S.O.S. Titanic (6 page)

"Excuse me," he told the colonel, interrupting a story about another daring escape. "I have to go to the Marconi Room to send a wireless home."

The first-class shop was on his way. Its windows were filled with all kinds of
Titanic
souvenirs: caps and trousers and elegant scarves. Instandy Barry spotted the small penknives, their ivory handles etched with the ship's image. He went inside and asked to see one. There was a notch at the edge of the blade so you could put your thumbnail to it and pry it out. It fit tightly, but if he nudged it just right it slid out easily. The point was sharp and the edge fine-tuned. Could he use it if he had to? If someone were pushing him over the railing into the cold, dark ocean he could.

He was sweating, and he wiped his face with the back of his hand. The pig stickers came to Mullinmore every year at butchering time. You could hear the squeals all over the village as the pigs' throats were cut, even down in the woods where Barry went to cover his ears. Would he be able to stick a knife in anyone?
Yes,
he told himself.
If I have to.

"One shilling and sixpence," the smiling clerk said. "It is rather a sweet little souvenir."

On the counter was a basket half filled with silver whistles on chains. They were the kind that policemen carried and blew when they needed help—one had shrilled all through Mullinmore the day Jonnie Flynn had grabbed a woman's hat from McKee the draper's and ran with it. "I'll take this, too," Barry said. "How much?"

"Ninepence. Aren't they nice?" She picked one up and gave it a polite little toot. Barry hoped he could make more noise with it than that.

Outside the shop he put the knife in his pocket and the whistle around his neck, letting it hang cold and hard inside his shirt. If he unbuttoned the second button, he could pull it out fast.

He practiced opening the knife blade one-handed as he walked.
Quick draw,
he thought.
And I'll get quicker.

The Marconi Room was jammed with bodies. If he blew his whistle here, now! Barry grinned and felt the jagged edges of the stitches cut into his skin. He'd have to remember not to smile until this healed up.

What were all these people doing here anyway? It was like the club room at the Bantry horse races. He jammed himself in at the back. Between the heads he could see the wireless operator at his desk, black earphones in place, sparks flying from under his fingers as he tapped out messages on the set in front of him. The room surged with excitement and impatience. Behind the counter, filling in wireless forms, was another man, younger than the operator. "Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. As quickly as we can," he kept saying over and over. The "in" basket where he put the completed message forms was bulging to overflowing.

"Can you do one right away, Mr. Phillips?" the young man called over his shoulder to the operator. "It's urgent." Barry got a glimpse of the wireless operator's pale face as he turned and stretched to ease his shoulder muscles. "What is the message, Mr. Bride?" he asked, his voice thick with weariness.

"It's a stock-exchange quotation," Bride, the counterman, said. Barry imagined him rolling his eyes at the operator, safely knowing the passengers behind him couldn't see.

"Bring it here," Mr. Phillips said. "I'll get to it just as quickly as I can."

Conversations raced around Barry. "I'm sending a wire to Percy Harbington. He was supposed to be on this crossing but his polo pony got sick."

"Ah, bad luck."

"They say Captain Smith's out to make a record crossing."

The wireless operator was calling again to Mr. Bride. "Message just came in that needs to be taken to the bridge." He rubbed his forehead. "I don't expect you can get away just yet. Take it up as soon as you can."

Mr. Bride nodded. The operator stuck the wireless message on the spiked file beside him, which was already topsy-turvy with paper. Barry edged himself to the side and tried to read the bulletin for the bridge. It was upside down and skewered sideways; he could only understand part of it. Something about the weather and icebergs. There was a longitude and latitude reading. He imagined one great liner calling to another across the endless green ocean, the words skipping on the surface of the water like stones bobbed across Donnelly's pond. Exciting. Mysterious.

They'd be passing icebergs. With any luck he'd get to see one.

While he waited he passed the time opening and closing the little knife in his pocket, getting the feel of it. He tested the sharpness of its point on his finger. He could do it.

Mr. and Mrs. Cherry Hat were sending messages. So was Mrs. Jacob Astor. She wore a fiir tippet that Barry thought wasn't nearly as nice as Grandmother's. It was made of two foxes that hung down her back, their black beady eyes staring at everyone, their claws spread. Poor dead foxes.

