On a Cold Dark Sea(68)
“No use looking for ’im now,” Mr. Wells says sharply. “If we stay here, we’ll be caught in the suction.”
The mother frowns. “What do you mean?”
“The ship’s going down. Its weight will pull down everything around it.”
Mr. Wells’s pronouncement sends a ripple of alarm through the previously stoic passengers. Sabine drops her head and presses her hands together in prayer. Esme, touched, remembers Sabine’s father and how Esme promised him she’d keep his daughter safe. Brimming with motherly protectiveness, Esme gives Sabine an approving pat, but the maid’s eyes remain shut. She is praying fervently for Mr. Harper, the kindest man she knows.
“Is it true?” Esme asks Charlie in a whisper. “Will we be pulled down?”
“I don’t know. It might be like a whirlpool, only a hell of a lot bigger.”
It’s the swearing that makes Esme realize Charlie is afraid, too.
“We must look to our own safety first, mustn’t we?” Esme asks Mr. Healy tightly.
Mr. Healy speaks to her with the deference due a lady wearing a fur coat. “I will do everything I can.” Turning to the back, he calls out to the woman steering, “We’ll make a turn to port.”
Behind him, Anna’s muddled thoughts shift into place. They are leaving. They can’t! Emil is there, in the water, and if they don’t pull him in, he will die. She straightens up with a jolt, knocking Charlotte’s arm away.
“Emil!” Anna cries. “We have to save my friend!”
Charlotte gives Anna a sympathetic but puzzled look. She doesn’t understand Swedish, of course, and Anna tries to remember the dialogues in her English phrase book. She studied those pages for hours, but none of the suggested conversations have prepared her for this. All she can think of are childish, useless words: “Train.” “Bread.” “Please.”
“My name is Anna Halversson,” she blurts out. It’s the only English sentence that comes to mind.
Charlotte smiles, a patient mother encouraging her baby’s first steps. “My name is Charlotte Evers,” she says slowly, pointing to her chest.
Anna struggles to make Charlotte understand. “Name Emil Andersson,” she tries, pointing out toward the blackness. “Emil!”
Charlotte can only shake her head, helplessly apologetic. She’d thought, at first, that Anna spoke some English, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Poor thing—she must be shouting about someone she left behind on the boat. Her father, a brother. Charlotte thinks of Reg and her chest seizes with a sudden sharp pain. Where is he?
Anna looks frantically at the water. Emil can’t be far away. She remembers the final kick she made to reach the boat, and how her left foot had hit something hard. Was it Emil’s life belt? His face? She doesn’t think she is strong enough to have hurt him, but he’d been weakened by the cold. She thinks of Emil, half frozen and suffering, and her heart pulses with panic. She has to find him. If he dies this close to rescue, she will never forgive herself. She will not deserve to live.
Anna tries to tell Charlotte all this, in a frenzy of words she knows Charlotte won’t understand. She hopes the desperation in her voice will be explanation enough. She throws her hands out, toward the water, pointing blindly, until an English word pops into her mind, a word Sonja had told her would be useful during their travels.
“Help!” Anna shouts, pointing away from the boat. “Help!”
Charlotte grasps Anna’s flittering hands, trying to calm her down.
“Yes,” Charlotte says with exaggerated nods. “We’re going for help.” She says the last word slowly, emphasizing it for Anna’s benefit.
Anna, despondent, breaks into ragged sobs. Perhaps the girl simply needs a good cry, Charlotte thinks. It’s no wonder, with what she’s been through.
“Make her stop,” the mother mutters from the row behind. “She’s going to upset the children.” The boy and girl sitting on either side of her look more curious than upset. The mother nudges their faces away from the Titanic, but the boy keeps sneaking looks.
“The poor dear,” the elderly woman says. Her hands, a lumpy mass of arthritic joints and swollen veins, rest on the top of her cane. “She’s lost someone, I imagine.”
Anger simmers beneath the mother’s cool English restraint. “We’ve all lost someone.”
Charlotte feels an overwhelming urge to slap the woman. How dare she talk as if everyone left on the Titanic were already dead! Reg is the cleverest person Charlotte knows, clever enough to find his way into another lifeboat or cling to the wreckage until the rescue boats arrive. Yet Charlotte sees no lights on the horizon. Not even the glow of another lifeboat’s lantern. Where have they all gone?
The passengers sit at attention, like toy soldiers, as the lifeboat makes a slow, stiff turn. Charlie and Mr. Healy lean into their oars and pull back with broad, strong movements, but their efforts are barely enough to budge the boat. Mr. Wells lights up a pipe, to loud protests from the women in the back. “I will not be treated in this manner!” one of them pronounces, but Mr. Wells pretends not to hear. He continues to smoke, each exhale defiant.
Most people have turned their backs on the Titanic, shielding themselves from its destruction, but Esme can’t look away. She hears a muffled rumble as the ship’s bones twist and break, the engines and machinery and beams crashing downward. There is a hypnotic quality to the ship’s leisurely descent. Esme imagines describing the scene to her friends, sometime in the future. The words “tragically magnificent” come to mind, and she is swept up in the self-important gratification that comes from witnessing history.