The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic

by Hazel Gaynor

  How her heart had soared as they danced together that evening, her entire body seeming to lift skyward with the whirling music, spiraling high up into the rafters along with the stamping of feet and the clapping of hands in time to the beat of the bodhrán as Séamus guided her awkwardly in the dance. She knew then that she never wanted him to leave her side.

  It was a year after they’d first danced at the Brennans’ wedding that she’d finally found the courage to tell him the news she had been dreading.

  “I’m goin’ to America, Séamus,” she’d said as they sat by the fireside playing cards on a wet, dark January evening. “It’s all decided. I’m to go with Aunt Kathleen to Chicago. Peggy Madden, Katie Kenny, and the Brennans are to travel with us—and some others.” The crackle and spit from the fire had filled the silence which descended upon the young couple. Séamus hadn’t spoken. “We’re to go in the spring.”

  The rain had lashed against the windows. There’d been no other sound. Even the fire had seemed to momentarily hush itself.

  “We’re to sail on a new liner called Titanic. They say it’s the biggest, finest, safest ocean liner there’s ever been built,” she’d added, more to break the unbearable silence than anything else. She’d felt silly then. Why had she told him this? Who cared about the ship or how big it was? That was the sort of stuff that her cousin Pat Brogan and Peggy Madden were interested in, not her. To Maggie, the ship they would sail on was an entirely insignificant fact amid the reality of what the departure meant for her and Séamus.

  He’d maintained his silence, throwing another sod of turf onto the fire, which sent a wave of moist, earthy smoke billowing across the room.

  “Would you think of coming too?” she’d added hesitantly, already knowing his answer.

  He’d looked at her, this young man she adored with the uncomplicated certainty of youth, his cheeks rosy from the warmth of the flames. “Ah, Maggie, you know I can’t. Not with Da so sick an’ all. Anyway, we haven’t a shillin’ to our name. I could never be affording one of those boat tickets, never mind two, even if he was well enough.”

  They’d talked before about the prospect of emigrating, it being a common occurrence in the parish. Séamus had a brother in Philadelphia, who sent home as much money as he could afford, but with his mam dead and his da too ill to travel, Séamus knew that a trip to America would not be his for the making anytime soon. Maggie’s fate, however, lay entirely in the hands of her aunt Kathleen, who had first made the trip to America herself twenty years ago and was completely enamored with the place. She’d written often to her niece about the possibility of joining her in Chicago, about how America offered much better prospects for young women than Ireland ever could, but one thing or another had always prevented it from happening. This time was different. With nobody to care for Maggie in Ireland, Aunt Kathleen had made up her mind: her niece would go back to Chicago with her in the spring. And no matter how much this arrangement might break Maggie’s heart, there was no changing Kathleen Dolan’s mind once it was made up.

  “What can we do, Séamus?” Maggie’s voice had trembled with frustration and despair. “What are we to do with me not able to stay and ye not able to go?” Her eyes had filled with tears, the flames of the fire reflecting in them.

  “I don’t know Maggie, sure I don’t.” Séamus had sighed, placing his cards down on the fireside before standing up, seeming so tall in Maggie and Kathleen’s small cottage, his head nearly touching the beams. “You’ll be able to write me. You’re good with your letters and words, and I’ll enjoy readin’ all about your adventures. You can write those stories you’re always talking of. You can write about your journey. What is it your aunt writes in? A journal? You could write one of those.”

  Maggie knew it was an impossible situation they faced, their destinies shaped not by their own decisions but by nature and economics and politics and things they were too young to even understand.

  “And if I do write, you must write back, Séamus Doyle, you must, or what will I know of you in years to come?” She’d stood then, allowing him to wrap his strong arms around her as she leaned her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

  “I’ll try, Maggie, but I’m not the best with my words, you know that.” Gazing into the flames over Maggie’s shoulder, he’d desperately wished that their circumstances could be different. “Maybe I can ask Bridie to help,” he’d added as an afterthought.

  Maggie had pulled back from his embrace and looked at him then, seriously. “Yes, do that. Get Bridie to help with your letters, because I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t hear a word from you. Promise me you’ll do that?”

