Women and Children First (15 page)

As she watched the
Titanic
sliding beneath the water, Juliette’s first emotion was terror. She became convinced they were all going to die out there in the black, fathomless night. The piteous screams of the men pitched from the ship into the ocean were like some awful hell chorus and she imagined she and her companions on the lifeboat would soon be joining them in the freezing water; either that or they’d be left to drift in the darkness until they froze to death.

‘We must go back and save as many as we can,’ a woman declared.

‘Not yet,’ Officer Lowe told her. ‘We’d be overwhelmed by swimmers.’

An argument broke out, with some passengers urging Lowe to turn back while others claimed it was too dangerous, and Juliette listened, unsure what to think. Her mother was being uncharacteristically silent.

Lowe seemed to have a plan in mind, though. He called to the men rowing some other craft in the vicinity and five boats converged and were tethered together.

‘Ladies, I’d like to transfer you into these other boats so that I can go back and pick up survivors,’ Lowe announced. There was a collective gasp of fear, so he continued: ‘There’s no need to be alarmed. We’ll hold the boats very steady so there can be no risk of falling. As you see, the ocean is very calm.’

Juliette’s heart was beating hard. Some months previously, she had been trained in lifesaving by the Red Cross. It was one of the charities for which she organised local baking and craft sales to raise funds. Normally she just handed over a bag of cash to the Red Cross representative and received his fulsome thanks, but on this occasion she had been asked if she would like to attend a one-day lifesaving course, and she agreed. Should she mention this to Officer Lowe? For the life of her, she didn’t think she could remember a single thing they had taught her. These men in the water would have hypothermia, and the only treatment she could imagine being effective would be to make them warm somehow – but without blankets and flasks of tea, how would that be possible?

Women were standing up carefully and stepping across to the other boats, causing theirs to rock alarmingly in the water. Juliette’s mother was breathing with short little pants as she stood to take her turn. Two seamen held her elbows and she shrieked as they lifted her into an adjoining boat.

Juliette stood up, still wrestling with her decision. Should she say anything? Officer Lowe reached a hand towards her and the words spilled out.

‘I have Red Cross training. I’m not sure … maybe I could be of assistance?’

‘Good,’ he nodded, appraising her. ‘Stay here then.’

She sat down, feeling sick. Now she would be expected to know what to do, to save lives, and she couldn’t think of anything useful. She was a fake, a sham, and this was no time for pretence. Juliette’s mother looked across from her seat in the new boat and seemed surprised but didn’t say anything.

Once most of the women had been distributed among the four other boats, Lowe ordered his men to row back towards the area where they could still hear voices crying out for help. Juliette ran through her scant knowledge: check if they are breathing, feel for a pulse. Would she have to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? Goodness knows what would be required.

When they reached the first figure in the water, Lowe leaned over to check for vital signs but quickly decided there was no hope. Juliette was too far away to see the face. All she could make out was the life preserver and a slick of wet hair. They stopped again, and again, but none was alive. The groans and cries were getting fewer and weaker as men succumbed to the brutal water temperature.

‘I am hearing their last utterances,’ Juliette realised. Sometimes they were snatches of prayer or distinguishable names, but more often just sighs of utter despair.

Lowe found a man who was still breathing, semiconscious, and all the crew gathered to help haul him onto the boat, causing it to rock wildly. They laid him on the bottom, with his head by Juliette’s feet and she sprang into action.

She placed her fingers on his neck and felt a pulse, a faint one. He was murmuring under his breath so that meant he was breathing. She took off his life preserver, loosened his collar and tie to help him breathe more easily and started rubbing his arms and chest vigorously in an attempt to warm him. He was young, in his twenties, clean-shaven, with dark hair. He could be handsome; it was hard to tell in the dark but she suspected he might be.

‘Mother,’ he mumbled at one point.

‘I’m here,’ she whispered. ‘You’re safe.’

Three more men were hauled on board and some other women took care of them, following Juliette’s lead.

Juliette sat on the floor of the boat and pulled the man’s head onto her lap, so she could more easily continue to warm and soothe him. It was good to have something to focus on rather than her own safety. She just hoped she was doing the right things.

Lowe circled the area several times and checked dozens of bodies floating in the water but no more were pulled on board. It was mostly quiet now, apart from the splashing of their oars. Occasionally a lone voice cried out and Lowe tried to row towards it, but it had always faded by the time he reached the scene.

They’re all dead,
Juliette realised.
And I listened to them dying.
She had no idea of the number of casualties but guessed it must be in the hundreds. The extent of the disaster was unimaginable. Every time she glanced over the side of their boat, there were floating life preservers as far as the eye could see, most of them holding a body suspended inside.

She bent down and hugged the man on her lap, trying to transmit her own body warmth to him. ‘There’s nothing I can do for the ones out there,’ she decided. ‘But I am going to save this man if it’s the last thing I do.’

‘Hold on,’ she whispered to him. ‘Help will be here soon.’ She brushed the dark hair back from his forehead and kissed his brow with all the gentleness of a lover, and he murmured something unintelligible in reply.

Reg was shivering convulsively and if it hadn’t been for the men who surrounded him, he would have fallen and slipped over the edge of the collapsible. He had no feeling at all in his feet and that bothered him. There was a very real danger he could lose them to frostbite. He stamped one then the other but they were so numb it was as if they belonged to someone else.

Lightoller had turned in their direction. ‘That man lying down. Is he alive? Could someone check?’

He meant the man whose leg Reg had used to haul himself up onto the collapsible. Someone crouched to listen for signs of breathing.

‘He’s gone.’

‘Roll him overboard then,’ Lightoller ordered. ‘We need the space.’

