Lovers Meeting

by Irene Carr

  Josie hurried on, ‘Now, as to the Macbeth and other business …’ She went through it quickly, remembering what she had said to Kitty regarding ‘my position here’, then bade Tom goodnight. But from the door, as she slipped out, she had to turn her head to say, ‘I’m glad you’re home, Captain Collingwood.’

  Inevitably, Felicity Blakemore called, this time accompanied by her mother. She was a matronly woman, alternately coy with Tom and gushing. Kitty took tea to them in the sitting room, but Josie was passing through the hall as they were leaving. Tom escorted them to the gleaming car where Jarvis, the chauffeur, held the rear door open for them. Mrs Blakemore clutched Tom’s arm and beamed at him. ‘… so we’ve determined on an October wedding. We must hope for a fine day.’

  Then Felicity chimed in, ‘I won’t see you sail tomorrow because Mother and I are off to the shops in Newcastle, but don’t forget the ball on the twentieth of this month. I’m so looking forward to it.’

  Tom answered her, ‘I will be back on the nineteenth. Don’t worry.’ He watched the car drive away. Josie thought, An October wedding. She hurried away before he could turn around and see her, ask her what was wrong.

  Tom went down to the ship the next day to see her cargo loaded and ensure that she was ready for sea. He returned at noon, striding along the hall and passage to put his head around the kitchen door. He saw Josie cooking in there with Annie and Kitty and said, ‘I’m glad to see you are in practice.’

  Josie smiled. ‘How is the ship?’

  ‘The ship is fine.’

  Josie detected his emphasis and paused in her stirring. Charlotte seized the opportunity to poke a finger into the basin of raw cake and lick it. Josie asked, ‘Then is something wrong?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘Nothing too serious, just the cook is out of action.’

  Josie protested, ‘The cook? He was all right yesterday when I paid him.’

  ‘No doubt. But it seems he’s been spending it in the pubs ever since. He won’t be fit for sea for days, certainly not this voyage.’ Then he eyed Josie. ‘I don’t suppose—’

  Josie remembered she had used those words when suggesting he captain the Macbeth for this next voyage. Guessing what would come next she said, ‘No.’ Then, as he nodded firmly, she wailed again, ‘No!’

  Tom said, mock serious, ‘If it’s good enough for me, then it’s good enough for you. I’ll enter you in the ship’s papers as cook.’

  So when the Macbeth sailed that evening Josie was in her galley. She thought she could still hear the mocking laughter of Kitty Duggan and didn’t care; she was happy.

  They had delivered their cargo and were homeward bound when a grave Tom Collingwood said, ‘We’re in for some bad weather.’

  21

  ‘Oh my God!’ Josie put a hand to her mouth.

  ‘Now you can see where it’s coming from!’ Tom Collingwood shoved his head out of the wheelhouse to shout down to Josie. She stood at the door of the galley of the Macbeth as the little old ship plodded southward and stared with dread across the lumpy North Sea to the eastern horizon. The clouds hung low and black there, fat-bellied with the rain inside them. The wind, cold in her face, came out of the north-east and was bringing those clouds down on her and the Macbeth. They heralded an early dusk and a night of storm.

  ‘If we were close to a port I’d run for shelter,’ Tom called down to her. ‘But we aren’t, so we’ll just have to ride it out. You’d better make everything fast in the galley.’

  Josie replied, ‘I’ve done that. What isn’t wedged securely is tied down. I thought that, when the storm came, anything not fastened would be thrown about.’

  Tom blinked, taken aback that his order had been anticipated. Then he complimented her. ‘Well done. Now I want you to get into your cabin, fasten the dead-light over the scuttle and lock the door. I don’t want you thrown about, either.’

  Josie did not want to do that, hated the idea of being shut in the airless cabin, unable to see what was going on about her. But she could see that Tom was preoccupied with the preparations for the coming storm. The crew had already secured everything above and below deck and were now setting up lifelines so that they could cross the open deck in the storm if necessary. So Josie did not argue but retired to her cabin, locked the door and took one last look out of the scuttle, then screwed the dead-light over it. She sat on the bunk as the deck rose and fell with an increasingly savage rhythm; the oil lamp swung and the shadows danced on the bulkheads. She prayed she would not be sick. The cabin was like a tomb.

