A Stone's Throw (7 page)

Meg’s lifeboat station, Number Six, was further down the promenade deck towards the stern and she stumbled on in that direction, clinging to the stanchions and rails as best she could to stop herself running headlong with the slope. She pictured the lifeboat – its solid planking, the tin cans of food, the bandages and blankets. It was just ahead of her, ready and waiting. The steam grew denser and the noise was thick in her ears, pushing out her thoughts; her feet slipped on the slick deck and she reached out into the air for something to hold.

‘Watch out!’

As if from a long way off, the voice broke in. She grabbed at a length of flailing rope and froze. Invisible till now, with all the smoke and steam, just a few feet from her was a huge crater, a rupture reaching right across the deck. Thirty feet wide and as many down, it looked as if some savage giant had reached into the bowels and ripped the ship open. Metal was torn and crumpled like tissue paper, charred and broken. Electrical jags ran along the edges and somewhere deep down a fire was raging, sending up a pink glow and the smell that Meg recognised now as melting metal. She stared at the metal carnage and her stomach turned. This was in the soldiers’ quarters.
She saw Jim bending towards her and taking her hands; she saw him in her cabin, his tunic tumbled, his eyes bright.

‘Please God,’ she murmured.

Her lifeboat, her safe journey, was blown apart, its solid white boards, its food and drink burnt up somewhere in that ghastly hole. She heard voices – screams and cries – from within the crater. They were distant and unearthly and she put her hands over her ears.

‘Miss!’ The sailor was shouting at her. ‘Miss!’

‘My lifeboat,’ she said.

‘Go back. Get in another one.’

‘There are soldiers down there.’

‘They’re getting everyone out. You must get in a lifeboat.’

And he took her by the shoulders and pushed her away. ‘Go!’

She looked out for Miss Lindsell, and for Mrs Richardson, but she didn’t see them. The lifeboats were nearly all full. Passengers sat looking just as if they were on a bus trip to the seaside, rather than a lifeboat in the middle of the Atlantic, while the sailors worked the falls, lowering the boats to the sea. It was precarious. The ship was sinking now at such a pitch that they struggled to keep the lifeboats on an even keel. Once the boats were in the water, the sailors shimmied down rope ladders and unclipped the falls. Then they moved slowly away from the ship, drifting into the darkness.

It was as if Meg forgot herself, watching. Her urgency left her and she felt detached and calm. She should go and claim her place, take her seat like the others and clasp her baggage, like ballast, on her lap. But she had no baggage; there
was nothing to anchor her. She didn’t feel any despair; just the utter absence of any hope. And perhaps, if a sailor hadn’t noticed her, she might have stayed on the ship and journeyed down with all the young soldiers she’d heard crying out.

‘You hurt?’ The sailor was yelling to make himself heard.

She shook her head.

‘Number Three,’ he said. ‘Over there.’

So she took her seat in the bow and sat tight. There were soldiers on the deck, filling up the spare places. She could only see the faces nearest to her, but none of them was Jim. Just ahead Miss Lindsell was counseling courage to someone; it was reassuring to hear a voice she knew, and a female one. Meg watched a sailor lift her up and into the lifeboat, quite as if she were a child in the playground, and Miss Lindsell turn back to him and thank him gravely.

Several of the soldiers seemed to be injured and one sitting close to her smelled of engine oil. He was soaked to the skin and shaking. The boat was full. Sailors were busy with the falls, then Meg felt it move. It went down in short, jerky movements and with each one the wounded soldier made a quick groaning sound, as if somebody was squeezing the air from him. Meg gripped the seat. She didn’t want to watch, but when she closed her eyes it was like being in a dream where up and down, and inside and outside, were all confused. So she opened them again and stared at her lap.

The lifeboat hung from the dying ship; above them, the sailors shouted into the wind: ‘Hold in aft! Hold it in!’

‘Easy, steady her off.’

The water was close – she could smell it. They’d be floating on the ocean in a minute.

‘Steady, damn you!’

