Women and Children First (13 page)

Reg walked over to the port side of the boat deck and scanned the horizon, but there was no sign of the other ship he had spotted earlier. The implications of this struck him immediately. If there wasn’t another ship to empty the lifeboats into, then most people would have to remain on the
Titanic
until help arrived. But how much longer would that be? They were obviously taking on water. You could feel a distinct list to port now, and the lifeboats on this side hung away from the ship’s edge, so there was a gap passengers had to leap across.

Second Officer Lightoller, now properly attired in his uniform, was in charge of loading the boats on the port side and Reg soon realised he was being much stricter than Officer Lowe in his application of the ‘women and children’ rule. Only a handful of seamen got into his boats – just sufficient to row them – and the rest of the occupants were women. As Reg watched, Lightoller extended his arm forcefully to stop a young man embarking.

‘We are all gentlemen here, sir,’ he said.

The man’s reply was drowned out by the noise of rockets being fired above. Reg had never seen this done in all his years at sea and it was a sobering indication of the gravity of the situation. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look up at the giant white starbursts. Then Reg decided the rockets were good news. Surely that ship he’d seen would turn round now? The captain must think it was close enough.

‘Excuse me.’ Someone tapped Reg’s arm. ‘My wife is pregnant and I don’t want to send her off in a lifeboat on her own. Do you think we will be safe if we stay behind on the ship?’

The couple were pale and terrified. She had an obvious pregnancy bump, which she rested her hands upon, and they gazed at Reg as if he were the fount of all knowledge, the one person who could save them.

‘Go over to the other side,’ Reg advised, pointing. ‘Speak to the officer in charge there. He might make an exception and let you get in a lifeboat together.’

They hurried off, and Reg walked to the railing to peer out at the boats that had been launched on the port side. He hoped Mrs Grayling was in one of them, but they were so far below it was impossible to discern individual faces. However, he could see that several boats were only half-full. Why hadn’t they filled them up at least?

‘Reg!’ He turned at the sound of his own name and was overjoyed to see John running towards him. ‘Where the hell have you been, man?’

They threw their arms round each other and hugged for a moment, overwhelmed with relief to be together. They’d never hugged before and felt self-conscious as they broke away.

‘I’ve been wandering around. It’s hard to know what to do for the best.’

‘She’s going to sink, you know,’ John said gravely, and Reg felt a plummeting sensation at the shock of his words.

‘How do you know?’

‘An engineer from the boiler room told us. Soaked to the skin, he was. He says straight after the collision the water was gushing in and they had to run for their lives. They closed all the watertight bulkheads but the hole is too big and the water’s flooding over the top.’

‘Christ! How long have we got?’

‘A couple of hours, he told me, but that was maybe an hour ago. There’s help on the way. The boys in the radio room are beavering away, but it’s not certain anyone’ll get here on time.’

‘I thought I saw a ship on the horizon earlier but it’s gone now.’

‘It’s such a black night, it’s hard to see anything. But listen, Reg, you and me are going to stick together, aren’t we? We’re never gonna get into a lifeboat so we need a plan.’

Reg tried to still the panic in his chest, in his head, so he could think clearly. ‘These lifeboats are pulling away half-full. If we could only get to one of them when the ship goes down, they’d have to take us on board. We’ve got an advantage here, John. We’re both strong swimmers. That’s what we have to do if it comes to it.’

‘It’s going to be bloody freezing in there.’ John jerked his head towards the ocean. ‘We won’t last long.’

‘We’ll wait till the last moment when she’s really low in the water. If we tried to jump from up here, we’d break our necks anyway. Wait till we’re about twenty feet off the water then jump with your arms up high. Remember they told us that in training?’

‘We’ll do it together, won’t we? The jump, I mean?’

‘I’ll be right beside you and as soon as we hit the water, we look for each other then choose a lifeboat and swim for it. We’ll make it. You know we will.’ Reg squeezed John’s shoulders.

