Touched by Angels

by Alan Watts

  The carpets were soft, thick twist wool. The sheets on the beds were gold silk and lace. There was even a teak writing desk, and a marble fireplace with a large oval mirror above.

  Robert was soon drawn to one of the square portholes, each side of the dressing table, having heard muffled shouts, brass bands and the sounds of engines. From somewhere came the chirp of a mouth organ. He saw a tug, with Vulcan on its side, pulling them away from the quay.

  It was absorbing enough, but he wanted to go on deck instead, and be part of the real excitement.

  Lil dashed it immediately, by snapping, “We’ll not venture out, not ’til we’re far out to sea, and that’s final! I have explained.”

  She was looking at herself in the mirror as she pulled her gloves off.

  “But we’re leaving port. Even if he is there…”

  “They have a wireless on board. If the police are with him, they may be able to communicate with the ship and get us that way, as they did with Dr Crippen.” She started brushing her hair.

  Robert was silent as he continued to gaze out at the broad stretch of water. Across the water, they could see a smaller ship with the name New York on its side, its decks crowded with spectators. As they drew closer, there were barely eighty feet between them and Robert said, “Mum, look!”

  When she looked closer, she felt frightened all over again. The little ship was moving quickly towards them, stern first, drawn by the wake of the much bigger liner they were part of.

  They heard sounds like gunshots, which were its mooring ropes snapping.

  The ship came so close, she found herself pacing backwards, certain they would collide.

  Soon, they passed into the English Channel, making for Cherbourg in France to pick up more passengers, many of them American.

  Only then did they make their way to the poop deck at the stern, where they stood for a long time, feeling the wash of the salty wind against their skin. Lil’s hair streamed out behind in hues of gold, as they watched the Isle of Wight melt into the haze.

  Groups of children were playing nearby, with one boy yanking a string to set a top spinning. Robert grinned as he watched and clapped when he finally succeeded. The boy bowed to him like a matador.

  As they dressed for the evening though, Lil’s imagination took flight. She could not dispel the thought of that wireless. In her mind’s eye, it took on the form of a mind-boggling beacon of communication, decades beyond the primitive, unreliable thing she had read that it really was.

  What, she wondered, if there were also private detectives on board, disguised as guests? Thinking of Sir Rupert and Alistair King, she saw very clearly the huge reward promised for their capture, even at this late hour. For all she knew, the Kings might even have sufficient clout and funds to have the ship do an about turn, as had happened with Crippen. She knew her only hope was to embellish her new role as Mrs Brookes. After all, they only had to get through the next few days, and then they would be free.

  She sat Robert down and told him that not only were they Mrs Frances Brookes and her son, but that they were travelling, ultimately, to Boston, Massachusetts, to be with her husband, who was a wealthy investment broker.

  They were considering a permanent relocation to America, to make life easier for him, and had been on a horse-buying trip in Hampshire, where he had contacts in the know, because he had insisted that English thoroughbreds were the best.

  It was, quite deliberately, a simple enough yarn with not too much to remember, and she was sure Robert would be able to stick to it. She made him repeat it back to her several times, to be sure.

  She went through it one more time, as she stood on the poop deck, in a dress of glimmering jade chiffon, with a necklace of gleaming emeralds around her neck.

  “Now remember,” she said, as she turned the doorknob, “speak nicely, and only when spoken to.”

  He nodded.

  Forty

  They ate in the first class dining saloon, while a string quintet rasped away in the middle, sitting in one of the Jacobean-style alcoves, with a mixed bag of Americans and English.

  All, without exception, were completely unlike the staid, priggish stereotypes of her imagination. Indeed, the huge American man sitting opposite, next to a handsome, uniformed officer, wasted no time introducing himself.

  “Isidor Straus, at your service, Ma’am,” he said with a flourish and Lil started a little at the accent she had never heard before. “And you most certainly are, may I tell you, the most delectable dame aboard, ’cept for my Ida here of course.” He laughed and beamed across his big sweating face.

