by Hazel Gaynor
He wondered what thoughts were crossing through Maggie’s mind as they trundled past the familiar sights of the local schoolhouse, the water pump, the broken fence, the hopscotch squares etched with chalk onto the flagstones outside O’Donoghue’s shop, the gorse bushes with their bright, fragrant-yellow flowers, the stone walls she had sat idly on, swinging her legs and the fields where she had taken lunch up to the men at harvest time. He wondered whether she would notice, with particular interest, the smell of ale as they passed Darcy’s Bar or the smell of the peat fires burning in the homes of her family and friends; homes which she had spent almost as much time in as her own. He wondered what it must feel like to see all of this, and wonder whether you might ever see it again. He wondered whether he might ever see Maggie again.
Theirs had been an unexpected, simple romance of snatched embraces and brief kisses on the banks of the lake whenever they could escape from their chores. They’d looked for opportunities for their hands to touch as they reached water from the well and for their paths to collide when one or another of them ran an errand. Séamus was pleased to have suggested the arrangement of meeting every Wednesday after market, under the sixth blossom tree, it being slightly set back from the others and offering a little privacy as it was near neither house nor store. If neither one of them was there, they would know that some other circumstance had kept them away. More often than not, they both made the agreed rendezvous and would spend time together then, for a short while at least, strolling casually down to the lake in the summertime to catch fish, or seeking shelter in the kitchen of Maggie’s cottage in the winter, before it was time for him to walk the three miles home. It was a happy arrangement which suited them both. And then Maggie had told him of her aunt’s intention to return with her to America and he knew nothing now of what the future held for them.
As he watched the women up at the well now, he wondered whether Maggie had opened his packet of letters. He’d written fourteen in total; one for each of the fourteen months they had been courting, one to represent each of the fourteen blossom trees she loved so much which lined the road from her aunt’s cottage into the village, one – as it had turned out – to signify each member of the journeying group she was part of. He had unintentionally ended each letter with fourteen simple words I will wait for you under our tree until the day you come back and was quite pleased with the symmetry of it all.
He wondered whether she was thinking of him at that moment and, if so, what scene she was observing right now as her thoughts travelled back over the miles already in place between them. He hadn’t really understood the notion of love before he’d met her, mainly considering it a foolish thing for fellas who’d taken too much of the poitín and didn’t fully possess their own minds. But he didn’t drink, and something had certainly affected his mind when he’d walked up to her and asked her to dance at Jack and Maura Brennan’s wedding. From that moment, he understood a little more about the notion of love, and over the fourteen months since that night, he’d grown to understand it and learnt to embrace it more and more.
Séamus wasn’t the type of man to dwell on misfortune or bad luck, so the fact that Maggie’s plans to travel to America had come about so soon after their courtship had started and during a time when his father was so sick, was, to him, just as life was meant to be. It wasn’t worth agonising over or wishing for things to be different or declaring that life was cruel in its playing out; that was just how it was, and how it would always be. So, Séamus did the only thing he could do, he disregarded what was done and looked instead to the future. I will wait for you under our tree, he’d said to her until the day you come back. And although he meant it, something deep within his heart told him she would not return to this land.
The silence was broken then by a sudden outburst from one of the women, Séamus couldn’t tell who.
‘Oh sweet Jesus. Look! Look at the fish.’ Séamus watched as the women stood up almost in unison, rushing to the edge of the well to see what it was, the woman pointing at something frantically, her hand clasped over her mouth, her eyes wide with fright. ‘It’s on its side.’
The group of women stared down into the water. A single, small, sliver fish was turned over on its side in the water. As they stared down, the fish gulped a last, desperate breath of air and was still.
The women were silent, every one of them thinking the same thought, that this was a terrible omen for their loved ones, travelling far across the sea.
‘Not a one of you say it,’ Mary d’Arcy said, speaking in low, steady voice which belied the overwhelming sense of dread coursing through her veins. ‘It’s only a dead fish, that’s all. Nothing else. So I don’t want one word said about this again – not to each other and not to any of the others, d’ye hear?’
There was a mumbled chorus of acceptance.
‘Right then, let that be that and let’s finish what we came here to do.’
By the time the sun was fully set behind the top of Nephin Mor, the women had finished their prayers and started to make their way back along the dusty track to the village.
Séamus Doyle stepped back from the cottage window as they walked by, wondering what had passed between the women up there. They were not entirely sure themselves, but they returned to the village with their hearts troubled and their beliefs shaken, not wishing to answer the questions which swirled around in their minds.
CHAPTER 12 - R.M.S Titanic, 11th April 1912
Harry Walsh was known for being lucky. He could turn a final card and win an entire hand when the deck seemed to be completely stacked against him. His friends had lost count of the number of times he’d correctly called a toss of heads or tails and, as a result, had skipped his turn to go to the bar or pay for a round of ales. ‘Lucky Harry’, Billy had called him one evening when he’d won twelve tosses of the coin in a row. It was a nickname which had stuck ever since.
