The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels) Page 9

  “She’s a witch,” she said finally, “and I hate her.” Then she brightened suddenly. “I could ask Papa,” she went on. “He’s got a lot of money. He could pay for your passage.”

  “No,” I told her firmly. “I don’t want money from him.”

  She looked hurt and crestfallen at this, and I wished at once I hadn’t spoken so directly. “You don’t want to come, do you?” She said.

  “I do,” I told her. “I really do. I don’t want to be carrying luggage and polishing shoes all my life, do I? And I’d love to go across to America in that big ship you drew for me – what was it called again?”

  “Titanic,” Lizziebeth said, in tears now. “We’re going early in the morning. We’ve got to go by train first, Ma says, before we can get to the ship. You could come with us. You could come and see us off. And you could bring Kaspar.”

  “I suppose I could see the ship then, couldn’t I?” I said, but I knew even as I spoke that I was grasping at straws. “It’s no good, Lizziebeth. Skullface wouldn’t let me have a day off work. I know she wouldn’t. I’d really like to see the Titanic too. Is it really the biggest ship in the world?”

  “And the fastest,” she said, getting up suddenly and handing me Kaspar. “I’m going to speak to Papa. You saved my life didn’t you? I’m going to ask him, and I’m going to tell him about Skullface too.”

  She was out of my room and gone before I could stop her.

  The very same day, only a few hours later, Skullface was seen walking grimfaced out of the tradesmen’s entrance with her suitcase, “never to return”, as Mr Freddie told me with a smile all over his face.

  But I never saw my money again. The next morning I found myself sitting in a first class train carriage with the Stanton family on the way to Southampton. The manager had told me that he’d had a special request from Mr Stanton that Kaspar and I be allowed to accompany the family to Southampton, and help them with their luggage on board ship. He said that considering recent events, and how I had enhanced the good name of the hotel, he was happy this one time to let me go. But I would be on duty, he reminded me. I had to wear my Savoy uniform, carry all their trunks and bags on board, and see to their every need until the ship sailed.

  In among the luggage I carried out of the hotel that day was a picnic basket Mary O’Connell had “borrowed” from the stores. Inside the basket was Kaspar. He yowled all the way down in the lift, wailed all the way across the lobby, past Mr Freddie, who lifted his hat to him in farewell. He only stopped his complaining once we were in the cab, when Lizziebeth took him out and cradled him in her arms. That was when she began telling her mother and father the whole story of our secret, of how we’d met, all about Kaspar and me, and the Countess Kandinsky, and my orphanage, and Harry the cockroach and Mr Wellington, and how I’d run away. One story flowed into the next, my whole life story and Kaspar’s in a torrent of words that tumbled over one another in her excitement to tell the whole thing. She hardly paused for breath until we got to the station.

  Kaspar sat on Lizziebeth’s lap all the way down on the train to Southampton. It was for the most part a silent journey, because Lizziebeth slept and so did Kasper.

  I shall never forget my first sighting of the Titanic. She seemed to dwarf the entire dockside. As I went up the gangplank carrying the Stantons’ trunks, Lizziebeth in front of me carrying Kaspar in the picnic basket, the band was playing on the quayside, and there were crowds of people everywhere, spectators on shore and passengers all along the railings, high excitement and anticipation on every face. I was agog with it all. Twice or three times I went back and forth to their cabin – deck C, number 52. I’ve never forgotten the number. Their cabin was at least as spacious as their rooms at the Savoy, and just as luxurious. I was bowled over by the palatial splendour of everything I saw, by the sheer enormity of the ship, both inside and out. It was grander and more magnificent than I could ever have imagined.

  The time came when I’d carried all their trunks up to their cabin, and I knew the moment for parting had come. Lizziebeth knew it too. Sitting on the sofa, she said her last goodbye to Kaspar, burying her face in his neck and sobbing her heart out. Her father took the cat from her as gently as he could and put him back in the picnic basket. It was as he was doing this that I decided. It had never even occurred to me until that moment.

  “Lizziebeth,” I said, “I want you to take him with you to America.”

