A Song Across the Sea (9 page)

Perspiring heavily from having to wrestle with the heavy carpetbags, Tara climbed over the last railing and onto the boat deck.

It was too late.

Her disbelieving eyes told her what the steerage passengers who streamed up to the deck thirty minutes later would also discover.

The lifeboats were all gone.

•  •  •

“Have ye seen me Danny? Have ye seen me boy and me husband?” Mrs. Flaherty frantically circled the crowded, chaotic deck, crying out the questions again and again and not getting any answers.

Tara refrained from telling her that it didn’t matter anymore. Wherever Danny and his father were, they were as likely to drown as everyone else. In spite of the harsh reality confronting her, Tara nonetheless fought off the sense of hopelessness that threatened to paralyze her. She was frightened for herself, but that was nothing compared to the sick guilt she felt over having dragged young, defenseless Padraig on this ill-fated journey. Bridey had been right! Everyone had been right. Why hadn’t she listened? What a stupid, stupid girl she was! It had been an insane idea to make this trip—more hazardous than the doubters had even imagined. It was her own fault that little Paddy was in terrible danger right now. She could hardly bear the thought, but at least she wouldn’t have to bear it for long.

Suddenly, as if in a bizarre celebration, the sky lit up in brilliant bursts. White rockets were being shot into the air. Distress signals. Surely there were other ships nearby who’d see the lights and come to their aid? This ocean couldn’t be as big as all that, could it?

In the frigid waters below she could dimly make out the shapes of lifeboats pulling briskly away from the Titanic. She squinted hard, certain her eyes were deceiving her. Several of the boats looked only half full!

Her ears registered the sound of music playing—a vigorous ragtime number. With a start, she realized that the ship’s band members were still performing their duties.

“Tara?” Little Paddy was tugging at her jacket. “Tara, don’t cry. It’ll be all right.”

She dabbed at the tears. “I’m not cryin’, Paddy. It’s just the wind, stingin’’ me eyes.” She must try and keep her brother from being afraid for as long as she could. Let most of his last minutes be spent peacefully, thinking that this was a grand adventure.

But she saw that there was still a prayer left. Some flimsy-looking inflatable boats were stowed just above the officer’s quarters. Several men struggled to free them, but their efforts were hindered by the steep pitch of the deck. One man lost his footing and rolled downward, flailing his arms and emitting a sharp, desperate cry. Another man turned and made a grab for him but it was too late. Tara saw him hit the rail and tumble over it into the icy waters below.

Lines were finally freed. An inflatable boat was loosened from its mooring. The men lowered it clumsily to the water by sliding it downward on oars. Heartbreakingly, it landed upside down.

Even if the remaining inflatable boats could be launched properly, they wouldn’t accommodate the tremendous number of passengers still lining the deck. Tara looked around, feeling ashamed. She’d been furious that the Third Class passengers had largely been left to their own devices, but it was clear that not all First Class passengers had made it into the lifeboats. She recognized the faces of men who’d been pointed out to her and described in awed tones. There was the heir to a steel fortune. There, the head of a mining conglomerate. Newspaper magnates, smelting kings and show business impresarios, they waited now for their fate just as she did. Two men in full evening dress, unencumbered by life jackets, stood at the rail and waved jauntily to someone in a lifeboat. An elderly couple stood arm-in-arm on the deck, unaffected by the turmoil around them, serenely awaiting death. She noticed one silver-haired man wearing wire-rimmed glasses, sitting calmly in a deck chair. It was Mr. Rutherford, she realized. He was smoking a cigar and watching the commotion in front of him as if he were watching a circus. A brave man, indeed.

They would all go down together.

•  •  •

The crowd scrambled to higher and higher positions on the deck as the ship’s bow plunged sharply downward and its stern rose into the air. The slant of the deck grew steeper with each new shuddering movement. The ensuing suction produced huge waves that lapped upward along the deck, picking off the slow and the weak. A woman holding a baby cried out as she was overtaken by a wave. Tara covered Paddy’s eyes and closed her own. When they looked again, the woman and the baby were gone.

Some opted to take their chances. They hopped over the rail and leaped far out into the water, hoping to clear the ship before it sank.

