“Please don’t leave me, Gardy,” she says with a sob. I am tempted not to, but taking her with me would cause delay. The instructor and several passengers are close by.
“I must, Miss Portia. I will be back as soon as I can, I promise!” I swallow my panic. I will find her, of course I will. I run out, looking from one side of the deck to the other. How dark and gloomy it looks compared to the brightness of the gymnasium. Many more passengers have arrived on deck. The blackness of the sky, despite the brilliance of the stars, is bewildering after the light and warmth of the gymnasium. I feel as if I am chasing shadows.…
A dog barks, poking his small head out of a lady’s muff. Most of the animals on board live below the passenger decks, in kennels and cages. Stewards and crew members walk the dogs during the day. I like to look down on them as they walk round and round on the second-class promenade. I must concentrate. Where would she go?
“Oh, where are you, Alexandra?” Who are all these people? I think I see her and call out her name, but the small figure in its dark blue coat and bonnet disappears into the gloom. I make my way towards the orchestra. Surely, that is where she will be.
I make a silent promise that I will never, ever allow such a thing to happen again. Nanny Mackintosh was right not to trust me!
Suddenly, rockets flare up into the sky, blazing like fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night! For a moment, the crowd moves with and against each other, not knowing what to do or where to go. We all realize this is a call for help. The Titanic is sending a signal to the world of her distress!
The danger is real–I must find Miss Alexandra. Suppose Miss Portia gets tired of waiting and comes to look for us? The three of us separated!
Crewmen tug at ropes and run back and forth, shouting instructions to each other. More passengers crowd onto the deck, jostling for space. They are laden with boxes and parcels, speaking in a babble of languages. The children, none of whom I have seen before, are bewildered and cling to their mothers’ skirts. In despair, I call out Miss Alexandra’s name over and over again.
What if she falls? What if she is trampled in the confusion of bodies and luggage? She is so little, no one will notice her! A woman, at the far end of the deck, begins to play the harmonica. Her children gather around her, and in the next flare of rockets, I catch a glimpse of golden curls. A small hand waves her bonnet in the air. Hoping she will hear me this time, I scream her name again.
The deck slopes to one side. I trip over bundles, right myself, and reach Miss Alexandra at last. I pick her up and hold her tight, not knowing whether to kiss or shake her! I am so relieved to have her safe again in my arms.
“No, no,” she howls, wanting to stay.
“That is quite enough. Come along, Miss Alexandra, we are going back to your sister! How can you be so naughty and run away?” I put her down and grasp her hand firmly. My voice sounds exactly like Nanny Mackintosh’s.
Miss Alexandra looks at me angelically. “More dance?” she asks, hopefully.
“Not now, Miss Alexandra.” I tie on her bonnet again, and we make our way back to the gymnasium. The light beckons to us. If only Portia has waited! How long have we been away? The gymnasium is almost empty now, and there is no sign of Lord and Lady Milton or of Hart. Miss Portia is huddled on the floor, her back against the wall. We crouch down beside her. I pull her hands down gently from her face and wipe her cheeks, which are damp with tears. I have seen Emmy do the same, believing it makes her invisible. I am overcome with guilt and fear. Will we all see our families again? Miss Alexandra pats her sister’s arm.
“There now, Miss Portia, you didn’t think I had broken my promise, did you? I would never leave you, never, and your sister is very sorry, are you not?”
“Yes,” Miss Alexandra says and puts her thumb in her mouth.
Groping for a handkerchief in my pocket, I find the package of biscuits. “Shall we have a little treat?” I give them each a biscuit and wrap the remaining ones up again. We may not be back in our cabin for breakfast after all!
“Now, put your mittens on. We will see if Mama and Papa are waiting outside.”
As we emerge on the port side, a crowd of passengers waits to climb into the remaining lifeboats. More than half the boats have already left. I hope that Lord and Lady Milton are safe on one of them!
By the light of the next flare, I see the boats rowing slowly away from the ship, bobbing in the sea like wooden toys.
