Every Man for Himself (23 page)

All the way up to A deck I argued with him in my head, protesting that I wasn’t stingy and that on his wages I wouldn’t have turned my nose up at two shillings and sixpence – but then, I thought of the money Charlie had said I’d thrown away at cards the night before and fairly burned with shame.

Hopper and Charlie had gone from the smoke-room. So had the card players. Thomas Andrews was standing with his back to me at the fire, balancing up on his toes, positioning a picture in place above the mantelpiece. It was the Plymouth Harbour painting, the one I’d last seen hanging in the library. He stepped back to see if it hung straight, and I called out his name. He didn’t turn round. His life-preserver lay across the table. I went closer and said, ‘Will you not come up on deck, sir? There isn’t much time.’ Still with his back to me he fluttered his hand in the air, either waving me away or waving goodbye.

I did as Riley had told me and once on the boat deck climbed the companionway up to the officers’ house which was forward of the first funnel. There were seamen on the roof, struggling to release the collapsible. I peered down and saw Guggenheim and his valet both dressed as though off to a swell party. They were listening to the orchestra which was playing rag-time to raise our spirits, Guggenheim tap-tapping his cane on the rail. Hopper stood not a yard from them, looking first one way then the other. I guessed he was trying to find me and shouted to him. By good luck he heard and sprinted towards the stairs. He told me Charlie was further along the deck. They had both gone aft to where a priest was giving conditional absolution to a demented congregation. When Charlie had fallen to his knees and started to blub out the most damn fool confessions, like how he’d tormented a cat when he was a child and how he’d stolen a dollar from his mother’s purse, he had to leave him. ‘Honest to God, Morgan, he’s turned yellow.’

At that moment the orchestra changed tune and struck up a hymn, one I knew well because it was a favourite of my aunt’s and sometimes she used to sing it when she was in one of her brighter moods . . .
E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me, Still all my song shall be, Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee
. Hearing it, I knew I had to go in search of Charlie, for Lady Melchett’s sake if not my own, and would have gone on searching for him if Scurra hadn’t been waiting for me at the bottom of the steps. He said, ‘A man bears the weight of his own body without knowing it, but he soon feels the weight of any other object. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that a man cannot forget – but not himself.’ Then, before walking away, he said those other things, about it being the drop, not the height, that was terrible, and I left Charlie to God and went back up to the officers’ house.

And now, the moment was almost upon us. The stern began to lift from the water. Guggenheim and his valet played mountaineers, going hand over hand up the rail. The hymn turned ragged; ceased altogether. The musicians scrambled upwards, the spike of the cello scraping the deck. Clinging to the rung of the ladder I tried to climb to the roof but there was such a sideways slant that I waved like a flag on a pole. I thought I must make a leap for it and turned to look for Hopper. Something, some inner voice urged me to glance below and I saw Scurra again, one arm hooked through the rail to steady himself. I raised my hand in greeting – then the water, first slithering, then tumbling, gushed us apart.

As the ship staggered and tipped, a great volume of water flowed in over the submerged bows and tossed me like a cork to the roof. Hopper was there too. My fingers touched some kind of bolt near the ventilation grille and I grabbed it tight. I filled my lungs with air and fixed my eyes on the blurred horizon, determined to hang on until I was sure I could float free rather than be swilled back and forth in a maelstrom. I wouldn’t waste my strength in swimming, not yet, for I knew the ship was now my enemy and if I wasn’t vigilant would drag me with her to the grave. I waited for the next slithering dip and when it came and the waves rushed in and swept me higher, I released my grip and let myself be carried away, over the tangle of ropes and wires and davits, clear of the rails and out into the darkness. I heard the angry roaring of the dying ship, the deafening cacophony as she stood on end and all her guts tore loose. I choked on soot and cringed beneath the sparks dancing like fire-flies as the forward funnel broke and smashed the sea in two. I thought I saw Hopper’s face but one eye was ripped away and he gobbled like a fish on the hook. I was sucked under, as I knew I would be, down, down, and still I waited, waited until the pull slackened – then I struck out with all my strength.

