And the Band Played On (11 page)

The ‘thunderbolt’ that Jock and Mary experienced when they met was clearly based on physical attraction. But they soon discovered they had a lot more in common, despite their different backgrounds. Both had lost a parent at a particularly vulnerable age: Mary, her father; Jock, his mother. Jock had been brought up with sisters and was comfortable in the company of girls. Mary had grown up with brothers and was easy in the company of boys. It was a good base from which to start a relationship and their emotional vulnerabilities undoubtedly drew the two teenagers closer together, providing mutual comfort and reassurance that they had never found elsewhere. Jock’s absences at sea, far from getting in the way of their relationship, intensified their feelings for each other, with written declarations of love sandwiched between lingering farewells and passionate reunions.

Mary’s mother, Susan, took an immediate liking to Jock when he escorted Mary home after the Rood Fair. She invited him in for tea and he played the fiddle. He also made her laugh. But Susan cautioned her daughter about becoming too involved with the young musician: his long trips away from home, the temptations on board ship with young crew members, the attractions of New York and Jamaica compared to Dumfries . . . all these seemed to Susan to stand in the way of an enduring relationship. But Jock would return from each trip even keener on Mary than he had been when they parted. Postcards and letters from foreign destinations would continue to drop through the letterbox in Buccleuch Street long after his return home. If anything, it was Jock who was jealous of Mary. She was an attractive girl, not without admirers, but after meeting Jock, according to my mother, she never looked at another man.

Courtships in Scotland in those days were generally conducted in secret, at least in the early stages when young couples would only be seen in public together on Fair days. Jock had spent enough time away from Dumfries to dispense with Border traditions and Mary seems to have cared little what people thought. Within months of meeting they had become inseparable, at weekends taking a horse bus or a coach to escape to the beautiful coast along the Solway Firth. My mother learned these things only many years later, from an old friend in Dumfries.

Jock’s devotion to Mary annoyed and concerned his father, Andrew. He thought his son too young to be thinking of settling down and he believed Jock could ‘do better’ for himself than Mary – for instance, by finding a girl who might one day bring a small inheritance to the marriage, rather than the financial and emotional burden of a widowed mother. He found Mary’s coolness disconcerting; he didn’t like the idea of losing his son at the very moment the boy could support himself and start contributing to his own household expenses.

Andrew Hume’s mistake, being a bad-tempered man who couldn’t control his tongue, was in not keeping these opinions to himself. He forbade Jock from bringing Mary home and made life as difficult as possible for Jock in the hope of keeping him working at sea, away from Mary. But by opposing Jock’s relationship with Mary he succeeded only in driving the two of them closer together.

This not-unusual confrontation between father and son had the effect of creating further dissent in the already divided Hume family. For some years a war – a guerrilla war consisting of hit-and-run attacks – had been waged by Andrew’s three teenage daughters on their stepmother, Alice. The girls struck in pincer movements. Alice set ambushes. Now Andrew introduced into this domestic theatre of war a new stand-off: an ongoing argument between himself and his son. Jock’s oldest sister Nellie had introduced Mary to Jock and continued to encourage the relationship; Kate, his kid sister, worshipped the ground Jock stood on. The girls now ganged up on their father as well as on their stepmother.

It was an intolerable situation for a young man, but much as Jock dreaded coming home to George Street, he had fallen in love with Mary. And it was Mary’s mother, a woman with surprisingly modern and enlightened views, who came up with the solution: Jock should come and live with them. The suggestion was not as extraordinary as it may at first seem to be, from our perception of the Edwardian era. Until 1923, a girl over the age of twelve and a boy of fourteen could be legally married in Scotland without their parents’ consent. And Gretna Green, the precursor of Las Vegas, was just a few miles down the road from Dumfries. There was an ancient Celtic custom of ‘handfasting’, which was essentially a form of trial marriage. At a handfasting ceremony, couples would take each other’s hands and pledge to live together for a year. If at the end of the year they were both happy with the arrangement, they could live together from then on as a married couple. Children born during this trial period were regarded as legitimate.

Susan told Jock and Mary that they should consider themselves ‘handfasted’ and that from then on they could share a bed together under her roof. It was a decision that would drive a deep wedge between Jock and his father and make Andrew Hume an implacable enemy of the Costins.

On his return from Jamaica in May 1911 Jock, still only twenty, felt tremendously proud to be chosen to join the band on the new White Star liner
Olympic
, the flagship of the fleet, for its maiden voyage to New York. It was confirmation that Jock had established a reputation both as a musician and as a team player. He returned home to Dumfries on a high and Mary was thrilled to see him again, but less than delighted that he was about to set off for another voyage across the Atlantic.

