett would come from Halifax and recover some two hundred of the bodies. Those left behind scattered over the Atlantic in the next weeks and months.

  Flesh rotted under the sun and the skeletons still floated until their water-logged, sun-bleached life jackets at last gave way and the bones plummeted miles to the ocean floor.

  In the decades to follow, ships’ captains would still avoid the region as a place of half-seen ghosts and uneasy folklore. It would be another fifty years before men sought out the Titanic’s grave.

  The news traveled fast. The ether crackled between the Atlantic ships—Frankford, Olympic, Mt. Temple, Virginian, Burma—relaying the impossible news toward the shore.

  Telegraphs and phone lines buzzed across the country, and the news was forged into hot lead for the presses.

  Clamoring headlines hit the stands. New York Times. Chicago Tribune. Los Angeles Times. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

  William Alfred Ryker sat behind the desk in his Pittsburgh hotel suite, staring out the window at the smoke smudging the city skyline.

  A yellow Marconigram lay under his outstretched hands on the desk top. Next to it was a lockable volume, much like a diary, opened to a page which contained a cipher key. The key rendered sense from the jumbled letters on the Marconigram.

  WE HAVE YOUR DAUGHTER STOP IF YOU WANT HER ALIVE BE AT SINGER BUILDING LOBBY NOON AFTER TITANIC DOCKS NEW YORK WITH LATEST SHIPMENT STOP NO TRICKS STOP

  Ryker didn’t speak. Or move.

  The doors flung open and Richards, his manservant, bolted into the room, fighting for any remnants of aplomb.

  “I … I’m very sorry, sir. I had to see you … I mean to tell you …”

  He held out a copy of the Pittsburgh paper.

  Ryker frowned at the shadow cast over the enciphered message on his desk. Looking up, he saw the front page in Richards’ outstretched hands. Ryker took it and studied the headlines.

  Neither man said a word. Ryker let the paper fall on his desk. He looked up at the butler.

  Ryker giggled. Helplessly. Peeling laughter over and over as he slumped on the desk, oblivious to Richards’ astonishment.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  Guffaws shook him as if stricken. Rolling on the floor, he held his sides.

  “May I please be excused, sir?” His face grew red around the collar.

  Whooping laughter ran on and on as if Ryker was gagging. He waved a hand in dismissal.

  Richards turned on his heel, took his coat from the closet, went down the hall, rang for the elevator, rode down to the lobby, and left the hotel, searching for the nearest bar.

  Jason Eddington leaned against a davit strut and watched the field ice gliding past, a mere two hundred yards away as the Carpathia steamed southwest for New York. His lips were pressed tight to keep his teeth from chattering as the wind blew his hair. He was alone. No one else would brave the cold without a reason.

  But Jason had a reason. The deck on which he stood led to the wheelhouse and the captain’s quarters.

  A tiny figure appeared at the opposite end of the deck, marching toward him. It grew in the corner of Jason’s eye. Turning, he stood in the figure’s path.

  The man halted at the sight of Jason, then pushed on. As he drew near, John McFarland’s face was murderous. And a little frightened.

  “Get out of my way, Eddington!”

  He smiled lazily. “Where’re you going, John?”

  The steward didn’t answer. He brunted past.

  Whiplike, Jason grabbed his arms and pinned them both behind his back, forcing McFarland hard up against the rail.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he whispered in his ear. “I already know. You’re going to tell the captain all about me.” He pulled harder on the arms and McFarland’s joints creaked.

  The steward gritted his teeth but said nothing.

  “I wouldn’t try it, John.” Jason’s grin flashed white. “A push over the railing. That’s all it’d take.”

  “You can’t do a damn thing to me,” McFarland spat. “The last thing you can afford is another murder on your hands.”

  “Very clever, John. You’re a regular detective.”

  “Then let me go.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that. Not until you listen to me. You’re not going to tell anyone what you saw on the Titanic.” His grip tightened. “Because it’s your word against Lisa’s and mine. And both my wife and I lie beautifully. You’ll have no backup witnesses. No evidence. Least of all Eva. I talked with Dr. McGhee. The kid can’t even speak. All you’ll have is your word and a police investigation that’ll end in a smear on your work record for slandering a passenger.”

  The courage drained from McFarland’s face.