‘Aye, remember that time we got caught in a current off Malta and were getting swept out to sea? I thought I was a goner, but you said “just keep swimming” and we did and we made it. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll just keep swimming.’

They looked at each other and Reg saw that the defiant words were at odds with the terror in John’s eyes. His own were probably the same, but being with John gave him courage. They would make it if they stuck together.

‘Hey you! Stewards!’ Reg turned to see Lightoller beckoning them over. They hurried across. ‘One of you go down to the galley. Joughin’s baking some bread. Bring up any batches that are ready and distribute them among the lifeboats. And the other, find the captain and give him this message.’ He handed a folded piece of paper to John. ‘Be quick about it.’

The last thing Reg wanted was to go below again. Instinctively he wanted to stay in the open air and Joughin would be on D Deck, four floors down from the boat deck, but John was clutching the message so it looked as though it had to be him.

‘I’ll meet you by the captain’s bridge soon as I’m done,’ he told John. ‘Good luck.’

‘You too.’ John gave a quick smile then each went off on their respective errands.

Reg ran all the way down the Grand Staircase to D Deck. The first-class corridors were eerily empty now, and he could hear odd creaking and groaning noises as the ship leaned in an unnatural direction and her timbers and metal plates complained. He sprinted through the first-class dining room, where the chandeliers were hanging askew and the tables were set for a breakfast that would never be served. The pantry was empty but in the galley Joughin was sitting by the bread oven, looking bleary-eyed.

‘Hello, young Reg. Did your belly bring you down here? It always seems to let you know when I’ve got fresh bread on the go.’

His words were slurred and Reg caught the smell of whisky on his breath.

‘I’ve to take some bread up to the boats.’

Joughin waved an arm at a batch of loaves that was cooling on racks. ‘Take all you can manage. It would be a shame for it to go to waste. Make sure you get some yourself. There’s butter on the side.’

‘Are you coming up to the boats soon?’ Reg asked, curious about his sense of calm.

‘By and by,’ Joughin grinned. ‘By and by.’

Reg grabbed some white towels to protect his hands and lifted a rack of a dozen hot loaves. It was unwieldy but he’d manage. ‘I’ll see you up there then,’ he said. ‘Good luck, sir.’

He hurried back along the route he’d come, just as fast as he could while balancing the rack of bread. The clock on the Grand Staircase read just before one-thirty a.m. ‘I should be tired,’ he thought, but in fact he had never felt more wide awake. Every muscle, every nerve was alert, and his brain was working overtime.

He carried the tray to Lightoller, who nodded and motioned for a seaman to take it. Reg didn’t see what happened to it after that. He’d meant to break off a piece for himself and John but his stomach was in knots and he wasn’t remotely hungry.

There was only one lifeboat left on the port side now and Reg heard an argument among an Irish crowd nearby.

‘Annie, will you see sense? Finbarr could be off on another boat already. Take this one and save yourself and the childrun.’

‘I can’t leave him. He’s my first-born, my angel.’ Her voice was high, sharp, desperate. She whirled round and saw Reg watching. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re the one who brought the boys back that day. Do you remember?’

‘Yes, of course I do, ma’am.’

‘My Finbarr is lost. This lady’s brother has gone to look for him but they’re not back yet and everyone says I should get on a boat. But how can I leave my precious boy? It would be wrong, plain wrong. You tell me. What must I do? I don’t know what to do.’ A baby cried continuously in her arms, and two scared children clung to her skirt.

Reg swallowed hard. ‘Your friends are right, ma’am. You should get on the boat to save these three little ones. Finbarr was a smart boy. I expect he’ll find his own way to a boat. Where did you see him last?’

‘In the corridor they call Scotland Road. Finbarr was showing me the dorm where you sleep, then we got crushed on the way up the stairs at the end and when I got to the top he wasn’t with us any more.’

Reg took a deep breath. All he wanted was to go and find John and look out for himself, but he couldn’t walk away from this woman’s distress. ‘I tell you what … If you get on this boat now, I’ll go down and find Finbarr. I’ll look after him for you and we’ll catch up with you later. How about that?’

