Touched by Angels

by Alan Watts

  It was presided over by a man who introduced himself as Reverend Ernest Carter, who turned out to be the vicar of the Poor Parish Church of St Jude’s in East London.

  Lil recognised him immediately, though she didn’t think he had noticed her, probably because of her new-found status.

  People from her background simply didn’t rise to these dizzying heights!

  She had seen him several times at the head of Temperance Society marches, mostly comprised of dour ladies in black, holding aloft banners, condemning the ‘Demon Drink’, as they sang forth such pious hymns as ‘My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord’.

  He bade them pray for his underprivileged ‘flock’ back home, and in particular, little Josiah Edwards, who had died aged three, of scarlet fever. A few tears were shed.

  “Let us pray for the soul of the thief on board, and that he may search his conscience, before the Day of Reckoning,” continued Carter.

  A man somewhere at the back said, “Needs ’ors whippin’, the bugger, not prayin’ fer!”

  There were several grunts of assent, though an embarrassed “Sssshhh!” followed.

  When the prayers had finished, a lady called Marion Wright sang ‘Lead kindly light’, to the accompaniment of an upright piano, and Carter explained afterwards that it was written as the result of a vessel wrecked in the Atlantic.

  Lil thought this was not a detail calculated to engender confidence, particularly in view of the number of lifeboats available and that perilous-looking thing they used for long-distance communication. She said nothing.

  Then they retired to their beds, while in a starkly different world, far below the waterline, a very fraught card game was in progress.

  Forty-three

  This was a world the passengers never saw. For most it didn’t even exist, yet without it, the ship was dead in the water.

  Second Engineer James Hesketh called the place ‘the Midnight World’, a terrible place of risk, noise and fumes that brought headaches and nausea. It was a world populated by ‘midnight men’, with black faces, from which bright eyes stared, and white teeth grinned.

  Leading Stoker Fred Barrett, who hated losing, fumed as he gazed at his hand, where not a single card had a higher value than the five of clubs. He never seemed to win these days.

  His eyes shone like beacons, as he snarled, “Shit!” and tossed them on the upturned crate they were sitting round.

  The sixteen-year-old Stoke Hand sitting opposite, who had no card less than a Jack, grinned, as he took the five pennies Fred had bet, and kissed them, before dropping them in his top pocket.

  “You should pray more,” he said.

  Fred reached out and cuffed him playfully, before snarling at the others, “Little sod’ll beggar me by time we’re docked.”

  The others laughed through cigarettes clamped between their teeth, so he added, “And you buggers too,” attracting more laughter, and coughing from Angus the Scot, who was the oldest member of the tribe.

  Angus touched a match to an ancient black pipe, so clogged he could barely smoke it. He regarded them disapprovingly through watering blue eyes, framed with bushy white eyebrows.

  Angus always watched, but never played. He had told them repeatedly that cards were the ‘Seeds of the Devil’, and that damnation awaited them, unless they cast them asunder.

  They played a few more hands and at last Barrett gazed at a King, two Queens, and a ten. He had to swallow carefully, so as not to give himself away.

  “I’ll raise,” he said, almost in a whisper. He put another three pennies on the crate and the boy did the same. He picked another card. It was a Jack. He bit his lip. The boy picked a card.

  His face and shoulders dropped and Barrett said, “I’m done. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “No, you first,” the boy said miserably, laying his four cards on the crate, face down.

  “All right!” Barrett said, throwing his down face up. “There, beat that, you little bastard!” He grinned through the black.

  The boy slowly and deliberately turned his cards over and fanned them out. There were four aces.

  Barrett’s chin nearly hit the floor.

  The laughter was so raucous, nobody could stand. Even Angus had to grin through pink gums.

  That was when a screeching sound reverberated through the ship so loudly, they all clamped their hands to their ears.

  Angus’s pipe fell to the deck and skittered off.

  A red warning light came on, with the Stop indicator on and Fred muttered, “Jesus!” before shouting, “Shut all dampers!”

  The noise was deafening and seemed to go on and on.

  When it tapered off, there was a rapid popping noise, like a low-powered machine gun. Only Fred and old Angus recognised it as the sound of rivets blasting out, fast enough to go clean through a man.

  As they stood, one of them caught the crate by his knees, tipping it over, sending the cards and coins slipping and tinkling in all directions.

  Angus muttered, “Iceberg, I’ll wager. She’ll not be happy.”

  By the clock, it was twenty minutes shy of midnight.

  Forty-four

  All but Fred, who against the odds would make his way to the top, had about fifteen terror-filled minutes left to live, while on B deck, Robert Smith blinked away a dream.

  He had been back in Rice Lane, laughing as he ran through the mud, chased by Mr McPherson, with a length of rope clutched in his hand. There were five of them. They had splintered the moment he had given chase, so he could only pursue one, and he had picked on him. The others were doubled up laughing, relieved it wasn’t them.

  The screeching noise had woken him, together with several jolts that had made the crystal of the small chandelier tinkle.

  He was half awake, instinctively frightened.

  “Mum?”

  She muttered something.

  “Mum!”

