The door was marked Crew Only. Jack turned to Rose, a mischievous smile on his face. They had spent the whole day exploring the ship, but now, at almost eleven in the evening, they had reached the staff quarters. Jack flung the door open and Rose gasped, knowing they could get into trouble for this. They entered a roaring room with a ladder going down into the boiler room. Steam floated upwards and the noise was incredible.
“Now what?” Rose shouted above the din, her hands over her ears.
“What?” Jack laughed. He, too, covered his ears.
He pointed to the ladder, which led into the boiler room. Jack scrambled down the ladder before helping Rose down. Once down, they looked around in amazement. It was like a vision of hell itself, with the roaring furnaces and black figures moving in the smoky glow. They ran the length of the boiler room, dodging amazed stokers and trimmers with their wheelbarrows of coal.
“Don’t mind us! Carry on! You’re doing a great job!” Jack called to the amazed stokers.
They ran through a watertight door into boiler room six. Jack pulled her through the fiercely hot alley between two boilers and they wound up in the dark, out of sight of the working crew. Watching from the shadows, they saw the stokers working in the hellish glow, shoveling coal into the insatiable maws of the furnaces. The whole place thundered with the roar of the fires.
Jack pulled Rose to him, putting his left hand on her waist. He kissed her forehead, tasting the sweat trickling down. Tilting his head, he kissed her lips passionately, more than what they had before. Their tongues massaged each other’s in the heat of the boiler room.
“What are you doing down here?” a stoker interrupted them. “You shouldn’t be down here. It could be dangerous.”
Immediately, Jack pulled Rose as they ran to the end of boiler room six and into the cargo hold. The coldness hit them full on in contrast to the boiler room. The cargo hold of the ship was below water level and, as Jack pulled her between the rows of mail, suitcases, and stacks of luggage, she rubbed her arms against the cold.
“Oh, look what we have here.” Jack laughed, pulling her towards a brand new Renault touring car. It looked like a royal coach from a fairy tale, its brass trim and headlamps nicely set off by its deep burgundy color. Jack shook his head, knowing how much this would cost.
Rose coughed a little, and Jack smiled. He opened the door and helped her into the car, onto the lushly upholstered back seat. She acted very royal. There were cut crystal bud vases on the walls in the back, each containing a rose. Jack jumped into the driver’s seat, enjoying the feel of the leather and wood. He beeped the car loudly and Rose giggled.
“Where to, miss?” he asked with a stuffy English accent, thinking they were still playing their game.
“To the stars,” Rose whispered in his ear softly.
He turned to her, a little confused, until her hands pulled him into the backseat of the Renault and he landed next to her. His breath seemed loud in the quiet darkness. He looked at her. She was smiling. He stroked her face gently, cherishing her, his beautiful wife. She kissed his artist’s fingers, something she hadn’t done before.
“Put your hands on me, Jack.”
It wasn’t a question. It was almost an order. She led his hand to her breast. He bent his head down to kiss her, not able to hold back anymore. He kissed her with the same passion he had in the boiler room just minutes before. This was something neither of them had done before, in the backseat of a Renault, but they knew they had to be quick.
Unbuttoning Rose’s dress, he pulled the material over her shoulders and pulled it down, exposing her bare breasts. She tugged at his coat and pulled it from his arms before throwing it to the floor of the car, before finding his shirt buttons and undoing them one by one, quickly, with shaking hands. Jack lifted up her skirts, not removing her dress completely, just leaving it around her waist. He pulled her stockings down as she found the button that held his pants closed.
Neither of them could wait to do this. There was very little privacy in their cabin. Leaning forward, he kissed her, and she slid down under his welcome weight.
There, in the backseat of a Renault, on the grandest ship of all time, Jack made love to his wife. The rear window of the car was completely steamed up and Rose slammed her hand against it, making a handprint in the veil of condensation as she felt her orgasm.
Inside the car, Jack’s coat was like a blanket over them as their naked upper bodies pressed together. They were huddled beneath it, still entwined and still mostly clothed. Their faces were flushed and they looked at each other wonderingly. She put her hand on his face, as if making sure he was real.
“You’re trembling,” she whispered to him.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be all right,” he told her before kissing her just once, still catching his breath. He lay his cheek against her chest. “I can feel your heart beating.”
She hugged his head against her chest and held him for dear life. God, she loved him. They stayed like that for several minutes before Jack’s head bolted up. He had heard footsteps.