‘It’s not right for me to leave the ship without him. My bones tell me it’s not right.’

‘Ma’am, it’s your duty.’ Reg took her arm and steered her towards Lightoller. ‘You have to protect your little ones. I’ll find your boy for you. I promise I will.’

She looked up at him with such trust and faith that he felt dreadful. He couldn’t promise any such thing with all the chaos and confusion. He just knew he had to make her save her other children, and so he lied.

‘A woman and three little ones, sir,’ he called to Lightoller, who immediately picked up the girl and passed her to a seaman on the lifeboat. ‘Come along, ma’am. We’re about to lower away.’

Annie turned to Reg. ‘I beg you with all my soul: please find my boy and bring him to me safe.’

‘I will,’ he said. ‘Trust me, I will.’

He watched as Patrick, then the baby and finally Annie were helped on board, then he turned to begin his search.

A surge of third-class passengers arrived on the boat deck, excited to be in the open air after a tortuous journey through the innards of the ship. They were gabbling in a mixture of European languages – Swedish, Greek, Portuguese, Czech – and gazing around, trying to work out where the lifeboats were located. Davits swung empty along both port and starboard sides. As this dawned on them, they looked puzzled and accosted any uniform-wearing crew they could see, straining to make themselves understood.

‘Where we go now?’ someone asked Reg, and he pointed to the roof of the captain’s bridge where some seamen were struggling to detach one of the ship’s four collapsible boats. ‘Try there,’ he suggested.

He ran over to the bridge himself and climbed a few steps, just high enough to give him a view over the heads of the crowd. Could a young Irish boy be somewhere within that mass of humanity? They kept moving, making it impossible to search efficiently.

‘Finbarr!’ he yelled, but his voice was lost in the din of anxious voices, distant crashing noises, and the strains of the orchestra who were still, unbelievably, playing their hearts out just by the entrance to the Grand Staircase. The whole deck was slanted towards the bow, and Reg could clearly see she was sinking nose first. Oh God, where were those rescue ships? There was no time to lose.

He swallowed his panic and scanned the boat deck methodically, section by section, looking for Finbarr and looking for John as well, but there was no sign of either. What would a ten-year-old boy do if he lost his mother in a crowd on Scotland Road? What would he himself have done at that age? Reg jumped down the steps and pushed his way through to the railing that overlooked the third-class open area. There were groups of passengers huddled down there but none of them was Finbarr. With sinking heart, Reg realised there was nothing for it but to go back down to E Deck himself and have one last look along Scotland Road.

The staff staircase was listing so badly that he had to cling to the banister with one hand and balance on the edges of the steps. Once inside the ship, he could hear more clearly the crashes as furniture toppled over, huge soup tureens clattered across dining rooms and other, more catastrophic damage was done to the pistons and turbines within the engine casing. The ship was shuddering like a huge wounded beast in its final throes, trying desperately to resist its fate.

His mother will never know if I turn back now,
Reg thought.
I could just say I didn’t manage to find him.
The idea was incredibly tempting, but then he remembered the boy’s eager face, his fascination with the engineering of the ship, and knew he couldn’t abandon him. Finbarr was just like him at that age. He deserved a chance.

As E Deck came into sight, Reg saw it was submerged under a few inches of water. Little waves were lapping up the stairs, and he swore. ‘Finbarr!’ he yelled and listened hard, but there was no answer. ‘Finbarr!’

He decided he would wade halfway along as far as the stewards’ dorm, then turn back, and he bent to unlace his shoes and slip them off. He reached behind him and placed them several steps higher up.

The water was cold but not as cold as he’d expected. The edge of iciness must have been mitigated by the heat of the ship’s furnaces. There was a current pulling him down Scotland Road, though, and he hooked his fingers around door jambs so as not to be swept off his feet. ‘Finbarr!’ he shouted. ‘Fin-barr!’ He listened hard but couldn’t hear anything above the gushing of the water.

