Spirit of the Titanic E-Book

Nicola Pierce

• Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 266

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Fifteen-year-old Samuel Scott died while building the Titanic. As the ship sails to her doom, his ghost moves restlessly alongside the passengers and crew: Frederick Fleet: the young look-out who spotted the iceberg and who survived in a life-boat with (the unsinkable) Molly Brown; Howard Hartley Wallace: the heroic band-leader who played ragtime music as the freezing waters lapped at his feet; Harold Bride: the junior radio operator whose messages echoed on, long after the ship had disappeared to its icy grave …

Leseprobe

Spirit of the Titanic

‘Pierce delivers some masterful narrative which will hold children aged 10 and upwards enthralled.’ Evening Echo

‘I was captivated by the writing and I couldn’t put it down … It is obviously a challenge to be able to make vivid and compelling a story whose ending we all know but Pierce manages this … writing is entirely captivating, the detail fascinating and the terror real.’ NI4Kids

‘A stunning debut … beautifully-written, exciting book’ Verbal Magazine

‘Beautifully handled … beautifully written … I enjoyed it very, very much.’ BBC Radio Arts Extra

‘This breathtaking book takes you on the deck of the Titanic with its amazing descriptive language … I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys reading a spooky, emotional book and is interested in the fascinating events of 1912. I would rate this book 10/10.’ Guardian Children’s Books Online

‘For Damian’

Contents

ReviewTitle PageDedicationPrologueChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenAuthor’s NotesAbout the AuthorCopyright

Prologue

The twentieth of April 1910 is a day that I can never forget. The only thing I can’t remember is exactly what day it was. It definitely wasn’t a Sunday because that was my only day off from my job at Harland & Wolff’s shipyard in Belfast. And it wasn’t a Saturday either, or else I would have finished in the early afternoon, as Saturdays were just half-days. Saturday was also the day we got paid, when the line out the door of the accounts office was longer than the massive ship I was helping to build.

Nevertheless, I remember everything else about that day. For instance, I got up, as usual, at a quarter to six and put back on the clothes I had worn the previous day, which I left on the floor beside my bed, ready and waiting to be picked up again. After that, I made my way, quietly as possible, so as not to disturb my mother, down to the kitchen, stretching my legs to overstep the creakiest part of the stairs.

On winter mornings I needed to light a candle and even put on my old jacket because downstairs was always so chilly at that hour. Fortunately, the mornings were a lot brighter in April. On the whole, I didn’t mind the early start, though even I had to admit it was easier to get up when the sun was already in the sky and the birds were singing loudly and, so it seemed to me, much more cheerfully than in December or January.

In the kitchen I threw cold water over my face and dried it with the tea towel, something I only did when it was safe to do so. Then I cut myself a thick slice of bread, carelessly covered it with jam and began to eat as I took the lunch my mother left for me, jamming it into my jacket pocket. Her never-ending sadness over my father’s death, along with her constant dislike of me, didn’t stop her from making the cheese sandwich. In fact, it meant a lot more to me than I realised at the time, that she continued to make it; that and washing my work clothes on Saturday evenings, after I went to bed, were the only things she did for me now.

I left the house still chewing on my bread. It seemed important to both of us that I be gone before she got up for her factory job. To be honest, it was a relief to shut the door behind me and join the crowd of workers heading in the same direction, to the shipyard, where I could forget about my mother’s unyielding gloom and my sometimes utter loneliness for the family we used to be with Da.

Three years had passed since he died and I already felt a whole lifetime older than the child I used to be. He had gone fishing in a storm, with his friend, Daniel, in a flimsy rowing boat that must have completely collapsed under the battering of waves and angry winds. Nothing was ever found, at any rate, of either the little boat or its two passengers.

At fifteen years of age I was one of the youngest of this army of employees and maybe I was one of the proudest too. It was Da’s brother, my Uncle Albert, who got me the job. He was one of the draughtsmen and spent his day in a huge, open room, standing over the longest desk I’ve ever seen. It was here that the ships we built were first sketched out with all the complicated mathematics and line-drawing. Uncle Al would tell me that he hoped one day to be able to send me to college, to learn his trade, but I much preferred working on the ships themselves, being up close to them as they took shape in front of me.

