S.O.S. Titanic (11 page)

In a daze of sound and confusion he saw the Flynns and their friends stumbling over each other and running along the corridor, their hands clasped to their ears. And he was running himself, racing up the stairs, the whistle jumping against him at every step, running hard.

He stood by the swing doors that led out to the deck, panting, his whole body wet with sweat. So close. They'd have left him battered and bloody. Would they come looking for him again tonight? He didn't think so. They'd picture him hiding in his cabin. They'd picture how they'd get him another time, when he wasn't ready. Well, there wouldn't be a time when he wasn't ready.

And what about Pegeen? She'd have read the letter by now. Would she come? What had Mary Kelly meant, "And you all starry-eyed over him?" What did that mean?

The door beside him rattled and swung open. Someone was coming in from the deck. Pegeen? No, she'd never dare step inside here. The dim, deserted first-class deck was one thing, but the gleaming luxury of first class proper would be unthinkable. He stepped back.

Mrs. Adair came through the door; and behind her, holding it open, was the man Barry had seen her with twice before. She wore a pale fur coat. A pale, silky scarf patterned all over with yellow roses was tied around her head. She was half turned, speaking back to the man, and she hadn't yet noticed Barry. He wished there were somewhere he could disappear to and not be standing here with his two arms the one length, but there was nowhere for him to go. Mrs. Adair was smiling. She looked almost happy. Her smile wavered when she saw him.

"Mrs. Adair," Barry said. "Hello." And to the man behind her he said, "Good evening, sir."

"Good evening." The man wore a black homburg hat and a black melton coat with the collar turned up.

"Barry?" Mrs. Adair bit her lip. Her eye began flicking in that horrible, hurtM-looking way.

The man held out his hand: "Barry, we haven't met officially. Charity has told me how nice you are to little Jocelyn."

"Well," Barry said. "It's not hard."

"No." The man removed his hat and turned down the collar of his coat. "It's very cold out there tonight. We took a few steps and decided to come back inside." Under the light of the chandelier his hair shone silver and black. "Charity and I are on our way for a hot drink in the Café Parisien room. Would you care to join us? I hear they have wonderfvd cinnamon cocoa." His accent was American.

"The stewardess stays with Jocelyn sometimes while I come up with Malcolm," Mrs. Adair said quickly, as if she needed to explain. She pushed back a strand of pale hair that had escaped the scarf. The painted roses were the same as the ones Grandmother grew in her garden, Barry thought, but bigger and brighter. Grandmother's were always a bit sickly and got chewed up by mites.

"Excuse me," Mrs. Adair said. "I should have introduced you. This is my fiancé, Mr. Malcolm Bensonhurst. Mr. Barry O'Neill. Together we suffer the colonel's stories of his many adventures." She made a face at Barry. "Malcolm came with me to get Jocelyn from her father," she said. "But in the end we decided..." She paused.

Mr. Bensonhurst finished the sentence for her. "We decided not to produce me just yet. Charity feels, and I agree, that Jocelyn should be introduced gradually to her new life."

Barry nodded. "She misses her father a lot." The second the words were out he wished them back. What an awful thing to say to Mrs. Adair. To them.

"Yes, she does." Mrs. Adair's eyelid flick, flick, flicked.

Mr. Bensonhurst put a gende hand on her arm. "Jossie is too young to understand," he said, "and perhaps that is as it should be. The courts awarded her to Charity. Charity's ex-husband took Jossie, though—"

Mrs. Adair put a finger to her lips. "Let's not burden Barry with our troubles."

"It took Charity four years to find her daughter. She literally had to hit Mr. Adair on the head to free Jocelyn and get her away from him."

"Barry knows a little about that," Mrs. Adair said. "It's hard, Barry, because Jossie doesn't know me." She shivered. "I'm sorry. I've said too much. Forgive me—" In the silence Barry heard the faint tinkle of the crystals that sparkled on the chandelier, the faraway laughter of someone below. Music drifted. Music always drifted from somewhere on the
Titanic,
music and perfume.

"It will be all right, sweetheart," Mr. Bensonhurst said. "Jocelyn will love you. How could she not, when you love her so much? This bad time will pass."

"Yes," Barry said, and the thought of his own mother came like the jab of a knife. "I know it will be hard for you," his mother had said in her last letter, "but we love you so much and we want you with us."

