SOS Lusitania (6 page)
Authors: Kevin Kiely
I
felt small in the baggage storeroom among the boxes. My bones hurt. So did my chest and my back. My hands trembled. Sweat poured through my clothes. The desk was too hard to sleep on and the ledger and schoolbag were not the softest of pillows, but the gabardine coat was enough of a blanket because I was burning hot. I hoped I wouldn’t fall off again. My breeches, long socks and boots were steaming and stuck to my body. I was really uncomfortable and even when the rat passed by me, searching for parcels to scratch open looking for food, I was beyond caring. Breathing hurt me. Sometimes I felt as if I might choke.
Time passed, how much time I did not know. Then I was woken in terror by someone pulling at my shirt. Was it the
rat? A man’s face was peering at me angrily. For a moment I thought it was Crowley, but it wasn’t. The man held a lantern. He shouted: ‘Who are you? What are you doing here, you waster?’ His uniform was a bit like my father’s. He grabbed hold of my shirt, pulled me off the desk roughly and shouted: ‘I need to see your ticket. Your ticket for cargo class!’
He dragged me to the door. I pleaded with him for my schoolbag, the cap and the coat. ‘Your ticket fell into the sea, I suppose? Yes, I know that story. We have cages for you people. Got no money, huh? Couldn’t buy a lousy ticket. We might even feed you to the whales.’ He snuffed out the lantern and dragged me out of the baggage room, closing the steel door with a vicious slam.
The lights on the walls outside made me squint as my eyes hurt from the glare. He pulled me along and I kept missing every other footstep, stumbling along the corridor. He opened a steel door at the end of the corridor and a stoker came out with a coal-stained face, holding a jug that he gulped from.
‘Well, isn’t he a puny herring!’ he commented, pointing a sooty finger at me. ‘Bad boy, what have you done, eh?’
‘He’s a millionaire on his way to America who lost his ticket,’ answered the baggage steward. ‘A gale blew up and took his ticket out to sea!’
‘Cast him in irons!’ said the stoker, and he laughed.
We came to a staircase and the man did not stop. My arm was nearly twisted out of its socket. My legs were sore from hitting against each other. I was dizzy. He kept hold of me with one arm as we mounted steps, and up four or maybe five flights of stairs. He stopped then and pushed me against the wall beside a door that had a round porthole window, with a gauze curtain showing some light from inside. He knocked, and as the door opened I noticed the word ‘officers’ painted in red below the window. The baggage man whispered something to the officer, who was reading charts.
The officer gave a quick look at me. ‘You can go,’ he said to the one who had dragged me in. ‘What’s ’is name? Where’s he from? Liverpool, I suppose?’
‘I dunno,’ the baggage steward shook his head and left.
The officers’ quarters were much finer than the horrible cargo place. For a moment I felt I was saved, but then I began to shiver with worry and a sickness that made me want to keel over. I realised also that the liner moved about more on this top deck. Out through a window I saw one of the chimney stacks, the white-painted decking, lifeboats, and, best of all, the sea going on for miles and miles to the horizon in the afternoon drizzle. My eyes watered and
stung a little, seeing the wondrous sight. I gaped in awe and amazement at the swell of waves and the whole sky teeming with rain over it all.
‘I’m officer John Lewis,’ the man said in a gruff tone. He was a small, sturdy man with a moustache and large, bulging eyes. ‘You must consider yourself under the jurisdiction of the officers and crew. We will hand you over to the police in New York.’ His tone grew more severe. ‘You will work in the stores for your food during the remainder of the voyage. If you cause any trouble, like fighting or stealing, you will be put in the cages. Is that understood? Why are you shivering, boy? Are you ill or something? Looks like you got the plague – the last bloody thing we need aboard a passenger liner!’ He stared at me. ‘What’s your name, boy?’ he asked, sitting down at a desk on which were pens, an ink well, Cunard headed notepaper, envelopes, maps and other documents.
‘I’m Finbar Kennedy from Queenstown,’ I managed to say as sweat poured down my face. Then, more brazenly, ‘My father is Jack Kennedy. He is Staff Captain on the
Lusitania
.’