  Jason released him, smiling as McFarland straightened his clothes. “I’m glad you have some common sense. It’s such a rare commodity these days. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

  “How did it go?”

  Standing on the poop deck with his wife, Jason glanced away from the Carpathia’s wake, dribbling along the edge of the ice that stretched whitely to the horizon.

  “McFarland shut up quickly enough,” he said. “He won’t be making any more trouble.”

  Lisa Eddington turned her collar up against the wind. “That’s the least of our worries right now.”

  “I know.”

  “Ryker will have men waiting at the dock in New York.”

  Jason eyed the Carpathia’s superstructure. “Maybe not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He tapped her shoulder and pointed. Lisa followed his finger up two decks, where Second Officer Bisset was leaning over two women in shawls, a clipboard cradled in his arm.

  “So?”

  “He’s compiling the survivors list. They’ll wire it to New York.”

  Lisa still looked baffled.

  “Ryker will only be after us if he thinks we’re alive.”

  Second Officer Bisset swore under his breath as he fought with the clipboard sheets whipping in the wind. Thank God this was almost over!

  Bisset leaned over the railing. There was a couple on the poop. God knows what they were doing out in this cold. Impossible to see who they were. Ah well, he’d better check it out!

  The couple smiled at his approach.

  “Sorry to intrude,” Bisset said, “but I’m compiling the survivors list. You are from the Titanic, aren’t you?”

  Lisa nodded happily, both arms around her husband’s waist. “Boats Four and Thirteen.”

  Bisset warmed to her infectious smile. “You’re very lucky. I’ve talked with a lot of widows this morning.”

  “We’re just thankful to be alive,” Jason said.

  The second officer held his clipboard, pen point poised over paper. “Your names, sir?”

  Jason tightened the embrace on his wife. “Mr. and Mrs. Albert and Martha Klein.”

  Sobbing women and frenzied men thronged the front of the White Star Line’s New York office on Broadway, ringed by a human chain of police reserves, blocking the path of William Ryker’s black Packard limousine.

  Not waiting for the car to stop, Ryker jumped from the back, running past newsboys hawking the April sixteenth paper. Their cries reaffirmed the huge black headlines.

  He had no luck shoveling past the mob until someone recognized him.
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  “It’s Ryker.” The words whispered from lip to lip. “Ryker … Ryker … Ryker …”

  The crowd slightly parted, making a path to the front door.

  About to pass through, he was pushed aside by a school of reporters, all trailing long pieces of paper as they scattered in all directions.

  The White Star Vice-President, Phillip Franklin, still stood in the foyer. The door to his office stood open to reveal total chaos. Telephones yammered throughout the building.

  “Mr.… Mr.… Ryker.” Franklin looked near collapse from exhaustion. “I had no idea …”

  “What were those men carrying?”

  Franklin dazedly brushed hair from his eyes. “It just came in. Relayed from the Olympic.” He picked up a page from the reception desk. “It’s the survivors …”

  Ryker tore it from his hands. All he saw were the names, in neat rows:

  Rheims

  Robert

  Rolmane

  Rosenbaum

  Rothes

  Rothschild

  Ryerson

  Ryerson

  Ryerson

  Ryerson

  The entry leaped at him. “Ryker, Eva (child).”

  Even as he spotted the name, Ryker noticed an absence. No Mrs. William A. Ryker. She wasn’t there. Swallowing hard, his eyes flashed up the list. Hawksford … Hays … No Herrick.

  He smiled savagely. “The bastards are dead.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  Ryker paid no attention as he spun and slammed the door behind him.

  On Thursday night, April eighteenth, Albert and Martha Klein braved the night air of the Carpathia’s deck, watching the Statue of Liberty’s torch cut through the night.

  Ten thousand people watched the ship’s approach from the Battery. Tugboats surrounded her, each weighed down with reporters yelling questions at Captain Rostron and the crew through megaphones.

  The ship remained silent to the reporters as it turned up the North River to Cunard Pier 54, where thirty thousand milled under umbrellas in the pouring rain. Police cordons struggled with the mob. Hoofs clomped on rain-slicked cobblestones as mounted policemen rode down scattered men and women scrambling to get closer to the pier.

  Outlined against a red sign flashing on the Jersey shore, the Carpathia crept to the dock. The umbrellas jiggled in excitement at her approach.