SOS Lusitania by Kevin Kiely

Author:Kevin Kiely [Kevin Kiely]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847175694
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2013-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

I nearly dropped the newspaper, hardly hearing the noise in the street anymore. I saw Dad coming along with officers John Lewis and Albert Bestic. Both smiled when they recognised me.

‘So, our stowaway has got his shipping papers this time,’ Bestic teased.

‘Dad–’

‘Come on, Finbar, we’re late.’ Dad rushed ahead.

Soon we were in a horse-drawn taxi with leather seats, a door on each side, and windows. I could see the driver through a small oval window up front, holding a whip. I said nothing on the journey while the men chatted loudly. We were dropped off at Pier 54.

The pier was crowded with people, automobiles, taxicabs like the one I had been in, and crewmen with carts full of luggage. There was a three-man band, dressed in green suits and green bowler hats, entertaining the arriving passengers, playing ‘My Irish Molly-O’ and other tunes on the accordion, fiddle and banjo. The Lusitania had jets of smoke coming from its four chimneystacks and its flagmasts rose grandly up into the sky. Dad shoved the New York Times into his luggage. When would he see the notice? What would he say?

Dad beckoned me to follow him as he walked along the dock through the teeming passengers who jostled each other, awaiting permission from the liner’s stewards to board the vessel. I noticed many people reading the New York Times and wondered if they had seen the notice. Out on the dockside, cranes hoisted food in crates marked: eggs, bread, fish, fruit, vegetables. Four vast, long gangways sloped from the liner’s lowest deck to the dock. Dad walked up one of the gangplanks, past crewmen with brass buttons on their tunics and wearing flat caps. They were hauling the remaining cargo of sackfuls of letters and packages on board, using a deck crane. We went up the stairs to the upper deck. The liner hummed and throbbed underneath us.

Along the top deck, children played games of chasing, while others were skipping and rolling hoops, and some hopped on the hopscotch area where numbers and squares were painted on the floor.

‘Are you the Captain?’ asked a little boy in a sailor suit.

‘I’m the Staff Captain,’ Dad replied. ‘And this is my son.’

‘Our father is the United States Senator, Richard Mayberry,’ said a taller girl, who was the boy’s sister. She had blond hair with a fringe, and sounded as if she were going to make a speech. She wore a blue blazer, white pinafore and thin, white woollen stockings. Her shiny black patent shoes had silver clasps. ‘I am Penny Mayberry and this is my brother John. He is eight.’ She spoke very politely and formally. I was unable to speak, staring as her large eyes focused on mine. For some reason I bowed as if she were a princess. Her refined American accent and her bright smile shook me for a moment so that my surroundings seemed to disappear. ‘And what is your name, young man?’ she asked me.

‘My name is F-F-Finbar,’ I stuttered, fixing my cap straight.

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