‘Eh, you’re Irish and you know what liner you are on.’ He placed his hands flat on the desk. ‘Who did you say your father is?’ He stared at me as another officer came in, shaking the rain off.
‘Got some company, John?’ The tall officer had to stoop to come in the door.
‘Got me a stowaway found in cargo,’ replied Lewis at the desk. ‘He claims Jack Kennedy is his father!’
‘Oh and let me introduce myself,’ said the tall man in mock formality. ‘I am Officer Albert Bestic, and this is my fellow officer, John Lewis.’ They both laughed.
‘Take him down to the stores. He can run errands,’ said Bestic.
‘Please sir,’ I begged Officer Bestic. ‘Would someone fetch my father?’
The officers howled with laughter.
‘He’ll be wanting his mother next,’ said Lewis. Then he lowered his voice. ‘He does look like a sick calf though.’
‘The Staff Captain,’ said Bestic, ‘should be in the wheelhouse with Captain Turner. What you say I go and get Jack Kennedy, clear up the situation and then take the boy to the stores where he can really work up a sweat! Keep him here until I get back.’ Bestic opened the door, tilted his head and went out, letting it slam shut after him.
After a long time, Officer Bestic returned with Dad, who was holding papers and documents that he pushed into Bestic’s hands when he saw me. He looked shocked, and his mouth opened as he tried to speak. I started to whimper and he ran over to me and put a hand on my forehead. Dad looked different than when he was at home. In fact, he looked as mean as Lewis and Bestic; the three of them were almost like brutes. I was too weak to tell him what had happened – how I’d run away, about the Baroness, the guns, the cane that nearly shot me, the secret talk about the German codebook as well as being locked in the cargo deck.
‘Dad,’ I muttered feebly, ‘it’s great to see you. I feel sick.’
Lewis, the shorter one, and Bestic, the taller one, suddenly looked kinder.
‘Finbar, you have a fever,’ Dad exclaimed. ‘You look really bad. Albert, run for the medical officer. Tell him we have a very sick boy on board. This is my son Finbar. Tell Captain Turner I’ll be delayed a while.’ My father had Bestic hopping into action.
‘Finbar, your Daddy will take care of you,’ said Lewis, going to his desk, ‘eh, Captain Kennedy?’
‘John,’ said my father sternly, ‘write down every word I say and get it sent by telegraph immediately to Admiral Coke in
Queenstown.’ Dad’s voice was stern and official as he called out to Lewis, who wrote on a pad with a pencil: ‘Attention Admiral Coke. Finbar Kennedy, son of Jack Kennedy, safely aboard the
Lusitania
today, 30 April 1915. Inform R.I.C. Queenstown and Mrs Kennedy & Family, 1 Park Terrace. All well on the high seas. John Kennedy, Staff Captain RMS
Lusitania
.’
‘John, this is for immediate transmission. Okay?’
‘Yes, Captain,’ said Lewis, putting his peaked cap on quickly as he rushed out with the telegraph message.
Dad opened a cupboard from which he took a heavy blanket and wrapped it around me like a cloak. He lifted me on to a big chair that had two wooden arm rests. ‘You got on board at Queenstown, and fell asleep?’ He waited for an answer and bit his lip. Then he began to grin. ‘Actually, I am secretly chuffed you are aboard the
Lusitania
, and once your mam knows you’re safe … So, you jumped ship! What an adventurer we have!’ My father’s voice was beginning to break into a laugh and his face was beaming.
‘Daddy, I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused.’ My chest heaved and I started to sob, cough, and splutter.
‘Well now, my son, I’m glad to see you safe and sound. But we must get you well.’ He began to fix the blanket around my
chest and then flung his arms around me. ‘Wait until you see New York, son. I’ll bet that’s why you ran away.’ He laughed and looked out into the dusk of the afternoon across the
grey-blue
mountainous waves of the sea. Then he felt my forehead. ‘Cripes, you’re burning up, boy, and you’re shivering,’ he said, staring at me with a worried look.
