Every Man for Himself (19 page)

‘I have,’ I said.

‘Keep it with you,’ and with that he went inside.

The crowd had dispersed when I crossed back through the foyer. Most of the men had returned to the smoke-room bar; judging by the noise they were in boisterous mood. Ginsberg and Melchett were at our old table, Ginsberg occupied in building a house out of the pack of bridge cards. This surprised me. I had thought he’d be in the thick of it, spouting his opinions about a lost propeller to all and sundry. I sat down feeling important.

‘Look here,’ I began, ‘I think it would be best if we went out to give a hand with the life-boats. Most of the crew will be needed for other things.’

‘You’ve experience of davits and such like, have you?’ asked Ginsberg. ‘I mean you’ve been through the drill?’

‘Well, no . . . but—’

‘Then you’ll be a lot of use, won’t you?’

‘We won’t actually be getting into the boats,’ scoffed Hopper. ‘It won’t come to that. Why, the women would never stand for it. It’s too cold.’

I said, ‘I happen to know that it’s more serious than you think. I have it on the best authority that things are looking pretty bad. There isn’t a great deal of time.’

‘Time for what?’ Hopper asked.

‘For us to get into the boats,’ I said. ‘It’s essential we put on more clothes.’

‘I think not,’ Ginsberg said. ‘I doubt we’ll be getting into any boats, not unless the clothing you have in mind includes petticoats.’ He was still playing with his house of cards, his tongue caught between his teeth with the effort of laying on the roof. Hopper looked mystified. There’d been a time, years ago, when I too had gone out of my way to baffle him.

‘Look here,’ I shouted, ‘this isn’t a game, you know.’ I tugged at Ginsberg’s elbow to make him listen and sent his cards in a heap.

‘How many boats did you say there were?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t,’ I retorted. ‘But as a matter of fact there are sixteen, plus four collapsibles.’

‘Capable of carrying how many? Fifty at the most?’

‘More like sixty,’ I snapped.

‘And how many of us would you estimate are on board?’ He was watching me through half-closed eyes, waiting. A burst of laughter came from the direction of the bar. A voice began to bellow the ‘Eton Boating Song’. What a fool I am, I thought, and the elation which had buoyed me up drained away and I was left swirling the cards round and round on the table-top in imitation of a whirlpool to stop my hands from shaking.

Just then Rosenfelder rushed in, his expression deeply gloomy. As always, he was looking for Scurra. A steward had come into the Palm Court, where he and Adele had been drinking high-balls with the Duff Gordons, and ordered them to their quarters to put on life-preservers before going up on deck. They had asked what luggage they’d be required to take with them and been told they couldn’t take anything, nothing but the clothes they stood up in. What was he going to do about his dress? He wasn’t allowed to carry it in its box and it was unthinkable that Adele should wear it in a life-boat. ‘There is the oil,’ he wailed, ‘the dirt, the salt-spray . . . it will be ruined. Where is Scurra? He will use his influence. Where are his rooms?’

None of us could tell him. Hopper had seen him in the passageways of both A and C decks. Ginsberg had bumped into him along the main corridor of B deck, but he could have been coming from anywhere. Rosenfelder looked at me. ‘I’ve not been to his room,’ I told him. ‘My steward hasn’t even heard of him.’

‘Then he’s one in a million,’ said Hopper.

‘Why not ask Wallis Ellery,’ Ginsberg said. I noticed his voice was unsteady. He seemed to be having difficulty with his breathing. I fancied he was more alarmed than he let on.

‘She is not to be found either,’ Rosenfelder moaned. ‘Adele’s clothes are in her room. I have knocked at her door but there is no reply.’

At that moment the bar steward came over and politely asked us to leave. We must all go as quickly as possible to fetch our life-preservers and assemble on deck. There was no cause for panic. It was simply a precaution. I arranged with Hopper that we meet in the gymnasium in ten minutes. ‘We’ll stick together, won’t we,’ he insisted. ‘It’ll be like the old days.’ ‘Yes,’ I assured him. Ginsberg strolled into the foyer and lowered himself into a leather armchair. Rosenfelder panted up the Grand Staircase in search of Scurra. Before we parted, Hopper touched my arm, ‘You’re my oldest friend,’ he murmured, ‘and my best.’ His eyes were scared. Ginsberg looked up and waved sardonically as the doors of the elevator clanged shut; he was holding a handkerchief to his nostrils.