  Josie had a clock above her bunk so she was able to measure the passage of time. It was in the early hours of the morning, when it seemed the storm had battered and tossed the little ship for ever, that she decided she could stand no more. The cabin creaked and groaned around her, rose like a lift and dropped with stomach-churning speed, lurched over on one side then on to the other. Josie was bruised and numbed, physically and mentally. She was not sick but she was mortally afraid. She went to the door, gingerly unlocked it and turned the handle.

  Crash! The door was flung back against her and would have thrown her across the cabin if she had not clung to it. The wind howled in through the doorway, stripped the cloth from the little table and strove to tear Josie from her hold. She in turn tried to close the door, bracing her legs and thrusting against it with all her strength. As she did so she was able to take in the scene outside and gained a horrified impression of a wave like a black glass wall marching past the ship. The wind whipped spray from its crest to fly like lace. Some of it smashed into Josie’s face, stinging. Then that wave had gone and she could see further, out over a dark sea of mountains and valleys under a sky that hung low and leaden with never a star to be seen. Then the Macbeth’s bow soared upwards again as she lifted to another towering wave. Briefly the wind eased and Josie, by exerting all her strength, was able to shut the door and turn the key in the lock. She was still afraid of being locked in the cabin but even more frightened by what lay outside.

  She waited in the rolling, bucketing cabin, hanging on to the bunk with hooked fingers all through that long night. Until there came a banging at the door and Tom’s voice came to her above the roar of the breaking seas, the howl of the wind: ‘Mrs Miller! Open up!’

  Once more Josie staggered to the door and unlocked it. Prepared now, she kept her weight behind it – but that did no good. This time there was not only the wind to contend with, fearsome though that was. Now as she turned the handle the Macbeth suddenly heeled over on her side. Josie fell back, fought to hold on to the door, but as it opened so Tom, also taken by surprise by the sudden heeling, was hurled forward. He fell over the cabin’s coaming and on to her. Together they blundered across the cabin as if in some mad dance and ended on the bunk.

  Josie gasped for the breath that the weight of his body had forced out of her. His face, black-stubbled and wet with salt spray, was only an inch above hers. For a second they stared into each other’s eyes, then Tom shoved himself up, grabbed Josie’s hand and pulled her after him. He made for the door, moving from handhold to handhold. And as he went he shouted, ‘You can’t stay in here any longer! I think she’s going!’

  They were walking uphill, the deck under their feet at a steep angle, the door hanging down towards them. Josie could see past Tom’s broad shoulders to the outside world and now she saw there was a greyness to the darkness, the day was coming. Tom passed through the doorway out on to the deck and hauled Josie after him. Now she could see that the Macbeth lay over on her side, her starboard rail level with Josie’s eyes, the rail to port immersed in the sea that washed over the deck.

  Tom released her hand then threw his arm around her, wrapping it about her slim waist and squeezing the breath out of her again. Together they climbed the short ladder to the wheelhouse and Josie glimpsed the crew huddled in its lee, trying to find some shelter from the storm. The door to the wheelhouse had been smashed by the sea and hung crookedly from its hinges. Inside they found Dougie Bickerst
affe at the helm. The wheel spun in his hands as he turned the spokes, but uselessly. He bawled, ‘Her steering’s gone!’ And then he left the wheel and went to where the mate, Bucko Daniels, lay in the corner of the wheelhouse.

  Josie pulled away from Tom and staggered past Dougie to kneel by the unconscious figure of the mate. She heard Dougie telling Tom, ‘Bucko was keeping her head to the seas but then this big one came along and she sheered off. I think that must ha’ been when the steering went. She swung broadside to this sea and it laid her over.’

  Tom shouted to him, ‘Fetch them up out of the engine-room and get the boat away! We’ll have to abandon her!’

  Meanwhile Josie was examining the mate as well as she could in the gloom. She found he was breathing, then, cautiously lifting his head, she felt at the back of it the stickiness of blood and a lump.

  ‘How is he?’ Tom was stooping over her.

