S.O.S. Titanic (15 page)

"I don't know."

"They're not up here anywhere."

"I imagine they have been taken to their own deck."

"But this is the only deck that has lifeboats, and they aren't on the poop deck. I've already looked. And why would they be taken there anyway? There aren't any lifeboats. Isn't that right? Isn't that right, Mr. Watley?"

"That is correct, sir. It is possible the steerage passengers are being held someplace else until it is their turn."

"What do you mean, until it is their turn? There are only a few boats left."

"I know." There was something deep in Watley's eyes, some awful knowledge that chilled Barry's heart.

"You mean they're keeping them below until—"

"I couldn't say, sir."

"You 'couldn't say, sir'?" Barry's rage was choking him. "Damned first-class steward! Damn you, you snob. Just like Bowers and Dickie. Just like all of us. You look out for the Mrs. Welshes, for the me's." In a blur of anger he snatched at the green box, got a hold on the side of it, and pulled it from Watley's hands. The top came off. The caul, shimmering dark under the lights, dropped to the deck between them. Barry stepped back.
I should kick it,
he thought.
I should kick it over to the side and overboard, let it drown with everybody else.
But his foot wouldn't move. His nose dripped, and his eyes, too. He wiped them on the back of Grandpop's glove.

"I'm going," he said.

Watley bent and picked up the caul, and Barry held out the box.

"Thank you." The steward arranged the caul carefully inside, put the lid on.

"I'm going," Barry said again, and Watley bobbed his little bow.

"Come back to this place if you are able, sir. I'll do what I can for you. I won't be saved myself."

Barry stared. "How do you...?"

"I can tell, sir. It is all right. This is how it was meant to be, but not necessarily for you."

"You see that, too?"

"Sometimes I see through a fog, darkly," Watley said. "Do not ask any more. I do not know any more. All our souls are in the hands of the Almighty."

"Right." It was hard getting even that one word out.

Barry let the moving crowd take him then, looking for a door with steps down, so he could find Pegeen. The band was still playing. He knew the tune. Was it a hymn? Was it called "Autumn"? As he pushed his way along the deck, snatches of music came to him, and with them, memory—snatches of the words:

God of mercy and compassion,
Look with pity on my pain,
Something, something; something, something,

and then didn't it say...

Hold me up in mighty waters,
Keep my eyes on things above.

Barry shivered.

"All in the hands of the Almighty," Watley had said.

Hold us up,
he thought.
Oh, please hold us up.

An emergency staircase ran from the boat deck down to E Deck. Barry had seen it. But where was it? Someone bumped into him, walking blindly, head down.

"Watch it—," Barry began. It was Malcolm, Mrs. Adair's friend. They stopped, facing one another.

"Where are Jocelyn and her mother?" Barry asked.

"They've gone in one of the lifeboats," Malcolm said. "Pray God they'll make it."

"But you. Couldn't you?"

"No, and it was touch-and-go at the end to see if they could both get on. But they did. Charity kept holding up Jocelyn, screaming, 'Take my child! Take my child!'" Malcolm covered his eyes with his hands.

"The boat was that full?" Barry asked.

"Yes. And there were only two boats left. I think the collapsibles are still here."

Barry gulped down his tears. "It's so unfair. Little Jossie..."

"She has her father's handkerchief wadded up in her hand," Malcolm said. "She kept calling for her daddy. I don't know if Jocelyn will ever forgive her mother for taking her from him ... if they make it. If they're saved."

"I think Jossie will forgive her mother," Barry said. "She'll understand that her mother did everything she could, that she wasn't to blame. My mother—" He stopped. His mother had done all she could, too. The separation wasn't her fault, and now maybe they'd never be together. He bit his lips. "I'm so sorry, Malcolm. You would have made such a wonderful father for Jocelyn. How much time do you think we have before we sink?"

"I don't know. Someone said a half hour ... forty-five minutes, not much more. Why don't you stay with me, Barry? We'll try for it together."

"I have to find someone first," Barry said. But was there any use looking?
Save yourself. Save yourself,
something inside him screamed. But he had thirty minutes left. Time to save himself and Pegeen, too.