My father hoisted me over one shoulder and we headed out of the officer’s quarters. The floors and walls moved past me as the liner swayed and heaved. Dad scrambled along and finally stopped at two white doors with a red cross on each. He put me down, took my hand and we walked into the ship’s hospital.
‘C
aptain Kennedy!’ A man in a white coat, wearing spectacles, greeted Dad and looked down at me. ‘So, this is your son. I heard about the situation from Officer Lewis. Follow me.’
‘This is the medical officer, Doctor McDermott, and he will look after you,’ Dad told me as we walked behind the doctor into a room divided into compartments. From midway up to the top of the ceiling the walls had glass panelling. Through bleary eyes I saw beds, tables, and cabinets containing bottles, small boxes, jars and silver medical instruments in glass jugs and beakers. Dad put me sitting on a bed and looked at Dr McDermott.
‘Finbar has been in the stern cargo deck since we left
Queenstown.’ Dad gave the doctor the details, but he didn’t know the full story and I was too exhausted to tell them everything.
‘Show me your tongue,’ the doctor said, and examined me. I started to cough. ‘Say Ah,’ he said, and looked down my throat. ‘Is your chest hurting?’ I nodded. ‘Breathe on to this.’ He put a mirror in front of my mouth and my breath made it cloudy. He placed a glass thermometer under one of my arms and held it there.
‘Did you eat or drink anything since coming aboard?’ he asked. I shook my head and he gave me a puzzled look.
‘Well, I drank the water off the walls in cargo because there was nothing else …’ I said, remembering that awful time.
‘Ah! I know what it is now, Finbar.’ Dr McDermott clicked his fingers. ‘It used to be a very common problem in the last century.’ He turned to my father.
‘Your son,’ the doctor said, ‘has a particular type of pneumonia. The water he took is unsuitable for drinking and it has infected his lungs with a nasty virus. His temperature is very, very high. We have to bring the temperature down.’ He went out into a small corridor and called the ship’s nurse, Nurse Ellis. ‘I think we should keep him away from the others in the main ward.’
Dr McDermott opened a cupboard where there was a shelf with test tubes. He took down a jar of red powder and put a spoonful of it in one of the test tubes. He lit a candle in a holder and held the test tube above the flame. Soon the powder changed colour, the glass turned black from the flame and he asked me to inhale the smoky vapour streaming out of the test tube. ‘That will help you breathe more easily,’ he said, checking my pulse again.
‘Poor boy,’ said Nurse Ellis. She had thick, plaited hair and a white cap pinned on her head. She got pillows to prop me up, so I was soon snug except for my aches, pains and sweating. ‘Isn’t this a strange hospital, a sea hospital?’ she said, smiling, but I was too sick to smile back. She rubbed my face with a sponge that smelt of some substance that reminded me of the peppermint drops and clove rock in Mrs Fitz’s shop in Queenstown, though stronger.
‘Dad,’ I called, and he was waiting, fidgeting with his peaked cap. ‘There’s a man on the liner with a suitcase full of guns. He is a friend of the Baroness. His name is Mr…’ suddenly with the fever and all I couldn’t remember the name.
My father’s brow was lined and furrowed as he listened.
‘Then the Baroness … what’s her name, she has a codebook for sinking battleships. She is a German. The man is British…’
I was telling him all I could remember. ‘Oh yes, and the man has a walking stick and it can fire a bullet and it did fire a bullet and nearly killed me…’ I felt pleased that I could tell Dad what happened.
‘Finbar is really not well at all,’ Dad said to the doctor and Nurse Ellis. ‘He’s raving. Is this part of the illness too?’
‘Your son is delirious, Captain,’ said Dr McDermott – and the word
delirious
seemed to echo in my ears as if the doctor was saying it over and over. ‘He is best left to our care.’
I just wanted to float off to sleep. My father, the nurse and the doctor became a blur before my eyes.
‘I can see that,’ said my father, ‘but you understand the international situation with the war. I am duty-bound to check any piece of information from anyone to do with security. Just let me ask him one question before I go.’
