SOS Lusitania (7 page)
Authors: Kevin Kiely
I
stared in awe at what met my eyes as we came out of the stairwell and through a steel door on to the sun deck of the
Lusitania
– huge buildings like castles, and towers of incredible shapes, covered in windows that looked like millions of ladders with glass between the rungs, and reaching up to the sky. The buildings were taller than anything I had ever seen in my life and looked like an undiscovered world from a fantastic universe. They almost blotted out the sky. The buildings and towers went on as far as the eye could see. New York was massive. Everything was so big, it was a wonder that the people below on the dockside weren’t all ten-foot giants.
The sun was shining and there was a sharp breeze off the harbour. Throngs of people moved about on the docks, where
horse-drawn cabs stood in lines waiting for fares. Cranes were loading and unloading items of great bulk from the
Lusitania
and other liners.
Nurse Ellis tugged at my arm, leading me towards a gangplank high above the wharf, and together we walked down the slope. It was an unforgettable moment. I had run away on the
Lusitania
! I was in New York!
‘Skyscrapers!’ I laughed. ‘I bet my teacher, Mr Dempsey, would like to write that word on his blackboard. Scraping the sky, he’d explain.’ I laughed giddily.
‘My, you must love school,’ she said, ‘to think of your teacher at a time like this. Come on, Finbar, I have to meet my sister. And you have to wait for your dad. He gave me some official papers for you, allowing you to get off here. Please mind them carefully.’ We headed down the gangplank but a police officer wearing a gun and holster came over.
‘Papers, please,’ he said in an American accent. ‘You are very late disembarking, ma’am. Have you permission to stay aboard so long?’ He looked puzzled.
‘We are crew members,’ Nurse Ellis replied, showing him her ID, ‘and this is Staff Captain Kennedy’s son, Finbar.’ She handed him more papers.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ The policeman stepped aside, handed her
back her papers and unhooked the chain at the end of the gangplank.
I still couldn’t believe my eyes and didn’t know where to look, everything was so new and exciting. Nurse Ellis gave me the official papers and said goodbye at the Cunard office; she kissed me on the cheek and we hugged. I thanked her for minding me and walked in the door of the office, feeling like a sailor who had travelled around the world!
‘I am to wait here for my father, Captain Jack Kennedy,’ I told the man at the desk, who wore a visor that was like a peak made of green cellophane across his forehead.
‘Okay by me, bud,’ he replied, and then he gave a foxy grin. ‘You okay, kid? You sit on the bench there. Your pop will be along soon. Okay?’
Later, my father entered with other men in uniform. He waved to me and smiled for a moment. I stayed sitting while he talked with the others. They all did a lot of nodding and fixing of their caps, scratched their faces and those who had beards, like him, tugged at them. I lost interest and stared out through the windows and realised that the
Lusitania
was a mighty liner and that I truly loved it.
Dad came over and broke in on my trance. He beckoned me to pick up my schoolbag and follow him outside. ‘You
look like the real Finbar Kennedy now, not that ghost we found on the
Lusitania
,’ he said, and stroked his beard in silence. I wondered if he was going to talk about my running away from home. ‘Listen, I have to tell you secret information – well, as much as I am allowed. You must tell no one what happened to you on the ship. No one. We don’t want to scare people away. That is very important.’
I nodded in amazement as he led me away from the Cunard office to an empty space with stacks of wooden crates and barrels marked ‘Crude American Oil’. Our view as we talked was of a busy crossway of four streets with a signpost for 14
th
Street and another sign above that, in blue, that said Pier 54.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘this is serious. Can you remember the name of the man you saw with the suitcase full of guns? He was the man with the cane that shot a bullet into one of the walls of Cabin 13 and broke the mirror, remember?’ He had obviously followed up on my story. He looked at me expectantly.
‘I can’t remember his name, Dad,’ I replied. ‘He was a bald man. Tall. I was in the cabin because the Baroness had got me to lift her luggage. I had to escape and in the struggle there was a shot. Honestly.’ I knew by his solemn look that he believed me now. He folded his arms and listened carefully to everything that had happened to me up to my time in the
hospital. It was a long story. I had tried to tell him some of it when I was sick, but he didn’t seem to understand me because of the fever. Now, here in New York, on the docks, he listened to it all and was amazed.
‘You see, Finbar,’ Dad began after I had talked for a long time, ‘we had a complaint during the voyage that someone heard a shot. We tracked it to Baroness Leonie von Leiditz in Cabin 13. She, of course, said there was no shot. But it all tied in with what I thought were your delusions. Now, is Aleister Crowley the name of the man who had the suitcase full of guns?’
‘Yes! That’s it! Crowley is the name. I remember now.’
Dad pushed his hat back on his head and took out a sheet of paper from his inside pocket. ‘Some of our cabin staff saw Crowley with Baroness von Leiditz and identified him for me.’ He read from the paper. ‘His full name is Edward Alexander Crowley. He’s British. He is a famous writer, a mysterious man – and obviously dealing in arms – but he denied everything as he hurried off the liner into a taxi this morning with a lot of heavy luggage, including the guns, I’d bet. But we can’t search a passenger’s luggage unless we have the police to supervise the situation,’ Dad explained. He was speaking low and in a voice I had never heard before.
‘You were in great danger when you met that man, Finbar.
It is so lucky that you escaped his clutches.’ His tone was serious and he was talking to me as if I were another staff captain. ‘If by any chance you see him here in New York, get away from him immediately.’
I felt like a player in a big game all of a sudden. This was life and it was more exciting than school or anything that had happened to me up to now. But it was dangerous too.
‘I read an article about Crowley in the
New York Times
,’ he continued. ‘It said that he is a self-publicist and a propagandist. But he’s involved in shady things like gun-running too.’ Dad wiped his mouth slowly.
