S.O.S. Titanic (4 page)

"Fine." They went back up the stairs and Barry pushed open the doors that led onto the wide boat deck. He and Mr. Scollins stood in the shadow of one of the high-slung lifeboats, feeling the cold, cold North Atlantic wind cutting through their jackets and shirts, through their skin to the shivering bones. The sea was calm and black, except close to the ship, where the lights shone on the surface, turning it to bottle green. The sky blazed with stars. Barry pointed upward. "Gemini—Heavenly Twins," he said. "I've never seen them so bright."

Scollins rubbed his hands along his arms. "Perhaps we should move before we freeze where we stand." He strode along the deck, wavering a little, as if he felt the roll of the
Titanic;
though up here in the open air Barry felt no movement at all. There was only that throb beneath their feet.

Music was coming from somewhere, happy, dancing music, and voices, too, singing and laughing. The farther Barry and Scollins walked, the louder the music got.

"The steerage passengers must be having a party," Mr. Scollins said. "Let's turn back."

"Oh, I'd like to have a look," Barry said. Scollins might have been rented to keep an eye on him, but that didn't mean he could order Barry around, did it?

"Oh, very well. Just for a minute, then."

They leaned on the railing at the stern of the ship, looking down onto the deck below. It was a steerage party. A man sat on the bulkhead, playing an accordion. He wore a soft felt hat with a feather in the side, and his shirt was buttoned to the neck. A pipe smoked in his mouth and the wind carried the smell of it toward them; carried the music that squeezed out between his hands, sweet and filled with memories.

Beside him a girl stood playing a mouth organ, one foot in its black boot tapping out the rhythm. Barry saw the breeze blow a mass of red hair, and the black shawl tied around her waist. Pegeen Flynn! But where were her brothers? He looked for them in the crowd and couldn't find them.

"Down there is what's called the poop deck," Scollins said in his know-it-all manner. "Very small. But what can you expect? It only costs thirty-five pounds from Ireland to New York if you're willing to go steerage."

"Or
have
to go steerage," Barry said. He leaned farther out.

The music had quickened now. It was the kind you heard at celebrations back home. The small space below them swarmed with dancers. Skirts and shawls billowed. Sleeves ballooned. Boots thumped. There was laughter, and words called out in a language he couldn't understand—Swedish, maybe, or German. He knew the Irish words, though, and there were plenty of them. There was singing and he knew the song:

Have you ever been in love, me boys, and have you felt the pain?

I'd rather be in jail myself than be in love again.

For the girl I loved was beautiful, I want you all to know,

And I met her in the garden where the praties grow.

Barry wished he was down there singing along with them.

"I really don't feel well at all," Scollins said. "I think..." He put his hand across his mouth and began walking quickly back the way they had come. With his free hand he waved urgently for Barry to follow him.

What if I don't?
Barry thought. What could Scollins do, after all—complain to Grandpop? Not for a while, he couldn't.

"I think I'll stay here and watch," Barry said.

"No, no, no." Scollins clutched at one of the stanchions that held the lifeboats high above their heads. "I insist."

I won't go,
Barry thought. Scollins wasn't about to carry him, or have him escorted to the cabin, or have him locked up in the purser's safe along with those precious jewels. But Scollins might insist on staying himself, indisposed or not.

Barry remembered the red brocade curtains that could be pulled across the beds for privacy. Perfect. If he got undressed and into bed and pulled those curtains closed behind him, Scollins would be satisfied. In fact, if Barry were careful to act obedient he could be wherever he wanted to be every night of the trip and Scollins wouldn't know the difference. He'd go now, then come back here and watch. Better than lying sleepless, imagining Grandmother and Grandpop back at home without him.

"I do think we'd better go to the cabin," he said, and faked a yawn. "It's getting cold."

He'd change into the heavy white sweater Grandmother had knit for him. "It's a fisherman's sweater," she'd said. "See the cable pattern? That's the O'Neill mark from years back. If an O'Neill fisherman drowned, they could tell who he was by this cable. See here, these rows of stitches looped over the others?"

