At the very end of this deck, as far forward as we could go, she stopped beside the ship’s bridge, a long narrow enclosed space lying across the entire width of the ship. A door here stood open, and inside the bridge, as always day and night, stood a line of four ship’s officers, among them the captain, hands behind his back, one hand clasping the other wrist. The front of the bridge was a line of tall glassed windows, giving them a clear view of the sea ahead. They stood silent, staring. They couldn’t see us, here beside the door at the rear, but the helmsman could. He stood several feet behind the officers, his outspread arms gripping the great wooden wheel, eyes on the face of the big lighted compass floating in the waist-high binnacle before him. He glanced at us standing there in the open doorway, but only for a moment, used to the occasional curious passenger. But he’d seen the Jotta Girl’s smile, her very best smile, which was very, very good; and, watching his compass again, he was slightly smiling, couldn’t help it.
Now the Jotta Girl smiled even more, a dazzling supersmile, and walked in toward the helmsman, lifting her hands as though to show him the scarf hanging loose between them. She stopped beside him, raised her hands, and gently laid her scarf across the helmsman’s face, pulling it taut, then tossing the ends up onto the flat top of his British seaman’s white cap. The scarf clung to his face, a hand rising to pluck it off, but he couldn’t quite pinch up the thin material, and had to lift both hands to get hold of and drag it off. I’d seen his wheel make a quarter-turn, and—scarf off—he grabbed it, glancing quickly down at his binnacle, and corrected his course. Then—we stood back outside the door again—he turned to us, glaring, but the Jot stood beautifully smiling at her little prank, blew him a kiss, and he had to grin, shaking his head.
We walked a step or two away, then ran—racing back along the port side, past the lifeboats again, clattering down the little staircase, across the bit of open deck, then up to our little poop deck perch at the stern. And there it lay, written on the water, already well behind us but clear and plain—the graphlike squiggle on the long greeny wake which told us that the Jotta Girl had just slightly altered the course of the Titanic.
Not much but very little was needed, just the tiny bit—a few inches enough—to make the enormous difference between riding over the underwater ice spur that would buckle her plates and kill her . . . or sailing unknowingly just past it. The Jotta Girl had made that difference, and—I couldn’t help it, didn’t want to help it—I grabbed and kissed her in a little ecstasy of joy and relief.
We celebrated—had drinks in the Cafe Parisian, sitting beside each other, grinning nonstop, clicking our glasses in toast or salute or whatever; to each other, the helmsman, Dr. D, Rube Prien, Captain Smith, this splendid new ship. People at nearby tables were smiling at us, and we raised our glasses to them, feeling just fine. To tease the Jot I said, “Never interfere with the past. Never, never, never, never! Ever!”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Broke the sacred rule, didn’t you? What would Dr. D say?”
“That I did exactly right.”
“Oh no he wouldn’t. But I will. You did just right, you did great.”
We were careful not to drink too much, and at dinner not even wine. And at 11:15 we sat waiting in the lounge at a table for two beside a starboard window: the great iceberg would pass close, and we wanted to see it. We talked, I don’t know about what, glancing often at a big round wall clock across the room. It worked by air pressure, a steward had told me, the big hand advancing a full minute at a time. And when it jumped from 11:19 to 11:20, we stopped trying to talk, and sat waiting.
Outside, I knew, up in a crow’s nest on the forward mast, a seaman bulky with heavy clothes sat staring out at the black sea and starlit sky. At any moment now, he should lean forward, eyes narrowing, making sure . . . then reach swiftly for the lanyard of his warning bell. A dozen seconds . . . several more, the clock hands across the room still at 11:20. Then we heard what we alone had known we’d hear, the fast triple sound, clang, clang, clang, of the warning bell, faint and distant through the window glass. A long pause, the lookout on his phone to the bridge, we knew. Then, grinning at each other, we felt it, the slow-motion swing of the great vessel as the rudder swung hard. And then, abruptly, astoundingly, here it was sliding past just outside our window, a great ice-white cliff filling the window glass bottom to top, side to side—we could have touched it except for the glass. And then, on her new course . . . on her new course . . . on the very slightly altered course the Jotta Girl had sent us into . . . the Titanic just barely touched the enormous mass she would otherwise just barely have missed.
And we heard—not at all loudly, feeling it through our shoe soles as much as hearing it—the long slow tearing sound, the prolonged ripping, as the ice spur deep under the sea in precisely the right place raked along the ship’s riveted bottom to let in the first rush of the unstoppable sea that in two hours would sink her. The Jot’s eyes widening, widening, as she listened, the color emptying from her face, she whispered, “Never . . .” Her eyes glittered with sudden tears. “Never alter . . .” She stood up swiftly, and as I pushed back my chair she said, “No!” Then, almost ferociously, “No, don’t come after me! Don’t!” And swung around to walk away very fast.
Outside my window a ship’s officer walked by, in no hurry that I could see. The berg was gone now, far off in the dark behind us. I looked around the room for, and found, Archibald Butt, sitting with several other men at the table where, I knew, he would remain. And I sat back—there were two long, long hours to get through, no rush—and picked up my drink.
30
I’M HOME NOW. For good. And sitting out here in the not-quite-darkness of our front stoop—there’s a streetlamp down at the curb—I’m okay, I’m all right. Pretty much, anyway. But I don’t want to leave here again, don’t ever want to be anywhere else. And don’t want to ever again even think of Rube Prien. Or Dr. D and how right he was. Rover’s out there across the street somewhere. He glances over here a lot; I see his eyes glint green from the street-lamp on that side. Wants to be sure I’m here while he checks out that the neighborhood is still unchanged.
Which it almost is, though not quite. Last night I walked down the block a way, checking out the neighborhood myself, and saw the funeral wreath on old Mr. Bostick’s front door: the stiff dark wreath with small lavender flowers that we hang on our front doors to say that someone in this house has died. Old Bostick was born in 1799, the year George Washington died; for a few months, weeks, or maybe only days they might have been alive together. Imagine it. Now he’s gone, a thread to the past broken. But they break every day, don’t they, the past ever receding, growing stiller and stiller in our minds.
Gloomy obvious thoughts, sitting out here. But I’ll stop pretty soon. Stop thinking so much of what happened. And stop thinking of the Jot; I hope she got off, I’m sure she did. She wouldn’t let me come with her; she was crying and actually ran away.
Yes, Rove, I’m still here: haven’t slammed the door and left you to go seek your fortune. I’m here, and Julia is upstairs putting Willy to bed. I’m sure he’ll be okay in years to come; forewarned is forearmed. Julia will be getting ready for bed herself soon, and I’ll go up to join her, and that’s a very nice thought. But sneaking in under the tent—damn it, I don’t know how to stop this!—is the Jotta Girl. The knowledge that we could have, might have, and almost did. Even worse is the tiny twinge of regret I feel about that. No denying it, and I wonder—oh hell, I wonder how that would have been. Cut it out, cut it out, cut it out.