S.O.S. Titanic (10 page)

Barry counted.
I'm like Howard counting lifeboats
, he thought.

"Any two compartments could be flooded and the vessel would still stay afloat," the captain said. "And we would never let two compartments be flooded. This ship won't sink."

"Well," Scollins said, "I certainly feel safe."

"Now, I have a ship to run," Captain Smith said. "Thank you for coming up to admire the wonders of our great liner."

"Thank
you,
" Barry said.

He and Scollins went back the way they had come.

"What a marvel of human ingenuity," Scollins said. "When we get to New York I shall write of this in detail to Mr. Billings and Mr. Fetters. They will be most interested."

Barry was thinking about the letter he'd written to Pegeen Flynn. "Urgent," he'd said. And he was going to warn her about the
Titanic
and the icebergs. He'd planned on telling her what Watley had said if she came. Now he'd feel like a fool. Who with any sense would believe crazy Watley and not Captain Smith?

And come to think of it, why hadn't he just sent her a direct message, to the point, and not vague and mysterious like that? Watley was vague and mysterious enough for all of them. Barry could have said, "It is important that you have your own life jackets in your cabin. For your safety I suggest you get them back from your brothers."

He hadn't done that, and he knew why. The life jackets had given him a reason to talk with her again. The word "urgent" was to force her to come. No use lying to himself. He wanted to see her again.

It was past eleven o'clock. Barry had been around the deck twice, and he knew she wasn't coming. Maybe her brothers had stopped her. Or maybe she'd made the decision herself. Well, it was fine with him.

The letter had been delivered. He knew that.

"I watched personally while the stewardess opened the young lady's door and placed it on her bed," Watley had said.

The night was colder than anything Barry had ever felt. Each time he breathed, his chest hurt way down where the air reached. His nose was numb and dripping, too.

Past eleven, and she wasn't coming. She didn't know how important it was. Well, there was nothing he could do—except maybe he could go find her cabin, find her ... Someone might see him, though. If he was caught there'd be a terrible commotion about it. A young man from first class going to a young lady's cabin in the middle of the night? And her being in third class would make it worse.

I don't care. I'll go anyway,
he thought.
I'll look for that stewardess Watley saw and I'll tell her Pegeen and Mary don't have their life jackets. She probably has spares. I won't try to talk to them,
he thought. Nobody could fault him for that.

He rode the elevator down as far as it went, to B Deck, then took the stairs. Deck G was where the third-class cabins were, Watley had said. The gates across were closed and hung with No Admittance signs, but they weren't locked. At G Deck he turned toward the stern, passing the tightly shut cabin doors that lined the corridor.

There was a different feeling down here. No carpeting, no palm trees in pots, no rich, hushed silence. The engine noise was steady and there was the sound of the ocean, too. Barry could feel it pushing against the hull. They'd be well under the waterline here. What was keeping the sea out? He sensed it forcing itself against the steel plates:
Let me in. Let me in.
Stop that, he said to himself, fighting the urge to run, to get up and out into the cold, clean air.
The greatest shipbuilders in the world built this
, he told himself.
Irish shipbuilders at that.
Everything was perfectly thought out. The strength of the steel, the water pressure per square inch.

Now he was acting like Howard, multiplying in his mind.
Don't think about Howard either. Keep going.

There was a nice newness to everything, though. When the ship was old it might be dingy down here, but now it shone with fresh paint, bright and clean. The poop deck should be directly above him now. Tonight there was no sound of music—too cold outside. Your fingers would freeze on the accordion keys. Your lips would stick to the mouth organ.

Twenty-one G, Twenty-two G, Twenty-three. Which cabin was hers?

"Good evening, sir." A voice as frosty as the air outside. "Are you looking for something?" The stewardess wore a black dress, a white apron and cap. On the band of her apron was a pin that said Thelma Acheson, Stewardess.

The dragon at the gates protecting the virgins within,
Barry thought, remembering school mythology class. "I was looking to find you," he said, sounding even to himself as Irish as a Ballintoy pig. He smiled what he hoped was an innocent smile. "I was talking to Miss Flynn and Miss Kelly earlier. Miss Flynn told me there are no life jackets in their cabin and I began to think how dangerous—"

"No life jackets? Of course there are life jackets. Every cabin has life jackets."