The sailor’s voice was desperate and Meg looked up. His face, lit by the strange emergency blue, was a mask of terror. Then she screamed as the bow end of the lifeboat dropped down towards the sea. Flung forward, she smashed hard against the bench in front. She was stunned, the breath blown from her, and when she came to, she found her hand trapped painfully between the bench and her life jacket. She tried to shift, to ease the pressure, but the wounded soldier was thrown against her and she was pinioned. The smell of the oil turned her stomach, but she couldn’t move. She saw people in the sea and they were those same people who had sat so neatly on their benches moments before. No wounded soldier to pinion them, they’d been flipped from the boat like so many matches. She heard their cries, their shouts for help. One of the voices was Miss Lindsell’s.

The sailors pulled at the ropes and somehow the lifeboat was levelled off again and lowered finally to the water. The sailors dropped down the rope ladders, unhitched the falls and the lifeboat floated free. Meg felt the wounded soldier shift; then his weight was off her and he half-crouched, half-lay against the side of the boat. He was murmuring, but not to her and when she spoke to him, he didn’t hear her. Pulling herself up, she gripped the edge of the lifeboat and called out: ‘Miss Lindsell!’

The sea had looked so calm that evening. But the waves rose like small gullies now and the lifeboat crashed over and down,
over and down. Some of the people in the water had managed to swim back and they were being hauled in: five, six, seven of them. But none was Miss Lindsell.

‘Miss Lindsell!’ Meg shouted again, but Miss Lindsell and her handbag and her courtesy had gone.

Somebody took charge.

‘Hands to the rowing gear,’ he shouted. ‘We need to get clear or she’ll take us all down with her.’

Soldiers scrambled to the pump handles and Meg sat down again. Slowly the boat moved away.

She doesn’t have her coat on but her ma doesn’t see. It’s dark outside except that the snow makes things show up suddenly. Trees and walls and other things. Meg runs to catch up. She does it in little steps like Will has showed her because it’s slippy on the snow, but she falls down once and gets her hands wet
.

‘
Wait. I’m coming too
.’

Left and right, left and right they look. They go up the lane and over the road towards the school. They go all the way to the bridge. They go up to the church gate and round the churchyard walls
.

‘
Dark as sin,’ her ma says
.

‘
Will!’ Meg calls. ‘Will!’ and the snow swallows up the sounds. Meg calls out ‘Pa!’ too. Her ma doesn’t call
.

Nobody answers; there’s only an animal with yellow eyes that runs away in the ditch. Meg’s feet hurt in her boots and her toes are sticking together
.

‘
Can we go home?’ she says. ‘I’m cold,’ and she takes her ma’s hand. ‘See?’ But she can’t make her ma’s fingers bend around hers
.

‘
You’re not holding,’ she says and her ma looks down at her all of a sudden, and then they go back
.

Meg looked at the ship and, as if on cue, it lit up like Christmas, every light on deck blazing down on the water. It had tipped so far now, it looked like a shining iceberg, throwing a pool of light across the sea. It was terrible and beautiful. And there were all the other lifeboats, each crammed with heads. Surely Jim is in one of them, she thought, and though she had no faith in the prayer, she prayed to God to keep him safe.

Only a single boat remained close to the ship. Meg could almost see the faces at the nearer end. There were people on the oars and yet it wasn’t moving. She saw one man push another off an oar and take over; she saw another stop and throw up his arms and cover his head. The ship would sink very soon now and if nothing happened, then all those people would be sucked down with it.

She watched the figures abandon the oars and several people jump over the side and begin swimming. Two figures started fighting. Then she heard a voice she knew, small inside the wind, but still she could hear that it was angry, and she saw that the Richardsons were in the middle of that boat.

Mrs Richardson was standing still, no lifejacket, her arms by her sides, and Mr Richardson was yelling. He grabbed at her and tried to pull her to the edge, but she fought him and screamed.

‘Jump, Margery,’ Meg whispered. ‘You can swim.’

But Mrs Richardson went on standing and screaming, and Mr Richardson went on shouting.

‘Pull her into the sea,’ Meg yelled. ‘Just pull her.’

The ship had seemed to pause in its sinking, as if it were gathering itself up for the final push, and now a sound came from it that was like a vast sigh.

It was a terrible sight. They jumped and scrambled and tumbled into the sea, and some came up and swam and some never did; and some got away and most didn’t.

Finally Mr Richardson let go of his wife and kissed her on the forehead. He climbed up on a bench, coattails flapping, and dived. Mrs Richardson still stood, looking towards the ship, one hand on a useless oar for balance.

