Authors: Kevin Kiely
SOS Lusitania (8 page)
D
uring the days in New York I walked the streets, gazing at everything in amazement. There were millions of people in the city and the buildings cast long shadows, and on some streets it was dark and on others dazzlingly bright. You couldn’t really see the sky because it hurt your neck looking up so far.
On our second night Dad took me to an amazing place. Even the street was different to every other street I had seen so far. The people were mostly Chinese. The buildings had archways at the entrance with lanterns and paper dragons; the shop fronts were mostly red and black, and many had incense smoking in lamps at the doors that caught my nose, making me sneeze. There was strange twanging music from harps,
stringed instruments, bells and drums.
We went into a hotel in Chinatown where the staff wore black caps, had pigtails, and seemed to shuffle in and out slowly and with great ease and dignity no matter how busy they were. Dad ordered and we were served lots of tiny dishes of fish and meat, with brightly coloured sauces. He ate with chopsticks, but after a messy attempt, I stuck to a knife and fork.
Then a woman in a red cloak with coloured birds sewn onto it came over to our table. Her hair was as black as coal. She had white powder painted all over her face, except for red paint on her lips and black paint at her eyebrows. She smelt like flowers.
‘I am Lily Lee.’ She had a beaming smile. ‘Can I tell your son’s fortune, sir? One dollar – a really special deal for the boy.’ She smiled and bowed.
‘You go ahead,’ Dad said, and he peeled off a note from his wedge, telling me to hold onto my eleven dollars.
‘Give me your hand,’ Lily Lee said as she sat on a chair near me. Her eyes became narrow. She gasped. Her eyes shone like jewels as she stared at me.
‘Hey, this is a bit strange,’ said Dad.
‘Be patient, sir. Your son knows some things that you do
not.’ Lily Lee became silent and motionless again. Then she breathed in loudly, closed her eyes and when they opened she stared into a vacant space above my head. ‘Be careful, boy,’ she said. ‘I see you in grave danger on a ship. You want to see your sister and brothers again, don’t you?’
‘But how could you know he has a sister and brothers?’ Dad was amazed.
But Lily Lee ignored him. ‘You watch out, sonny,’ she said slowly. ‘In time of war a boy at the centre of bad things can survive. Remember that.’ She repeated this three times, stared at my father as she bowed, moved backwards, facing us for a while, then rushed away and disappeared outside into the crowd of passersby.
Dad looked worried for a moment and then indicated that we were leaving. He paid the bill, left a tip and we walked outside. ‘You all right?’ he asked as we strolled along the sidewalk. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’ He stopped and put one hand on my shoulder.
‘Is she a witch or what?’ I asked, a bit shaken. ‘What did she mean?’
‘Finbar, I don’t know, but she has you scared, I can see that. Lily Lee saw that I was in naval uniform – that doesn’t make her so gifted with second sight!’
‘But, Dad,’ I blurted out – somehow I got the courage to tell him – ‘Dad, there’s going to be a shipwreck. I saw it in a powerful dream.’
He said nothing at first, then he turned to me with glaring eyes. ‘Let’s get to bed, son. It’s been a long day and sleep must be our next port of call.’
Next morning over breakfast he mentioned the dream and what I’d said. ‘The problem is, Finbar, talk is dangerous. In New York, if you talk about a shipwreck that is going to happen you’ll sound like a spy. There’s evil in the air. You are picking up the signals in your dreams.’ He paused, and looked at me seriously. ‘On our return journey I’ll fix you up with a job as a messenger on board ship, but you can also act as a spy for me, and, like a spy, you must tell no one what you discover, except Captain Turner and myself.’ Dad tapped me on the shoulder and smiled.
‘But I ran away from home b-b-because I wanted to protect you from danger.’
‘I understand, son,’ Dad said. ‘And now you can help protect us all from danger on our home journey.’
My mood changed to one of steely courage. ‘Dad, I’ll do my best. But I can’t wait till we’re home in Queenstown.’