I rode below in the company of two ladies in wrappers and a man wearing pyjamas beneath a golfing jacket. I swear the stouter of the women was the one who had expressed disappointment at there not being more of a show when we left Southampton. She was going to the purser’s office to withdraw her valuables from the safe. Not that they amounted to much. She had a watch left to her by a grandmother born in Kent, England, a diamond pin that had belonged to her dead mother and an album of family photographs. If it came to the pinch, she said, she’d choose the album every time. The steward had told her to fetch what small items she had because everyone might have to get into the boats. The man in the golfing jacket laughed and said this was highly unlikely. ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ he said, ‘this isn’t some elaborate hoax. After all, the ship is unsinkable.’

When I entered the passage McKinlay and the night steward were knocking on doors, urging people to go up on deck. I felt curiously detached and had the notion I swaggered rather than walked; I’d never been so conscious of how good it was be young, for I knew it was my youthful resolution as well as my strong arms that would enable me to survive the next two hours. I thought of old man Seefax and his feeble grasp on life and reckoned he might perish from nothing more than lack of hope. By now, wireless messages would have been dispatched to every vessel in the area, and even if there wasn’t enough room for all in the boats, there would still be time for those left behind to switch from one ship to another. Somewhere in my mind I pored over an illustration, in a child’s book of heroic deeds, of a rescue at sea, ropes slung between two heaving decks and men swinging like gibbons above the foaming waves. How Sissy would gasp when I recounted my story! How my aunt would throw up her hands when I shouted the details of my midnight adventure! Why, as long as I wrapped up well it would be the greatest fun in the world.

Accordingly, having reached my stateroom, I put my cricket pullover on under my jacket and taking off my dancing pumps struggled into three pairs of thick stockings. I had to pull one pair off again because I couldn’t fit into my boots. Then I went into the corridor and got McKinlay to help tie the strings of my life-preserver. He jokingly remarked that I’d put on weight since we last met and asked if I had with me everything I wanted to take. He’d been instructed to lock all the doors until the emergency was over – in case things went missing. They were having a spot of trouble keeping the steerage class from surging up from below.

‘I’m working for Mr Andrews,’ I told him. ‘I may need my room as a base . . . to write reports . . . that sort of rigmarole.’

‘It’s orders, sir,’ he said.

‘Well, in my case, just forget them, there’s a good chap.’ He hesitated, but the ‘good chap’ did the trick and he left my door alone. On an impulse I went back inside and took up the painting of my mother. Taking out my knife I levered the picture from its frame, tore out the stretchers and rolling up the canvas stuck it in my pocket.

There were now a dozen or more people filing in procession towards the elevator. They were mostly pretty cheerful, engaging in banter to do with each other’s quaint attire. A gentleman carrying a top hat and wearing tennis shoes beneath a coat with an astrakhan collar was much admired. He said he thought his hat would come in useful if baling-out was required. One woman cradled a Pekinese dog with the snuffles, another a pink china pig.

I decided to go below to see for myself what was happening. Descending the stairs I was aware of there being something not quite right about the slope of them. They looked perfectly level but my step was slightly off balance; my feet didn’t seem to know where to land, and I was tilting forward. I put it down to imagination, that and the bulky clothing which encumbered me, and marvelled that Rosenfelder must feel this propulsion all the time.

I didn’t get very far. There were too many people streaming in an opposite direction. On F deck an officer barred my way. He was holding on to the arm of a steerage woman who was carrying a baby against her cheek. The officer tried to restrain her and turn me back at the same time. ‘Why have we stopped?’ she kept asking. ‘What for have we stopped?’ Behind the officer’s shoulders I saw a line of postal clerks at the bend of the companionway, heaving mail sacks, one to the other, up from the lower level. The sacks were stained to the seals with damp.

Retracing my steps I made my way upwards again. On the staircase landing of C deck I passed White, the racquets professional. He didn’t acknowledge me though I raised my hand in greeting. From somewhere along the corridor a voice called out, ‘Hadn’t we better cancel that appointment for tomorrow morning?’ I didn’t hear White’s reply.

Colonel Astor was in the foyer talking to Bruce Ismay. Ismay had the appearance of a man on his death bed; his face had become as old as time. Owing to the numbers thronging the stairs I was prevented from going immediately up top and heard Astor say, ‘Is it essential I bring my wife on deck? Her condition is delicate,’ and Ismay’s response, ‘You must fetch her at once. The ship is torn to pieces below but she won’t sink if her bulkheads hold.’

