Touched by Angels (21 page)

A man’s breath was hot on her neck, while her own was locked in her throat.

He muttered
, an inch from her ear, “Let go or I’ll kill you here and now. There’s none to save you.”

“
There’s nothing in it, just…
”

“
Don’t turn around!”

“
That man was right, you
should
be whi…”

He pushed the gun even harder un
til it was hurting.

“
All right… all right!” She let go, trying hard not to be sick.

“
Thank you. Wasn’t hard, was it?”

The pressure disappeared.

After a few seconds, she turned, as did Robert, both of them with tears in their eyes.

They just caught a glimpse, before he disappeared and were shocked to see one of the waiters carrying their suitcase away. They recognised the parting in his hair, flowing dead centre down the middle.

The ship tilted suddenly. The screaming redoubled and several people around them fell.

A man lay near them, unconscious, his head bleeding. His wife was on her knees before him, shouting for help. It never came.

Perhaps the money didn’t matter any more. There seemed to be no sound or reality to the scene as they watched the maelstrom of fear and panic; men frogmarching their hysterical women to the ship’s edge, howling children holding onto their legs.

A few were being prised loose by the ship’s crew, some of whom were crying themselves. They saw a well to do man with a waxed moustache stand to attention, before pulling a Derringer pistol from under his red silk lined cape. He placed it under his chin and pulled the trigger. The bullet came out the top of his top hat in a pinkish grey cloud.

A huge bang rumbled up from somewhere below and the ship bucked like a horse.

Lil felt a man’s arm circle her waist, as a voice insisted, “Just get her in, for gawd’s sake, or she’ll be a goner like the rest of us.”

“
My boy too!” she gasped
as he lifted her with no effort at all.

He was gripping her so tight, she couldn’t breathe. She tried to fight him as he dropped her into one of the lifeboats, but thankfully, saw another man carrying Robert towards her. She saw tears streaming down his cheeks, before blacking out briefly. As she came back to her senses, he was beside her.

The last glimpse they had of the deck was of the string quintet, who had made their way up from below.

They calmly arranged themselves in a semi-circle and at a nod from the cellist, struck up a piece she recognised from church attendance as ‘
Nearer my God to thee’
. The soft, tender notes carried across the horror like a salve.

Her boat was not designed to carry as many, and after they had dropped about ten feet, it tilted abruptly aft. Everybody screamed in terror.

Various personal belongings tumbled overboard and she felt something smack into her left eye, so hard, it felt as if her head was split open.

She saw a shrieking woman above being held back and when she saw why, she realised how lucky she was. The object that had struck her was a baby’s head, before it dropped into the glacial water, thirty feet below. The moment they hit it themselves, no strength could hold the woman. She was over the side in a flash and that was last they ever saw of her.

A matronly, big-busted woman, who introduced herself as Molly Brown, called from the front, in one of those voices that instantly commanded respect, “Let us keep our chins up, everybody. The good Lord is with us now. Row for your lives, or she’ll drag us down!” She held the tiller.

Many of the women who took the oars had been waited on hand and foot all their lives, and were unused to such labour. Raw fear alone drove them.

Lil was somewhere in the middle, her arms tight around her sobbing son, swooning from the impact on her face.

The woman called, “Come on now, girls! A steady rhythm. Push-and-pull… Push-and-pull… Push…”

Lil turned as they moved further away. The demented screaming of those freezing to death was thankfully beginning to peter out.

The lights were out and by now
the band was silent, though the screams and shouts of those left stranded on deck still floated across.

Her head ached, especially round her eye and queer thoughts danced in and out her mind. All she could see was a vague silhouette looming out of the sea, blotting out the stars and the giant rudder like a beckoning hand, with the three colossal propellers surrounding it.

A few random bangs thudded up, muffled from the depths, with the ghastly squealing of metal, setting their teeth on edge and the kak, kak, kak of rivets cannoning out.

Soon, all Lil could hear about her were sobs and the chattering of teeth.

Robert said, “Mum, we’ve lost everything…”

“
No, we haven’t,” she said, thinking of the woman who had dived overboard in pursuit of her baby, “we still have each other.” She kissed his head.

They heard a massive rumbling noise. All heads turned to see the ship drop back into the sea, so the propellers and rudder were submerged once more. The impact sent a huge wave that rocked them fiercely, bringing whimpering sounds and crying from some of the smaller children.

It looked as though the water had spat it back up again, as if it didn’t want it, but then Molly Brown said softly, “Her back is broken. The rest will follow. Davy Jones’s locker keeps what it is given.”

And it did, scant minutes later.

With a sickening roar, the ship was swallowed up forever.

They sat on the gentle swell for the next two hours, huddling together to keep warm. Some were crying, though most were too numb, both with the cold and what they had seen and lost, to do anything but wait.

Some were in terrible pain, others, who had lost loved ones, were being comforted by fellow survivors.

Lil had dozed on and off, groggy with concussion. She dreamed vividly, seeing the ship’s captain swimming up to the boat with the lost baby and delivering it safely aboard, before sinking beneath the sea one last time. She awoke suddenly, her eyes casting around, certain she would see the dripping infant and somebody wrapping it against the chill.

Many a time s
he would snap awake, look briefly at Molly Brown, who never seemed to stop scanning the horizon, nod off, and it would start all over again.