"Yes," he said again. "It will be all right."

Mrs. Adair's smile was warm, her eyes steady. "Thank you. You know, you could have had two cups of that cinnamon cocoa while we kept you here, talking." She put up a hand and touched his cheek. "Is this a new bruise on your face? How on earth did you get another one?"

"Really?" Barry felt where she'd touched. "It's sore, all right," he said. "My mother's going to think I've been in the wars when she sees me." How strange. He hadn't even known that one of Frank Flynn's punches had landed. At least this one wouldn't need stitches.

"Good-night, then, old chap," Mr. Bensonhurst said. The words sounded so English and so wrong in that American accent that Barry had to smile.

"Good-night."

"I wanted you to know," Mrs. Adair said softly. "I didn't like it that you thought me a monster."

"I never thought that," Barry said. He watched them go together down the wide staircase, and he was glad for them and glad for Jocelyn. It might be a long way to go, but in the end they'd be a family. Wasn't that something his own mother had said, too?

He turned and looked again at the swinging doors to the deck. The thought that Pegeen might come had crept far into the back of his head. Just because by now she'd have read the letter, what made him think she would come right away up onto the cold deck? Why had he ever thought she would? And how long had he been standing here talking to Mrs. Adair and Mr. Bensonhurst? Five minutes. Maybe ten.

It was what Father Dooley in Mullinmore would have called an act of blind faith, but a fool action for all of that, that made him push open the door and go out again into the cold to wait.
But,
he told himself,
just in case.

He thought he'd waited a long time, but maybe it only seemed long with the cold sinking through him and his ears nervous at every sound, at every creak and twitch of the ship. Easy to tell himself the fighting Flynns wouldn't be after him tonight, but his muscles didn't seem to believe him. They jerked and tightened and his fingers fumbled around till they found the little knife in his pocket.

He'd never seen stars so hard and sharp edged. He'd never seen a sea so calm, like a mirror of glass.

Then she was there. She had wrapped herself again in the shawl. It hid her hair and turned her into a shapeless bundle of black. The silver pin at her neck gleamed through the weave of the wool.

"Jonnie brought the life jackets," she said. "Thank you. But I thought maybe there was more you wanted to say to me."

"There is." His mouth was so numbed with cold that the words wouldn't come. He wished she'd worn the long black coat that came almost to her ankles, because the cold was desperate, sinking through flesh and bones, turning the marrow inside them to ice.

"Let's go inside," he muttered.

Pegeen pulled away. "Och, no. What if one of the stewards saw me and sent me back to my rightful place? I'd die of shame."

She would, he knew. But it was so cold.

"We could go down to steerage, then," he said. "We can't be out here—you can't."

"No, Frank and Jonnie might be around."

Well, he didn't want that either. The whistle might not save him next time.

"Just tell me fast what it is you want," Pegeen said.

Everything jumbled in his head. The danger to the ship, if there was danger. That she should be ready if anything happened.

He stared at her, not knowing where to begin or how to make sense. Did she know that he liked her? Which was daft. Did she know?

"It was mosdy the life jackets," he said. "I was worried you might need them."

And then there was a sudden gende jolt, a ripping sound as if someone had drawn a knife along the outside of the ship, the way Jonnie Flynn had drawn his knife across Grandfather's carriage way back in Mullinmore. There was a fumbling sound, like marbles rolling along the deck, thousands and thousands of marbles.

"What...?" Pegeen clutched at his arm. "What was that? Look!" She was pointing over his shoulder. "Look!"

Sailing past them, towering above the deck where they stood, so close that if a person leaned over the railing a person could touch it, was a ghosdy white shape. They stared at it, speechless, as it passed them, or as they passed it.

"Was it another ship?" Pegeen whispered. "One of those old-fashioned ships with great white sails? But sure there aren't any of those anymore, only in paintings. Did it bump into us? I felt a bit of a thump."

"I ... I...," Barry began. "It was an iceberg. We just missed it. Maybe it touched us."

In the strange white light it seemed as if a thousand stars had fallen from the sky. They lay small and glittering on the deck. Barry fumbled to pick one up. It shone on his glove. "Ice!" he said.

