Lovers Meeting

by Irene Carr

  Tom explained, ‘It’s possible you did see a ship but she was more than likely steaming away from us and moving a sight faster than we are.’

  Josie shivered, from the chill dampness of her clothes and also from apprehension. She wondered how long they could survive in the North Sea in this weather. But, casting her mind back to when she had been standing by the wheelhouse, she was still sure. She persisted stubbornly, ‘I did see something, a long, low shape in the distance.’

  Tom nodded acceptance. ‘We’ll hold this course.’ And they did as the morning wore on and Josie sank gradually into a stupor of cold and misery.

  Until Tom stiffened in his seat beside her and a second later stood, holding the tiller against his leg, balancing as the boat rolled and pitched. He squinted against the wind, waiting as the boat rose on a wave, then he grinned and called down to the others, ‘There’s a ship!’ That brought a cheer and heads turned, but Tom said, ‘You won’t see it from down there. Just wait a while.’ He was silent a moment, then added slowly, ‘She doesn’t seem to be making any smoke.’ He glanced down at Josie. ‘That’s why we couldn’t see any. It’s strange, though.’

  He sank down on his seat again and now Josie sat up straight, peering ahead eagerly, looking for a first sight of this ship. Then she realised that Tom was watching her, and she was suddenly conscious of how she must look, wrapped in the tarpaulin and with her hair blown on the wind. She fixed her gaze on the sea ahead and blamed the wind for bringing the colour to her cheeks.

  ‘There it is!’ And Josie added, ‘That’s what I saw.’ It was no more than a black smudge, a blip on the horizon, but that was how it had appeared the previous night.

  A half-hour later Tom said, ‘It baffles me why she’s still here. There is some smoke’ – and there was just a wisp of it from the single tall funnel – ‘but she isn’t moving. There’s no bow wave, no wash at her stern. Her screw isn’t turning.’

  When they were close enough to read the ship’s name on her bow – Northern Queen – he cupped his hands around his mouth to bellow, ‘Ahoy!’ Then again and again, ‘Ahoy!’ But there was no answer. The ship lay still and silent in the water. He said, ‘I think she’s derelict. Her boats have gone and you can see the falls hanging from the davits where they lowered them.’ Josie saw the ‘falls’, the ropes by which the boats had been lowered. Now they hung from the davits that stuck out from the ship’s side like gibbets, so that the ropes dangled some feet out from the black and rusty wall.

  ‘She’s low in the water,’ Tom muttered. As the boat rose on a wave the deck of the ship was only a few feet above them. Then the ship lifted and the boat fell, the gap opened. As it rose again Tom called, ‘Lay hold of one o’ those lines!’

  Josie grabbed at the rope that swung by her side. Then, as the boat fell once more, dropping away from under her, she was yanked out of her seat and her nest in the tarpaulin. She clung to the rope and, looking down with horrified eyes, saw the boat filled with gaping men and the sea washing below her. She climbed. Reacting instinctively, remembering the far-off days in the woods of Geoffrey Urquhart’s country house with little Bob Miller, she twined her legs around the rope and shinned up it. At the top she desperately transferred her hold from the rope to the davit and slid down that to the deck. Only then did she seem to draw breath, and only then did she realise what she had done. She found with relief that her skirts had clung to her legs and not ridden above her knees, thus retaining her modesty.

  ‘Mrs Miller!’ Tom’s voice. Then the rope shook and a moment later his head appeared, eyes searching for her. He saw her with relief, swung across the davit and dropped to the deck beside her. ‘You’re not hurt?’ he questioned. Then, when she shook her head, he went on, ‘Why did you do that?’ And grinning now, ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes. You were like an acrobat in a circus.’

  ‘You said to grab a rope.’ Josie had been frightened and embarrassed and now was becoming angry. ‘Did you know that would happen?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘How dare you!’ And Josie slapped his face.

  It was not much of a slap because she had had little practice. Tom was not hurt, merely startled. As she swung her hand again, he caught it. ‘I knew that would happen as would any of the men in that boat, but I didn’t mean it to happen to you. I intended one of them to catch hold of the line and then pay it out, or haul in, to hold us alongside.’

  ‘Oh.’ Josie saw that it had been no more than a misunderstanding. She winced. ‘Please.’

