The Last Lifeboat, page 11
‘Of a sort, yes.’ Isobel placed her finger to her lips and led Lily down the back stairs. At the bottom, she pointed toward the staff kitchen.
Lily peered around the door to see a dozen or so women and several children sitting around the table, a few bags and small cases strewn across the floor. They all looked exhausted.
‘Evacuees,’ Mrs Carr whispered. ‘From the East End. Arrived last night in their hundreds. Boats and barges full of them. Susie let these in. I’ve already had words with her.’
Lily now understood the huddled groups she’d seen under the bridge. ‘Poor things must have been terrified. Imagine having to leave your home and everything you own. You can still see the fires burning from here.’
‘Yes, but they can’t stay.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not! Because this is my home, Lilian, not a poor house. According to the gardener they’re swarming all over Richmond, knocking on basement doors. Some are even sleeping in the picture house. We’ll be inundated if word gets out. There must be a communal shelter they can put them in, or something.’
Or something.
Lily looked at the bewildered women and children, and thought about the three Carr girls, shipped away to safety with their very best dresses and favourite toys, given the finest first-class accommodation. ‘Surely you could let them stay for a few days? Until they get themselves organized.’
Mrs Carr huffed and folded her arms. ‘I don’t really have much choice, do I? I’ll look uncharitable if I send them away now.’
Lily bit her tongue. She imagined Peter beside her. He’d thought Isobel Carr was an insufferable snob and hated that Lily worked for her.
‘Anyway, I suggest you get on,’ Mrs Carr continued with a dramatic prolonged sigh. ‘We apparently need extra beds to be made up for a start.’
Lily stepped into the kitchen. The poor things hadn’t even been given a cup of tea.
A woman resting her head on the table sat up. Lily remembered her – the Wedgwood-blue linen cloche, the patterns and swirls in the tired-looking tea dress.
‘Mrs Fortune?’ The name had stayed with her. ‘Ada?’
The woman stared at Lily blankly. ‘I’m Ada Fortune. Do I know you?’
‘I’m Lily Nicholls. We met a few months back. In the queue to sign the children up for evacuation.’
The woman shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, love. I don’t remember.’
She was hardly recognizable as the lively woman Lily had spoken to just a few months ago. Her face was tired and drawn, her eyes spoke of loss and unimaginable things.
‘I remembered your name,’ Lily said. ‘Fortune. I hoped it would bring your children good luck.’
‘Everything’s gone,’ Ada said. ‘The house, the pigeons, everything. Nothing but a pile of rubble and feathers.’ Tears slipped down her cheeks and dropped onto the table. She was too exhausted to brush them away.
Lily didn’t know what to say, except how sorry she was. It was such an odd word – sorry – an apology dressed up as sympathy. It never felt enough. ‘Your children? Did they get a place on the seavac ships?’
‘Yes, thank the Lord. All of them. Gone off to Canada.’
That was something, at least.
Lily couldn’t bear to leave Ada sitting in the staff kitchen, considered as nothing better than vermin. She led her gently to one side of the room. ‘You can stay with me,’ she said. ‘Come with me when I finish up this afternoon.’ As she made the offer, she remembered she wasn’t even staying in her own home. Maybe it was time she went back to number 13. What did a bit of smoke damage matter when other people’s houses had been flattened?
Ada shook her head. ‘You’re very kind love, but I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble. The maid said we can stay here for the time being. To be honest, I’m too exhausted to go anywhere. I’ll sleep right here on the floor if needs be.’
Lily grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from a drawer in the dresser, scribbled down her address and handed the paper to Ada. ‘Come if you need anything at all. I don’t have much, but you’re welcome to share it with me. My children have gone away, too. I’d be glad of the company.’
Ada took Lily’s hands in hers. ‘You’re a good woman, Mrs Nicholls. Thank you.’
She folded the paper and put it in her pocket, but Lily sensed she was only being polite and was far too proud to take her up on her offer.
