Every Man for Himself (9 page)

Some years before, on a visit to England, I’d spent a weekend in Ismay’s company and not forgotten it. We were both guests of Sanderson, his fellow director, who had a house in Freshfield in Lancashire. Sanderson was captain of the county golf club and his house was built among pine woods swarming with red squirrels. His butler lent us guns and we spent a whole morning blasting them to bits from the porch. Even in high summer the wind blew and I emptied my shoes of sand a dozen times a day. Beyond the trees lay the black edge of the Irish Sea.

The night of our arrival Mrs Sanderson gave a large dinner party, in my honour as much as Ismay’s. My connections have always made me welcome and the cotton merchants and shipping owners who attended treated me very civilly. At the end of the meal and before the women had left the room Mr Sanderson got up to make a little speech of welcome. It wasn’t a strictly formal occasion – there’d even been a bit of tomfoolery between the pudding and cheese involving the chucking of golf balls into the fruit bowl. I was seated to the left of Sanderson, next to a lady with a pug dog on her lap, Ismay on his right. I took out my cigarettes – the other men were already smoking – and being without matches reached across to bring the candles nearer, at which Ismay, leaning out over the table, violently slapped my outstretched hand. I was not yet eighteen years old.

Smarting still, I wondered what he would say if I brought up that distant incident, and might have done if I hadn’t caught Melchett’s eye. He was looking distinctly frosty. I couldn’t think what was the matter with him until I suddenly remembered I’d walked out on him earlier.

‘Charlie,’ I pleaded, filled with genuine remorse. ‘Forgive me, there’s a good fellow. I was out of sorts.’

Good fellow that he was, he responded instantly, even to getting to his feet and coming to shake me by the hand.

At the end of the table Mrs Carter was shuddering in mock horror. Apparently the journalist Stead had once written a short story about a ship hit by an iceberg which she claimed to have read.

‘I can’t remember the ending,’ she cried, ‘but I know I had nightmares for weeks.’

‘Mr Stead ought to write one about a stoker coming up out a funnel,’ said Hopper. ‘Although the ladies have pretty well written it already.’

‘What did happen at the end?’ shouted Lady Duff Gordon. I noticed she had her hand on Rosenfelder’s arm.

‘They all drowned,’ said Stead. ‘All but the Captain.’

‘You shouldn’t let Wallis upset you,’ whispered Melchett. ‘She’s not worth it,’ which nearly put me out of sorts all over again.

The party broke up at about eleven o’clock, by which time the restaurant was deserted. Ginsberg had left a good hour before; he’d been so busy buttering up the elder of the Taft cousins that he’d walked straight past.

‘The grown-ups are going to have coffee in the saloon,’ Mrs Carter told Hopper. ‘I expect you boys will want to go dancing.’

None of us was keen. Hopper had some notion we should find George Dodge and all go down to the cargo hold to look at his father’s new motor-car. I said I’d wait for him and Charlie in the foyer; I didn’t want to bump into Wallis. As I loitered there Ismay came through on the way to his suite. He said, ‘I understand you know Scurra.’

‘I’ve only recently met him.’

‘And what do you think of him?’

‘Why, I think him . . . I think he’s . . .’ I stopped, unable to think of words sufficiently neutral.

‘From that I gather he’s made his usual impression.’ He stared at me, as if trying to make up his mind. ‘I knew him many years ago in France,’ he said. ‘He’s an interesting man . . . if dangerous.’

‘Dangerous!’ I said.

‘I had reason to ask his advice and he gave it to me.’

‘It was bad advice?’

‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘it was almost certainly good. But I failed to take it.’ With that, he wished me goodnight.

Melchett and Hopper had found George in the Veranda Café. He wasn’t coming with us but it was all right by him if we wanted a peek at the Lanchester.

‘Molly’s picked up some bounder who owns a canning factory in Chicago,’ explained Hopper. ‘George feels he ought to stay and keep an eye on her.’

Melchett was watching me like a hawk but I couldn’t help myself. ‘I would have thought either Wallis or Ida could do that.’

‘Ida would probably hand her over, if asked,’ Hopper said. ‘And Wallis isn’t there.’