Grandpop had winked. "So if the fish had eaten his face off, they'd still know him for an O'Neill."

"Stop it," Grandmother protested, shivering. "Do you always have to be so plainspoken?"

"It's my nature," Grandpop had said.

I'll change into my O'Neill sweater,
Barry thought,
and the tweed cap, pulled down to hide my eyes, and Grandpop's gloves. And I'll come back up here and look down on them.

"Looking down on us, as usual?" Jonnie Flynn would have said if he'd known.

But Jonnie Flynn would never know.

Barry was ready, waiting. It hadn't been easy to get one set of clothes off behind the brocade bed curtains, and another on. He'd wriggled like an eel going up the River Bann. Now he lay quietly, pretending sleep.

Scollins tossed and groaned. Once he got up and heaved into the washbasin. Barry decided there couldn't be much of that too-rich meal left, and surely soon he'd sleep.

Scollins had left his curtains open, either for air or for a dash to the washbasin if he needed it again. Through a gap in the fold of his own drape Barry watched him. Scollins looked so small under the blanket, his face the color of its white fleece, his eyelids fluttering. The fringed brocade swayed back and forth with a gende, steady rhythm as the ship plowed through the ocean under its canopy of stars.

An hour must have passed, but Barry had no thought of sleep himself. He was resdess and nervous, filled with a muddle of feelings. The sorrow of the leaving, the strangeness of being on the big ocean liner. The fighting Flynns, Mr. Scollins, little Jocelyn and her mother—they all paraded through his mind. Would his mother look like Mrs. Adair? Would she have fawn-colored hair? Of course not. In the photos and in his scattered memories her hair was black, with the same wild curl that his own hair had. And his father? He had a bald spot in back that could be covered by a penny. Sometimes his father had done that, Barry remembered, balancing the penny on his head, staggering around.

He thought about the
Titan
and the
Titanic.
That was only a coincidence. There were coincidences in life. He and Grandpop had the same birthday ... One party for the two of them, and Mrs. Bowers baking her cream sponge cake with raspberry jam and presents all around.

Through his thoughts came the soft sound of snoring.

Scollins had kicked off the blanket. Barry crept out of bed and covered him again so he wouldn't get cold and wake up. Gently he closed both sets of bed curtains.

Now it must be late. Would the party on the poop deck still be going? He put on his cap and Grandpop's gloves and tiptoed out of the cabin.

The quiet voice almost startled him into letting the door bang.

"Are you having trouble sleeping, Master O'Neill? Shall I bring you a glass of warm milk?"

Watley stood there in his white steward's jacket with its brass buttons, every strand pf his boot black hair perfectly in place.

"Oh, no, thanks. No milk," Barry said. Did White Star stewards stay on duty day and night? "I was awake, so I decided to go out and watch the party that's going on in steerage. I know some of the people." Why did he feel he had to explain? Was Watley his guardian, too?

"Yes." Neither Watley's face nor his voice changed, but there was something hidden in both of them.

The great ship gave a sudden shudder, so that they staggered.

"What was that?" Barry asked.

"Probably a rogue wave." Watley smoothed his jacket. "Waves are like people; they don't always do what's expected of them."

Barry grinned. "But surely no wave would dare shake the
Titanic?
"

"Don't be too certain," Watley said. "The ocean always has a surprise or two waiting."

He sounded like one of those solemn mechanical fortune-tellers in the glass booths at summer fairs. Put in a penny and he'd tell you the future, standing there with his mouth not moving but the card popping out of the slot below:
Ton will have great good fortune. News will come from across the water.
Barry always knew it would be from his mother and father, across the water and across the world.

Watley's eyes were like the fortune-teller's, too, seeing nothing, seeing everything. "Saying the ship is unsinkable is a proud statement," he went on. "And one the sea may not like." He squared his little, white-jacketed shoulders. "Excuse me, sir. I've been at sea too long. Never you worry about anything. Whatever may happen, Watley's here."

"Thank you, Watley," Barry said. "Good-night, then."
What a strange little man,
he thought.
What does he think is going to happen?

