Chapter 4

"What in the Hell are you doing here?" he demanded. I stared back in shock. "Answer me!"

"I—I decided to take a… vacation," I lied timidly.

"Where is Father?"

"He is dead," I replied flatly. I noticed the other officer standing behind Michael. He stayed silent, sensing tension, perhaps.

Michael shook his head. "Dead? What do you mean, dead? How? Why?"

"He was murdered a few days after you left. Unfortunately for me, Meg left the same day you did. Then James, Raoul and Thomas left. I spent two years in that empty old house while you and our brothers were having the time of your lives! So I left, too!"

Michael stepped back. The other officer put his hand to his mouth in shock. Michael gasped. "Who did it?"

"I do not know. I also do not know why James or Thomas never told you, either."

"Well, what's done is done."

"That's it? You do not care?" I almost screamed. I certainly cared. Father's death had ruined my whole life.

"I care. And you should go straight home. I'll take you to James, then he'll take you home."

"I don't like James. And I'll go where I want," I contradicted.

"No, you shall not, because you are a girl and you do not know anything about the world."

That stung me. I stepped back slowly, then turned around and began running to the stateroom. The officer looked at me, then Michael, and then disappeared.

Fifty yards and one story further, I still ran. As I passed through groups of people gathered to discuss the arrival of the lifeboat, I heard someone, a woman, shout, "Christine?"
I stopped short and turned. It was Meg. But why should I speak to her?

But she came closer to me, and my feet were stuck to the deck. I stared, and she stared right back. "Christine? Is it you? My God, I have not seen you for years!"

I still did not move or talk. My heart was painfully pounding. I did not leave home to see these dreadful people again! I wanted to start anew and forget about them! But I said, "You left me."

"I had to, Christine. I married that last night I saw you."

My eyes widened. "And why couldn't I be present?" I demanded furiously.

"My parents made it a private wedding. They wanted it," Meg said.

"And your husband? Did he want a small wedding? His parents? Why did I not meet him?"

"I—I-"

"Excuse me, ladies," the officer suddenly appeared again and interrupted, pushing the two of us apart, "Shall I take you to the room? I'll let you be the first to know that this ship is taking us to the Magic right as we speak. We'll be back on board and on schedule tomorrow."

I decided that this was my excuse to leave Meg. "Is the ship all right?" I asked. We started walking.

"Yes, The storm pushed the lifeboats already lowered away."

"Were all of the lifeboats lowered?"

"No, the storm came right after we got off the ship, remember?"

We were walking down stairs, when I realized that Meg was following us.

"So nobody left after us?" I asked.

"A total of five lifeboats left the ship. The other four are safely returned and we are in the process of being returned." The officer turned into another hallway, I followed, and stopped at a door. He opened it. There were at least five families squeezed in the one room.

"Where will you be staying?" I asked.

"Among you passengers."

"Christine, you may stay with me," Meg offered.

I turned to her. " I do not ever want to speak to you again," I reported bitterly.

The officer mumbled something to himself.

"Fine," Meg said rebelliously. She turned her heel and left.

That night I stayed up. I was probably the only person who had slept while we were in the lifeboat. I went to the boat deck. The lifeboats said "S.S. Aquitian" on them. I strolled to the front of the boat deck. The night air stung my face, and I wished that I had not come up in such cold weather. My footsteps seemed to hurt the silence, so I slowed down and tried to walk quieter. Making noise and attracting attention was not something I had ever enjoyed.

It was a pair of two voices that stopped my walk as I approached the bridge. Another conversation. I felt I needed to listen.

"Did you tell her about us?" A female.

"No. She told me about Father's murder. Not that I did not know! James told me. What a fool!" Could that be Michael?

"Well, that other Deveroux officer told her that they would be on their ship by tomorrow, so there is no need to worry."

"She doesn't need to know, Meg." She was Meg? What about them? They had stopped talking, but I still heard something. I dared to look.

Sure enough, there was Meg facing Michael, his back turned to me. That noise was the two of them kissing. They seemed… passionate.

