Evening on the River

by Anita Scarlett

The city is so much bigger now: some 9 million souls. It is a busy, noisy place,

with people hurrying about their business, occupied with their own concerns.

The living and the dead lead separate lives, divided by the passing of years.

On the riverbank there is a small plaque, faded and shabby, half lost in the

weeds. Few ever read it. Few ever come here. It is a peaceful place, a bleak

industrial wasteland. Just the suck and gurgle of the river along its muddy

banks, the muted calls of marsh birds,  the scream of a gull overhead, like the

scream of humans, drowning and terrified.........

We stood by the railing, my mother and I, enjoying the evening air, though it

reeked of London's waste. It had been an enjoyable day: sun, a breeze chasing

the scudding clouds, fresher air than we were used to. We had walked,

enjoyed the change of scene, eaten dinner in a small hotel in Gravesend. And

we had talked - something we rarely had chance to do since I left home. Easy

conversation, of friends and family, shared memories, the small concerns of

everyday life. We should do this more often, we agreed - a day trip down the

river did not cost much after all.

The chatter of voices was all around. Further along the deck, musicians were

playing: something cheery and Irish-sounding. Tired children bickered, others

were still excited by the events of the day and the sights on the river, busy with

ships of all kinds: small boats, barges, lightermen plying their trade, the

occasional larger vessel on its way back out from the docks. We watched one

of these approaching, a big, slab-sided cargo ship. "Bywell Castle," I read, as it

came near enough to see the name.

The turgid water slid past, the tide going out; the 'Princess Alice' was having to

work hard to progress against it. "Shall we go down to the saloon and get

something to drink, Annie?" my mother suggested. I laughed. "In this

crowd......? We would still be waiting for it when we get back to Woolwich.

No, I'd rather stay up here." Next to us, a small boy was persuading his

even smaller sister that huge sea serpents lived in the murky depths below.

I could see that she believed him, gazing at the sludge-brown water in a

mixture of fascination and terror. I smiled, then glanced again at the 'Bywell

Castle'. It was nearer. Much nearer, its massive bow looming over us in an iron

wall. Too near, surely......! And even as I thought this, a long, creaking shudder

ran through the planks under my feet, and with a splintering crash, the

'Princess Alice' split apart. The music ended abruptly in a discordant cacophony

of wrong notes, and was drowned out by screams. Pitched over the side by the

impact, I found myself in the river. The stinking water closed over my head.

In the darkness, my hand found my mother's. I saw her as we surfaced

momentarily, her face contorted with shock, then her fingers slid from my

grasp as the churning water tore us apart. I never saw her again.

In her death throes the 'Princess Alice' took us down with her. My serge skirt

dragged and twisted as I turned over and over. Water pressed in from all

sides, a cold, suffocating blanket. Where is up? - where is down? - I fought

against blind panic, thrashing wildly in the seething darkness. Other bodies

swirled against me, all of us lost in this watery hell. A world away, there were

distant screams. A world where there was still air, and light........ Surrounded

by the dying, I had never felt so alone. Bizarrely, I thought of the sea serpents.

If I encountered one now, I would greet it as a friend. Wrap my arms around

its sinuous coils and let it carry me to safety.

And as I thought this, I felt something real and solid collide with me. A hand

clutched my shoulder, arms closed around me. Light glimmered through the

murk, and suddenly I knew which way was up. For a fleeting moment, I

had the illusion  I was saved. Together we broke the surface, and I found

myself looking into the eyes of a man: young, and terrified; blue eyes wide

open in unspeakable fear. He tried to say something, but all that came was a

rasping gurgle and that hideous brown water. For a few seconds we clung

together  in a mutual tumult of hope, despair, terror: strangers clinging to life

and a last vestige of human contact in a world grown alien and indifferent to

our fates. No man has ever held me in his arms before. I am 28, a spinster,

resigned to my humdrum existence as a lady's maid. How strange, how ironic,

that it should happen like this. Why now? - why now.......? Helplessly I saw the

blue eyes grow empty; his grip loosened and slipped away, and he was gone.

My senses were clouding, but I registered a tiny flicker of something like

regret, for a life unlived, for all the things I had never known, and now would

never know.

 The water closed over me one last time. The tide had me in its grip, carrying

me downstream toward the sea. I let it take me. I felt a strange calm...... and

then nothing.......

And here I was found, three days later, washed up on a mudbank, my hair

tangled in the weeds. They used a boathook to retrieve what was left of me,

and took me back to Woolwich and the ever-lengthening rows of the dead.

The living have forgotten us, but we are still here, the dead of the 'Princess

Alice': pallid faces below the water, eyes glassy and unseeing, hands

unclenched now, no longer clutching at whatever they touch, desperate to

claw their way to the surface, back to air, to the world they knew, to life......

Even those who succeeded died later: the river ran not water, but poison.

 One way or the other, we were all marked for death.

The water is so much cleaner now. Salmon swim here, and seals have been

seen far up the river. And yes, there are sea serpents, though they are small

and brown and called eels.

A runner passes, breathing hard, glancing at his sports watch. He does not

stop to read the plaque; he does not see the dead faces beneath the water;

he cannot hear our voices sighing through the reeds. But I do not begrudge

him his life, his breath, his heart and muscles, his unthinking certainty that

death cannot touch him.

 So thought we all, that September day in 1878.

Wait...... he has stopped, turned back. He reads the words; reads them again;

looks out across the water....... Blue eyes suddenly widen with shock. For a

moment he stands as if turned to stone, then abruptly he turns and runs on,

faster than before. A seagull screams, the sound strangely human........ and

then there is just the sound of water lapping in the shallows before the

incoming tide.

Historical background:

On 3rd September 1878, the paddle steamer 'Princess Alice', returning from

a day trip to Gravesend, collided on a particularly polluted part of the Thames

with the coal carrier 'Bywell Castle' and was cut in half. Of the approximately

800 people on board, some 650 died, among them my relatives Maria White

(1st cousin 5 times removed) and her daughter Ann. Many of the victims were

never identified. Although largely forgotten, it remains Britain's worst

transport disaster.