  ‘He has a lump on the back of his head but he’s breathing.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Then Tom went on, ‘She’s been making water for two hours or more. She was gradually going down. I thought she might go in a hurry and that’s why I brought you up here. And that’s why the men were under the wheelhouse; they didn’t want to be in the fo’c’sle if she sank.’

  Josie answered with sincerity, ‘I was glad to be out of that cabin.’ Then: ‘Have you any bandages that I can use to bind up his head, to stop the bleeding and keep the dirt out?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘No. Only in my cabin.’

  Josie said quickly, ‘Don’t go down there.’

  ‘Not likely. Just a minute. I think we’ve got some cotton waste and twine in here.’ Tom straightened and went searching at the back of the wheelhouse. He was less than a yard away in that cramped little place but his back was turned to Josie and she decided she could do better for the mate than cotton waste and twine. She hoisted up her skirts and tore a long strip, four inches wide, from the hem of her petticoat. She was pulling down her skirts as Tom turned back to her. He held out a handful of cotton waste but said nothing when he saw the makeshift bandage.

  Josie took the waste. ‘I’ll see to him.’

  Tom answered, ‘You haven’t got long. As soon as we’ve lowered the boat, we’re leaving.’

  Josie nodded, trying to stifle her fear, to hide from it by finding work for her hands. She bound up the mate’s wound, using the waste between folds of the linen as an extra pad. As she knotted the dressing in place Tom took her arm. She rose to her feet as he lifted her. He said, ‘Put this on. It’ll keep the worst of the wet off.’

  Josie saw he held out an oilskin coat but she shook her head. ‘Wrap it round Bucko. He’ll need it more than me.’ Her dress was soaked, anyway.

  Tom seemed about to argue but then said, ‘Let’s have him out of here. We’re going now.’

  Dougie Bickerstaffe and two other men lifted the mate on the oilskin coat and carried him out to the deck. Tom hustled Josie out after them. He shouted at her, ‘Hold on!’ and pushed her up against a stanchion. Josie gripped it, eyes narrowed against the wind that tore at her again now they were out of the shelter of the wheelhouse, meagre though that had been. The deck sloped away from her to the rail. The boat had been lowered into the sea there, with two of the seamen in it at bow and stern trying to hold it in position with lines, two more gripping oars and attempting to stave it off from smashing against the Macbeth’s rusty side. But one second it was level with the rail, the next it had plummeted to twenty feet below, then it was close to the ship’s side and the next second was yards away.

  Josie waited, swallowing her fear. She could not bear to watch the wild tossing of the boat and raised her head to look out over the mountainous seas. For a moment there was a break in the solid, banked clouds overhead and a lightening of the sky in the distance. Josie thought she saw something, like a black brush stroke on the leaden horizon. Might it have been a ship? She was not sure. Then the gap in the clouds closed again, the far-off horizon was blotted out – and Tom Collingwood bawled at her, ‘In you go!’

  The loose dead weight of Bucko Daniels had been swung out into the boat, laid in its sternsheets, and now Tom turned to Josie. He lifted her in his arms and stood with one booted foot braced on the rail, the other on the canted deck. Despite not wanting to look, Josie twisted her face from where it was hidden in his chest. She saw the boat far below her and a hideous drop into sea churned into foam as it boiled between the boat and the ship’s side. Then it soared up to meet her, the men on the lines hauling in furiously to keep it close to the steel wall. It hung there for a fraction of a second and Tom passed her over the rail into the stern of the boat. Josie stumbled and fell, but into the bottom of the craft. She was aware that it was falling again, could see Tom’s head above the rail where he was watching to see she was safe, saw him soaring away from her. She lifted a hand and waved and the head disappeared.

  ‘Up you come out o’ that!’ The seaman manning the line in the stern of the boat reached down to lift Josie. She was well aware that the bottom of the boat was inches deep in water that washed from end to end and swirled around her. She rose willingly as he dragged at her arm and pushed herself up to sit in the sternsheets beside Bucko Daniels. She peered down into his face, saw his eyes still closed, and could not tell whether he breathed or not. She wrapped her arms around him.