That morning, just like any other, I kept my eyes focused over the roofs of the neighbours’ houses for my first glimpse of Titanic. I couldn’t help it; every time I caught sight of her my heart would jump just a little. She wasn’t alone; on her right sat her sister, the Olympic, who was the older of the two, work having started on her a few months earlier. Therefore, she looked liked a proper ship, while Titanic was mostly still a skeleton, with just the bare bones, ribs, clavicle and femurs on show. But Titanic would be the greater one: the biggest, heaviest, most expensive ship ever to be built in the whole world. As Charlie, my boss, would say, ‘We’re making history, boys, imagine that!’

The nearer I got to the shipyard, the larger the crowd grew. Something like twenty thousand men worked at the yard, though not all at the same time. I worked the day shift with Charlie and the others, while at night you could see the hundreds of torches swarming all over the two ships as the night shift took over.

‘Sammy, over here! Look at him, Ed; he’s the only lad I know who smiles his way to work.’ Charlie’s curly black hair was sticking out at all angles from beneath his dirty soft cap, which was always pushed that far away from his forehead it was a wonder it never slid off – reminding me of how my father used to wear his.

‘Aye, well it’s a lot better than having to look at your miserable mug of a morning.’ Ed always had something smart to say, no matter how early it was.

This was a typical greeting from my workmates. They were the two riveters in our squad and I was their catch-boy. The riveters were the kings of the shipyard and one day I hoped, to Uncle Al’s mild disappointment, to be just like them. It wasn’t an easy job and I suppose there was plenty of truth to Al’s warning that I’d be ‘as deaf as a lamp-post by the time you’re twenty-five.’

Jack, always the last to arrive, was the heater-boy. Two years older than me, he was the most unambitious person I had ever met, but he was also one of the most likeable. He sidled up to us, a lazy grin on his broad freckled face, hands in pockets.

‘Mornin’ all!’

Ed nagged him mercilessly, doing his utmost to unsettle Jack’s yawning self-confidence, ‘Hmpphh! Afternoon, more like. What happened this time? You couldn’t eat your kippers fast enough or maybe your butler overslept?’

Jack, who was never serious about anything, was more than happy to answer Ed’s silly questions: ‘If you must know, I had to escort a very nice girl to her place of work.’

As usual, Ed refused to let him have the last word, ‘Well, from now on have her escort you here instead.’

We joined the thousands that stood outside the shipyard’s green gates. It was Ed who decided that we met early before the gates were unlocked at 6.20am. He had never forgiven Jack for arriving too late, one morning, to get inside the gates before they closed at 6.35am. Jack had to wait outside on the street, until 7.30am, which was the next time they opened. This meant that he lost an hour’s pay for himself and probably for the rest of the squad as I ended up doing both his job and mine. Of course, this slowed us down and fewer rivets could be hammered into place and since we got paid per rivet every single second mattered.

The rivets are like big, stubby nails that bolt down the sheets of steel all over the outside of a ship’s body. Charlie loved to explain what we did in one short sentence, ‘It’s us who put the flesh on her.’ Before the rivets were handed over by me, to be hammered into place, they had to be heated to the right temperature. Jack’s job was to pluck the rivet out of the fire, using his tongs, only when it was a certain shade of cherry-red, and roll it down the chute, to where I was waiting. Snatching it up with my own tongs, I would sprint as hard as I could, presenting the inflamed rivet to Ed and Charlie, whether they were on the ground beside me, or sixty feet up in the air.

On that April morning they took their places way up the side of the ship, as Titanic’s underbelly had already been coated over with steel. I’m sure I was very fit from all the running and climbing I did. Since the spring weather remained calm and sunny, I didn’t have to worry about the wind catching me unawares half-way up the ladder, trying to knock me off my balance or the tongs out of my sweaty grasp.

Both the night and day shifts were made up of dozens upon dozens of rivet squads. I imagined that the noise of the constant battering against the rivet heads, from a thousand different hammers, could be heard for miles around Belfast, and maybe even miles out to sea. Now, that was something to consider. How far out could the banging be heard? The terrific noise was why so many riveters went deaf in later years.

