Every Man for Himself (4 page)

We drank just enough to heighten our perceptions, so that when we began our inspection of the ship I fancy we’d loosened that grey veil of sophistication common to our kind.

Melchett was keen on visiting E deck, mostly on account of a broad alleyway, known to the crew by the name of Scotland Road after some street in Liverpool, which ran the length of the vessel. He had visited the northern city as a child, he eagerly told me, on the occasion of a horse running in his grandfather’s colours in the Grand National steeplechase. I did tell him, knowledgeable as I was in regards to plumbing in the steerage accommodation, that it was unlikely he would find the thoroughfare thronged with race-horses, but he was adamant. We duly descended by elevator and roamed up and down a tiled corridor intersected by iron staircases leading to working departments of indescribable dullness. Melchett, trying hard to remain animated, wilted. ‘What is the point,’ he complained, ‘of giving names to places that bear no resemblance to the past?’

‘The point is,’ I stressed, ‘that they draw attention to the origin of the reference. Think of Waterloo station.’

After which exchange we fortunately encountered a young seaman who was persuaded to conduct us over the lower decks. Reluctant at first, then swayed by the promise of a generous tip, he led us below. Though stunted in growth, his eyes shone with intelligence. He said his name was Riley and his home town Liverpool, where he lived with his ‘Mam’ and five siblings. Considerably bucked at the coincidence, Melchett boasted he knew the town quite well. ‘My grandfather,’ he said, ‘owned a horse that finished second in the Grand National of 1901 . . . I can’t for the life of me remember its name.’

‘Me Dad,’ replied Riley, ‘had a donkey called Dickey-Sam that pulled a rag and bone cart.’ Melchett said that was interesting, and turned pink again.

Apart from a certain casualness of manner Riley proved to be the best of guides, for though the English he spoke could have benefited from an interpreter his knowledge of the ship was profound and his appreciation infectious. On F deck, starboard side, beneath which the main engines were housed, he delivered a lecture on their capacity and capabilities. The vessel, I understood him to inform us, was powered by two four-cylinder, triple expansion, reciprocating steam engines. Each could deliver 15,000 horsepower at 75 revolutions, producing a speed of 21 knots. Aft of these, a low-pressure turbine recycled steam from the main engines to drive the three propellers. He was wrong in this last assumption, in that it was only the central propeller that was thus driven, but I held my tongue.

‘There’s also four 400 kilowatt steam-powered generators,’ he said, ‘with dynamos capable of providing enough electricity to work the machinery controlling the winches, cranes, passenger and service lifts, heaters, cookers, watertight doors, the internal telephone exchange and the Marconi wireless set to a range of 350 miles. It can go further at night,’ he concluded. ‘Though I’m buggered if I know why.’

Melchett, shamelessly taking advantage of his enthusiasm, pressed to be allowed a glimpse of such wonders. A glimpse was all we got; barely a minute after we reached G deck and Riley had dragged back the iron door of Number 1 engine room we were approached by an assistant engineer and ordered about our business. Brief as the moment had been we had nonetheless clearly seen the awesome monster rearing on splayed legs from the glittering avenue below, its gigantic head vibrating inside its steel helmet, its thunderous intestines of lubricated pistons and crank-shafts pounding and pumping in perpetual motion.

Riley was sent packing. I’m ashamed to say neither Melchett nor I put in a word for him, nor was there time to palm him his tip. Escorted by the engineer we were returned by twists and turns and much tapping up of metal stairs to E deck, where, after sternly reminding us that unauthorised explorations of engine and boiler rooms were against company safety rules, he left us. I could have told him who I was and put him in his place but was loath to puncture his sense of self-importance, having had my own pricked on numerous occasions, and with more cause, by my Uncle Morgan.

Melchett and I remained silent while we continued our inspection of the ship, and when it was done and we had sunk into the leather armchairs in the foyer of A deck we still had no words. It wasn’t the lavish furnishings of the public rooms, the doors inlaid with mother of pearl, the panelled corridorsof oak and maple, the shimmer of gilt and brass and cut glass that made us catch our breath, anymore than the twenty-one-light candelabra hung from the massive dome above the sweep of that imperial staircase. We had spent our lives in splendid houses and grand hotels and for us there was nothing new under the sun, nothing that is, in the way of opulence; it was the sublime thermodynamics of the
Titanic
’s marine engineering that took us by the throat. Dazzled, I was thinking that if the fate of man was connected to the order of the universe, and if one could equate the scientific workings of the engines with just such a reciprocal universe, why then, nothing could go wrong with my world.

