Every Man for Himself (10 page)

‘I don’t think you should mention this matter further,’ I said. ‘I’m quite sure the chief engineer is qualified to deal with the situation. And we have the chief designer on board.’

‘What do they care?’ Riley burst out. ‘They won’t be doing a fifteen-hour shift in that hell-hole.’

‘Neither will you,’ I reprimanded, and stood up. Sulkily he opened the door. ‘You may keep the handkerchief,’ I said, and added, ‘I don’t expect you to believe it but I’ve not always lived like this. There was a time when we might have played in the same gutter.’ Walking away I was annoyed with myself for being so open with him.

I wasn’t ready to go to bed, my thoughts running too wild. Though it was twenty past one by the clock on the landing of the Grand Staircase the lights were still burning in the library. Thomas Andrews was there, alone, scribbling in his notebook, a glass of whisky at his elbow. Remembering our encounter earlier that evening I was all for slipping out again but he spotted me. He immediately brought up the matter of the leaking bath taps and suggested I examine them first thing in the morning and supervise their fixing. When I had done that he wanted me to join him on a thorough inspection of the ship. The experience would be beneficial. It was evident he still thought I was a member of the design team.

He had in mind various adjustments and alterations. The colouring of the private promenade’s pebble-dashing was a shade too dark; the appearance of the wicker chairs on the starboard side might be improved if stained green; there were too many screws in stateroom hat hooks; did I think the painting of Plymouth Harbour – here he pointed at a rather dull oil hung above the fireplace – should be replaced with a portrait of a literary figure? Would it not be more suitable for a library?

‘It would,’ I agreed. I was wondering whether the inspection would include the boiler rooms.

‘Shelley,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps Doctor Johnson.’

‘Dickens,’ I ventured. ‘Then people will know who it is.’

It’s possible I had a crush on Andrews. Certainly I admired him. One needs someone to look up to, someone worthy that is, and being fulfilled rather than just rich he was what I judge to be a successful man. He was also a pretty smart dresser and I’d once gone to the lengths of sketching a particular coat he wore – it had a row of tortoiseshell buttons down the front and four on each cuff – and giving it to my tailor to copy. When it was made up I didn’t have the nerve to wear it, in case he noticed.

For the rest, he wasn’t renowned for his wit, had never said anything to me that stayed in the mind, and one couldn’t call him handsome exactly, his face being on the heavy side, though he did have remarkable eyes, blue and candid, and a dimple in his chin. All the same, when I was in his company I quite forgot my plans for the future and if things had been different might have wished for nothing better in this world than to remain in his employ.

He engaged me in a discussion concerning the sirocco ventilating fans in Number 2 engine room. In his opinion they weren’t entirely satisfactory.

‘I believe you’re right, sir,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been down on G deck and seen a man carried out with heat stroke.’

‘Indeed,’ he said, and wrote something in his notebook.

He was good to chat with and learn from, just as long as one kept to the subject of the ship, or rather its design – bring up anything of a more personal nature and he immediately shied off. Stupidly mentioning who I’d dined with that evening I repeated Ismay’s remark that heads would roll if we didn’t reach full speed.

‘Ten o’clock sharp,’ he said, cutting me short. ‘I suggest we meet outside the gymnasium,’ and with that he gathered up his pencil and notebook and made for the door. He walked like a boxer, slightly bow-legged yet light on his feet.

Crushed, I was about to follow at a respectful distance when a tremendous outburst of coughing and spluttering arose from one of the wing armchairs turned to the wall. It was old Seefax, who, thumping the skirting board with his stick, demanded to be turned to the fire. When I’d manhandled his chair into place and prodded the coals into flame, he asked me to ring for a night-cap.

‘It’s late,’ I told him. ‘The bar steward has gone off duty.’

‘Nonsense,’ he wheezed. ‘Go and find him,’ at which, shouting out to an imaginary attendant, I fetched Andrews’ half-filled glass.

