Promise Me This (14 page)

A shrill whistle fired into the sky and another distress rocket flared.
Titanic
’s funnels belched steam through a hideous roar. Owen was shouting something only an arm’s length from Michael’s face, but in the noise and confusion Michael could not hear him.

A man in evening dress, glassy eyed and still parading a brandy, turned at Owen’s shouting and scolded, “What are you doing in first class?”

That brought the officer’s narrowed eye around.

A woman wrapped in a long fur coat and heavy muff slapped the drunkard. She said something, her expression high and haughty, but no one heard her words, for another long blast drowned her out.

The officer turned back to his duties.

The challenger tipped his hat and moved on.

When the man had disappeared into the crowd, Owen shouted, “God bless you, mum!”

“God bless and help us all,” the woman shouted back. “You had best get this boy in a boat!”

“My brother needs a savior tonight,” Owen replied. “He’s just a lad. Won’t you take him with you?”

“I’m not going. I am not married. I have no children.”

“You have now, mum.” And Owen clasped Michael’s hand in hers. The woman wavered, clearly taken aback.

“No!” Michael jerked away. “I’ll stay with you, Owen. We’ll wait and go together.”

“I’ll come later. It’s women and children only for now.” He turned again to the woman. “Please, mum.”

“I won’t go without you!” Michael shouted, as near hysterics as he had ever been.

Owen gripped Michael’s shoulders. “You must, Michael; you must. You’re the key to keeping our dream alive and dry now. I’ll join you as soon as I’m able. But if I must swim for a time, our roots and seeds will freeze and there will be nothing for us—nothing for Annie.”

“I won’t leave you!” Michael’s tears threatened, came very near escape.

“If we’re separated, you go to New Jersey, to Uncle Sean, and wait for me there. His address is in my journal, in my coat pocket.” Owen unbuttoned his greatcoat.

Michael’s head would not stop its vehement shaking. “No! I won’t take your coat! I won’t go, Owen! I won’t!”

Owen pulled his coat off and wrapped it round Michael, forcefully shoving Michael’s hands and arms through the sleeves, even as Michael fought him. He shook Michael, suddenly stern. “You promised me. You promised that you would not let me down and that you would do all in your power to protect and provide for Annie. I hold you to it!”

Michael’s head stopped moving. The mention of Annie’s name brought visions of Megan Marie. “You go instead of me, Owen. Annie needs you. She doesn’t need me.”

Owen buttoned his coat with its treasure-laden pockets around Michael. He fastened the life belt Michael had struggled against around the boy’s chest. The fight was gone. “They won’t let me go, not now. And I’ve got to find Lucy. I’ve got to make sure she’s in a lifeboat. Be a man, a brother I am proud of this night, Michael Dunnagan!” And then, softly, “I’m a strong swimmer. God bless you, Michael. Carry our dreams to safety.” He squared Michael’s shoulders. “What are we without our dreams?”

Michael could not refuse Owen, could not refuse the carrying of his friend’s dreams, could not deny his plea for Annie’s sake. He ignored the prickles taunting his eyes and threw his arms around Owen.

“Women and children? Are there any more women and children?” the officer called.

“Here! One here!” Owen cried, pushing Michael and the lady who had already rescued them once toward the lifeboat. The woman hesitated.

The officer stepped between them and the lifeboat. “Women and children only, please. This boy is not a child. He must stay. Step this way, madam.”

But the woman froze, staring at the officer as if she did not understand.

“Please, madam. Step this way quickly.”

The woman looked at Owen and Michael, then back at the officer. “He is just a child. He’s barely twelve.”

Michael grimaced at the lie.

“We can make no exceptions, madam.”

“These lifeboats are not full, Officer, and he is my only son!” she cried, and heads turned. “If you refuse my child, I’ll go down with this ship! And I will scream my way to the bottom of the ocean!”

“Madam, please—”

But the woman was as good as her word, and locking her arm with Michael’s, she began to scream at the top of her lungs. The officer abruptly passed both the woman in her heavy fur and Michael, bundled in Owen’s greatcoat, into the lifeboat, then gave the signal to lower away.

“No more boys!” the officer ordered. “Women and children. Women and children!”

