Dorothy Eden (4 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Because she’s carrying guns beneath her forward decks. They’ve only to be rolled into position ready for firing. Don’t ask me how I know. But I do know.”

“Then, if it’s secret, you shouldn’t have told me,” Hetty burst out in alarm.

“Suppose I shouldn’t have. I haven’t told anyone else. But it’s better to be forewarned. It might just give you that much more chance if we’re torpedoed.”

Hetty caught her breath. She wasn’t so brave after all.

“Do you think we will be?”

“Well, it’s always on the cards that the Huns may miss.” He threw back his head, laughing. He was attractive and reckless. He would make a good airman—if he lived.

If any of them lived.

“What’s your name?”

“Hetty Brown.”

“Now I’ve spoiled your evening, Hetty. Anyway, what’s a nice girl like you doing travelling alone? You are alone, aren’t you? I’ve watched you.”

“I’m not exactly alone. I’m a lady’s maid. My mistresses are in first class. I keep going up and down stairs. I have to go up later tonight to get them out of their finery.”

“No! I can’t believe it! You mean two grown women can’t undress themselves!” He was virtually repeating Mrs Drummond’s words.

Hetty found his astonishment amusing.

“I can see you don’t know much about the ways of the rich.”

“And nor do I want to if that’s the way they go on. You’re too good for that, Hetty. Let the bitches wait on themselves.”

“Actually, I intend to.” Now she was getting reckless, too. It wasn’t only Clemency feeling the alchemy of a sea voyage. “As soon as Clemency is married. She’s to have a grand society wedding, you should see her trousseau. But after that I thought of joining the Red Cross, or doing something useful while the war’s on. Will it go on for long, do you think?”

“Much longer than they say. I was a history student. I know the megalomaniac dreams of the Germans. They want to be world conquerors.”

“I liked history, too,” Hetty was pleased to have something else in common. “Although I never had a proper teacher. But I read a lot. I read everything.”

“I think that’s cute, a blue-stocking lady’s maid.” He was holding her more closely. “Say, Hetty, couldn’t we meet in London?”

“If you like. When you’re not up above the clouds.”

“Actually that’s where I am right now.” His cheek lay lightly against hers. She was amazed at the softness of his skin. She hadn’t ever before felt a man’s skin. Or looked into a man’s eyes at such close range. She felt a moment of intense promise, like great happiness. And she didn’t even know the young man’s name.

“Give me an address where I can find you, Hetty.”

“We’re staying at the Ritz hotel until the twentieth, when Clemency gets married. You’d have to write to me care of Mrs Howard B. Jervis. What’s your name?”

“Donald Newman, and I can’t give you an address until I get posted.” He tickled her ear. “But we’ll be seeing each other, Hetty. Gosh, I feel like a bird tonight. And that’s nothing to do with flying in airplanes.”

The fiddler was playing an Irish folksong, “The Kerry Dancers”. Someone began singing, mournfully,
“Loving voices of old companions” …
The steady hum of the ship’s engines accompanied the reedy voice. Few eyes were dry, Hetty noticed. She wanted to cry herself. But for joy, for excitement, for hope. It had turned into a wonderful voyage.

I
T WAS DISAPPOINTING, IN
the morning, to find that fog shrouded both the sea and the distant tip of Ireland’s coastline, which should have been visible. The fog horn was blaring. Passengers came on deck wrapped in overcoats, and found the scene extremely depressing. Most of them were a little jaded from the parties of the previous evening. They had hoped for a bright spring morning and the green hump of Ireland in the far distance to raise their spirits.

Speed had had to be slackened. A rumour that the Captain had had a wireless message to say that submarines had been sighted off Fastnet Rock was being whispered. However, the fog that hampered the
Lusitania
’s speed would also hamper visibility for lurking submarines. There was no sign of anxiety among the ship’s officers, although in the early morning lifeboat drill had been carried out. The ropes had rasped as the lifeboats were swung out, twenty-two on the starboard side, eleven on the port side.

