Promise Me This (13 page)

Michael’s throat tightened. He pulled a life belt from the top of the cupboard and set it at the Swede’s feet, then sat on Owen’s bunk to wait. Still the Swede snored, but Michael, nearly afraid to breathe, did not go near him.

It seemed an hour before Owen pushed open the door, took the second life belt from the cupboard, and threw it toward Michael. “Put that on,” he ordered, grabbing the life belt at the Swede’s feet. He jostled the man’s beefy hands, his shoulders. “Wake up. Wake up, man.”

But the big man snorted, groaned, and rolled over, waving him away.

Owen grimaced and shook the man roughly. “For God’s sake, man, get your life belt on and get above deck!” He threw the man’s jacket across his chest, jerked him up by his shoulders, and pointed toward the door. But the Swede, bleary eyed and still the worse for drink, made sounds of foreign swearing. He hauled back his fist and swung, grazing Owen’s jaw and opening his lip.

Michael, numbed through, did not react to Owen’s split lip but asked, almost idly, “Why does the lamp cord hang askew like that?”

Owen swiped blood from his lip. “She’s beginning to list.”

Michael shook his head. He knew such a ship should not list. It was as though his body understood that a nightmare brewed, but his brain refused to listen.

Owen pushed wide the cabin door.

Michael watched as anxious men and women gathered and filled the white enameled hallway, holding sleepy small children towing stocking dolls and blankets, and some with babes swaddled in shawls across their chests. They mingled, some half-dressed in nightgowns, others in thin or woolen wrappers or layers of day clothes, coats upon greatcoats.

Michael stood with great effort and stared as if from a distance. He might have laughed at the odd combination of worn brogans at the end of hairy legs peeking from nightshirts. He might have chuckled at the congregation of woolen and flannel sleeping caps pulled low over ears if not for the frantic current that sped through their owners’ speech. Mixtures of English and Gaelic, of French and of languages Michael did not know filled the shrinking air. He could not understand their questions, their prattle, but fear and confusion communicated clearly in every language.

“Gather your wits, Michael!” Owen had layered his warmest clothing and was trying to tie something round Michael.

Michael looked down to see life belt straps bandaged across his chest—the same canvas-covered life belts that armored the huddled mass of men, women, and children outside their door. The fog in his brain thinned. He tugged, ripping at the life belt even as Owen tied him in. But Owen’s strength of purpose was no match for Michael’s fury.

“I’ll not wear your life belt! I won’t, Owen!” Michael pulled free of his friend and jerked the belt over his head, shoving it back into Owen’s chest.

“You must, Michael!” Owen stood close and spoke low. “
Titanic
’s hit a berg. I stopped alongside a crewmen’s stairway and overheard two officers. She’s making water fast. The mail hold is already awash. They’ve moved the mail higher, but it’s no good. The water keeps coming. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

Michael shook his head as though the shaking could stop time.
No, not now—not this!

“They’re calling for women and children above deck. They’re loading first class into lifeboats now. Women and children only, Michael!”

Owen pulled Michael by the sleeve, and Michael let himself be threaded through the crowd of third-class passengers until they reached the nearest stairwell. But the stairs were packed and blocked by something or someone ahead that Michael could not see.

“What is it?” Owen grabbed the shoulder of the man ahead of them. “What is the holdup?”

But the man shook his head at Owen and repeated again and again, “No Engleesh. No Engleesh.”

“They won’t let us through!” an Irishman behind Michael shouted to those still crowding the passageway behind him. “Is it locked? Is the gate locked?” he demanded.

“I can’t see,” Owen shouted. “We can’t stand here waiting.” He turned Michael round, then pushed past him. “Come!”

Michael followed as Owen elbowed and plowed their way back through the thickening crowd. By the time they reached their cabin corridor, water had begun to puddle round their feet as if someone had overflowed a bath.

“He’s gone,” Michael said of the Swede as they passed their cabin door. But Owen did not pause, and Michael, the fog in his head finally gone, trailed his friend through a maze of corridors.

But they could not outrun the freezing water. The icy puddle had grown to a rising creek and seeped through the soles of their shoes. They reached the general room from an angle new to Michael. Steerage passengers by the dozens clustered anxiously, apparently waiting for direction; they huddled, talking, kneeling, praying through rosaries.

Owen dragged Michael on, twisting and turning through corridors until they reached another stairwell, then shoved him up the stairs. They were nearly to the top when they saw a lock upon the gate. Owen groaned but Michael gasped. “A key! There’s a key!”

“Thank You, Lord Jesus!” Owen whispered. And then louder, “God is with us, Michael.”

Michael twisted the key in its lock, hoping with all his heart that God was with Owen. He trusted God for Owen’s sake, though not for his own. And he trusted in the giant ship herself. “
Titanic
cannot sink. She was the talk of Belfast—they built her unsinkable.”

Owen snorted. “She is wood and metal, Michael. She can surely sink. Hurry now!”

They climbed to the next landing and the next before coming upon another locked gate. This time there was no key, no crowd, and no steward.

“There’s got to be another way. Think,” Owen ordered. “When we delivered the flowers and palms, which way did we come to reach this deck?”

Michael knew. Not from their delivery of Bealing’s flowers and palms but from the night he spent dodging crewmen when he’d stowed away from Belfast to Southampton. “This way.” Michael, sure of his route, dashed through a labyrinth of corridors and wound up stairways. Owen matched him step for step.

They raced the length of the broad hallway along E deck, the crew’s quick route from one end of the ship to the other.
Scotland Road,
Michael remembered.
They call this Scotland Road.