“Shit.” He bolted up, pulling up his trousers and buttoning them. “Come on, Rose. Someone’s coming.”
Quickly, she pulled up her dress and Jack buttoned it up for her. She stuffed her stockings in Jack’s coat pocket as they quietly sneaked out of the car. Jack took her hand, glancing around to see the direction that the voices had come from. He pulled her behind a stack of mail. A flashlight was visible as two men came from the boiler room.
“They went down there,” a stoker told them.
Looking around, the men looked for any sign of the man and woman the stokers had described to them. A handprint on the rear window was a clue, and one of the men snapped his fingers to get his friend’s attention. He walked around to the left side of the car, opening the door and shouting, “Gotcha!”
Jack pulled Rose out of the cargo hold and onto the deck through the crew door. They could barely stand because of their laughter. The cold was biting, but Rose failed to notice it. They stood in each other’s arms, breathing in the cold air, which neither of them felt. They couldn’t believe what they had just done.
“Did you see those guys’ faces?” Jack laughed, but Rose put her fingers on his lips to shush him.
Their eyes interlocked, and she touched his face gently. “I love you,” she told him. A smile came across his face and they kissed fiercely.
As they pulled away, the ship seemed to shudder. Coldness ran through Jack. He had a feeling something had happened. Out of nowhere, an iceberg sailed past them, blocking out the sky like a mountain. Fragments of it broke off and crashed down onto the deck. They had to jump back to avoid the flying chunks of ice.
Both of them stared up in astonishment, and then it was gone as quickly as it had come. Jack and Rose ran to the rail and looked over it, seeing the iceberg disappear out of sight.
*****
In steerage on G-Deck, Tommy felt the shudder and jumped out of the top bunk. When his feet reached the ground, he felt the sharp pain of freezing cold water against them.
“What the fuck?”
Flipping on the light, he saw that the floor was covered with three inches of freezing cold water. He pulled the door open, looking out into the corridor, which was flooded. People were running up and down, shouting in several different languages.
Closing the door, he looked at Jack and Rose’s bunk—they weren’t there. “Shit!”
He put his hand on his head. Gently, he shook his sister’s sleeping body until she woke. He didn’t want to startle her in any way, but the ship was in trouble. He knew that he had to get them to some sort of safety.
“Sharon…Sharon…” After a few shakes, her green eyes flickered open. “Get up, Sharon. The ship’s in trouble.”
Sharon sat up, feeling her unborn child kick wildly. Her feet hit the floor and met freezing water. Tears formed in her eyes. She knew her brother was speaking the truth.
“What do we do?” she asked Tommy, his face just as worried as hers.
“Come on, girl. We’ll get dressed up warmly and go to see what the fuck’s going on,” he spoke angrily. Sharon felt uneasy when her brother swore, but he had a right to.
After changing into the warmest clothes they owned, they opened the door to see that the water was just as bad outside. Neither of them could feel their feet. The water was numbing them through their shoes.
Cora’s father, Bert, came running towards them. “I was just coming to find you. We think the ship’s sinking,” he told them breathlessly.
Sharon could feel herself shaking. Her right hand came to her face. “Oh, my.” She put her hand on her swollen stomach and Tommy put his arm around her. “What about Jack and Rose?”
Neither of them knew where their friends were.
*****
Jack and Rose were leaning over the starboard rail, looking at the hull of the ship. Rose hugged herself against the chill of the night.
“Looks all right. I don’t see anything,” Jack told her.
“Could it have damaged the ship?”
“It didn’t feel like much of a bump. I think we’re all right.”
Behind them, a couple of steerage passengers kicked around blocks of ice like a football.
*****
Below decks, Sharon, Tommy, and Bert, along with his wife and two daughters, were standing in a crowd of steerage men clogging the corridors, heading aft away from the flooding. Many of them had grabbed their suitcases and bags, which were soaked.
Tommy held his sister’s hand, pulling her through the crowds of people. Rats ran down the corridors and Cora hid behind her father, not liking the sight of the vermin. “If this is the way the rats are going, it’s good enough for me.”
*****
On B-Deck, the steerage men who were kicking around the ice were joined by another man, who leaned on the forward rail, watching the men playing soccer with chunks of ice. “I guess it’s nothing too serious. I’m going back to my room to read.”
