Page 24 - Titanic: Forbidden Stories Hollywood Forgot

10 Jack Fritscher

eye-to-eye, measuring my choice. Titanic was like half of
Noah’s ark: there was one of every kind.
A hand pulled on my trou sers. I looked down at a
blond lad with the face of an orphaned an gel. “Take me,
sir. Only one quid.”
“No one told me anyone charged by the ‘pound’ down
below,” I said.
“I do, sir.”
He was a ragamuffin cabin boy. His confident smile
told me he usually received what he asked for.
“All right then, first tell me how big you are.”
“Fourteen, sir.”
“Fourteen inches? My! My! Then you are worth
something.”
“No, sir. Fourteen years. Next month.”
“Sorry, my boy. I’m looking for beef not chicken.”
“I need the money for my sick mother back in
Liverpool.”
“You have the stench of an orphanage about you.”
“Nossir. I mean, yessir, but I seen you above deck and
you looked...”
“Like a mark.”
“Yessir. You all look, forgive me, sir, like marks to a
lad like me.”
“Here.” I laid a sovereign in his soft hand. “The
money’s for you, not your mother, isn’t it?”
“Who else, sir? My mother’s been dead long since I
was born. Eighteen years ago.”
Of legal age, but selling his wares as a “young boy,”
off he ran into the darkness. I wondered at the justice in
the world where the B Deck middle-class was chained off
at the stairs leading to first-class of A Deck, and steerage

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