T
he following morning was Sunday, the day of our departure, and my father had to shake me awake because I was so tired after a late Saturday night in the Mayflower restaurant with the rest of the
Lusitania
crew. I proudly put on my new uniform and cap. My schoolbag was under the bed, but school was so far away across the world, it seemed as if it had all ended and Mr Dempsey had vanished. With a wide grin, I stuffed my schoolbag and school cap into my new knapsack. How could I leave them behind? Dad paid our bill and Josephine Weir gave us a big, cheery goodbye.
‘Will you get a newspaper,’ Dad said and handed me a coin on our way past a big Port Authority sign. I rushed along the sidewalk, pushed the coin into the slot that opened the
newspaper rack from which I took a copy. I could have taken two copies or more, but in New York they trusted you to take only what you’d paid for. The
New York Times
was folded in two. The date below the title was 1 May 1915. My reading skills, thanks to Mr Dempsey, were fairly good, still I went through the paper looking only at the pictures of the war in Europe – at aeroplanes, artillery, buildings destroyed by bombing and soldiers in trenches with their rifles and bayonets wearing gasmasks, making them look scary. Then I noticed an advertisement for the
Lusitania
: ‘Sail to Europe on the World’s Fastest and Safest Transatlantic Liner;
Four Sailings per Month’
. There were times and dates for sailings, and prices for first, second and third class tickets. Then I saw another advertisement in a thick, black border. I read it slowly and had to stand still, it scared me so much:
NOTICE
Attention travellers on the Atlantic Ocean, bound for Great Britain and Ireland. You travellers will enter the war zone when you approach the West and South Coast of Ireland. All vessels in these waters flying the flag of our enemies are liable to destruction. Know ye that we will fire upon such liners in the waters of the war zone.
I nearly dropped the newspaper, hardly hearing the noise in
the street anymore. I saw Dad coming along with officers John Lewis and Albert Bestic. Both smiled when they recognised me.
‘So, our stowaway has got his shipping papers this time,’ Bestic teased.
‘Dad–’
‘Come on, Finbar, we’re late.’ Dad rushed ahead.
Soon we were in a horse-drawn taxi with leather seats, a door on each side, and windows. I could see the driver through a small oval window up front, holding a whip. I said nothing on the journey while the men chatted loudly. We were dropped off at Pier 54.
The pier was crowded with people, automobiles, taxicabs like the one I had been in, and crewmen with carts full of luggage. There was a three-man band, dressed in green suits and green bowler hats, entertaining the arriving passengers, playing ‘My Irish Molly-O’ and other tunes on the accordion, fiddle and banjo. The
Lusitania
had jets of smoke coming from its four chimneystacks and its flagmasts rose grandly up into the sky. Dad shoved the
New York Times
into his luggage. When would he see the notice? What would he say?
Dad beckoned me to follow him as he walked along the dock through the teeming passengers who jostled each other,
awaiting permission from the liner’s stewards to board the vessel. I noticed many people reading the
New York Times
and wondered if they had seen the notice. Out on the dockside, cranes hoisted food in crates marked: eggs, bread, fish, fruit, vegetables. Four vast, long gangways sloped from the liner’s lowest deck to the dock. Dad walked up one of the gangplanks, past crewmen with brass buttons on their tunics and wearing flat caps. They were hauling the remaining cargo of sackfuls of letters and packages on board, using a deck crane. We went up the stairs to the upper deck. The liner hummed and throbbed underneath us.
Along the top deck, children played games of chasing, while others were skipping and rolling hoops, and some hopped on the hopscotch area where numbers and squares were painted on the floor.
‘Are you the Captain?’ asked a little boy in a sailor suit.
‘I’m the Staff Captain,’ Dad replied. ‘And this is my son.’
‘Our father is the United States Senator, Richard Mayberry,’ said a taller girl, who was the boy’s sister. She had blond hair with a fringe, and sounded as if she were going to make a speech. She wore a blue blazer, white pinafore and thin, white woollen stockings. Her shiny black patent shoes had silver clasps. ‘I am Penny Mayberry and this is my brother John. He
is eight.’ She spoke very politely and formally. I was unable to speak, staring as her large eyes focused on mine. For some reason I bowed as if she were a princess. Her refined American accent and her bright smile shook me for a moment so that my surroundings seemed to disappear. ‘And what is your name, young man?’ she asked me.