Meg opened her eyes. She looked straight at me. I darted as quickly as I could, like a mouse, behind the wall. Or in this case, my hole. Nevertheless, she hissed alarmingly, "Michael, she is there!"

They both turned the corner, to see me blushing angrily.

"How long have you been listening?" Michael demanded, not even the slightest bit embarrassed.

"The two of you are married?" I awed, but not in any happy way.

"When I ask you a question, you answer me, Christine."

I fumed. "I heard you discussing what fool I am. You knew of Father's murder and did not do anything about it? Doesn't that shame you?" I asked defiantly. "And you are the oldest of us!"

"Christine," Meg said calmly, "listen…"

"No!" I interrupted crisply. "I am tired of listening to everyone. I am on my own."

"You are a girl," Michael said, as though I had forgotten and he was reminding me.

"Oh, girl…… schmirl!" I sputtered. "I don't care! Leave me alone! I don't care that you are married! Do what you want!" I stormed away, wishing even more that I hadn't come up into the stinging cold weather. It hurt.

The next morning I woke to a growling stomach and a noisy room. After I ate breakfast, it was announced that all Magic's passengers were to report to the boat deck. Up there was the Magic. Onlookers from both ships were waving to each other. The officer from our boat was ushering us to the lifeboat that we had arrived in. I noticed that both ships had stopped.

Michael showed up from behind me. He murmured, "Wait at the nearest hotel for me when you dock. I am going to take you to James."

"I am not going."

"Why are you so stubborn lately?"

Lately? I had not seen him in the longest time ever! When did 'lately' start?

I did not answer. The officer was now pushing the last of the rescued into our lifeboat. We were to be lowered down on the sea and be hauled aboard the Magic as we had been onto the Aquitian. I walked over to the lifeboat and he followed. After I found myself back on the Magic again, and the lifeboat was pulled up to the boat deck and all the passengers were gone, I realized that I was in first class area. I had no clue as to how to get back to my room.

"Are you lost?"

I spun around. The officer was there.

"Where is your room?" he asked.

"E-112."

His face changed. "Third class area?" I nodded. He gave the directions, giving them with hand gestures. When he was finished, I thought for a moment, grasping the information.

"Thank-you," I said.

"No problem. Take care of yourself," he replied. I started on my way.

"Wow, Christine! Did you really sit a whole day in a water-filled lifeboat?" Agatha cried out in surprise after I told her and her family about my experience. I left out the part about Michael and Meg. They seemed happy that I was all right. I was glad that they were all right. They had taken their drill later that day.

The following day we continued to tour the ship. We discovered that third class passengers had less access to places on the ship. This crushed the children's hearts, but only to a small extent.

The next two days of the voyage we talked up on the boat deck. We talked about what we were going to do in England. They said that England was their home, and their life in America was not to their liking, so they were going home. I told them of my dead father. They gasped in horror and gave me sympathy. I told them that I loved my father so much that I could not stay in the empty house anymore. I also mentioned that my brothers had deserted the house. Phillip suggested that I could live with them, but I refused politely with a laugh. The next day we talked about school. They, or Agatha, said that I was lucky to be out of school.

On the final day of the trip, I helped them to finish packing up for departure. We went to the place we had entered from and waited. Then a steward opened the door. A gangway was right there. There was a small crowd and automobiles and more people and noise. I went out in front of my new friends and stepped on the English ground. Looking back at the ship for the last time, I saw that officer again, staring at me. He was smiling. I returned the smile, knowing that I would never see him again.

I was clear out of the third class area when it struck me: I had no place to immediately go to. I looked around. Other people were being picked up in cars by family or boarding trains. The place would not have seemed so new if I had a definite place to go to.

Then someone grabbed my shoulder from behind. "There you are," a gruff male's voice said. I turned and faced a big surprise: James.

"Michael sent you here, am I wrong?"

"No, well, he sent me here as you say, but I have other things to do with you."

"You sound as though I am and object and not a human."

"You're-"

"A girl?" I said, with one of my hands on my hip.

