No Greater Love (8 page)

Kate and Bert walked into the gym for a minute then, to get warm again and escape the agonies of the tears and good-byes and the visible tension as Lightoller loaded another lifeboat. Phillip stayed outside on deck, with Jack Thayer and Charles, who were helping the women and children into the lifeboats. Dan Martin had just put his bride in the same lifeboat with Edwina, and another man had just sent his wife and baby off with them. And in the gym, Kate and Bert noticed that the Astors were still sitting on the mechanical horses and quietly talking. She seemed in no hurry to get off, and he had their maid and valet on the deck, keeping an eye on the situation.

“Do you suppose the children are alright?” Kate looked worriedly at Bert in the gym, as he nodded, relieved that Edwina had found Alexis, and that at least five of the children had gotten off. He was still worried about getting Phillip and Kate off, and he was hoping that Lightoller would take Phillip in the end. There was less hope for Bert and Charles, and they both knew it.

“I think they’ll be alright,” Bert reassured his wife. “It’s certainly an experience none of them will forget. Nor will I,” he added with a serious look at Kate. “I think she’s going to sink, you know.” He had been sure of it for the last half hour, although none of the crew would admit it, and the band played on as if it were all in good fun though a slightly crazy evening. And then, Bert looked at her pointedly and took one of her long, slim hands in his own and kissed the tips of her fingers. “I want you off in the next lifeboat, Kate. And I’m going to see if I can bribe them to take Phillip with you. He’s only sixteen, they ought to be willing to take him. He’s barely more than a child.” The problem wasn’t convincing her, it was convincing Lightoller.

“I don’t see why we don’t wait until they start boarding the men too, and I can go with you then. I can’t help Edwina now anyway, we’d be in different lifeboats. And she’s a very capable girl.” Kate smiled, it was a terrible feeling not to be with them, yet she was sure that they’d be alright. She had to believe that. And Edwina was like another mother to them. All Kate had to worry about now was the safety of her oldest son, and her husband, and Edwina’s fiancé, Charles. Once they were in a lifeboat with her, she didn’t give a damn what happened to the ship, as long as everyone got off safely, and she saw no reason why they would not. Everything seemed to be moving ahead calmly, and the lifeboats weren’t even full as they lowered them, which had to mean that there was plenty of room for everyone, or they wouldn’t have lowered them without filling them completely first. And she was sure they had hours before anything serious happened, if anything serious happened at all. There was a false aura of calm that led her to believe they had nothing to fear.

But on the bridge, Captain Smith knew the truth. It was well after one o’clock by then and the engine room was flooded. There was no doubt that she was going down, the only question was how soon. And he was sure now that it wouldn’t be long. Wireless Operator Phillips was sending frantic messages everywhere, and on the
Californian
, their radio still turned off, they watched the rockets high above the
Titanic
without dreaming what they meant. They still thought she was celebrating. At one point, they noticed that she had begun to look very strange, and one of their officers thought she was sitting in the water at an odd angle. But still it never dawned on them that she was sinking. And the
Olympic
radioed and wanted to know if the
Titanic
was coming to meet them. No one understood what was happening, or how fast they were going down. It was inconceivable to all
that the “unsinkable” ship, the biggest ship afloat, was actually sinking. In fact, she was already halfway there. And this time, when Bert and Kate stepped out of the gym again, the atmosphere was very different. People were no longer calling out to each other quite so gaily, and husbands were begging their wives to be brave and leave the ship in the lifeboats without them. And when the women refused, the husbands forced them into crewmen’s arms, and more than one woman was tossed unwillingly into a lifeboat. Lightoller, on the port side, was still following the rule of women and children only, but on the starboard side, for a few men there was hope, particularly if they claimed to know something about boats. They needed all the help they could get to row them. A few people were openly crying now and there were heart-wrenching good-byes everywhere. Most of the children were gone, and Kate was relieved that theirs were, too, with the exception of Phillip, but he would leave with them. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw little Lorraine Allison clinging to her mother’s hand on the deck, and it reminded her of Alexis, now safely off with her brothers and sisters in lifeboat number eight. Mrs. Allison had kept Lorraine with her, and thus far she had refused to leave her husband, but she had put her younger child, Trevor, off with his nurse in one of the early lifeboats. More than once, Kate had seen families separate, and wives and children go on ahead, with the assumption that the husbands would get in the lifeboats that would leave the ship later. It was only toward the very end that it became obvious that almost all of the lifeboats were gone, and there were still almost two thousand people left on board with no way to escape, no way to flee the sinking ship. They were discovering what the captain, the builder, and the head of the White Star Line had known all along, that there weren’t enough lifeboats for every
one. If the ship went down, most of them would drown, but who had ever thought the
Titanic
would sink and they would actually need the lifeboats in which to escape her?