  “You mean it?” she cried. “You really mean it?”

  “I mean it,” I told her.

  Lizziebeth turned to her mother and father. “I can, can’t I, Ma? Please Papa. Say yes, please.”

  Neither objected. On the contrary, they looked delighted.

  Each of them shook me by the hand. They were still reserved, but I saw a genuine kindness there, and a warmth in their eyes that I had not seen before. I crouched down and stroked Kaspar in his picnic basket. He looked up at me very intently. He knew what was happening, that we were saying goodbye. Lizziebeth led me to the door of the cabin. She clung to me for so long that I thought she’d never let go. The ship’s siren was sounding. I broke away from her and ran up on to the deck, brushing away my tears.

  I’ve thought a lot about this since, about why I gave Kaspar away like that, on the spur of the moment, and about what I did next too. I remember standing there on deck with everyone waving, with the siren blasting and the band playing, and I knew then I couldn’t go back to my old life, to my little attic room at the Savoy, that I should stay with Kaspar and Lizziebeth, and that I just didn’t want to leave the ship, this wonderful ship, this magical floating palace. When the final call went out for any last visitors and porters to leave the ship, I stayed on board. It was that simple. I ran to the rail and began waving with all the other passengers. I was one of them. I was going. I was going to America, to Lizziebeth’s land of the free, where I could be anything I wanted to be. It really wasn’t until I saw the Titanic moving away from the dockside and saw the widening gap of sea in between, that I realised quite what I had done, what a momentous decision I had made, that there was no going back. I was a stowaway on the Titanic.

  “We’ve Only Gone and Hit A Flaming Iceberg”

  My life as a stowaway didn’t last long. It took me a while to understand that I was in the First Class part of the ship; and when I did, I discovered it wasn’t at all easy to blend in with the First Class passengers all around me. Everyone was in their travelling finery, and dressed as I was in my uniform of a Savoy bell-boy, I stuck out like a sore thumb. They even moved differently, as if they belonged there, as if they had all the time in the world. Maybe you need a lifetime to learn how to look nonchalantly wealthy.

  For a while the uniform actually helped. I could pass myself off as a steward, and of course that was easy enough for me. I knew well enough how to touch my forelock, how to help old ladies down the stairs, how to point out to people where to go – even if I hadn’t a clue where anything was.

  For the first hour or so, as the other passengers promenaded the deck, exploring the ship, that was what I did too, until I began getting some strange looks from some of the crew and the other stewards who clearly thought my uniform a bit strange. I knew that sooner or later I’d be rumbled, that my luck couldn’t hold out for long if I went on pretending to be one of them. I also realised that if I stayed in First Class I was bound to bump into one of the Stanton family, and I wasn’t at all sure how they would respond if they discovered that I had stowed away. I could see the steerage passengers all crowded on the lower deck at the stern end of the ship. They were more my own kind I thought, I’d be safer there. So that’s where I headed. I took off my tunic and cap, and when no one was looking dropped them over the side. Then I vaulted over the rail, and tried to mingle in among the steerage passengers as best I could.

  We were well out to sea by now, the last of England fast disappearing over the horizon. The sea was flat calm, like a silver blue lake. No one was paying me any attention. They wer
e all enjoying themselves far too much to know I was even there. You only had to use your eyes and ears to know that these steerage passengers came from all over the world. There were Irish, Chinese, French, Germans, Americans and quite a few London cockneys too. I was feeling much more at home already. I went below deck, and after a long search, at last, found myself an empty berth in a dormitory at the bottom of the ship. There were a few men in there, but they paid me little attention.

  I was lying down, my hands behind my head, my eyes closed, the ship’s engines throbbing through me, believing absolutely I had got away with it, when everything went badly wrong.

  I heard voices, loud voices, voices of authority. I opened my eyes and saw two sailors coming through the dormitory. “We’re looking for a stowaway. Have you seen him? He’s kind of a Japanese-looking fellow.” One of them stopped by a table where some men were sat about playing cards. “Has he come through here? Little fellow he is. We know he’s down here somewhere.”