  Lil was about to speak, when Ida, an attractive woman herself, who Lil guessed to be in her forties, rebuked quietly, “Isidor, rein in that wicked tongue o’ yours! The young lady is bashful.”

  Lil felt a faint flush cross her cheeks.

  “See how you have made her blush? You know how reserved the English are. Now you leave her be.”

  She smiled apologetically.

  As they ate their first course, of cream of barley soup, any remaining ice was broken when Robert asked the officer, “How do you steer a ship this big? With a wooden wheel like Nelson?”

  The question attracted good natured laughter from all and Ida clapped her hands saying, “Isn’t he just a dear?”

  “Yes, in a way, we do,” said the officer. “It’s attached to a bronze pedestal, called a telemotor. It’s linked hydraulically with the steering mechanism in the stern. This in turn, steers the rudder.”

  He turned his attention to Lil, and said, “He’s a bright young man… Oh, please forgive me. Joseph Boxhall, Fourth Officer.”

  He took her hand, and shook it gently.

  “Mrs Frances Brookes,” she replied.

  Straus asked, as he cut the tip off a huge cigar with a silver cutter, “Where d’you hail from?”

  Ida gave him an acid stare, but this time, he ignored it.

  By now, all ears were tuned in, as she relayed the story she and Robert had rehearsed.

  Straus nodded and said, “Uh-hu,” a few times, as he lit the thing, before blowing a thick stream of blue towards the ornate ceiling. Then he threw his shoulders back and started talking about horses too.

  Several tables heard how his Daddy had been a rancher down in Texas, and how he had ridden his first pony at four, even learning to fire a Winchester rifle from one, without the kick knocking him off.

  “Why, by the time I was your age, boy, I could hit a circle on a barn door two feet across, from more than thirty yards!”

  By this time, Robert was all ears, leaning over the table, completely absorbed. Lil began to sweat, thinking he would start asking questions she would be ill-equipped to answer, but luckily, Robert came to the rescue once more, by asking, “Do you live on a ranch too?”

  Straus looked a little embarrassed, as he replied, quietly, “Hell… no, son. Cain’t ride at all n’more, on account o’… well…”

  “He gets the sneezes, the poor dear,” Ida said primly, and Isidor choked on his cigar and turned the colour of a ripe tomato.

  Now the laughter roared, and Isidor wheezed, “Oh honey! Our secret an’ all. Cain’t a man have some pride?” He dabbed his watering eyes.

  When the laughter had died down, the attention focused on Boxhall, and he was flooded with questions.

  “How much does the ship weigh?” Robert asked.

  “Forty-five thousand gross tons, half as big again as Cunard’s Lusitania, and a hundred feet longer, at eight hundred and ninety feet.”

  “What about the anchors?”

  “Two of them, at fifteen and a half tons each.”

  Straus whistled and asked, “How in the name of damnation did they get them to the ship yard? I saw one when we boarded, hanging beneath the forecastle deck – it looked like a kid’s toy.”

  “Twenty dray horses per item,” Boxhall told him, “and a crane a third as big as the Eiffel Tower to lift them.”

  “What about the propellers?”
asked a thin, retired surgeon at the end, as the chandelier glinted from his monocle.

  In his element, Boxhall smiled, as he leaned back in the sumptuous comfort of his chair. He rakishly lit a cigarette.

  “Three of them. Sixteen feet across, copper alloy, forty-five tons apiece.”

  The statistics flooded from him. About two thousand two hundred people on board. Ten months to fit the interior installations, and several million man-hours to perform them. Fourteen thousand men built her. Many were injured. Some died. Twenty-three tons of tallow, train oil and soft soap were needed to grease the ways as the ship was launched.

  He told the gathering, that in spite of the ship’s vast size, the launch had taken just sixty-two seconds, and that six anchor chains, plus two piles of drag chains, weighing eighty tons each were needed to help slow her down. She had nevertheless reached twelve knots before striking the water.

