Unsinkable Page 4

  Paddy felt the drawing beneath his shirt. All he had of Daniel — and all he would ever have. He had examined the diagram, which seemed to show the Titanic with a thick jagged stripe down the length of her hull. Paddy wasn’t sure how this was supposed to sink the unsinkable. It didn’t matter. Daniel was dead. And besides, Mr. Andrews had built the mightiest ship in creation. No accident, no storm, no force of nature could destroy this floating wonderland.

  The sheer length of her equaled the distance from their print shop to the River Lagan. The luxury, the modern inventions, would cause the swankiest toff in Belfast to open up wide eyes. The lights ran with real electricity, and there were electric elevators in case you were too rich to walk up the stairs. There was something called a Marconi room, where wireless messages could be sent to other ships and even all the way to shore. There was a heated swimming bath, a squash court, and a Turkish steam room where you could go and sweat — although why anyone would want to do that was beyond Paddy.

  For the past few days, he had explored the great ship from prow to stern, making a mental note of every hatch, closet, nook, and cranny that might serve as a hiding place, should the need arise. Everywhere he looked, there was something dazzling. The two grand staircases were massive, solid wood, intricately carved, each topped with a spectacular stained-glass dome. It was like being in church just walking up the stairs. The first-class dining saloon was so huge, so fancy, and so gorgeous, Paddy couldn’t imagine anyone being able to think about food. Given a choice, the Pope himself would abandon the Vatican in favor of going back and forth between England and America aboard the Titanic.

  The experience of being on board was so exhilarating, Paddy would have agreed to live there forever. But he knew the Titanic would not remain so empty and free much longer. Already he was noticing more luggage and cargo, and there was definitely an increase of activity on the ship. No longer could he sneak up on deck and peer curiously at England, the country he’d heard so much about but had never dreamed he’d actually see. And even in the vessel’s belly, he’d been hearing footsteps and had been forced to take sudden refuge in some of his hiding places. There was no way he could allow himself to be spotted. His ragged clothes would give away the fact that he did not belong in such opulent surroundings.

  That was a problem. When the ship was full, he was going to have to be able to fit in. In this way, life aboard the Titanic was no different from his old life on the streets of Belfast. What he needed, he had to steal.

  The laundry on F Deck was enormous, with dozens of cauldrons that would soon be boiling with soapy water. Paddy looked around. The drying racks were bare, and there was nothing in the hampers. There would be no laundering to do until the passengers and the sailing crew were aboard. He frowned in frustration. Where could a fellow outfit himself in this place?

  He was about to leave when he spied a small door in the corner of the compartment. It was not like the wood-paneled entrances in the swankier parts of the ship. This was more like the hatches on the steerage cabins — the lowest class of service on board. He ventured over to investigate. An unfastened padlock hung from the hasp.

  Gingerly, he eased the door open and peered inside. The room was filled with crew uniforms, black and bleached white, hanging from a series of racks. He chose a heavy cable-knit sweater bearing the crest of the White Star Line, but abandoned it in favor of a black half coat. Perfect. He’d look a proper sailor in this monkey jacket.

  He selected the smallest size — a luxury in itself, that. Beggars had to take whatever castoffs they could find. He peeled off his battered coat and the shirt underneath, which was little more than a rag and smelled none too fresh. He kicked out of his hobnail boots and ruefully noticed his toes poking out of sweaty stockings. His breeches were next — torn, muddy, and too tight. He would not miss those.

  As soon as the starched uniform shirt touched his skin, Paddy became aware of a warmth that had nothing to do with the temperature. So this was how rich people felt all the time. Clean, comfortable — a little stiff, perhaps, especially the collar. But it was going to be easy to get used to. He stepped into the trousers and shrugged the black vest and jacket over this gleaming shirt. He caught sight of his reflection in the pier glass and had to fight down the instinct to flee from this stranger in the room.

  Lord Almighty, if only Daniel could see me here, looking like the Prince of Wales!

