I took no notice any more of the people around me, nor of my sumptuous surroundings; I was simply enthralled by the music. I ate the food that was put in front of me, but paid little attention to it. It was the music that was feeding me. The silver-haired pianist was flashing smiles all around as his fingers danced over the keyboard. And what a piano it was, the most magnificent grand piano I had ever seen. He played sometimes delicately, sometimes flamboyantly, but always with the greatest ease and supreme style.
It was at that very first lunch also that I found myself adopted by the family at the table next to mine, who, seeing I was on my own, and taking pity on me I suppose, invited me to join them. I recognised them at once as the same family who had so nearly missed the boat back in New York. Sad to say, I have forgotten their family name, but the two children – Paul, who informed me at once that he was five and that his sister Celia was only three – soon became very attached to me, and I to them too. Whenever I ate with them after that – and they insisted I did every time I came to the dining room – the children made me sit between them. Celia liked me to feed her teddy bear, which I did. She was rather talkative, and told me that it didn’t matter her teddy bear had only one eye, that he was quite happy, and you could tell that because he was always smiling.
After I mentioned that I liked playing the piano, they took me over and introduced me to the silver-haired pianist – he was called Maurice, and was French, he said, from Paris.
When I went, as I often did, for walks with the whole family along the promenade deck, I would sometimes find little hands slipping into mine, one on either side. I liked playing at being their older sister, and their parents seemed to like it too. They were endlessly kind, the mother going to visit Mama sometimes in the cabin to see if there was anything she could do for her.
Much as I liked being with them though, my best times were with Brendan Doyle. Whenever he had time to spare, he would take me on a tour around the ship, always somewhere different, always somewhere new. Often we’d go where he told me passengers like me weren’t really supposed to go, but that it was all right if I was with him. We went into First Class – Mama and I were in Second Class – and we went down below too into the depths of the ship, where the Third Class passengers lived – where everything was very crowded and cramped, where people huddled together, dark-eyed and miserable, where children whimpered and cried, and where the smell was overpoweringly dreadful. But worst of all, and even further below, were the giant boilers and the engines, where the thunder of the machinery and the pounding of the pistons were deafening, where the stench and heat of the furnaces were so stifling I could hardly breathe. Here, Brendan told me, the men laboured long and tirelessly twenty-four hours a day to keep the ship going.
It was deep in the bowels of the engine room that I truly felt the power of this great ship, and witnessed for myself how hard it must be for the men working down there. Brendan said there were nearly two hundred men needed to keep the ship going. For me, it seemed like a vision of hell itself, and I could not wait to get back up on deck and fill my lungs with fresh sea air again.
I often stood with Brendan on the stern of the ship, looking out over the ocean at the ever-widening wake behind us. It was my favourite place, and his too, or so it seemed. To me, it was like the pathway back home, back to New York and Pippa and Uncle Mac and Aunty Ducka. Brendan was so proud of the ship. He’d been working on her for seven years, he told me, ever since she was launched. He loved her. The people who worked on her were his family now. He had never missed a voyage in all that time.
We’d stand there, gazing up at the four massive funnels, bright red, black tipped, each one billowing out dark smoke that drifted over our heads, over the wake of the ship and away. “Can you not feel the throbbing heart of her?” Brendan said to me one day as we stood there on deck, marvelling at her. “Sometimes I think the Lusy is a living, breathing creature, a great gentle giant who keeps us safe, and we do the same for her. She’s not a ship at all, not to me. She’s a friend. The biggest, most beautiful friend anyone could ever have.”
And it was true; everything about the Lusitania was awesome. I knew now what drove that mighty ship on through the ocean, what muscle and what work made that smoke, made that wake. “Isn’t she just the finest ship you ever saw?” Brendan said. “Isn’t she just the best in the entire world?” And she was, she was.
It was here, leaning on the rail at the stern of the ship and looking out to sea, that Brendan and I were standing together on that last morning. We could just make out the coastline of Ireland through the fog.