  When the gasps of awe had subsided, Straus laughed and said, as he looked around, “As I ’spected. Not a single question from a dame. No offence, Ma’am,” he said to Lil, as he stuck his chin out, “but as my Daddy always said…” and here he leaned forward, his face a grinning, sweating moon, “… it’s the fellas who do all the thinkin’.”

  After a long guffaw, he leaned back, winked at Robert, and several of the men nodded and laughed in accord.

  Ida glared, and mouthed at him to be quiet, before Lil asked, very quietly, “How many lifeboats, Mr Boxhall?”

  The chatter slowed and then died at several surrounding tables.

  Boxhall had been putting a fresh cigarette to his lips. His face clouded over, as he admitted a little quietly, “I’m er… I’m not rightly sure. Thirteen… fourteen. Something… something like that. Not that we’ll need them, of course.” He smiled thinly, though the maths that went through everybody’s minds didn’t need vocalising.

  Boxhall tried not to show his relief when Robert announced, “I would love to see the crow’s nest.”

  He invited Lil and Robert on a tour of the ship the following day as by then, they would be crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and he would have a couple of hours free.

  That night, they retired to their beds euphoric, but so exhausted, they were asleep in minutes.

  Forty-one

  The next day, they anchored off a place called Roche’s Point, near Queenstown in Southern Ireland, to pick up more passengers and bags of mail, where the crowds were as ecstatic as those in Southampton, if not quite as numerous.

  Then the ship nosed its way into the Atlantic Ocean, and, under Boxhall’s guidance, Lil and Robert explored it from the poop deck to the forecastle deck, and every square foot of space in between. The only blot was that the First Officer forbade Robert a trip into the crow’s nest, saying it was too dangerous.

  They visited the bridge and then the wheelhouse, where the Quartermaster, Robert Hichens, allowed Robert to take the wheel.

  There were smiles as he remarked it was nowhere near as big as he had thought it would be. He had a lot of difficulty believing it could steer a ship weighing as much as Boxhall had said.

  He even met the Captain himself, but felt a little tense as he shook his hand; and not just because he reminded him of Mr MacPherson, the grocer on Cross Street, but because a ship’s captain had always occupied a very aloof place in his imagination.

  The thick white beard and gleaming medals pinned to his white tunic added to the mystique, as he said, shaking Robert’s hand, “Captain Edward Smith.”

  All eyes were on him, as Robert replied nervously, “Robert… er… Robert Brookes. And… this is my mum.”

  “Enjoying the voyage, young man?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Robert said, unable to bring his voice above or below a level plane.

  As they made their way back out onto A deck, they heard him demanding if a pair of lost binoculars had been found yet. After learning they hadn’t, he snapped, “Then for Heaven’s sake, show some initiative, man! Hunt for them, properly! We must have them, before the ice.”

  Seeming relieved to be out of the line of fire, Boxhall took them to see the compass platform, amidships, from where he explained most of the navigation was conducted.

  The last place he took them to, at Lil’s request, was the wireless room, and she sagged in relief the moment she clapped eyes on it. It was a heap of brass, wires and dials, with a very stressed and uncertain looking man sitting before it. If anything, it looked dangerous.

  “It’s more of a novelty, really,” Boxhall told them, seeming a trifle embarrassed at the contraption, “it’ll never catch on, er…” He looked around and said, half-playfully, “but don’t tell the captain I said that.” He winked and they both laughed.

  He gave them a short lecture about Morse Code, the only sort of conversation it seemed capable of, when it worked.

  “Dots and dashes,” he said, “with each letter of the alphabet made up of a combination thereof.” He chuckled. “I mean, I ask you! I’m hopeless at it myself, though Mr Philips here, I’m sure, will very kindly astound you with his speed and dexterity. I’m rather envious, if truth be known. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give him a message to tap out. We’ll see if you can guess what it is.”

  He scribbled something on a thick pad, beside the wireless, whilst keeping his back to them. Then, as if he’d thought of something more appropriate, he crunched it up and tossed it in a wire basket, before writing another.

  He passed it to Philips, who tapped it out in a blur.

  “Well,” he asked grinning, when the clicking stopped, “can you guess?”

