S.O.S. Titanic (5 page)

There was such stillness below now. Such attention. Everyone there was leaving a Vale of Avoca or someplace equally loved—or someone loved.

Carefully, slowly, Barry undid a chain. First Class Only was printed on the other side of the sign that hung on it. He hooked the chain carefully back in place behind him and went silently down the steps.

Bad luck take it! Two people were leaning now against the coil of rope, and from below here he could see that this wasn't going to be as easy a job as he'd thought. The rope coil was bigger, wider. Wouldn't it have to be, for a ship the size of the
Titanic
? There'd be no just reaching up and taking the glove. He'd have to climb—and not now. Not till the singing was over and the dancing started again. Not till those two people moved.

He stood back against the railing, the ship's wake spreading like a white triangle in the ocean behind him, boiling itself out into darkness.

A girl about his own age edged over beside him.

Barry stared straight ahead.
Don't talk to me,
he thought.
Don't notice me.

"What happened to your face?" she asked.

"I fell against a post," Barry said, not looking at her.

She laughed. "You must have been falling-down drunk, then, for this ship's steady as a rock."

The singer was finishing:

Oh, the last rays of feeling and life must depart

'Ere the bloom of that beauty shall fade from my heart.

"That was good," the girl said, "but he shouldn't be singing such a sad ould song. Aren't we all sad enough?" She faced him, sticking out her hand. "My name's Mary Kelly, what's yours?"

"Barry O'Neill." She had a cap like his own and hair dark as his, but spiky. The coat might have been her father's, for it trailed to her ankles and had lapels on it that stuck out from her shoulders like wings.

The music had started again and he caught a glimpse of Pegeen Flynn among the other dancers. She was still with the fellow in the fat white jacket, but now Barry saw that what he was wearing was a padded life jacket. It made him look as round as he was long, and took away his neck. He and Pegeen held each other at arm's length, swinging around and around, Pegeen's black skirt billowing like a balloon, her red hair streaking behind her.

One of the straps of the boy's life jacket swung loose, clipping people as they passed, and he stopped and refastened it. Pegeen hugged her arms around herself as if she were cold with the standing, and then she and the boy were dancing again.

Mary followed the steadiness of his glance. "Do you know Pegeen?"

Barry shook his head.

"I just met her tonight, myself," Mary said. "She's not a bit happy. I pushed her out there and told her to dance. She might as well; there's no turning back now. That's my brother, Mick, she's with. He's wearing that stupid life jacket because he's deadly afraid of the water. He can't swim. Well, none of us can, I suppose. He says that life jacket will be on him day and night till we reach New York."

"Good idea," Barry said, though he thought it must be uncomfortable. Imagine wearing that thing in bed. He let his gaze wander over the crowd, checking again for Jonnie and Frank, feeling himself relax when he saw there was still no sign of them.

"I told Pegeen there's not a bit of sense being mopey," Mary went on. "Of course, it's easier for me. I have my ma and da with me, and Mick as well."

The music had stopped and Pegeen and her partner stood, waiting. Barry glanced quickly at the coil of rope. From here he couldn't even see the glove. But it was there, and so were the two men carrying on a serious conversation. Would it draw too much attention to himself if he just said "Excuse me" and climbed past them?

Mary was waving and shouting, "Pegeen, Mick, over here!"

Their heads turned, and Barry saw that they were coming toward him and Mary. He pulled the peak of his cap lower and began moving away.

"Don't be going now. I want you to meet my friends." Mary had a hold of his arm. She was calling out again to Pegeen. "Don't you feel better now, the both of you? This is Mr. Barry O'Neill. We'll have to get him at the dancing, too, for I think he needs a bit of cheering up."

"Barry O'Neill." Pegeen took a step backward.

And then some terrible force smashed into Barry, sending him reeling against the railing, almost cutting him in two where his kidneys would be, maybe, pounding the breath out of him.

Jonnie and Frank Flynn.

"He's yours, Jonnie," Frank said, and Jonnie had his fists up and he was hopping from foot to foot in his newly polished boots, shouting, "Come on, me boy, come on, me boyo. We found you at last."

Barry tried to get up, but his legs had turned soft as porridge. He crawled, stood, and was smashed down again by Jonnie Flynn's fists. His cap flew off.