Clemency had put her hand in Bobby Merrit’s as they strolled on the deck. She told Hetty when she returned that she and Bobby were probably the only passengers who had had any practice in climbing in and out of lifeboats. She was laughing but her eyes were strained. Not only enemy submarines, but the Liverpool docks, were imminent. There would have to be farewells. And greetings …

After breakfast Mrs Jervis kept Hetty busy packing the trunks. Such a profusion of garments had been taken out for use on board. They must all now be carefully folded in tissue paper and repacked. There would be no dressing for dinner that night, the last on board. She and Clemency would wear the coats and skirts in which they would go on shore the following morning, Mrs Jervis’s bottle-green worsted, Clemency’s grey flannel with a ruffled white cravat.

Clemency’s lower lip was developing a tendency to tremble. Hetty was genuinely sorry for her, for she was having similar trouble.

She hoped that evening to see Donald Newman again and make sure that he meant what he had said about their meeting in London. She couldn’t see him at luncheon because Mrs Jervis had ordered a meal to be sent to her stateroom. Hetty would share it, since there was too much to be done to allow her to leave, even for an hour. Garments to be ironed, buttons to be sewn on (even those that showed no signs of coming adrift), the sacred wedding dress to be checked.

Hetty suspected that Mrs Jervis was deliberately inventing tasks because she didn’t want to be left alone. She felt much safer when the two girls were with her. Hetty felt a further twinge of pity. It was strange to see that demanding woman with uncertainty in her eyes. Surely it was the fog that was making people nervous.

The fog also must be the cause of the absence of an escort vessel. No one suggested that it might not have been sent. Some people thought, more alarmingly, that it might have been sunk.

By mid-morning the fog had dispersed and an hour later there were sporadic cheers on the decks as land was at last sighted. They were heading up the coast towards Queenstown. The Irish coast was becoming clearer, trees, grey rooftops, a church spire. But there was still no sign of any other ship to shepherd this monster of the ocean safely home. The
Lusitania
seemed to be entirely alone on the now calm and dazzlingly blue sea.

But she was within sight of land. Surely there was little to fear, although, once that familiar landmark of mariners, the Old Head of Kinsale, was sighted, the passengers were alarmed that the ship had altered course and seemed to be heading again for the open sea.

The steward who had come for the luncheon trays assured Mrs Jervis and the girls that there was nothing to worry about. The Captain knew what he was doing. He must stay in deep water. He wouldn’t want to run aground on the Saltes Islands, would he?

Hetty looked at the time and wondered if Mrs Drummond had managed to get the little boys down for their afternoon nap. Clemency suddenly jumped up and said she wasn’t going to stay indoors another minute. It was ten minutes past two. She would take a turn on the deck and come back and report what was happening.

She never reached the door. A sudden devastating explosion reverberated through the ship. Immediately the floor seemed to slide away beneath the three women’s feet.

Mrs Jervis screamed and clutched at a table which tipped over, then at the wardrobe which was nodding sideways in the strangest manner. Nothing was stable. The trunks were sliding about the floor, and Clemency was shrieking, “We’ve been torpedoed! Oh, Mother! What shall we do?”

Hetty, balancing against an upturned trunk, tried to keep calm, for in a minute Mrs Jervis was going to faint, and Clemency have a full-scale attack of hysterics.

She managed to edge her way to the hook where the lifebelts hung and, getting them down, threw one to Mrs Jervis and the other to Clemency. There were only two. Her own was in the cabin in steerage.

“We have to get on deck,” she gasped. “Put on your lifebelts. Come on, Mrs Jervis.”

“No, wait a minute!” Mrs Jervis had regained a measure of her self-control. “Get the jewellery.”

“Mrs Jervis, we haven’t got time.”

“The case is right there. Clemency, open it.”

The ship seemed to be tilting more sharply, and Hetty was sure she had heard the distant thud of another explosion. A stewardess, her cap crooked, put her head inside the door crying, “Get out to the boat decks, ladies. Hurry!” and vanished.

“Mrs Jervis, we can’t carry a jewel case,” Hetty cried despairingly. Damn this vain woman. Were they all to drown for the sake of baubles?

“We’ll wear everything,” Mrs Jervis answered, grabbing at the contents of the velvet-lined case. She had her diamond choker round her neck in a flash, and was fumbling with earrings. Clemency, catching her greed, had flung on her pearls and all the rings she could cram on her fingers. She thrust a heavy gold bracelet and a couple of rings at Hetty.

“Here, wear these.”