  “I promise.”

  They’d stood then in their fireside embrace for a few moments longer, until Aunt Kathleen had entered the house and reminded Séamus that it was getting dark out and he should be making his way home.

  Over the following days, weeks, and months, Maggie and Séamus hadn’t talked again of her impending journey to America, continuing with their usual routines and meeting under the sixth cherry blossom tree on Wednesdays after market. They’d talked of simple things: the sowing of the potatoes, the cutting of the turf, the hurling, the Gaelic League, and the excitement of the local summer fairs. They’d watched the snow fall on the mountaintops, the buds form on the trees, and the lambs frolic in the fields. Maggie would usually enjoy these predictable seasonal events, which marked the passing of the months better than any calendar ever could, but now the rhythms of nature she observed in every melting snowflake, each budding leaf, brought her and thirteen other residents of their small community closer to the day when they would leave Ballysheen, closer to the day when she would leave Séamus.

  They’d said their final good-byes after Sunday Mass, the last the would-be travelers would attend in their local church.

  “I’ll not be comin’ to any American wake, Maggie,” he’d told her, aware of the traditions and plans to see off the fourteen travelers over the next few nights with music and drinking. “I’ll not be mournin’ you while you’ve still so much life to live. So this will be my good-bye.” He’d pressed a set of rosary beads and a silver hair comb into her hands and promised that he would write. “And when you come back, Maggie Murphy, I’ll be waiting, under our tree.”

  That was where he stood now, under the sixth cherry blossom tree.

  Maggie watched a slow, sad smile spread across his lips as she gasped and raised a hand to her chest at the sight of him. She walked forward in a daze, hardly noticing the traps which she passed or the horses nuzzling into their nose bags and kicking impatiently at the ground.

  “You came.” Her voice was barely a whisper, her hands trembling as they reached out to take hold of his. “You came.”

  They stood and looked at each other for a moment, neither one of them able to move, neither one of them knowing what to say.

  “Yes, Maggie. I came. But I’m not saying good-bye again. I just wanted to give ye this.”

  He handed her a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied with a single piece of fraying string.

  She turned it over in her hands. “What is it?”

  “It’s my letters, Maggie.” She looked at him, not understanding, tears pricking her eyes. “These are my letters to you in America. I’ve been writin’ them for the last while, y’know, on quiet evenin’s and when I had a moment free. I asked Bridie to help me. I wasn’t sure how long a letter would take to get to America, so I thought that this way you can read them whenever ye like and won’t have to be waiting on any deliveries.”

  The sudden cry of a cockerel nearby made one of the horses skitter, the metal fastenings on the harness jangling noisily against its sturdy flanks until the jarvey shushed and soothed it.

  “But, Séamus, I . . .” Maggie’s emotions washed over her now, all of the despair, all of the suppressed worry and uncertainty about the journey ahead suddenly overwhelming her. She allowed her tears to fall freely as she clutched the simple packe
t of letters in her hands.

  “And when you’re planning on coming back home, you can write to tell me,” Séamus continued, grasping the tops of Maggie’s shoulders to impress his words upon her. “I’ll wait here for you as usual. Every Wednesday after market. I’ll wait until you come back, Maggie Murphy.” He paused, righting himself to stand tall and taking in a deep, long breath. “You will come back home one day, won’t ye? Come back and be the girl I remember? Be the same Maggie Murphy?”

  “I hope so, Séamus, I do. I hope so.”

  Their last, tender embrace among the falling blossoms was one of many that took place that morning in their small village and in homes across the parish. Promises to keep in touch and sentiments of love were exchanged on almost every doorstep; mothers wept for their departing sons and daughters, sisters held on to sisters, brothers grasped brothers, friends embraced friends, and neighbors held neighbors.

  Kathleen Dolan observed these touching scenes as she stood for a moment in the doorway of her home. She watched a spider in the doorframe, wondering how long it had lived among those cracks in the wood, cracks she hadn’t noticed until now. She wondered how much of this house, of this parish, she would recall in the future, aware that with Maggie in America with her, there would be little reason to return here again. She wondered whether those who dwelled in this home in years to come would ever know the names Maggie Murphy and Kathleen Dolan; would ever know that they, and twelve others, had departed from this small village on a calm spring morning in search of a better life.