  It was a pity to have to step into his tattered boots again, but there were no shoes available. He popped a peaked cap on his head and stuck a bow tie in his pocket. It would probably take him until America to learn how to tie it.

  There was a desk at the entrance to the main passageway. Upon it sat a large ledger, pen, and inkwell so the crew members could sign for their uniforms. What a stroke of luck that he’d blundered in here before the clerk came on duty.

  No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the main door opened, and voices reached him from the passageway.

  Panicking, he looked around. To make it back to the laundry, he’d have to run out into the open — and his Titanic adventure would be over before it began. Desperately, he kicked his discarded clothing underneath the rack and dashed into the changing booth against the bulkhead. He pulled the curtain shut and stepped up onto the stool to keep his boots out of view.

  Another way in which life aboard the Titanic was similar to Belfast: He was still hiding, still holding his breath, and still praying that he wouldn’t be discovered.

  “Boy, when I saw you standing on the dock waiting for me, I near jumped off the deck and dashed my brains at your feet!” John Huggins told his son in the uniform room. His voice was deep and scratchy from years of stoking coal in countless boiler rooms.

  “I only wish I’d had some better news for you,” Alfie said sadly.

  The big man ruffled his hair. “Try not to be so hard on your ma. She was never cut out for the kind of life I gave her. She was always lonely, with her head in the clouds. Proper helpless, she was.” He brightened. “But she surely did right by you. I’ve got to give her credit for that.”

  “Right by me!” Alfie exclaimed, outraged. “She shuffled off and left me without a penny to bless myself with!”

  “But she made a man of you,” his father argued. “The kind of man who had the sense to get hired by White Star so we could sail together. Your old da never would have thought of that. Clever of you, that was.”

  Alfie was sheepish. “I had to lie about my age. I told them I was sixteen.”

  “You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. Now find a jacket that fits you. You look like you’ve lost your hands.”

  Alfie was nervous. “Shouldn’t we wait for the clerk?”

  “You’re not taking anything, just exchanging,” John Huggins explained. “It’s already signed for. Now I’ve got to get back to work. She may be the most modern ship ever built, but the boilers won’t mind themselves. Imagine that.”

  Conflicting emotions mingled in Alfie’s gut as he watched his father disappear into the passageway. He was happy to be sailing with Da, but the man was practically a stranger. He’d been away at sea for a large part of Alfie’s fifteen years. Ma was his real parent — and now she was gone. He had no idea if he’d ever lay eyes on her again.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if the Huggins men would be working side by side. As a fireman, Da would be down in the bowels of the ship, shoveling coal into the Titanic’s twenty-nine boilers. As a junior steward assigned to first class, Alfie’s duties would keep him many decks above.

  “You’ll be rubbing elbows with princes and millionaires, boy!” his father had assured him.

  It was the talk of the crew. The guest list for the maiden voyage included the very apex of high society: European and British nobility, captains of industry, business tycoons, and wealth that was unimaginable to the likes of Alphonse Huggins. One passenger, a fellow named John Jacob Astor, might have been the richest man in the world. Might have been! That was the most ast
ounding part. Not that he was the richest, but the fact that nobody could be sure if he was number one or not. Imagine having so much money that it was impossible to count, so all you could do was guess at how much there was!

  Still, Alfie would have gladly traded all of Colonel Astor’s vast fortune to have Ma back.

  He knew this was a child’s way of thinking. He was a man now — at least, he’d told the White Star Line that he was. With a sigh, he began to rustle through the racks of jackets, trying on one that seemed closer to his size. His hands emerged from the sleeves. Yes, this would do.

  Back in the passageway, he tried to remember the quickest way back down to Number 5 Boiler Room, where Da would be. By strict rule, Alfie wasn’t supposed to be boarding the ship until sailing day, April 10. But he had nowhere else to go, and there were empty hammocks in the firemen’s quarters, where his father slept. On a ship the size of the Titanic, no one would be the wiser. No one who would report him, anyway. An engine crew was a brotherhood, Da had told him, slaving shoulder to shoulder in the same searing heat, choking on the same steam and smoke and coal dust.

