Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“Your Belfast accent comes and goes.”

“Ahhh…”

“All I know for sure is that Cunard doesn’t hire American spies. Fact is, they dislike you Americans, intensely so; they rely on London-born chaps as a rule. That and Liverpool. Or Southampton for such as sabotage. You young fellas, you just don’t look the part.” He eyed Ransom, clearly believing that he did look the part of some kind of charlatan.

“For God’s sake man,” shot back Ransom, “why didn’t you say all this to your captain to at least help these boys out?”

“Well it just didn’t seem… it wasn’t my place.”

“At least you don’t think we are common gutter trash.” Ransom pounded the cage and it rattled as a result.

Lightoller nervously laughed; he’d pulled back from the lockup as a result of Ransom’s bullish behavior. “I came up in Liverpool.” His last statement held a mix of pride and sadness weighing it down at once as if he might add ‘enough said’.

Lightoller took the book and letters away with him, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll send down an evening meal for you in a few hours. Have to find a crewman to take first watch over you.”

“Nice of you Titanic officers to watch over us!” joked Alastair.

“There’s nothing funny about this!” shouted Thomas, looking all about them in the semi-darkened area behind the crates of cargo stacked to the ceiling. Thomas found a bunk and threw himself onto it.

“Thomas is right, Constable Ransom. What’re we to do now?”

“Wait for Lightoller to do his light reading, and hope we have convinced at least one man outside these bars.”

“You mean hope that we get out of here before the disease gets us,” complained Thomas.

“This place down here,” added Declan, “iron ore walls somewhat like that cave in Belfast, the mine shaft; looks a perfect place for… for…”

“Go ahead, say it,” replied Ransom, “a perfect breeding ground for that thing… and we’re smack in the midst of its hunting grounds and locked here. Helpless!”

“All cheery thoughts.” Declan did a little vault onto his chosen bunk.

Thomas bemoaned, “We-We gotta get off this ship, save our damned selves.”

“If… if it begins spreading,” Declan near whispered. “I saw some lifeboats out there.”

“I see you’ve learned to take in your surroundings, Declan,” said Ransom, testing how hard his bunk was before lying back. “Make a detective of you yet.”

“Thomas makes sense, Alastair.” Declan had decided against the one bunk for the identical one beside it. Lying now on his back, hands behind his head, he again spoke, “If we get shed of these bars, we should plot our escape from Titanic altogether; live to fight another day, you know? That is if they don’t come to their senses and quickly.”

“You mean if there’s no evidence aboard that the disease is here?” asked Alastair.

“No,” said Thomas, “I mean if they remain idiots and fools here in charge, like that self-important captain.”

“Smith is a great ship’s captain, Thomas,” argued Declan. “No one could easily believe our story. Look what it took to bring even Dr. B and the dean over to our side, not to mention Constable Reahall.”

“Declan is right and you, too, are right, Thomas.” Alastair paced the cell. “And so I am right.”

“Whatever do you mean, Alastair?” asked Declan.

“I mean we should get you two off Titanic , and that I’ll stay to see this through.”

The interns looked at one another, unsure what to say to this.

Ransom added, “Look… the only reason you needed to come aboard with me was to give credence to this cock’n’bull story of ours—to carry the letter from your teachers, to be taken seriously. Obviously, that isn’t happening; hell, they don’t believe a word of it, nor the authenticity of my badge.”

They all fell silent, each taking his own council… each wondering about the wisdom of their approach taken with Captain Edward Smith. Somewhere in a nearby room the noise of caged animals, pets no doubt of the rich and famous, making the Atlantic crossing with their masters. It seemed the animals would get excited, begin yipping and crying out and then settle into a silence.

After a silence of their own and a lot of pacing among the caged men, Ransom erupted with, “Smith did have a certain smugness about him, a superior attitude.”

“He’s earned it,” said Declan.

“Attitude like that is hard to break through.” Ransom paced like a lumbering, caged bear. “Damn sick of cages!” He tried to rattle the bars until he realized they were fused to the floor and ceiling. “Can’t believe this!”

“I would think you’d be used to it by now,” muttered Thomas. “What about your burglary tools? Have ’em on ya?” Thomas almost broke into smile.

“Wouldn’t work on this lock.”

“Some detective you turned out to be.”

“Please, Thomas,” said Declan. “No need to be rude.”

“Rude? Look around you, Declan—we’re in a cell in the bowels of Titanic with this thing that dehydrates and kills a man in hours, and you’re worried I may hurt this old fart’s feelings?”

Ransom turned on Thomas and said, “This old fart is old enough to be your father, young man, so hold your tongue.”

“Yes, father.”

“Enough with the sniping, Thomas.” Declan rolled over. “If you’ve nothing kind to say, say nothing.”

“You’ll make me puke with that kind of talk. Damn it, Declan, I can’t believe they locked us up!”

Declan had turned to Alastair, who was now perched on a bunk. “At least this time we get to share a single cell.”

“Somehow that doesn’t help matters,” Thomas muttered.

But Declan merely asked, “Do you have any children, Alastair?”

“Children? Me? Well no… none that I know of that is, but I almost had a daughter once… almost.”

“How do you almost have a daughter? Tell me it wasn’t a stillbirth.”

“No, no, no… .thank God. No, I was in love with her mother, and she—Gabby was her name—she adopted me, so to speak. Killed me having to leave Jane and Gabby, but staying would have only dragged them down with me.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Thomas said and then laughed.

Declan laughed, his eyes meeting Alastair’s.

Alastair could not hold it in any longer, and he burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of their situation; at the same time, he pictured his beautiful girls, the petite Dr. Jane Francis aka Dr. James Phineas Tewes when necessary, and her daughter, Gabby, a firebrand for women’s rights still, and a graduate of Northwestern Medical School, and a lovely younger version of Jane. Jane, who became James so as to deal with prejudices aimed all female surgeons. All this he missed along with his city—Ransom’s city as many called it. He silently laughed at the phrase, a kind of title bestowed on the “Bear” of Chicago. These memories made his heart a led weight in his chest. He missed the three of them—Jane, Gabby, and Chicago in that order.

The combined laughter coming from the three prisoners masked his pain and resonated about the larger room outside the cell, bouncing off crates and sacks of potatoes and boxed grandfather clocks earmarked for Macy’s and furniture crated and marked for Marshal Field’s, Chicago. “I get outta this cage… I oughta slip into that crate going to Chicago. Go straight home to my women, make it official, marry Jane, adopt Gabby. Pipe dreams… regrets, I’ve had a few.”

Then they heard a noise, something or someone approaching but making strange sounds—heavy breathing, someone struggling, knocking into things, gasping. In fact, it sounded like a man suffering from consumption—a great deal of hacking up, gut-wrenching coughing, vomiting. Echoing as it did in the chamber here, the gasping made the trio in the bars shudder when out of the darkness, a man in extreme distress banged into the cage with such force, the entire cage shook.