Barry went quickly along the corridor, up the wide staircase, and out onto A Deck. It was colder there than it had been two hours earlier, and he dug his chin into the rolled neck of his sweater and paced faster. Beneath his feet the smooth wooden deck trembled, the way a drum still shivers minutes after you've finished playing it. The sea stretched black and calm to the horizon.

That was the edge of the world out there. He'd never seen the edge of the world so clearly. In Mullinmore there were always trees and soft hills between you and it. But over there was where the world ended. It seemed you could step over it and be someplace else. The stars were so big that if he jumped he could pull one down and put it in his pocket or carry it, glowing, in his hand.

There was a small movement in the shadow of one of the bulkhead lights, and Barry saw a woman and a man. They'd been standing close together, but they moved apart when they saw him. Her coat was pale against the darkness of sea and sky; her hair, too.

"Lovely night," the man said. "Looks like we're going to have a fine crossing."

The woman turned her back and stared wordlessly across the ocean. "Good-night," the man said.

"Good-night."

The deck was damp. Did spray come up this far, Barry wondered, or was this the same kind of night dew that wet the grass at home? Now he could hear the music, fast and lively, rising from the deck below, and he walked even faster. "Molly's Jig." They were still there, then, singing and dancing. His own feet felt like dancing along with them.

There was nobody leaning over the railing now looking down on the celebrations. The first-class passengers would be snug in the smoking room or in the Café Parisién, or down in their staterooms. A wind blew across the stern, whistling its own songs in the lines and stays. A shooting star with a ribbon for a tail raced across the sky. Barry stood a little back from the railing in the shelter of a metal post, looking down on the hurly-burly of color and movement below. This was better than lying sleepless in his bunk, thinking his sad thoughts, listening to Scollins snore.

There wasn't an inch of the small poop deck that didn't jump and dance. He saw Pegeen Flynn whirling around with a funny-looking fellow in an odd white jacket. No Jonnie Flynn to be seen. No Frank. They'd be exploring, looking for Barry maybe.
Ifs because of your grandfather and you, too. Bad cess to both of you. Can ya swim?

A man in a navy blue coat, like a sailor's, almost, looked straight up at him and pointed, nudging the arm of a man beside him. Instinctively Barry pulled back, forgetting the metal pole with its studding of rivets; he whacked his head against it with a thump that jarred his teeth and made his eyes water.
Jakers!
What had he done to himself? And why? Those two fellows had meant him no harm. They were laughing, probably, at the way those jackass snobs of first class looked down on steerage. And weren't the first-class fellows a dull lot altogether, in spite of their riches?

He pulled off one of his gloves, probing at his face, and felt the warm, wet trickle of blood. The gash was high on his left cheekbone and so sore he could hardly touch it. There'd be swelling, too. What a stupid ... And that was when he realized he'd dropped the glove. Where was it?

The ship's lights shone white on the deck around his feet. There was no glove. Had it fallen? Had he somehow kicked it over the edge and into the ocean? Grandpop's glove. Or—He looked down again on the poop deck and saw it. It had fallen on a coiled rope and lay neady in the middle, like a cherry on top of a bun. Barry closed his eyes. His cheek was throbbing, but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was the glove.

Suppose he called down, pointed at someone to throw it up? They'd never. He knew it surely. They'd make sport with it the way the boys at school did when they took your cap or book and tossed it around from one to the other. There was no way they'd throw something back to a first-class passenger. One who'd come to gawk at them.

What if he went down himself, then, and got it? Watley said first-class passengers sometimes did go into steerage. For a lark. He would never be noticed, not in that crowd. Not in that jumble of noise and movement. Carefully he checked again, sorting out the crowd below. Neither Jonnie nor Frank Flynn was there. They might come, though. He'd have to get down and back fast.

Metal steps at the side led straight to the poop deck. The trick would be not being noticed on the staircase. He pulled his cap lower on his head and waited.

In a few minutes the dancing stopped and someone called out, "Time for a song. Will you give us a song, Sean McGinnis?"

A man in a long black coat said, "I will and all," and stood up on an overturned box and began to sing:

There is not in the wide world a, valley so sweet

As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.