“Women and children first!” the officer in charge of loading the next lifeboat shouts. We join a line of passengers. I have no choice except to get the girls safely away. Hart will have told their parents that we had left the cabin to go on deck. I don’t know how we could have missed each other. Looking around for them again, I see so many passengers waiting–hundreds of people! Will there be room for all of us?
What was it Mr. Andrews said? That there is room in the lifeboats for half our passengers? Then what is to happen to those who cannot find a place? The boats must intend to return for more passengers. In response to the flares, ships will arrive to rescue us. But what are we being rescued from? No one has told us what is happening! The Titanic’s deck slopes more now, but there is no one to ask what it means.
A shot rings out. The woman standing in front of me, her arm linked to that of an old lady, makes the sign of the cross with her free hand. “May God have mercy on our souls,” she says.
Her companion refuses to move, holding up the line. A sailor lifts the old woman in his arms and drops her, protesting, the few feet from the deck into the boat.
“I’m coming, Ma,” her daughter calls, hoisting up her skirts.
I pick up Miss Alexandra. “Whatever happens, Miss Portia,” I say, “keep hold of my coat and don’t let go.”
“In you get, lassies, boat 12,” a sailor says, wrenching Miss Alexandra from my arms. He lowers her to a woman already seated below and shouts to the officer in charge, “Thirty-eight passengers aboard, sir.”
“We’ll take six more, then. Move the rest of the line over to boat 14. I’m giving the order to board, now!”
“Sir, please, the children’s parents…Lord and Lady Milton … and their maid…did you see them?”
He shrugs. I don’t think he has even heard me!
“Keep moving! Women and children only, men stand back,” the officer shouts.
“I have forgotten my gold watch. I must return to my cabin,” the lady behind me insists.
“Your watch will still be there tomorrow, madam. Down you go, or miss your place.” She turns and leaves.
I hear Miss Alexandra shrieking my name above the uproar.
It is our turn now. The line has dwindled and formed anew in front of the remaining boats. Miss Portia pulls away from me. “Papa, Papa,” she calls out.
I turn, grasping her wrist. We must stay together. Somehow Lord Milton has pushed his way through to us! Oh, I am so relieved to see him.
“Look after them, Gardener, I promised my wife.…” He grasps Miss Portia’s hand, then releases it. Isn’t he coming with us? His words become lost in a confusion of shouts and orders. He disappears among the crowd of men and crew before I have a chance to beg him to stay with us.
“Keep the men back and move along. Lower number 14,” the officer barks.
Miss Portia and I clamber into boat number 12, clinging to each other. Once down, I pick up Miss Alexandra from the woman’s knee. We manage to squeeze into a cramped space and sit together. Miss Portia and I search the darkness above us, hoping for another glimpse of Lord Milton.
Miss Portia clutches a card. “Papa gave it to me. ‘This is for Roger,’ he said.” I wait for another flare’s light to read by. It is Lord Milton’s boarding pass, and I can just make out the words:
WHITE STAR LINE
BOARDING PASS
PERMISSION GRANTED TO COME ABOARD
WHITE STAR LINE’S
R. M. S. TITANIC
A girl stumbles over my legs; we both mumble an apology. I button t
he card inside Miss Portia’s pocket. The boat begins to descend with a rocking motion–the journey has begun, down from the topmost deck and into the ocean below. Was it only five or six days ago that we embarked? The first time I looked up at the ship from the dock at Southampton, I marveled at its height. And now, from this height, we must descend. My mouth is dry with fear.
The women whisper to their little ones. Someone moans. Miss Alexandra chuckles, “Lift go down, lift down!” I hold Miss Portia’s hand tightly and bury my face in the back of Miss Alexandra’s neck.
Inch by inch, we are lowered into the sea. The orchestra plays on, accompanying the creaking of the ropes. The lifeboat swings dizzily from side to side, jerks, stops, descends once more. And suddenly it is over, like a miracle! I raise my head and look around. We float on the surface of the water as dark as night, barely causing a ripple in the sea. We have not drowned!