‘My name is F-F-Finbar,’ I stuttered, fixing my cap straight. She smiled warmly and raised the palm of one hand, making a circle in the air in a kind of wave.
‘We must go, we are on duty. Goodbye, children,’ said Dad, and we went up two further sets of stairs towards a gateway with a red sign saying:
NO ENTRY, CREW ONLY
. Dad took out a key and let us in. We climbed steps to the bridge with its steel wall of square windows looking into the wheelhouse. Dad told me that this was the main hub of the thirty-thousand-ton turbine driven liner. ‘Under full steam, the turbine propellers produce 68,000 horse power and make a speed of
twenty-five
knots,’ he explained. His tone had become official and somehow I knew that any intimate conversation would have to cease now that he was at work. He told me to wait inside the door while he went to attend to things and I stood there on a mat made from thick rope. Two men in uniform had their backs to me; one wrote in a notebook while the other
looked at dials and gauges before writing numbers on a page in a clipboard. Another man tended the wheel with its handles and brass edgings. There was an indicator with words in black on the white metal signs:
AHEAD, ASTERN, SLOW
and a thick needle pointing to
FULL
.
Captain Turner turned around when one of the officers spoke to him and nodded solemnly. He squared up his cap and walked past the dials and instruments section of the bridge. For a moment, he twirled a button of his double-breasted, navy-blue blazer and mounted the stairs to the wheel-room from where the liner was steered. I had never seen such an amazing place and being up so high in the liner made me feel immense power.
‘Captain Kennedy, check the passenger list and the cargo list please, and get the latest weather reports.’ Captain Turner stood tall, like my father. His cap had braid on the peak. He held a hard-covered file marked
The Log of the Lusitania
. I waited, looked around and noticed how, far below us, the people on the pier looked tiny.
Dad called me over and just as I was about to tell him about the notice in the
Times
, he pointed to VIP written after some names on the list. ‘That means Very Important Person,’ he informed me. ‘Mrs Mabel Mayberry, the wife of Senator
Richard Mayberry, is accompanied by her children, Penelope and John. Rita Jolivet is a Hollywood actress. Sir Hugh Lane is an international art dealer.’ There were many names on the pages.
‘The American VIPs are millionaires,’ Dad said, and moved his thumb down the long list. ‘Let’s go and check the cargo.’
I followed him outside, feeling confused. ‘Dad, there’s a notice in the
New York Times
,’ I finally blurted out. When I told him what the notice said he rushed back into the wheelhouse to tell Captain Turner. At last I could relax. They would read the notice saying that the Germans considered the Atlantic Ocean a war zone. They would know what to do
A
s Dad’s first tour of duty began, he told me to follow him. He said nothing while we walked along corridors and descended staircases, through many doors that slammed behind us, until we stood on a steel platform with railings that led down into the centre of the liner where the noise increased. This cargo deck had the widest corridors and doors that creaked open into a vast area, where I couldn’t see the other end since it went on and on out of sight. A crewman approached Dad and they talked for a few moments. Then Dad walked around piled stockades of cargo, shouting out the name of each lot as he checked them off in a notepad: bales of leather, automobile parts, dental goods, crates of books, sewing machines, oil paintings, wool, aluminium, steel and bronze powder.
He turned a corner and told me to stay behind and not to follow him. ‘Nobody is permitted in here,’ he said, looking at me very sternly. ‘This is top secret.’
‘Of course, Dad,’ I said.
He disappeared for a few minutes, then returned, and we headed out.
‘Strictly no smoking, Mister Smith,’ he said to the crewman, who let us out and locked the door after us.
We soon returned to the passenger corridors with cabins, stairs and signs. After the dark cargo hold the galley seemed very bright with its portholes and lights. We sat at a table and a chef with a floppy white hat served us oxtail soup with bread rolls and butter, followed by fish, chips, and beans. ‘You can have both desserts too, lad, if you can sink them,’ he told me, and winked and tapped his large stomach with a fist.
