Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [62]
At that moment the bar steward came over and politely asked us to leave. We must all go as quickly as possible to fetch our life-preservers and assemble on deck. There was no cause for panic. It was simply a precaution. I arranged with Hopper that we meet in the gymnasium in ten minutes. ‘We’ll stick together, won’t we,’ he insisted. ‘It’ll be like the old days.’ ‘Yes,’ I assured him. Ginsberg strolled into the foyer and lowered himself into a leather armchair. Rosenfelder panted up the Grand Staircase in search of Scurra. Before we parted, Hopper touched my arm, ‘You’re my oldest friend,’ he murmured, ‘and my best.’ His eyes were scared. Ginsberg looked up and waved sardonically as the doors of the elevator clanged shut; he was holding a handkerchief to his nostrils.
I rode below in the company of two ladies in wrappers and a man wearing pyjamas beneath a golfing jacket. I swear the stouter of the women was the one who had expressed disappointment at there not being more of a show when we left Southampton. She was going to the purser’s office to withdraw her valuables from the safe. Not that they amounted to much. She had a watch left to her by a grandmother born in Kent, England, a diamond pin that had belonged to her dead mother and an album of family photographs. If it came to the pinch, she said, she’d choose the album every time. The steward had told her to fetch what small items she had because everyone might have to get into the boats. The man in the golfing jacket laughed and said this was highly unlikely. ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ he said, ‘this isn’t some elaborate hoax. After all, the ship is unsinkable.’
When I entered the passage McKinlay and the night steward were knocking on doors, urging people to go up on deck. I felt curiously detached and had the notion I swaggered rather than walked; I’d never been so conscious of how good it was be young, for I knew it was my youthful resolution as well as my strong arms that would enable me to survive the next two hours. I thought of old man Seefax and his feeble grasp on life and reckoned he might perish from nothing more than lack of hope. By now, wireless messages would have been dispatched to every vessel in the area, and even if there wasn’t enough room for all in the boats, there would still be time for those left behind to switch from one ship to another. Somewhere in my mind I pored over an illustration, in a child’s book of heroic deeds, of a rescue at sea, ropes slung between two heaving decks and men swinging like gibbons above the foaming waves. How Sissy would gasp when I recounted my story! How my aunt would throw up her hands when I shouted the details of my midnight adventure! Why, as long as I wrapped up well it would be the greatest fun in the world.
Accordingly, having reached my stateroom, I put my cricket pullover on under my jacket and taking off my dancing pumps struggled into three pairs of thick stockings. I had to pull one pair off again because I couldn’t fit into my boots. Then I went into the corridor and got McKinlay to help tie the strings of my life-preserver. He jokingly remarked that I’d put on weight since we last met and asked if I had with me everything I wanted to take. He’d been instructed to lock all the doors until the emergency was over – in case things went missing. They were having a spot of trouble keeping the steerage class from surging up from below.
‘I’m working for Mr Andrews,’ I told him. ‘I may need my room as a base . . . to write reports . . . that sort of rigmarole.’
‘It’s orders, sir,’ he said.
‘Well, in my case, just forget them, there’s a good chap.’ He hesitated, but the ‘good chap’ did the trick and he left my door alone. On an impulse I went back inside and took up the painting of my mother. Taking out my knife I levered the picture from its frame, tore out the stretchers and rolling up the canvas stuck it in my pocket.
There were now a dozen or more people filing in procession towards the elevator. They were mostly pretty cheerful, engaging in banter to do