Authors: Irene Carr
‘
A friend?’ Liza peered at the ship, very like the
Wear
Lass
, a mile or so ahead of them. ‘She’s the
Frances
Hopkinson
,’ William explained. ‘You’ll remember we followed her into the Thames. She’s making better time than us but Jock McAvoy was always a driver. She’s homeward bound, too — I expect his wife wants to get back to Newcastle.’
Homeward bound. That applied to her, Liza thought. Just over a week to go and she would be with Kitty and Susan. She was looking forward to that, yearning for it. But at the same time
...
Ferguson, the first mate, came on to the bridge then, in jacket and thick jersey, ginger hair cropped short under his cap.
‘Here’s my relief,’ William said. He handed over the watch to the other man and turned to Liza. ‘Breakfast?’
They ate together, serve
d by Archie Godolphin, who somehow managed hot plates and the coffee-pot despite the ship’s pitching and rolling. ‘If it gets any worse it’ll be cold grub because I won’t be able to keep pans on the stove,’ he warned.
William nodded.
‘Sandwiches and tea. I don’t think it’s going to improve today.’ He went off to his cabin to deal with some paperwork.
Archie jerked a thumb at Liza
’s empty plate. ‘You’re enjoying this voyage more than your last, I’m glad to see.’ Liza smiled at him. ‘I am.’
‘
As I said afore, it’s a pleasure to have you aboard, Miss. To tell you the truth, I took a liking to you the first time I saw you, when we picked you up, you and that other lass. In fact, I thought she was the young lady, with her hoity-toity ways.’
Liza kept her smile in place. Suppose he had aired his
opinion in front of William and started people questioning whether she was Cecily Spencer? ‘Really?’
‘
Just at first,’ he said awkwardly. ‘But I soon saw who was the real lady.’
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Cecily, Liza thought. But she took this as a warning that she could not lower her guard even with only a week to go. She was grateful to Archie. She got up and kissed his cheek, then skipped out of the saloon.
That day Liza read in her cabin, spent more time on the bridge, lunched. The sea, if anything, was rougher now, under a leaden sky, but the
Wear
Lass
steamed steadily northward. In the late afternoon she was off Skegness on the Lincolnshire coast and Liza sat in the saloon, drinking tea. She had to hold the mug to keep it on the table as the ship rose, fell and rolled, but she was relaxed after two days of worry and hunting criminals, at peace with the world.
Then the ship
’s siren blared above her, deafening, and she ran to the bridge.
FRIDAY, 8 FEBRUARY 1907, AT SEA
As Liza stepped up off the ladder on to the bridge gratings the siren blared again. She clapped her hands over her ears, and removed them only when the teeth-jarring wailing stopped. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked then.
William turned from where he stood with Ferguson by the helmsman.
‘Jock McAvoy is stopped and flying NC, the signal for a vessel in distress. We used our siren to show we’d seen it.’ Liza saw the
Frances
Hopkinson
ahead. The signal flags, splashes of colour, were flying from her yardarm. There were figures on the wing of her bridge, peering back at the
Wear
Lass
. In the distance Liza could see land.
William saw the direction of her gaze and said quietly,
‘Without engines the wind and tide will set her ashore and she’ll break up. We’ve got to haul her off — we’re the only other ship in sight.’
The beat of the engines slowed until the ship was moving at only walking pace. They were passing the
Frances
Hopkinson
close with only fifty yards or so of foaming grey water between them. William had a tin megaphone in his hand now. ‘There’s Jock,’ he said. He lifted the megaphone and bawled into it: ‘Hello, Jock! You’re wanting assistance?’
Captain McAvoy also had a megaphone and his answer came back tinnily over the narrow strip of churned sea.
‘Aye, I do!’
‘
I’ll throw you a line.’
But Jock had not finished:
‘I’m wanting a tow to Newcastle. The missus fell down the companion a half-hour back. She says the bairn’s on the way and she wants to get home to her mother. Ye wouldn’t have a doctor on board?’