Already swung from its davit, the lifeboat jerked awkwardly and repeatedly as it was lowered toward the inky sea.

“Tell Annie that I love her, that I pray for her,” Owen called to Michael.

“Owen, Owen.” Michael repeated his friend’s name, desperate to make the frenzy stop. But it did not stop, and the madness, the flaring rockets, the rollicking music, the disappearing lifeboats, the calm but stern judging over who lived and who died, who grasped at life and who sacrificed, who remained at their stations and who sought a means of escape, went on.

The sea was still, so flat that no swell came to lift the small boat.

“Pull clear!” The call rang from above.

But the boat tottered while a man at the tiller struggled to saw the ropes with his pocketknife, then to loose the oars’ lashings.

Water sloshed over Michael’s ankles as the oarsmen pushed from the ship’s side, then pulled away with all the strength they could command. Michael did not notice the water until later. He wanted only to see Owen’s face. But when the boat gained enough distance to view the deck, Owen was not there.

Michael knew that he’d gone in search of Lucy Snape, and he could only imagine Owen running, running back down the stairs, back along Scotland Road, back to wherever he believed Lucy might be.

But, Owen, Lucy is a stewardess! They won’t allow crew into the lifeboats when they’ve first- and second-class passengers waiting!

But Owen had fashioned a miracle for him. Michael determined to believe that he would find a way for Lucy, if a way could be found.

The temperature dropped sharply as the boat pulled away. Someone near the tiller kept shouting, “Row! Row!” Those stationed by the oars pulled clumsily through the glassy water. Another rocket burst the sky, dragging its sparkling white tail into the sea.

“Why doesn’t someone come?” a woman cried. “Can’t they see our rockets?”

But no ship came, and the precious minutes passed.

Michael looked around them. Boats, perhaps a dozen or so like theirs, were scattered across the water, and he thought again of a daring midnight picnic on the sea, made visible by a million heavenly lanterns, serenaded by ragtime music. “It isn’t real,” he whispered. “Let it not be real.”

Titanic
dipped her bow like a great whale preparing to submerge, her lines still lit by electric lights. Deck chairs, tables, all manner of things were thrown from the deck.

“Are they trying to lighten the load?” a woman asked, incredulous.

“Sending things out what can float, mum.”

“Rafts,” a voice echoed.

“We need more distance,” the voice at the tiller charged. “When she goes down, those boilers will blow and everything will be sucked in for miles. Row! Row!”

“No,” Michael whispered. And then, louder, “Don’t go so far! We’ll need to go back—we must get Owen!” But no one paid him any heed.

The orchestra changed its tune. No more ragtime. No more waltz. But a solemn piece swelled from the deck, a hymn, long and beautiful and plaintive. And though Michael did not know the name or the words, he sensed, young as he was, that all of life came down to this, and that perhaps there were no words.

The bow dipped lower. The stern began to lift. The giant forward funnel strained toward the sinking bow. When the funnel’s first guy wire snapped and then another, Michael jerked in response. He watched in horror as the massive black funnel tipped forward, slowly fell, and crashed into the sea, shattering the starboard bridge and every helpless swimmer in its path. Those left on deck raced uphill, toward the stern, pulling themselves up and along by railings and ropes, anything within their grasp.

And then there came a great clatter, a smashing and a growing, grinding noise, a terrible belching and hideous roar from the dying beast. “It’s the boilers and everything in her!” the doomsday man at the tiller cried. “Row!”

“It’s the end of everything,” the woman who had saved Michael whispered.

The bow disappeared beneath the water. It seemed the great ship broke in two and parted, one end from the other. The stern lifted, slowly at first, exposing
Titanic
’s black keel. She rose and rose until her giant propellers cleared the water and hung, poised and dripping, high in the air. She held for moments as hundreds—groping for a line, for a rail, for anything—fell, screaming, to their deaths. She hovered just long enough to breed false hope, settled back, blinked her lights once, and all was dark. Down she plunged, and all the people with her—like an elevator in a mine shaft—and the sea closed over her.

“Dear God!” a woman screamed.

“She’s gone,” a man whispered, then checked his watch in the light of a torch. “2:20.”