  I think I would have been fine if I hadn’t panicked. I could have just pretended to be asleep. I didn’t look Japanese. They wouldn’t have bothered me. But I didn’t think. I got up and ran, and they came after me hollering at me to stop. I took the stairs to the deck three at a time. Once up there I hid in the first place I found – of course it was the most obvious, and therefore the most stupid place I could ever have chosen – a lifeboat. Inside I saw the Japanese man sitting at the far end, knees drawn up under his chin, rocking back and forth and gnawing at his knuckles. And that was where, only minutes later the two of us were discovered, caught like rats in a trap. We were not treated at all kindly as we were hustled along the decks, but at least I felt we had the sympathy of the steerage passengers. All the booing and jeering seemed directed more at our sailor escorts than at us. Both of us were taken before the Captain – Captain Smith he was called – and there were three other men there already. So there were five of us in all, all stowaways, an Italian I remember who spoke very little English, the Japanese man and three Englishmen, myself among them. From behind his desk the Captain looked at us wearily out of deep-set, sad eyes. With his great beard and calm bearing, he looked every inch a sea captain. He didn’t curse us or berate us as the sailors had.

  “Well, Mr Lightoller.” he said to the officer standing beside him. “So, we’ve got five of them, have we? Not as many as I’d feared. What shall we do with them then? Where do we need them most, would you say?”

  “Down below in the engine room, Captain,” the officer replied. “Stokers. We’re short of a dozen stokers at least. And if you want to make full speed as you say, if you want to make the crossing in record time, as you say, then we could do with them down below. Looking at them, I’d say they were a bit on the thin and spindly side, but there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  The Captain looked right at me. “Why did you do it?” he asked me.

  I told him the truth, part of it anyway. I had nothing to lose. “Because I didn’t want to leave the ship, sir. She’s so beautiful, and everyone says she’s very fast too. And I’ve never been on a ship before.”

  “Well, I have, son,” laughed the Captain. “Dozens of them. And you’re right, this one is fast, the fastest ship that ever sailed, and what’s more she’s unsinkable too. Very well, Mr Lightoller, you will set these men to work their passage to New York as stokers. It will be hot work and hard, gentlemen, and for this you will be fed and looked after well enough. Take them away.”

  So began the hardest three days I have ever worked in all my life. My body never ached so much, every bone, every muscle, every joint. My hands never bled so much either, open blisters on every finger. I was never so hot and dirty, never so completely and utterly exhausted. The stokers about me were strong men, big men, muscle-bound and sinewy. Stripped to the waist as we were I felt like a sparrow among eagles. The pounding thunder of the engines in my ears was deafening, the blast of the furnaces scorched my skin. But for all this discomfort I somehow found it the most exciting and invigorating place I had ever been. Every time I looked up and saw those great boilers, those great pistons driving, I marvelled at them, at the power and the beauty of it all. And believe it or not, as I shovelled coal for hour after hour in that stifling heat, there was only one thought that kept me shovelling: it was me driving these mighty engines, Johnny Trott. I wasn’t just a bell-boy anymore. I was a man among men, and our muscles were firing the boilers that were powering the engines that were turning the screws that were driving the fastest ship the world had ever seen across the Atlantic. I felt proud of the work I was doing.

  My fellow stokers ribbed me mercilessly from time to time, for I was the baby among them. I didn’t mind. They ribbed the little Japanese man too till they discovered that, small though he was, he could shovel more coal than any of us. He was called Michiya, but we all called him Little Mitch – and he was little, littler even than me. Maybe because we had been fellow stowaways, or maybe because we were both about the same size, he became quite a friend.

  He spoke no English at all, so we conversed in gestures and smiles. We managed to make ourselves well enough understood. Like the rest of them I was black from head to toe after every shift. But Captain Smith was true to his word, we were all well enough looked after. We had plenty of hot water to wash ourselves clean, we had all the food we could eat and a warm bunk to sleep in. I didn’t go up on deck that much. It was a long way up, and when I did have an hour or two off I found I was just too tired to do anything much except sleep. Down there in the bowels of the ship I didn’t know if it was night or day – and I didn’t much care either. It was just work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat. I was too tired even to dream.