  They both shrugged, so he said to Robert, as he passed the slip of paper to him, “Aloud, if you please.”

  “We are sinking fast,” Robert recited, “all vessels please make haste. Save our souls. Thirty-six degrees North. Forty-eight degrees East.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears.

  “All those words in just a few seconds?”

  Philips grinned too, as he removed his head phones, and said, “Good, eh? Don’t worry. I didn’t send it.”

  “And nor should we ever,” Boxhall reminded them, “as you know, the ship is damn near unsinkable, on account of its double skin.”

  “Very impressive,” Lil told him, feeling anything but impressed.

  As they were leaving the little room, Robert stooped on the pretext of tying his shoelace and retrieved the discarded note from the bin. It said, “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I wish I could marry you.”

  Though shocked, he could only admire the man’s taste, as he took them to the Café Parisien, to take tea. He watched his mother in awe, as Boxhall chatted with her, but vowed never to tell her.

  Forty-two

  Friday and Saturday seemed to vanish in a blur.

  Lil and Robert raced each other along the length of the ship, through the enclosed promenades of both first and second class, laughing as they went. Their footfalls echoed from the walls and ceilings.

  In the restaurant that evening, they heard talk of a professional thief, and that several wealthy ladies had been relieved of various items of jewellery, and that other valuables had disappeared from the suites of the well-to-do.

  Lil had stirred upon hearing this, thinking of the suitcase. She had not considered this possibility, such was the rush she had been in to get away.

  The dinner party had been organised by George and Eleanor Widener of Pennsylvania, who were among the richest people on board, and Captain Smith, an honoured guest, sat at the far end, though he had said very little and seemed preoccupied.

  Next to him sat Major Archibald Butt, the American President’s aide-de-camp, who listened to the exchange with interest.

  Lil and Robert had been invited, at the insistence of Isidor and Ida Straus, mostly because Ida had taken a shine to Robert. Lil had dressed him appropriately, in a sailor suit, and Ida gazed at him benevolently.

  Lil was a little embarrassed that Robert had been unable to take his gaze from Eleanor Widener, t
hough she could see why. She had never seen such a beautiful woman in her life, and when she spoke, her voice was like indigo velvet.

  “Have you had anything taken?” she asked Lil, as the chandelier glinted from a band of diamonds circling her neck.

  “No, not yet,” Lil replied, thinking how easy it would be to break into their suite. She herself wore a necklace of rubies to complement her purple evening gown.

  “But we will be on our guard from now on.”

  “Wonder who he is,” Ida said, sipping champagne and looking around.

  “It’s kinda obvious,” George replied, cutting a cigar, “It’s this young fella.” He nodded at Robert, whilst winking at Lil.

  A steward stepped forward to light his cigar. Ida kicked George under the table, and he grunted, making Robert laugh.

  “Perhaps it ain’t a fella,” Major Butt pointed out grimly, “maybe it’s a dame.”

  This uncomfortable possibility brought a moment of silence, as he polished his spectacles on a napkin, but Eleanor Widener was having none of it.

  “I firmly believe that all of the female members of First Class are ladies first and foremost. They would never stoop to such treachery, as might those lesser beings beneath decks.”

  “I agree,” Ida said, and began to tell the gathering about a book she had read by an eminent psychiatrist, that effectively quashed the theory completely.

  Major Butt simply grunted and painfully aware of acid looks from various females, shrugged and sipped his wine.

  Captain Smith stood at about nine o’clock and announced, “I will make it my business to pull out all stops in our efforts to apprehend the culprit. I sincerely hope the thief is not a crew member.”

  With that, he thanked the Wideners for such a pleasant evening, and excused himself, by saying, “Duty calls.”

  The comment brought polite laughter, and soon, seeing that Robert was barely able to keep his eyes open, and by now worried about her valuables, Lil made her own excuses and retired.

  ***

  On Sunday morning, dressed in their very best, they attended a Church of England service, presided over by Captain Smith, and then in the evening, a hymn-sing in the second class dining saloon.