The Girl Who Came Home - a Titanic Novel (19 page)

I’ve been thinking on Séamus while I’m sitting here. I just remembered a day when we sat on the shore of the lake and threw stones together. He got one to bounce twelve times, the most he’d ever managed he said. I wonder what he’s doing now as I sit here. I wonder if he’ll remember me this time next week, next month, next year? Our lives are going to be so different now, but I hope I don’t get too interested in fancy skirts and hats while I’m in America as all the girls seem to do. I don’t think Séamus has much of a care for girls who fuss about skirts and hats and the like. I’d not like to go home and be all prissy and snobby about a life working in the fields. Travelling can do that to people, make them all talk of new and foreign things and makes them forget where they come from in the first place. I hope I never forget Ballysheen.

I’m going back inside now. It’s really getting cold and my fingers can barely hold the pen.

11.00pm

Well, we are just back to the cabin from the best night of dancing and singing for Katie’s birthday. Lord, it was mighty craic altogether. I almost thought my sides were going to burst with the laughing. Some of them are still there, still singing and making music.

Katie was in fine voice, singing her favourite songs, getting half the steerage passengers up on their feet and stomping out the beat. Even Ellen Joyce stopped talking about her wedding for a few hours and joined in with the singing and Maura Brennan surprised us all by standing on a table and giving us a rendition of ‘Moonlight in Mayo’ - and her being with a baby and all! I thought aunt Kathleen was almost going to die with the shame of us all.

I walked out onto the deck for a few minutes to cool down from the heat and sweat of so many bodies dancing. It’s such a cold night tonight so I didn’t stay out for long. It’s a night to make your eyes stream with the chill but there isn’t a hint of a breeze. You’d almost be fooled into thinking the boat has stopped the air is so still. The sea is so calm it almost looks like we’re afloat on a piece of blackened glass. Other than for the millions of lights from the boat which light up the sea for a mile around, you’d hardly know we were here at all. She must be quite a sight to see from a distance.

I sat and watched the stars for a while, they seem to be out in their thousands tonight. It reminded me of the night of Maura and Jack Brennan’s wedding – the night Séamus first asked me to dance. It was exactly the same moonless sky I gazed at that night. I felt for the letters in my pocket as I thought about him and in the other pocket I found blossom petals of all things! I’d forgotten that I’d picked them up on the morning we left Ballysheen. They’re withered and brown at the edges now and sorry looking - I almost wish I hadn’t put my hand in my pocket, hadn’t remembered them.

We passed Harry as we returned to our cabins. He was retiring for the night himself, having already set the tables out ready for breakfast tomorrow morning. Lord I cannot even think about food my belly is still so full from all I’ve eaten today.

Of course Pat had to stop and check the ship’s log outside the dining room one last time. He told us it said ‘Calm sea, 22 knots. Icebergs ahead.’ ‘Pretty much the same as for the last three days then,’ Peggy said and we all fell about the place laughing!

I hope Katie has enjoyed her birthday - she must be sad to not be celebrating with her ma and da and brothers and sisters as usual. They’ll be thinking of her and missing her especially today no doubt - and her sister Catherine who is waiting for her to arrive in New York. Lord how excited she must be to see her sister she hasn’t set eyes on in three years! What with so many waiting to catch the first glimpse of their loved ones, there’ll be quite a party planned for our arrival at the docks in New York I should think.

The other three are already fast asleep. I should probably turn out the light soon and get some slee.……

The sudden jolt and the continuous shudder that followed rocked Maggie’s bed. She sat bolt upright wondering what on earth it was. The strange noise, as if a piece of calico was being torn, was followed by a sound which she could only liken to that of one of the steam trains they had travelled on from Castlebar. She looked around the cabin. Her aunt Kathleen was sound asleep in the bed below her and Peggy and Katie were also both fast asleep – the shaking and noises not having woken them.