Archie, come from his galley out of curiosity and standing just below the bridge, said,
‘A doctor? What does he think we are? A White Star liner?’
‘
Shut up!’ William snapped. ‘Poor old Jock,’ he muttered, ‘and his wife. This is her first. She must be in a state.’
Liza could believe it: having her first child with no help except from ignorant, heavy-handed sailors! She stared at the sea heaving between the two ships, imagined a boat crossing that neck of water and bouncing like a cork, imagined the things that might go wrong with the birth. Suppose it was me? She gulped, then said in a small voice,
‘I’ll go.’
‘
What
?’
‘
I said, I’ll go over to help Mrs McAvoy.’
He struggled with this.
‘Do you mean you know about —these things?’ At that time young ladies were left in ignorance of childbirth.
Liza helped him:
‘I’m not a midwife but I know a little about it.’ She had picked up quite a lot from all those times she had gone to confinements with her mother and Jinnie —and giving birth to Susan. ‘I’ll be better than no one at all.’ She hoped that would prove true.
‘
I’ll be damned,’ William said, but he looked at her with respect. ‘We won’t need that heaving line to pass a towing hawser.’ Then he shouted to Archie, ‘Fetch Mr Ferguson and call all hands. We’re going to lower a boat.’ And through the megaphone: ‘We haven’t a doctor, but I’m sending you a boat with a line and a young lady who will care for Mrs McAvoy.’
Ten minutes later the boat was in the water with two seamen
at the oars. They fended off the cockleshell from the steel wall of the ship’s side as they rose and fell. Liza sat in the sternsheets, in oilskins again, already glistening with the salt spray, and in a cork lifejacket. She held tight to the side of the boat as it soared level with the ship’s deck. Then the wave passed under and it dropped like a stone, leaving her stomach behind. She swallowed as the boat lifted under her again, then the seamen thrust it out from the ship’s side, the oars bit into the sea and they were heading for the
Frances
Hopkinson
. They towed behind them, like an umbilical cord, a line being paid out from the
Wear
Lass
.
The boat bounced like a cork, but with the two sailors heaving at the oars it had soon crossed the narrow neck of water and was swinging in to the side of the
Frances
Hopkinson
. Liza saw the Jacob’s ladder dangling down the ship’s side, swallowed again but was ready: she had been through this before in the North Sea only three weeks ago. It seemed much longer than that.
A rope hung beside the ladder. She grabbed it and looped it round her waist, made it fast, and then she was on the ladder, climbing. She knew she was showing an immodest amount of her calves and ankles but did not care. It was not for long. The sailors on the deck above her hauled on the rope, pulling her up the ladder quickly. Then they were lifting her over the bulwark, setting her on her feet, and hauling in the line from the
Wear
Lass
.
‘
I’m pleased to see you, Miss.’ Jock McAvoy had come down from his bridge to receive her. He was thirty or so, sandy-haired, not as tall as William but still looked down at Liza. ‘I’ll take you to see my wife.’ He led her to his cabin in the superstructure. ‘I was wanting her to stay at home for this voyage but she was all for coming and she’s kept very well all along — until she had this fall.’ He turned to look at Liza, a worried man. ‘She’s afeared she’ll lose the bairn. I’m afeared I’ll lose
her
.’
Liza decided he needed reassurance.
‘I’ve known women who had a fall bring on the birth and mother and child were fine.’ It was true.
Apparently Jock took heart from this.
‘Is that so?’
‘
It is,’ Liza told him.
He paused at the cabin door.
‘That’s good to know. Thank you, Miss ... ?’
‘
Cecily Spencer,’ Liza supplied.
He opened the door, ushered her in and announced,
‘Here y’are, Bridget. Miss Cecily Spencer has come over from the
Wear
Lass
to help you, so you can stop worrying now.’