Lily’s anger simmered all day as she ironed bed sheets and plumped pillows for the East End evacuees to sleep on that night. She was glad they’d come to The Beeches, glad that Mrs Carr had been forced to confront the reality of war up close. Maybe, if she saw for herself the people whose lives had been upended by something far more devastating than pulling up a few rose bushes, she would put aside her privilege and welcome these poor souls into her home.
Before she finished for the day, Lily knocked on the door of the Rose Room where Mrs Carr was taking her afternoon nap.
She startled when Lily walked in. ‘Lilian? What on earth—’
Lily cleared her throat. ‘Sorry to disturb, but I wanted to remind you that there are thirteen desperate women and five terrified children downstairs, and I think you should let them stay as long as they want.’ Her hands trembled in her coat pockets.
Mrs Carr stared at her. ‘Was that all?’
‘Not quite.’ Lily took a deep breath. ‘You know, the bend in the river out east might determine someone’s status in life, but it doesn’t make them any less deserving of a chance to keep their children safe. Those women downstairs are mothers and daughters and wives, just like you. They want the best for their children, just like you.’
At this, Mrs Carr laughed. ‘I can assure you, those creatures downstairs are nothing like me. We are hardly even the same species.’
Lily bristled. ‘No, you’re right. They are nothing like you. They’re far better than you.’
Mrs Carr stood up. ‘Well! I have never—’
‘I’ll see myself out.’
Lily walked out of the austere room, along the polished maple floors of the entrance hall, and, heart pounding, left by the main entrance, her shoes crunching satisfyingly over the pristine stones of the carriage circle.
Her heart was still racing, her body fizzing with adrenaline and anger as the omnibus took a detour around Putney High Street to avoid a burst water main. Lily leaned her head against the window. The government’s message that the people of Britain were ‘all in this together’ wasn’t true, even if Her Majesty did think she could face the East End now that Buckingham Palace had been hit. Until the bombs started to fall on the grand houses in Richmond and the wealthy mourned their children, there would always be one war for the poor, another for the rich.
‘I brought the milk in for you,’ Elsie said as Lily told her about the evacuees from the East End after supper that evening. ‘Hope you don’t mind, but it was under assault from the sparrows. You should pop over again yourself. Air the rooms and check for post. I can come with you if you like? See how things are? The smell of smoke should have gone by now.’
Lily said she would go first thing in the morning. She’d put it off for too long. She hadn’t intended to stay at number 14 for more than a night or two, but despite finding Elsie’s relentless chatter exhausting, a bit of company was a welcome distraction. It was certainly preferable to the stark silence waiting for her across the road.
‘I’m sure there’s nothing urgent anyway,’ she said. ‘All I seem to get in the post these days are bills and leaflets from the Ministry.’
Elsie nodded and, for once, left the conversation there and returned to her pen and notepad.
Right on cue, the siren went off just after eight.
After the all-clear several hours later, Lily found herself, once again, lying awake in a stranger’s bed, alone, and yet surrounded by memories. She’d always liked patterns and routine, but now they only emphasized the things that were missing. It was so hard sometimes to keep going, to wake up and get dressed and go about her day knowing that it would end the same way: without Peter, and now without the children, too. Sometimes it felt too hard to make a meaningful life out of what was left.
Eventually, she slept, but her dreams that night were especially chaotic, the children shouting for her, someone calling for help, until she sat up with a jolt, panicking because the children weren’t in her arms and she was sure she’d grabbed them both. But they were never in her arms. It was only a dream.
She let out a long tense breath. The children would be in Canada any day now, the dangers of their journey behind them. A rare bud of optimism unfurled in her heart as she lay back down, and settled in for her now nightly vigil, watching the edge of the blackout curtains, waiting for the release of morning.
15
SS Carlisle. 17 September 1940
It was two minutes after ten when the torpedo hit.
Alice had just finished her after-dinner stroll with Eleanor and said she would turn in for the night when the violent shudder of the impact knocked her sideways. The deck vibrated beneath her feet as she gripped the railings.
‘What was that? You don’t think …’
Eleanor pushed her shoulders back. ‘Most likely hit a whale. Go and get your life jacket then check on the girls. I’ll see what I can find out. And Alice …’
‘Yes?’
‘No need to panic.’