“In a couple of hours or so I reckon we’ll be off the Old Head of Kinsale,” he said. “If this fog lifts, we should be able to see the town of Kinsale itself clear enough, with a little luck, and maybe a little imagination. I’d like to show it to you, Merry. I told you it was the place where I was born, didn’t I? When I was a little fella, I always wanted to go to sea. I’d be sitting there on the harbour wall at Kinsale, swinging me legs, and watching the fishing boats going out and coming in; and the great big ships – with great funnels like ours – steaming by on the horizon. I longed to go wherever they had been, wherever they were going, to see what was beyond. I had to go. There was a whole wide world out there, and I wanted to see it. There was nothing for me at home anyway – too many in the nest, fourteen of us, and never enough to eat. Seven years now, off and on, I’ve been at sea, and in all that time I’ve never once been home again. I couldn’t wait to get out of the place. But do you know what, Merry? I miss it, miss it bad.”
He fell silent for a few moments, and I could see he was feeling sad, which was unlike him. Then out of the sadness came a sudden smile, and a cheery laugh. “I’ve steamed past the place dozens of times in this ship, Merry, on the way to Liverpool,” he went on. “And every time I see it there in the distance I wonder if there isn’t a small boy just like me sitting on the harbour wall, kicking his heels, and watching us going slowly by along the horizon, and thinking how fine and wonderful a thing it would be to go to sea in a great ship like that. I’ll go back home one day, Merry, I will, I will. I’ll stroll in and say: ‘It’s me, Ma. It’s Brendan.’ That’ll be a moment. I’ll be hugged from here to kingdom come, and Ma will examine me neck and tell me I haven’t been washing meself like I should.”
His voice was full of laughter now, laughter that was near to tears, I thought. He put his arm round me as we walked away from the ship’s rail. “I’m thinking we should be off Kinsale at about two o’clock today,” said Brendan, “just after lunch. Tell you what, Merry. We could maybe meet up again then, and I could show you. I shall come and fetch you from the dining hall when the time’s right. Would you like that? Mind you, it may be a little later than two o’clock. The captain has had to slow right down in this fog. I reckon we’re only doing about fifteen knots at the most. But the fog will very likely have lifted a little by lunchtime, may be gone altogether. Let’s hope so. I’ll bring my binoculars, Merry, then you’ll be able to see Kinsale easy enough.” He looked around him, his brow furrowing. “I hate a fog at sea, every sailor does.”
I went back down to the cabin after that, and found Mama fast asleep again. I was sitting at the desk, writing her another note to say I was going to the dining room to have lunch, when I happened to notice the newspaper lying there on her bed, on her sheets. She had clearly fallen asleep reading it. It looked to me very much like the same newspaper Uncle Mac had been reading to Mama on the day we sailed. Curious, I picked it up. There was an advertisement in the centre of the page, printed in large letters. Someone had circled it in pencil, and that had to be Uncle Mac, I thought. It took me a long while to read it because many of the words were far too long and complicated for me, some I had to miss out altogether. But at least the print was big, so I could read some of the words, but not enough to make much sense of them.
NOTICE
Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between
Germany and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles: that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any other of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain and her allies do so at their own risk.
I had just finished reading this, and was still trying to work out what it meant, when I heard Mama stirring and waking behind me. I put the newspaper down at once, but it was too late. She had seen me. “Give me that newspaper, Merry. Now, this minute.” She was angry at me, and I didn’t know why. I went over to the bed.
“What does it mean, Mama?” I asked, as I handed it to her.
“Nothing.” She snatched it from me. “Nothing at all.”
“It’s what Uncle Mac was showing you, isn’t it?” I said.
“It’s all nonsense, plain nonsense,” she told me dismissively, and dropped the paper into the wastepaper bin. “German propaganda, Merry, that’s what it is, and that’s where it belongs, in the bin. Let’s hear no more about it.”
But I knew then that she wasn’t telling me the truth. I could tell that she was worried and was trying to disguise it. “What does it all mean?” I asked her. She would not reply. “Does it mean they’re going to attack us, Mama? It does, doesn’t it? That’s what Uncle Mac was trying to tell you, wasn’t it? He was trying to warn us. He didn’t want us to sail, did he? And it was because of this.” I was shouting at her now, and crying too.
