6
A man with a flat cap and a red moustache strolled past me playing the elbow pipes. He was playing an old Irish tune called ‘Erin’s Lament’, and it reminded me of the afternoon we first boarded the Titanic at Queenstown. He had played ‘Erin’s Lament’ that day, too. I remember thinking that it was a strange, sorrowful sort of tune for the maiden voyage of such a wonderful ship.
Everything about the Queenstown launch was still fresh in my memory. The cart ride from Kilkenny, the crowds milling around the harbour, the seagulls wailing and squawking. Most of all I remembered my first sight of the Titanic, with its colossal hull, gleaming decks and enormous smoking funnels.
Mum, Ralph and I had boarded the ship along a gangplank right here on the foreward well deck. A medical officer had checked my head for lice and made me stick out my tongue to check for scarlet fever. At the same moment I stuck my tongue out, I saw a young girl watching me from the first-class deck up above. She must have thought I was sticking my tongue out at her, because she stuck out her tongue right back at me!
I had seen the girl again a few times after that. She often came to stand at the railing, her duffel coat drawn tight around her body and her auburn curls blowing in the wind. Whenever she stood there watching the third-class passengers enjoying themselves, she looked a little sad. I guessed she would rather be down here having fun with us than up there in first class with her posh family.
I looked up at the first-class deck. Sure enough, there she was again, gazing down at the well deck. Except this time, she was hanging upside down, gripping the railing in the crook of her knees.
“Beryl!” cried a woman in a long fur coat, hurrying towards her. “Stop that! You’ll fall and kill yourself!”
“I’m fine, Mama,” the girl replied, scowling at her mother upside down.
“You won’t be fine when your body is splattered all over the well deck. Besides, those poor people down there have enough problems in their lives without you falling on their heads.”
Beryl sighed and flipped herself the right way up. As she did so, two tiny slips of paper fell out of her duffel coat pocket and fluttered down onto the pedestal of a cargo crane below.
“Mama!” cried Beryl. “My gym tickets fell down onto the well deck.”
“Thank heaven that’s the only thing that fell onto the well deck,” snapped the woman. “Come along, I’m taking you inside.”
“But Mama, the tickets. . .”
“Leave them! Your father paid a thousand pounds for our parlour suite. He won’t refuse you a shilling to replace a couple of gym tickets.”
As soon as Beryl and her mother were out of sight, I made my move. I leaped from the hatch cover onto a metal rail, and from there onto the pedestal of the cargo crane. I reached out and grabbed the tickets before the wind could blow them away.
“Get down from there!” a steward on the first-class deck shouted at me. “It’s not safe!”
I scrambled back down onto the deck and looked at the tickets in my hand.
GYMNASIUM ADMITTANCE
The bearer of this ticket is entitled to one hour in the Titanic gymnasium, including unlimited rides on the electric camel.
Ladies: 9 a.m.–noon
Gentlemen: 2 p.m.–6 p.m.
Children: (ages 6 to 16): 1 p.m.–3 p.m.
Omar hurried over to me. “What were you doing on the crane?” he asked. “I heard the steward shouting at you.”
“Nothing much,” I said. “Just fetching these.”
“The first-class gym!” Omar peered over my shoulder and his eyes almost popped out of his head. “I don’t believe it. An electric camel!”
“Keep your hair on,” I said. “You know that third-class passengers aren’t allowed to use the gym.”
“Who will know we’re third class?” cried Omar. “Do we have ‘third class’ written on our foreheads? Come on, Jimmy, it’s an electric camel! If we don’t do this, we will regret it for the rest of our lives!”