  ‘She’s capsizing!’ The seamen in the boat yelled in chorus and fear. Josie looked up and saw that the Macbeth had listed further still and that her deck was almost vertical. Dougie Bickerstaffe and the rest of the crew were seated on the thwarts in the waist of the boat and now only Tom Collingwood hung on to the deck above. Then, as she watched, the boat made its swift ascent once more. This time it did not rise quite so high, was not so close to the ship’s side, and Tom stood poised, seeming to hesitate.

  The men shouted, ‘Come on, Skipper!’

  Josie was infected by the fearful chorus and shrieked, ‘Jump, Tom!’ This time he waved a hand, to show he heard. Josie realised he was judging the best time. Then, as the boat started to fall, it also surged closer to the ship’s side. Tom saw his chance, stepped out from the rail and dropped down into the boat. He stumbled and fell between Josie and the men seated on the thwarts, but then he was up and sliding on to the seat at her side.

  ‘Shove off!’ At his bellow the men in bow and stern cast off the lines holding the boat to the ship and the men gripping the oars used them to push it clear of the Macbeth. Then the oars went into the rowlocks, the rowers bent to them and hauled. As the little craft moved out of the lee made by the Macbeth, its motion increased.

  ‘It’s easing!’ Tom shouted in Josie’s ear. ‘And it’s getting light!’ Josie wanted to believe him, and the darkness was turning to grey now, though there would be no hint of a sun rising this day. But to her mind the boat rode no better. The big seas rose in front of it like mountains of green glass, each one to be climbed to the crest. Then they would hang, poised on the crest, looking down into the dark valley below, and slide bow first into it.

  Tom fumbled beneath his seat in the sternsheets and hauled out a folded tarpaulin. He shook out its stiff folds and wrapped it around Josie and the inert Bucko Daniels. Josie said, ‘I thought I saw a ship – just before I came down into the boat.’

  ‘Where?’ Tom demanded. And as Josie pointed, he muttered, ‘There’s nothing to be seen now. Maybe when it’s lighter—’

  ‘She’s going!’

  ‘Aye, she’s going!’ The men at the oars spoke, looking over Josie’s head as they bent and pulled. She and Tom turned as one and saw the Macbeth roll completely over. Above the noise of the storm she heard a rumbling across the sea and one of the stokers said, ‘That’s her engines working loose and dropping out of her. She’ll flood now.’ On the heels of his words the bow of the Macbeth sank from sight and her stern lifted so they could see her single screw. Then she slid down and was gone in a hiss of steam.

  There was silence in the boat and then Tom said ha
rshly, ‘Watch your stroke, you men at the oars. You’re like a lot o’ bum-boat men. The rest of you start bailing.’

  Josie realised they were adrift in an open boat and any rescue would depend on a passing ship seeing them, just a dot on this wild ocean. And they had lost the Macbeth.

  22

  The light grew until it was full day, when it showed an empty sea. Tom muttered, ‘I can’t see any sign of that ship you thought you sighted.’

  Josie protested, ‘I only thought it was a ship. I thought I saw … something …’ Her voice trailed away. It was difficult now to recall just what she had seen.

  He looked around the green waste that now rolled in long, slow swells. The boat still rose and fell ten to twenty feet, but slowly, and it rode easily now as it took the seas on the bow. ‘I think we can steer towards where you saw it, anyway.’ He glanced down at the boat’s compass and eased over the tiller. The bow swung to the new heading and the motion increased as the seas broke against the side now, but Tom held the course and little water was shipped.

  Bucko Daniels was conscious now, sitting in the sternsheets on one side of Tom while Josie sat on the other. Josie thought he looked like some Sikh in his turban of white bandage. He had shrugged off the tarpaulin, refusing to wear it, and Josie sat with it wrapped stiffly around her. Despite its protection, she could feel her skirts clinging damply to her legs.

  The men pulled steadily at the oars. They were working in two shifts, one rowing while the others rested. For a while on the new heading they were cheerful and joking, encouraged by the thought that they were steering towards possible help and not just to keep the boat’s head to the sea to stay afloat. But as time went by and there was no sighting they grew quiet. Finally Tom sighed, ‘I think we would have seen her smoke by now if she was there.’

  ‘Maybe I was mistaken,’ said Josie in a small voice. ‘But I was sure I saw something.’