Reg inched down past the crew WCs, alternately shouting and listening. Miscellaneous items floated by: a book, a pair of trousers, a striped towel. He passed the cooks’ dorm and the bedroom stewards’ dorm and at last he reached his own. It was barely recognisable, the bunks squashed against the end wall and one of them upended. The water was getting deeper by the second and now swirled up to his knees.

‘Finbarr!’ he shouted one last time, and was about to give up when he heard a faint cry of ‘Help!’ coming from further down Scotland Road.

‘Is that you, Finbarr?’ he called.

‘Yes,’ came the reply.

Reg swore under his breath. He couldn’t turn back now. He waded further along the corridor, still calling, and the boy’s voice got closer then he came into sight. Just by the elevators, there were stairs down to the laundry area on F Deck. A metal gate was pulled shut across them and Finbarr was trapped behind that gate, submerged up to his waist in water. His face was bright scarlet with crying. The poor kid was scared out of his wits.

‘How on earth did you get in there?’ Reg exclaimed, trying to make his voice sound calm. ‘Your mum’s been going crazy looking for you.’

‘I lost me ma in the crush and someone said there was water coming in down below and I wanted to see it. But I got lost and I couldn’t find the way back up again.’ Finbarr was sobbing and stuttering, overcome with emotion.

Reg waded over and grabbed hold of the gate and wrenched, but it wouldn’t move. The floor catch on his side needed to be released so he groped under the water to find it. ‘We’ll soon get you up on deck,’ he soothed.

Surely he’d be able to find him a place on one of the collapsibles? They might be in short supply, but Finbarr was just a kid. That should get him to the front of the queue.
The catch sprang loose and he pulled at the gate, using all his strength to drag it across against the weight of the water until there was just enough of a gap to haul Finbarr through.

‘Where’s Ma? Is she mad at me?’

‘She’s not mad, just worried. She had to get on a lifeboat with your little brothers so I said I would look out for you. We’ll find her later.’ No point in alarming the boy yet when he was still shaking with the horror of his ordeal. ‘We’ve to get along this corridor and up the stairs to the boat deck. Quick as you can.’ Reg pushed him forwards.

‘Is the ship sinking?’ Finbarr asked.

There was no point in lying. ‘Yes, it is. But don’t worry, because help is on the way. It might even be there by the time we reach the deck.’ Reg felt cheered by his own words, but seconds later the ship gave a huge judder, causing a wave to sweep along Scotland Road, nearly knocking them off their feet. They hurried faster, clinging to door frames, until they got to the staff staircase.

‘Damn!’ Reg swore out loud. The water had reached the step he’d left his shoes on and they’d been swept away. They’d cost eight shillings and sixpence. He couldn’t afford to lose them.

‘Start heading up,’ he told Finbarr. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’

He followed the direction of the water and spotted one of his shoes in a mound of detritus just round the corner from the cold store. The other one was further along outside the engineers’ mess. Both were completely sodden, but they were better than no shoes at all.

Back at the stairs, he had to use the handrail to drag himself up because it was impossible to get purchase on the lopsided steps. Finbarr was waiting for him, shivering, his teeth chattering, and Reg hoped the exertion of the climb would warm him. Goodness knows how long he’d been in the water. Beneath their feet, the ship kept shifting, and behind them the ocean crept upwards step by step.

When they emerged onto the boat deck, they had to grab hold of the nearest railing because the deck was at a slant and anything unsecured was hurtling down towards the bow. Reg slipped his wet shoes on, tied the laces, and inched forwards till he could see the bridge. Some men were still on the roof struggling with a collapsible but they hadn’t managed to shift it. There were folk huddled on the stairs to the bridge and around the base of it, but no sign of John – at least not that he could make out.