It was almost lunchtime when he got to the counter and filled in his wireless forms. The communication for the bridge was still stuck on the spike. He could see a corner of it under the mountains of speared papers. Maybe he should offer to take it up to the captain. "Captain Smith," he'd say, "remember me?" No, they'd never trust him with it anyway. He concentrated on filling in the lined wireless forms. "Having a great time. Love, Barry." The same words for all of them, but the love he sent wasn't the same.

He hurried then, knowing he'd be late again to the dining salon. The colonel would be miffed.

Their table was filled. Mr. Scollins, pale and pasty, was having a cup of clear soup and some dry crackers. Colonel Sapp noisily spooned up something thick and dark brown with cream that floated on top. Turtle soup again, maybe. The ladies had joined them, Mrs. Adair with her pale hair braided in a coil that sat high on her head like a crown.

Little Jocelyn was the only one who didn't look up when Barry came. She was wearing a jacket with a furry lamb for a pocket. Barry saw how the lamb bulged. Inside would be her father's handkerchief. He knew it. He knew without being told that she carried it everywhere. And he remembered last night, the comfort of his grandfather's glove on the pillow beside him.

The dining steward unfolded Barry's serviette, placed it in his lap, and offered a menu.

"My word, what happened to you?" Mrs. Adair asked. And for the first time Jocelyn looked up.

Barry bared his teeth at her. "A shark," he said. "He jumped up and over the railing. I was way up on A Deck, too. And he had teeth THIS long." He spread his arms. "And when he opened his mouth..."

"My mother hit my father once on his head," Jocelyn said clearly. "He had to have eleven stitches. He had to have the whole of his hair shaved off."

They all sat in a stunned silence. Even the colonel stopped drinking his soup.

"My mother's bad," Jocelyn added.

"Baby, please!" Mrs. Adair's eyelid went flick, flick.

The steward, still hovering with the menu, said discreetly, "Have you decided on your order, Mr. O'Neill?"

"Ah. Oh. The fish." Barry pointed to the printed menu. "Usually at home we have fish on Friday," he added to no one in particular. "At school, too."

"Good for you," the colonel observed. "Gives you brains, what?"

"
Sole meunière.
Thank you, sir," the steward said.

"Are you feeling better, Mr. Scollins?" Barry asked, forcing his glance away from Mrs. Adair's face, which had been pink a few moments ago and was now as pale as the ivory profile on Grandmother's cameo brooch.

"I'm a little better," Scollins said stiffly. "I have already been to the purser's office and checked on my bag." He sounded accusing, as if Barry should have taken care of that for him. "This afternoon I plan to sit on deck and take the air," he went on. "I'd be obliged if you'd stay with me, Mr. O'Neill. I feel reluctant to let you out of my sight, day or night."

Barry made another shark face at Jocelyn. "Want to come on deck and sit with us?" he asked her. "Maybe the shark will come back. You could have a look at him."

Jocelyn gave a little giggle.

"Or we could play cards," Barry offered. "Do you like to play 'Go to Duck Hill'?"

"I don't know it," Jocelyn said.

"It's easy. I'll—"

Her mother interrupted. "I'm afraid Jocelyn needs to take her nap this afternoon."

Or you don't want her to talk to me,
Barry thought.
Who knows what secrets she might tell?
Jocelyn's hand had crept into the lamb pocket and stayed there.

Mr. Scollins brought up the subject of Jocelyn and her parents as he and Barry sat on the deck. The stewards had found them long wooden deck chairs and tucked White Star blankets snugly around their legs. The air was cold, the sea green as bottle glass. Mr. Scollins was looking a little green, too.

"Doesn't it bother you the way the horizon slides up and down?" he asked.

"I don't notice it," Barry said. "Why don't you close your eyes?" He looked around. Nice and safe here. Rows of passengers, mummy-wrapped like themselves, were lined up on either side of them ... Was there really a mummy in the hold below them, lying snugly in its coffin? Some of the passengers walked briskly along the deck, bulked up in heavy overcoats. There always seemed to be deck walkers.

"You think Mrs. Adair really hit her husband?" Scollins asked.

Barry shrugged.