The only aspect of Harry’s life in which he wasn’t lucky was love and it wasn’t for want of trying. There had been plenty of girls brought home to dinner and tea or taken to a dance at the Town Hall or for a stroll along the quay, but despite his good manners, pleasant face, well-scrubbed fingernails and polished shoes, none of them seemed especially keen on him. They always lost interest after a couple of dates, spending more time talking to his mates than to him, until they eventually went to a dance with one of them instead, like Nancy Parker who was now engaged to Dave Ward or Barbara Lacy who was married to Brian Addison and had three kids. Harry sometimes wondered whether any of his mates would be married at all if it wasn’t for him providing their wives.
And, as luck would have it, whenever he did meet a girl who seemed genuinely keen on him, it seemed that Harry’s mother wasn’t especially keen on them. There had been many a time when one of his girlfriends had left the house after Sunday dinner, complaining that they were sure his mother didn’t like them. He would deny the fact, but knew that they were absolutely right. His mother knew just how to add a certain tone to her voice when offering another slice of apple pie which told a girl, quite clearly, that this would be the last time they sat at her kitchen table and ate her apple pie.
He wasn’t all that bothered about it really. He’d watched his friends settle down and raise a family in recent years and the more he saw this happen, the more he realised that he wasn’t quite ready for all of that just yet. He was enjoying his life too much for settling down and had a few more oceans he wanted to cross before he left a wife at home to worry about him coming back. Anyway, he felt instinctively that he would know when he met the right girl, a girl who would be good enough for him - and his interfering mother - and who would get along with his mates without running off with one of them; a girl like the pretty Irish one who had just boarded at Queenstown.
Amid the hundreds of people boarding the ship at this, the last embarkation stop, she caught his attention straight away. She and her friends were hard to ignore with the charming lilt of their Irish accent, their infectious gig
gles and the mass of luggage they had brought with them which bashed against their legs, and his, as he negotiated the narrow corridors to show them to cabin number 115 on E Deck.
He listened carefully to their excitable conversation and gasps of wonder as he walked them to their quarters deep in the lower section of the ship. In the time it took him to escort them to their cabin, he learnt that the girls were part of a group of fourteen friends and family who were travelling together from a small town in the north west of Ireland to join members of their family in America and start a new life. He didn’t quite understand why he found them so captivating, but he felt oddly moved by them and their story, by the notion that these young girls, and the people travelling with them, had left their homes and the land of their birth to take their chances in a distant and unfamiliar land.
With the words of his own mother ringing in his ears, it struck Harry that unlike the socialites and the honeymooners and the home-coming European travellers and the actresses with silly little dogs who had already boarded the ship in joyous and jovial mood at Southampton and Cherbourg, the many steerage passengers who were boarding at Queenstown seemed to have a strange air of remorse about them, a distinct sense of sadness which was lifted only by the chatter of these three young girls.
He couldn’t help but smile to himself as he listened to their irrepressible excitement at the spectacle of this vessel, their gasps of amazement echoing the feelings he’d had himself just twenty four hours earlier. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph girls, would you look,’ the pretty girl had said as they walked through the general room, ‘this room alone is bigger than the whole of Ballysheen!’
Titanic seemed to do that to people, inspire them, astound them, draw them together and connect them in a shared sense of awe at the magnitude and splendour of this spectacle which had been derived from riveted steel plates. Because, after all, that is all this was; a ship held together with steel rivets. And yet, it was much more than that. It was a ship which would transport some of its passengers towards a life of prosperity and others simply away from a life of poverty.
He hung around the girls’ cabin a little longer than usual to make sure they were happy with their accommodations (which, judging by their remarks about hand wash basins and towels and bars of White Star Line soap they clearly were), when the pretty girl turned to thank him very much for his help, smiling warmly at him. It was a smile which he gladly returned until he noticed the rather stiff looking woman glaring at him. She seemed to be minding the group of girls and Harry assumed she must be the mother of one of them, most probably the mother of the girl he was smiling at, judging by the disapproving scowl on her face. He could almost hear the words of his friend Billy in his head Bloody hell, that’s a face to melt steel if ever I saw one. He stopped smiling then, wished them a pleasant journey and returned to the gangway to collect more passengers.
Queenstown was a busy embarkation stop for the Third Class stewards, with the majority of passengers who were boarding there travelling on third class tickets. As was customary, the stop meant a routine lifejacket inspection. Harry was quite familiar with this, it being common practice now among the large transatlantic liners to ensure that all crew understood how to apply the cork-filled life jackets.
As he stood in line with a group of other stewards and crew, joking among themselves about how like the ladies with their corsets they must look trussed up in their lifejackets as they were inspected by a Junior Officer, they were approached by the Head Purser, Mr McElroy. He introduced a man with him as Father Browne, a Jesuit Priest from Cork, Ireland.
