From Time to Time (38 page)

The Mauretania, the most loved of them all. Franklin Roosevelt said, "She always fascinated me with her graceful, yachtlike lines, her four enormous black-banded red funnels, and her appearance of power and good breeding . . . if there ever was a ship which possessed the thing called soul,' the Mauretania did. . Every ship has a soul. But the Mauretania had one you could talk to. . . . As Captain Rostron once said to me, she had the manners and deportment of a great lady and behaved herself as such. In the Smithsonian, if you hunt for it and ask enough questions, you'll find it: F.D.R. s own model of the loved Mauretania.

There is nothing to do aboard an ocean liner, nothing you need to do. You're a child again, everything taken care of by Mommy and Daddy. So you change clothes, several times a day. Go out and walk the promenade deck, around and around, counting the laps, breathing the utterly clean air, feeling new health move through your veins. Then you sit in a deck chair, and a steward brings you hot bouillon, which you never drink anywhere else, but here you like it. You're a prince but a prisoner, too: you can't change your mind now. You are here on this ship and will stay here, nothing to be done about that. But this new absence of ability or need to decide is liberating. And you give in to the deliciousness of being taken care of. Spend hours in a deck chair, blanket tucked around you by a deck steward, your smile of thanks almost that of an invalid. The immense book you brought along, or got from the library, may lie unread as you doze or stare at the sea or chat with your neighbor.

Nothing to do, and it keeps you busy. I moved through and lounged in the great rooms I'd seen the night Archie sailed, the splendid arched ceilings of patterned glass now bright with the daylight of the open sea. These majestic rooms belonged to us now, the chosen few, never crowded, ours alone.

You eat; astonishing meals, delicious, and anything you want, anything, the Mauretania boasted, and lived up to it. And on the deck of this lovely ship, the ocean as you've never experienced it before. You're afloat in it, you're of it now, it's the element you live in. I loved it; here I saw that the horizon is a circle, with us always precisely at its center. I watched the distant glints of far-off waves, saw them rolling away beside us, saw a far-off school of porpoises curving in and out of the ocean.

Nothing to do, and all the time in the world to do it. For an hour at a time or longer, I'd stand at the stern of the Mauretania leaning on the rail, watching the wake endlessly line out behind us. Watching it had the hypnotic fascination of staring at the flames in a fireplace, seeing the broad light green road we'd just traveled, lying in sharp contrast to the gray-black of the sea beside it. Those deep, deep propellers, taller than a small building, endlessly thrusting up that green water so powerfully that I never saw the wake behind us subside. Always it lay stretched out further back than I could see, the long road along which we had moved. Now and then as it lined out behind us, a little squiggle would appear at right or left, a little bend in our path over the ocean, reflecting the small turns of the helmsman's wheel twitching the great rudder into endless tiny corrections of our course.

I talked to people leaning on the rail beside me. Or sitting in the next deck chair. Or barstool. And of course to the people beside and across from me in the great dining room. And I fell very easily in love with the Mauretanza.

But for me and everyone else, beginning after breakfast on our last full day at sea, it all changed, life's demands again reaching out for us. And we talked about arrival times, destinations, and plans, and when the sea turned rough, and we reduced speed, and were told we'd be late, arriving in Liverpool well after dark, we grumbled.

Finally, at anchor in the Mersey just off the Liverpool dock- not deep enough for the draft of this ship, or the tide too low, I never learned which-the passengers for Ireland stood at the railing watching the others go off in ship's boats.

And at ten-fifteen, our luggage already transferred, we stepped from an open hatchway at just above sea level-lighted by a Mauretania searchlight-onto the deck of T.S.S. (twin-screw steamer) Heroic, a slim handsome little one-stack ferry. At my steward's advice I'd booked a cabin; the Irish Sea would be rough, and nothing to see in the dark anyway.

It was rough. I slept pretty well, but awakened a lot; we rolled from side to side, and we pitched stem to stern, moving at eighteen knots. And I heard the sea, loud and close. During the night someone passing my cabin said, "Allaman, as it sounded, and I understood that we must be passing the Isle of Man, but I didn't care.

Around five-thirty or six, daylight, I went out on deck; our motion much quieter now because we were steaming up the land- sheltered Belfast Lough, the mouth of the River Lagan, an Irish passenger told me. We reached the Dunbar's Dock a little past six, but berthing took a while, and I stood looking out at what I could see of Belfast: sheds . . . a mountain dominating the skyline . . .chimneys, already smoking . . . a clock tower . . . a city. A real city; four hundred thousand people lived here.

Cabs waiting on the broad dock-I guess you'd say cabs. These were pony-drawn traps, so)me open, some closed, not an automobile to be seen. And for the Grand Central Hotel, there stood an omnibus-it looked to me like a stretch stagecoach, four windows long-two horses, and a uniformed porter waiting. He loaded my luggage up on top, along with that of two other passengers, one a woman in full mourning including black veil. Ten minutes to the hotel on Royal Street, the best hotel in town, the Mauretania steward had told me. I liked it; lots of polished wood, glass, tile floor, and potted palms in the lobby. A stack of newspapers on the desk as I registered, and I bought one, the Northern Whig. A nice large room then, with a big brass bedstead, long lace curtains, heavy down comforter, washbowl and pitcher on the dresser. No bathroom; that was down the hall.

Back in the lobby, I said to the clerk, "I have business with Harland and Wolff; is it a walking distance? Yes, if I enjoyed walking, and he brought out a map and showed me the route, easy enough, it looked, always heading toward the River Lagan.