I don’t know what Melchett was thinking, beyond he was pale and his left knee was bouncing up and down as though in imitation of those connecting rods oscillating below the water line.

Just then, old man Seefax called out my name. He was tottering through the doors of the promenade deck supported between a bell-hop boy and the man with the split lip. Behind strutted the stout individual last seen on the mechanical camel. I jumped up and offered my chair to Seefax.

‘Morgan,’ he said, ‘why the devil isn’t your uncle aboard?’

‘Business,’ I said.

‘Nonsense. He was cruising the Nile a week ago.’

‘Which precipitated an attack of the gout,’ I said. ‘It came on suddenly.’

I was about to perjure myself further when my attention was distracted by the sight of the statuesque woman ascending the main staircase. She was waving her hand in my direction.

‘Have you met Scurra?’ asked Seefax. ‘Your uncle knows him.’

‘He does not
know
me,’ corrected the man with the split lip. ‘But we were acquainted in the past.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Scurra,’ I said, holding out my hand.

‘Not
Mr
,’ he replied. ‘In my experience such prefixes erect barriers. Haven’t you found that to be the case?’

He was watching me closely through those heavy spectacles; his eyes were nearer black than brown.

I said, ‘I believe someone is looking for you.’

He glanced over his shoulder and saw the woman. She called out, ‘We’re nearly at Cherbourg . . . he will surely be there.’

‘I hope so,’ he said, ‘for your sake,’ and turned back to me.

She waited there a moment before going out on deck, as if expecting him to join her. I must admit I was puzzled; for all his ease of manner and air of authority, no gentleman would treat his wife in such a churlish manner, let alone a mistress.

As though he read my thoughts, he exclaimed, ‘Yet another damsel in distress. They’re everywhere, dear boy,’ and laughed so boisterously I couldn’t help smiling.

Perching himself on the arm of Melchett’s chair he took off his spectacles and began to rub at them with his handkerchief. Lookingup at me, he said, ‘I understand you have been working as a designer under Thomas Andrews.’

‘Simply as a draughtsman,’ I replied, somewhat stiffly. ‘Concerned mainly with the specifications of bathtubs.’ Even then I wanted to impress him but had a sixth sense he would see through the attempt. Without his spectacles I saw his eyes were grey, not brown.

He said, ‘Andrews is a curious man. Unlike many who regard succession as a right, he believes in proving himself. I find that very boring, don’t you? He also believes in fate.’

‘Fate,’ I echoed.

‘The sentence of the Gods. A comforting idea, don’t you think, in that it leaves the individual blameless?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, though I hardly knew what I was agreeing with. It wasn’t comfortable, talking to him. Quite apart from keeping one’s gaze from off his damaged lip, everything he said was expressed in such a way as to require an answer, and a considered one at that. He had no small talk.

‘Melchett and I have been down to the engine rooms,’ I blurted. ‘We were both bowled over.’ I nudged Melchett’s shoulder, but though he glanced up he was too polite to disturb Seefax’s rambling conversation. Scurra was watching the fat man who had adopted the dandified stance of a ballet dancer, heel of one foot thrust at an angle against the other, head turned theatrically aside in the direction of the doors through which the tall woman had gone. ‘I wouldn’t care,’ I said, ‘to get in the way of such machinery. It could slice one in half.’

‘My mouth,’ Scurra said, ‘is the result of a discourse with a macaw while walking through a department store in Cape Town–’

‘Forgive me,’ I stammered. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘I was but six years old at the time. My mother was intent on buying material for a dress. She had let go my hand and walked on ahead. The bird had eyes like marbles. I reached upwards to stroke it –it was so close I smelt the sawdust on its unused wings.
All is not lost
, it croaked, and I cockily replied,
What has gone missing
? One should always attempt to understand what is being asked of one, don’t you think? . . . at which, hopping along its perch it swooped down and pecked my mouth. I have been told my blood spouted out like liquid from a teapot.’

He replaced his spectacles, stood up with a mock sigh and taking the fat man by the elbow announced it was time for a turn on deck. The fat man seemed to be in some sort of trance; he said not a word as he was led to the elevator.