The suction predicted by the man at the tiller did not reach Michael’s boat. But the piercing screams, the heartrending, desperate cries and prayers begging for help and salvation from over a thousand people futilely beating the waves—the swimmers and those who could not swim—rent the night.

“Row back!” Michael screamed. “Row back and pick them up!”

But the man at the tiller stared, and the oarsmen, leaning on their oars, stared, stunned, at the place where the ship had been. Desperate, Michael climbed over the woman in front of him to get to an oar.

“Sit down, boy!” An oarsman shoved him back.

“Row back!” Michael begged, trying to regain his balance. He shook the lady who had helped him. “Make them row back!”

She whispered, her voice shaking, “For God’s sake, can’t you hear them? Row back! We’ve room for more.”

“Shut up!” the man at the tiller hissed. And then louder, before anyone spoke again, “We’d be swamped. Do you want to drown, woman?”

“It ain’t safe. They’ll be clambering aboard and we’d capsize. We’ll all drown!” a gruff voice echoed.

“We must try!” another pleaded.

“We can’t help them and save ourselves too. They’d capsize us.”

The arguing went back and forth, as absurd as dickering for peaches on market day, but no one moved.

And still, from the vast emptiness where
Titanic
had been, the begging, the screaming, the dying, went on. Michael could not have said if twenty minutes or twenty years passed as they all waited, waited, and did nothing.

“Go back now,” Michael begged again, more quietly. “Please. Go back for Owen.” But no one seemed to hear.

“We should go back,” another woman said, this time without conviction. No one responded. And no one challenged the silence, not even Michael.

Minutes passed. Gradually the screams thinned—not so many, not so shrill. A whistle blasted from a lifeboat far away. It blasted and blasted, and from the feeble light of a lantern that shone in one of the boats, Michael could see that two or perhaps three boats pulled and tied together. Apparitions climbed from one boat to another.

Finally a lone boat rowed back toward the place where the great ship had been swallowed. Michael’s eyes clung desperately to the lamp in the rescue boat. He hoped and prayed before realizing that the cries in the sea had died out completely.

“Owen,” Michael whispered. Again and again he repeated his friend’s name. “Owen . . .”

“Hush now,” chided the woman beside Michael, the woman who had saved him.

And then, after long minutes, long minutes of mournful, shameful silence, a woman near the stern began talking of the fine grand piano in one of the saloons, of the mahogany writing desks and all that lovely, barely used china, smashed. “What a pity,” she lamented. No one answered her.

Michael tried to comprehend what the woman had said. He cocked his head, but as he grasped her words, his breath came hard. He spun round in the small space, groped for the seat behind him, ready to scramble roughshod over every passenger between him and the woman. He would punch her in her stupid mouth, he would shout in her stupid face and rip her foolish hat from her foolish head and throw it into the sea. And then he would make the oarsmen row back until they’d turned every life belt, propped like pillows, round, until they found Owen—the thing he should have done in the first place.

But the woman beside Michael grabbed him by his waist and jerked him, tumbling, back into his seat. She forced him round and clasped his hands firmly between hers, then shoved them with an iron grip into the muff she’d cast aside, locking them away from the bitter cold, away from every temptation.

Hot tears Michael had never shed—not for his mam or da, not for sweet Megan Marie—coursed over his cheeks. He prayed that Owen had not been hit by the “fine grand piano” or cut by the “lovely smashed china.” He begged again that somehow Owen had found Lucy and gotten them both, miraculously, into a lifeboat. From his cold plank seat in the lifeboat, a pinprick on the dark sea, Michael vowed outrageous oaths, if only Owen might live.

The minutes wore on. A woman cried that she spied a ship in the distance. Even the brooding man at the tiller shouted that he saw the light of a masthead and commanded that they “Pull for the light!”

They pulled and pulled, but there was no masthead, no ship, and at length the light disappeared. Someone ordered they turn back to be nearer the other lifeboats, seeking whatever safety numbers might provide.

Michael breathed, relieved, and then gasped, ashamed that he counted his own life dear. He took his turn at the oars and found that it warmed him. The mindless rhythm of the strokes helped numb his brain.

Shooting stars broke the endless night and bitter cold. Michael’s head and throat ached as he alternately shivered and sweated. His feet and legs tingled, then grew numb.