Titanic: The Long Night (30 page)

He could barely make it up the stairs to the upper decks. Elizabeth had to help him, and he clung to the railing as they went as he must have clung to the man’s life vest straps. Picturing what he must have gone through, Elizabeth shuddered again. But he was alive. He was alive, and he was here, with her.

“Max,” she said as they reached the public room where Elizabeth’s mother still lay fast asleep, “I never did check in the hospital. My father…?”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “He’s not there, Elizabeth. I’m sorry. I don’t know about anyone else. Have you seen Arthur or Lily?”

“I found Lily. But not Arthur.”

Max sighed and sank into an empty deck chair. “They’ll be putting out a list of survivors soon. I hope Arthur is on it, but I’m not very optimistic.” He glanced up at Elizabeth with heavy-lidded eyes. “How many died?”

She told him, and his face went even grayer. “My god. That many!”

“Don’t think about it. I’m trying not to. I’m just so happy that you’re here.” She knelt beside his chair. “I still can’t believe it.”

“Believe it.” He took her hand. His was cold and clammy, but Elizabeth didn’t pull away. “Let’s just hope you remember the next time you feel like arguing with me, how glad you were to see me.”

A stewardess passed by with a tray of cups, and Elizabeth reached out and took one. It was hot, and she handed it to Max, who accepted it gratefully. He sipped silently, his eyelids drooping with fatigue. When the cup was empty, he lay back against the chair. Elizabeth covered him with a blanket, and kept her eyes on his face until he had fallen asleep. Then she sat down on the floor beside him, content to simply rest there, watching him sleep and trying to take in the fact that he was actually there beside her.

The young Irish couple Elizabeth had seen earlier hurried along the deck, their faces still filled with anxiety. Whoever it was they were looking for, it was clear they hadn’t found that person. They hadn’t been as lucky as Elizabeth. Her heart went out to them.

Unwilling to take her eyes off Max, it was a long time before she slept.

Katie and Paddy finally had no choice. They had to give up their search for Brian. They had looked everywhere on the
Carpathia.
Though they had come across more than one drenched, pallid-faced young man lying on a pallet, most of them had been crewmen, and none of them had been Paddy’s brother.

Paddy’s own face had lost its usual ruddy hue by the time their search ended. “What’ll I tell me ma and da?” he asked Katie as, tired and sad, they made their way to the
Carpathia’s
lounge. “Me da was partial to Bri, you know. This’ll break his heart.”

Katie knew Paddy’s father. If he was “partial” to any one of his children, it was his younger son, not the older one. “No, it won’t. Their hearts will be broken, you’re right about that. But they still have you. There was people on board the
Titanic
who lost everyone, Paddy, their whole families. If your ma and da hear the news before you get a message to them, they’ll think you’ve been lost, too. You must get word to them, and to mine, that
we
are alive. Spare them whatever heartache you can.”

When he had left her in the hands of a kind stewardess, he went to see about sending his parents and Katie’s a Marconigram. When he returned, Katie was lying on a steamer rug on the floor, her arms folded beneath her head, her eyes closed. She was sound asleep, her body limp with exhaustion, her face peaceful. The women surrounding her were either lost in sleep or in grief, and the public room was filled with a somber silence.

Paddy stood over Katie, gazing down at her. In spite of his sadness over his brother’s loss, he knew that he was luckier than most of the people around him, all in various stages of shock and grief. Brian was gone, gone forever, and that was something he could hardly bear. But he still had Katie, a girl whose heart and soul were as fair as her face. She would help him through the worst of it. He hadn’t lost everything. That was more than some who’d been on board the
Titanic
could say.

With one last glance at Katie, Paddy went to seek out a place to rest his own weary head.

Tuesday-Thursday, April 16
-18, 1912

Gradually over the next two days, Paddy and Katie located everyone on the
Carpathia
who had been in third class on the
Titanic.
The numbers were pathetically low. Whole families had been lost in the tragedy. Katie wept at the thought of the terrified children who had been swept into the black and icy Atlantic Ocean. Marta had survived. She, too, wept, when Paddy confirmed that Brian had not been as lucky.