"You got him a good one. Look at the blood, would you?" Frank shouted.

"He didn't do that," Barry wanted to say. "I got that from the post." But there was no wind in him to say anything.

"Give him a chance, Jonnie. Let him off the ropes," someone called.

And then a girl's voice, "It wasn't sporting of you, coming up on him se-credy like that." Through the haze that filled his mind he recognized Mary Kelly's voice. His new friend. The only friend he had here—if she still was one.

Barry got up, shaking his head the way their hound, Oliver, shook his when he came through water, and he got his own fists up.

There was a crowd around them now. Barry lashed out. Somehow and by good luck he found Jonnie Flynn's stomach, flailing away with both arms, pumping, getting himself far from the railing and the drop to the deck below—and below that, the drop to the cold, dark sea.

"This is for your ould rascal of a grandfather," Jonnie Flynn grunted. He threw a punch to the side of Barry's head—the good side that hadn't been cut before but might be now. A handful of stars jumped from the sky and danced around him inside the place where his brain used to be.

But the mention of his grandpop was strong as smelling salts. Barry flung himself at Jonnie Flynn's knees, both of them down now, rolling over and over on the deck.

Feet in boots and buttoned shoes and laced-up brogues stepped back to give them room. No need for gendemen's rules. The boys were gouging, scratching, grunting words in Gaelic and in English.

And then they were being pulled apart. Someone had Barry by the back of his sweater, lifting him up. Across from him Jonnie Flynn struggled in the hands of a seaman who was saying, "Easy now, boy, easy," the way Bowers, their groundskeeper, spoke to Oliver, pulling on his collar. Barry couldn't see who was behind him. Someone big and with the smell of strong tobacco on his hands.

And standing a bit away, in the uniform with gold braid on the sleeves and on the peak of his cap, was Captain Smith.

"What's going on here?" he asked, his voice deep and dark as the ocean itself. "I won't have fighting on my ship."

His hands were in his jacket pockets. His short gray beard shot out from his chin, stiff and angry. He was fiercer looking even than the pictures Barry had seen of him. Captain Edward J. Smith. Previously in command of the
Olympic
, the
Titanic'
s sister ship, his photograph in all the newspapers in Ireland; here now, in person, scolding them.

"Mr. Feeney! Taffy!" Captain Smith said. "You may release the young gendemen." The tobacco hands behind Barry loosened their grip.

The crowd was quiet, paying close attention.

"What's your name, young man?" This to Jonnie Flynn.

"Jonnie Flynn, Captain, sir." It was the same bad-mannered, insulting way of talking he had when he spoke to Barry or to Grandpop, or to Bowers or Dickie, even. It said,
I'm me and I don't give a, rat's tail for any of you.

"And you?" The captain's steady eyes examined Barry.

"He's Barry O'Neill, a toff down from first class. Down slumming," someone called. Barry thought he recognized Frank Flynn's voice.

"Got more than he bargained for," someone else added, and there was laughter and applause. Barry's face burned. He fingered the cut on his face and the swelling around his mouth.

"I dropped my glove," he said, or thought he said, through his swollen mouth.

"Huh," a voice mocked. "He came down here to make trouble."

"No, it's my grandpop's glove and it's up there in the rope. I lost it through the railing."

"I'll have no more of this," the captain said, as if he'd heard nothing—and maybe he hadn't. Maybe every word Barry had thought he'd said had been only inside of his head.

"You two young gendemen—and all of you—will stay inside your classes for the rest of this voyage," Captain Smith said. "Those are the rules. You know them. They are posted on the gates and barriers. We do not tolerate disrespect for the rules. Mr. Feeney, Taffy, escort Mr. O'Neill back to his cabin. A stop off at the ship's doctor would be in order. He may need a sdtch or two in that face."

He turned toward Jonnie Flynn. "And you. Have you any wounds to speak of?"

"Och, sure, he hardly touched me at all." Jonnie Flynn grinned widely. "You can't beat the Irish, Captain, sir." Barry noticed how he turned his head so the red bruise that was already darkening the side of his face was hidden.

Barry picked up his cap.

"Good-night, ladies and gendemen," Captain Smith said, and he nodded to Barry and to the two seamen to follow him as he strode away. Barry heard the laughter and cheers behind him. He heard the shouts of "You showed them, Jonnie, boy. You told them."

