From Time to Time (40 page)

To the pleased, excited passengers moving up and down through the ship with me, I think everything said pleasure ahead. I saw it in their faces, smiles, and heard it in their voices, and it affected me. For a forgetful few moments moving up through this ship, I shared the anticipation of a beginning voyage. Then I stepped off the stairs onto the floor of the first-class salon, and saw the shining, possibly never-yet-played grand piano. And remembered the story of an Irish immigrant girl saved in one of the lifeboats-had I glimpsed her on the ferry? The ship slowly sinking, she'd climbed up from steerage into this magnificent salon, along with a group of fellow steerage passengers. She continued on up, heading for the boat deck, but glancing back she saw one of her fellow immigrants stop at the piano in awe. He touched the keys, then began to play, sliding onto the piano bench. Others of the group gathered around him, and they began to sing along, staring around them at the unimaginable luxury of the room they'd found themselves in. And that was the last the girl ascending the stairs ever saw or heard of her friends.

True or not, the memory of that story a bruptlv separated me from the other passengers on the stairs; these splendid women and the cigar-smoking, pince-nezed men. Who of these would be saved? Most of the women, few of the men. I had to shut off these incapacitating thoughts; I was here on this ship for a powerful reason, and I forced my mind to focus on that.

My cabin was where the White Star deck plan had said it would be, very near the staircase I stepped from onto B deck. This is it,

B~9 on the Titanic, door ajar, key in lock, steady as a hotel room as I stood in the door taking this picture. Just behind me a steward said, "Boarded at Queenstown, did you, sir? and I understood that he wanted to see a ticket and turned: he wore a brass-buttoned green jacket, white shirt, black how tie. Will you be saved? my mind asked as I handed him my ticket. He gave it back, nodding: I was the only first-class boarder at Queenstown, so my luggage should soon be here. I nodded and walked out to explore.

Up one last flight to the boat deck, but just before reaching it, I stopped. Beside each stair, one at each side, a little glassed-in light was set, all unlighted now. Wasn't this the staircase, I stood wondering, and weren't these the lights that Second Officer Lightoller saw as he stood loading women and children into the portside lifeboats? Glancing down from time to time to see the green ocean water slowly creeping up the stairs toward him, these lights shining eerily under the ascending water? I thought so; thought I remembered from so much I had read that this was Lightoller's staircase, waiting now for the midnight just ahead when the ocean would enter to slowly climb higher and higher, stair by stair.

I shut down on the thought, and stepped out onto the new teak of the boat deck, the very topmost deck out under the pale sky and weak sun. Through the leather of my soles, suddenly, I felt the vibration from many decks below of the ship's great turbines, and we began to move out to sea. Here hung the lifeboats, here was the deck soon to be crowded with men, women, and children in life jackets. Some of them stone-faced calm, some crying, some terribly frightened, some laughing at what they supposed was a false alarm. Up here the confused, botched lowering of half-empty boats-Cut it out! I turned to walk over to the starboard side of B deck, and the shining white paint of boat number five. There it hung secure in its davits, glittery white, tautly covered with canvas, and I reached out to touch the new paint of its wooden side. Under my fingertip, the painted wood felt smooth, faintly warm from the sun. But above all it felt solid and real. Titanic Boat Five, said the fresh black lettering at its prow, and I touched the T. Then touched the cool solidity of the varnished ship's rail below Boat Five, and then I was really here. On the new Titanic, its speed steadily increasing, a doomed ship, carrying me and every other soul aboard toward the immense icy mass waiting ahead. And once again I stood bleakly alone, eyes closing against this useless knowledge.

I walked on; beside me, large as a ten-story building, a great beige and black stack marched in line with three more identical monsters back toward the stern. They rose immensely up through the roofs of the various superstructures, their thin wash of black smoke streaming out to merge and dissipate behind us. Huge air scoops sprouted from the deck like giant ear trumpets. I turned to look forward, and just ahead, the enclosed bridge o)f the ship stretched across the entire forward end of the deck. A door at its side stood ajar, swinging slightly to and fro with our movement, and I walked up to peek in. There they were, four officers, three in blue, the fourth, Captain Smith himself, still in his whites. Not quite shoulder to shoulder, they stood in a line facing forward, staring out through the long square windows. Captain Smith's arms hung behind him, one hand clasping the other wrist. Behind them, in his own little glassed-in enclosure, was the helmsman, hands on his great wooden wheel, eyes on the compass in the brass binnacle before him. He stood directly opposite me, only a dozen feet or so off, and before he could glance over and see me, I turned away.