"If you ask me, it's all in the child's imagination," Scollins said, putting the tips of his long fingers together. "Anyone can see the little girl doesn't like her mother. Mrs. Adair is a lady. Did you notice her pearls? They're real, and of excellent quality. They'd probably go for three hundred guineas at least, wholesale."

He pulled his chin deep into his collar. "I may just close my eyes for a while," he told Barry. "I want your word that you won't go roaming off someplace if I sleep."

"I won't," Barry promised. He certainly wasn't going anywhere near the poop deck, not even to look down on it from a safe distance. Not today or any other day while he was on board.

He lay watching the sparkle of cold sun on cold ocean. No land anywhere. Nothing. What a terrible thing if the ship did sink! Nowhere to swim to. Nothing but emptiness, and your feet going down, feeling for a bottom that wasn't there, and your head going under the waves—down, down into that greenness. Shivers chased one another up and down his legs. What a thing to think about. Howard and he. Two of a kind. The wooden arms of his deck chair throbbed slighdy under his hands. The ship must be moving fast, moving him away from Ireland. "There's no turning back now," Mary Kelly had said last night. The words were as final as the priest saying amen.

Once he thought he saw Jonnie Flynn come out of a swinging door halfway along the deck, but it was only someone built like him, someone young, swaggering. Barry relaxed his hold on his knife. He didn't have much to worry about up here in the daytime. The nights were when he'd have to be careful.

The deck steward came pacing toward him, balancing one of the small silver trays with an engraved White Star emblem. On it was an envelope.
Someone was getting a message delivered from the wireless room,
Barry thought.
Or maybe it's an answer to a message already sent. Maybe something about that stock quotation.
But the deck steward had stopped, holding the tray out. "Mr. Barry O'Neill? Letter for you."

"For me?" It was in a
Titanic
envelope, the kind of embossed stationery they had in the writing-room desks. Barry took it and turned it in his hand.

"Who gave it to you?" he asked.

"It was left on the tray, sir." The deck steward gestured toward the serving cart that held silver teapots, sugars and creamers, cups and saucers.

"And you knew who I was, to bring it to me?" Barry asked.

The steward smiled. "Oh, yes, sir. I know all my passengers."

"Well, thanks." Barry glanced at the sleeping Scollins, then opened the envelope. Inside, on the single sheet of paper it said, "Meet me tonight at ten. Promenade deck." It was signed Pegeen Flynn.

Pegeen Flynn! It was a trick, of course, to get him to a quiet place on the night-dark deck. Maybe she had written and signed the letter, but it had been her brothers' idea. Did they think he was an idiot?

The deck stewards were pushing the serving carts, offering tea and hot cocoa and mugs of steaming Bovril.

I won't go,
Barry decided. But what if the Flynn girl wanted to give him Grandpop's glove? He remembered the way she'd looked at him as she'd held it. There'd been a softness about her.

He read the letter again. Beside him Scollins breathed heavily. His mouth had fallen open and a little spit bubble hung on the corner of his lower lip.

What I should do,
Barry thought,
is go right now and check out that deck. I could find something to hide behind and then tonight I could get there early, hide, see if she comes, see if she's alone.

"Cocoa, sir?"

"No. No, thanks."

"Shall I waken Mr. Scollins?"

"Better not. Just let him sleep." Amazing, they did know all the names.

Maybe he could get Scollins to go with him tonight. Suggest a walk. But Scollins would be useless.

Much later, when Scollins woke complaining that he was half-frozen and asking why everyone around them had empty cups and they'd missed him, Barry suggested a walk on the promenade deck. "It'll get your blood moving," he said.

They walked briskly, to keep their blood from freezing entirely.

There was nothing to see except the wide expanse of deck, the railing, and the stretch of calm, smooth ocean beyond. There were other promenaders like themselves. But Barry saw nowhere he could hide tonight. Still, there would be nowhere for Jonnie and Frank Flynn to hide either. That was something.

During dinner and afterward, while he and Scollins sat in the first-class reception room listening to the string orchestra, he worried about it. What should he do?

He was in bed before ten, the curtains tightly closed. Was Pegeen Flynn coming up through the ship, coming some secret, hidden way that only the likes of the Flynns would know about? Was she waiting now? Or were all three there waiting, waiting for him?