It must have been around this time that Jock ran into his old school pal, Thomas Mullin, and gave him some advice that was to cost Tom his life. Tom had followed in his father’s footsteps and become a pattern weaver in the Rosefield tweed mills. Like his father, he was well liked and a good worker but in his mid-teens Tom’s sight had begun to fail and, after an unsuccessful operation in Dumfries Infirmary, he was told his eyesight would never be good enough to return to work at the mill. It was Jock’s idea that Tom should consider seeking work on passenger ships as a steward where, unlike pattern weaving at the mill, 20/20 vision was not critical to the tasks he would have to carry out. Jock advised Tom to go to Liverpool and Tom was duly taken on by the American Line, to work as a steward on the
St Louis
, which operated a weekly express service between Southampton and New York. Tom took sailor’s lodgings in Southampton and made five or six transatlantic crossings between the summer of 1911 and March 1912 as a Third Class saloon steward. It seems likely that Jock and Tom saw each other in Southampton, where Jock also had temporary lodgings. Tom’s success in his new job, which brought two promotions, was almost certainly what led to him being offered a position on the
Titanic
, which he and Jock boarded together at Southampton the following April.

Before the
Olympic
sailed on its maiden voyage in May 1911, the White Star Line were to pull off a brilliant public relations coup in May by launching the
Titanic
on the day that
Olympic
, its sister ship, was leaving the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast to prepare for its maiden voyage. More than 100,000 VIPs, journalists and dignitaries who had gathered at the shipyard for the launch of
Titanic
were able to see these great liners side by side for the first – and only – time. Selected VIPs were taken on board the
Olympic
before it sailed via Liverpool to Southampton. At the helm of the
Olympic
was Captain Edward J. Smith, whose next ship would be the
Titanic
.

The
Olympic
set new benchmarks in speed and luxury, winning acclaim from passengers on both sides of the Atlantic; its First Class passenger list was an international
Who’s Who
of the rich and famous. When the ship arrived back in Southampton on 4 July there was a message waiting for Jock asking him to make himself available for what would be the
Olympic
’s fourth transatlantic crossing on 20 September.

On 7 September, as Jock was making preparations for his trip south from Dumfries, the Costins received some terrible news: Mary’s oldest brother, William, who was twenty-three, had been taken ill at the butcher’s shop where he now worked and rushed to hospital. He had been complaining of stomach pains for a couple of days and by the time he was admitted to hospital, his appendix had burst. He died the following evening, his wife Maria and his brother John by his side.

Mary was beside herself with grief. She loved William who had been such a tower of strength when their father had died. Now he was dead, too, leaving a widow and three children under the age of four. For the fourth time in her life Mary found herself in the same cemetery standing at the same grave where her father and two sisters were buried, as William was lowered into the ground. For Susan Costin, burying the third of her six children, it must have been even worse, but there were too many vulnerable people dependent on her to let it show. When they returned to Buccleuch Street, Susan made arrangements for Maria and the children to move in.

After William’s death, Jock suggested he abandoned the
Olympic
trip but Mary insisted that he should go and so he left for Southampton a week later. Ten days after his departure he was home again. Within sight of Southampton harbour the
Olympic
had collided with a warship, HMS
Hawke
, tearing a 40ft gash in
Olympic
’s hull and crushing
Hawke
’s bow, almost causing the warship to capsize. While the
Hawke
limped back to Portsmouth, the
Olympic
anchored off the Isle of Wight so that tenders could ferry the passengers and crew to safety. Repairs to the
Olympic
at the Harland & Wolff shipyard would have a knock-on effect on work on the
Titanic
and delay her maiden voyage by several days.

Neither captain was found to be at fault and far from being admonished or relieved of his command, Captain Smith was informed that as repairs to the
Olympic
were going to take many months, he would be given command of the SS
Titanic
. Although there was no loss of life or serious injuries, the
Hawke
incident shook public confidence in passenger liners. Whereas previously they were regarded as safe and practically unsinkable, now they were seen as another of life’s risks. Jock’s stepmother, Alice, took the accident particularly badly, having had a ‘premonition’ of a catastrophe in a dream. She begged Jock not to return to sea. Mary, too, having just buried another member of the family, became anxious. But Jock took no heed of their pleas or their warnings. He could not afford to. The cancellation of the
Olympic
’s New York trip had left him out of pocket in terms of wages and tips. He could make up some lost ground with a Mediterranean cruise later in the year on the
Carmania
and there was a chance of being offered a place in the orchestra on the
Titanic
the following spring. When he returned, they would have just enough money to get married at Greyfriars Kirk.

Mary’s mother Susan, a woman with a big heart and a broad mind, had suspected for some time that her daughter might be pregnant. For more than a year Jock had been staying with them in Buccleuch Street between trips. With so many passionate goodbyes and lustful homecomings, it was no wonder Jock and Mary had become careless. Having condoned then encouraged her daughter’s love affair, Susan wished the young couple had waited longer to start a family, but as they were planning to marry when Jock returned from the
Titanic
, she was pleased for them as well as excited by the prospect of another grandchild.