When she
was
fully conscious, she held her sleeping son tighter than ever, determined to do whatever it took to protect him.

As her faculties slowly returned, she thought of the money taken from them and fury gripped her. If the thief had survived, she reasoned, he must be in one of the thirteen other lifeboats dotted around them… or in their own. The thought set her heart racing, as much with fear as anger.

There were fewer men than women and children. She looked from face to face, in the growing light, seeing their breath pluming, trying to pick him out.

There were three men, but he was not among them. Perhaps he had stolen a dead crewman’s uniform, perhaps even murdered him to get it. Perhaps he was even dressed as a woman.

She looked across the water, at the other boats, but some were too distant to make out individual features, and a thin mist covered the sea.

“
I’m hungry,” Robert muttered.

“
We’re all hungry, sweetheart,” she whispered, tenderly finger-combing his hair.

Her attention was taken by a sudden cry. “There’s a ship!”

Shouts and cries drifted across the water, though it was pointless. The ship must have received the distress call long before their own had gone down, in spite of Lil’s misgivings about the wireless.

As it drew near, they could hear its engines slow, and see her name on her side, in simple white letters.
Carpathia
.

It was a single funnel Cunard
liner, which had been on its way to the Med with seven hundred and fifty passengers on board. They were still sleeping in their cabins.

Forty-three-year old Captain Arthur Rostron stood on the bridge, wrapped in his great coat against the freezing cold, though his fingers were numb. Dismayed, he gazed through binoculars at the handful of frail looking boats, some of which he saw were collapsible.

A consummate professional, he made scrupulous arrangements for his unwitting visitors. He had ordered the ship’s three doctors to station themselves in the three dining rooms to receive the sick and injured.

The Chief Steward had also been ordered to have ready copious amounts of hot coffee, soup, drinks and blankets, while each passageway was manned by a steward, to keep the ship’s passengers off the deck.

***

Lil and Robert were hoisted aboard with chair slings, while
she watched the other survivors the whole time, for anybody acting furtively. She looked for the suitcase too, but couldn’t see it, and knew he had probably transferred the valuables to another container to throw her off the scent.

They were huddled in thick grey blankets in one of the restaurants, after guzzling water, in spite of the steward’s warning not to.

Now, there were mugs of steaming soup in their hands, though Robert had barely drunk a third of his before he was dead to the world. His head lolled against her breast, as she kept her arm around him.

Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall sat propped against the opposite wall, though there was no sign of Mr Philips, the wireless operator. Boxhall was on the floor, as all seats were taken, knees up by his ears. His head was gashed and his hair was all over the place. His uniform was ruffled and torn. A trickle of blood had dried in one corner of his mouth. His hand shook madly as he raised a cigarette to his lips.

She caught his eye briefly. His head dropped and his shoulders shook as he sobbed.

A man next to her squirmed in agony and gasped as a grey-haired doctor with a
pince nez
perched on his thin nose dabbed his mangled finger with iodine. He was apologising softly for the stinging, but insisting too that it would help prevent infection and gangrene.

There were a lot of broken arms, legs, and other cuts and grazes that also got the dreaded iodine therapy, making the younger victims howl with pain. Most of the maladies were of frostbite and hypothermia.

When the doctor looked at Lil’s black eye and swollen face, he didn’t seem unduly concerned.

He was about to move on to the next, more serious case, when she said in a low voice, “We’ve had a lot of money stolen from us.” Her voice was gravelly.

He glanced back at her, irritated by what he saw, in light of all that had happened, as pettiness. “You are alive, madam, and you have your child. Many of these other people are not as fortunate.” He made to move on.

“
But you don’t realise. It’s not just a few shillings or pounds…” She looked around herself, before adding, in an even lower voice, “It’s a vast fortune.”

He regarded her with even grey eyes. “Even so, with what has happened, a few hundred pounds…”

“
Sixty thousand, some in cash, some in…”

“
How much?!”

She repeated
it and saw him looking once more at the bruising and swelling around her left eye.

“
My job is to minister to the sick and to ease suffering. I’m not a detec…”

“
The thief is on board this ship. He’s already stolen from some of the other passengers,
before
the ship sank. Please, he’s got to be stopped. He might be disguised as a crewman!”

The doctor
kept his face deadpan, although she was sure he suspected delirium. She saw the captain walking through, whose eyes too, were red rimmed from lack of sleep.

“
Please!” she whispered, as Robert muttered in his sleep.

The
doctor stopped the captain, who seemed irritated by the intrusion.

She could just make out the doctor saying, “… massive blow to her head and she’s got hypothermia. I think she’s imagining it. Well, I ask you, sixty thousand?” He shook his head adding, “She has managed to convince herself he has disguised himself as crewman.”

The captain looked around the dozens of crewmen in the room.

He seemed to relax
and said, “Well, I hope
I
find the blighter, what, with my salary.” They both laughed.

Lil
sank back, knowing that nobody was going to believe her.

As if to confirm it, the doctor said, a little condescendingly, “We’ll keep our eyes peeled, madam, and if we see or hear anything…”

She closed her eyes, as she listened to a very well-to-do woman whining because her hands were blistered, where she had had to ply an oar.

As the afternoon came, her strength returned.