It was Marta who convinced Paddy that he should accept Katie’s invitation to join her at her uncle Malachy’s in Brooklyn, at least for a while, until he felt at home in the great city. “Your brother would want that, ja?” she said, leaning forward to peer into Paddy’s face with huge blue eyes. “He talked much about you, you know. He was so proud, saying to me that you would one day be a fine writer. But he said that you would need help and he was worried that your Irish pride, that was what he called it, would keep you from accepting any help. If Katie’s uncle is willing to give you a hand, you should take it, Paddy. For Brian’s sake.”

He finally agreed, but he told Katie later that it was only because he would be able to “keep an eye on her” that much more easily. “You’ll be needin’ someone to look after you in America,” he said, “and if I’m livin’ in the city and you’re all the way out there in Brooklyn, how will I know that you’re bein’ taken care of?”

Katie nodded and smiled. She was thinking how amazing it would be, having Paddy right there in her uncle’s house while she struggled to make a home for herself on the New York stage and he worked at becoming a famous writer. They could help each other. He could cheer her up when the hard knocks came along, as they surely would, and she could do the same for him, when every word Paddy had ever known flew right out of his skull, leaving his mind as blank as a new slate.

Together, they could do anything.

After all, hadn’t they both survived the greatest of all sea tragedies? Wasn’t that what everyone on board was beginning to call the sinking of the
Titanic
?

If they could survive that, they could survive anything life tossed their way. Together.

Arthur’s name was not on the list of survivors from the
Titanic.
Elizabeth noticed sadly that much of the light had gone from Lily’s eyes when they first met up with her. But then, there were so many sad eyes on the
Carpathia.

Elizabeth slept restlessly throughout the rest of the trip, half lying, half sitting in a deck chair next to her mother. Max had developed a serious cough, and she had persuaded him to spend his nights in the infirmary, away from the chill that filled the
Carpathia
, the result of a deep, damp fog surrounding the ship.

With the dawn of Tuesday came the full, painful awareness of all that had happened. As she made her way to the infirmary, Elizabeth saw dozens of women clustered together in the dining rooms, still wearing the bizarre assortment of clothing in which they’d left the
Titanic.
Most were weeping. Some were asking other women whose children were at their side, “How is it that you all managed to get to safety?” The question had a bitter edge to it.

As Elizabeth passed one room, she heard a woman wail, “Had I known there would be no lifeboat for my Andrew, I never would have left. We were married forty-seven years. I would rather have gone down with him than survived alone.”

Later, on deck with Max, who couldn’t seem to get enough fresh air, she heard some of the widows approaching men who had survived and asking them angrily, “How did you get into a boat when my husband did not?”

Those who had suffered most severely in the lifeboats, mainly on the collapsibles, had little patience with those who had arrived in lifeboats and were complaining of inconveniences as minor as the crewmen who’d been smoking, or blistered hands from rowing. One of the men who had undergone great hardships on a canvas boat whose sides had collapsed, leaving its passengers standing or kneeling in frigid seawater, finally cried out in exasperation, “Oh, stop your whining! You don’t realize how good you had it! And you’re alive, aren’t you?”

When Elizabeth and Max went into the dining room for breakfast, they came upon Quartermaster Hichens, from Elizabeth’s lifeboat. He was regaling an audience with complaints about how difficult it had been to maintain order on his boat, because the women had been so “uncooperative.” When he recognized Elizabeth, he interrupted his story and hurried from the room.

Throughout the next two days, which were made more difficult by a storm that arose on Tuesday night and continued through Wednesday, keeping everyone indoors, Elizabeth heard many rumors about what had taken place on the
Titanic
after she left. One that proved to be untrue was that the captain and the first officer had shot themselves rather than go down with the ship. Max was certain this was a lie, as he had himself seen Captain Smith in the water after the sinking. They also heard that some passengers had been shot rushing the lifeboats at the last moment. That, too, was later proved untrue. The most unsettling rumor spreading throughout the
Carpathia
was word that the
Titanic
had received countless messages warning about the onset of ice fields and icebergs long before the disaster, and had not only ignored the warnings, but had refused to slow its speed. This rumor persisted, and was never denied by anyone in authority.