That afternoon, during our lunch-break, I asked Charlie if he thought the hammering could be heard as far as the coast of England, which I knew wasn’t too far away, on the other side of the Irish Sea.

‘Aye, surely, and those who hear it probably think it’s the sound of church bells on the wind.’

Not one of us in the squad had ever been to sea. It didn’t seem fair that we would make these ships with our bare hands but never get to sail on them once we were finished.

Many a Sunday I spent staring out beyond Belfast Lough, wondering what it would be like to be completely free of land, and to be standing, instead, on a grand floating island that moved from one side of the world to the other. Imagine that. Everywhere you look, no matter what side you are on, all you can see is water and more water. I wanted to know if the sky and sea ever met. When I stood down at the docks and looked out into the distance, I could just about convince myself that they did.

‘What in God’s name is he daydreaming about now?’ growled Ed. He was pulling on his after-lunch fag and staring at me in exasperation, making Charlie laugh and Jack’s grin even wider than usual. They all waited expectantly while I blushed the perfect shade of cherry-red, I’m sure.

Shyly, I shrugged my shoulders and offered up my thoughts to them, ‘I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to go with her when she leaves?’

Only Charlie knew who I was talking about. Ed, however, got the wrong end of the stick and was a little shocked. ‘What? You have a girlfriend already and you didn’t tell us? You’re a bit too young to be getting so serious, don’t you think?’

Jack added his bit, more than likely just to annoy Ed, ‘If he’s big enough, he’s old enough.’

‘No, no, I meant her.’ I pointed to Titanic, causing Jack to roll his eyes towards the sky. Ignoring him, I turned to the older men, to plead my case, ‘Wouldn’t you like to leave here, just for a while, and see the world from such a magnificent ship, and get a look at the passengers, to see where they’re going and why?’

Both men took a second or two to think about this and then they both nodded, although Ed was quick to say, ‘Just for a while, mind. Belfast will always be home to me.’

Charlie was typically more expansive.

‘Imagine going first class; it would be like living all day, every day, in the best hotel in the world. I’ve always fancied seeing America myself. Is that where you’d like to sail to, Sammy, take in the bright lights and tall buildings of New York City?’

‘Maybe. I suppose, but I also think I’d be happy enough to just stay onboard her for the rest of my life and never have to live in a house again.’

Ed stubbed out his fag as the buzzer sounded out for us to return to work. ‘Daft bugger! Just be careful what you wish for, hey? That sounds a bit silly to me.’

We packed up our things and headed back to our individual posts. Ed couldn’t resist bellowing a last instruction to me before he and Charlie began to climb the ladder, ‘Just keep those rivets coming and maybe you’ll make us all rich enough to come with you on your lifelong voyage. Ha! Ha!’

Ed always laughed louder than anyone else at his own jokes. In fact, he didn’t care if nobody else laughed at all.

‘You should never tell him anything important’ was Jack’s parting shot as he headed off in the direction of his furnace.

The next couple of hours passed quickly enough. I tried my best to keep count of how many rivets I delivered but, as usual, I lost count after twelve or so. I did have a strange moment when I was coming back down the ladder, in the late afternoon. I thought someone was calling for help, but I must have imagined it. It would have been impossible. Even if somebody was hurt – and I did take a few precious seconds to look around me, but could only see men and boys hard at work – there is no way I would have been able to hear them. I forgot about it as soon the next boiling rivet rolled down to be collected.

Ed and Charlie were moving farther and farther up the ship and they both look pleased with our performance rate. I picked up the rivet, with the tongs, and ran to the foot of the ladder. The sweat was running down my back, causing, at least, a certain coolness as long as I kept moving. It was only when I was standing still that the heat was suffocating. As I climbed, a flash of movement or colour caught my eye. A dog? I was quite high up; maybe it was just a rat in the ship’s belly. We had to chase them off from time to time, rats the size of small dogs, although they would rarely show themselves this late in the day. Ach, it was nothing. The heat must be getting to me; I would ask Charlie for a quick mouthful from the bottle of water he kept at his side.