  He heard her stirring, a rustling noise, then the harsh electric bulbs lit the cabin, making him squint.

  She was looking at him through half-closed eyes, but then they snapped open as she heard shouting, bells ringing and muffled oaths and screams.

  “Something’s happening,” he said, staring at the curtains, which seemed to be hanging at a weird angle.

  She muttered, semi-dreamily, “God has decided to punish us.”

  Robert watched her as he scrabbled for his trousers, his heart whamming as he slipped into them… and then the lights went out.

  She yelped and Robert said, “We’re going down, aren’t we?”

  She was about to reply when the lights flickered on again, and they saw that in that brief interlude, the cabin had tilted even more towards either fore or aft. She never knew which was which, though she knew they were sinking fast.

  “Come on, get dressed. We must go…”

  As she was pulling on an ankle length skirt, there was sudden hammering on the door. A clipped voice called through, “Make your way to A deck, orderly and calmly.”

  Then they heard the same voice giving the same instruction to the next cabin along. Robert had barely tied his shoes, when he asked, “What about the money?”

  She pulled the suitcase from under her bed and hefted it onto the mattress.

  Above the surrounding din, they could hear muted bangs and the rending and squealing of metal tearing far below.

  Oddly, through it all, they could also hear one of the string ensembles playing somewhere close by.

  “If the lights go out again, it might be for good,” Lil said.

  “Come on then!” Robert growled, with terror in his eyes.

  He grabbed her hand and started pulling.

  ***

  She looked at him, seeing his hair was unkempt. Absurdly, she wanted to brush it.

  She pulled the door open a crack and saw a sight she would never forget.

  Two manservants and three maids were following a lady attired from head to toe in red silk and lace. Her hair was piled
up, with a choker of gold set with jewels around her neck, carrying a closed pink parasol, trimmed with purple feathers. Her arm was gloved to the elbow in white lace. They recognised her as Eleanor Widener.

  It was only as the ship lurched suddenly and a couple more bangs whacked up like thunder, from beneath them, that Lil found her senses.

  Robert said, sounding tearful, “Mum, we’ll die if we stay.”

  They walked out, seeing the corridor was almost empty, meaning most of the people had made their way up to the lifeboats.

  When they had found their way there, they felt the biting cold of the North Atlantic. In seconds, their fingers and the tips of their noses were numb.

  Robert grinned, as he saw a bright flash in the sky, towards the stern, followed a second later by a deafening crack, which made the air jolt back and forth.

  He muttered happily, “Fireworks!”

  His grin faded, though, as he was being pushed and jostled by adults a hair’s breadth from panic.

  They could hear other children crying, and a woman screaming something jumbled about her baby, though it was engulfed as another rocket shrieked up into the black.

  Lil was confused. There was no order at all, though she knew what had happened, seeing the vague outline of giant icebergs in the sea around them. Some were so vast, they blotted out the millions of stars.

  The water was strewn with other, more numerous chunks, some as big as houses.

  Fourteen lifeboats… maybe thirteen. Two thousand two hundred people. A crew that didn’t know its knee from its elbow. Lost binoculars. A wireless that… well… she tried not to think about it. She was gripping both the bag and Robert’s hand so hard, he was wincing.

  She was suddenly shoved so hard, she found herself sprawling on the deck, heaving for breath. Her neck twinged, where her head had snapped back and she was briefly dazed.

  All around were a sea of shoes, darting this way and that. A pair of spectacles crunched as somebody stepped on them. The suitcase had slithered a couple of feet ahead. In spite of terrible pain between her shoulders, she reached out and pulled it back. If they survived, it contained their whole future… but where was Robert?

  Her eyes were instantly flicking everywhere. She had been holding his hand. One of the ship’s crew helped her up. She looked around frantically.

  He was gone.

  Forty-five

  The pain vanished. She turned in a complete circle, not twice, but endless times, looking from face to face. Her heart was hammering. She tried to calm herself down, knowing he couldn’t have got far and that he would be on the lookout for her too.

  She guessed from the slope of the deck that the ship could sink soon though with the din coming up from the depths, she knew it could break apart at any moment and go much quicker.

  She bawled out his name, but she might as well have been trying to shout above the sound of Big Ben. Soon her throat hurt from shouting.

  The panic on deck was complete. Others too had been knocked over and several were unconscious. A few were fighting. A man was crawling around blindly, groping for his spectacles. He screamed as somebody stepped on one of his fingers, breaking it.

  She started running, flitting in and out of people and pushing a few, not caring a damn about them, wanting only to see her son and fling her arms around him. At the same time, she knew it would be foolhardy to leave the immediate area and go searching further afield.

  There was no sign of him at all.

  Crewmen were linking arms to try and stem the mayhem.

  She saw an officer threatening some of the crowd with a revolver.

  He fired two shots in the air, and with that, she saw Robert’s face appear between the linked arms and she darted forward screaming, “Let him through. He’s mine.”

  They broke their barrier for a split second and the boy ran through, straight into Lil’s embrace.

  She almost crushed the wind out of him, she was so relieved.