  He let go of her wrist and she rubbed at the weals his fingers had left. He said stiffly, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  Josie managed a smile. ‘And I’m sorry I lost my temper.’

  ‘You must be tired.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ Josie saw that her hand had left its mark on his face. She reached up to stroke it gently with the tips of her fingers, as she might have comforted Charlotte. Then she remembered this was Tom Collingwood and dropped her hand.

  He said, ‘I’d better get the men aboard.’ He turned away and swung the davits inboard so that the ropes hung close against the ship’s side. The men climbed up and soon all of them were gathered on the deck of the Northern Queen. They were weary and empty-bellied, shivered in their wet clothing. Tom addressed them, his voice harsh and demanding: ‘You’ll get warm by working and you might stay alive that way. We’ll not hoist our boat in until we find out if this ship is sinking or not. She seems to have been deserted. We’d better find out why and what we can do with her. I want to know if she’s holed or making water some way and whether she can be steered, whether we can raise steam …’

  He had no orders for Josie. When the group scattered she set out on her own exploration and found the galley where she expected it to be, in the superstructure amidships and alongside the saloon where the captain and his officers would eat. The galley stove was still alight – just – and she added more coal, pulled out the damper and soon it was roaring with life. Meanwhile she washed, found a comb in a little pocket in her dress and examined the contents of the cupboards. Soon she was able to step outside the galley again, looking for Tom Collingwood. She didn’t see him but caught Dougie Bickerstaffe as he hurried by. ‘Dougie! Do you know where Captain Collingwood is?’

  ‘Up forrard. I saw him a minute ago.’

  ‘Will you tell him I have some tea and sandwiches for everyone, please.’

  ‘Oh, aye, ma’am.’ Dougie trotted away.

  In a few minutes he returned with all the others, including Tom, and they gathered in or around the galley. They wolfed sandwiches and gulped the hot tea, each mug coloured and sweetened by a spoonful of condensed milk. Josie stood slender and comparatively trim among the ruffian crew. All were wearing old clothes for working at sea and were blear-eyed from tiredness, unwashed, unshaven and filthy. The black gang from the engine-room were particularly so, coated with coal dust and oil. They all smelt of sweat, salt and smoke.

  Tom summed up the results of their investigations, talking as he ate, staccato and urgent: ‘Her steering’s intact. She’s taken a lot of water aboard but I can’t tell how fast she’s making it. I think most of the trouble lies in the number one hold forrad. The seas battered through the hatch covers and it’s full. I think her captain and crew thought she was going to sink – that would be easy to believe with the weather we had last night – and so they took to the boats. I pray that they are safe but I doubt it. The chances in an open boat with these seas are not good.

  ‘Now, Joe Kelly’ – and he glanced at the little engineer in his boiler suit – ‘tells me the fires are still burning and he can raise enough steam in an hour or two to give us steerage way.’ A shivering Joe nodded agreement and Tom said, ‘One more thing. I’ve had a look at the barometer and what it told me matches with what I see out there.’ He pointed over the weather rail. Josie and the others looked out in that direction and saw the black storm clouds massing again on the horizon. Tom said grimly, ‘The b
ad weather hasn’t finished with us yet. I want you to bear that in mind.’

  He paused to give them a second or two to think about what he had said, then went on, ‘We have a choice. We can stay aboard her, fight to keep her afloat and risk her sinking under us, but I don’t think she will. Or we can get back into the boat and hope for a rescue.’

  He swallowed the last of his tea and passed the empty mug to Josie. Their hands touched briefly and their eyes met.

  ‘I don’t want to get into the boat again,’ Josie said primly. Then, as they stared at her: ‘And then there’s the way I have to get out. I’d rather stay here.’ There was silence for a second and then hoarse guffaws.

  Tom grinned, realised he had been forgiven and looked around. ‘Is that how you all feel?’

  He got a rumbling chorus of ‘Aye!’