Alice checked her wristwatch as she made her way to her cabin. It felt important to make a note of the time. She walked quickly, passing other people who were grim-faced. Nobody spoke, afraid to acknowledge what they all suspected.
In her cabin, Alice grabbed her life jacket and hurried on along the corridor, her only thought to get to the children. As she made her way down a set of stairs, a loud siren started up. Three sharp shrill blasts. She thought back to the emergency drills, but couldn’t remember whether it was three blasts or a continual siren that meant abandon ship.
She pressed on, but found the stairwell to the girls’ cabins blocked by a sickening tangle of shattered wood and twisted metal. Dark churning water already licked at the bottom of the steps. The ship gave a sudden lurch to the right as more water gushed into the lower compartments with appalling force and speed. Whatever had hit the ship must have caused serious damage. Alice stared at the terrible scene in front of her. The violence and noise of the water was terrifying. She began to shake, her body reacting to the shock. She had to get to the children, but she couldn’t possibly go any further.
As she turned to try and find another way down to the cabins, a woman – a maid? – rushed past, struggling against the increasing incline of the corridor. ‘Get up on deck, miss!’ she shouted. ‘Get to your muster station.’
Alice followed the woman, praying that the girls in her group were already on deck, but her progress was hampered by the bulky life jacket and the list of the ship, so that she walked like a drunk, staggering suddenly to one side. As she emerged onto the boat deck, wild gusts of wind snatched her breath away and lashing sideways rain made it almost impossible to see. Above the wind, she could hear panicked shouts and desperate cries. This was nothing like the calm order of the lifeboat drills she’d attended. This was a ship in crisis.
Head down, Alice stumbled toward the muster station for lifeboat seven where she found a dozen girls gathered, with Beryl Barnes instructing them to keep calm as they climbed into the lifeboat.
‘Girls! Beryl! Thank goodness!’ Alice frantically counted seven girls from her group.
Beryl’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘Torpedo strike. She’s going down.’
Alice nodded as she tried to steady her breathing and ignore the clattering of her heart in her chest. ‘Make sure your life jackets are securely fastened, girls,’ she said, shouting to be heard above the noise. Bewildered faces stared back at her, small bodies shivering in paper-thin nightdresses. Only one of the girls wore an overcoat. ‘And don’t worry,’ Alice added. ‘The other ships will come to help.’ As she spoke, a distress flare sent a burst of light into the sky above.
To Alice’s right, a lifeboat jammed on its davits as it was being lowered. She looked on in horror as it swung wildly from left to right, then tilted sharply down and hung for a moment until a cable snapped and sent everyone inside spilling into the water like pennies thrown into a wishing well. The girls screamed. Alice turned her face away. Memories raced through her mind: the dying pilot crying for his mother, Walter draping her silk scarf over the young man’s bloodied face, the sea breeze in Kitty’s hair as she told Alice she wished she would do something unexpected and brave, the lifeless form of the runt of the dog’s litter. You can’t save everyone, Alice. You can’t save them all.
‘I’m going back for the others,’ she said.
Beryl grabbed her arm. ‘It isn’t safe, Alice! You have to get into the lifeboat.’
‘I can’t leave them!’
Before Beryl could say anything else, Alice turned and made her way back to the door she’d just come through.
Inside, the ship creaked and groaned ominously. Alice hurried back along the corridors, passing people going the other way. Driven by a primal instinct to help, at the stairwell to the cabins, she pulled desperately at the shattered wood and the steel beams that blocked her way. She gasped at the shock of ice-cold seawater against her stockings and shoes.
A passing crew member saw her. ‘You have to go up, miss! Torpedo strike. Captain’s orders to abandon ship.’
Alice pulled and kicked at a stubborn beam. ‘There are children down there! I have to help them.’ Her words were drowned out by the persistent wail of the siren.
The young man looked at the impossible tangle of metal and wood. ‘You can’t save the dead, miss, but you can save yourself. Get to a lifeboat before it’s too late!’