‘Told you so,’ he said. ‘They never go off duty, not in a properly run hotel.’ Spilling more than he sipped, he asked, ‘What have you been up to? Chasing girls I shouldn’t wonder.’ I told him I’d been down to the cargo decks and seen a stoker with a crucifix tattooed upon his back.

‘Used to be quite common in the past,’ he said. ‘They did it hoping to avoid the lash. Same as when they come aboard . . . you’ll see some of the old hands saluting the quarterdeck . . . the cross used to hang there.’

He then fell into a reverie, eyes fixed on the leaping flames, one parchment claw twisting the black cord from which his spectacles dangled. I waited with him; the ship was as steady as a rock but he was a frail and ancient man and I feared he might fall if left to get to his room on his own.

After some minutes, he said, ‘Women are extraordinary creatures. You can never guess what they’re capable of.’

I nodded, thinking of Wallis.

‘She went out through that window like a chipmunk up a tree. When she clambered back in one could have mistaken her for a nigger woman.’

‘Could one,’ I said, humouring him.

‘It was the smoke from the engine, you see . . . it was just going through a tunnel.’ Then, kicking his feet in delight he cried out, ‘That’s where I met Scurra.’

His thoughts were dreadfully tangled. The woman had been called Madame Humbert, or perhaps Hubert, and she’d climbed out of a moving train and crawled along its side to reach the next compartment where a wealthy man was having a heart attack–

‘Surely not Scurra?’ I said.

‘No, no, no. That was Crawley . . . Crawford . . . Cranley . . . Having saved his life he left her a fortune. In ’97 she spent two thousand dollars on flowers for a party she gave in her house on the Avenue de la Grande Armée.’

‘And that’s where you met Scurra?’

‘I never said that,’ he snapped. ‘It was in Madrid . . . later . . . when they arrested her. You’d know about that sort of thing . . . noises in the night . . . police . . . the dock. Always thought her account of the train was fishy . . . damned if she could have heard him above the noise of the track.’

I got nothing more out of him on the subject because he was now mumbling about some book on the shelves to do with the battle of Chickamauga in which the Confederates had routed the Union Army. According to him the author had got his facts wrong. ‘He should have consulted me,’ he muttered, ‘I was an eye witness,’ though only last Christmas he’d bored Hopper and me rigid with the story of how he’d spent the entire war in Europe, running the blockade single-handed and scuttling cruisers off Cherbourg.

Escorting him from the library I was fortunate enough to find a steward in the foyer who took him off my hands. As I descended the stairs who should I see stepping into the elevator one floor below but Wallis? She was with Ginsberg and I swear he had his hand on her waist.

THREE

 

Friday, 12th April

Too early the next morning I woke with the fragment of a dream still in my head. It wasn’t the one that had disturbed my childhood nights and brought Sissy running. I reckon I’d slept with my arm covering my face because my mouth felt swollen.

I had been walking down a cobbled alleyway between a row of little houses, making for the last one on the left pinned to the arch of a railway bridge. As is the way of dreams I was both in the road and walking up the path – there was a stunted tree, leaves black with soot, standing in a patch of earth near the broken gate. I saw a man on hands and knees, scrabbling at the soil, a piece of newspaper flapping on the sole of his boot. I was carrying a child whose cold, cold cheek was pressed to my own. At that instant a train rattled across the bridge and a belch of black smoke rolled down the street. The man leapt to his feet and with a terrible bellow of rage ran towards me; one moment he was visible, the next the smoke swallowed him up. The scrap of newspaper whirled through the air and masked the child’s face. The child turned into myself.

The damnedest thing was, going into the bathroom to shave I noticed my nails were rimmed with dirt. It gave me quite a turn until I remembered that following my trip into the hold I had fallen into bed without washing.