  Alfie hesitated. The Titanic was a marvel of engineering, but she was also a maze, with dozens of passageways on nine different decks. Da had brought him here via a wide passageway on E Deck that the crew had named “Scotland Road.” It was supposed to be the fastest way to get from one end of the ship to the other. But he was on F now. It made no sense that going up could be the most convenient way to get down to the boiler room. Or did it?

  As he stood, pondering his route, the door to the uniform room opened and out stepped a very young steward. Alfie was shocked. He’d been positive the compartment had been empty.

  A stab of fear. I admitted lying about my age!

  Spying Alfie, the boy spun around and began marching quickly in the opposite direction.

  “Hello,” Alfie called tentatively.

  The steward broke into a run and disappeared up the companion stairs at the end of the passageway.

  Alfie frowned. Had the boy overheard the confession? In truth, the lad seemed even younger than Alfie, but appearances were often deceiving.

  Nervously, Alfie reentered the compartment, scanning the racks of uniforms for the steward’s hiding place. He noticed the hatch leading to the deserted laundry. Had the boy come from there? Maybe he’d heard nothing at all….

  Alfie’s eyes fell on a bundle of clothing concealed by a row of trench coats. A jacket, shirt, and trousers, worn and ragged and — he sniffed — plenty pungent, too.

  It came to him like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle assembling in his brain. The young “steward” — a stowaway? A street boy who had exchanged his rags for a crew uniform in order to pose as a White Star employee?

  I must tell an officer at once!

  A moment later, rational thought returned. Until April 10, Alfie himself had no business being on board. And if the word got out that he was underage, he would be put off the ship.

  Better not to call attention to himself.

  What about the old clothes? Should he just leave them here? That would alert everyone to the fact that there was a stowaway.

  If the crew began sweeping the entire ship to determine who belonged and who didn’t …

  No, he had to get rid of them. But where? The trash? They’d be noticed there as well.

  The image came to mind of the Titanic’s 15-foot-high boilers, his father and his mates stoking fires hot enough to produce the steam to move the largest ocean liner in the world.

  How long could a bundle of rags last in an inferno like that?

  CHAPTER NINE

  SOUTHAMPTON

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 1912, 11:35 A.M.

  The hustle and bustle on the dock was approaching hysterical proportions. The rush to board more than two thousand passengers and new crew members created nothing less than a mob scene. That was compounded by the relatives and friends who had come to see their loved ones off, and spectators anxious to catch a glimpse of the start of the famous maiden voyage.

  The first-class boat train had arrived, and the cream of American and British society poured across the wharf toward the dream ship that would carry them to New York. These titans of the civilized world had to vie for dock space with their own baggage — thousands of crates, steamer trunks, and pieces of hand-tooled leather luggage of every conceivable size and shape. The crane loaded cargo containers that held everything from sacks of mail to a jeweled copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, bound for an American museum.

  Farther aft, at the third-class gangway, steerage passengers swarmed. Most of them were emigrants, carrying all their earthly belongings in carpetbags and cord-wrapped parcels. White Star officials pored over their identification documents and steamer tickets.

  No one bothered first class with such trifles. No sooner had Juliana and her parents stepped aboard than they were whisked to their staterooms by waiting stewards and made as comfortable as the wealthy were accustomed to.

  Stateroom B-56 was as sumptuous as any chamber in Glamford Hall, the family’s country estate outside London. Juliana could not have been more excited. The suite provided bedrooms for her and her father, as well as accommodations for the maid and the valet. It was a glorious place to be spending the next several days, and she looked forward to the voyage as well as to seeing New York. There was one strangely puzzling development: Why was her mother weeping so?

  Elizabeth, Countess of Glamford, clung to her daughter as if she expected never to see her again.

