The Midnight Watch (20 page)

‘Yes, possibly,’ I said. This explanation didn’t really help me. Gill had told me the officer – Old Mattress-back – had not only seen the rockets but reported them to his captain. ‘But what if he did see them?’ I pressed. ‘Is there any reason why the captain would not go to the aid of the distressed ship?’

‘No. If he saw them, he must go. It is the oldest tradition of the sea.’

‘But could the officer perhaps have confused them with a celebration – a display for the passengers?’

The old man looked at me as if I were a deliberately mischievous child. ‘In the middle of the night? White rockets are white rockets. They’re very distinctive.’

‘There’s nothing else they could be taken for, then?’

‘Well, pyrotechnics are sometimes still used as private night signals – company signals – to show shore stations or passing ships what company a ship comes from.’

‘Could white rockets be confused with them?’

‘Not really. Company signals are coloured flares or balls or lights displayed in very particular patterns. Distress rockets are fired singly, one at a time. And maritime regulations tell ships not to use any company signal that could be confused with a distress signal.’

‘Let me put this to you: if you were a captain, sleeping below decks, and the watch officer called down to tell you rockets were being fired, what would you do?’

‘I’d go to the bridge. I’d wake the wireless man. Then raise steam and go for the source of the rockets.’

‘But what if there was danger to your own ship?’

‘What sort of danger?’

‘Ice, for example?’

‘No one would thank a captain for sinking his ship, but he must at least try to respond to the rockets. He must do what he can do within the limits of safety.’ The old mariner paused. ‘We have an example, of course, in this very case.’

I waited, uncertain of his meaning.

‘Rostron,’ he explained, ‘of the
Carpathia
. When he got the message by wireless, he took his ship and his seven hundred passengers at full speed to the
Titanic
, knowing there were icebergs about. It’s the law – but more than that, it’s a point of honour. No captain would risk the shame of not trying.’

My expert mariner, during this discussion, had been polishing a small brass telescope. Suddenly he lifted it and peered through it at me. ‘In New York,’ he said, ‘everyone is hunting for this mysterious ship seen by the
Titanic
. But you already know, don’t you? That’s why you’re asking these questions. You’ve found out, haven’t you?’

‘I have not.’

‘Now you’re lying.’

I smiled at him.

‘Protect your story if you must,’ he said, putting down his telescope. ‘I expect I’ll read all about it soon enough.’

‘Perhaps you will. May I use what you’ve told me?’

‘Most certainly,’ said the old man as he rose from his sofa. ‘But you must let me give you a little word of warning. You really think a man has committed this crime – of not going to the
Titanic
?’

‘I do.’

‘An American?’

‘An Englishman.’

‘Then I need to tell you: I think you’ve made a mistake. You’ve set your dogs barking up the wrong tree. No English officer would ignore distress rockets. There’s something you’re missing, something you’ve got wrong. You must be careful what you publish.’

I thanked him for his warning and took my leave. As I made my way back to my office in the gathering darkness I thought about what the pilot had said: no Englishman would ignore distress rockets. Yet tomorrow Ernest Gill would swear in an affidavit to exactly that, on pain of prison. It was perplexing. It seemed that the more I knew about this story, the less I understood. Each fact pointed to the next in a logical sequence, but, like road signs leading to a cliff edge, their endpoint made no sense. Was Gill lying? I really did not think so. Enhancing the truth, perhaps, or exaggerating it a little. But the nub of what he said, that the officer on the bridge had seen the rockets and told the captain –
that
I believed.

This puzzle became my obsession. Every other aspect of the disaster was subsumed by it: the missing bodies, the lunacy of Major Butt, Astor’s chivalry and Ismay’s dishonour, my wife’s frustration with the suffragettes, Thomas’s need for a hero – even my own indignation about the unknown and unsung dead children. All of these things now seemed secondary. None of them would have happened if the rockets had been answered.

Why weren’t they? It was a riddle worthy of the sphinx. There was only one man who could answer it, and tomorrow, once I had my affidavit, I would ask that man quietly and directly: Why didn’t you go?

