‘
Grab hold,’ he shouted to the women in the boat. ‘Grab hold and pull. We need to get further away.’
Slowly, with the help of several of the stunned and freezing passengers, lifeboat sixteen, the last to leave Titanic, moved further and further away from the ship, the distress flares still being sent up into the clear, black sky, adding a marvellous red aura to the millions of stars shining down helplessly upon the dreadful events unfolding on the ocean below.
Amid the panic and terror, it occurred to Harry that this must be the most tragic firework display ever seen and his thoughts turned fleetingly to crisp November nights when, as a young boy, he had watched the few rockets his father could afford, shooting up into the night sky and exploding into a dazzling display of colour. His sister Sally always cried with fright at the bangs and cracks but he loved it. He thought it was beautiful and wonderful.
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, 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, a rising sense of panic, dread and anger now surging through his body, producing a strength he didn’t know he was capable of as 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.
Maggie opened her eyes and watched as the stern of the ship soared higher and higher above the water, the massive propellers looming out of the blackness. Despite their distance, the cacophony of terror was still audible to her frozen ears.
Listening to the horrifying screams and the chilling crunching and grinding of metal, Maggie retreated into herself. The faces of those she had encountered on this journey flashed across her mind as if in a movie reel; the boiler man hiding among the mailbags at Queenstown, the girl with the rash who was so broken-hearted to be turned away at the health inspection line, the Priest with the camera who’d spoken to her as he left the ship at Queenstown. She had thought it a shame at the time that these people wouldn’t share the experience of sailing across the Atlantic on this breath-taking ship. It would seem that God had a mind for those people and had spared them, as he had spared her.
Unable to find a way to respond to what was happening, she wondered about the lady travelling on her own with the seven children, about Elsie and her family travelling from Wiltshire, the honeymooning couples they had met, the little boy she had watched play with the spinning top, the Marconi boy who Harry had asked to send her message, the ladies she had watched taking afternoon tea in their fine silk dresses. She saw every one of their faces in her mind now and wondered what their fate was; wondered whether they were out here on the sea with her, or screaming in terror on the sinking ship. She could not even begin to think about those she had travelled with; those she knew as family, her aunts and cousins, the friends she regarded as brothers and sisters of her own, even though they were not. She tried desperately to block their panic-stricken faces from her numbed mind and rocked back and forth, cradling her shivering knees.
‘
Good Lord,’ one woman gasped, as a dreadful rumbling roar came from the ship, the majestic funnels ripping from their fixtures and crashing into the decks, and all who stood on them, below. ‘May God have mercy on their souls.’
Another woman led the group in prayer as the scraping and crunching of steel filled the air around them and the brilliant lights of Titanic finally flickered and went out.
Despite the enveloping blackness, the remaining bulk of Titanic was still visible as an eerie silhouette against the starlit sky, and for a few, brief moments the stern reared up, perfectly perpendicular, before plunging with a peculiar gracefulness into the icy waters.
‘
She’s gone,’ somebody said. ‘God bless us and save us all. She’s gone.’
Maggie felt strangely calm. It was as if she were in someone’s dream, almost unable to believe that this was actually happening to her; unable to believe that she had just seen Titanic slip into the sea.
The bitter cold of the Atlantic night quickly seeped through her body, her uncontrollable shaking was almost the only sensation she was conscious of.
The night engulfed them. Time seemed endless.
With the lights from Titanic gone, they were plunged into total darkness. For a while, the frantic thrashing of a thousand people in the water and their desperate cries for help continued, but eventually they faded and stopped.
Silence.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, Maggie saw blurred images of icebergs around her, vaguely aware of the ominous creaking coming from them. She had waking dreams that the ice was alive, silently, menacingly creeping towards their tiny lifeboat, ready to consume it and all who sat in it. She screamed aloud in terror. A man placed his arm around her.
Images flashed across her salt-filled eyes; other lifeboats bobbing around in the water, frozen bodies, blue faces.
Sensations came and went; someone helping her off with her own, thin coat which was soaked from the water she and Peggy had splashed through on the way back from their cabin the final time.
‘
I have two coats,’ she heard a well-spoken American lady say. ‘Take this one. It will keep you warmer.’ She had a sensation then of a heavy, dry coat being placed around her. She heard a dog bark next to her and the same lady shushing it. ‘Quiet Edmund. We can give the girl a coat can’t we?
She tried to say thank you, but no words would come from her mouth.
She heard people talking about paper to burn for light so the rescue ships would be able to see them; heard them searching in their pockets or in the cases they had managed to bring with them, looking for letters, or other scraps of paper. For some reason she thought she had some letters in her coat pocket, but her hands couldn’t feel them. She assumed she must have dreamt it.
Babies crying, mothers comforting them, women comforting the mothers and wives who wailed for their husbands and sons who had been left behind.
The pale light of dawn streaking across the sky.
She closed her eyes.
Time stood still. There was nothing.
‘
I’m so cold,’ someone said.
The sound of prayers and sobbing.
It was hard to breathe.
Another voice. ‘A ship.’
She was being lifted then, pulled. Her frozen hands tried to grasp a rope. A ladder? Was she back on Titanic? Was it a dream?
Her body wouldn’t move. She had no idea where she was. Where was her aunt Kathleen? Where was everyone?
‘
Maggie,’ someone said. ‘Her name is Maggie Murphy. From Ireland. She had this small case with her.’
A bitter taste in her mouth. Hot coffee? Then brandy. Coughing. Spluttering.
She tried to open her eyes, but they were too sore from the salt and the cold.
She tried to speak.
‘
I can’t see. Am I blind?’
The words came out as an indecipherable mumble.
‘
It’s OK Maggie,’ someone replied. ‘You’re on the Carpathia. It came to rescue us. You’re going to be OK. You’re safe now.’
A blanket was wrapped around her. She let the tears fall.
For the next few days, Maggie barely noticed the sunset or sunrise; barely acknowledged the faint shafts of early morning light which reflected off a piece of metal through the window in front of her, sending light dancing across the deck. She stared dimly ahead, the sun almost irrelevant to her, unable to warm her, unable to illuminate the shadows of thirteen people which clouded her broken heart.
‘
Where am I?’ she asked the person lying next to her.
‘
The library,’ they replied. ‘There wasn’t room for us all in the cabins and those of us who were last to be rescued were placed in makeshift dorms, like this one.’
‘
Which ship are we on?’ she enquired, still confused.
‘
The Carpathia. They came to rescue us. Remember?’
She didn’t.
It wasn’t until the third day on the Carpathia that she found enough strength to sit on the deck. Still shaking under her blankets, a kind man with blue eyes, who said he was the doctor, told her that she wasn’t cold anymore but the shock of what she had been through had her nerves bouncing around all over the place. She was unable to cry any more tears. All she could feel was fear and a desolate loneliness.
At the doctor’s advice, she tried to think of comforting thoughts, thoughts of home. She thought of Séamus, picturing his soft eyes, hearing his gentle voice, feeling his warm embrace. She recalled their first, tender kiss on the shore of the lake and how her stomach had felt it was doing cartwheels with the joy she felt.
She reflected on the journey she had taken from Ballysheen, almost able to hear the rumble of the carts as they’d set off before a sort of stillness had fallen over them as the rutted tracks gave way to the softer sandy road at the edge of the village.
She remembered how she’d watched the three carts ahead of the one she shared with her aunt and how she had wondered what thoughts were passing through everyone’s minds as they moved slowly through the landscape that had framed all of their lives. She had watched Peggy, in the cart ahead, speaking some words of comfort to Katie who was twisting a sodden handkerchief around and around her fingers.