Friends Indeed

by Rose Doyle

  'He wants me to stay. He wants me to be with my mother when he's away. My mother and Mary Connor. He wants me to be a watchdog over her.'

  'Is that what he said?'

  Her eyes were hard and bright. 'He says he doesn't want me to go away. He says my place is here, enjoying the fruits of all he's labouring for. He says he's been praying to God for my return and that he had detectives in Dublin and Paris looking for me.'

  'You don't believe him?'

  'He must have hired very poor detectives.'

  I had to agree with her about this. Any half-able detective would have found her. Then again, maybe not.

  The wrens were outcast, in every sense. As far as the rest of society was concerned they didn't exist, had no names, were nothing but a collection of whores and drunkards and derelict women. When she became a wren Allie was as lost to the rest of the world as the other women. As I'd been myself.

  'Maybe not,' I said, 'and you well know he missed you.'

  'Not enough to put me before my mother,' Allie said.

  This was true and was at the heart of the hurt her father had done to her. Allie, if she wasn't to be cherished for herself, preferred to make her way in life alone. She would have her dignity and, though she said in a thin-lipped way that she would never marry, could never love again, I doubted myself that she would be alone forever.

  'My father has made enquiries about the best way for us to travel to America,' she said, leaning across the table to play with James, 'he says we should go to Londonderry and take a sailing ship from there. He's been told that the McCorkell company own the most reliable vessels crossing the Atlantic.' She paused then gave a shrug and half-smile. 'It seems the storms we had on the Curragh did us at least one favour. They delayed McCorkell's autumn sailings so that their ship, called the Minnehaha for some strange reason, will be sailing in eight days' time, to get to New York for Christmas. It's the biggest sailing ship in the Londonderry trade, he says, so we'll be sure of getting passenger packets. We'll be safer crossing the Atlantic on a bigger ship too.'

  Her father gave her a thousand pounds which was more, he said, than he would have settled on her had she married. Allie called it conscience money and took it as her due.

  'You've the price there of two houses in this city, three if you choose well,' he said, 'make sure you spend it as wisely in America as I would have here.'

  In her room she packed two trunks with her Paris clothes and as many other bits of her life as she could. Into a separate bag she put Daniel Casey's doctor's bag, scented water, creams, soap and books. She would never again, she swore, be deprived of those things which refined life. 'Why should I?' she asked.

  I could see no reason at all why she should live an inelegant or impoverished life. Why either of us should.

  I was nearly as well off as her myself. Beezy Ryan's fortune and Jimmy Vance's thirty pounds gave me a total of six hundred and fifty pounds. Beezy had been an even better businesswoman than people suspected.

  In Todd Burns & Co., a department store I'd never before been inside, I bought myself shoes and walking boots, a waterproof cloak, woollen stockings, two light wool dresses and three petticoats. I bought the softest of wool and cotton for James and a trunk into which I put the lot. When I'd paid for this, and given my mother fifty pounds, I still had almost five hundred and seventy left.

  There was nothing to be done after that but get together the identification and other papers we needed for the journey.

  That and say our goodbyes.

  We left Dublin by train for Londonderry on the Friday of the week we'd arrived home. This time, once we were on the move, the both of us kept our eyes fixed forward. There was no point any more in looking back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Allie

  Cold and bright; that was how Londonderry struck me as the train drew into the city. Cold and bright and, when we were inside its great walls, teeming with people and noisy.

  As a city it was smaller than Dublin and nothing near as big as Paris. But it was governed by a wide river, just as those two cities were, and its citizens had the same indifference to people passing through as the Parisians.

  For that is what Sarah, James and myself were to them: just three among thousands arriving to leave from Londonderry's quays for an Atlantic crossing. Nothing new, nothing strange, nothing interesting about us. People had been sailing in huge numbers from the city to the New World since the time of the Great Famine, more than twenty years before.