‘Father Browne has been recording life on board the ship with his camera since we left Southampton,’ Mr McElroy explained. ‘He will, sadly, be disembarking in a few moments, but wondered whether he might take your photograph beforehand.’
‘Quite a spectacle you are with your life preservers on,’ the Priest commented, smiling at the group. ‘Perhaps a picture taken by a Priest will bless them with good fortune and ensure they will not have occasion to be worn again? What do you say?!’
Spirits were high among the group and they laughed, charmed by the soft, Irish brogue and the distinguished manner of the man. They obliged, posing happily for his picture. He thanked them and moved on with Mr McElroy to photograph the Captain and some of the officers before getting off the ship.
The stewards returned then to the business of showing the remaining passengers to their cabins. Amid all the noise and disorganisation and wrong turns down long corridors as he guided the next group of wide-eyed passengers to their accommodations, Harry couldn’t get the Irish girl out of his thoughts, her impish face imprinted firmly on his mind. Maybe lady luck is smiling down on me on this mighty ship, he thought to himself. He’d already had an unexpected, albeit temporary, transfer to the First Class decks thanks to his mate Billy, they’d just had the lifejackets blessed by a Priest and a lovely Irish lass had landed in his midst. More importantly, his mother wasn’t there to frighten her off and there wasn’t much chance of a girl running off on him on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, no matter how big it was. He hoped he would have the chance to find out more about her over the coming days and realised that he didn’t even know her name, a fact he decided to rectify at the earliest opportunity.
As he continued in his work, whistling an Irish tune he’d heard a piper play on the deck, he recalled one of the posters for Titanic which had been put up around the town ahead of this maiden voyage ‘The Ship of Dreams’ was its mighty claim. Harry Walsh was beginning to wonder whether this might not be such a bold claim after all and smiled as he walked past cabin 115.
CHAPTER 13 - Chicago, April 1982
Grace sat in the swing-chair on the porch of her mother’s house, enjoying the rocking sensation and the light breeze that danced around her bare feet. It was a warm day, full of blossom on the trees and bees buzzing among the early azalea bushes. The first buds of wisteria were forming around the trellis that framed the porch door. Grace had always loved the wisteria with its fragrant cascading bunches of purple flowers; the pale, gnarled branches and stunning green foliage reminding her of the Californian grapevines she had seen on a family holiday. Her father had explained all about the harvesting process and the pressing of the grapes to make wine. It had seemed like a magical process to her and one that her father had described so poetically. Ever since, the wisteria had reminded her of that holiday and in turn, it reminded her of her father.
It was two years now since the accident, two years since she’d walked away from university life and a promising career as a journalist, two years since she’d walked away from Jimmy. Her life felt so different now; she felt so different now to the girl who had raced home that January day with Jimmy driving his Ford Mustang.
She’d been thinking recently about what Maggie had said to her at her birthday party, about going back to University and getting in touch with Jimmy again. He’d tried calling her and had written to her for about six months’ after the funeral. She’d pretended she was out whenever he called and hadn’t replied to any of his letters. She hadn’t even read them, putting them into a shoebox under her bed, not quite able to bring herself to throw them away.
Her reaction to her father’s sudden death had been to protect herself from ever again feeling that pain of losing someone she loved so much. She wouldn’t allow herself to love Jimmy that much she’d decided and having shut him out of her life, she hadn’t spoken to anyone about Jimmy again. As everyone was so wrapped up in the loss of her father, nobody had really stopped to ask about him.
But listening to her great-grandmother’s story, Grace had started to wonder. Here was a woman who’d had no choice in the direction of her life; no choice but to leave the home and the land and the man she loved and start over. Fate had intervened in the most dreadful way imaginable, leaving Maggie as a girl not yet turned eighteen, lost and alone in a strange land, with just a small case of meaningless possessions in her hand. She had suffered real l
oss, in so many ways, and Grace felt that she had maybe been a little foolish, a little hasty in locking herself away from the university life she had been so enjoying and from the man she had been enjoying it with.
Her mom was so much better than she had been. Little things such as opening the wedding anniversary dinner set were small but definite signs that she was starting to move on. Grace’s brother Art was due to come home that summer from the archaeological dig he had been working on in Egypt and he’d promised to spend most of his time back in America with his mom and sister, having not really been around much over the last twelve months. Yes, there was a definite wind of change circling around the Butler household that spring.
As she swung on the seat and watched their marmalade cat chase a bee which buzzed idly among the flowers, Grace swept her hair back behind her ears and tucked her feet up under her. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she allowed herself to wonder whether it might be time to go back to her own life, whether it might be OK to move on. She decided to broach the subject with her mother over dinner that evening and then closed her eyes, letting the gentle rocking of the swing soothe her into a restful doze.