"Do you think that all girls interrupt older men?" James asked. I hated when he acted like he was the god of the world! "Now let's be going," he said authoritatively. As I followed, I looked once more at the Magic. The officer was still looking at me, but neither of us was smiling. James had pulled me around and in front of him. He also made it clear that he was in charge and I was not to leave his sight. I had to remind him of my age, hoping to ring a bell in his head that I was no longer a child. On the train that we boarded, he saw to it that no one else was in our compartment.

In the silence of the emptiness of the car, James asked me questions about the voyage, and answered my questions. It turned out that Michael had sent a Marconigram to the shore, which was sent to James, telling him to meet me where the Magic was to be docked. I was furious at that, but I remained calm.

At the end of the train ride, James gripped my arm and literally pulled me off the train. Despite my protests, he walked very quickly through the people with my box in his hands. I was holding a separate box with Magic and Bright in it. It was a shame that two two-year-old cats could weigh so much.

He pulled me, by foot, all the way to a dark alley. He lifted a garbage can lid from the ground… to reveal a hole in the ground. I watched, feeling as though I had stepped into the crazy world that I read about in the newspapers.

"Hello!" James called.

"Open?" a voice answered.

"That would be nice!" James responded.

Then a rectangular piece of the back brick wall was pulled into the building. A staircase that descended into the ground came into view. The piece of brick was level with the ground, held on two railings. A man in old, tattered clothes appeared. I heard cheap, old music and masculine laughter, while I gaped in wonder.

"Inside you go," James said, pulling me by the sleeve in front of him.

"It's all right, mate," the man said in the strange accent that Agatha and the officer carried. He extended his hand to me. I clutched my cats' box still, as though it was the last of civilization that I would ever meet, and walked down the rest of the stairs.

I was in a room filled with strange, poor-looking men, all appearing to be drunk. They sat at tables, and a bar was at the back of the room. A hallway extended to the left, with doors lining each side. Another door was to my right. The room became silent as though some miracle had washed over us. All eyes fell on me. I felt like an ant.

To break the stunning silence, James said, "She's Christine."

All the men then smiled and said "Oh, yes," and nodded their heads and such, as though they knew me or were expecting me.

"She'll be coming with me," James said to the doorman. He pushed me towards the hallway and opened a door to our right. It was a bedroom, when the light was turned on.

"Why does everyone talk peculiarly?"

"What?" James set my box down.

"They sound as though they have some accent."

He shook his head to himself, as though ashamed of me. "We're in England. They're speaking English. We have the accents, not them."

I looked at the dirty, soiled carpet, feeling like a fool. "You live here?"

"Yes."

"I do not like it."

"Would I care?"

"No. Can't I live somewhere else?"

"Not unless I say so."

Wait. I was to live with him?

James was putting his things away. Done with that, he thought a bit. "Never mind. You'll live somewhere else." With the big box in his hands, he pulled me out of the room.

As we walked through, many men looked at me as though they had never seen a lady before. James then stopped to talk to someone. While I waited, another man said, "You can stay with me the night!" jokingly, and put his hand on my skirt near my hip. I winced and glared at him. He and his friends laughed and started to make jokes about me in bed with him. I felt like crying. The jokes were horrible and sex-oriented, about beds and removing blouses.

"Aw, James, your sister has no sense o' humor," the man said.

"It was not funny," I said firmly.

"It was very funny. Ha ha! You and me, together!"

He then drank some more beer or whatever was in his mug. I was thoroughly disgusted.

"Bart, tie it. She is a lady," James said.

"Well," the man called Bart said, standing up, "if she's a lady, then, I imagine she should be havin' some sex!"

I gasped in horror. As though that was all I was good for! "You dirty son of a-" but James, at the last moment, struck me. I felt like I wanted to throw every bottle of beer that was in this room at his head. I wanted to talk, but nothing came out. I wanted to hurt James, for bringing me to this horrible place, for spoiling my plans, for letting me get humiliated.

The men continued rambling on, drunk. James shoved me towards the main entrance, or so I thought. He opened that door that I had noticed earlier. It was a closet, but now I did not know whether to consider it as that. Everything here was not really what it looked like. But sure enough, James walked in a few steps, set the box down, stepped out and pushed me in.

"This is your home," he said, and so saying he closed the door.

And locked it.