*   *   *

But as it happened, I did not have the luxury of waiting until tomorrow. I was back at my desk early Tuesday evening when I heard Krupp calling my name from his office. ‘Steadman!
Steadman!
STEAD-MAN!’
He did not, as my daughter would have put it, sound best pleased.

‘You have this story tied up?’ he demanded as soon as the door of his office closed behind me. His face was redder than usual; his eyes seemed to bulge outwards, like a toad’s.

‘Yes,’ I said. I already feared where this was heading.

‘So it’s an exclusive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because we have agreed to pay – what was his name?’

‘Gill.’

‘Whoever – five hundred dollars?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which is a great deal of money?’

‘Yes.’ By now I was distinctly nervous.

‘Then why – please do tell me why – is some village newspaper out west running your story on its front page
this very afternoon
?’

I was stunned. ‘My story? The
Californian
?’

‘The one and the same. I quote,’ and here he read from his notes, ‘“
Californian
refuses aid. Foreman carpenter on board this boat says hundreds might have been saved from the
Titanic
.” Do you know anything about this foreman carpenter?’

I vaguely remembered Gill mentioning a carpenter: a big man who accused Gill of mutiny and told the crew to keep their mouths shut. ‘He’s got dark skin, I think.’

‘Dark skin and a big mouth, because he’s telling your story to anyone who will listen – for
free
. Listen.’ Krupp turned again to his notes. ‘“This story was told to John Frazer of this town by the foreman carpenter, who is a cousin of Mr Frazer.” Lucky Mr Frazer! “It was shortly after the
Californian
had gone by the icefield that the watch saw the rockets which were sent up by the
Titanic
as signals of distress … It is said that those on board the
Californian
could see the lights of the
Titanic
very plainly…”’ Krupp folded his arms across his chest and stared at me. His nose twitched. ‘Well?’

I tried to think. I was shocked. ‘Where did you get those notes?’ I asked.

‘The
Clinton Daily Item
. It was read to me over the long-distance line. I wrote down the main parts.’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Nobody has. But they have the story and we have nothing.’

‘But it’s a small paper, and we have Gill. Tomorrow he will swear his affidavit —’

‘Tomorrow is too late. You need to go to the ship
now
. The
Herald
in New York has got hold of this somehow, and the
Post
here, and they’re both sending men to the ship
now
. Damn them! So take my notes, throw them at the captain’s feet if you have to, and see what he says. But whatever happens, telephone the story back to me
tonight.
’

I left his office, collected my hat, coat and notebook from my desk, and set off into the night. I was angry at the world. It was a rotten piece of luck: a nobody carpenter spills the beans to a cousin in a nowhere town who chats to someone at a two-page rag that no one reads. And then somehow
The
New York Herald
and
The Boston Post
find out. If only the carpenter had waited one more day. I’d lost my scoop, and no doubt my job with it.

But as I boarded the ferry once again and headed out into the harbour, I became strangely light-spirited. Boston seen at night from the water has a very special magic. Fine buildings are lit from base to top and the monumental State House stands tall on Beacon Hill, its gilt dome aflame with the electric light of American democracy. It’s a sight that always lifts the soul. This is where the East India tea chests were thrown overboard, and the water seems to sparkle with the thrill of it. There’s a sense of the new: the colonists, the revolutionaries, the suffragettes. Out here on the water, far from Watch and Ward and Mrs Baker Eddy, Boston seems to be a city of the future. I would make my way in it, somehow. I began to think it might be a good thing finally to be free of the
Boston American
and Krupp’s unrelenting quest for
cir-cu-lation
. Something new would come up. It always did.

As the ferry slowed and neared the East Boston wharves, I could see the
Californian
’s
pier lit brilliantly by electric lights slung along iron frameworks. The silhouetted hulk of the
ship
loomed low and dark. Her derricks were swinging wildly, bringing cargo aboard in great canvas slings, and hard, angular shadows played about her upper decks.

Somewhere in all that activity, I knew, was Captain Stanley Lord, preparing to defend himself against the allegations of a disloyal carpenter.