I was beginning to get anxious, but also hoping Dad would not stop telling me the details. ‘Is he going to kill someone?’ I tried to sound like an adult – after crossing the Atlantic on the
Lusitania
, I felt really grown up.
‘Crowley writes for a newspaper called
The Fatherland,
which is pro-German; in other words, it boosts German morale during the war and deliberately prints news that is anti-British. He even makes up lies to try to turn people against Britain. The newspaper can be published in America because America is not in the Great War. America is neutral, do you get it?’
‘Not really, Dad,’ I said.
‘Well, son, Britain and Germany spy on each other because they are at war. Crowley, as a British citizen, is up to no good mixing with a wealthy German Baroness, especially when they are enemies. British politicians treat Crowley as a crank or a kind of fool because he writes anything for any newspaper or magazine that pays him, but they largely ignore him. The man has no principles, no sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. But he’s no fool either.’ Dad exhaled loudly and looked at me. He had me scared now. His eyes were cold and he seemed to be far off in his thoughts. ‘He’s big trouble, and I’ll be glad to leave all that behind on our return journey. We wouldn’t want the likes of him on board again. He’s a really dangerous type.’
Dad looked up and down the street, then at our luggage – his navy sack and my schoolbag. He picked up the sack, handed me the schoolbag and we turned to enter the omnibus station where there were lots of big buses and long queues.
‘Finbar, the world is at war,’ Dad said. ‘We’re in danger because of being on the
Lusitania
. You didn’t realise what a big step you took hiding on board the
Lusitania
! Our ship needs to be protected by Royal Navy battleships when we’re at sea. The Atlantic Ocean is enemy territory. Get it now?’
But I decided to forget about the danger for a while. I was in America with my Dad. It was a great adventure.
O
ur three days in New York passed like lightning and were full of new experiences. That very first day Dad and I bought two hotdogs from a stall in the omnibus station, and ate them savagely because we were starving. Then we joined the queue for the bus. We had huge grins on our faces as we sat at the front where we had a good view of everyone passing up and down the streets.
‘We are on Manhattan island, son,’ said Dad. ‘The avenues are north to south,’ he explained, ‘and the streets east to west.’
‘It’s called “man-hat-on”,’ I joked because the scene made me feel cheeky and both of us had our caps on, his peaked naval one and my school cap.
We got out and walked past a sign for 16
th
Street. At No.
132 was Ward’s Rooming House and we went up the steps there and in through double doors. Dad rang the bell at the desk and a woman came out through beads on cords that rattled as she moved.
‘Well hello, Captain Jack,’ she said. Her hair was tied up on her head with what looked to me like small sticks, and she wore spectacles. ‘Oh wow, you brought one of your sons! He looks really like you.’ The woman had big white shining teeth that filled her smiling face. ‘Going to sea at a young age, eh?’ she said to me. ‘Aren’t you the brave lad!’ She caught me by the ear, tugging at it until I began to laugh loudly.
‘This is my son Finbar. This is Josephine Weir,’ Dad introduced us.
‘Well, I am mighty glad to meet you, Finbar,’ said Josephine. ‘How long are you staying this time?’ she asked Dad.
‘Three nights.’ Dad signed the book. ‘How is everything in Weir’s famous rooming house?’
‘Tonight I’m getting out of here to go bowling – and leaving the others get on with the work.’ She lit a cigarette and blew smoke out of her mouth in a little cloud. ‘I bet Finbar would like a hot tub.’ Josephine came from behind the desk and put her hand around my shoulder in a hug. ‘What a fine boy, and a handsome boy too.’ She grinned, showing
her pearly teeth again. ‘You sailors can dump your luggage in the locker behind the desk, go get a hot tub and come back later. Your luggage will be brought to your room – it’s on the seventh floor, I’m afraid, as we’re almost booked out. April is kinda the start of the summer season, you know.’ She exhaled smoke again, talking between drags of the cigarette. We pushed the luggage into the locker.
Before we left the hostel Dad had a piece of advice for me. ‘If you get lost in the next few days, son, find an Irish cop and he’ll show you the way to Weir’s place.’ Then he tweaked me on the nose. ‘Hey, after what you’ve done you won’t get lost, will you? You’re thirteen, now – let’s hope it’s a lucky year for you, Finbar.’
We set out for Bowery Bath House where at the entrance were lots of shops, cafés, laundries for washing clothes, barber’s shops and bars. Beyond, in the corridors, people filed along in bathrobes in their bare feet, with wet hair, the women and girls down one corridor, the men and boys along another. The corridors were so wide and high they looked like streets. I got a cubicle number and Dad got one too, and we changed into our bathrobes. My cubicle had a door that led into a small,
steamy compartment where there was a big bath. The taps were wheels on the wall and a chunk of soap was wedged onto a piece of wood on a rough chain. There was also a bath brush on a chain. The bath itself was deep with steps up to it and a wooden seat below the water. I sat down and the water came up to my neck. I rubbed the brush hard along my back and neck, giving myself a bracing scrub. Dad was singing in the cubicle next door, so I joined in a chorus of ‘The Banks of My Own Lovely Lee’. When he sang ‘Skibbereen’ other voices mingled with his and the whole bellowing concert made me laugh madly as the hot water, steam and soap cleaned me thoroughly.
‘Finbar, are you cooked?’ shouted Dad, banging on the door. ‘Are you turning into a seal in there?’
‘I’m ready,’ I shouted.
Still in the bathhouse, we next went to the barber’s. By the time we came out into the street our faces were glowing, and our hair was trimmed and parted, and glistening with oil.
Then Dad took me back to the front door of Weir’s because he needed to visit the Cunard office in Upper Manhattan.