For a moment or so longer I stood alone out here, glancing up at the aerial strung between our two masts; it would be the first ever to signal an SOS. Through the web of black guy wires bracing the enormous stacks, the wind of our passage moaned steadily, mournful and lonely, as though it knew and was telling me what was going to happen, and I walked back to my stairs.

Down here on B deck,

the sides sheltered from the sea in places by long glass windows, it was warmer, and I walked along on the sun side toward the stern. A boy spinning a top on the steady deck had a little audience, and I joined them long enough to snap this. Will this boy survive? I was sick of the question, unable to prevent it, and walked on toward the stern. At every entrance passengers were turning in to the warmth of the interior, but I kept on toward the stern and the entrance to the Verandah and Palm Court. Near the stern, second-class passengers stood up on their limited deck space watching the

privileged first class, and rue with my red leather camera as I stood taking them. As I saw this in my tiny little viewfinder, my mind said, Most of you are going to drown Sunday night. I left to walk back along the port side, then wished I hadn't. Very little sun, no one out, and the rows o)f empty deck chairs made it seem like a deserted ship. My own solitary steps sounded along the deck as though I were the only passenger, and up there ahead I rounded the turn near the prow. I wound my film, and saw the last of it appear in the little red window. Over the rail I used it for this bleak sight: the Titanic, racing now, on toward the night over this strange deathly calm sea.

I'd had enough, and spent the rest of the day in my cabin; had the steward bring dinner in. I didn't want to see any more people who might be living their last day or so; or to encounter Archie prematurely, to stutter and stumble and say it all wrong. If there was a way to convince Arch of the unbelievable, I had to find it, and I tried to work it out in my mind, lying on my bed feeling the easy motion, hearing the quiet, regular, almost reassuring creakings of a ship moving through a quiet sea.

I could have learned from the purser in the morning which was Archie's cabin, but instead I simply wandered in and out of the great public rooms till I found him in the lounge in a big leather chair: gray suit, plain blue tie; smoking a morning cigar.

Suspicious, he sat watching me approach, making my way around and between tables and big lounge chairs. And didn't smile: whoever I was or whatever I might be up to, he knew from my very presence aboard that I must be more than the casual New York acquaintance he'd supposed. I thought he wasn't even going to stand, and possibly he thought so too. But at the last moment instinct brought him to his feet, and when I said, "Hello, Archie, and put out a hand, he took it and replied politely, watching me with sharp, inquisitive eyes.

He said, "Sit down, nodding at a chair facing him.

I sat down, leaned toward him, and said it the way I'd worked it out. "Archie, I know about your mission. I'm not your enemy: I want it to succeed. But let me tell you something you can't possibly believe. Just hear me out. And then, Arch... wait. And when you actually see the proof. . . you will know then that I've spoken the truth. I saw the flick of impatience and got down to it.

"I know something that is impossible to know, and yet I know it. This is Friday. On Sunday night, around eleven-thirty, this ship will strike an iceberg. Two hours later it will sink. He sat watching me, waiting. "A good many people will be saved in lifeboats in those two hours. But many of the boats will be lowered only partly filled. And fifteen hundred people will drown. Do I really know this? Sunday night will tell, won't it. It will happen, and when it does, I want to take you to boat number five, which will be lowered with only a few people. Some women in first, then with no others around, the men standing by will be allowed in. You and I can be there-

"Si. I've seen a few inexplicable things; I know they happen. And possibly somehow you know what you say you do. Maybe so. Maybe somehow you really know. But you don't seem to know me. If you did, you could not possibly think that with women and children left behind to drown, Archibald Butt would be standing beside a lifeboat scheming to climb into it! He sat there looking at me, then smiled a little. "I would be where every other gentleman aboard would be: waiting quietly somewhere out of the way for whatever fate intends. Very likely here in this lounge, accepting God's will. Along with a glass of brandy. Not cowering beside a lifeboat while women drown. I believe it's where you d be too, Si. When \ou'd thought about it. I'm sure you would

"But what about your papers, Arch? Shouldn't they be saved at least?

He looked contemptuously at the crackpot. "I don't know what you're talking about. Leaning forward in his chair, he looked past me at a quietly ticking grandfather clock across the room. "And now if you'll excuse me. And he stood, smiled but only just barely, walked out, and I understood as though he had said it that I was not to trouble him again.