Women and Children First (14 page)

The water came faster than Reg had expected and he shot down through it like an arrow. There was no time to notice the cold. He was conscious only of the pressure pounding in his ears. When he stopped plummeting, Reg immediately started to swim upwards. He had to reach the surface so he could breathe, but which way was up? He could only trust his instincts and push in the direction he seemed to have come from because it was pitch black and there was no reassuring light above. Just when his lungs were fit to burst, his head broke the surface and he sucked in huge gulps of air. His heart was beating so hard he could hear it.

That’s when he began to feel the excruciating cold biting into the back of his neck, his hands, his legs. His flesh felt raw with it. ‘I have to keep moving,’ he told himself, and then his next thought was to look round for the boy. The knots between their life preservers hadn’t survived the impact with the water but he couldn’t be far off.

‘Finbarr?’ Reg called, his voice sounding weak even to his own ears. ‘Finbarr?’ he called, slightly louder.

Yells and screams and cries for help filled the air but they all seemed a long way off. Behind him, the stern of the ship was perpendicular in the water and Reg guessed that she could slide under the surface any moment. He had to get clear or he could be sucked down with it, but where was the boy?

‘Fin-barr!’ he yelled, as loud as he could this time. He turned in each direction yelling the boy’s name and scanning the water but there was no sign. What could have happened to him? Reg began shuddering with the cold and knew that if he didn’t start swimming soon, he would die.

‘Where are you? If you can hear me, swim away from the ship. Follow my voice.’ He had one last look round then struck out blindly, his normal strong strokes hindered by the cumbersome life preserver.
Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.
John would probably be in the water now, the same thought in his head.

‘Finbarr! This way!’ he yelled from time to time, his voice breathless from the effort of propelling himself forward. He raised his head and looked around but there were no lifeboats in sight.
Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.
The cold bit into him, and he knew it was a killing cold. It sucked your energy, sapped your strength, made you want to close your eyes and give up.

Suddenly the ocean moved. Reg was pulled under again and he struggled to find the surface. He opened his eyes but all around was black. Panic set in and he kicked out with all his might. After all this effort, was he going to drown anyway? His lungs were agony. Would his life flash in front of his eyes the way they said it did?
Don’t panic, don’t panic.
He released a dribble of air from his mouth to see which way the bubbles went, then swam in that direction. Just when he thought he was lost for sure, he found the surface and gulped at the night air. His lungs were overstretched and burning. All those years at sea and no one had ever told him how much it
hurt
to drown.

He trod water for a minute, trying to breathe his fill, and then he looked around to get his bearings. He turned one way then the other and a new horror filled him. Where was the ship? She had gone. Disappeared. In the water there were bits of fractured wood, life preservers – some with people in them and some without – a deckchair, a barrel of some kind. But no
Titanic
. How could something so enormous have simply vanished?

He tried to lift himself higher out of the water to spot a lifeboat but found he had little strength left. It was ebbing from him as the cold gnawed into his muscles and bones. He turned ninety degrees and scanned the horizon, then another ninety, then again, and finally he spotted a collapsible. It was upside down in the water and half a dozen men were sitting on it.

‘If I can get there, I’ll be safe,’ Reg thought. Like that time in Malta, he knew he had to keep swimming. Easy to say, but his arms felt as though they belonged to someone else and were no longer under his control, and he had lost any sensation in his legs. He was working as hard as he could and didn’t seem to be moving at all.

I have to do this,
he spoke sternly to himself.
I have to live. I’m only young and I haven’t done anything yet.
He wanted to start his own business, buy a car – a Lozier, preferably – and get married. He couldn’t die before he’d achieved all those things. His arms and legs had stiffened up, making it harder than ever to move forwards, but he pictured himself behind the wheel of his car, driving down a road on a sunny day with Florence by his side, laughing.
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. Not far now, you can do it.

By the time he reached the collapsible there were a dozen men on it, some standing, some sitting and one, just near Reg, who was lying with his leg trailing over the edge. Reg grabbed hold of that leg for something to haul himself up by and the man said ‘Hey!’ but that was all. Reg tried to get a grip on the wooden slats but there was nothing to hold so he used the body of the lying man and with the last of his strength he crawled onto the upturned boat.

Instantly he was out of the water, he felt colder. His teeth were chattering and he couldn’t stop shaking.

‘Stand up. You’re taking too much room,’ someone nagged him.

His legs were so wobbly he wasn’t sure he could make it and he had to grab hold of another man to steady himself. Once upright, he looked at the scene around him and blinked. As far as the eye could see, the ocean was littered with bodies and broken pieces of the ship. He couldn’t see any other lifeboats. A swimmer approached and was told there was no more room on board and Reg felt a pang of guilt about that. And then suddenly he remembered Finbarr, and began to yell his name.

‘Shut up, you,’ someone growled.

Reg called even louder. Surely the boy must be nearby. Guilt pierced his heart like a knife wound. He had promised to protect Finbarr. His mother had put her trust in him. And instead he had saved himself.

Someone else was climbing onto their raft, and Reg was delighted to recognise Second Officer Lightoller. He felt euphoric. They would be all right now, because Lightoller would take charge. He’d tell them what to do. First, it was imperative that he told Lightoller about the boy.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ he called. ‘Excuse me, Officer Lightoller.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Reg Parton, sir. There’s an Irish boy, a passenger, in the water nearby. I promised his mother I’d look after him. His name’s Finbarr. We have to find him.’