"It'll be a while before the English fellow comes back to tangle with the likes of us."

Barry looked back and saw Pegeen Flynn. She lay on her stomach across the coil of rope. In her hand was Grandpop's glove.

The ship's doctor took four stitches in Barry's cheek.

In the infirmary mirror Barry examined the ugly-looking gash. What would Scollins say? "How did you get that?" he'd ask. "You were supposed to have been in bed, asleep."

Taffy had waited with him and now walked him back to his cabin.

"So you're going to hook up with your mum and dad in New York," he said. He glanced across at Barry. "I tell you what, son. Why don't you go up to the Marconi Room in the morning and send your folks a telegram. Say, 'Having a lovely time,' or something like that. Make you feel better, and them, too."

Barry nodded. "Thanks." A wireless wouldn't be like a letter. He wouldn't have to wonder what he could say to his mother and father to fill up the page. He'd send a wireless to Grandmother and Grandpop, as well as one to his parents.

Taffy clapped him on the back. "Good-night, then. I hope you won't be too sore to sleep."

Barry opened his hand, the one without the glove, and showed the two white tablets the doctor had given him for pain. He'd sleep.

Watley wasn't on guard in the corridor, and Barry was glad of that. He didn't want offers of hot milk, or questions either.

Mr. Scollins's bed curtains were still closed. Barry slipped into his own bed and lay thinking. Was Jonnie Flynn sleeping? Frankie? Were they planning something new? Or would they stop now? And Pegeen? What had she done with the glove? The pills made his thoughts blurry, made the
Titanic
seem to pitch and toss like a small boat in a heavy sea. He laid Grandpop's glove on his pillow by his cheek, breathing in the dog and horse and old-rain smell of the wool, and let sleep come.

It was Watley's discreet knock that wakened him in the morning.

"Good day, gentiemen. Tea?"

Barry opened his curtains and sat up. His brain felt numb, but not his face. It throbbed from ear to ear.

"Oh, dear," Watley said. "What happened, sir?" He set the tray he was carrying on the cabin table.

Scollins poked his head out like a turtle from its shell. "My heavens, did you fall out of bed?"

"No, I got up and bumped into..." Barry looked around and saw nothing in the cabin he could have bumped into. "You were asleep," he added quickly. "I went up to the infirmary and the doctor fixed it for me. It's nothing."

Scollins shuddered. "What will your parents say? I will get the blame."

"I'll tell them it was my fault."

Barry drank the tea Watley offered, but Scollins shook his head weakly and lay back on the pillows.

"Gendemen, breakfast will be served in the dining salon in a half hour," Watley said.

And Scollins murmured, "I may stay where I am this morning."

Watley took Barry's empty cup. "Better to keep away from that part of the ship, Mr. O'Neill," he murmured.

"What was that?" Scollins asked.

"I was advising Mr. O'Neill to be careful not to slip." Watley's everlasting smile was in place. "If you have no further need of me...?"

"No," Barry said, "and thanks. That is good advice, Mr. Watley."

He dressed quickly.

"You just have a quiet day, Mr. Scollins," he said. "Rest."

Mrs. Adair and Jocelyn were not at breakfast either.

"Having it in their cabin, I expect," Colonel Sapp said. "Lazy habit, breakfast in bed. Never could tolerate it myself." He forked kippers and scrambled eggs into his mouth. "Good God, man, what happened to you?"

"A shark bit me," Barry said. If he was going to be asked the same question by everyone, he should have a better answer ready.

The colonel guffawed and sprayed kipper morsels across the table. "And that pasty-looking fellow you're with? Did the sharks swallow him in one bite? He's not much of a seagoing man, I expect. Weak stomach."

"I'm afraid so." Barry allowed the dining steward to spread a serviette across his lap and take his order.

"Wouldn't have had a fellow like him in my regiment," the colonel said. Amidst spattering kipper showers he told Barry how he himself had been attacked once, not by a shark, but by a tiger. "An unhealthy-looking beast. Mange, most likely."

Barry only half listened, examining the knife at his place. It was of heavy silver, with the White Star logo etched on the handle. What if he slipped it into his pocket? At least he'd have a weapon if the Flynns found him again. But that knife was too long, and the bread-and-butter one too small. Useless with its blunted point and flat edge.