The sailors take up the oars, and we slowly pull away from the ship. A flare shows us other boats some distance away, waiting, drifting. The next lifeboat is lowered. Gradually, the silence in ours is broken. My neighbor counts the beads of her rosary over and over again, whispering her prayers.
Another woman sobs her despair. “They would not open the gates for us below until the very last moment. What of our men and the others left behind?” She holds her baby, wrapped in a shawl, and weeps.
A voice answers her: “Hush now, what kind of talk is that? The officer said that once we are safely on board the ships coming to our aid, the lifeboats have orders to row back. They will rescue the others. Do you think the captain would let them drown?”
All this time, the sounds of the orchestra have carried over the water. But now I hear another melody–is it the woman who played the harmonica? Why is she still on board the Titanic, instead of on a lifeboat? I thought they said women and children first?
“Will Papa and Mama be on the next boat?” Miss Portia asks, wriggling closer to me and holding my arm as if I might vanish. How do I answer her? Miss Alexandra begins to fidget. I know that if I let go of her, she could easily fall overboard!
“Do you remember all the lifeboats I showed you this afternoon, Miss Portia?” Was it this afternoon, or yesterday? I can’t remember. My feet are numb inside my shoes. I try to shield Miss Alexandra from the cold with the hem of my coat and rub her fingers inside her mittens. “I hope your mama and papa and Hart are on one of the other lifeboats, safe like us!”
A small girl without a bonnet tries to protect her ears, mottled red and purple from the wind. Her mother shelters her, as best she can, with a bit of the shawl in which she has wrapped her baby. I pull the white linen napkin from my pocket, unwrap it, and hand a biscuit to each of my girls before offering both the napkin and the last biscuit to the mother.
“Grazie,” she says, reminding me of Mrs. Bernardi, and ties the napkin around her daughter’s ears.
A lady clad in furs passes a spare shawl to a woman who is trembling with cold. She wears only a thin wrap over her nightclothes. No gates separate us, as they did on board. We are all the same now–crowded together, cold and frightened, hoping to be back on our lovely ship very soon, reunited with our friends and families.
Looking towards the Titanic, watching her lights shimmer across the water, I think of the steward’s reassurance that we will be back on board before breakfast! I cling to the words Mr. Andrews spoke–that the Titanic is unsinkable. Whatever has gone wrong, he will make sure it will soon be repaired. I imagine him making notes in his little book, planning to put things right.
The lights of the Titanic still shine, but some of the portholes in the lower decks are dark. We have enough light to see that we are only women and children in our boat, apart from our two sailors who sit crouched over their oars. None of the other lifeboats is too far away from us. We wait, hoping for the sight of a rescue ship to take us aboard, or better still, to row us back to the Titanic.
15
Lost
The orchestra has been silent since the last plaintive melody wafted across the water a short while ago. The Titanic’s lights, the beacon that gave us hope as we wait for rescue, begin to flicker on and off.
We are near enough to the ship to notice that she is leaning farther and farther towards the water. Many of the portholes are gradually disappearing. I think of some great sea monster tugging at her, refusing to let go. As the ship settles deeper and deeper, relinquishing her painful struggle, we watch, aghast, as the Titanic’s bow sinks lower rapidly. The old woman sitting near me resumes her prayers. The clicking of her beads accompany our murmurs of disbelief.
Suddenly the air is rent with sounds such as one could never have imagined. First, one of the ship’s proud funnels crashes down. And then, a thundering collision of noises rolls and slides into an avalanche of glass, mirrors, and china, breaking into a million shards!
“Don’t be afraid, my dears, it is only a passing storm. Close your eyes,” I tell the children. No one is prepared for such an end to the Titanic. It is her end, for even in the gloom of night, we sense the ship being torn in half. Sparks like shooting stars rise into the sky.
Furniture flies through the air; the sea is littered with deck chairs, doors, tables, boxes, and trunks. Are they thrown over in hope that they may serve as life rafts? I remember my first sight of the Grand Staircase. Now it, too, must be engulfed by waves. Nothing could remain intact in such turmoil! All of the gold and silver, the brass and ornamental carvings, tarnished by saltwater. The pride of the shipyards, of the men who built her, and of so many of us who sailed on her maiden voyage, lost….