  Tom started again to drive the weary men on. He gave his orders: ‘We want steam, Joe, as soon as you can. And the pumps working, the donkey-engine to hoist in the boat. We need timber for the hatch on number one hold, hammers, nails and canvas …’

  Josie went back to the galley. She did not need to be told what to do. During the next two hours the boat was hoisted in, the pumps started to suck some of the water out of the Northern Queen and the broken hatch covers forward were repaired. Josie worked in the galley, cautiously because the rolling of the ship – which had never ceased – gradually worsened. She was wary of being scalded by some pan hurled from the stove despite the ‘fiddles’ around it, designed to prevent just that. Every few minutes her gaze was drawn to the scuttle that gave her a view of the distant skyline and the approaching storm.

  She finished with the stove just in time. And just in time she felt the first tremor through the gratings under her feet, heard the rumbling, regular, thump, thump! of the engines turning over. She ran outside on to the deck, looked up and saw Tom in the wheelhouse on the bridge. The Northern Queen was under way. And the storm was upon them again. Josie saw the black shadow of the first squall sweeping over the sea towards her, then it was on her with a cold wind that snatched at her skirts and hurled a spatter of rain into her face.

  Josie waved at Tom up on the bridge and saw him lift a hand from the wheel to reply, then she ran back to the galley. She had cooked a pie made from corned beef, and a jam tart. She served the meal in the saloon that was next to the galley and the men ate in shifts as they could be spared from their work. Tom came last, leaving Bucko Daniels at the wheel. Josie staggered in from the galley, bearing the hot plate held in a cloth and balancing against the roll and pitch of the ship. As she set his meal before him, Tom stared. ‘I thought it would be sandwiches again.’

  ‘Tomorrow it may be,’ Josie replied darkly. ‘I can’t use the stove in this weather.’ But she did. Over the next six hours she twice boiled water to make hot drinks for the men, steadying the kettle on the stove with one hand swathed in a cloth, while holding on to the solidly fixed galley table with the other. The sea pounded the ship. She had closed the dead-lights over the scuttles so she could not see out, but she could hear the smash of the seas against them and against the door of the galley.

  The storm growled away as the day died. Josie slowly realised that the ship was not rolling so badly, she was steadier. The howling of the wind had dropped to a whisper. Her legs trembled but it was not from continual bracing to keep her balance but from tiredness. She was in a daze of weariness when she ventured out on to the deck and found the sea still rising and falling in long slow humps and valleys but not whipped into mountainous waves by the wind.

  She fetched yet another mug of tea and climbed to the bridge. Tom Collingwood, standing tall and rock steady at the wheel, turned to blink red-eyed at her. Josie said, ‘I’ve brought you a drink.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He let go of the wheel with one hand to gulp at the tea.

  Josie asked, ‘Are we going to stay afloat?’

  ‘Aye.’ Tom nodded and grinned at her.

  ‘You’re tired.’ She knew how she felt.

  ‘Aye, but I could go for another twenty-four hours. I won’t need to, though. Bucko will be up in another half-hour. Then I’ll sleep for a bit.’ He drained the mug and handed it back to her. ‘You do the same, Mrs Miller. You’ve earned it. Find a cabin and get some sleep.’

  Josie was too tired to argue, did not want to. She turned away, but as she reached the head of the ladder leading down to the deck he called after her, ‘You’ve been a first-class hand, Mrs Miller.’ Josie laughed. First-class hand, indeed!

  She found a cabin with its bunk neatly made up. Suits of clothes hung behind a curtain in one corner and a small chest of drawers held clean shirts and socks. The cabin looked as if it waited for its owner to return. Then Josie realised that the owner had probably drowned. She borrowed a robe that hung behind the door but would not touch the other clothes. She washed herself and her clothes in a bowl she found in the galley, behind its locked door, and hung the clothes above the stove to dry. Then she handed Bucko Daniels a mug of tea as he went up to the bridge and told him, ‘Call me when you come off watch, please.’ Because she had no clock, let alone an alarm.

  ‘Righto, Mrs Miller.’

  In the cabin she bolted the door and took off the robe, shivering as she remembered its owner. She crawled into the bunk naked, curled up small because of the cold at first, but the heat of her body soon dispelled that and exhaustion brought sleep rushing down on her.

  Her last thought was: First-class hand. She fell asleep smiling.

  ‘Mrs Miller! Mrs Miller! You asked me to call you!’ Bucko’s voice came hoarsely through the cabin door.

