S.O.S. Titanic (9 page)

"Thank you." Scollins smiled a warm smile. While Watley was within hearing he said, "I think that fellow deserves a special letter to the White Star Line. He certainly is conscientious."

Watley closed the door quietly, and Barry opened it again after him. "May I speak to you for a minute, Watley?"

"Certainly, sir." Watley stood motionless. "You have a problem, Mr. O'Neill?"

"It's just..." Barry didn't know how to put it. "I keep hearing about ice and icebergs. And you—well, it's almost as if you know something, which I realize seems ridiculous, but..."

Watley's eyes were glazed, as though covered with transparent paper. "What could I know, sir?"

"I have no idea. It's ... well, you said it yourself. The sea is big and our ship is small. I'd like to know..."

For a second the eye glaze seemed to lift. "Yes." It was almost as if Watley had come to some kind of decision. "Follow me if you will, Mr. O'Neill. I think now is the time to show you."

Barry walked behind him down the corridor to a door marked Cabin Steward. Watley opened it with a key that he took from his pocket and stood aside for Barry.

The cabin was not as luxurious as theirs, but it was comfortable. A narrow bed, a dresser, and a table that hinged down from the wall. On the dresser beside a tortoise-shell brush-and-comb set was the faded green box.

"Please sit down, Mr. O'Neill."

Barry sat on the straight-backed chair by the small mahogany table.

Watley set the box on the table's shining surface and lifted the lid. Inside was something that looked like old crumpled paper. He lifted it out, letting it droop, shapeless, between his fingers. It was as long as a baby's dress.

"I wanted to show you this," he said.

"What is it?" Barry felt a chill deep in his stomach. He put his hands behind his back and felt himself strain away from whatever it was Watley held.

"It's a caul. I was born in it. A child born in a caul will have the gift and the curse of seeing what you cannot." He spoke in his fortune-teller voice again, toneless but with something of the Irish in it—the western islands, maybe; Achill or Aran or farther out. The light from the brass wall lamp gleamed on the caul, on the onionskin fineness of it, its spider-spun gloss. Those strange shadows chased themselves across Watley's face.

"I see disaster," he said.

"Disaster? Do you mean for me? Myself?" Barry asked. The picture of him, himself, somersaulting over the railing into the dark ocean was terrifying. "You don't mean disaster for the ship, do you? It can't sink. You can't mean that."

But Watley simply floated the shimmer of caul back into its box, closed the lid, and said, "I'm sure I can't say, sir."

Couldn't or wouldn't?

All night long Barry thought about the caul, about the ice warnings in the Marconi Room, about Howard saying there weren't enough lifeboats. "We're all doomed," Howard had said, but
doomed
was the word used about the
Titan,
not the
Titanic.

Sometime just before first light filtered through the window, carrying the reflection of the predawn sea, Barry sat straight up in his bunk. The words Pegeen Flynn had tossed at him, the words pounced on by the wind as they talked, jumped back into his mind: "It's nice enough, but it's awful small." She'd been talking about the cabin. "Mary and I gave our life jackets to Jonnie and Frank to store for us. They take up too much room."

She'd said that. She had. He must warn her.

Sunday morning, and church services for the first-class passengers were in the lounge. Around Barry the congregation sang: "Eternal father strong to save..." Beside him Scollins bellowed the hymn. Scollins had the worst voice—like a rook's it was—and the squawk of it was louder than anybody's.

Barry had to get to Pegeen and Mary fast, because who knew when this disaster might happen? He could go to steerage himself. He knew women were at the back of the ship, but he had no idea which cabin was Pegeen's and how to find it. What would he say?—"The ship might sink. Go right away and get your life jackets from Jonnie and Frank?"

He imagined Pegeen's flashing green eyes. "Och, don't be daft. Don't you know this is the
Titanic?
"

Around him the voices rose in praise, heedless of what they sang:

O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.

Nobody with a thought that they might be in peril. Except Watley, of course. And Watley might have meant that only Barry was in danger. From the Flynns. He had looked half crazy anyway, holding up that caul. Who would believe Watley any more than they'd believe the turbaned fortune-teller at the fair? Nobody but superstitious Barry, and maybe superstitious Howard. But still, he wished Pegeen had her life jacket.