We went first to the purser’s office and filled out a form authorising our entry into the hold. Hopper had to dash back and get George’s signature. Alighting from the elevator on the lower level of G deck we passed along the same route taken by Riley the day before. The heat was tremendous, more so than I remembered, and we walked to the constant vibrating thrum of those hidden, magnificent engines. There was nobody in the cubby hole that served as the baggage office, the man in charge having left his post. We hung on because the kettle on the stove was jiggling to the boil. When at last he did appear he seemed put out at our being there and even had the insolence to suggest we come back in the morning. Hopper put him in his place.

We had to clamber down vertical steps into the hold below. Though a dozen or more switches had been snapped on before our descent, the place was eerily lit, the electric filaments flickering like starlight. We were now below the water-line and the air was filled with ominous creaks and groans and an irregular pinging sound half-way between a tuning fork and the plucking of a violin string. There were two motors, tethered side by side, an ancient Wolseley which Hopper claimed belonged to old Seefax and Dodge’s spanking new Lanchester, the latter with its brass headlights, scarlet wheel spokes and dark blue upholstery infinitely superior to the former – at least in Hopper’s opinion. My uncle owned a Rolls Royce, as did Jack, but I’d never caught the craze. While Hopper and Charlie fussed round its bonnet discussing horsepower and compression ratios I amused myself inspecting the items nearby. I could see the use for the contents of two tea-chests, one stamped
Hair nets
, the other
Ostrich plumes
, but what was one to make of the several lengths of oak beams bearing the cautionary notice
Not to be mistaken for Ballast
? They were so massive in thickness and so crocheted with worm holes that they must surely have come from a man-of-war or else the roof of a medieval cathedral. Lying athwart them, bound in sacking, teetered a package labelled
Portrait of Garibaldi, Property of C.D. Bernotti
.

Hopper and Charlie had climbed into the Lanchester. Childishly, both began imitating the puttering of an engine and the grinding of gears. Charlie, who was at the wheel, leaned out and squeezed the horn, sending a frog-like honking reverberating round the hold. After a time, mercifully tiring of such foolery, they embarked on one of those fragmentary conversations, to do with women and the future, indulged in by young men late at night. I won’t go into what Hopper said about women; some of it was pretty indelicate. God knows what Charlie made of it, his knowledge of such matters extending little further than the pollination of orchids in his father’s glass houses. At any rate his contribution was minor, if poignant, mainly that he’d once touched the breast, by mistake, of a very nice girl in Dorset who had first run and told her mother and then vomited.

‘You should get yourself rooms of your own in London,’ Hopper advised.

‘My people would never allow it,’ said Melchett.

‘There are girls in London,’ Hopper boasted, ‘who would thank you for caressing them.’

It was different for Hopper, of course. Though only two years older he had an apartment on Fifty-seventh Street and a job in his father’s law firm. Being British, Charlie had nothing of his own and nothing to do save ride round the family estate with a gun under his arm, waiting for his father to die. All the same, both insisted they had plans for a golden future which would have little to do with either law or the running of an estate. Quite what it would have to do with wasn’t made clear, though Hopper vowed he was going to land the biggest fish that ever flashed in a river.

It’s true he was crazy about fishing. When we were boys at Warm Springs he spent whole nights lying on his stomach waiting for the bait to be taken, until his grandmother, catching him fast asleep in the moonlight, a snake a foot away from his face, beat him out of the habit.

I envied them, lolling in that shining automobile, both so sure the future would be different from what had gone before. For myself, I had no such certainties. Jumping into the back of the Wolseley I lay flat and contemplated the heights above and the depths below. Cupping my hands over my ears I imagined it was the ocean that roared in my head. I might have fallen asleep if Hopper hadn’t bellowed my name.

‘What now?’ I called.

‘Charlie says you’re steamed up over Wallis.’

‘Is that so?’

‘We all know what she’s like, Morgan. The girl has ice in her veins. I doubt if any man could melt her, not even a husband.’

‘I don’t wish to discuss it,’ I said pompously, and heard his snort of laughter.

It had gone midnight when we climbed up out of the hold. As we returned to the elevator a door opened in the corridor ahead and two men, one in seaman’s uniform, stepped out. Between them sagged a third man, knees buckling, head sunk on his breast. A monstrous hissing rolled towards us and ceased as the door clanged shut. I would have passed by had I not recognised Riley. Hopper and Melchett, side-stepping, walked on.