Mrs Richardson’s lifeboat was nearly touching it when at last the ship lifted its bright bow to the dark sky, and as if it were the easiest thing in the world, the ship, and the boat, and the single woman standing, slid beneath the sea.

The ship lights shone beneath the water for a while, then everything went black. And monstrous waves rolled out from where the ship had been, tossing the lifeboat so hard, Meg feared it would capsize. Voices still cried out for help. She couldn’t tell where they were. Some got to Meg’s lifeboat and were pulled in, but it wasn’t long before the cries stopped. Debris bumped the boat for a while – deckchairs and timber. Once Meg saw a body bang against the side. Then the sea was empty again. She listened, but there was nothing to see, and nothing to hear except the waves and the wind.

The boat drifted, and Meg drifted too, her back to the black ocean, half-sleeping, half-waking. Once she thought she heard
Jack’s voice. She was cold, her face, her feet, her hands: all numb; she didn’t think, and she didn’t dream. In one pocket her fingers made a cold fist around her mother’s photograph. Beside her, the wounded soldier groaned in his delirium. Once or twice someone fed him brandy; once someone passed her a beaker with water and she drank it down and asked for more, but no more came.

The dawn woke her properly, first a grey ribbon on the edge of the horizon, then the lifeboat floating in gold. They were alone on the sea, no other boats, nothing that showed any sign of the ship. She was stiff and cramped and she longed to stretch out her legs, and swing her arms. But the wounded soldier leaned against her and he had gone quiet, his eyes closed, his face bone-white and peaceful. Carefully she bent and put her face close to his and listened. He was still breathing, though his breath smelled rank. She couldn’t move without disturbing him, so she stayed as she was, only turning her head to look around.

She could see the lifeboat properly for the first time, now it was light. A sailor sat up as look-out, but most people seemed to be still sleeping, or dozing, or too exhausted to move, perhaps. She wondered who had passed her the beaker during the night because she had a raging thirst now, and she was hungry. It was difficult to see exactly how many people there were, because they were jammed in every which way, and some lay on the bottom of the boat. But she had a go at counting the heads and got to over forty. As far as she could see it was mostly soldiers, and a few sailors. There were no other civilians; there were no other women. As she watched, a figure in
an overcoat, up in the bows, sat up off the floor, wrapped his arms around his body and looked across the sea.

‘Mr Richardson!’ Meg exclaimed.

He turned slowly towards her.

Meg stared. It was Mr Richardson, but in a single night he had become an old man. His eyes were rheumy and red-rimmed and his face had sunk into itself, so that his cheekbones and chin jutted out and his skin seemed strangely loose. His hair was matted to his head. But most shocking of all was the look he gave her.

‘Mr Richardson?’ she said again.

But he only turned back to the sea.

The rest of the boat was stirring now, men groaning and muttering, stretching and moving where they could.

In the stern of the boat three men had taken charge. Meg recognised two of them – a young naval officer by the name of Appleby and a steward. The third was a soldier. He didn’t look much older than Jim, but he was issuing instructions to the nearest soldiers and they were saluting him. Tins, boxes, blankets, barrels of water, a first-aid box were being passed from man to man and stacked up under a piece of tarpaulin, the steward making notes with a stubby pad and pencil. Meg heard snatches of conversation: about water, and food, and when they’d be rescued. The wounded man was heavy against her and she was so tired, and so cold. She closed her eyes against it all and imagined herself alone again.

‘Miss?’

She started. Someone’s hand was on her arm.

‘Excuse me?’ the voice said. He spoke quietly, just to her.

It was Appleby, crouched down beside her. She opened her eyes. His face was very close; she could see the day’s growth on his chin. High above him, a couple of seagulls turned.

‘I think he’s badly wounded,’ she said.

‘You must come with me,’ he said.

‘He was moaning in the night, but he’s been quiet for a while now.’

‘I’m sorry, Miss,’ Appleby said. ‘But he didn’t make it.’

She put a hand to the dead man’s cold cheek.

‘I didn’t even know his name,’ she said finally. There was an ache behind her eyes. She didn’t want to cry here. She didn’t want to be seen to cry.