It felt cruel to do so, but it was an order given by an officer. To his surprise, Reg found himself making the sign of the cross. Despite his lack of religious faith, it felt as though some gesture were needed and that’s all he could think of. The man rolled off and was soon lost from sight.

All was quiet now, apart from Lightoller’s occasional orders for them to lean to the left or to the right. Oars were virtually useless on an upturned boat, so they drifted aimlessly through the blackness. Reg didn’t think he knew anyone on the collapsible apart from Lightoller, but then he heard a Birkenhead accent he recognised.

‘Mr Joughin, is that you?’

‘Yeah, an’ who’s that?’

‘Reg Parton, sir.’

‘Young Reg. I’m glad of it.’

They lapsed into silence again, and now Reg simply focused on the act of staying upright. His legs were like jelly and he knew he was leaning on his neighbours too heavily because they nudged him and snapped that he should get off the boat and swim for it if he couldn’t stand up by himself. He blew into his fingers to warm them, and all he could think was that something had to happen soon because he couldn’t go on like this much longer. And yet he must.

The night seemed interminable. At one stage, Reg began hallucinating. He thought that Lightoller was his father and felt euphoric that he had come back to look after him in his hour of need. He was a good man after all, no matter what they said about him. ‘Father, I wish you could meet Florence,’ he said, and all of a sudden Florence was there and Reg was delighted. He couldn’t see her but he could hear her introducing herself to his father. ‘Reg is a good boy, Mr Parton,’ she said.

‘Will you put a bloody lid on it?’ a harsh voice scolded. ‘You’re going doolally.’

‘Is he talking to me?’ Reg wondered. And then he realised he had been speaking out loud, and that Florence wasn’t on the boat and Lightoller wasn’t his father.

He looked out across the ocean, and there weren’t so many bodies floating around now; they must have drifted away on a current. On the horizon he could see faint grey dawn arriving, its rays curving around the edge of the planet. It was probably about four in the morning, he reckoned, although he had no way of checking. They could have been standing on that collapsible for hours, or days even. He couldn’t remember.

Gradually he became aware that the other men were talking among themselves: just quietly at first, and then the tone changed, became more animated. What were they saying?

‘I reckon she’s twenty minutes away.’

‘Less than that.’

Reg looked out towards the horizon and first he saw an iceberg, glistening in pale pink rays of sunlight. Next he saw a lifeboat full of people. That must be what they were talking about. And then the sun slipped a little further over the horizon and he made out an indistinct glowing shape and his heart gave a little skip. Could it be? He kept his eyes glued to that spot and the shape got bigger and closer and soon there was no doubt at all. It was a ship. They were saved. He was going to live.

‘Was that a shooting star?’

Juliette looked up. A carpet of stars was blinking against the black sky but she couldn’t see any trails. And then she saw what they were talking about: a white starburst that exploded outwards before petering down towards the water.

‘It’s a rocket!’ Lowe declared. ‘It must be the
Carpathia
.’

‘Is that a ship come to rescue us?’ one woman asked, and Lowe told her that it was.

Juliette leant down to whisper the news to the man on her lap. ‘Not long now,’ she told him. Hang on in there.’ She ran her fingers through his hair and ruffled it affectionately.

Lowe was giving orders and the men were rowing with renewed vigour. She could feel them pulling through the water. It was getting lighter and as she looked out over the edge of the boat, she saw other lifeboats dotted in the water around them, all full of huddled figures. She counted six boats, each of them crammed with survivors. Maybe more people had lived than she thought. Perhaps only a few had perished and the rest had been picked up and saved, like the man in her lap.

She wondered if she should check his pockets to see if he had any identification, but it felt impertinent. Instead she cradled him and whispered reassurance. ‘I can see the ship now,’ she told him. ‘It’s huge. We’ll soon be on there, in dry clothes, with blankets and a warm drink. They’ll have doctors too.’

As she watched, the first lifeboat arrived alongside the
Carpathia
, and Juliette could see there was some kind of opening halfway up the side of the ship, and tiny figures were lifting people onto ladders to reach it. The sky was brightening by the minute.

‘Ladies, we’re going to have to squeeze up and take some more on board,’ Lowe told them.

They were pulling up alongside a lifeboat in a perilous state, half-submerged so that its occupants were standing in several inches of water. There were about thirty of them, crowded together like sardines, all soaked to the skin and teeth chattering. Juliette pulled her patient closer and bent his knees up to make room. One by one the men from the half-submerged vessel clambered on board, and she felt their craft lowering in the water with the extra weight.

When everyone was loaded, they started rowing towards the ship. Juliette felt impatient now, but it took at least another half-hour before they pulled alongside the
Carpathia
and some of her crew began helping them on board. She saw there was a rope ladder stretching upwards.

‘Will you manage to climb, ma’am, or would you like us to lower a chair?’ someone asked her.

‘I can climb myself, but what about this man? Look after him first, please. He needs help.’ She lifted his head from her lap and extricated her skirt from beneath him.

A
Carpathia
crew member came on board and crouched to assess the condition of her patient. After a minute, he looked up gravely. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but he’s gone.’

It was like a punch in the heart. ‘He can’t be. He’s not, he’s alive!’ she insisted. She grabbed his wrist and felt for the faint pulse she had detected not long before. She bent her head to listen for any hint of breath. She shook him by the shoulders. ‘He was alive just now, I swear.’ Tears came to her eyes and began to flow. ‘Oh God, he has to be alive.’

‘Let me help you on board.’ The seaman took her hand and raised her to her feet. She stepped across onto the rope ladder and began to climb, and that’s when she started to sob in earnest. She felt intense grief, as though he had been a close relative, or a lover. Maybe he could even have been her future husband. But in truth, she hadn’t even found out his name.