  As the last of the luggage was loaded into the traps, the fourteen travelers took their seats. Still clutching the packet of letters, Maggie climbed up to take the last seat in the last trap alongside her aunt. With a final blessing of holy water and a prayer for protection from the priest, the jarveys gave a sharp tug on the reins. The horses and donkeys skittered to attention, the harnesses jolted taut, and fourteen hearts lurched as the traps rumbled slowly forward.

  CHAPTER 4

  Cass County, Illinois

  April 15, 1982

  Grace Butler gathered her long auburn hair at the nape of her neck and held it loosely to one side as she bent forward to blow out the candles on her birthday cake. The bright flames swayed in mesmerizing unison as a light breeze drifted in through the open kitchen window, the motion reminding her of the late summer cornfields around their small farm. One last dance before harvesttime, her father had said to her one August evening, as they sat on the old gate and watched a beautiful sunset turn the ripe cornfield to a dazzling display of liquid gold. One last dance.

  This unexpectedly beautiful remark had stayed with her ever since. She remembered those words again now as she blew out her birthday candles; remembered him, as the small group of friends and family who had gathered in her mother’s kitchen sang “Happy Birthday” and clapped with love and admiration for a girl who had returned to this humble family home two years earlier to bury the father she adored.

  Until that very dark jolt, life had been satisfyingly predictable for Grace, safe and unremarkable. Hers had been a contented childhood, spent playing in the hayfields with her twin brother, Art, and the kids from the other farms around their home. She had fond memories of lazy summer days spent splashing her bare feet in the cooling streams and running her fingers through the crystal-clear waters of the rivers that flowed around their land, catching small fish in jam jar aquariums, eating honeysuckle flowers, and rubbing nettle stings with the large, flat dock leaves that nature had cleverly planned to always grow nearby.

  The rivers that meandered and intertwined across the countryside, lazily in the summer and more violently after the winter rains and snow, were as much a part of Grace’s life as they were a part of the landscape. For as long as she could remember, she had felt curiously drawn to the water, entranced by the sight of it, soothed by the sound of it, and intrigued by the dangers and mysteries hidden within it. Grace knew that just below the gentle, inviting surface there were dangerous eddies and deceptive currents, which even a strong swimmer like her would not be able to kick against. She respected the water for this, never underestimating its power and admiring its beauty with a cautious eye.

  Her father had once told her that water has a memory; that every rock, every stone, every grain of muddy sediment leaves something of a fingerprint in the water that flows over it. Grace liked this idea, imagining the water of the great lakes and oceans of the world to echo with the memories of the places, people, and events it had passed on its journey.

  Grace; her brother, Art; and the other kids were a familiar sight in their neighborhood, at one with the wildlife and nature around them, free to roam at will until the inky blue skies of dusk signaled that it was time for them to trudge home along the dusty pathways forged by the tractors and heavy machinery of harvesttime.

  From the carefree life of a farmer’s daughter, Grace had settled quickly into the routine of school, excelling academically and socially. During the summer of ’75 she’d blossomed into a stunning teenager, her natural beauty and developing female form not going unnoticed by the hormonally charged boys in her class. She’d met her first boyfriend the following spring. Sam Adamson was his name. They’d spent most of the summer hidden away in an old hay barn, engaging in awkward encounters with zippers and buttons while the chickens pecked idly at husks of grain on the dusty floor. By the time the leaves were changing color on the trees that fall, the hay barn roof had fallen in and Grace’s first real relationship had fallen apart. She was surprised to realize that she was more concerned about the roof.

