He exchanges a guarded look with the crewman holding the passenger log. “Luck?”
“Yes.” In Cantonese, our surname sounds more like “Luke,” but the British like to pronounce it “luck.” Ba had decided to embrace good fortune and spell it that way, too. He’d intended the lofty-sounding name “Valor” for Jamie, and “Virtue” for me—after a sea shanty about a pair of boots—but my British mum put the brakes on that. Instead, she named my brother James, and I got Valora. It’s a toss-up as to which of us is more relieved.
“You’re Chinese, right?”
“Half of me.” Mum married Ba against the wishes of her father, a vicar in the local parish.
“Then at least half of you needs documentation. Ain’t you heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act? You can’t go to America without papers. That’s just how it is.”
“Wh-what?” A pang of fear slices through me. The Chinese Exclusion Act. What madness is this? They don’t like us here in England, but clearly, they really don’t like us in America. “But my brother’s on this ship, too, with the members of the Atlantic Steam Company. They’re all Chinese. Did they get on?”
“I don’t keep the third-class register. You’ll need to get off my gangway.”
“B-but my lady will be expecting me.”
“Where is she?”
I was prepared for this question. “Mrs. Sloane wanted me to board first to make sure her room was ready.” Of course, she had already pushed off on a different ship, one that wouldn’t be making a return journey, causing me great inconvenience. “We had her trunk forwarded here a week ago. I must lay out her things.” Mum’s Bible is in that trunk, within its pages my only picture of her and Ba. At last, my family will be reunited, even if it is just with a photo of our parents.
“Well, you’re not getting on this ship without the proper documentation.” He waves the ticket. “I’ll keep this for her for when she boards. Next!”
Waiting passengers begin to grumble behind me, but I ignore them. “No, please! I must board! I must—”
“Robert, escort this girl off.”
The crewman beside the severe officer grabs my arm.
I shake him off, trying to muster a bit of respect. “I will see myself off.”
The woman in the menswear suit behind me steps aside to allow others to go before her, her amber eyes curiously assessing me. “I saw a group of Chinese men enter the ship early this morning,” she says in the no-nonsense tone Americans use. “Perhaps you can check if your brother was one of them.”
“Thank you,” I say, grateful for the unexpected charity.
A family pushes past me, and I lose the woman in a flurry of people, parcels, and hats. I find myself being squeezed back into the train depot, like a piece of indigestible meat. Mrs. Sloane would’ve never stood for this outrage. Probably a rich lady like her would have persuaded them to let me on. But there is no one to speak for me now. I descend the staircase, then exit the depot onto the quay. The glare from the overcast sky cuts my eyes.
I figured the hardest part of this endeavor would be getting on without Mrs. Sloane. Never could I have foreseen this complication. What now? I need to be on that ship, or it could be months, maybe years, before I see Jamie again.
Something skirts over my boot and I recoil. A rat. They are certainly bold here, called by the peanut peddlers and meat pie hawkers. I shrink away from a pile of crates, where the rodents are making short work of a melon rind. The river slaps a rhythm against the Titanic’s hull, and my heart beats double time with the slosh.
Taking the American’s advice, I make tracks for the third-class entrance farther down the quay toward the bow. Unlike in the first class, passengers crowd the gangway, tightening the queue as I near. I straighten my jacket. “I’m sorry, I just need to check if my brother made it through. Please let me pass.”
A man with a dark mustache chastises me in a foreign tongue, then jerks his head toward the end of the line. Heads nod, cutting me suspicious glares, and people move to block me. Seems wearing first-class clothes will not gain me any advantage here.
Perhaps things would be different if I looked less like Ba and more like Mum. I exhale my frustration, a wind heated by a lifetime of being turned away for no good cause. Then I continue farther along the quay to the end of the line, passing dockworkers manhandling ropes and a navy uniform shining a torch into people’s eyeballs. They don’t check the first class for disease.
Beyond the nose of the ship, a couple of tugboats line up, ready to tow the Titanic from her mooring. Voices rise as people look up to a massive crane on the bow lowering a hoisting platform onto the quay ten paces away. A horn honks, and the queue shifts, making way for a sleek cinnamon-red Renault motorcar. It stops right before the hoisting platform.
It could take an hour to reach the gangway from here. But even if Jamie has boarded, they still won’t let me on that ship without papers. Then the Titanic will leave, and he will be lost to me, possibly forever. His letters to me will be undeliverable at the Sloanes’, and I will have no way of knowing which new route he was assigned. Jamie is the only real family I have left. I won’t let him idle his time on a steamship when he is destined for better things. Great things.
A woman with large nostrils glances at me, then pulls her son closer, spilling some of the peanuts from his paper cone. A rat slithers out from behind a crate and quietly feasts. “Stay away from that one. I’ve heard they eat dogs.”
Barely glancing at me, the boy returns his attention to the Renault.
A crewman gestures at the dockworkers positioned on either side of the car. “Easy now. Load her on.”
I am getting on that ship, by hook or by crook. Jamie is there, and I won’t let him leave without me. As for the Chinese Exclusion Act, put out the fire on your trousers before worrying about the one down the street. But how will I board?
The hoisting platform sways on its hook, the stage just big enough to hold the motorcar. A crewman reaches up and guides it the last few feet to the quay.
By hook.
I flex my back, my muscles twitching. There are more ways onto the Titanic than the gangways.
2
Ishade my eyes. The ride up stretches a couple hundred feet, with no walls and no safety net in case something should slide off the platform. I will have to stow away before the platform begins to rise. The car makes a poor hiding spot with its open design, but I can slide underneath and hope no one looks.
It’ll be like the times Jamie and I snuck rides aboard the drays about town, slipping on and off without being seen. London is full of distractions. Of course, we usually only needed to distract the driver. The ship with its many portholes suddenly looms like a wall of prying eyes. More pressing are the hundreds of eyes right here on the quay.