The Hawthorns Bloom in May by Anne Doughty Read Free Book Online Page B

surely. Ma cousin Hugh’s a boilermaker. Me mother’s people all work in the yard, but they’re plater’s and riveters, except Hugh. He was that excited he was goin’ and they cou’d only stan’ an’ watch. But they’re safe enough now, an’ likely he’s gone,’ he said matter-of-factly.
    ‘But there’s still some hope, isn’t there?’ Rose began tentatively. ‘He might be among the saved. There are no names yet, are there?’
    The young man smiled at her and shook his head.
    ‘Not much chance wi’ all them millionaires on board forby weemen and childer,’ he said, pressing his lips together. ‘He wou’d have deeved ye when he talked about them boilers, the size o’ them and how they worked together like,’ he said suddenly. ‘I diden understan the haf o’ what he said. I wisht I’d lissened to him rightly the last time I saw him.’
    He turned away quickly without another word.
    Rose sat down by the stove and read everything she could find about the
Titanic
. Some of the reports contradicted each other. One said there were 3,359 souls on board and 1,500 had been lost, but elsewhere it said 600 passengers were transferred without mishap. The figures simply didn’t add up. One report said the survivors were going to Halifax, another to New York.
    No, there was nothing to give so much as a grain of comfort. Mr Bruce Ismay, the Chairman of the White Star Line was among the victims, it said, but no names of survivors were given. There was a great deal about ‘the space annihilating speed of wireless telegraphy’, the number of American millionaires on board, the likelihood and possibility of icebergs at this time of year, and ‘the need for incessant watchfulness on the part of mariner’s traversing the North Atlantic’.
    Life was full of danger, she told herself, as she dropped the paper by her chair and leant forward to stir the fire. There was nothing new in that. It was just that sometimes it came so close, as it had on her thirtieth birthday, the day of the excursion to Warrenpoint, the day dear Mary Wylie threw her youngest son out of the window of a train with locked doors, as it ran backwards down a steep gradient into an oncoming passenger train. Ned had survived unscathed. He’d married a local girl only last summer.
    For years she had been haunted by dreams of that awful morning, the sun beating down remorselessly as she tried to get the children home across the fields without them seeing the devastation, but the dreams had passed. She thought of Mary often enough, but until last night she had never dreamt of her.
    They’d bought all the newspapers then too, looking for news of the injured, and details of the Board of Trade inquiry, but their own information had been more accurate than anything in the papers, for they heard immediately who had died overnight from injuries and who still lay critically ill in the infirmary in Armagh.
    All the people involved had been friends or neighbours, or the friends and neighbours of someone they knew. This was different. So many, many people. People of all sorts and conditions. Millionaires and film stars. Owners of big American companies. Poor people emigrating with only a suitcase. Only some of these people were known, even indirectly, but it seemed the fate of each one became a personal matter because the ship they’d sailed in, confident they were safe, had been built by thousands of work people in Belfast.
    She sat silent for a long time, just gazing into the warm glow of the stove and asking herself, over and over again, what could anyone do.
     
    For the rest of the week no one talked about anything else but the loss of the
Titanic
. Each day brought new information to set against the rumours and speculations which had circulated as freely as the newspapers themselves. There was now no doubt about the cause of the disaster. The
Titanic
had hit an iceberg which had opened one side of the ship allowing the sea to flood to the so-called water