‘Very well, Captain. Then we’ll let him sleep. He’s your son, but it’s my responsibility to restore his health.’ The doctor sighed and folded his arms.
‘Finbar, you definitely saw guns in a suitcase, did you? Where?’
I nodded, but sleep was slowly and safely leading me into its beautiful and peaceful world.
‘In the cabin number…’ I mumbled, but could not
remember the number of the Baroness’s cabin. The room began to move in a swirl and fade away as my senses entered the healing halls of sleep.
Being sick is like being in a strange country, and being sick at sea with a fever was like being on another planet where I was a watery, wobbly creature made entirely of jelly, and where people’s heads looked bigger, their voices echoed as if they talked to me from the bottom of a well, and I never knew if they heard what I said to them. They answered my questions as if I had asked something strange or had spoken in a language they did not understand.
I lost track of time. Night and day were the same. Nurse Ellis was so good; she was always there. She showed me a little card with my name ‘Finbar Kennedy’ written on it and underneath, in red ink, the letters: ‘VP’. ‘That means Viral Pneumonia,’ she explained.
‘Are they the code words for my name?’ I asked her. ‘Are you a spy?’ She went for Dr McDermott, who came and looked at me, his long face looking serious.
‘Nurse, you must try and get him to eat as he’s so weak.’ His voice was like an echo.
The gaslamp in the corner above the bed was too bright when I stared at it for long. I dozed off, I woke up, I dozed
off again. Sometimes I thought I was in Queenstown and expected to see Mam, Colleen, Christopher and Sean.
Sometimes when I woke up Dad was sitting beside me on the bed. ‘There is no school on the
Lusitania
, you’ll be glad to hear,’ he said one day. He had brought my clothes, my cap, the schoolbag and handed me the five dollars he’d found in my pocket that the Baroness had given me for carrying her suitcases. ‘Your mother knows you’re safe. They got our message. Captain Turner is asking after you. In two days we will be docking in New York,’ he announced.
I was about to try to tell him again about the guns, but he stood up, put his hand to my forehead, and said, ‘Get well, shipmate.’ He was in a hurry to get away to his work. ‘We can talk when you’re fully recovered,’ he said.
I was given hot lemon with crushed garlic to drink, which was very hard to swallow because it burned my throat. I sweated. I tossed and turned like the liner. Nurse Ellis brought chicken broth with chopped onions in it. And after one spoonful I began to feel that my throat was not so sore.
Then one day I woke up and heard no sound on the liner.
The engines had stopped. I was certain of that because it was so still and the boat did not move around. My aches and pains had gone and the sweats had disappeared, my forehead and temples were cool, and my chest heaved up and down gently.
Nurse Ellis breezed in and I heard her voice clearly, as if for the first time. She held my wrist, looked at her watch and counted the beats of my pulse. ‘You’re over it,’ she announced. ‘I think you should walk a bit,’ she suggested, and helped me into my clothes that had been washed clean and fresh. My schoolbag looked odd so far away from home. I looked inside and smiled when I saw my penknife, the conker and the wooden liner.
‘Has the
Lusitania
stopped?’ I asked. My legs were a bit shaky when I walked. For the first time I could see the liner’s hospital clearly. My room opened on to a bigger room with rows of beds on each side. There were small tables between the beds and there were curtains on rails around the beds. There were no other patients.
‘We docked just after eleven this morning,’ said Nurse Ellis. ‘It is now four o’clock in the afternoon. Your father will collect you in the Cunard office. We must hurry, now. It’s across the wharf. Pier 54, on 14th Street. We mustn’t miss him. Let’s go up to the sun deck and give you your first sight of New York.’
She led the way with a big grin, and I followed her up two flights of stairs.
‘Look,’ Nurse Ellis said in a loud voice, ‘you’ll need your legs today – and you will have to walk better than a newborn foal. Look over there. Look!’ She was quite excited herself. ‘You are in America.’ She hugged me and I thought she was about to cry. I could have cried too. God, had this nurse been good to me! She was like my mother at sea.