There was a fearful crush in the gymnasium, spilling out on deck and flowing in again as the cold stabbed to the bone. Hopper was nowhere to be seen. Mrs Brown jogged my sleeve and asked if it would be a good idea to start community singing, but before I could answer the far door was thrust open and the ship’s band struck up something jolly. Kitty Webb sat astride one of the mechanical bicycles. She wore silk pyjamas under a man’s leather automobile coat and was accompanied by Guggenheim’s valet. I went out in search of Hopper. Save for a solitary man gripping the rail there was no one about under that glorious panoply of stars. I imagined the crew must be all assembled at the stern; before quitting the wheelhouse I had heard Captain Smith’s call for all hands on deck.

I was walking towards the port side when suddenly the night was rendered hideous by a tremendous blast of steam escaping from the safety valves of the pipes fore and aft of the funnels. I clapped my palms over my ears under the onslaught and turned giddy, for the noise was like a thousand locomotives thundering through a culvert. Even the stars seemed to shake. Recovering, I spied Hopper watching an officer attempting to parley with the bridge above. The officer was pointing at the life-boats and soundlessly roaring for instructions. Hopper and I, bent double under the din, ran back inside.

The crowd in the gymnasium had mostly retreated to the landing of the Grand Staircase and the foyer beneath. The band was now playing rag-time. Kitty Webb, head lolling like a doll, danced with Mrs Brown. Mrs Carter asked if Captain Smith was on the boat deck and whether I knew the whereabouts of Mr Ismay. I said I expected they were both on the bridge seeing to things. There was such a dearth of information, of confirmation or denial of rumours – the racquets court was under water but not the Turkish baths; a spur of the iceberg had ripped the ship from one end to the other but the crew was fully equipped to make good the damage and were even now putting it to rights – and such an absence of persons in authority to whom one might turn that it was possible to imagine the man in the golfing jacket had spoken no more than the truth when presupposing we were victims of a hoax. In part, this lack of communication was due to the awesome size of the wounded ship. It was simply not possible to keep everyone abreast of events. An accident at the summit of a mountain is hardly observable from the slopes. For the rest, what was Smith expected to do? Should he appear on the landing of the Grand Staircase beneath that rococo clock whose hands now stood at twenty-five to one in the morning and announce that in spite of the watertight compartments, the indestructible bulkheads, the unimaginable technology, the unthinkable was in process and his unsinkable vessel, now doomed, unfortunately carried insufficient life-boats to accommodate all on board?

Ginsberg was still in his armchair opposite the elevator, still clutching a handkerchief to his nose. An unknown girl was chatting to him; he introduced her but the loudness of the band blotted out her name. She had an enormous expanse of brow, beneath which her features sat truncated like those of an infant’s; it was possibly on account of her hair being dragged back in a fearsome bun. She said, without preamble, that she had known for several years past, from dreams and such like, that it was her destiny to drown. She spoke of it quite calmly and without resorting to melodrama. Her doctor had dismissed her condition as no more than nerves; her mother had enrolled her in the local tennis club, in the hopes that strenuous exercise in the fresh air would banish such fancies. She had become quite exceptionally adroit on the courts, but the dreams persisted.

‘There is nothing to worry about,’ I said. ‘I myself have been plagued by nightmares. I’m convinced they consist of memories of the past rather than portents of the future.’

Ginsberg was leaning back in his chair, breathing like a man recovering from a record-breaking run round the tracks. Hopper asked what was wrong and he explained he was afflicted with asthma. It came on sometimes without reason. His handkerchief was smeared with a concoction of honey obtained from a bee-keeper in a Shaker community in Massachusetts and would do the trick shortly. I thought it was an inspired excuse and fancied he was in a blue funk.

It was then that I realised I hadn’t seen Charlie Melchett since the interruption to our game of bridge. In Hopper’s opinion it was probable he’d galloped off to play knight errant to the Ellery sisters and Molly Dodge. I made my excuses to the girl with the forehead and went looking for him. Lady Melchett, but six weeks before, had drawn me to one side and entreated me to keep an eye on her boy. ‘He is so very fond of you,’ she’d said. ‘He looks up to you.’ ‘You may rely on me,’ I’d told her, fighting off those damn dogs threatening to lick my face away.