  A man’s voice said, “You’d better head for the lifeboats, madam. Half are already taken.”

  When she turned to see who it was, he had gone.

  “From now on,” she said, sobbing and almost shouting, “stick to me like glue. Promise me!”

  She shook him, but he was unresponsive. He was completely silent, his face utterly blank and she knew he was almost petrified with fear. Holding both his hand and the suitcase, this time double tight, she started making her way to the nearest lifeboat, already three quarters full.

  She was dismayed to see that one, already on the swell below, had only twelve people inside. There was easily room for four times as many.

  Then, as she was wondering how long somebody would last if they remained immersed in the freezing sea here, she felt something hard in the middle of her back.

  It felt like the muzzle of a gun.

  A man’s breath was hot on her neck, while her own was locked in her throat.

  Forty-six

  He muttered, an inch from her ear, “Let go or I’ll kill you here and now. There’s none to save you.”

  “There’s nothing in it, just…”

  “Don’t turn around!”

  “That man was right, you should be whi…”

  He pushed the gun even harder until it was hurting.

  “All right… all right!” She let go, trying hard not to be sick.

  “Thank you. Wasn’t hard, was it?”

  The pressure disappeared.

  After a few seconds, she turned, as did Robert, both of them with tears in their eyes.

  They just caught a glimpse, before he disappeared and were shocked to see one of the waiters carrying their suitcase away. They recognised the parting in his hair, flowing dead centre down the middle.

  The ship tilted suddenly. The screaming redoubled and several people around them fell.

  A man lay near them, unconscious, his head bleeding. His wife was on her knees before him, shouting for help. It never came.

  Perhaps the money didn’t matter any more. There seemed to be no sound or reality to the scene as they watched the maelstrom of fear and panic; men frogmarching their hysterical women to the ship’s edge, howling children holding onto their legs.

  A few were being prised loose by the ship’s crew, some of whom were crying themselves. They saw a well to do man with a waxed moustache stand to attention, before pulling a Derringer pistol from under his red silk lined cape. He placed it under his chin and pulled the trigger. The bullet came out the top of his top hat in a pinkish grey cloud.

  A huge bang rumbled up from somewhere below and the ship bucked like a horse.

  Lil felt a man’s arm circle her waist, as a voice insisted, “Just get her in, for gawd’s sake, or she’ll be a goner like the rest of us.”

  “My boy too!” she gasped as he lifted her with no effort at all.

  He was gripping her so tight, she couldn’t breathe. She tried to fight him as he dropped her into one of the lifeboats, but thankfully, saw another man carrying Robert towards her. She saw tears streaming down his cheeks, before blacking out briefly. As she came back to her senses, he was beside her.

  The last glimpse they had of the deck was of the string quintet, who had made their way up from below.

  They calmly arranged themselves in a semi-circle and at a nod from the cellist, struck up a piece she recognised from church attendance as ‘Nearer my God to thee’. The soft, tender notes carried across the horror like a salve.

  Her boat was not designed to carry as many, and after they had dropped about ten feet, it tilted abruptly aft. Everybody screamed in terror.

  Various personal belongings tumbled overboard and she felt something smack into her left eye, so hard, it felt as if her head was split open.

  She saw a shrieking woman above being held back and when she saw why, she realised how lucky she was. The object that had struck her was a baby’s head, before it dropped into the glacial water, thirty feet below. The moment they hit it themselves, no strength could
hold the woman. She was over the side in a flash and that was last they ever saw of her.

  A matronly, big-busted woman, who introduced herself as Molly Brown, called from the front, in one of those voices that instantly commanded respect, “Let us keep our chins up, everybody. The good Lord is with us now. Row for your lives, or she’ll drag us down!” She held the tiller.

  Many of the women who took the oars had been waited on hand and foot all their lives, and were unused to such labour. Raw fear alone drove them.

  Lil was somewhere in the middle, her arms tight around her sobbing son, swooning from the impact on her face.

  The woman called, “Come on now, girls! A steady rhythm. Push-and-pull… Push-and-pull… Push…”

  Lil turned as they moved further away. The demented screaming of those freezing to death was thankfully beginning to peter out.

  The lights were out and by now the band was silent, though the screams and shouts of those left stranded on deck still floated across.

  Her head ached, especially round her eye and queer thoughts danced in and out her mind. All she could see was a vague silhouette looming out of the sea, blotting out the stars and the giant rudder like a beckoning hand, with the three colossal propellers surrounding it.

  A few random bangs thudded up, muffled from the depths, with the ghastly squealing of metal, setting their teeth on edge and the kak, kak, kak of rivets cannoning out.

  Soon, all Lil could hear about her were sobs and the chattering of teeth.

  Robert said, “Mum, we’ve lost everything…”

  “No, we haven’t,” she said, thinking of the woman who had dived overboard in pursuit of her baby, “we still have each other.” She kissed his head.

  They heard a massive rumbling noise. All heads turned to see the ship drop back into the sea, so the propellers and rudder were submerged once more. The impact sent a huge wave that rocked them fiercely, bringing whimpering sounds and crying from some of the smaller children.