Suddenly I heard barking as clearly as if a dog was at my feet. I stopped climbing, to catch my breath. The barking was loud and frantic, confusing me as I watched only men alongside me, beneath me and above me. Where on earth was it coming from? My heart was pounding from all the exercise and from something else as I became aware of the distance between me and the ground. For the first time I felt a little queasy at the sight. It made me feel cold and shivery, as if I was coming down with the dreaded flu.

I longed to scream at the invisible dog to shut up. Then again, maybe the barking was inside my head. One thing was certain; I needed to get off this blasted ladder, and I needed both hands to do so. I let go of my tongs, allowing it and the glowing rivet to crash below and began to creep downwards, shutting my eyes in a drastic effort to calm myself, feeling for the step below me with my trembling foot. However, my hands were clammy, even wet, and I couldn’t, wouldn’t trust them to keep me safe so I brought my foot back to the original position, with some relief. I was stuck, once more, unable to move up or down.

The only thing I could think to do was call for help. Clinging blindly to the ladder, I shouted out, praying that someone would notice me. Only I couldn’t hear my voice, instead I heard a whole lot of other calls for help. Babies were crying, not one but hundreds. What was happening to me? The dog kept barking and all these voices were swirling around and around me, making me dizzy; help us, please help us, somebody help us.

‘Oh, my God! Samuel?’

It was Charlie, sounding absolutely horrified. I don’t know how I managed to hear him. Although it occurred to me that he wasn’t as far away as I thought. Keeping my eyes closed, I could only call back his name for an answer, ‘Charlie.’

‘Okay, pet, you’re okay. Just open your eyes and look at me. Can you do that? Just concentrate on me, nothing else.’

I wanted to do just as he told me to. In fact, I opened my eyes to do just that, to gaze upon his grimy face and greasy hair. Only when I looked up to see him, I found that he was surrounded by a dense crowd of men, women and children. Their faces were so white that they were transparent and I could only make out dark circles in place of eyes and mouths. Some of the men seemed to be wearing top hats, while most of the women were poorly dressed, their hair all askew. I could see right through them, to the far side of the gantry. They had no legs, so they seemed to hang still in mid-air. Hundreds and hundreds of them – ghosts, phantoms, ghouls – whatever they were, they were horrible, terrifying me with their silent stares. It was perhaps to get away from them as far and as fast as possible that I instinctively let go of the ladder. And it worked, their empty staring faces got further and further away from me and I hardly noticed Charlie’s scream. ‘Nooo!’

That calm, sunny day is one I’ll always remember and can never forget because the twentieth of April, in the year 1910, was the day that I, Samuel Joseph Scott, died.

Chapter One

TWO YEARS LATER

My wish had come true. How I longed to be able to share my news with Ed, Charlie and Jack but I couldn’t. The three of them stood side by side with David, my replacement, in the crowd, as Titanic prepared to pull away from Belfast to begin her maiden voyage. It was all very thrilling and I found myself much carried away by the party atmosphere onboard and on the docks below, waving gaily along with everyone else, in spite of myself, but, of course, my friends could neither see nor hear me. Nobody could.

The world hadn’t ended or even changed much since I smashed up my skull that day, though Charlie’s dark hair went grey in the weeks after my fall. He was the only one to look properly sad, telling Ed that he blamed himself for not coming down the ladder to grab a hold of me.

Ed was his usual practical self. ‘You can’t say that, Charlie. No way. It wasn’t your fault. If you had reached him, he might’ve taken you with him. It was just one of those things. When your time is up, that’s it!’

Charlie didn’t sound comforted by this. His voice wavered as he tried to get Ed to understand. ‘But you didn’t see his face, Ed. He was scared, more than scared; it was like he could see something dreadful. He called out to me and I did nothing, absolutely nothing.’

Ed refused to be drawn any further. He kept it to himself that he felt I had simply been daydreaming as usual and missed my footing; he didn’t want to fall out with his friend.