Horror upon horror! We watch figures silhouetted against the starlit, moonless sky jump off what remains of the deck. Some men walk straight into the sea. And although our crewmen have rowed us farther away from the sinking vessel, we are still close enough to see hands gripping rails that do not hold. Men, women, and children are tossed into the ocean like rag dolls. Is Kathleen’s Patrick one of them?
The Titanic is wrenched apart, and as the bow is submerged, the stern rises up, straight into the air. It soars to the sky like an arrow, poised the moment before it is released in flight, then falls. The vessel plunges into the depths of the ocean and disappears. The ship is no more….
We sit in silent darkness. A slight ripple in the water shows where the great liner vanished–all the grace, beauty, and elegance that was the Titanic is gone forever.
It is over, and I am ashamed to feel relieved. Sitting here, unable to help those poor people aboard, has been unbearable. No one speaks. A baby whimpers and is hushed. A splash of oars, a sob stifled. Our little boats drift to and fro, lit only by the stars. The moon has not appeared this night. There was no moon before, or after, Johnny died.
The memory is still fresh of the first time I saw the moon again, after his funeral. How it shone on the floor of our room, clear and liquid as water…I will not think of it! The loneliness of sitting here in our small boat, no longer able to see the Titanic, is like a bad dream. How I long to wake up!
And now the silence is broken by new sounds. From out of the darkness, pleading voices–a chorus of anguish and despair–call out, then diminish, cry by cry, frozen forever. Wreckage floats by us, bumps into the side of the boat, only to drift again, some gripped by hands that slip away before we can reach them.
The officer from lifeboat 14, the closest one to ours, takes command. He shouts to the oarsmen, “Tie the boats that are close enough together. We must make room and row back for survivors.”
We try to help, cramming even closer, finding spaces. Some passengers are moved from our crowded boat, but it takes a long time in the dark for them to cross into another boat that is never quite still. I am grateful that the children and I may stay where we are. A small girl, separated from her mother in the darkness, cries bitterly.
At last, boat 14 pulls away, skirting the debris to pick up any survivors. How long can they last in these freezing waters? How long is it since the Titanic sank? All
I can do to help is pray.
Lines echo in my head from the hymn we sang on Sunday morning.
Eternal Father, strong to save…
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.
Is He strong enough to save? Has He heard the cries? I can’t remember what words come next, so I repeat the same phrases over and over again to myself.
Miss Portia whispers, “Has the singing stopped?”
I wipe the tears off my cheeks before they freeze there. “Yes,” I manage to answer. My thoughts are of my little brother and the pale faces of the drowned.
Thankfully, Miss Alexandra is asleep. Her arms are fastened round my neck, her legs around my waist.
Miss Portia tugs at my sleeve. “Look, Gardy, the moon is awake again.” A crescent moon appears over the horizon. Tonight, I am too sad to say we will make a wish on the new moon, as I normally do.
Who or what could we wish for? Rescue for ourselves, for Lord and Lady Milton, for Hart, for all the good kind people on board? For the woman who played the harmonica to her children to the last moment? For the brave men of the orchestra, who gave us comfort? For old Mr. and Mrs. Straus, who were never seen one without the other? Is she alone in a lifeboat without him?
The moon illuminates white patches covering the surface of the water. They might be giant seabirds, resting on outspread wings, waiting like us until morning. But they are not birds. They float, some with faces submerged, others turned towards the sky–bodies, held up by cork life jackets.
“Don’t cry, Gardy,” Miss Portia says.
Dawn arrives, and with it the palest of pink clouds amidst a glitter of color–green and violet and softest blue–shimmering and glistening on the tall white sails of ships that surround us. Rescue at last!
“Icebergs,” the oarsmen cry hoarsely. And I thought they were ships! Now our small convoy of boats is in greater danger than ever before! A whistle shrills through the silence.
No Moon Page 12