A young man appeared in the doorway with a topcoat over pajamas. “Say, did I miss all the fun?” The men threw a piece of ice at him.
Jack and Rose came up the stairs next to the well deck, which was right next to the men playing with the ice. They stared as the couple climbed over the locked gate.
A moment later, Captain Smith rounded the corner, followed by Andrews and Carpenter Hutchinson. They had come down from the bridge by the outside stairs. The three men, their faces grim, pushed right past Jack and Rose.
“Can you shore up?”
“Not unless the pumps get ahead.”
The inspection party went down the stairs to the well deck. Jack turned to Rose, hearing the tidbits of the conversation between the captain and carpenter. “This is bad.”
“We should tell Tommy and Sharon.”
Agreeing, they headed for steerage to warn Tommy and Sharon. The evening was freezing, so they had to dress warmly.
As they reached E-Deck, they saw that the area was already a few inches under water. Steerage passengers were already in the hallway, clutching their belongings. Jack clutched Rose’s hand tightly, leading her back to their cabin.
Upon seeing that Sharon and Tommy weren’t anywhere to be seen, they quickly found something warmer to wear. Rose donned a long beige coat over the top of her navy blue dress, while Jack changed his shirt to a long-sleeved one and put his overcoat on.
*****
In the E-Deck stairwell, Tommy stood with Sharon at the gate. A steward stood behind it, refusing to unlock it.
“Sharon! Sharon!”
She turned to see Rose behind the large crowd, standing with Jack, and she felt some relief. Struggling, she shoved her way through the crowd to stand with Rose and Jack. She hugged them both, as if they were family.
“The boats are going,” Sharon told Rose.
“We’ve got to get up there, or else we’ll be gargling saltwater. Where’s Tommy?” Jack asked Sharon, who pointed over the heads of the solidly packed stairwell.
Tommy had his hands on the bars of the steel gate, which blocked the head of the stairwell. The crewman opened the gate a foot or so, and a few women squeezed through.
“Women only! No men!”
But some terrified men, not understanding English, tried to rush through the gap, forcing the gate open. The crewman and stewards pushed them back, shoving and punching them.
“Get back, you lot! Lock the damned gate.”
They struggled to get the gate closed again, while the other steward brandished a small revolver. Another held a fire axe. They locked the gate and a cry went up among the crowd, who surged forward, pounding against the steel and shouting in several languages.
“For the love of God, man! There are women and children down here! Let us up so we can have a chance! Let me sister out! She’s pregnant.”
The crewmen were scared now. They had let the situation get out of hand, and now they had a mob. Tommy gave up and pushed his way back through the crowd, going down the stairs.
“Its fucking hopeless that way,” he told Sharon. He hugged Jack.
“We’ve got to do something fast.”
Jack squeezed Rose’s hand tighter. He looked around at the crowds of people in the corridors. He felt anger within him, but knew he had to save himself and Rose, as well as Tommy and Sharon—they were all he had to care about.
“Come on. Let’s try this way.”
He led them into a crowd. They pushed past confused passengers, past a mother changing her baby’s diaper on top of an upturned steamer trunk, past a woman arguing heatedly with a man in Serbo-Croatian, a wailing child next to them, past a man kneeling to console a woman who was just sitting on the floor, sobbing, and past another man with an English/Arabic dictionary, trying to figure out what the signs meant, while his wife and children waited patiently. They came upon a narrow stairwell and went up two decks before they were stopped by a small group pressed up against a steel gate. The steerage men were yelling at a scared steward.
“Go back down the main stairwell like everyone else!” he told the small group. “It will all get sorted out back there.”
Finally, Jack had had enough. He felt the anger rise inside of him. “God damn it to hell son of a bitch!”
He grabbed one end of a bench bolted to the floor on the landing. He started pulling on it, and Tommy and some other men pitched in until the bolts sheared and it broke free.
Rose figured out what they were doing and cleared a path up the stairs between the waiting people. “Quickly! Move aside!”
Jack and Tommy ran up the steps with the bench and rammed it into the gate with all their strength. It ripped loose from its track and fell outward, narrowly missing the steward. Led by Jack, the crowd surged though.
“You can’t do this!” the steward told them, watching as they all walked past him, before Tommy decked him, knocking him to the floor.
They found their way up on deck to see that the boats were all being lowered. They knew they had to find their way to a boat to get to safety, or they would be going down with the ship.