SOS Lusitania

A STORY OF WAR, SPIES…

AND A STOWAWAY

SOS LUSITANIA

In 1915, only three years after the

Titanic
disaster, another liner, the
Lusitania
,

sank off the coast of Ireland near Kinsale, County Cork.

It was torpedoed by a German submarine.

Over a thousand people were drowned.

CHAPTER 1

T
HE
N
IGHTMARE

L
ast night I had a terrible dream. My dreams and visions are a bit frightening because sometimes I can see into the future; nobody knows about this secret of mine, though often Mam is woken if I scream, and she calls out to me: ‘It’s just a bad dream, Finbar. Go back to sleep, son.’ My younger brothers, Christopher and Sean, were sleeping soundly in the bunk beds that we call ‘shelves’. ‘Get up on your shelf!’ we’d joke at night when they were going to bed.

In the dream, there was a shipwreck, explosions, flames. A huge ocean liner was breaking up and sinking into an icy sea. There were lifeboats and people screaming. I woke up, sweating.

It was the kind of nightmare that when you wake up
the events are still there. The water was rising up over my bed – but when my feet touched the dry, cold floorboards a feeling of calm returned. I stood at the window, staring at the gaslights outside on the sloping streets of Queenstown. I yawned for a while, then went back to my cosy bed. Everything became peaceful now, just rainwater from the roof sloshing down on to the streets.

I cannot really tell anyone my secret dreams, because sometimes these nightmares are like a message about what is going to happen days, weeks, or months later – but I never know if the events I see will
actually
happen. Like when our dog Rusty, a whippet, got lost … or stolen … or ran away. Days before it happened I had a dream that we were looking all over Queenstown for him. I forget the dreams that don’t happen, but Rusty
is
gone. Surely the shipwreck is too fantastic to be true? Maybe I was just remembering the
Titanic
three years ago? I don’t think it could ever happen again. It is too shocking!

But my father is away working on the
Lusitania
, one of the world’s biggest liners.

Next day I dawdled coming out of the school yard when lessons were over. Seagulls swooped down looking for something to devour, birds with yellow beaks and webbed feet, pouncing on a squashed piece of bread that must have fallen out of someone’s schoolbag. I stood staring at them, thinking about my wild dream, going over it in my head. The teachers stood near the turnstile gate. ‘Chalky’ Dempsey, nearly as tall as the spire on Queenstown cathedral. His grey hair was like a floor mop, his face the colour of a turnip, his ears like mushrooms, his suit forever dusty with chalk. The other teacher, Mrs Dempsey, his wife, was small and round as a bush, her black hair tied in a bun. She had tiny eyes, squinting out through spectacles. Sometimes I saw her at her sewing machine through their parlour window, and she was the same: squinting, stooping, sewing.

‘Finbar!’ My sister Colleen came running towards me, startling me out of my daydreams, her face staring wildly as she got so close we could easily bang heads. ‘Dad is home. He’s home!’

And she turned around and we both ran hell for leather up the steep hills of the town, jostling our way through the other kids and veering off the footpaths to avoid them.

‘And he brought presents.’ Colleen’s voice was louder
than usual. ‘It’s like Christmas.’

We were both panting when we got to our house. Number 1 Park Terrace was redbrick, with black slates covered in green moss, and the gutter missing from half of the roof.

‘Hey!’ Colleen poked me in the stomach, her laughter like bagpipes starting up. She had gone all giddy. She pushed me aside and opened the front door.

‘Dad is home!’ she shouted and ran inside.

CHAPTER 2

T
REASURES FROM
C
HINA

M
rs Kelly’s hands and blue housecoat were flecked with flour. She was talking to Mam, who wore an apron also stained with flour. They baked pies for the shops and hotels downtown every week. ‘Making a pretty penny,’ Mrs Kelly always said. ‘Well, it’s a living – sort of.’