‘Everyone who can, on their feet,’ Lightoller ordered, and Reg thought with relief that he was getting them all to search for Finbarr. ‘Easy does it. Lean towards me, men.’

The boat wobbled and almost overturned, but every time it tipped in one direction, Lightoller gave an order and they managed to lean and steady it.

He’s looking for Finbarr now. He’s bound to find him,
Reg told himself, and it was a while before he realised that Lightoller was simply directing their movements so that the collapsible didn’t capsize.

More swimmers came towards them but were told they couldn’t climb aboard or the boat would sink. One man tried his luck and was beaten off with an oar. He fell back into the ocean with a groan of utter despair. All around them were groans. The cries for help gradually subsided as swimmers realised there was no one to come to their rescue and they needed all their breath simply to keep moving.

‘Finbarr!’ Reg called his name one last time, but without any hope. It had taken all the strength of his twenty-one years and all his skill as a swimmer to make it this far. A skinny little lad of ten wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Annie sat huddled on a bench in Lifeboat 13, so traumatised she couldn’t move. Baby Ciaran had been crying and there was sick down his front, Roisin was sucking her thumb and whimpering, and Patrick was white as a ghost, but Annie couldn’t help them. She was enveloped in a sense of dread so heavy that it made her oblivious to everything around her.

She had done a wicked, evil thing leaving her first-born behind on the ship. Seamus would never forgive her if any harm came to him. It was obvious now that she’d made the wrong decision. She should have sent the other three on a lifeboat with Kathleen and stayed behind to find Finbarr herself. Why hadn’t she thought of that? It hadn’t been fair to put such pressure on Kathleen’s brother and then on that young steward. Neither of them knew the boy. Neither of them loved him. They might search for a while but then they’d give up because after all he was nothing to them. But she, Annie, would never have given up until she’d found him. Surely her mother’s love would have been fierce enough to save him? Yet instead she had let herself be talked into leaving him behind.

How would he feel when he heard that she had saved the others and left him? How would he manage if he was lost, or injured? Would someone take pity on him? He was only a boy and looked younger than his years.

In her head, she repeated the rosary, over and over, and it formed a backdrop to the pounding anxiety, the fears and suppositions. She kept turning to look back at the ship, although they were too far away now to make out the faces of those on the decks. Rows of portholes in its sides were still brightly lit but it was obvious the vessel was fatally damaged because of the slant at which it sat in the water, its bow almost submerged.

Was Finbarr one of those little black figures on deck? Why weren’t they launching any more lifeboats? Could he maybe have disembarked on the other side? Pray God that he had.

‘Don’t look!’ someone said to her in a kind voice, and she turned to see that the huge vessel had upended itself in the water, like a broken child’s toy. Some of the little black figures, mere dots, were slipping and falling overboard, and their cries for help reached her ears and pierced her soul. What kind of a mother was she that she left her son to go through this on his own? She didn’t deserve to have children, didn’t deserve a loving husband.

Now she couldn’t take her eyes off the vertical ship, so unnatural it seemed a crime against the law of gravity. The lights flickered off, then on again, but it seemed as if it might stay poised there forever, providing refuge for those left on board. ‘Please God, please,’ Annie repeated over and over. If it could just stay like that, there was hope.

But then it began to slip, smoothly and quietly, into the oily blackness. In just a few seconds it was gone completely and they were plunged into almost complete darkness. There was no moon that night, no lamps on the lifeboats, just the dim glow of the stars to see by.

There was a delay before the wave of sound reached her: a prolonged howl of anguish unlike anything she had ever heard. All those people on deck had plummeted into the North Atlantic, all those tiny specks swallowed up by the water that must be close to freezing point. She couldn’t see them any more, but could hear the sound and it made the blood freeze in her veins. Was her son one of them?

‘We must go back,’ she insisted to the men who were rowing their boat. ‘My son might be in there.’

‘We’ve no room, ma’am,’ a seaman replied. ‘We’re full to bursting.’

It was true that they were crushed against each other and every space filled, but Finbarr was only little.

‘He’s small for his age. He’s only ten. We must go back.’ She pressed them, trying to get them to understand.

‘He’ll be on another boat already,’ a woman nearby told her kindly. ‘There were places for all the women and children. Those in the water are grown men and pray God they will find something to float on until help arrives.’

‘You’ll find him when the rescue ship arrives,’ someone else told her.

‘Oh, please can we go back just in case?’ Annie wailed. ‘What if he’s in there?’

‘The boat would be overwhelmed if we went back. Every man and his brother would try to climb aboard and we’d all drown. If he’s a young child he’ll be safe on another boat. You mark my words.’

After a while there was no more point in arguing because they weren’t going to change course, so Annie strained her ears to listen, trying to pick out individual voices. There were cries of ‘Help me!’ and ‘My God!’ and lots of names – Ethel, Anna, Marie, Clara – presumably men calling for their wives. A couple of times she thought she heard shouts of ‘Ma’, but none with Finbarr’s distinctive Cork accent. There were curses and groans and sighs, and gradually, as time went on, the voices got fewer and farther between.

Still Annie strained to hear every last sound that echoed across the fathomless ocean, even though she knew by now that none could be her son. If he had got onto a boat, he would be alive, but if he had toppled into the ocean he had no chance. He couldn’t make his way to a lifeboat, wouldn’t know how, because none of her children had ever learned to swim.

By her side, Patrick was shaking with silent sobs. The others were too young to understand but he knew the worst. She should put her arm round him. They should all hug and share their body warmth and try to give comfort, but Annie found she couldn’t move. She was paralysed in her fear. She wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to move again.