Tara stubbornly refused to give up. She led Padraig upward, dodging the deck chairs that came sliding down toward them with a fearful clatter. She’d long since abandoned the carpetbags, so they were able to move quickly, albeit without a real destination. It wasn’t hopeless, she told herself. It couldn’t be hopeless. Perhaps another ship would rescue them before this one sank. Even if they did end up in the water, maybe their lifejackets would keep them afloat long enough to—

In an instant, an enormous, churning wave yanked Tara and Padraig from the deck and tumbled them into the sea. Tara desperately made a lunge for Paddy as the wave closed over them. Her fingers grasped his arm. The icy water was a shock, but she kept her grip on Paddy as they spiraled down, lower and lower, into the inky depths of the water. She prayed that he would know enough to hold his breath.

Her lungs felt ready to explode when they finally broke the surface. She kicked hard, to put distance between themselves and the ship, towing a stunned Padraig behind her.

The Titanic loomed above them, a dark monolith that was now nearly perpendicular in the water. Its red and green running lights emitted an unearthly glow underwater. The forward funnel erupted in a violent gush of sparks and smoke, as if the ship was rebelling angrily against its demise. It toppled over and smacked the water with a sickening boom that drowned out the screams of the swimmers it crushed.

Tara determinedly tread water, although she knew she couldn’t last long in this cold.

“Padraig?” He didn’t respond. “Paddy! Answer me!”

“I’m cold,” he mumbled.

“I know you are, Paddy. Keep movin’ your arms and legs. Pretend that you’re swimmin’ in the river back home on a fine, warm summer day. We’ll be picked up by another boat soon. I’m certain of it.”

The Titanic sat back on its stern, then began sliding into the water at a sharp angle, faster than Tara would have believed possible. People were still clinging to the deck houses and rails, screaming for help. The great ship lurched and finally vanished beneath the water. Tara tried to brace herself for the aftershock of waves, but it was no use. Paddy was ripped from her grasp. The force of the water pushed her under again. She fought her way back to the surface and groped for him in the darkness.

“Paddy!” she screamed in desperation. “Paddy! Paddy! Paddy!” She bumped into objects floating in the water—wooden crates and deck chairs, sometimes with people wearily clinging to them. None were Paddy. As the cold minutes ebbed away, so did her hope of finding her brother.

Hundreds of people thrashed helplessly in the waters over the Titanic’s cold grave, contributing their own faint cries to a chorus of agony.

Tara felt the last of her strength draining away. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the inevitable.

“S
he’s still alive.”

Tara felt herself being roughly dragged over the stern of a boat and dropped onto its floorboards. Through a gray mist of confusion, she saw people hovering over her. Her sodden jacket was stripped off and replaced by a scratchy woolen blanket. Someone massaged her wrists. She tried to speak but her lips, immobilized by the cold, only managed an incoherent babble. A flask was put to her mouth and her head tilted back so that brandy flowed down her throat, spreading a fiery warmth deep inside of her. She coughed and pushed the flask away, trying to sit up.

“Easy, now. Take it easy. You’ll be all right.”

His uniform indicated that the man crouching next to her was one of the Titanic’s officers. Satisfied that she was conscious, he stood up and resumed command of the lifeboat.

Tara slowly regained her senses. She remembered about Paddy and wished she’d been left to die.

“You’re a lucky one, young lady. If the officer hadn’t decided to come back and look for survivors—.”

“We shouldn’t have done it,” another woman snapped. “Look at how much time we’ve wasted, and hardly anybody left alive. We’ll catch our death out here.”

“You’re in such a hurry. Where do you think we’re going?” countered the first woman. “Do you see any lights from other ships out there? What’s the rush? It was worth turning back, to see if someone else could be saved.”

“What if there’d been a lot of them left in the water? They’d have swamped us.”

“Well fortunately for you there weren’t.”

The senseless argument raged on and on. It took considerable effort, but Tara lifted herself to a sitting position. Her limbs felt unbearably heavy. Reaching up to push the damp mass of hair away from her face exhausted her. She turned to the woman who’d spoken to her.

“Were there any others? Survivors? A little boy, six years old, with brown hair and blue eyes?”

The woman shook her head. “We did find a few people. You’re the last. No little boys. Was he your brother?”

Tara nodded. ‘Was,’ the woman said. Already Paddy belonged to the past.

It was still too dark to clearly see most of the people that sat huddled in the lifeboat. Tara could discern the shape of an elaborate hat here, a snap-brim cap there, but for the most part, those around her were featureless shadows. There was little conversation. People sat quietly, dazed and grieving.

Following the officer’s crisp orders, the lifeboat was being steadily rowed east.

