Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [69]
When our boat was at last ready and Mrs Carter had boarded, Mr Carter cried out, ‘If anything should prevent me from following, everything you need to know is in the third drawer down in the bureau.’
‘Yes, dear,’ replied Mrs Carter.
The Astors stepped forward. Helping his wife over the gunwale Astor asked, ‘I can go with her, can’t I? She needs me.’ His foot was raised, ready to climb. The officer replied, ‘I’m afraid you can’t, sir. We have to see to the women first.’ ‘I understand,’ Astor said, and dropped back instantly. His wife looked at him; she gave a plucky little smile as he waved his farewell. I turned to Adele and seized her elbow. She was tearing chunks out of the loaf with her teeth, as though famished. She shook me away and crumbs flew in all directions. ‘I’m not getting in that thing,’ she said. ‘I’ll go when the Duff Gordons tell me it’s time.’ I think Rosenfelder was relieved at her refusal. Mrs Carter had shown him her torn coat.
The boat descended with creaks and groans. It was half full, no more. We peered down, waiting to hear it hit the water. ‘We need a man,’ bellowed the spunky Mrs Brown, her hat in the light of the portholes assuming the shape of a swooping vulture. ‘There’s no one at the tiller.’ The officer shouted for a seaman and a wine steward from the a` la carte restaurant darted forward and shimmied down the rope before anyone could stop him. Someone screamed out he was a damned scoundrel. We watched the boat row away. There were no lanterns on board and once it had moved out of the shimmer of the porthole lights we heard only the ghostly splashings of the oars. ‘Garfield has the key,’ called Mr Carter. There was no reply.
The second boat was almost in place when it jammed some three feet above the rail. A complicated procedure required it to jerk upwards before coming down; I supposed this was to make sure the ropes were running free. The officer in charge turned – I was fortunate to be standing nearest to him – and called for assistance. I leapt at the chance, glad to be active at last, and put my whole heart into the task, tugging and pushing as though it was my own life that depended on it. And when we had got it straight, or fairly so, and the officer shouted for the women to come forward, I was able to help them up and tumble them aboard. Again the boat was cranked away half full, and I couldn’t but do arithmetic in my head and subtract the saved from those left behind, particularly those bewildered souls I had seen below in the steerage class.
I was now ordered to the port side where there were more men than women gathered on deck. I learnt later that a rumour had gone round to the effect that men were to be taken off from here and women from the starboard side. Whatever the truth of it, when boat Number 5 was ready to be filled there were so few women that a dozen or more men were allowed to clamber in. I asked the officer if we shouldn’t wait but he said there wasn’t time and he daren’t fill it to capacity, not at this height, because the boat might break in two under the strain. There are women and children waiting below at the gangway hatches,’ he said. ‘They can enter more easily from there.’ As the boat dropped in fits and starts, the women clinging to each other, a commotion broke out to my right and a man shouted, ‘Faster . . . faster . . . lower away faster, I tell you.’ It was Bruce Ismay, whirling his arms round like a windmill. He had lost one of his slippers and his bare foot stamped the deck as he cried out again in a fever of impatience, ‘Faster, damn you . . . faster.’ Then the officer supervising got angry, and shouted back, ‘If you’ll get the hell out of the way, I’ll be able to do my job. You want me to lower away faster? You fool, you’ll have me drown the lot of them.’ At this Ismay limped off, his arms still swinging. I craned over the rail, expecting to see the boat halt on a level with the hatches, but it met the water and rowed away.
Shortly after, they started