I was quickly replaced by a skinny sixteen-year-old who was no way near as fast as I was. On his first day Ed nobly held his tongue while Charlie coldly informed a bewildered-looking David that he had ‘big shoes to fill’. After that, Charlie’s only conversation with the boy was to shout at him, from time to time, ‘Watch your bloody step, why don’t you!’

Within a week or two the others returned to their usual ways. Ed went back to his jovial bullying of Jack who smilingly refused to be moved one way or the other. The four of them continued to meet every morning before the gates opened and then, once over the threshold, they made their way to where I was waiting for them, to watch them at their day’s work.

I wanted to tell Charlie that I was okay, that he shouldn’t feel sad for me, but I couldn’t. I mean, I tried talking to him, whispering directly into his ear, but he could never hear me. Once or twice, however, he would stop what he was doing to look slowly about him, as if, perhaps, sensing I was there. This made Ed very nervous and the older man had to fight the urge to shout at Charlie to keep hammering.

Since Da’s death Charlie was the only person that really listened to me when I said something, even something daft, and I did find it hard, in the beginning, to appreciate that he could no longer hear me now. It took a bit of getting used to, though perhaps not as much as you might think. To be honest, I didn’t feel too sad over my ghostly state, if that’s what I was. In some ways it wasn’t too different from the life I had led before I started working here, when nobody had taken much notice of me anyway. So I didn’t feel particularly lonely. What I did miss, however, was feeling that I mattered to someone. Da was lost to me and now I was lost to Charlie, but at least I could still enjoy his company, Monday to Saturday.

We continued to have our lunch together every day, same as always, only I had to do without my cheese sandwich and nobody knew I was sitting alongside them, listening to the gossip and laughing at Ed’s rotten jokes.

In this way I learned many different things, like, for instance, Ed’s daily silent disappointment with his wife’s sandwiches that were either scrambled or fried egg between chunky slices of bread. He didn’t like egg but wouldn’t risk hurting her feelings by saying so. It was quite a revelation to find he had a soft side for someone else’s feelings.

Charlie longed to take out his library book and read it as he ate, and he often wished he could find somewhere quiet to eat his lunch, away from the demands of Ed with his constant need to be to the expert on every subject.

Meanwhile, Jack spent a lot of his time thinking about the girl who sold him his cigarettes at the corner shop. He could never be sure if she really liked him or not.

I wasn’t terribly interested in David. If anything, I was jealous of him for taking my place and enjoyed finding fault with his work rather than learning more about him.

It wasn’t that I could read their minds or hear the voices in their heads, it was more than I could sense what they were feeling and maybe it helped that I knew them before the fall. At night I maintained my supervision of the building of Titanic, hovering over the shoulders of the evening crew, none of whom was familiar to me. It was a peculiar thing to hear the more sensitive ones complain of feeling they were being watched.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one to die on the ship. I watched a boy about my age end up like me, fractured skull and legs broken beneath his crumpled body. A year after the young lad’s accident, his father, who was a rivet-counter, was counting away, fifty feet from the ground, balancing on flimsy scaffolding. I sensed what was going to happen and tried my best to warn the man, but he ignored the chill he might’ve felt on the back of his neck. Mourning his son was taking up all his energy, so that once he started counting he was completely switched off from any distraction or sensation. Sure enough, he imitated exactly his son’s passing. As with the boy, I saw his spirit leave his body; a light mist exited from his gaping mouth and flew upwards until I could see it no more.

Why I was here, I didn’t know. Why I hadn’t yet met my father or God or my mother’s parents who had been dead for years was mystifying. Nothing was how I’d expected it to be. To be sure, I was glad to be in a familiar – as well as my favourite – place in the whole world, still surrounded by my friends and colleagues. Nevertheless I did worry, from time to time, that I was lost or had been forgotten about.

And then there was the conversation that I heard one winter’s morning. I recognised the man as someone my father used to say hello to; he lived on the street behind us and was also a riveter. Peering out at Ed and Charlie, from beneath the drenched peak of his cap, he nodded to them as he approached. ‘Aren’t you the ones that young lad worked with, the Scott boy?’

His temper soured by the wet weather, Ed’s reply was blunt and careless, ‘What of it?’