Hetty dropped the rings and they went skittering away across the sloping floor. But, simply to placate the two crazy women, she put the bracelet on to her wrist.

“Oh, do come!” she begged them. “I’ll take you to the boat deck and then I must go down and help Mrs Drummond with the children.”

“I don’t know who Mrs Drummond is,” Mrs Jervis declared hoarsely, “but I forbid you to leave us, Hetty.”

“I have to get my lifebelt. I haven’t got a lifebelt,” Hetty was nearly sobbing. “And little Alfie and Benny—oh, come on!”

The sounds of pandemonium outside were growing, shuffling steps, a woman crying, someone shouting orders. Clinging to the handrail on the almost vertical deck, Hetty urged the two women ahead of her. She didn’t think what a strange sight they must make with their lifebelts and their glittering jewels. Other people were carrying all kinds of belongings; several clutched small infants. Exactly like a shipwreck, Hetty thought dazedly, and said aloud, “It is a shipwreck, God help us.”

Where was Mrs Drummond and her babies? And where was her daring young aviator?

There was a desperate crush on the boat deck where a great many people were attempting to clamber into the lifeboats. One boat had been launched safely. It looked very small and frail down in the shining sea. The next one, lowered too clumsily because the list had become more acute, swung in against the ship’s side, and spilled all of its occupants, like a scattered harvest of fruit, into the water far below.

The horror of this made Hetty close her eyes. When she opened them she saw forms struggling in the water, some of them clambering on to the upturned boat. People were sobbing. A woman was holding her baby so tightly that it looked as if it had been suffocated. There were a lot of babies in steerage and in third class as well. She
must
get down to Mrs Drummond. The ship was going to sink, there was no doubt about that, for the doom-like cry, “Abandon ship”, was echoing all about. But surely it couldn’t happen too quickly. Hadn’t the
Titanic
stayed afloat for some hours?

“Hetty! Hetty!”

She saw that Mrs Jervis and Clemency were being pushed into a lifeboat, and someone was pushing her, too. A brawny seaman with a face bright red from terror.

“Come along, miss. Don’t waste time. She’s going. We’ll all be jumping for it.”

“But I have to go down to steerage—”

“No hope there, miss. The sea’s flooded it.”

It was no use to protest. The very list of the ship toppled her towards the boat. She saw Mrs Jervis and Clemency ahead of her, mid-way down the boat, clinging to one another, the sunlight catching fire on Mrs Jervis’s diamond choker. Then she was tumbled in like a sack of potatoes, a plump woman falling heavily on top of her.

Someone was shouting, “That’s enough. Lower away. Careful now, lads. No more spills.”

The fat woman was almost suffocating Hetty. She was aware of a floating sensation, a sudden rush downwards, and then a crash, and a dizzy tilt as the doomed lifeboat upended and hit the water, precisely as its predecessor had done.

In seconds the sea, dark and cold and stifling, closed over everyone, and Hetty knew that she was drowning.

It was just twelve minutes since the torpedo had struck. No one had really known, or would ever clearly remember, what had happened.

Drowning people did come to the surface once, often twice, Hetty remembered hazily some time later. For without knowing how she had managed to do it, she found herself clinging to a floating lifebelt, her arms stiff with strain, her lungs half-choked, her body frozen.

But alive. So far.

She was dimly beginning to realise the miracle of it when something bumped gently and persistently against her. An arm, a wild white face.

Hetty began paddling away in horror. A dead body. She saw that all the sea around her was full of floating debris. There was no sign of the ship. It was as if it had never existed.

She began to shout, “Mrs Jervis! Clemency! Clemency!” At least she thought she was shouting, but the sea water lapped into her mouth and silenced her. Then she tried to loosen her arms from the lifebelt so that she could sink into darkness. Away from the nightmare. But she had no strength. Her arms were locked round the slippery rubber.

“This one seems to be alive.” It might have been hours, or days, later that she heard voices, and felt herself being tugged. “Get her on board. Jesus! She’s young. How many are we now?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Well, that’s better than twenty. Twenty-one out of two thousand. Jesus!”

“There must be other boats afloat. Is she going to be all right?”

“Looks pretty far gone to me. It’s getting dark. If we’re not picked up soon we’re all goners.” The voice cracked. “Damn those bloody Germans! Damn them, damn them, damn them!”