  When I did go up on deck I looked out on a moonlit sea, or a sunlit sea, that was always as flat as a pond and shining. I never saw another ship, just the wide horizons. Occasionally there were birds soaring over the decks, and once to everyone’s great excitement we spotted dozens of leaping dolphins. I had never known such beauty. Every time I went up on deck though, I was drawn towards the First Class part of the ship. I’d stay there by the rail for a while, hoping against hope I might see Lizziebeth come walking by with Kaspar on his lead.

  But I never saw them. I thought of them though as I shovelled and sweated, as I lay in my bunk in between shifts, as I looked over that glassy sea. I kept trying to summon up the courage to climb over the railings and find my way again back to their cabin. I longed to see the look of surprise on Lizziebeth’s face when she saw I was on board. I knew how pleased she’d be to see me, that Kaspar would swish his tail and smile up at me. But about Lizziebeth’s mother and father I couldn’t be at all sure. The truth is that I still believed they would think badly of me for stowing away as I had. I decided that it would be better to wait until we got to New York, and then I’d just walk up to them all and surprise them on the quayside. I’d tell them then and there that I’d taken Lizziebeth’s advice and come to live in America, in the land of the free. They’d never need to know I’d stowed away.

  I was half sleeping, half dreaming in my bunk, dreaming that Kaspar was yowling at me, trying to wake me. We were in some kind of danger and he was trying to warn me. Then it happened. The ship suddenly shuddered and shook. I sat up. Right away it felt to me like some kind of a collision, and I could tell it had happened on the starboard side. A long silence followed. Then I heard a great rushing and roaring of escaping steam, like a death rattle. I knew that something had gone terribly wrong, that the ship had been wounded. The engines had stopped.

  Half a dozen of us got dressed at once and rushed up to the third deck, the boat deck. We all expected to see the ship we had collided with, because that was what we thought had happened. But we could see nothing, no ship, nothing but the stars and an empty sea all around. There was no one else on deck except us. It was as if no one else had felt it, as if it had all been a bad dream. No one else had woken, so it followed that nothing had happened. I was almost beginning to believe I had imagined t
he whole thing, when I saw Little Mitch come rushing along the deck towards us carrying something in both hands. It was a huge piece of ice shaped like a giant tooth, jagged and sharp. He was shouting the same thing over and over again, but I couldn’t understand him, none of us could. Then one of the other stokers said it. “Iceberg! It’s off an iceberg! We’ve only gone and hit a flaming iceberg!”

  Women and Children First

  I never saw the iceberg, nor did any of us stokers, but we soon met one of the crew who was there when the ship struck, and who had seen it all. He said the iceberg was at least a hundred feet high, looming above the ship, and not white like icebergs are supposed to be, but dark, almost black. But it had been a glancing blow, he said, no cause for alarm, no need for panic. And no one was panicking. No one was rushing anywhere. By now more and more passengers were beginning to appear on deck, to find out what was happening, just as we had. I saw a couple strolling by arm in arm. They looked completely unconcerned, as if they were simply taking the air. Even after the collision, like everyone on board, they clearly still accepted, as I did, the absolute assumption – and one that had after all been confirmed to me in person of course by Captain Smith himself – that the Titanic was unsinkable, that everything would be all right.

  It was when the ship began to list, and this happened quite soon, that the first doubts began to creep in. But only when I saw men and women gathering in numbers on deck, and putting on their life-preservers, did I truly begin to understand the dreadful danger we were now in, and only then did I think of Lizziebeth and Kaspar in their stateroom on deck C. It took me a while to locate the right corridor, and when I did I had some difficulty in finding my way to number 52. There was no time to stand on ceremony. I hammered on the door, yelling for them. A moment or two later Mr Stanton was standing there, in front of me, his face grey with anxiety. He was fully dressed, with his life-preserver already on, as were the rest of the family.