Alice couldn’t bear to walk away knowing children were trapped below. We can’t save everyone, Alice. No matter how desperately we want to, or how deeply we care for them, we can’t save them all. She pulled at the beam once more, wishing she were stronger, wishing Walter were there with his great arms. The water was now at her knees and rising fast. She let out a panicked cry and, choking back tears, hurried back to the muster station, but lifeboat seven had already launched.
She looked around wildly. All the lifeboats had gone.
As a crew member rushed past, she grabbed his arm. ‘I was supposed to take lifeboat seven! What shall I do?’
‘There’s one boat left,’ he said. ‘Forward port. Lifeboat twelve.’
Alice hurried to the front of the ship. All around her, lifeboats swayed wildly on their ropes, dangling over the side of the great ship like puppet show props. Three were quickly overturned by the strength of the waves. Too many people were in the water.
SS Carlisle already sat dangerously low in the ocean. Alice peered over the railings. Some seven feet below, the last lifeboat to be lowered was just reaching the water. It was now, or never. The wind was so strong it snatched her breath away, leaving her gasping for air as she half-stumbled, half-jumped, and fell, face down, against the boards in the bottom of the boat. She tried to pull herself up, but the lifeboat pitched violently as another monstrous wave smashed into them and threw Alice into a woman beside her. The woman lost her grip on the rain-slicked mast, and tumbled, with extraordinary grace, into the dark ocean, her white nightdress unfurling around her, spinning and twirling as if she were a ballerina in a pirouette. Too shocked to respond, Alice couldn’t look away.
‘Miss, can you help them?’
Alice turned to see a tall man in plaid pyjamas emerge through the rain. He grabbed the mast to steady himself as he pointed toward something at the other end of the lifeboat.
‘Miss! Miss! Can you help the children?’
PART TWO – ABSENCE
16
SS Carlisle. Mid-Atlantic. 17 September 1940
Alice hears the crack and snap of wood and metal, the broken bones and wounded flesh of their dying ship. The boy in the coat grabs her arm tight as a low metallic groan slices through the dark.
‘What’s that noise?’ he asks. The chilling sound comes again, adding to the howl of the storm and the clamour and confusion of panicked voices that fill the lifeboat. ‘Is it another torpedo?’
‘It’s the Carlisle,’ Alice says. ‘She’s going down.’ It is the sound of despair, she thinks. The sound of mothers and fathers sinking to their knees as they learn the fate of the ship that was supposed to take their children to safety. The finality of it is horrifying.
The boy can’t comprehend that a ship as big as the Carlisle can possibly sink. ‘All of it?’ he asks, his tiny piping voice so misplaced among such brutal turmoil. ‘The smokestacks, and everything?’
Alice holds his hand. ‘Yes, dear. All of it. Everything. Even the smokestacks.’
He nudges a boy beside him. ‘It’s going down, Billy! And all your marbles with it.’
The boy, a bedraggled scrap of a thing, hugs his knees tight to his chest and shrugs. His silent acknowledgement is devastating. So many little treasures lost, so much so violently destroyed.
It takes Alice a moment to recognize little Billy Fortune, the boy from the station platform in London, shoelaces undone, cap falling over his eyes, a prized marble in his coat pocket. The boy in Howard’s group. ‘A real character,’ he’d said.
Billy pats the pocket of his pyjama top. ‘Still have my best shooter though. Stinking Nazis can’t have everything.’
Alice could cry at his staunch defiance.
The lifeboat pitches and rolls erratically in the swell caused by the slip and suck of the sinking ship. Alice braces herself as cries and screams rise up from those around her. A group of six men, who seem to have taken charge, shout urgent instructions to each other to row away, to pull hard to starboard. Alice shouts above the noise to tell the children to hold hands as the Carlisle’s proud stern plunges beneath the waves, and disappears.
It is unfathomable to Alice that the pristine restaurant she’d drunk coffee in that evening, the linen-draped tables, the bone-china cups and saucers, every breakfast bowl and butter knife, every gilt-framed seascape and polished brass handrail, every library book and reading chair and table lamp are now lost to the ocean. She focuses on fixtures and fittings because it is impossible to acknowledge the questions that sit like stones dropped into her heart and send ripples of dread coursing through her: What has happened to everyone else? Where are they all?
