The Girl Who Came Home(56)
Harry turned to walk out, pausing for a moment as if wanting to say something else. He looked at Peggy. She returned his gaze. There was an unspoken understanding between them, even though neither one of them spoke a word.
With Kathleen gone and the sounds of Harry pounding on the door of the cabin next to theirs, and then the next and the next, the three girls sat together on Katie’s bed, trying to take in what they had heard, the unspoken recollections of predictions in the tealeaves and of strangers in railway stations hanging ominously in the air between them.
Peggy spoke first. ‘Well, let’s be gettin’ our things ready then girls. Kathleen will be back soon with the others and then we’ll all be wantin’ to go up them stairs to the decks.’
‘They’ll have opened the gates won’t they?’ Katie’s question was left unanswered. None of them knew. ‘Well, maybe we should say a prayer first,’ she suggested. ‘Y’know, for all our safety like.’
They looked at each other and nodded in agreement. Maggie grabbed the rosary beads which Séamus had given her as a parting gift and together the three girls sat on the bed, the White Star Line blankets they had admired so much when they first saw them, wrapped now around their shoulders for warmth. They recited their Hail Marys with more sincerity than they had ever recited them in their lives.
Their prayers complete, they sat in silence, holding each other’s hands, afraid to let go.
*
Harry ran from cabin to cabin, pounding on the doors until they were opened and telling the occupants that they needed to put on their life vests and make their way to the upper decks straightaway. Other crewmen and stewards were doing the same.
Many of the occupants couldn’t understand what he was saying, throwing their hands upwards and speaking in a foreign language to the others in the cabin. Those he did manage to rouse barely took him seriously at all, assuming it was the drill which had been cancelled earlier that day and nodding that they would do as he said, but then returning to their beds. Others never even responded to the banging on the door, too stupefied from a night of drinking in the bar to hear him or any of the commotion which was now building in the corridors along from cabin 115.
After rushing around the cabins for forty minutes or more, getting occasionally lost still among the endless maze of corridors and companionways, Harry noticed a definite list in the ship, having to walk up an incline as he made his way along Scotland Road and using the walls on either side of him for balance. He was relieved to bump into his friend Billy.
‘Christ mate. Have you heard? We’re bloody sinking.’
‘Y’don’t say. She’s almost totally underwater in the first five compartments. Christ only knows what’s gone on in the boiler rooms. They’ve closed the watertight doors – with the men still inside I reckon. There’s men down there trying to keep the generators going so as we’ve some light to watch ourselves drown by.’
‘Christ Billy, don’t. It’s fuckin’ terrifyin’. Did y’see the size of that iceberg?’
‘Yeah. I went up. There’s fellas up there drinking their brandy being serenaded by the violinists. You’d think it was a special bleedin’ iceberg cruise or somethin’. There’s a whole gang of Irish in the dining room. Have you seen them? Some are already at the booze and others are sittin’ around prayin’ with those beads they have – fat lot of use they’ll do ‘em at the bottom of the ocean. Captain Smith’s ordered the lifeboats to be swung out.’
Something within Harry sensed that he needed to go to the dining room. ‘Right, keep banging on the doors and waking people up. I’m going to the dining room to shift everyone up the stairs.’ He started to make his way back along the corridor. ‘Oi. Billy,’ he called back to his friend. ‘I’ll see you up there. Right?’
Billy turned and gave him a thumbs up with his trademark, cocky grin. ‘Not if I see you first Walsh!’
*
Before going to the dining room, Harry returned to cabin 115 where he found the three girls still waiting patiently for Kathleen to come back.
‘Harry,’ Peggy gasped when she saw him. ‘We can feel the ship leanin’. We don’t know where Kathleen is.’
‘You’ve got to go girls,’ he urged. ‘There’s a lot of Irish gatherin’ in the dining room. She’s probably gone there to find everyone in your group. You should go there. Now. It’s not safe to hang around here. The corridors are getting busy with people movin’ their cases and the stairs are getting blocked. Go on, go and wait for her in the dining room. You can come back for your cases when you find her. I’ve got to go and keep helping others.’