Suddenly, Captain Smith appeared from the radio room on the port side and strode towards the bridge, for all the world as if everything was normal, the deck wasn’t tilted at a strange angle and they’d soon be serving breakfast in the dining saloons. He pushed through the crowds on the stairs and disappeared up into the bridge without stopping to talk to any of those who turned to him in expectation.

Reg wished he could get over to the bridge to join him. The captain must know how close the rescue ships were, and he would tell them what to do in the meantime. But there was nothing to hold onto in the area between where they were and the bridge and Reg worried that Finbarr might lose his balance. Could they make it if they ran for it? He reckoned he probably could but he wasn’t sure about the boy, who was wide-eyed and silent with shock.

While Reg hesitated, there was a deafening crash deep within the bowels of the ship. Something gave way and they were thrown back against the doorway to the stairs. Seconds later, a huge wave washed over the boat deck, sweeping several people over the side into the ocean. Their terrified screams hung in the air.

Finbarr grabbed Reg’s arm. ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ he sobbed.

Reg felt like sobbing himself, but having someone else to look after made him calm. ‘OK, Finbarr, this is how it is. I don’t think we’re going to make it to a boat on deck. We’ll have to jump into the water and then one will pick us up. You’re wearing your life preserver so that’s good. It means you’ll stay afloat. I need you to listen to me very carefully and do exactly what I say.’

Finbarr nodded, his face so trusting that Reg felt a lump in his throat.

‘First, we’re going to make our way over to that railing. That’s where we’ll jump from. It’s not far. We’ll just run and grab hold of it. Are you ready? Go!’

Finbarr dashed first and Reg followed directly behind him. When he reached the edge, he saw they were still around thirty feet above the water, which seemed too high to risk it. Some people were already floating on the surface but none looked as though they had survived the drop. The nearest lifeboats were about fifty or sixty feet away. He reckoned they could make that, so long as the boy stayed calm and didn’t thrash around in panic.

‘We mustn’t jump too soon or it will be too far to fall. I’m going to tie our life preservers together so we don’t get separated. When I say jump, you jump.’ As he spoke, he unfastened the ties at the side of his own life preserver and looped them through Finbarr’s, tightening all the knots carefully. ‘As you jump, put your arms right up in the air so you hit the water feet first in a straight line, like a pencil.’ Reg demonstrated. They’d been shown this in staff training. If you didn’t do that, the impact could force the life preserver upwards and break your neck. ‘Do you understand?’

Finbarr nodded, too overcome for speech.

‘Once we’re in the water, we’ll find the nearest lifeboat, and later, when the rescue ships come, we’ll get you back together with your mum.’
Oh God,
Reg prayed silently.
Please make it true.

His stomach was churning as he watched the movement of the ship carefully, making his calculations. If only John were there, they could have discussed it together and worked out the best time to jump. He didn’t want to wait too long because they had to swim clear of the ship to avoid the suction when she finally went under. He’d make his move just as soon as they got a bit closer to the surface.

There was a bonus to having the boy with him. If places in lifeboats were at a premium, surely he would get priority with a child to look after? He’d be hailed as a hero for rescuing Finbarr. That was a heart-warming thought. Shame he wasn’t a first-class passenger or there might even have been a reward.

Something odd was happening below decks. With a deafening crack, the bow of the ship disappeared completely and the stern upended. Simultaneously the ground disappeared from beneath their feet so they were left hanging by the arms from the railings. The deck was almost vertical and the water was close by. Reg heard screams as people all around them fell away into the bubbling whirlpool below.

‘Pull up and swing your feet over the edge,’ Reg yelled at Finbarr, and with his free hand he pushed the boy’s legs to demonstrate what he meant. He did the same himself, and now they were poised, maybe twenty feet above the ocean. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a collapsible being washed overboard.

‘See that boat?’ he shouted to Finbarr. ‘When I count to three, we’re going to jump in that direction. Are you ready?’

He looked at the boy, and Finbarr nodded. Reg grinned, to give him courage, and Finbarr smiled back.

‘One, two, three … jump!’

Together they made their leap out into the blackness.