  ‘Yes, I’m awake!’ Josie lied. She had been jerked from sleep by his hammering at the door and now it took a huge effort to get up from the bunk. How long had she slept? Four hours, the length of the mate’s watch on the bridge. It felt more like four minutes. Yawning, she pulled on the robe and her shoes. In the galley she washed and dressed in the clothes that had baked dry over the stove. They looked as she had expected them to look but in the absence of an iron she grimaced and carried on.

  She prepared a meal and set it to cook then made two mugs of tea and carried them up to the bridge. As she handed a mug to Tom Collingwood she said, ‘It seems calmer.’ The sea was smooth and the Northern Queen was rising and falling gently as her blunt bow butted into the waves.

  ‘This swell is fading away.’ Tom sipped at the tea. ‘I’ve had men checking the level of the water in her every hour and we’re gaining; the pumps are sucking more out of her than is coming in. We’re making seven knots and we’ll be home and dry tomorrow.’

  Feet thumped on the ladder and Dougie Bickerstaffe appeared on the bridge. ‘’Scuse me, Skipper, Mrs Miller, but the chaps are asking if we’re putting in to Blyth or the Tyne?’

  Tom chuckled. ‘To hell with that. We’re putting in to neither and taking her home.’

  ‘Aw! That’s champion!’ Dougie dropped down the ladder to report the good news, and Josie followed. She went back to her task of feeding the men and making unending jugs of tea all through the day. Then she slept again, soundly, and woke in the night still ready to sleep but puzzled at what had awakened her. Then she heard boots clumping on the bridge ladder and realised the watch was changing. She got up and dressed, went to the galley and made tea, then took the two mugs to the bridge.

  The wheelhouse was dark save for the glow from the compass binnacle which lit Tom’s face dimly. It hung, eyes gleaming in shadows, over the wheel which he gripped with one hand while reaching for the mug with the other. He smiled at Josie. ‘You’ll be glad to get ashore.’

  ‘I will.’ She was definite about it and they both laughed. Then, scanning his face, realising that the shadows around his eyes were not all due to the light, she said, ‘There’s a chair just here.’ It stood to one side of the wheel and was about four feet high, with a cushion on the seat and a step that would serve as a footrest.

  ‘Captain’s chair,’ explained Tom. ‘He could sit in
that and look out over the screen.’

  ‘Well, could I steer? Then you could sit in that chair for a rest.’

  He glanced at her, startled by the suggestion. ‘Steer? You?’

  ‘Why not? Does it need a lot of strength?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘not when the sea is like this.’

  ‘Or skill?’

  ‘Not when—’ He broke off from repeating himself. Instead he looked across from the compass card, studying her for some seconds. Then: ‘What if I say no?’

  ‘I’ll go back to bed.’

  He grinned. ‘All right. Come here.’ He set her behind the wheel with her hands on the spokes. Josie was nervous at first but then interested as he taught her, standing close behind her, his hands on hers, swallowing them. And after a time he stepped back and said, mildly surprised, ‘You seem to have got the idea.’ Josie had shown that she had got it some time ago. He climbed on to the chair and settled down to watching over her. He said little and once or twice he dozed for a minute or two to jerk awake and sit up straight, blinking. He would rub at his jaw and the black stubble that now bristled thick there rasped under his hand.

  They were together on the bridge when the sun came up. He took the wheel from her then and steered for the mouth of the River Wear and Sunderland. He said, ‘You know what this will mean to us?’

  ‘Yes.’ And she told him.

  He nodded. ‘Charlotte is going to be all right.’

  Josie reached up to pull his head down. She kissed him, not caring about the stubble, then ran back to her galley. The men, and Tom among them, would want breakfast. She went at it singing.

  Tugs nudged the Northern Queen alongside the quay and Tom Collingwood rang down ‘Finished with engines’ on the engine-room telegraph. The ship lay still and he climbed down from the bridge, his weariness forgotten in the exhilaration of bringing her in – and knowing his mind and heart now. He knew what he wanted and who he wanted. Then he saw the sunlight glinting on the big Blakemore motor car standing on the quay. His lips tightened and he looked for Felicity but did not see her. He recognised her maid, Susie, standing by the car, and now Jarvis, the chauffeur, was coming up the gangway Bucko Daniels and the hands had just rigged. He looked for Tom and handed him an envelope. ‘From Miss Felicity, sir.’