Their pounding boots formed a rhythm. They whipped round a corner, nearly colliding with the back of a steward withdrawing his key from a cabin door. A knocking sound startled all three, and a woman’s shrill scream from inside. “Let me out! Do not lock me in!”

The flustered steward fumbled his keys, dropped them, retrieved the ring, and set to unlocking the door. “I’m sorry, miss—terribly sorry. I thought this floor was empty. My orders are to lock everything—a safeguard against looting.”

The pale young woman did not speak but threw a heavy cloak over her shoulders and flew past him.

Michael felt Owen’s jab to his arm, and the two of them shadowed the woman up the stairs. But something was the matter with the stairs. Michael’s feet did not fall where he placed them and he wondered if that was what it was like to be drunk—only it was the ship that swayed and not him. He steadied himself against the railing.

Michael smelled the sea before he saw it. As he stepped on deck, the frigid night air pierced his trousers and jacket as though he wore nothing at all.

The night sky, alive with millions of stars, close enough to touch, suddenly exploded. Rockets burst into white flame, trailing long and sparkling tails into the black sea below. Michael knew they signaled distress—he’d heard seamen talk of such—but they looked to him like the kind he’d seen burst over Belfast at the new year.
Rockets should signal celebration,
he thought,
and not the end of the world.

“I don’t want to go into the boat without Papa!” a small tousle-headed boy shrieked and made every attempt to squirm from his mother’s arms. But the man—his father, Michael thought—pushed him back toward his mother. Tearfully, she pulled the child close. “Why can’t Papa come now?” the child whined.

But the proper British officer standing near the lifeboat was firm. “Women and children only. Women and children. Sir, you must step back.”

Michael watched as the officer took the boy, now screaming mightily for his father, and handed him again to the mother once she had stepped into the lifeboat.

Michael heard the father’s feeble assurance. “I shall see you in the morning, Robbie. Be good for Mother. It’s just a precaution. You will go for a little ride, and then we shall all be together in the morning.”

Had he not known what was happening, he would have imagined they were all waiting for a train. But Michael knew it was a train that only some would catch that night. It reminded him of the night after Mam and Da’s burial, the night the village midwife—the lusty woman who’d delivered him and most of their village into this world—stood on the platform, waving him and Megan Marie off in the pouring rain, keening all the while.

Little Megan Marie had keened back. She had pounded the window of the train with her tiny fist and wailed for all the fear of what lay ahead, for the loss of all that was known, and for knowing, just as Michael did, that their parents were locked in boxes in the cold ground. How would they ever find them?

Michael had looked, he knew, just as that father on the deck. No amount of crying would bring their parents back. So Michael had not cried. And neither did the tousle-headed boy’s father. He simply stepped back and raised his hand in farewell.

Michael could tell by the long fur coats and formal evening dress of those nearby that most of the passengers boarding lifeboats came from first class. He cringed in the face of spasms of anguish and tears but could not look upon the strong, stoic faces of the men who stayed behind—their jaws set firmly in place.

And all the while music played—jaunty ragtime airs that Michael knew had to be coming from the ship’s orchestra, though he could not see them. Somehow it kept the general calm, and even though he knew better, he could almost believe things would come right after all. Why else would the band still play?

In the glow of the ship’s electric lights, Michael could see a collection of lifeboats already spread across the glassy sea as though a few adventurous souls had decided to take a holiday row in the dark, perhaps to enjoy
Titanic
’s electric lights and music from afar. Michael pushed his imagination to the limits, if only to shut out what might lie ahead.

Owen stepped aside and spoke to an officer. Michael momentarily forgot his certainty that the Almighty despised him and prayed that the officer might let Owen aboard, perhaps let him row one of the boats.
He’s strong from all his years of gardening; he’ll make a strong rower. He’s a good man, Sweet Jesus. Let them take him.
It was the best Michael knew to pray, but any attention he brought from the Almighty, he suddenly feared, might not be in Owen’s favor.
For his sake and Miss Annie’s, Sweet Jesus—not mine.

“I won’t leave without my husband!” a young woman shrieked. “We’ve only just married. You must let him come!”

“Ruth, you must go. I’ll join you as soon as I can. Do it. Go on—be brave . . . for me,” the man pleaded, then kissed her long and warmly, leading her all the while, as in a dance, toward an opening in the railing, toward a lifeboat.

How can they part from one another? But how can they refuse to part—to give up their chance of escape?
And then,
I’ll never kiss a woman. I’ll die never having kissed so much as a lass.

An older woman, a raised voice Michael recognized as cultured and perhaps American, insisted, “No! I’ll not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die. Together.” Her silvering hair shone softly in the electric lights as she stepped away from the small boats.

Though no longer young, she was beautiful, holding tightly to her husband, refusing the officer. Who was she? Michael fancied such a woman might be royalty. Weaving through the crowd, he leaned closer to her, thinking he would like to touch a queen, once, at this, the end of his life.

“I think, with respect to your years, Mr. Straus, that no one will object if you accompany your wife,” the officer said quietly.

But the bewhiskered gentleman raised his chin and straightened his spine, despite his wife’s hold on his arm. “Not while there are others. I do not wish any distinction in my favor which is not granted to others.”

The officer spoke again, but the two turned away. The beautiful lady smiled into her husband’s eyes and pulled his scarf snug about his neck. He stroked her lined cheek.

“We are old people, Isidor,” she said, “and we will die together.”

A chill swept through Michael’s bones and he turned away, knowing he had glimpsed an intimacy too personal. Still, mesmerized, he peeked again and watched as the couple walked back to a glassed-in part of the deck, watched as they sat, side by side, in steamer chairs. He watched them watch as the world fell apart around them, as though sitting down aboard a sinking ship was something they had done before. And he wondered if he could make his heart so calm as they appeared.