Obviously expecting a better show of interest, the man was taken aback with the unfriendly reception. ‘Oh. Well. I just thought you’d want to know that his mother died last night.’

Ed shrugged and turned away, pretending he hadn’t looked at Charlie to see his reaction. Not that there was much to be seen. ‘Thanks, mate,’ was all Charlie said, before stepping onto the ladder. I followed him and that was that. Maybe she was happy now. I hoped so. It didn’t seem right to feel nothing more than, well, nothing more than this, but I suppose she had sort of given up or, or died, the day she heard about Da. And I spent the next three years missing her, there and then, when she was standing right in front of me. So I had nothing more now to give.

Aside from the waving and the cheering, there was a certain amount of sadness in the air as Titanic bid farewell to Belfast. Most of the men who had worked on her had come to see her off and mixed in with their pride at what they had produced was just a little bit of sorrow at having to say goodbye to her. For the last two years she had been part of the landscape of Belfast. I certainly wasn’t the only one who enjoyed looking for her at every opportunity. Her progression from bare skeleton, to empty ship, to her present magnificence had been watched, and shared, by the locals, near and far. Wasn’t I the lucky one then?

All around me was the staff of Titanic, the new crew who had taken over from the draughtsmen, the riveters, carpenters, painters and electricians. It was their turn now to tend to the ship. They were the maids, the stewards, the chefs and, of course, the sailors. Nobody said anything, but I felt it keenly as the thousand-strong crowd, in their crisp new uniforms, looked out over the railings at the men who had built her; I was sure I heard the collective feeling, ‘She’s ours now.’

As the ship’s horn sounded out its final farewell I experienced a ferocious wrench and I realised that this was it; I was leaving Belfast at long last. From now on everything was going to be different, except for dear Titanic. I felt bound to her alone. Like a parent I had watched over her birth and like my child she had to outlive my death. If I wasn’t going to heaven, then I was happy to stay with her forevermore, though it would have been more perfect if Charlie could have come too.

‘Da, are we going to America now?’ The little boy was tugging excitedly on his father’s jacket with one hand as he continued to wave the other at the crowd.

‘Not yet, Joseph. Remember what I told you. We have to collect lots more passengers in England, France and County Cork and then we’re on our way.’

Goodness! It was the man from the street behind us, the one who brought the news about my mother. What was he doing here? That must be his wife with the baby girl, while Joseph looked to be no more than six or seven. How small they looked, dwarfed by the large crowd of efficient staff and the overall brilliance of the ship.

His wife spoke in hushed tones, ‘Let’s find our room, Jim, I can’t wait to see it.’

‘Alright, if everyone is sure that they’ve finished saying goodbye to poor Belfast?’

His wife’s excited smile was tinged with a bitter sweetness. ‘I think it’s Belfast that has finished saying goodbye to poor us,’ she murmured.

Jim held her gaze for a second or two and a feeling of something powerful passed between them. I was fascinated. Then he bent down to pick up the suitcase at his feet, take Joseph by the hand, and declare cheerfully, ‘Come on, then. Let’s go find where we’ll be living for the next few days.’

As I watched them head off, I determined to meet up with them later – once I had taken my fill of the sight. I felt a lot happier in myself. There was something about Jim that reminded me of Charlie, who, in turn, had always reminded me a little of my father. He shared his sureness and solid sense of self. There was nothing to hide, only things to protect.

Da and I used to walk for miles on the days when my mother’s moods were particularly bad. When she wasn’t so bad, he used to take her out for walks instead. Naturally I preferred when it was him and me. One day he told me a story about something that had happened when I was a little baby, promising me it was absolutely true. Ma was giving me a bottle when there was a knock on the door. As the door was unlocked and she didn’t want to disturb me, she called out to whoever it was to come in. It was a handsome woman, a gypsy, wearing layers of colourful clothes with lots of noisy bracelets and earrings that cracked against one another as she strode into our tiny kitchen.

‘Good morning, missus. I was wondering if you’d spare a bit of bread or a few pence?’

My mother was flustered and told her she had no money to give.