  We were a part of the emigrant trade, and nothing more. But for me, after the accusing watchfulness of Kildare and Newbridge and the cloistered life of the wren village, to be anonymous and unnoticed had the freedom of shedding chains.

  Sarah didn't like it as much as I did.

  'We could be trampled in the street by animals,' she said as she gazed morosely through the window of the carriage taking us to our lodgings, 'or fall off the quays and drown. No one would notice. Or care.'

  'We'll do our best to avoid animals and keep well back from the water's edge,' I took James from her lap on to my own. 'We can do what we like and be what we want, Sarah. Be glad that we're on our way to new lives.' I turned James so that he could see the waters of the river Foyle opening in front of us.

  'I am glad.' Sarah closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the carriage seat. 'I'm very glad.' She clenched and unclenched her hands.

  Her humour hadn't been great since leaving Dublin, but then it was harder for her to look forward than me. She was leaving a mother and father who loved her and whom she might never see again. She was taking her child, whose father had abandoned her, into the unknown.

  As well as all this, she'd never been out of Ireland before and was full of foreboding about the sea crossing.

  In my case my father was the only family I cared about leaving and he could follow me if he cared to. I doubted he would.

  My fears were more about what we would find on the ship and, when we got there, in New York City. Daniel had told me how, because of the numbers who travelled and the condition of the ships during the Great Famine, typhus fever had for years raged unrestrained on sea and on land in New York. Hardly a ship had managed to cross the Atlantic without the fever breaking out during the passage. The mortality on land had been horrendous with many who survived the journey dying of the fever on the streets of New York.

  Daniel. Things he'd said, the way he'd been, even his freckled face and serious smile; all sorts of things about him were never far from my mind. He was a part of me now and I would take that part to America and keep alive, in me, his belief in justice and rights for all. Because he'd helped me recognise those beliefs in myself I would live my life for both of us. It was the least I could do.

  It was remembering what Daniel had said about the Famine ships made me check, before leaving Dublin, how much things had changed with emigrant sailings from Londonderry.

  I went along to the newspaper officers of The Freeman's Journal and from their files discovered things were better, but not hugely so. Conditions were anything but ideal and the risks to health and personal safety still high.

  Emigrants continued to leave the country in great numbers. The good news was that sailings which had once taken as long as 150 to 160 days now took an average of one month.

  I found too that my father had been right to recommend McCorkell & Co. Their sailing ships were reported in the paper to be first class. To be sure of a reasonable trip, a report of only months before advised passengers to avoid travelling steerage, where there was overcrowding and the risk of disease, by paying the extra three guineas for a second-class cabin.

  Passengers paying the additional fare didn't have to provide their own dishes and bedding — useful information since it meant travelling second class would have the extra benefit of allowing room in my trunks for my Paris clothes. I would be judged by my appearance in the New World, not my past. I would appear as a respectable young woman in Paris frocks. It would be
as good a beginning as any.

  What hadn't changed on the ships was the fact that many emigrants were poor and malnourished to begin with and brought fever and other diseases on board with them. Storms at sea still lengthened the travelling time and fights and bad feelings between passenger groups were notorious and common as they'd ever been.

  Thanks to The Freeman's Journal I arrived in Londonderry forewarned, and determined to book a second-class cabin. I was determined too to take fruit on the journey and to befriend and pay a seaman to bring us regular water for the duration. The signs of that city's prosperity from the trade in passengers to America were everywhere. Regulations and the regulated abounded.

  We were met from the tram by a barrage of porters with licence badges on their arms, all of them vying to carry our luggage to hackney carriages waiting outside. The carriage drivers were another surging barrage to be faced. The man we engaged in the end was a head taller than his companions and broader, his driver badge and licence hanging from under an inky-black, curling beard. When he waved to his carriage and shining black horse the gesture was as lofty as everything else about him.

  ‘I’ll charge only for the two of yourselves and let the child go free,' he said.

  'The child travels free anyway,' Sarah nodded to the regulations pinned to a wall, 'since he won't be taking up a seat.'