Someone—a woman sitting near her—was moaning softly to herself. “Lionel… Lionel… Lionel…oh, what will I do? What will I do?”

As Tara’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she realized that there was something familiar about the older woman keeping up the dreadful, tuneless keening. Her silvery hair was in disarray, her eyes unfocused. Her head was bowed and her shoulders slumped forward in resignation—a far cry from the erect, aristocratic carriage Tara had noticed earlier in the evening.

It was Mrs. Rutherford. Rings set with pearls and emeralds bedecked the slender fingers that pulled the collar of her sable coat close to her neck. In spite of the heavy garb, she was shivering violently.

The moaning continued, growing louder and softer by turns. Sometimes there were words to it, sometimes it was simply a desolate, inarticulate dirge. Tara tried not to listen. No one else seemed to be paying attention. After the argument between the two women ended, silence hung over the lifeboat—save for the crisp, quiet words of the officer in charge. Except for those manning the oars, everyone sat motionless, like Tara, in quiet, self-contained little islands of misery.

Padraig… Padraig… Could there be a chance for him? If she herself had been rescued, might her brother have been pulled into a lifeboat, too?

Logic swept away her hope. She was a stronger swimmer than Paddy, had no doubt been able to stay afloat longer than he had after they were separated. He was probably dead by now.

The terror he must have felt in his last moments… Had he reached out through the black waters for her? In his childlike way was he certain—right up to the last—that his big sister would save him?

“Lionel… Oh, my poor Lionel.” The moaning started up again, after a short silence. “Down with the ship… Oh my poor Lionel… What will I do? Oh what will I do?”

“Shut up, won’t you?” offered the argumentative woman. “We’ve all lost our husbands tonight. You’re not the only one who feels terrible.”

“Let her be,” someone else said.

Mrs. Rutherford gave no sign that she heard either voice, but she did stop moaning.

Tara was relieved. She felt as if she should do something to comfort the poor woman. After all, it was her husband who’d so gallantly stepped forward not so many hours ago to speak up for two steerage passengers he didn’t even know. Mrs. Rutherford seemed beyond comfort, anyway. In time, she’d put this whole horrible night behind her. Perhaps they all would. Besides, Tara doubted that she could rouse herself to even simple conversation.

She couldn’t stop brooding over Paddy. How terrified he must have been. He trusted her. He didn’t even question her when she made him put on his lifejacket and led him up ladders and over cranes. He trusted that she’d do what was best for him.

Mrs. Rutherford suddenly stood up. She unfastened her sable coat and, with a shrug, let it slide off her shoulders and land in a heap on the floor of the lifeboat. A few curious glances came her way, but nothing more. People were too tired and cold to wonder for very long.

Tara watched, though. It was a curious thing. Mrs. Rutherford looked surprisingly composed. Peaceful, almost. As if she’d already laid her grief to rest. She stared out over the ocean, a disturbing half-smile on her face.

It happened so quickly that no one could stop her. Mrs. Rutherford stepped up onto an unoccupied section of the seating lining the lifeboat and hurled herself over the side.

Tara leapt to her feet. Was there a floatation device to toss to the woman? Where was the officer in charge? Surely he’d know what to do. But he was well forward, in the bow of the boat, his back to the commotion in the stern. By the time he realized…

“Stop rowing!” Tara screamed. Heads turned her way. She dropped the blanket that had been around her shoulders. A woman—was it that same, unpleasant creature?—guessed what she was about to do, and grabbed her arm.

“Let her go! She doesn’t want to live, anyway!”

Tara shook her arm free, took a deep breath and dove overboard.

The ocean felt even colder this time, if that was possible. Tara aimed downward, moving her arms and legs around in all directions, hoping to strike Mrs. Rutherford. It was probably futile. How far down was the woman by now? She could see nothing, nothing at all. Mrs. Rutherford could be just a few feet away and she’d never know it. The chill of the water was excruciating. She should give up and save herself. It was useless. She was a fool to think that in the vastness of the ocean, she could find one person. Her lungs felt near to bursting. She’d have to surface for air soon. By then, another trip downward to find Mrs. Rutherford might be too late. Wait…what was that? Had something brushed by her leg? She reached down and felt…nothing. Every logical fiber in her told her to streak upward, toward air, but she fought the instinct. She pushed herself even further downward, toward where she thought she’d felt something. She reached out again, found and seized a slender arm.