‘Dad, did you and Captain Turner read the
New York Times
warning notice?’ I gulped down water, poured more ketchup on my chips and wiped my mouth.
‘The notice in the newspaper was written by Aleister Crowley, but not for the
New York Times,
it was first published in
The Fatherland
, which is a German paper published in New York. Crowley is a spy and propagandist,’ Dad explained. ‘He is a writer willing to write anything for anybody for money.
He writes an awful lot of propaganda.’
‘Dad, what’s propaganda?’ I asked.
‘It’s often lies or half-truths. I told you about it before, remember? It is meant to force people to change their views, especially about the war. It frightens people. So if, for example, a person supports the British in this war, propaganda is used to try to get them to support the Germans instead. This is done by threatening them.’
‘Like frightening them off the
Lusitania
?’
‘Yes, that sort of thing. If they’re scared to take the ship, then the business stops. I think the more people who see the warning notice, the better – there will be some passengers who’ll get scared, of course, but it’s better if everyone is alert.’
‘Will the ship be attacked, Dad?’
‘We run the
Lusitania
, Finbar, and we run a good ship. It’s the fastest ship anywhere. We aim to get safely across the Atlantic.’ Dad smiled proudly. ‘You know your duties, Finbar: cabin service, running errands and, most important of all, keeping alert for anything suspicious among the passengers.’ He put a finger to his forehead and saluted.
‘Okay, Dad. You can trust me.’ My spoon was loaded with my last chunk of hot apple pie and custard. ‘This is a great liner.’
Dad rubbed his hands together and stood up. ‘You better get to McCormick in the Marconi room and get the weather charts. It’s on the top deck – the sun deck – between the second and third chimney stacks.’
I made my way out onto the top deck, past the two funnels and arrived at the Marconi radio room. A man in a shirt and naval trousers let me in when I knocked. He had two messages written out beside the Morse Code apparatus on top of a sloping desk where there were lots of notepads and pencils. A sign on the wall said:
Attention: Telegrams 6 Cents Per Word Payable before Transmission
.
No Refunds
. The Morse Code apparatus was a tiny hammer on a hinge above a screwtop. There were wires attached to the apparatus that picked up signals from any other Morse Code apparatus within range. Suddenly, as I looked, the hammer began to hit the screwtop with long and short pauses between taps, and the operator bade me be silent as he listened and wrote out two lines of words in pencil.
‘Are you Mister McCormick?’ I asked when he had finished. ‘I have to collect the weather charts for the bridge.’
‘Here they are,’ he said. He rustled through charts on a desk
behind him and rolled up two of them into cylinders. He turned away from me then as the apparatus began tapping out another message.
I decided to take a short cut through the corridor past the first class cabins. As I descended the staircase carefully so as not to fall or drop the charts, Penny Mayberry and her brother John waved at me to come over to them.
‘Can you walk with us?’ Penny noticed the rolled-up charts. ‘I will soon be dropping John back to Mom. He was playing ball on deck.’ She made a cross face to me, looking down at him. ‘Mom is already seasick. Well, I mean, she was laid up with worry when she read the notice in the
New York
Times
. My father, Senator Mayberry is always talking about the war…’ she tucked some strands of blond hair behind one ear and a few of them brushed my shoulder as we moved away in the opposite direction from Crowley. Penny’s eyes caught me in their gaze, making me forget my duty for a moment; they were green like the sea.
‘Is Mom ill?’ John asked his sister.
‘No, John, she is resting so as not to get ill,’ she explained and then looked at me. ‘What are those papers you have?’ She reminded me of the task in hand.
‘Oh! Charts!’ I stammered. ‘I better be going immediately…’
I would have given anything to stay with her.
‘Can I meet you later? I have to tell you something very important.’ She grasped her brother’s hand, dragging him along.
‘I am off duty at nineteen hundred hours. Seven o’clock.’ My sense of pride in my work made me sound very important, I thought.
‘Let’s see. I will meet you at seven in the games room.’ She gave me a smile.
I ran off, feeling a strange sort of excitement.