"Well, cheerio, then." Malcolm smiled a quiet smile.

"Cheerio," Barry repeated.

He ran on, not daring to look back. To have a friend at the end. To be sure of having a friend might make it easier. But if he found Pegeen he'd have her.

Here was a door plainly marked Emergency Stairs.

He yanked it open.

Below him the steps marched down, down, down into the depths of the
Titanic.
Covered lights lit the way, showed Barry the sea below. It was the first time he'd seen it inside the ship, and his heart jumped sickeningly against his ribs. It was there like water at the bottom of a well, climbing slowly, step by step. Under its pale greenness the lights still gleamed.

"No," he breathed. "No." He'd gone down five, six steps, not really believing what he could see, and he backed up again fast, slamming the door behind him as if slamming it would keep the ocean inside.

Frantically he looked up and down the boat deck, the empty stanchions, all the boats but one gone on this side. The deck was slanting now at a crazy angle, like a seesaw, one end up, the other halfway down. When it dropped all the way, everything would be finished.

There was a sharp scream behind him.

"A woman's fallen. She was trying to jump into one of the boats. But someone caught her ankle—they're pulling her up."

Horror upon horror.

Close to Barry a man had stacked a pile of long wooden deck chairs by the railing and he was heaving them up one by one, then dropping them over. There were two of the round cork life preservers beside him also. RMS
Titanic.
The man paused for breath. "You never know," he panted. "Throw over anything you see that will float."

Barry nodded. He should help, but more urgent even than that for him was Pegeen. She wasn't anywhere. He ran into the lobby with the grand staircase stretching down. No water coming up these steps yet, but a slope so steep that if he didn't hold on to the banister he'd pitch forward on his face. The cherub clock said 1:20. He had to go almost to the bottom and look back before he could see it. 1:20. How much time left?

A group of about thirty people was coming up the stairs, led by a steward in a white jacket. By their dress and meek manner Barry guessed they were steerage passengers who'd been kept out of the way till the last possible moment. This was the last possible moment. A glance told him Pegeen wasn't among them.

The men and women and children climbed quietly, with no pushing or shoving, trusting sheep following the shepherd. They were used to obeying authority.

"Where are the other third-class passengers?" Barry called to the steward.

He jerked his head. "Below. I'm leading these ones up. They can't find their way in this maze by themselves. I can hardly find it myself. Besides, a lot of the corridors are underwater."

He kept climbing as he talked and Barry had to walk backward in front of him to shout his questions.

"But where are the rest?"

"I doubt if you could find them, and there's not much time. I don't expect there'll be time for me to get back. I was told to bring them up in clusters so there'd be less confusion."

"So what happens to them?"

"They'll be all right, sir."

Barry watched them go, climbing the stairs, quiet and docile. He took a deep, shaky breath. What was the number of Pegeen's cabin? 29G? 27G? But she wouldn't be in her cabin. That whole deck was underwater.

The ocean met him when he dropped down to E Deck, limpid, without a ripple, rising like water in a tub. Dozens of sodden loaves drifted along what had been the corridor, floating tentacles of raw dough stringing around them. Cabbages, oranges, a straggle of flowers that might once have been a bunch of red carnations. Grandfather always wore a red carnation in his buttonhole to Sunday mass.... If he stepped into this water Barry knew he'd be up to his waist. Through the open cabin doors he saw sea lapping over the bottom bunks. Nobody could be here either.

Up again.
Keep going. Don't think of the drowning of Barry Shane O'Neill, his face eaten off by fishes.

There was another terrible bellow as the
Titanic
blew off more steam. Barry clapped his hands to his ears. He felt as if he were going mad, like Mrs. Cherry Hat. The water had moved up another step. Now it covered his feet, icy cold through his socks and his boots. How much would have to come in before it weighed them down? Was the ship about to turn over, belly-up?

"Help!" he shouted, but his voice was swallowed in the funnel's roar. Or maybe he'd only screamed the word in his mind.