  With her almost luminous fair skin and rich auburn hair, there was little doubting Grace’s Irish heritage. It wasn’t spoken of very often in the family, but she knew that her great-nana Maggie (her great-grandmother on her mother’s side) had traveled as a teenager from Ireland to America, as indeed had her great-grandfather James, the man Maggie had married soon after settling in Chicago. There were very few photos of Maggie as a young girl, but in the rare ones that did exist, Grace could see the unmistakable likeness between them, particularly since she’d hit her teenage years. It was her dream to travel to Ireland one day to see the country of her origins for herself. She’d been planning the trip with Jimmy when her life suddenly fell apart.

  She’d met Jimmy Shepard in her first semester at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. He sat next to her in their first lecture and asked her if he could borrow a pen. She spent the next forty minutes trying to sneak a better look at him out of the corner of her eye, catching just the occasional glimpse of his sandy-colored hair, broad jawline, and long dark eyelashes. In reality, she spent most of the lecture admiring his battered Converse sneakers. By the time the bell rang for the end of class, she hadn’t written one word on her notepad and had absolutely no recollection of anything the professor had said. Jimmy returned her pen, along with a piece of paper on which he’d scribbled Thank you, gorgeous. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? They’d been inseparable ever since.

  The vibrant existence she experienced in her first semester at college couldn’t have been farther removed from the tranquil, innocent days of her childhood, but self-assured and poised as always, Grace excelled in her new life. While she loved her old school friends for their uncomplicated lives and their reliability, she grew to love her college friends for their complex lives and their spontaneity. They introduced her to new music, innovative writers, and completely different fashions, and she realized how sheltered her life had been. Jimmy was a revelation to Grace; a city boy, he was self-assured, witty, streetwise, and a far cry from the awkward fumblings of Sam Adamson in the hay barn.

  She was a popular girl in her dorm, and her talent for writing had not gone unnoticed. “You have a genuine gift,” Professor Andrews told her during the fall semester of her second year. She liked this tall, narrow man with angular features and a crooked smile; he reminded Grace of her grandpa. She coughed as he wiped the blackboard vigorously, sending dust flying around th
e room. “Yes, you have a real talent, young lady,” he continued. “So, tell me, who do you get it from, Mom or Dad?”

  Grace thought for a moment. “My dad, I guess.” She felt a little embarrassed then, afraid that he might think her dad was a successful writer himself. “But he’s just a farmer. He doesn’t actually write anything himself.”

  “Ah, a man of the earth.” Professor Andrews perched on the edge of the desk. “They make the best poets, in my estimation; full of senses and emotions and in touch with their surroundings.”

  Grace had never thought of it like that, but it kind of made sense. She had always attributed her love of reading and writing to her father, who had read to her every night at bedtime, no matter how exhausted he was from a hard day’s work. “Just one more chapter, Daddy, please,” she would plead when it was time to turn out the light, especially when he read from Little House on the Prairie, her favorite. She liked to imagine herself as Laura Ingalls and her father as Pa, reliving their adventures in her mind and basking in the warmth of their family’s unfaltering love for one another. She adored the book so much that she’d cried inconsolably into her pillow when Laura’s sister Mary went blind.

  It was her father who had inspired her love of books and stories long before her schoolteachers taught her the mechanics of reading, he who had encouraged her to keep writing her little tales about a family traveling across America in a small wagon and princesses locked in towers by evil witches. It was he, a hardworking, unassuming farmer, who had uttered phrases such as one last dance before harvesttime, who had told her about the memory of water, who had inspired her to observe the world around her and describe it as beautifully on a piece of paper as she saw it in reality.

  “So, Ms. Butler,” Professor Andrews had continued, folding his arms casually over his gray sweater, which, Grace noticed, was wearing thin on the elbows. She wondered whether there was a Mrs. Professor Andrews, who might take him shopping to buy a new one, although for some reason, she got the feeling he still lived with his mother. “You’re probably wondering why I asked you to stay back.” He’d paused for dramatic effect, as he was prone to do, before continuing. “Well, I was speaking to a colleague of mine at the Chicago Tribune earlier this week, and I happened to mention to him that I have a very talented young lady in my class.” Grace had felt herself blush a little at his compliment and shuffled her feet awkwardly. “He has agreed to take a feature article from you.” He’d stood up then, striding around the large desk to collect his briefcase. “So, what do you think of that? You up for the challenge?”