"Well, you see, Miss Acheson, I think they gave them—"

He stopped. There was the sound of loud voices coming closer somewhere around the bend in the corridor. Laughter. A man's voice singing: "
We're off to Philadelphia in the morning.
"

"I was about to tell you Miss Flynn and Miss Kelly are not in their cabin," the stewardess said, sounding more dragonlike than ever. "They were meeting some of their male friends in the third-class lounge." She made the words "male friends" sound sinful. "There's horse racing up there, and dancing, too, I understand. You didn't go yourself?" He felt her grudging approval at that. "I think this might be them returning."

Barry stood beside her, waiting. Pegeen's brothers would be with her, no doubt about that. But who else?

As if on cue, he heard Jonnie Flynn's voice. "Sure, I told you to bet on Killarney Kiss. It was a natural. You're no judge of horseflesh at all, Mick Kelly."

"Horseflesh? Them ould horses are made of wood, and sure they only move to the throw of the dice. I thought Columbus would be a certain winner for us, seeing as how we're doing what he did, in a manner of speaking."

Barry had the glove off his right hand and his fingers curled around the knife in his pocket. He'd put a muffler on over his pullover before he left his cabin, and the whistle hung outside his clothes, hidden by the muffler's trailing ends. He wouldn't need either it or the knife, he didn't think. Not down here. Not with the dragon lady. But these were the fighting Flynns, and you could never be sure.

The noisy group came around the corner and into the stretch of the corridor. Seven of them, Barry counted, all jumbled together: Pegeen Flynn, her hair fire red in the dim corridor lights, Mary Kelly, Jonnie, Frank, Mary Kelly's brother, Mick, and two other fellows, one big as a horse himself, one puny. Mick Kelly still wore the padded white life jacket.

They stopped and Miss Thelma Acheson moved toward them. Barry saw Frank nudge Jonnie. Saw a few muttered words exchanged, and knew he'd been spotted.

"Be quiet," Miss Acheson whispered in a whisper loud enough to wake the dead and buried. "Have you no thought for the passengers who are sleeping? And what are you boys doing in this part of the ship? You know very well that male visitors are not allowed."

"Och, sure, my darlin', we couldn't let the young ladies go home alone, could we?" That was Mick Kelly. "We're only walkin' them as far as their cabin doors. Our mothers told us it was polite to go that far and no further."

"And what about him? Mr. Bloody O'Neill from first class?" That was Jonnie Flynn shouting, pushing Mick aside, jutting his chin out at Barry. "What are you doing down here, Mr. Bloody O'Neill?"

"He came to—," the stewardess began. But Jonnie and Frank shouldered her aside.

"Don't you start making trouble here," she said fiercely, and other cabin doors opened, faces peered out, voices called, "What's going on? Where's the trouble?"

The Flynn brothers were in front of Barry. "Sniffing after our sister, were you?" Jonnie Flynn asked. He rubbed the back of his hand hard against the healing stitches in Barry's face, and Barry pulled his head back fast at the needle sting of the stitches' ends pricking into his flesh.

"I told you he had a wild notion of her," Frank Flynn said. "I told you." There was a red gypsy handkerchief knotted at the neck of his ravelly pullover, and his hands were all big, raw knuckles, opening and closing, ready for use.

"I came to speak to Pegeen and Mary," Barry said. "I tried to send your sister a message but I don't know if she got it."

"You did
what?
" Frank Flynn's face was as red as his handkerchief.

"She didn't get it." That was Mary Kelly. "I did." She took a step closer to Pegeen. "It was there on your bed, Peggy. The stewardess"—she nodded toward Miss Acheson—"I asked her." Mary's voice stumbled as she talked too fast. "She said a steward from first class brought it down. She said it was from a Mr. O'Neill. Oh, Peggy, Peggy. I knew he'd want to see you again. I knew it. And you all starry-eyed over him, and him one of the O'Neills of Mullinmore. And that's the same whether he's here or in America. He's not one of us." She was pleading now, rubbing one of Pegeen's arms. "Remember the maid up at Randalls', at the Big House? Remember how the Randall boy came after her and—"

"So Mr. O'Neill was writing to our sister, was he? I'll give him writing." Jonnie Flynn leapt forward, but Mick Kelly grabbed him and pulled his head back against the wadding of his white life jacket.