  “Please calm down, Mama,” Juliana soothed. “It’s only a short stay. We’ll be home in two months!”

  Her reply was only to sob harder. “My darling girl!” she managed.

  Her husband, the earl, stepped forward and attempted to embrace her. She whirled away with an expression of deep resentment, and held her daughter once more.

  “Your mother is not one for travel,” he explained, falsely jovial. “You know how I couldn’t coax her into my aeroplane.”

  “That’s because she has an ounce of sense in her head,” Juliana teased, trying to lighten the mood. “Would that I had inherited it.”

  A steward’s voice could be heard in the passageway. “All ashore that’s going ashore!”

  This brought on a fresh bout of weeping.

  Juliana would miss her mother, but she was secretly relieved when the Countess of Glamford was escorted off the ship, a steward solicitously holding each arm. She stood, still sobbing, on the dock, waving to her daughter at the rail. It was difficult for a single passenger to stand out aboard the largest ship in the world, but the hysterical countess was making sure everyone noticed her poor daughter.

  What could be more embarrassing?

  The answer to that came swiftly. A hansom cab drove up to the edge of the gangway and out stepped two uniformed constables. With perfect gallantry, they helped two ladies alight — one a girl of about Juliana’s age, the other a buxom matron dressed, oddly, in purple, white, and green, who had a great deal to say to the policemen, none of it pleasant.

  The constables were polite, their decorum never slipping, but their mission was clear: to put these two women aboard the Titanic and make sure they stayed.

  Sophie Bronson was humiliated. “Mother, if we had arrived with a brass band, we could not possibly have drawn more attention onto ourselves.”

  The famous Amelia Bronson was unrepentant. “I like attention. It’s good for the cause.”

  “I was hoping,” Sophie told her ruefully, “that for this one special voyage, we could forget about the cause. It’s already too late for that. Perhaps there’s a stoker in the bowels of the engine room who hasn’t noticed us being kicked out of England, but everybody else has.”

  Mrs. Bronson was triumphant in her outrage. “My role is to shed light on the kind of” — she raised her voice so it carried over the bustling dockside — “injustice visited upon women by an unfair system! So I’m quite pleased by all this,” she finished in her regu
lar voice.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” said the older of the two constables, “but we’re not visiting injustice on anybody. Our orders are just to make sure you’re aboard the ship and not to leave until she steams away with you still on her.”

  Sophie sensed a long, loud reply brewing inside Amelia Bronson’s active mind. To stifle it, Sophie picked up a sizable leather bag and set it down firmly on her mother’s boot. Seeing a first-class passenger — a lady — actually handling her own luggage brought two porters scurrying over to take charge of their belongings.

  A steward followed quickly to take their tickets and escort them to their cabin. “Will your maid be arriving separately?”

  “We are women of the twentieth century,” Amelia Bronson snapped. “Quite capable of looking after ourselves — and of voting, too, and making other important decisions!”

  “Mother …” Sophie gritted her teeth and gave her traveling companion a none-too-gentle push.

  But the steward was well accustomed to high society and its quirks. “Very good, madam. If you’ll be so kind as to follow me.” After a few instructions to the porters, he led Sophie and her mother through a dark-paneled foyer, over carpets as thick as the turf of a well-tended golf course.

  A real elevator, thought Sophie, hugely impressed. Just like the ones in the skyscrapers of New York and Boston.

  Riding up in the car, seeing herself and her mother repeated in the polished brass and mirrors, Sophie was almost sad. This was the experience of a lifetime — the maiden voyage of this masterpiece of modern science and technology. Vast, luxurious, unsinkable — the Titanic was all that and more, because she also represented the promise of the wonders to come in this new century.

  But Mother saw none of this. She was determined to keep her focus narrow. Suffrage, the cause — that was all that existed for her. It wasn’t that she disapproved of the magnificence of the great ship. She simply didn’t notice it. The Titanic was a means to get home so Amelia Bronson could hold rallies and disturb the peace of American cities, just as she had done in the English ones.