It made Elizabeth physically ill to think that the terrible tragedy could have been averted. She could only hope the rumor wasn’t true.

“If it is,” Max said darkly, “there’ll be hell to pay. It’s bad enough we were short on lifeboats. Someone’s going to have to answer a lot of questions.”

A stewardess on board the
Carpathia
had borrowed clothing from two of its passengers for Elizabeth and her mother. While the apparel was not the height of fashion that Nola was used to, she was grateful. Lost in grief for her husband, she remained quiet and noncommittal, not even complaining that the ship was overcrowded, or that the lines waiting at the bathrooms to use the tubs stretched the length of a corridor. She had seemed to rejoice when she first saw Max, and though she later said she was happy for Enid and Jules, Elizabeth sensed that she was just as happy for Elizabeth. Nola never once mentioned Alan’s name, nor did she send him a Marconigram saying they were safe. It seemed to Elizabeth that the sudden loss of her mother’s one true love had given Nola a new understanding of just how important love really was.

Anticipating a scandal over the lack of lifeboats on board the
Titanic
, a congressman’s daughter who had been in Elizabeth’s lifeboat said, “I imagine there will be hearings. Investigations. I understand few people from third class survived, that whole families were lost. That will be a big scandal, too.” She sighed heavily. “Nothing will ever be the same, it seems to me.”

Elizabeth couldn’t say whether she thought that was true or not. She only knew that life would never be the same again for the Farrs. Nola roused herself from her grief enough to return Elizabeth’s good-night hugs with warmth and affection, making it clear that she was aware of her daughter’s presence and glad to have it.

“She won’t stay like this forever,” Elizabeth confided to Max as they were returning from lunch on Thursday. Nola, in need of a nap, had retreated to the cabin of the woman whose clothing she had borrowed. “She’ll be herself again, and maybe when that happens, she’ll push me at Alan again.”

There was mild alarm in Max’s face as he glanced over at her. Color had returned to his face, the redness had left his eyes, and except for the fact that he was still so chilled he had to wear two borrowed, heavy sweaters at a time, he was beginning to look like his old self.

Smiling, Elizabeth waved a hand in dismissal. “Don’t worry. I’ve made up my mind. She won’t change it for me.” The smile gone, she added seriously, “I know that young Irish couple I watched board the ship at Queenstown lost someone they cared about. I’ve seen their faces. I think it was the boy’s brother, who boarded with the girl. That boy couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. He probably thought he had his whole life ahead of him.” She took Max’s hand in hers, held it tightly. “So I’m not wasting any time doing things other people want me to do, not even my own mother. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to manage it, but I
am
going to college, and I
am
going to choose my own friends.”

One of Max’s eyebrows lifted toward the sky. “Friends? That’s all I am, a friend? Do you
know
how cold that water was, Elizabeth? And I swam through it to get to
you.
Surely I deserve more than friendship for my efforts.”

Elizabeth laughed. “You know you’re more than that. And you know what I mean. I won’t forget my promise to my father, but it doesn’t worry me. I know my mother isn’t going to want a daughter hovering at her side every single minute. He never saw that independent side of her, but I have. It may take her a while, but sooner or later she’s going to realize we both have to live our own lives. I can wait. I can be patient. Now that I know I’m going to do what I want, there’s no rush.”

Max nodded. “You’re right. But while you’re waiting, are you going to be allowed to see me? We’ll both be in New York, and—”

Elizabeth tilted her head to look up at him. “Max, weren’t you listening? I just said I’m not wasting my time doing things dictated by other people. If I want to see you in New York, I shall.”

“I’m going to be living in a garret,” he warned, smiling down at her. “You don’t have a lot of experience with garrets.”

“I don’t have
any
experience with garrets. It might be fun to see one. I’ll consider it part of my education. But if you ask me, your parents are going to be so thrilled that you survived the
Titanic
, they’ll let you do whatever you want with your life.”