Outside then, but not to Harland and Wolff, not yet; now I just wandered in Belfast, and what I saw was a crowded, noisy, cluttered, purely Victorian city, nothing I saw newly built. This was a city of stone, at least downtown here, mostly low two- and three- story commercial buildings. Streets clanging with traffic, all horse- drawn except for some of the great double-decked red buses, upper decks unroofed. These were trolley buses on electrified streets, but horse-drawn on other streets. On the front of every bus, a sign reading, Marsh's Biscuits. Besides the buses, every kind of horse- drawn vehicle, and I saw a two-wheeled cart pulled by three boys. Not a single automobile-I saw none. Pedestrians crossed the streets wherever and whenever they chose, and there were advertising signs everywhere: Cerebos, whatever that meant, and Co-Op Bread, and plenty of music hall ads.

I wandered through a block or two of music halls and a theater, the Opera House, with an Arthur Pinero play. And looked over the hoardings of two-a-day music halls: Cherburn's Young Stars at the Empire, plus Elton Edwin, classical banjoist. Kitts and Wind- row, The Fair Imposters and their Melange. At the Royal Hippodrome, Alfred Cruikshank, a droll clown, in song and story. Horton and Latriska, and so on and so on. None of my vaudeville friends, though I knew they sometimes had bookings in England and Ireland.

Back to the hotel in the late afternoon, where I tried to read the Northern Whig. And finally, a little after ten o'clock, a flashlight in my pocket, I walked through the lobby, deserted now, then outside, where I followed the clerk's directions, in which the key word seemed to be "Queen. I crossed Queen's Bridge . . . passed Queen's Quay Station . . . walked along Queen's Road. .

The closer to my destination, the quieter, meaner, and uglier the streets became. And presently, the street slanting down toward the Lagan ahead, the houses were ugly little two-story stone dwellings, built wall to wall, and directly beside the stone sidewalk. These were workers' houses, dockyard and shipyard laborers. No lights now, no sound except from one where I could hear a baby crying. The roadway beside me cobbled with field or river stones. Dark through each silent block, streetlamps only at the corners, ragged-edged, smoky, orange-flame lights; I could smell the kerosene as I passed under each, my shadow bunching under my feet, then lengthening and fading off into the darkness ahead.

Now a road T-crossed this, the intersection dimly lighted. I walked across it; brick-paved, deserted, silent. On the other side, a narrow walk beside a brick wall a couple feet taller than I, easily climbed. On the other side of this wall, a scattering of buildings, some with a dim light inside, some dark. I could read the painted names of some: Foundry . . . Fettling Shop . . . Storage . . . Timber Drying Shed . . . Electric Generating Station . . . Brass Fitting Shop . . . Galvanizing . . . Pattern Stores . . . Fitting and Bolt Shop . . . Upholstery Shop . . . Paint Shop . . . and many more as I walked. Mostly dark, no movement, no sound but the soft scuff of my shoes, here on this night of 1911.

Now a break in the wall, the road branching into the walled area, a wide wooden gate across the opening, a black-and-white painted sign: Harland & Wolff Ltd., Shipbuilders. Then the wall resumed, and more shops: Coppersmith's Shop. . . Brass Foundry . . . Boiler Shop. .

On through a long dark block, then both wall and I made a right turn, down toward the Lagan. A final turn, into Queen's Road, and now I walked between brick-walled areas on each side. Time Office. . . then Main Office, a dim night-light inside this one. And between it and Mast Shop, a narrow passageway.

Through a long minute I stood listening.. . then reached up press my hooked hands onto the wall top. then I heaved myself up to hang supported on my stiffened arms, listening. No whistle blast, no running feet or snarling dogs. Nothing, and I lay across the wall on my belly, squirmed my legs around and over, dropped, turned around and stood staring at what I'd known I would see from here, but hugely larger, impossibly larger than I'd ever imagined.

CHAPTER 28

THIS-not my photograph, and taken in daylight-hut this is what I saw now, only in black silhouette, a giant cutout sharp against the moonlit sky over the river waiting to receive her in two more days. Just under the knife of its prow, the shadowy reviewing stand waiting for the lady with the christening champagne, I supposed. Who would smash her bottle against that black steel, and-I had read- the hydraulic launching trigger would be pulled. Then the almost imperceptible slow widening between prow and dripping bottle: a foot . . . a yard . . . then with abrupt speed, down the incline she'd slide, this enormous black mass, her stern smashing into the Lagan, waterspout soaring, then this great black hull bobbing a little, afloat at last. To be towed to the dock where cranes would lower her superstructure, the ship would be fitted out, and in a remarkably short time the Titanic would sail out on her black, murderous, only journey.

But no; now it would not. Standing in the dark between my two buildings, I looked at and-abruptly, surprisingly-hated the new ship rising to the sky there across the yard. We personify ships, they seem to have human qualities; there are good ships, stubborn resistant ships, and now I saw this giant silhouetted shape as evil, blackly malevolent: she knew-this monstrous bulk knew she would betray the hundreds who, trusting her, would sail out on her only voyage. At this moment somewhere across hundreds of ocean miles the great berg lay drifting toward their rendezvous, this black prow waiting now to slide along the mass of blue ice it might just as well have missed by the feet or even inches that would have made the difference.

Well, I was here to prevent that rendezvous, and I walked out- moving from shadow to shadow, pausing to listen-toward the Titanic, her cargo ports open. This was Rube's simple idea: launch her now, down the ways into and under the Lagan.

At the prow just past the ceremonial stand, I used my flashlight to hunt for "the launching trigger. It would have to be somewhere forward here easily in sight of lady and bottle to synchronize trigger pull with, "I christen you Titanic!

I couldn't find it; nothing that to my mind even resembled a trigger, and I walked back and around to the starboard side. Not here, nothing like a launching trigger, and I walked on and into this tunnel directly under the Titanic's hull---again, not my photo