Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [75]
‘I suppose it’s best to jump,’ I said. ‘And from the stern.’
‘Wrong, bloody wrong. Best place is the roof of the officers’ house. Where the collapsible is. Her bows will go down and the sea will wash you off. Mind you, the first funnel will likely keep you company.’
‘There’s another boat?’
‘The officers is keeping it for themselves. Leastways, we weren’t told to get it down.’ He was watching me in the mirror, studying my build. ‘You might make it,’ he said. ‘You’d think the fat ones would do best, having more flesh on them, but mostly their tickers give up under the shock. Now me, I’m on the scrawny side, but that only means the cold will freeze my blood quicker.’ I reckoned he was trying to frighten me and stared him out. I asked, ‘What did I do to make you so angry . . . before?’
‘It’s water under the bridge now,’ he said.
‘All the same, I’d like to know.’
‘That bleeding half-crown you tossed me.’ I stared at him. I thought he meant that in tipping him I’d treated him as an inferior. ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I didn’t think.’
‘No, you bloody well didn’t. Still, it don’t matter now . . . you with your millions and me with me half-crown, we’re both in the same boat.’ And with that he took a silver coin out of his pocket and dropped it in the sink. Then he went out of the door. I sat there a moment, feeling sick. I think it was the smell of lavender, not his treatment of me that turned my stomach. I left the coin where it lay, in case he came back, but when I went out into the passage there was no sign of him.
All the way up to A deck I argued with him in my head, protesting that I wasn’t stingy and that on his wages I wouldn’t have turned my nose up at two shillings and sixpence – but then, I thought of the money Charlie had said I’d thrown away at cards the night before and fairly burned with shame.
Hopper and Charlie had gone from the smoke-room. So had the card players. Thomas Andrews was standing with his back to me at the fire, balancing up on his toes, positioning a picture in place above the mantelpiece. It was the Plymouth Harbour painting, the one I’d last seen hanging in the library. He stepped back to see if it hung straight, and I called out his name. He didn’t turn round. His life-preserver lay across the table. I went closer and said, ‘Will you not come up on deck, sir? There isn’t much time.’ Still with his back to me he fluttered his hand in the air, either waving me away or waving goodbye.
I did as Riley had told me and once on the boat deck climbed the companionway up to the officers’ house which was forward of the first funnel. There were seamen on the roof, struggling to release the collapsible. I peered down and saw Guggenheim and his valet both dressed as though off to a swell party. They were listening to the orchestra which was playing rag-time to raise our spirits, Guggenheim tap-tapping his cane on the rail. Hopper stood not a yard from them, looking first one way then the other. I guessed he was trying to find me and shouted to him. By good luck he heard and sprinted towards the stairs. He told me Charlie was further along the deck. They had both gone aft to where a priest was giving conditional absolution to a demented congregation. When Charlie had fallen to his knees and started to blub out the most damn fool confessions, like how he’d tormented a cat when he was a child and how he’d stolen a dollar from his mother’s purse, he had to leave him. ‘Honest to God, Morgan, he’s turned yellow.’
At that moment the orchestra changed tune and struck up a hymn, one I knew well because it was a favourite of my aunt’s and sometimes she used to sing it when she was in one of her brighter moods . . . E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me, Still all my song shall be, Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee. Hearing it, I knew I had to go in search of Charlie, for Lady Melchett’s sake if not my own, and would have gone on searching for him if