I tried to find out from J.S. Seefax what Scurra did for a living and in what way he might be acquainted with my uncle. The old man was vague. ‘I think we met in Boston . . .’ he said, ‘or perhaps it was Paris. One goes to so many places.’

‘And who is the man he was with?’

‘What man?’ he asked, and that was as far as I got.

I returned to my stateroom, rang for the steward and instructed him to call me at five thirty. He enquired whether I would require lemonade to revive me on waking, or something stronger. Stung, I ordered tea.

My room was done out in the style of Louis XVI; there was a feeble engraving of the Bastille hung on the picture rail above the writing desk. On an impulse I removed it from its hook and replaced it with the painting of my mother.

I stretched out on the bed and hoped she would watch over me, but her eyes looked at some point beyond my head. Absent to the last, I thought, and slipped into sleep.

Dinner that evening was a boisterous affair. Ours was a small world and between the soup and the fish we were all constantly bobbing up and down to acknowledge people we knew; but for the intermittent and minute flickerings of the electric lights we might have been dining at the Ritz in Paris. The Theyers stopped at our table, the Daniels, Mrs Snyder, the Speddens of Tuxedo Park, Colonel Gracie, jolly Mrs Hogeboom with the excessively rich and eccentric Mrs James Brown, her bridge crony from Denver, in tow. As usual, the latter was dressed inappropriately and wore a gigantic hat across whose brim languished an entire stuffed bird. Colonel Astor and his young bride passed by without a nod, leaving Ginsberg on his feet with hand held foolishly out. He said he knew Vincent, the Colonel’s eldest son, and had often fenced with him.

‘Verbally or with foils?’ asked wicked Molly Dodge, but he ignored her.

The new Mrs Astor was pale and tall like her husband, and both looked as if they’d barely finished a thundering row. They’d been travelling Europe for months, waiting for the scandal of his divorce to die down. They joined Captain Smith’s party, alongside the Strauses and Bruce Ismay, and sat as though exhausted, he nearing fifty, his long gloomy nose nudging his moustaches, she barely nineteen, her flower head drooping on the stalk of her neck.

Benjamin Guggenheim had come aboard at Cherbourg with his mistress, Kitty Webb. I’d danced with Kitty once at some charity ball and found her touching; she’d confessed to biting her nails. She had pouting blue eyes, a small mouth and a mother, so it was said, who had hoed corn. Guggenheim had picked her out of the chorus line of
Naughty Marietta
. It was spread about that he’d fallen for her when she’d burst into tears and run off stage in the middle of the song ‘Ah Sweet Mystery of Life’. As Guggenheim wasn’t famed for his sensitivity this was taken to be a tall yarn.

When Kitty paused at our table she brushed my cheek with her hand.

‘Morgan,’ she breathed. ‘How thrilling to see you.’

Ginsberg boasted he knew her, of course. He held she truly loved Guggenheim and that it wasn’t doing her a power of good. I thought that was phooey judging by the size of the sapphires in the necklace about her throat, and said so. Wallis Ellery gave me one of her glances and pronounced it a vulgar observation, which shrivelled me, though I laughed it off.

A curious interchange took place when Melchett leapt up at the approach of a woman escorted by a pink porpoise of a man. He was about to greet them when the woman cried out, ‘Our name is Morgan.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said her companion, adding with exaggerated emphasis, ‘We are always known as Mr and Mrs Morgan.’

Melchett looked fairly taken aback, at which the woman pressed her finger against his lips and said, ‘Charlie dear, not a word,’ and swept on.

‘How very rum,’ said Melchett.

‘What Morgans are those?’ I asked mystified.

‘Not Morgan at all,’ he replied. ‘That was Lord and Lady Duff Gordon.’

There were eight of us at table; Hopper, Melchett, Ginsberg, George Dodge, his half-sister Molly, the Ellery sisters and myself. Ida Ellery wasn’t pretty, which is possibly why she was so good-natured and easy to be with. We were all madly in love with her sister Wallis, who was as clever as Sissy and absolutely unobtainable. In Wallis’s company it was impossible not to stare, and dangerous, for if she caught you and was in the mood to look back her gaze was so level and her expression so mocking it could turn one to stone. She had warm dark eyes and a pale full mouth, and just above her lip there was the faintest fuzz of down which glinted chestnut where the light touched. No one ever dared flirt with Wallis. Dancing with her was like holding cut glass; Hopper got it about right when he complained she made him feel he left finger marks.