Barry's skin was clammy under his shirt. He eased a finger around the collar, felt the chain that held the whistle move slightiy, cool and smooth against his stillness. He looked at the shining Sunday faces. There were Colonel Sapp and Mrs. Adair and little Jocelyn, Howard and Mrs. Cherry Hat. She saw him looking and gave him a cheeky wink. Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein and Arthur weren't here. They were probably Jewish and would have been at Jewish services yesterday. He saw the Ryersons and Henry Sleeper Harper up in the front row. All these people. If anything happened...

Captain Smith, very dignified in his uniform, finished his reading from the Book of Psalms.

Barry shivered.
Suppose I leapt up and ran to the front and shouted, "Everybody listen. The ship is going to sink. Make the captain turn back"?
But they were as far from one shore as the other. The passengers would think he was dotty. Scollins would die of acute mortification. And so would he.

The service was over now and Captain Smith was leaving. In a minute he'd be gone.

Barry pushed quickly past the people between himself and the space that had been left in the middle of the rows of chairs.

"Excuse me. Excuse me."

Behind him Scollins whispered loudly, "What are you doing? Just where do you think you're—"

Barry planted himself in front of the captain so the man couldn't get past. "Captain Smith."

"Yes?" Hands clasped behind him, a kindly smile on his bearded face, the captain leaned toward Barry.

"I ... I need to ask you something. Are we in any danger from icebergs?"

The eyebrows beetled. The smile faded a little. Captain Smith rocked back and forth on his feet, the way a man would who was accustomed to standing on a heaving bridge in a stormy sea. "Are you frightened, my boy?" he asked, peering more closely. "Oh, yes, you and I have met before. Did our ship's doctor take good care of your wound?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you. It's fine."

Mr. Scollins was beside Barry now, taking his elbow, frowning apologetically at the captain. "Captain Smith."

The captain stopped Scollins with a wave of his hand. "Are you traveling alone, son?" he asked Barry.

Barry nodded toward Scollins. "Except for Mr. Scollins. I mean, no one in my family is with me."

"I'm so—" Scollins began.

The captain stopped him again in mid-sentence. "Mr. Collins."

"Scollins. It's an Anglo-Saxon name. I believe there was a Scollins who fought with King Henry at Agincourt. My mother always—"

"Quite so." Captain Smith stroked his beard and rocked closer to Barry. "Tell you what, old chap. How would you like to see the way the greatest ship in the world is really run? A view from the inside, so to speak."

"I'd like that very much," Barry said.

"Come up on the bridge after the midday meal, then. I think I can allay your fears about icebergs and anything else that may be worrying you." He gave Barry a grandfatherly pat on the shoulder and strode away.

"My word." Scollins was beaming, as were all the passengers around them who'd heard the exchange.

"I say, put me in your pocket, old man, will you?" a gentleman in an old Etonian tie said. "The bridge is quite an honor."

"So lovely of the captain," his lady companion murmured. "I do like men who are thoughtfiil of young people."

Howard pushed up beside them. "Take a good look around," he told Barry. "Ask him about the lifeboats, and his speed."

"I will." He'd ask, too, if there were other collapsibles that Howard had missed on his lifeboat inspection.

It was during the midday meal that Barry got the idea.

"Shall we freshen up before we go to the bridge?" Scollins asked as they walked from the dining salon.

"You go," Barry said. "I have something to do first. I'll be down in a few minutes."

He went quickly before Scollins could argue or question.

In the writing room he took a sheet of
Titanic
paper and wrote, "Meet me, same place, same time, tonight. Urgent," signed it, and put it in an envelope. "Miss Pegeen Flynn," he printed. It made him smile to think they were becoming pen pals even though they didn't know each other.

Watley was hovering in the corridor outside their cabin. "I understand you are to have a visit with the captain," he said.

News gets around fast,
Barry thought. Even on a ship the size of the
Titanic.

"I trust all confidences will remain, as it were, between us," Watley went on.

He meant his talk of a disaster, of course. "I won't say anything." Barry held out the envelope. "But I need to ask you to do something for me. Can you deliver this? It's for a steerage passenger. She's in a cabin at the stern of the ship."