"Easy, man," he said. "We're not needing another fight."

Jonnie was stopped but Frank wasn't. He jabbed one of his big-knuckled fists at Barry, and Barry dodged, the fist thumping against the wall behind him. No need for the knife here. One on one, or two on one—he could handle it. Down here he could. He clenched his teeth. "Come on," he said, putting up his own fists. "Come on."

But Miss Thelma Acheson was between them. Her arms held them apart as easily as Bowers would have held two fighting dogs, one from the other. "You'll stop it now. You!" This was to Barry. "Coming down here and starting trouble! And you!" This to Frank Flynn. "Spoiling for a fight, so you are. I know your kind."

"Please." Pegeen's face was white and angry, the freckles standing out against the paleness. "Am I to understand this, Mary Kelly? You took and read something that was meant for me?"

"I didn't read it. I took it, that's true. But I never read a word."

Pegeen held out her hand. "Give it to me." Not once had she looked at Barry. Not once.

"It's under my pillow. I was going to give it to you when we were safely landed."

"You did the right thing, Mary girl," Jonnie Flynn said. "You give it to Frank and me, not to her at all."

The stewardess interrupted. "The important question is, Where are the young ladies' life jackets? It is a serious offense to remove life jackets from a cabin."

"We gave them to Jonnie and Frank," Pegeen began guiltily.

"This is not permitted. Who has the life jackets?"

Frank Flynn elbowed his brother. "The O'Neill fellow was that worried about our sister he had to come down here himself in person."

"Too bad him and his didn't worry about us back in Mullinmore. There wouldn't be a Flynn here if it wasn't for him and his kind, always whining about—no, lamenting—if we looked sideways at them."

"You did a lot more than look sideways," Barry began.

A cabin door opened and an angry voice shouted, "Are you going to gab all night? Will you let a woman get her sleep?"

"Exacdy," Miss Acheson said. "You two young ladies go in your cabin. Mr. O'Neill, leave. You others go, and return with Miss Flynn's and Miss Kelly's life jackets. Give them to me."

For the first time Pegeen looked at Barry. Her black dress had the square silver brooch at the high neck and her fingers nervously traced and retraced its outline. "The message? It was to tell me about the life jackets? That was the holy all of it?"

Barry bit his lip. He looked quickly around at the half circle of glowering feces. "There was something else," he said.

"Oh, he's the fly one. 'There was something else,'" Jonnie Flynn said in a mincing English voice. "Telling her he loved her, likely. Oh, the boyo has the nerve of Brian Boru, so he does."

"Get the letter, Pegeen, and give it to us," Frank said.

"Frank Flynn!" Pegeen's voice was as angry as the brothers'. "Don't tell me what to do. I'm my own person, I am."

"I'm telling yez all to shut up," someone else shouted from farther along the corridor. An angry thump on a cabin wall.

"I'm not going to say it again," Miss Acheson ordered. "Go."

"Aye, go!" the cabin voice shouted.

Miss Acheson pushed them. "Go."

"Don't be letting him near her, then!" Jonnie Flynn shouted back over his shoulder. "I'm putting you in charge. You keep him away from her, or the captain will hear about it."

Mary had her hand on the cabin doorknob. "Twenty-nine G," Barry read. He was glad he knew, and not sure why he was glad.

"I'll read the letter," Pegeen said, looking right at him, and then she was gone.

"Good-night, Mr. O'Neill," the stewardess said firmly.

"Good-night."

Barry went back the way he had come, the knife ready in his pocket, the whistle dangling where he could reach it in a second. It would be hard for them to throw him overboard from here. They'd have to carry him up like an old sack of coal, but they could jump him, the whole holy bunch of them. They could be waiting.

And they were. He heard their breathing before he saw them bunched around the corner at the bottom of the stairs.

"Get him, boys!" Jonnie Flynn shouted.

One on one, or two on one, he might have had a chance, but not five on one; and the boy big as a horse had something in his hand ... A water carafe? A lemonade bottle? There was no time to see. They were lunging toward him.

Barry pulled the whistle from under his scarf and blew with all his breath. The high, shrill scream of it almost took his head off.

Doors opened everywhere. Voices called. He thought one of the voices belonged to Miss Thelma Acheson.