After a few minutes, the shaking stopped and so did the noise. All the noise. Maggie sat in complete silence, her light flickering off for a few seconds before coming back on again. She realised that the familiar background drone of the engines had stopped.

‘
We must be stopped,’ she said aloud to herself. She wasn’t sure why they would have stopped though and concluded that they must do this every night, shipping rules or something. As she was usually asleep by that time, she wouldn’t have noticed it before.

To reassure herself she got out of the bed and tiptoed silently across the floor, not wanting to wake the others. Opening the cabin door slightly, she peered out into the corridor. Nobody was about, nothing seemed amiss. Reassured, she crept back into her bed, placed her journal into her small, black case and turned out her light. She shivered for a while in her thin nightdress, wishing they had been able to get those extra blankets after all.

CHAPTER
21

Harry Walsh was a man of his word. He’d told Maggie he would deliver her note up to Philips and Bride in the Marconi room, and that’s what he’d intended to do until he’d become distracted by an incident in the dining room at lunchtime when one of the passengers started to choke on a piece of bacon. There had been all manner of fuss and panic then until Harry performed the Heimlich manoeuvre which he remembered from his safety training and managed to dislodge the offending item from the man’s throat. He’d been asked to write up an incident report for the Officers and when that was complete he’d called in on the man himself to check on his health.

‘
I had a lucky escape young lad, thanks to you,’ he chuckled, when Harry asked how he was feeling. ‘It wouldn’t have been very pleasant for the other passengers if I’d died right in the middle of lunch now would it? Imagine the headlines the papers would have had in the morning – ‘Man chokes to death on Titanic. Safety inspection underway’ – now that would have taken the shine off the ship’s triumphant arrival in New York, wouldn’t it!?’

Harry had laughed at the man’s sarcasm. ‘Yes sir, I suppose it would! Not quite the headlines Captain Smith and Mr Ismay are after! Well, I’m glad to see that you’re fully recovered. Enjoy the rest of the trip.’

As a result of this strange interlude to normal proceedings, all thoughts about delivering Maggie’s note were totally forgotten until he was just about to make his way to bed that night.

Having laid out the tables for the following morning’s breakfast, the final task before saloon stewards were permitted to retire for the evening, he felt in his pocket for the keys to his dormitory. Feeling a piece of paper among his keys, he emptied his pocket. ‘Oh, bugger it,’ he said aloud, stopping in his tracks.

‘
What’s up Harry,’ one of the other stewards asked, who was also just finishing up having laid the starboard side of the room while Harry had attended to the port. ‘Have you just realised you’ve put a spoon facing the wrong way or something?’ The other third class saloon stewards liked to tease Harry about his particular ways and his insistence that everything was perfect before he would leave things for the night.

‘
No, no, not a spoon.’ Harry was distracted, wondering what to do.

‘
What’s that? A love letter from that Irish lass? You want to be aiming a bit higher mate,’ the steward continued, pointing towards the ceiling. ‘That’s where the lasses are who you want to be flirting with, not these nit-riddled steerage types.’

‘
Aw, bugger off will ya. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.’

The other steward laughed and carried on ahead to the crew quarters. Harry turned and walked back down the corridor in the opposite direction towards the elevator. In his pocket he’d found Maggie’s message to home. He’d completely forgotten about it and had promised her he would get it sent out that day. Being a man of his word, he decided that that was exactly what he was going to do.

The elevator carried him up to the portside boat deck where he ran along the corridor past the Officer’s quarters to the Marconi radio room.

‘
Bride, Bride,’ he hissed, barely stepping foot into the room.

Harold Bride, one of the two radio operators, turned in his seat and took the headset from his ears, his dark hair ruffled as if he had been running his hands through it, his cheeks flushed with concentration, his eyes looking tired.

‘
Bloody hell Harry, what are you doing creeping around up here at this time of night?’

Harry handed him the small piece of paper. ‘Send us this would you? Favour for a steerage girl with no cash.’