When the steward came in with the coffee pot he remarked I wasn’t the only early bird he’d visited that morning. But then, it was fairly usual, he maintained, for passengers to sleep poorly the second night on board. It was a question of getting accustomed to being on water, that and the appearance of the stoker coming up out of the funnel – quite a few people had been upset by that. The two elderly ladies in Stateroom 19 had complained of bad dreams and the middle-aged couple in the Jacobean suite had twice rung for the night steward.

‘I slept like a top,’ I told him. ‘I never dream.’ ‘Ah, well, sir,’ he said, ‘That’s thanks to youth and an easy conscience.’

It was not yet seven o’clock when I went below to call out the plumbers; I didn’t want to run the risk of being late for my appointment with Thomas Andrews. Luckily I was proved right in thinking the fault with the bath taps was nothing more serious than ill-fitting washers, and having selected new ones from the stores and insisted they be put in place right away I was able to go up for my breakfast.

Scurra was seated in the main restaurant with Rosenfelder, the latter in a fever of optimism. Apparently ‘Mrs Duff’ had told him that Mr Harris, the theatrical producer, was on board. He had only to say the word and she would perform an introduction.

‘He’s hungry for the limelight,’ said Scurra, winking at me.

‘There’s money in designing dresses for the stage,’ Rosenfelder protested. ‘Mrs Duff thinks my skills lie in the direction of the flamboyant. There is about me an element of showmanship.’

‘You must tell young Morgan what role you have in mind for Adele,’ prompted Scurra.

This Rosenfelder did, at some length. It spoilt my breakfast rather, for I had to keep nodding and smiling. If I glanced down to cut my bacon or spread butter on my bread he tapped my knuckles with his teaspoon to ensure attention. He was going to get Adele to sing in the Palm Court that evening; the ship’s orchestra would accompany her. This had been Scurra’s idea. She would wear the window dress intended for Macy’s. That idea had come from Mrs Duff.

‘I will then ask Mr Harris to the concert—’

‘His very own idea,’ interrupted Scurra.

‘And in the ticking of a clock myself and the abandoned Adele will make ourselves famous,’ concluded Rosenfelder.

I agreed it was a splendid idea and one not likely to fail. Unless, of course, the Fenwicks song-bird didn’t choose to sing.

‘Pff,’ cried Rosenfelder. ‘Since when did a woman with two pounds in her purse and no buttons to her coat know such a thing as choice?’

Andrews and his team were at least half an hour late assembling outside the gymnasium. By the time they arrived, Captain Smith, in full dress uniform, medals pinned to his pouting white tunic, the chief engineer, purser, surgeon and chief steward strutting gosling-fashion in his wake, had already begun his daily inspection. It was quite comical the way our two groups kept passing each other, often merging as we went down through the ship examining hand rails and companionways, checking portholes and connecting doors, making notes on the durability of floor coverings, measuring distances between service hatches and tables.

On F deck, forward, something of a kerfuffle ensued when Captain Smith, about to enter the Turkish baths, was confronted by a harridan of a woman stewardess who flew through the doors and barred his way. Apparently he had forgotten that the baths were open to ladies between the hours of ten and twelve each morning.

‘You shall not force yourself inside,’ she shouted imperiously, taking no heed of the braid on his uniform.

‘Madam,’ he thundered, ‘I have no intention of forcing myself anywhere.’

Discomforted, he turned and blundered into those hard on his heels. Confined in that narrow passage it took time to sort ourselves out and at least two of the design team fell in behind the purser and marched mistakenly off, not to join us again until we reached the Marconi telegraph room. Here I was present, albeit squeezed out into the corridor, when one of the wireless operators read out a message received from the French vessel
La Touraine
, bound from New York to Le Havre, congratulating the
Titanic
on her maiden voyage, wishing her God Speed and warning of ice ahead.

I was half afraid I would encounter Adele during our inspection of the steerage decks. How should I greet her? If I ignored her it was surely on the cards, seeing she roamed over the ship as she pleased, that it would be reported to Scurra, who would then think less of me. In the event, though the public rooms swarmed with men, women and children, mostly emigrants babbling in a mixture of tongues, Adele was not among them.