And at that moment he heard far away in the depths of the ship a dull sound that he'd never heard before, but knew. The distant metal thump of a watertight door coming down, and another, and another.
Like traps,
he thought.
Like guillotines falling.

They stood in terrified silence as the
Titanic
came to a smooth, silent stop.

Barry hadn't much noticed the steady beat of the engines but he noticed the silence when they stopped. The
Titanic
lay motionless. There was no small push of air as the ship glided forward, no whisper of waves against the hull. For a semisecond he imagined the ship hanging between sky and sea, between time and space, suspended in nothingness. The quiet was more eerie than noise could ever be.

Pegeen had her hands pressed against her cheeks. "Why have we stopped?"

"I don't know."

A crush of noise and people erupted through the doors and onto the deck. Questions were shouted back and forth. Crowds rushed to peer across the ocean, calm and aglimmer under the stars.

Barry and Pegeen ran across to the railings with them. He could hardly believe what they'd seen a few minutes ago. But they couldn't both have imagined it.

Then someone pointed. "My gosh! Look at the iceberg ... way behind us. Hurry! Quick, it's drifting away."

Barry leaned across the railing as far as he dared. Little lumps of ice shattered under his boots. Floating behind them, blue-white, shining, the iceberg sailed majestically on. It was like a mountain, the kind Barry had seen in postcards of the Alps or the Matterhorn, sheer and sleek.

"Do you think that's why we stopped?" The woman who asked was wearing a Chinese silk dressing gown with a dragon that flamed red and gold from hem to collar. She hugged her arms around herself and the wide, pleated sleeves swept out like fans. "Brrr," she said. "It's so cold. But I had to find out what's going on."

"I felt a bump," someone said.

"Felt a bump? I was in my bunk and the ice came tumbling in through my open porthole," a man in pajamas and a raccoon coat said. "I'll tell you, I've never leapt out of bed faster."

"Look at this, would you?" Someone scooped up one of the ice chips that littered the deck. "Hey, I'd like to take this home for a souvenir. Do you think it will melt?"

"Not if it stays this cold, it won't."

Pegeen stood in front of Barry, not speaking, keeping herself unnoticed. He put his hands on her shoulders, feeling how bony they were, like a bird's wings, so small, so delicate even through the bulkiness of his gloves. He wondered how he could get his gloves off and his hands back on her shoulders without her noticing. He could smell the faint smell of moth balls off her shawl, the kind Grandmother kept in the wardrobes at home.

A steward who came along the deck was instantly surrounded.

"Can you tell us what's wrong?"

"Not a thing, sir. An iceberg came close, that's all I know. I think we shaved the side of it. Nothing to worry about."

"Someone said he thought he heard the watertight doors close."

"It's possible, madam. If so, it was just a precaution. 'Safety first' is the White Star motto. I'm sure we'll be under way again in a few minutes." His smile showed big, caramel-colored teeth. "Then you'll hear the doors go up. You know what they say, madam. What goes up must come down. And vice-versa."

"Well, I'm going inside. I'm freezing."

"I would certainly recommend that, madam. There's nothing to see anyway."

And there wasn't, anymore. Just the quiet, peaceful, starlit emptiness of the ocean.

An officer came hurrying in the opposite direction, heading for the bridge.

"Do you have any information?" a man asked him, a man fully dressed in a coat with a fur collar, overboots on top of his shoes. Barry saw that he was carrying a life jacket that he kept behind his back as though ashamed to be seen with it.

"We may have dropped a propeller blade. That's the guess down in the officers' room. If that's the case we'll have to return to Belfast for repairs."

"Back to Belfast?" The woman in the Chinese robe was now also wrapped in a blanket that had mysteriously appeared. "What a dreadful bore. Whoever wants to go back to Belfast?"

"Well, I'm going back to my bridge game," another passenger said grumpily. "I hope my partner hasn't given up and gone to bed."

"Hey, come up here and see the snowball fight," someone called from the railing that overlooked the poop deck.

Ice had really broken off the berg onto the lower deck. Great chunks, some soft and powdery as snow, lay scattered there like boulders. A half-dozen third-class passengers were laughing and whooping and throwing ice balls at each other. Barry saw Jonnie Flynn cramming ice down the neck of Mick Kelly's jersey; Mick, all puffed up in his life jacket, screamed and hopped about, trying to fish it out.