Bride glanced at the folded piece of paper. ‘Dunno mate. We’re working Cape Race, there’s messages coming in thick and fast from the first class passengers. I need to get them sent out before we lose the frequency. I’m making a bloody fortune!’ He smiled and turned back in his seat. Harry could hear the distinct crackle of messages coming in over Bride’s headset. ‘And,’ he continued, ‘there’s bloody ice warnings coming in from all over the place. Here’s another one.’

Harry waited patiently while he watched Bride note down the message coming in from another ship. He read the words over Bride’s shoulder.

‘
From Mesaba to Titanic. In latitude 42
N, to 41*25* W, to longitude 52*30* W, saw much heavy pack ice and great number large icebergs, also field ice, weather good, clear.'

‘
It’s an MSG - for the Captain,’ he said, folding it carefully, placing it into an envelope and writing
Captain Smith
on the front. ‘I have to deliver it in person.’

‘
Oh go on, just send this one first,’ Harry cajoled. ‘Just this once. I swear there won’t be any more. I think it’s to her fella back home and I promised her.’

Bride sighed and unfolded the paper. ‘Alright then, just this one though. Now sod off will you and let me get on with my work.’

He put his headset back on, pushing the envelope with the ice warning for Captain Smith to one side of the desk, where it would remain, forgotten.

‘
Thanks mate,’ Harry whispered, backing out of the room. ‘I owe you one.’

Bride ignored him, busily concentrating on his work.

Relieved to have Maggie’s message on its way, Harry made his way back down the corridor, a couple of Second Mate Officers strolling casually towards him nodded as they passed. He admired their dark blue Officers uniforms and decided at that moment that the next time he sailed on this ship, or any as magnificent, he would be wearing that uniform. His steward’s uniform looked well on him, and seemed to attract the attention of giggly, Irish girls, but an Officers uniform would look very well on him indeed. His mother had always told him dark blue brought out the colour in his eyes.

A short while after Harry left the radio room, Bride finished the last of his Cape Race passenger messages and unfolded the piece of paper Harry Walsh had given him. Exhausted from the night’s work, he started to tap out the words.
From Maggie Murphy, Titanic to Séamus Doyle, Ballysheen, Co. Mayo, Ireland. Dearest Séamus, all is well. Titanic is a fine ship. I hope your Da is well. Don’t wait for me, ………..

The sudden jolt caused his finger to slip, transmitting the incomplete message. The interference in his ears startled him. His partner, Philips, emerged from the sleeping quarters at the back, rubbing his eyes against the sudden glare of the lights.

‘
What the bloody hell was that?’

‘
Dunno mate. It felt like an earthquake – can you get them in the Atlantic?’

‘
Don’t be such an idiot. That wasn’t an earthquake. It feels like the engines have stopped to me. Go up to the bridge and see what you can find out will you. I’m knackered, I’m going back to bed.’

Bride left the room to make his way to the bridge.

The judder was barely noticeable, but it sent a dull vibration through Harry’s shoes all the way up to the cap on the top of head. He was returning to his cabin, having gone for a walk on deck to get some fresh air before turning in for the night. Standing at one end of the long ‘Scotland Road’ crew passageway he grabbed onto the iron grille of the elevator door to steady himself.

‘
What the hell was that?’ he said, aloud, although there was nobody else there.

He stood for a moment, the vibrations continuing all the way through the metal, up his hands and arms into his shoulders. It made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Then it stopped and he heard a different sound, one he was familiar with. The engines had been put into reverse and that could only mean that they were stopping the ship.

He considered going down to the boiler rooms to ask the stokers what was going on, but thought he might get more sense out of Bride. The stokers could be curt at the best of times and if they were busy putting the dampers down they’d be less than pleased to see him.

He started to make his way back up the stairwells to the boat deck where he had been just a short while ago. As he turned to walk back down the Officers corridor towards the radio room, he heard banging on doors and shouts of, ‘All hands on deck.’