I don’t know how long I swam under that lidded sea – time had stopped with my breath – and just as it seemed as if my lungs would burst the blackness paled and I kicked to the surface. I had thought I was entering paradise, for I was alive and about to breathe again, and then I heard the cries of souls in torment and believed myself in hell. Dear God! Those voices!
Father . . . Father . . . For the love of Christ . . . Help me, for pity’s sake! . . . Where is my son
. Some called for their mothers, some on the Lord, some to die quickly, a few to be saved. The lamentations rang through the frosty air and touched the stars; my own mouth opened in a silent howl of grief. The cries went on and on, trembling, lingering – and God forgive me, but I wanted them to end. In all that ghastly night it was the din of the dying that chilled the most. Presently, the voices grew fainter, ceased – yet still I heard them, as though the drowned called to one another in a ghostly place where none could follow. Then silence fell, and that was the worst sound of all. There was no trace of the
Titanic
. All that remained was a grey veil of vapour drifting above the water.

Gradually I grew accustomed to the darkness and made out a boat some distance away. Summoning up all my strength I swam closer; it was a collapsible, wrong side up and sagging in the sea. I tried to climb on to the gunwale but the occupants gazed through me and offered no assistance; they might have been dead men for all the life in their eyes. Swimming round to the far side, I commandeered a bobbing barrel, and, mounting it like a horse, hand-paddled to the stern and flung myself aboard.

We slushed there, twenty or more of us, lying like sponges in the icy pond within that canvas bag, looking up at the stars, students of the universe, each man lost in separate thoughts and dreams. I saw the library and that figure now clinging to the tilted mantelpiece, and old man Seefax, arms raised in terror as his chair skidded the room and the water leapt to douse the coals. Then I was in London again standing outside the Café Royal, the wet pavement shining in the lamp-light, a bunch of violets in my hand. And as I waited the revolving doors began to spin and out they came – Hopper, smiling, asking where the devil I’d been; Ginsberg, slapping me on the back in greeting; Charlie, cheeks pink with pleasure at the sight of me; Ben Guggenheim with his top hat jaunty on his head; Riley, hands in pockets, jingling coins; lastly, Scurra, staying within the doors, now facing me, now showing me his back, then facing me again, eyes sadly fixed on mine. Each time he passed he made an upward gesture with his hand and I stepped to join him, but the doors spun round and round and when they slowed he’d gone. Then Charlie pointed to the sky and we all looked up to watch a shooting star.

Now it was very cold in the boat and we were sinking deeper as we floated. I sat up and rubbed my frozen limbs, shouting at the others to stir themselves unless they wished to die. Some grumbled and resisted but most saw the sense in it and we worked together, baling out as much water as we could, though we still sat in that icy pool and sloped alarmingly. Fearing we might be swamped I organised them to stand up, not all at once, but in twos and separated by the length of an arm to maintain a balance. When this was accomplished and we all faced the horizon someone declared there was a ship out there and that she was moving. We stared as hard as we could, but there was such a display of shooting stars that night it was difficult to distinguish one light from another. An hour crept by, and to our delight we heard voices. Pretty soon, by means of shouting back and forth, two life-boats loomed. There was space in one of them for three of us, but we daren’t disturb our balance and they rowed off.

It must have been thirty minutes or so later when that second lot of shooting stars went arching to the sea. We gazed in disbelief because they burst asunder before they fell. A solitary cheer came from somewhere to our right and a woman’s voice shouted, ‘It’s the
Carpathia
for sure.’ For one instant I wanted to cheer too, the next that momentary leap of relief was replaced by unease which deepened into guilt, for in that moment I had already begun to forget the dead. Now that I knew I was going to live there was something dishonourable in survival.

Dawn came and as far as the eye could see the ocean was dotted with islands and fields of ice. Some floated with tapering mast-heads, some sailed with monstrous bows rising sheer to the pink-flushed sky, some glided the water in the shapes of ancient vessels. Between this pale fleet the little life-boats rocked. There were other things caught upon the water – chairs and tables, crates, an empty gin bottle, a set of bagpipes, a cup without a handle, a creased square of canvas with a girl’s face painted on it; and two bodies, she in a gown of ice with a mermaid’s tail, he in shirt sleeves, the curls stiff as wood shavings on his head, his two hands frozen to the curve of a metal rail. Beyond, where the sun was beginning to show its burning rim, smoke blew from a funnel.