Liza saw that Bridget McAvoy was scarcely older than herself, a tall blonde girl in the narrow bunk, on top of the covers, not under them. She looked frightened. Her hair had come down and hung lank about her shoulders. She still wore her day clothes, a brown dress over white petticoats.
‘You’re taking me home to my mam?’ she quavered.
‘
Aye, sure I am,’ Jock said stoutly. ‘We’re getting a tow from Bill Morgan. Ye ken him, the big lad. They’re hauling in the hawser now and I should be up there.’ He blew her a kiss from where he stood in the doorway, then he was gone.
Bridget smiled tremulously.
‘Bless the man. He’s nearly as frightened as I am.’ Then she dissolved into tears. ‘I’m so glad to see you.’
‘
It doesn’t sound like it,’ Liza joked. She divested herself of lifejacket and oilskins, kissed Bridget and said brightly, ‘Now, let’s get those clothes off you, pop you into a nightie and make you a bit more comfortable.’ That was done with difficulty because of the ship’s rolling and pitching, but finally Bridget was back in the bunk. Then Liza examined her. ‘Seems all right.’ She covered the girl. ‘I’m just going out for a few minutes.’
‘
Don’t be long,’ pleaded Bridget.
‘
I won’t.’
Liza went out on deck, seeking the galley. Night was falling over the huge, humping seas. The wind was gale force, whipping foam from the crests of the waves. She could see the men above her on the open bridge, and beyond the bow the shadowy outline of the
Wear
Lass
, a ghost ship in the darkness. The big towing hawser stretched out to her from the
Frances
Hopkinson
in a shallow curve. Liza watched the
Wear
Lass
longingly for a few seconds: the battered tramp steamer represented home and William would be on her bridge.
When she found the galley she told the cook,
‘I want a clean bucket full of hot water, please. Bring it down to the captain’s cabin.’
‘
Right y’ are, Miss.’
Liza returned to Bridget. She brushed the girl
’s hair, and when the hot water came she washed her face. ‘Does that feel better?’
Bridget nodded and her hand stole out to grip Liza
’s.
They went through the night together as the ships steamed steadily northward. With the first grey light the
Frances
Hopkinson
had a different motion. The steadiness of when she had been under tow had gone and she lay powerless, tossed on the sea.
Liza placed Bridget
’s child in her arms and went out on deck and up to the bridge. Despite the motion of the ship she thought the gale had moderated.
Jock McAvoy was haggard in the dawn.
‘You have a fine son,’ Liza told him.
A grin spread across his face.
‘By, bonny lass, that’s grand news.’ He wrapped his arms about her and kissed her.
A moment later Liza eased away from him.
‘The tow has gone,’ she said, dismayed. It no longer stretched between the two ships. She could see where one end hung from the stern of the
Wear
Lass
and trailed in the sea, but that was all.
‘
Aye,’ said Jock. ‘It parted a few minutes back. Bill said he’d throw a heaving line. And there he is.’
Liza made out William
’s tall figure among the other men now gathered in the stern of the
Wear
Lass
. The ship was moving slowly astern, closing the gap between her and the
Frances
Hopkinson
. She saw he had stripped down to his shirt, the better to throw; it was plastered to his broad chest by the rain. Liza waved to him, and he waved back. She found she was smiling. He poised as the gap closed, then threw. The weight soared over the gap, the light line snaking out behind it, and fell in the bow of the
Frances
Hopkinson
, to be seized by a sailor waiting there.
William hastened back to the bridge. Liza would have liked to watch the new towing hawser hauled in and made fast, but she was cold and wet. Besides, she had a duty. She went to the galley, asked the cook for two mugs of tea, then carried them to the captain
’s cabin. The baby was sleeping, but Bridget reluctantly released him. Liza tucked him into the captain’s bunk and whispered, ‘There you are, bonny lad, your daddy won’t mind.’ She gave one mug of tea to Bridget and sat down with the other.