"Very good, sir. I will give it to her cabin stewardess to place in her room. Is there anything else, Mr. O'Neill?"

"Yes," Barry said. "I've been wondering. Why did you tell me what you told me last night? Why did you show me what you showed me?"

"I have a responsibility to my passengers. Only that, sir."

"So you said. But did you show and tell everything to all your passengers?"

"No, sir. One senses receptiveness."

"I see." What on earth did he mean by that? That Barry was the only one around who was easily terrified?

"I knew you would believe me," Watley said.

The glaze seemed to cover his eyes again, making it hard to look into them, distracting Barry from what he said.

"I will deliver the letter now." Watley gave his little bob of a bow. "If you will excuse me."

"Thanks." Barry watched him glide away down the corridor, his feet in their pointed shoes making no sound on the carpeting.

Scollins came through the cabin door. His hair was slicked down and his face shone with a soap-and-water shine. Oley Palm soap, exclusive to the
Titanic.
"We'd better hurry," Scollins warned.

Barry combed his own hair with his fingers. "I'm ready," he said.

They went up on the elevator, along the deck, unhooked the chain that said No Entrance—Crew Only, and climbed the steps to the bridge.

"Good afternoon."

"Good afternoon, and welcome." The captain swept his hand expansively around the bridge. "Here we are, gendemen. The bridge of the RMS
Titanic.
"

It was all glass, like a high, high room made of windows. In front of them was the foredeck, the bow of the ship, and then nothing all around but sea. Looking out and across it, Barry felt they could be the only ones on the ocean. The only ones on the face of the earth.

The ocean today was the dark deep blue of Grandmother's silk Sunday dress. It was as flat as a skating pond and it seemed to stretch forever. There was nothing on it to break the smoothness—no wave, no ripple, no shadow, no hint of land.
I am the monarch of the sea...

A sailor stood by a wheel as big and spoked as a cartwheel, but no cartwheel had ever been this smooth and polished. The sailor's eyes were fixed on the horizon, fixed on nothingness. The black arrow on the compass was steady and unwavering. There was a panel of instruments, a fixed table with colored charts. Another seaman stared through binoculars, turning himself and them in all directions.

The captain shaded his eyes with his hands. "See any icebergs?" he asked, and laughed a gruff bark of a laugh.

"Not right now," Barry said.

"And up there, way up there..." The captain stretched back his head and stared upward, as though he could see through the roof of the bridge to the crow's nest. "Up there in the lookout are two of my best men. You've heard of sharpshooters in the Wild West? Those are sharp spotters. We call them the eyes of the ship. If there's anything to see they send down the signal to me."

"And the sharp spotters have binoculars, too, I expect?" Scollins said, nodding wisely.

There was a second's pause, then the captain said, "Actually, no, Mr. Collins. Not on this trip." And Barry sensed a cooling of the friendliness. Wrong question, but smart of Scollins to have asked it.

"We do have binoculars, but somehow we didn't have enough for everyone, so the bridge took them. We'll pick up more when we get to New York so they can have some in the crow's nest. Believe me, though, they can see perfectly well up there without them. In fact, most of the time lookouts don't bother to use them."

"Yes, I understand. Bit of a nuisance, probably." Scollins was ready to agree to anything.

"We were wondering about lifeboats," Barry said. "One of the passengers thought there might not be enough if there should be an emergency."

"We are fully equipped with lifeboats and meet all current Board of Trade standards," the captain said stiffly. "Besides, what sort of emergency could there be?"

They followed where he pointed, to a panel with rows of buttons on it. "Do you know what this is?"

Barry shook his head.

"With this mechanism I can activate the watertight doors between the bulkheads. I can do it with the touch of a finger. Of course, they can be closed manually as well, from down below. Also..." He paused for effect. "The mechanism is so sensitive that if there is water on the floor in any one of the bulkheads the door will sense it and activate itself. It comes down like a hatchet chop—like a guillotine falling. Not that you've probably ever seen a guillotine fall." He laughed his hoarse laugh. "There are sixteen watertight compartments. Count the buttons."