  'True enough,' the man grinned, 'but I'm still the best bargain you'll get from among this lot.' The horse gave a jerk and a snort when he slapped his hand roughly on its neck. 'You'll be looking to go to the north-west side of the bridge, no doubt? Wanting to buy passages to America for tomorrow's sailing?'

  'What else on God's earth would bring us here?' Sarah glared from the driver to the stone buildings all around and back again. 'It's hardly to visit the city we came.'

  'Taste is a queer thing,' the driver said, shaking a puzzled head, 'and there's no accounting for it. I went to Dublin once myself and could find very little to recommend it. Full of mean- eyed beggars it was, and sharp-tongued shawlies. The one good thing it had was beautiful women like yourself.' He put a hand on his tweedy coat where his heart might be. 'The most beautiful women in the land are to be found on the dirty streets of Dublin. Now there's a paradox for you, but that's the way life is. Full of paradoxes.' He saw the impatience building in Sarah's face and changed from philosophy to flattery. 'I'd swear I saw you in Sackville Street on a Monday morning two years ago. There's hardly two women with a face like yours in that…'

  'I'd more to be doing than parading about the streets on a Monday morning,' Sarah cut him short, but she was hiding a smile.

  'Now that you're in Londonderry it would be my privilege and pleasure to be your driver,’ he gave a small bow. 'I'll get you to the public quays quicker and safer than any of the rest of them here.'

  'Quicker and safer?' Sarah asked.

  'There's a fierce amount of traffic going that way,' the man eyed our luggage, 'small accidents happen, sometimes. Trunks have a way of falling off the back of carriages and suchlike.' He lifted my trunk and a bag with ease. 'You'll want a place to stay until the ship sails. I can take ye to a clean boarding house too.'

  He weighed our luggage and told us that, since it was more than fifty-six pounds, he'd have to charge us a shilling to take it.

  'For another two shillings on top of that I'll take ye from the quays on to the boarding house. That's a better deal than ye'll get anywhere else in this city.'

  He told us his name was Toby Magee and helped first Sarah and then me into the carriage.

  He was charging us the fares displayed on the wall; there was no dealing to be done in Londonderry. It was a very honest place in some ways.

  He brought us close as he could to McCorkell's offices. A wind gusted viciously off the water as we stood on the quays.

  'Not a good sign,' said Toby Magee, 'they have to decide in the night whether to sail tomorrow or not.'

  He was right. The ticket clerks in McCorkell's booking offices were spreading the word about a storm at sea.

  'We'll be posting notices at first light in the morning,' said the worried, bespectacled young man who made out our passage, 'but it's not looking good, I can assure you of that much here and now.'

  'How long might it be delayed?' I said.

  'It is not this company's policy to sail in anything but the most clement conditions.'

  He wrote our details carefully before checking our papers. When he had that done he looked up and frowned and fixed his glasses more firmly on to the bridge of his nose. He had bitten fingernails.

  'That'll be twenty guineas in all. Eight each for adults, four for the infant.'

  Working on the principle that each should give according to her means, Sarah and I had agreed that I should pay our passage to America. She had already paid the train fares from Dublin. The wrens would have approved.

  I gave the clerk the money and he counted it, twice. He nodded and handed us our papers and passage. 'The sailing's for midday, if the storm holds off,' he said, 'but I think myself she'll blow.'

  'What exactly does a delay mean? Are you telling us it'll be days before we sail?' Sarah's look would have alarmed a more sensitive man. The clerk went on smiling and snapped his fingers for the next person to come forward.

  'Could mean you won't sail for a week,' he said.

  He was right. Prophets of doom often are. The storm which rose in the night made me fear for the city walls. The boarding house groaned and its windows and doors rattled ceaselessly, some of them out of their fittings. Not, luckily, those in our room.

  There was no chance we would be sailing in the morning.