“Will you stop it, Merry?” she said. “Just stop it. You’re being silly. I have told you, there is nothing to worry about. We will be in Liverpool in only a few hours, take the train to London, and by this time tomorrow we shall be seeing Papa in his hospital. That’s why we came, that’s why we had to come. And no one’s sunk the ship, have they?”
“They still could,” I cried. “They still could. Then we’ll never see Papa, will we? And it’ll be all your fault! I hate it when you don’t tell me things, when you talk to me as if I’m a baby. I’m not! I’m not!” I ran from the cabin then in tears. I could hear her sobbing behind me as I left.
I managed to calm myself before I reached the dining hall. The piano was playing and my ‘family’ were waiting for me, beckoning me to join them, as I came in. As we ate our lunch, the two children prattled on, but I wasn’t really listening. Celia, as usual, gave me her teddy bear to hold. So I sat it on my lap, but she had to keep reminding me to stroke and feed it. My mind was elsewhere. All I could think of was how upset Mama must be after what I had said. I had never spoken to her like that before, and was regretting it bitterly.
I was about to leave the table to go down to the cabin to say how sorry I was when Maurice, the silver-haired French piano player, rose suddenly to his feet from his piano, and clapped his hands for silence. “Mesdames, Messieurs, mes enfants,” Maurice began, “I am told that we have in our midst today a young lady – she is called Merry, which is a very pretty name – who plays the piano quite beautifully.” Paul and Celia’s parents were smiling knowingly at me from across the table. They had clearly arranged this. “So, shall we ask Merry to come and play for us?”
Everyone in the dining hall was laughing and clapping. I had no choice. Mortified, but heart pounding with excitement too, I stood up and walked slowly towards the grand piano. Maurice patted the piano stool and stood aside, inviting me to sit down. The dining hall fell silent around me. Everyone was looking at me, waiting for me to begin. I noticed Brendan then, standing by the door, smiling at me, encouraging me. I still couldn’t think what to play, nor even how to begin to play. My mind froze. My hands froze. It was then that I thought I felt the gentle touch of a hand on my shoulder. Papa’s hand, I was sure of it. He was willing me on, telling me I could do it. And now I could, I could!
I played almost without knowing it, and found I was listening to Papa’s favourite piece, my favourite piece, Mozart’s ‘Andante Grazioso’. I saw my fingers dancing over the keys. Only then did I know for certain that I must be playing it, it was me making the piano sing. The music took hold of me and I forgot everything else, until it was over, until the applause came long and loud, and Maurice was helping me to my feet, telling me to take my bow.
“Three bows, Merry,” he said. “Say each time to yourself, as you bow, ‘un éléphant, deux éléphants, trois éléphants’ – this is what I always do. This way you take your time. This way you bow low. This way you enjoy the applause.” I did as he told me, and he was right – I did enjoy the applause. Bravos rang around the dining hall. Everyone seemed to want to pat me on the back and shake my hand as I passed by. Some I saw had been moved to tears and Celia and Paul were jumping up and down with delight, Celia waving her teddy bear in the air.
Minutes later, Brendan was at my table, helping me to my feet, and escorting me out of the dining room. “We have to hurry,” he whispered. “And that music, girl,” he went on, “that music you played in there was supreme, supreme.”
Just outside the dining room, we found our way suddenly blocked by a tall man in a tailcoat and monocle, who looked down at me sternly from a great height, wagging his finger. “Very fine playing, I’m sure, young lady,” he said. “But I would not stay to hear it. Mozart was German, don’t you know, so we should not be playing his music. It is enemy music now, until the war is over and won.”
“Wasn’t that Mozart fella an Austrian?” said Brendan.
“Austrian? German? They are the same,” the man replied. “Both enemies, and don’t you forget it. There are enemy ships, enemy submarines, all around us out there on the ocean, so we should not be playing their music. Plenty of good British music to play! Elgar. Elgar’s your man.” And with that he strode away back into the hubbub of the dining room.