The roaring stopped and he stood very still, afraid to take another step in case his slightest movement would send the ship spinning to the bottom. Too much silence now. Dead silence.

He would leave here, go up where at least there'd be air.

But what was that other noise? It wafted to him like the murmur of a football crowd in the distance. From where? From his right? Left? The echoes bounced back at him so he couldn't tell.

Down these stairs, along here, ease into a corridor. He stopped when he saw the gates. The closed, locked gates with the seaman on this side of them and the crowd on the other side.

Through the bars he saw Mary Kelly—and Pegeen. His heart soared with joy. Whatever else, he'd found her.

"Pegeen!" he shouted.

And then he was yelling at the seaman. "Hey, you! Why are you keeping them in there? Open that gate and let them out."

The sailor looked startled. "On whose orders? Who are you?"

Was that a shifting of the ship? Had it just lurched and buried itself deeper in the water? There was a silence, as if they'd all felt it. Behind the gates, men and women dropped to their knees, crossed themselves. Barry ran at the man, but the seaman stepped back, his hands in the air. "They can go if they want. I was only doing what I was ordered," he said.

"They told us there was no hurry," someone behind the gate shouted. It was the big-as-a-horse fellow, bigger than ever now in his white life jacket.

"No hurry?" Barry said. No hurry while they all drowned, like kittens locked in a box underwater, clawing to get out.

The seaman was gone, leaving the gate locked behind him.

"We can go?" somebody called. And somebody else said, "Knock the gate down, then." Another voice called, "We shouldn't. We're supposed to stay here till they tell us."

"Don't talk that nonsense anymore, man. We're going."

The crowd ran their shoulders into the gate again and again till it fell, and they swarmed through.

Why hadn't they done this before, with only a puny gate and one seaman on guard? Barry wondered—and he answered his own question. Because they knew their place. Because he and Grandpop and the rest had taught them they should do only what they were told.

Here was Pegeen. Barry held her hands, the littleness of them smothered in the bigness of his own, bulky in Grandpop's gloves. And then they were running.

"I'm glad I found you," he muttered, not knowing if she heard him or not, but knowing that it didn't matter. He had her.

"Jonnie and Frank and Mick went to find another way," Pegeen said, her voice coming in spurts as they pounded along the corridor through the door, back the way he had come. "How did you get down to us?"

"I don't know for certain," Barry yelled, "and there's no time to talk, Pegeen. Save your breath and run."

But where would they run to? There was no way to tell on this drowning ship, with nothing level anymore—walls, doors, lights, all hanging at crazy angles. Fire extinguishers rolled under their feet. Broken glass crunched and shattered like ice.

The crowd was separating now, one group going to the left, the other to the right, searching for a way out.

"Keep going against the slant," Barry yelled. "The stern is up. Keep going toward the stern."

"But what can have happened to my brothers?" Pegeen wailed. "They'd have come for us if they'd found a way out. They're trapped somewhere."

"More likely they couldn't find their way back," Barry said. "Keep going, Pegeen. Mary, don't stop for anything."

They rushed this way and that. Barry's wet boots squished with seawater. Were his feet still inside there? Maybe they were black and shriveled, sea-frosted.

Up to the third-class lounge on C Deck. Playing cards scattered, books toppled from shelves, framed pictures of the
Titanic
hanging by one corner. Across the open well deck, holding on to each other to keep from sliding down it. So cold out here. The sea so close, so icy close. And how strange that it was night and not dark. No moon to light the calm, flat ocean, but the stars so bright it could have been midday.

"Look!" The horse of a fellow was pointing to a thin line of passengers climbing a crane that rose from the after well deck. There was a boom beyond the crane and some of them had reached that, straddling it, edging slowly along with a leg dangling on each side. Where did the boom go? To the railing of the boat deck. A small figure stood up there, waving his arms, urging them on.

"It's my brother Frank!" Pegeen shouted.

From here Barry couldn't tell, but Pegeen could. And then he noticed the red gypsy scarf tied around the person's neck. It
was
Frank!

Barry pushed Pegeen and Mary toward the crane. "Climb," he yelled. There could still be room in those collapsibles. "Climb."