The captain was still on the bridge, and Thomas Andrews, the managing director of the firm that had built the enormous ship, was still helping to load people into the lifeboats, as Bruce Ismay, head of the White Star Line, pulled his collar close around his neck and stepped into one of the lifeboats, and no one dared to say a word of challenge. He was lowered to safety with the few chosen lucky ones, leaving close to two thousand souls doomed on the sinking
Titanic.

“Kate …” Bert was looking at her pointedly, as they watched the next lifeboat being swung out on the davits. “I want you to go in this one.” But she quietly shook her head and looked at him, and this time when her eyes met his, they were quiet and strong. She had always obeyed him, but she knew she wouldn’t this time, no matter what he said to sway her.

“I’m not leaving you,” she spoke softly. “I want Phillip to go now. But I’m staying here with you. We’ll leave together when we can.” Her back was very straight, and her eyes firmly locked in his. There was no changing her mind now, and he knew it. She had loved him and lived with him for twenty-two years, and she wasn’t leaving him now at the eleventh hour. All but one of her children were safe, and she wouldn’t leave her husband.

“And if we can’t get off?” Ever since most of their children had gone, his own terror had dimmed a little bit, and he was able to say the words now. All he really wanted now was to get Phillip off with Kate, and Charles if he could. But he was willing to go down himself, as long as the rest of his family survived. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make for her, and for them, but he didn’t want her to go too. It just wasn’t fair to the
children, or to her. The children needed her. And he wanted her to get off while she could. “I don’t want you staying here, Kate.”

“I love you.” The words said everything.

“I love you too.” He held her for a long moment, and silently thought about doing what he had seen others do, force her into the arms of a crewman who would literally throw her into a lifeboat. But he couldn’t do that to her. He loved her too much, and they had lived together for too long. He respected what she wanted to do, even though in this case it could cost her her life. But it meant a lot to him that she was willing to die with him. They had always shared that kind of love, mixed with tenderness and passion.

“If you stay, I want to stay too.” She said the words clearly as he held her close to him, willing her to go, yet not willing to force her into doing what she didn’t want to. “If you die, I want to stay with you.”

“You can’t do that, Kate. I won’t let you. Think of the children.” She already had, and she had made up her mind. She loved them with all her heart, but she loved him too and she belonged with him. He was her husband. And Edwina was old enough to take care of the children, if Kate died. And besides, deep down, she still thought they were all being melodramatic over all this. In the end, they’d all sit in the lifeboats, and they’d be back on the
Titanic
by lunchtime. She tried to say as much to Bert, but this time he shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think this is much worse than we’ve been told.” And it was, much more so than either of them knew. At 1:40
A.M.
, the crew on the bridge had just fired the last rocket, and now the last lifeboats were being filled, as in the stateroom, far below, unbeknownst to them, Alexis continued to play with her doll, Mrs. Thomas.

“I think you have a responsibility to the children,”
Bert went on. “You
must
leave the ship.” It was his last fervent try. But she refused to hear him.

She squeezed his hands tight in her own and looked into his eyes. “Bert Winfield, I will
not
leave you. Do you understand me?” Nearby, Mrs. Straus had just made the same choice, but she was older than Kate, and had no small children. But Mrs. Allison did, and she had decided to stay on with her husband and her little girl, and go down with both of them, if the ship went down, as people now understood it was going to.

“What about Phillip?” Bert decided to stop arguing with her for the moment, but he was still hoping to change her mind.