  'There's bad luck about,' Sarah paced the floor with a frightened James in her arms, 'staying in Londonderry is costing us money. I don't like this place. I've had a bad feeling ever since we got here.'

  'We've been delayed by a storm,' I didn't want to hear any of this. 'It's the time of year for bad weather and has nothing to do with luck, good or bad. It seems to me you don't like any place outside of Dublin. You didn't like the Curragh either.'

  'How could anyone have liked the Curragh?' She stood, from the safety of the middle of the room, looking through the window. The rain, driven by the wind, beat like gravel against the glass. 'I hope the storm isn't too hard on the wrens . . .'

  'It's a sea storm,' I said, 'it won't travel inland as far as the Curragh.'

  Wanting to believe this I lit a second candle. All its light did was bring to mind images of Moll, huddled and watching over her mother, and of Ellen Neary fiercely trying to hold her nest together.

  'We're not meant to go to America,' said Sarah.

  'You're the one wanted to go. All of this was your idea.'

  'I know. But it seems to me now that we've ignored too many signs in the past. I should have known when my letters weren't answered that it was a sign to me not to go after James's father. You should have listened to Beezy and not gone there either.'

  'Sit down, Sarah.'

  I took James from her and laid him in his cot. He whimpered but lay quietly enough watching the candle. I sat beside Sarah and did what I could to put my arms about her. Her being larger than me had always made this difficult.

  'You're afraid and you're lonely about leaving everything you've known,' I said, 'but we had to go to the Curragh. If we hadn't gone there you would have had to give up James. I would have had to go away someplace on my own. I didn't want to. It suited me to continue the work I was doing in the dispensary on the Curragh.'

  'Nothing you say will make me feel right about America.' Sarah was hunched and rigid.

  'What do you want to do then?' I let her go.

  'I don't know. I feel . . .' 'What?'

  A long time went by before she said, 'desolate. I feel desolate and that more desolation is coming.'

  'You have your child to think of, you have the promise you made to Beezy Ryan when you took her money . . .'

  'I'll give the money to the Magdalen.'

 
'That's not what Beezy wanted done with it. And what about me? Am I to travel on my own?' I lay on the bed. 'I don't want to talk about this any more, Sarah. I'm going to sleep.'

  Only I didn't sleep. I lay remembering Beezy Ryan, sore and dying in Nance Reilly's nest, and the last time I'd spoken to her.

  'Sarah's life and future are in your hands,' she'd said, 'I'll give her my money if you go with her. If you don't,' she glared at me with the last remnants of ferocity left in her, 'if you decide to make a martyr of yourself and stay here, then Nance can have and drink the lot. Sarah, without it, will go to Dublin and wait for a man who'll never come for her. She'll grow old and bitter in no time. You know she will, you know I'm right. It's a case of securing my investment. If the two of you go together the chances of Sarah and James making out in the New World are better than if they go alone. What do you say?' Her eyes had become pleading.

  'I'll go,' I said. Beezy nodded. I don't think she ever doubted what I would say.

  I spent a large part of the night in the Londonderry lodging house without sleeping. Sarah sat in the chair without sleeping. Sometime after midnight I slept, waking in a murky dawn to see her still awake in the chair. She looked infinitely sad. There was nothing I could do for her. Jimmy Vance was the only one could have made the world a bearable place for Sarah that night.

  She came to bed as the dawn lightened, stretching herself carefully beside me.

  'I'm awake,' I said.

  'I'll go to America with you,' she said, 'I must do what's best for James from now on. There's nothing in Dublin for a boy without a father and a mother all the time stupidly hoping he'll come back. If there's an even half-decent shop in this place we'll go tomorrow and I'll buy ribbons for my hair for landing in New York. We should buy gloves too, the both of us. The furze and fire-making have made our hands redder and rougher than any scullery maid's.'

  'You're right about the gloves,' I said, 'and I might see too what they have by way of point lace handkerchiefs. I left the one I had with Moll.'