Mam hugged me, and I smelt the flour and dough off her. There were pies and tarts all over the place. The kitchen was warm with the smell of baking. It was the sweetest, happiest smell. Oh for some hot bread with butter – I couldn’t wait. But where were the toys?

‘Isn’t it great your Daddy’s home!’ Mrs Kelly wore thick glasses that slid down her nose. She pushed them back up to her eyes and they looked like little windows with snow on them.

‘They all missed him at Christmas,’ Mam said to her. ‘And I was lonesome without my Jack.’ Mam pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. The flour got up there too. Mam put her floury hand on her waist, adding more white to the dark apron. ‘Go into the parlour, Finbar. Wait till you see what your Dad brought. It’s like a toyshop in there. He must have found buried treasure at sea to have paid for all those things. Christopher and Sean are in the park flying their kites. Your dad’s gone down town. Ye’ll all see him later.’

In the parlour our best table was covered in curious items. My mouth dropped open. Oh gosh, it
was
better than Christmas. We didn’t have much of a time at the real Christmas, but now we could have it! Colleen was playing a little musical box that made sounds like a harp. I didn’t know what to look at. My eyes roved over everything. Gosh, this was mighty.

‘Mam says,’ Colleen’s eyes were wide, ‘that Dad brought home all of China. All of flippin’ China, can you believe it?’ Colleen wound the spring on a clock and suddenly a bird popped out and hooted three times. ‘Dad’s the best in the world,’ she shouted, her eyes shining with happiness.

‘Here,’ she threw me a postcard of a circus with elephants, and up on their backs were little huts with roofs! Chinese people were sitting under the roofs, wearing strange hats and
smiling. Some of the smiling people looked up at birds flying overhead in the sky. On the postcard was a message from Dad. It was fantastic to read the postcard from him when he was already home with us, because it often made me sad getting the postcards when he’s far away:

I held the card and grinned. Typical. I opened a box full of chocolate coins, wrapped in silver paper. I flicked off the wrappers and ate a coin. Eating ‘money’ made me laugh. A pretty penny! Chunky chocolate teeth were funny to unwrap and lovely to eat. Eating teeth with your own teeth! And
what was over here? Lacquered black boxes that opened to the sound of insects. Chopsticks. Coins with four straight sides and a square hole in the middle. A toy boat with sails. Two boats with tiny oars. Balloons. Magic tricks.

Best of all, I found a spyglass with a label marked ‘For my son, Finbar’. It was like a brass pipe, the bigger side with polished glass like the end of a bottle. I stretched it out, pulling both ends, and it was longer than a sword.

‘Wow! Look, Colleen,’ I shouted, but suddenly the front door was thrown open. The twins were back for more booty. Christopher was in a tussle with Sean as to who was going to get into the room first, so Mam separated them. Their clothes had flour stains now, but today no one was scolded. Mam rubbed the flour off them, pretending that she was beating them, and they were giggling.

‘Hip, hip, hurray!’ Christopher roared. ‘I love all the goodies Dad brought.’

Then Mam gave out to us as we fought like cats and dogs about who owned which toys. Things got so noisy that Mrs Kelly rushed in – but moments later she rushed back out: ‘My flippin’ flaky pastry!’ she shouted, and this seemed to stop us arguing and we all burst out laughing. We each stood at a corner of the table, our arms circled around our own bundle
of toys. ‘I don’t want to hear another word of fighting about who owns what part of China,’ Mam said crossly, but she soon began to smile again, and we began to cheer up. It wasn’t a day for crossness. ‘Ye’re like a bunch of drunken sailors,’ she said, tilting her head as she went back to her baking. The whole house was topsy turvy. But Dad was home. That was all that

Mam had an awful job trying to make us eat our carrot soup and brown bread and butter because we were so giddy and excited.

‘You’ll need to eat yours double-quick, Finbar,’ she said. ‘I’m sending you downtown to give your father a list of groceries to bring home.’ She tore a piece of paper from the
Cork Examiner
and with a stub of a pencil wrote a list on it. I carefully placed the folded paper with flour stains in my pocket.