I asked if I could be of assistance. The stricken man was well past middle age, the perspiration plastering his white hair to his scalp. Bare-chested, his sodden trousers smeared with grease and dirt, he looked half drowned. Riley said it was nothing to worry about, simply a matter of heat and exhaustion. Indeed, even as he spoke the old man came to, and, wiping his eyes on the back of one filthy hand made as if to pull back the door.

‘He needs rest,’ I protested. ‘And water.’

After some hesitation on the part of all three, the second man, supporting his comrade round the waist, shambled off along the corridor in the direction of the cargo office. I noticed the sick man had an elaborate crucifixion tattooed on his back, the arms of the Christ spread out across his shoulders.

‘They’re working double shifts,’ said Riley. He began to rub at his soiled uniform with a piece of rag.

‘You’ve coal dust on your cheek,’ I said. Taking the rag from him I offered my handkerchief. Smiling, he took it and dabbed at his face. It wasn’t an entirely friendly smile. I was about to wish him goodnight when he said, ‘Someone ought to do something about them shifts. They knew the situation before we left Southampton.’

‘And what situation was that?’ I asked, but before he could reply the two stokers appeared again at the top of the passage.

‘Come with me,’ he ordered, marching off in the opposite direction, and I followed meekly enough until, reaching a door marked
Crew Only
, he halted and enquired whether I could spare him a few moments. ‘I expect,’ he said, ‘you’ve better things to do.’ Though the words were deferential he made it sound like an accusation.

‘Not at all,’ I replied, damned if he was going to get the better of me. The room we entered was some sort of night pantry. There was a stove, two chairs, a table with its legs standing in circles of rat poison and a row of shelves stocked with tins of food. On the wall, askew, hung a picture of Captain Smith with his dog.

‘I believe you come from Liverpool,’ I began, with the notion of putting him at his ease, though indeed he hadn’t once addressed me as sir.

‘Yes, yes,’ he cried impatiently, and motioned me to sit. He himself remained standing, my handkerchief still crumpled in his hand.

‘That man,’ said he, ‘that old geezer you just seen . . . he’s done a nine hour shift and gone straight into a six-hour one.’

‘That seems excessive,’ I said.

‘It isn’t right,’ said he. ‘It shouldn’t be allowed.’ In his indignation he kicked at the pellets on the floor. I told him I’d gathered from the steward that the crew was at full muster, to which he replied that was so, but only if circumstances had been normal.

‘And aren’t they?’ I queried.

‘Not on your Nellie!’ he scoffed. ‘What’s more, they knew about it before they signed us on. They just didn’t bother to hire enough extra men to deal with it.’

‘To deal with what?’

‘The bloody fire,’ he said. ‘The bloody fire what’s blazing in Number 10 coal bunker.’

I thought of Queen’s Island and the hull of the
Titanic
rising up in the drydock of Harland and Wolff. Three million rivets, thrust into coke braziers before being beaten into the overlapping plates, had gone into its construction. She was double-bottomed, the space between big enough for a man to stand up in. Hour upon hour the hammering continued, the clamorous echoes screeching off the tin roofs of the draughtsmen’s huts. At the end of the day when the hooter blew and work stopped, the sudden shocking silence plummeted from the leaden skies.

‘It’s been blazing for days,’ said Riley. ‘At this rate old man Smith’s going to be shamed into asking for the City Fire Department to meet us when we dock.’

I stayed silent, staring at the picture on the wall; it wasn’t the same dog I’d fed ginger biscuits. Ginsberg, I thought, had been in the right of it, though quite how the ship had been granted a certificate of sea-worthiness defeated me. I knew about fires from Tuohy. Containment was easy if one kept hosing down the coal; it was the damage done to the so-called steel plates that mattered. They weren’t steel at all, just raw iron, and iron weakened under exposure to heat. A picture came into my head of that front room by the harbour, of the hole in the oilcloth, the plaster statue of the Virgin simpering on the mantelpiece. I trembled; it wasn’t so much the fire that bothered me, rather the realisation that Tuohy’s rantings had been more than fine talk.