“Can’t you do what you said, and bribe them to take Phillip on?” Kate asked.

They were boarding the last boat on the Boat Deck and there was still one more after that, number four, hanging off the glass partitions of the Promenade Deck, just below. But as Lightoller worked above on the Boat Deck, other crewmen were working to open the windows on the Promenade so that more women could be loaded into the lifeboat through the previously locked windows that, earlier, had gotten in their way. This was going to be the last regular lifeboat to leave the
Titanic.

Bert approached the officer cautiously, spoke to him as best he could as he continued to work furiously on the now seriously listing ship, and Kate saw Lightoller shake his head vehemently and glance over in Phillip’s direction. Phillip was still standing with the Thayer boy, who was conversing quietly with his father.

“He says absolutely not, as long as there are women and children on the ship,” Bert reported to her a moment later. There were some loading now from second class, but all of the first-class children were off, with the exception of little Lorraine Allison, standing next to her mother and holding the doll that looked so much like
the one carried everywhere by Alexis. It made Kate smile briefly as she looked at her, and then away. It was as though every scene one saw was too tender, too intimate, too private, to be looked upon by strangers.

And now there was a serious consultation among Phillip, Charles, Bert, and Kate, as to how to get the two younger men off, and if possible, also Bert and Kate, in spite of Lightoller.

“I think we’ll just have to wait a little while,” Charles said calmly, a gentleman to the end. Through it all, he had never lost his good manners or his good spirits. “But I do think that you, Mrs. Winfield, should get in one of the boats now. There’s no point lingering here with the men.” He smiled warmly at her, and for some reason realized for the first time how much she really looked like Edwina. “We’ll be fine. But you might as well get off comfortably now, rather than in the last scramble with us. You know how dreadful men are. And if I were you, I’d give a go at taking our young friend here.” But how? The last boy his age who had attempted to get on, in women’s dress, had been threatened at gunpoint, although they had finally decided to leave him in the lifeboat because there wasn’t time to get him off. But feelings were running a little higher now, and Bert didn’t want to tackle Lightoller again, he was clearly brooking no nonsense. None of them knew, of course, that things were slightly different on the starboard side. The ship was just too big for anyone to know that things were different on one side or the other. And as they discussed it, Kate still insisting to Bertram that she wouldn’t leave him, Phillip wandered over to talk to Jack Thayer again. Charles sat down in a deck chair and lit a cigarette. He didn’t want to intrude on Edwina’s parents, even now, and they were clearly engaged in serious discussion, about whether or not Kate was going
to get off. And Charles was filled with lonely thoughts of Edwina. He had no hope of getting off now.

Below decks, the cabins were all cleared, the crew had checked them all, and the water in the ship had risen to C Deck. And as she played with her doll in the parlor of the stateroom, Alexis could still hear the band playing pretty music. And every now and then, she would hear footsteps, as crew members dashed past or someone from second class ran by, looking for the way to the first-class Boat Deck. And Alexis was beginning to wonder when they would all come back. She was tired of playing alone, and she hadn’t wanted to get in the lifeboat, but she was beginning to seriously miss her mommy and the others. But she knew that eventually, she’d be in for a scolding. They always scolded her when she ran away, especially Edwina.

She heard heavy footsteps then, and looked up, suddenly wondering if it was her father, or Charles, or even Phillip. But as she glanced up expectantly, a strange face appeared in the doorway. He looked shocked suddenly as he saw her. He was the last steward to leave the deck, and he had known long since that all of the B Deck cabins were empty. But he was checking them one last time before the water came up from C Deck and filled them. He was horrified to see the small child sitting there, playing with her dolly.

“Hey, there …” He took a rapid step toward her, as Alexis flew into the next room and started to close the door, but the heavyset steward with the full red beard was quicker than she was. “Just a minute, young lady, what are you doing here?” He wondered how she had escaped, and why no one had come looking for her. It seemed strange to him, and he wanted to get her up to the lifeboats quickly. “Come on …” She had no hat, and no coat. She had abandoned them in her cabin
when she’d come back to the stateroom to play with the doll she called “Mrs. Thomas.”