CHAPTER 12

Herbert Stone knew as soon as he saw them that the two men walking down the wharf towards the gangway were reporters. He knew by the way they laughed and sauntered along, sniffing the air as if there might be news in the smell of the gas lamps. It was only a few hours since Stone had read of Mr Boxhall seeing a mystery ship and firing rockets, but the press were here already. Somehow they had found him out.

In a moment they were in the alleyway outside his cabin. He heard the chartroom door jerking open, the gangway watchman apologising to the captain, and the reporters announcing their newspapers. He slipped quietly along the alleyway, pressed himself flat against the bulkhead outside the partly open chartroom door, and listened. There were indistinct murmurings – complaints from the captain, apologies from the reporters – and then this: ‘What do you say, Captain Lord, about this statement from your carpenter that it was your ship the
Titanic
saw?’

Stone leaned closer to the door. A statement from the ship’s
carpenter
? Mr McGregor? The good and loyal carpenter, who kept himself to himself and always took off his cap when Stone spoke to him? The captain, too, must have been surprised, because he asked the pressmen twice for confirmation that the carpenter was their source. The men confirmed that he was. Stone closed his eyes. He tried not to breathe.

The captain’s voice was at a higher pitch than usual and his words were stretched tight. His denials were driven by barely suppressed rage. Sailors would say anything when they were ashore; the whole thing was an outrage; the captain had known nothing whatsoever of the
Titanic
’s plight until the next morning. All of which was true enough, Stone thought, but what about the rockets? ‘You can tell lies by telling the truth,’ Stone’s mother had once told him.

He could, he thought, stride into the room – right now – and tell the real truth: that he had seen the rockets and he had told the captain. He could say he was sorry, that he’d had no idea it was the
Titanic
and that she was sinking, and that he should have done more. He could do it now; he could end this whole sorry business once and for all.

A reporter said, ‘If your wireless had been working, you may have heard the distress call?’

‘Indeed,’ Stone heard the captain say, as if it were nothing of consequence.

‘And you would have gone?’

‘Of course.’

‘And everyone might have been saved?’

‘Very possibly. I only wish that I had known the
Titanic
was in danger. I would have been glad of the opportunity to go to her assistance just as fast as I possibly could.’

Stone drew in a breath. What sort of man could give such an answer? ‘I only wish that I had known…’ Stone felt like crying out, But you did know! I told you!

Behind him in the alleyway a man cleared his throat. Stone turned sharply and saw it was another reporter – thin, handsome, with tired eyes and a mop of shiny black hair. Stone recognised him as one of the men in the chartroom on the morning the
Californian
arrived in Boston.

The man smiled and shook his hand. ‘Forgive me sneaking up on you,’ he whispered.

Stone, embarrassed, moved away from the chartroom door, mumbling something about being on his way to his cabin.

‘Your cabin is … here?’ the man asked, walking a few steps along the alleyway. Stone noticed a softness in his voice, a kindness in his eyes. His tone was respectful, his manner sympathetic.

‘I’m not allowed to speak to the press. You should talk to the captain.’

‘I will, I will. But I thought it might help
you
to talk to someone.’

‘No, thank you,’ Stone said, moving towards his cabin door.

‘If you tell me what happened,’ said the man, ‘I will write your story exactly as you say it. People will know the truth.’

‘Thank you, but no,’ said Stone, stepping into his cabin and pulling closed the door.

But the reporter quickly put his foot out to stop it. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘If you change your mind, come and see me. Today, tomorrow – whenever you like. I will listen.’ He took from his pocket a small card, wrote some words on it, and pushed it into Stone’s hand. ‘Any time,’ he repeated, then turned and walked towards the chartroom.

Later that night, as Stone sat at his desk writing to his wife, he thought much about the man in the alleyway. There was something delicate about him – a sadness, a sensitivity. Perhaps he’d done something wrong in his own life. It had been the briefest of meetings, but Stone, for the first time since the disaster, sensed an offer of understanding, of sympathy. ‘I will listen,’ the man had said. ‘It might help…’