“Well, sir, at half after ten, and it’s nearly that now, he should be coming along the deck just outside with his morning inspection party. I should think that might be a good time, sir.”
So out on the deck again, I sat in a wooden deck chair watching the almost imperceptible roll of the ship, the horizontal top deck rail dropping slowly, slowly below the distant horizon encircling us, then holding there, holding . . . before it began to slowly rise again. Soothing to watch, it calmed me, and when I heard and saw the inspection party down the deck moving toward me, I knew I could stand and say what I had to.
Here they came, five ship’s officers led by the captain himself, all in full-dress blues with medals, all wearing wing collars. One of the party making notes, the captain’s big white-bearded head turned steadily side to side, looking, watching, commenting, nodding and smiling at passengers but moving briskly along, conversation not encouraged now, and I made myself stand, stepped out before the little group, and made my mouth speak.
“May I have a word with you, Captain? It is truly important.”
He stood looking at me carefully. “Yes?”
“Sir. Captain Smith.” How could I make sense? “I happen to have some . . . special knowledge.” Didn’t sound right! How to say this? Oh hell, just say it! “On Sunday night, if you maintain this course and speed, sir, we are going to strike an iceberg. We will! I—” I stopped, amazed; he was grinning at me.
“Oh, don’t worry, don’t you worry, sir!” He clapped a reassuring hand lightly on my shoulder. “We know all about the icebergs; this is the iceberg season, and we’ve had plenty of warnings, isn’t that so, Jack,” glancing at one of his officers.
“Yes, sir, from Empress of Britain and Touraine so far. They report field ice, some growlers, some bergs between forty-one fifty north latitude and forty-nine fifty west. Bound to hear more reports as we approach, sir.”
And this impressive, neatly bearded, likable captain smiled at me pleasantly. “So we’re well warned, sir,” Captain Smith said, “but I do thank you”—he touched me lightly on the shoulder again. “Not to worry.” And they moved on.
So . . . yes. What else could he have thought or said? And now? Now there was simply nothing else I could do. Except wait. And because I knew what I knew, I was no longer able to talk to or even look at other passengers. At my assigned dining room table I’d been seated with a not-quite-elderly man and his wife, he newly retired; and another, forty-year-old man, all English. And I was not able to continue making light conversation with them, all of us laughing a lot, with me wondering all the time: What will happen to you tomorrow night?
I had to find a refuge from the sight and sound of living people whose shoes—I’d compulsively glance at them—were going to lie alone on the ocean floor through decades to come, their clothes and entire bodies dissolving to nothing. And Sunday afternoon, restlessly wandering, I found my refuge at the very stern, overhanging the sea, protruding further back than even the great rudder. This was a separate little poop deck reached by a short flight of stairs from the main Deck B. And in this desolate, deserted little place crowded with ship’s machinery—winches, cranes, capstans—I stood, here at the very stern, forearms on the rail, trying to isolate my helpless self from the horror of what was going to happen. And I resumed my old game of watching the greeny-white wake peel endlessly out behind us.
It empties the mind to stare down at the ever-changing sameness of a ship’s wake. There behind us it lay on the quiet gray sea, handsomely green, squirming with bubbles, a wide watery road over which we’d just come. Arms on the stern rail, hands clasped over the sea, I stood watching the great propeller bubbles blossom up from the deep; watching the helmsman’s occasional small corrections appear as a squiggle in the wake, slightly bending the long green road to left or right. Watched a bird appear here far out in the ocean. A tern, was that what they were called? He’d follow us, wings spread motionless, getting a free ride on the invisible tunnel of warmed air lining out behind us. Then he’d move, he’d tilt; it looked like fun. Presently he lowered to the surface and, wings tucking, bobbed away behind us on our flat green wake. They slept on the sea, I thought I knew.
And out here, bent over the roadlike wake, I escaped. The deck under my feet, the rail under my forearms were solid, the people inside the warmth of this ship truly alive. But for me, only for me but nevertheless, all this finally became the distant past. My own reality lay far away, and what was going to happen tonight out here in the Atlantic was an old, old story from a long-ago time about which I could do nothing at all.
But I couldn’t hang on to that truth. From behind me on the deck of the ship whose fate and people I’d tried to turn from, I heard approaching footsteps, then the mumble-grumble of a man’s voice, a woman’s reply, everything turning again to real and now, and I stood frantic with helplessness.
Someone materialized beside me, sleeved forearms sliding into vision on the railing beside mine, hands clasping, and I knew whose they were, and could not possibly have prevented the wild rush of happiness. And, no way to stop this, none, I turned, my arms reaching, and grabbed the Jotta Girl to me, kissing her hard, kissing her long, and just did not want to stop. But did; Julia, I did. And now out here on the gray Atlantic, we stood grinning at each other. I said, “Dr. D just never quits, does he.”
“He had to be certain. So I sat in the lounge watching you and Archie from an armchair behind a pillar till I knew. It’s over now, Si; Archie won’t change his mind.”
“I know. Jot, what will you do when it happens?”
“Dr. D says go to Boat Eighteen. It was lowered with plenty of room left. You?”
“Boat Five. There were only a few women in it, no others around, just a few men. So the men were ordered in too.”
Side by side then, forearms again on the stern rail, we stood watching the long green wake endlessly come into being, straight as a road for a while, then the little squiggle to one side or the other of the helmsman’s small correction. Occasionally people walked by on the deck behind us; we’d hear their wooden footsteps approach, hear the murmur of their talk. We heard a man, a woman, and a small girl; then the child spotted us, and scampered up our stairs just enough so that, turning at the sound, we saw her little face and red knitted cap appear. She stared at us for a moment, her eyes bright with mischief, then called, “Hello!” delighted with her own daring. The Jotta Girl smiled, calling an answer, but when she looked back to me her eyes glittered wet. “Oh Christ, Si, what can we do?”
I shook my head. “There’s no warning them,” and I told her what had happened when I spoke to Captain Smith. And we turned back to stare down at our wake again.
But not for long. She turned from our rail to the little flight of stairs down to the main deck, and I followed. A few steps across the deck below, then up the outside stairs to the boat deck, I almost trotting along behind her, wondering. Forward along the deck, glancing at her as I caught up. But her face was set, purposeful, not a glance at me, and no explanation.
On past the lifeboats in their davits—big, big, seeing them this close. And now the Jot pulled the scarf from her neck, a thin gauzy thing patterned in lavender, and carried it hanging loosely between her hands. We walked fast, the length of the port side, the steady wind of the ship’s passage mournful in the guy wires spidered out from the huge beige stacks rimmed in black.