He thought of his family then, his mother sitting alone in the front room, his father – coughing relentlessly – and his kind, gentle sister. He longed to be in his comfortable home and couldn’t bear to think about how worried everyone back home would be when they heard about the catastrophe. There were so many boiler men, stokers and crew already dead; locked into the bowels of the ship when the watertight doors were closed. He knew many of them from his hometown and knew there would be many mothers and sisters left without their fathers and brothers now.
He rowed and rowed, lost in silent thoughts of his own family, of Peggy and the others in the Irish group, of Bride and Philips in the Marconi Room, of Billy and everyone else he had worked with and had such a lark with along Scotland Road. He wondered what had become of them all.
With a rising sense of panic, dread and anger now surging through his body, producing a strength he didn’t know he was capable of, he rowed and rowed with the strength of ten men, determined not to die in the suction from the ship, determined not to die now that they had got so close to safety.
*
In the lifeboat, the minutes passed slowly. Time seemed suspended.
The iceberg loomed like a ghost from the jet black water, reaching up almost as high as Titanic’s funnels. Maggie had never seen an iceberg before. She gazed at it now dully, barely registering the continual slapping noise of the water lapping against the edges of its great, grey bulk.
Gazing mechanically around the lifeboat at her fellow passengers, she recognised the Irish man with the Uilleann pipes and wondered for a moment how he had managed to get into the boat before noticing another man, huddled at the back of the lifeboat under a woman’s coat. She thought of young Michael Kelly who had been refused a seat and noticed then the space to her right and left; ample space for a young boy to sit. In fact, as she looked about the boat she saw plenty of space for all fourteen of the Ballysheen group to have a seat. It was a thought which momentarily angered her, until her attention was caught by the shrill cry of a baby. The bawling was coming from an old sack; the baby swaddled inside.
‘She was too small,’ the mother said, noting Maggie’s gaze. ‘They had to lift her down to me in the sack. My husband is still out there,’ she sobbed, rocking the infant in her arms, shushing and soothing it and letting her tears fall.
She saw other mothers, clasping their children to them to try and give them some extra warmth; older women staring blankly into the distance and several ladies, still dressed in their finest silk evening gowns, their fur stoles and fancy hats offering meagre protection against the icy air.
She thought she recognised a dignified-looking lady with a fur coat around her shoulders. She was clutching a small dog, soothing its frightened whimpers as if it were a child. Despite her almost catatonic state, it struck Maggie how completely unjust it was that babies and children were drowning in the sea while a small dog, wearing a nice, warm coat, was here, sailing to safety. It was just one of the many injustices she would feel about the whole tragedy at that moment and for many, many years to come. She shook uncontrollably with the cold and fear and pulled the emergency blanket tighter around her shoulders, knowing that in a few more moments she would have to pass it to someone else for them to get their short burst of protection against the bitter night air.
All around them other lifeboats moved slowly away from Titanic’s bulk. The sound of the oars slapping against the water and the moaning and sobbing from the occupants seeming to gather and fill the spaces between them all; the mist of their frozen breaths rising up, up into the blank nothingness above.
Straight ahead, Titanic sank lower and lower into the water, the thousands of electric lights still shining brightly, casting a dazzling glow onto the still calm ocean, adding a brilliant illumination to the tragic scene of people thrashing desperately in the freezing water. Unable to comprehend what she was seeing, Maggie closed her eyes against the piercing cold.
With her eyes shut and her body numbed with the cold, her ears took on a heightened sense of awareness. Amid the perfect melody from the violinists who were still playing on the upper decks, she heard, with chilling clarity, the terrifying orchestra of a thousand people dying; heard the haunting shouts and screams of their terrified voices. She could bear it no longer, placing her hands over her ears and burying her head deep into her lap. She shivered uncontrollably, but she didn’t shed any tears. Her body and mind were shocked beyond the ability to weep.
*
Twenty minutes had passed since she’d left the ship. It felt like a lifetime.
They were further away from Titanic now, her bow having slipped deeper and deeper into the water until only the foremast was now visible.