“Silly old duffer,” said Brendan under his breath as we walked up on deck towards the stern of the ship. He looked at his watch. “Just after two o’clock. We should be sighting the Old Head of Kinsale any time now. The fog’s cleared a bit, so we’ll be seeing it well enough, I reckon, if we keep a sharp eye.”
We were standing at the ship’s rail now, Brendan looking out through his binoculars. “I think the captain’s taking us a little closer to shore than he usually does,” he went on, “which is good, but I still can’t make out Kinsale. Patchy this fog, but it’ll clear, Merry, it will. It’ll be maybe a few more minutes yet before we can see the town.” He turned and looked upwards then, as I did too, at the ship’s dark smoke billowing up into the wispy white of the fog above them, at the hundreds of escorting gulls wheeling over the ship.
“Will you look at them, Merry? Isn’t that a sight? Irish gulls,” he laughed. And then his voice changed, the laughter suddenly gone. “That’s strange,” he said. “The lifeboats are all out on the starboard side, all ready to launch. What have they done that for? Must be an exercise or something. No one told me. Let’s take a look.”
As we walked across the deck over to the starboard side of the ship, Brendan began pointing skywards. There was blue sky quite visible now through the fog. He handed me the binoculars. “Gannets!” he cried. “Will you look at that! They’re diving. Take a look. See how they slice into the water. D’you see them, Merry? Isn’t that the most marvellous thing you ever saw! Can you see? Can you see?” And I did see them, dozens of them, like a shower of white stars falling from the blue of the sky. “After the mackerel I shouldn’t wonder,” said Brendan. “They love mackerel, and herring too.”
It was a spectacular display. With the binoculars, I could just make out the yellow of their heads as they dived. In they went, one after another, disappearing into the waves, only to rise again miraculously moments later with a fish.
Then, without warning, the binoculars were snatched roughly from me. Brendan was looking through them out to sea, but he was no longer interested in the gannets’ feeding frenzy. He had seen something else. “Jeez!” he breathed. “Jeez!”
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br /> “What?” I said. “What is it?” Then I saw it myself, about five hundred yards away, a trail of bubbles in the sea, moving rapidly towards us, coming ever closer to the ship. Brendan was shouting up at the crow’s-nest high above the deck. I couldn’t understand at all, not at first, why he had become so suddenly agitated, why he was gesticulating wildly, and screaming at the top of his voice.
“Submarine! Torpedo! Torpedo! Submarine!”
AN ECHOING CRY WENT UP at once from the crow’s-nest. Other passengers out walking on the starboard deck were now alerted to the danger, and were running and screaming. And we were running too, Brendan dragging me across the deck, over to the other side of the ship.
It was like a clap of thunder when it struck. The force of it rocked the ship under us, throwing us across the deck and sending us crashing into the rails. We were barely on our feet again before another explosion, more muffled this time, a dull boom, shook the ship but from somewhere deep down below. The deck tilted violently, tipping us both off balance again. But Brendan held on to me and got me to my feet. “It’s a torpedo, Merry,” he cried. “She’s wounded in the heart of her, wounded bad. She’s a dead ship. She’ll go down.”
He took me firmly by the arm and we ran at once back across the deck to the starboard side, towards the nearest lifeboat. Passengers and crew were pouring up on deck now, consternation and terror on every face. Everywhere about us there was panic. Everyone seemed to be looking for someone else, and pulling on life jackets as they went. But it seemed no one could be found. There were children crying for their mothers, and mothers searching frantically for their children, screaming for them. I saw not a single reunion in that dreadful, fearful melee.
A great fire had taken hold of the ship, flames roaring, clouds of smoke blackening the sky above. It took me some time to gather my thoughts, but, when I did, I was crystal clear what I had to do. “Mama!” I shouted to Brendan, pulling away from him and making for the door to the companionway. “I have to find Mama! She’s in the cabin.”