by Rhys Bowen
I tossed back my head and put my hands on my hips. “I noticed you following me all the way down the street. Have you nothing better to do than follow decent factory girls on their way home from the mill, or am I to thank you for guarding my honor?”
They were still staring at me with cold, suspicious eyes. “Do you live here, miss?”
I’ve never been very good at outright lies. I suppose the beatings my ma and pa gave us for lying really did make a lasting impression.
“Not exactly, sir. I’m just visiting my—”
“We’ve been told to be on the lookout for a young woman who resembles—”
At that moment the door nearest me opened and a woman’s face looked out. “Is that you at last, Siobhan?” she demanded, frowning at me. “Get inside here right away, you lazy thing, and no excuses this time.”
She grabbed my sleeve and jerked me in her direction.
“You know this young woman?” one of the policemen asked.
“You think I’m not knowing my own sister?” the woman said. “I sent her out over an hour ago to get me the powder for my headaches and where’s she been all this time I’d like to know. No concern for her sister’s poor head, have you, you ungrateful creature?”
Either she was crazy or her vision was poor, because she was clearly mistaking me for someone else. I decided to say nothing and hung my head, looking repentant.
“We’re all sailing for America in the morning,” the woman went on. “How was I going to stand all that time at sea without my headache powders?” She turned away, coughing.
The first policeman touched his helmet. “Sorry to have troubled you, missus. And you, too, miss. Good luck in America.”
They went, leaving me staring at the woman. She was younger than I thought at first, but hollow eyed and very thin.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but you’ve made a mistake. I’m not your sister.”
A smile crossed her tired face. “You think I don’t have two good eyes in my head?” she demanded. “I was watching out of the window and I saw those two fellows following you and I decided no good was going to come of it. I’ve no love of the English police myself. I don’t know what you’ve done but you don’t look like a criminal to me.” She opened her door wider. “Come on in with you. There’s a kettle boiling on the grate.”
She closed the door behind us. Two young children, a boy and a girl, were sitting by a poor excuse for a fire. They looked up at me with big, wary eyes.
“Hello,” I said. “My name’s Molly. What’s yours?”
The woman put a hand on each of their heads. “This one is Seamus like his daddy and the little scrap of a person is my Bridie.” Seamus continued to stare and managed a defiant half smile. Bridie hid her face under the quilt. “They’ve not been themselves since we left home and came here,” she went on. “They don’t know whether they’re coming or going, poor little mites. I’m Kathleen O’Connor.” She held out her hand.
“Molly Murphy,” I said. “I’m very pleased to meet you, and very grateful to you, too. I know nobody in this whole town.”
She poured boiling water into a teapot. “The landlady tells us not to cook in the rooms but the food she prepares isn’t fit for man nor beast. And sit yourself down. You look ready to drop. Were those two policemen really after you?”
I glanced at the window, half expecting to see them still lurking nearby. “I’m afraid they were.” I took a deep breath. “Look, you should know I’m on the run. It’s possible those policemen were already onto me. So I ought not to stay here long. I don’t want to get you involved. . . .”
“You think I’d turn a fellow Irishwoman over to the English police?” she demanded. Her accent was very different from mine, with all those harsh arrrr sounds of the north. “Whatever you’ve done, I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”
I glanced across at Kathleen’s children. She seemed to pick up my meaning.
“You two will be wanting your tea soon, I’m thinking,” Kathleen said to them. She fished in the purse that hung from her waist. “Here’s twopence. How about taking your sister down to the fish shop on the corner and bringing us back twopence worth of chips?” She handed the money to the boy, who grabbed his sister’s hand. “Come on, Bridie,” he said. “And you better walk fast this time ‘cos I’m not waiting for you.”
The little one looked back fearfully at her mother. “Go on with you,” Kathleen said, wrapping a scarf around the child’s neck. “You need some fresh air or you’ll not sleep tonight.”
The door closed behind the children and Kathleen turned back to me.
“I killed a man,” I said and watched it register on her face. “I didn’t mean to.”
“This man you killed?” she asked.
I stared into the fire. I had kept the whole thing blocked from my mind since it happened. Now I saw the details as if it was all happening in front of me—Justin bursting into my cottage, standing there with that insolent smile on his face, telling me there was no point in struggling because he owned me just as much as the beasts on his farm. For the first time in my life words had not been a good enough defense. What had kept the local boys at bay didn’t work on Justin. He’d merely laughed and thrown me back across the kitchen table. Then there was the sound of my dress ripping as he got impatient and then my mighty kick that surprised even me, the surprised look on his face and the sickening sound of his head striking our stove . . . and all that blood.
“He was trying to . . . have his way with me, you know.” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word rape. “I pushed him away. He slipped and hit his head.”
“Well then,” she said, but I shook my head. “It won’t make any difference with the jury, will it? He was the landowner’s son. English gentry. You don’t get away with killing the gentry, do you?” I kept staring into the fire. The hopelessness of the situation was catching up with me. “He tore my dress,” I said and opened my shawl to show her. Suddenly I was very near to tears, but I don’t cry in front of strangers.
“The beast,” she said gently, in a way that brought me even closer to tears. “He deserved everything he got and more. Don’t you worry. I’ll not give you away. They’re all beasts, these English. Why else would my Seamus have had to get away to America, leaving us to fend for ourselves these two years?”
She handed me a chipped enamel mug of tea. I took a big gulp and felt warmth returning to my body.
“First my brother and then my man,” she went on. “They hanged our Liam, you know. Only nineteen, he was, and such a lovely boy. He and some of the boys tried to stop the landowner’s agent from evicting a neighbor. The agent was killed in the struggle. It was in the dark of night in foul weather and I reckon they’d have got away with it, but someone betrayed them. One of their own, it had to be. They were all hanged.” She turned away, coughing again.
“How terrible,” I said. “And your man?”
“He tried to organize a trade union at the mill. They held a strike. The guard was called in and things got ugly. My Seamus had to flee for his life.” She broke off with another coughing spell. “They managed to get him on a boat to America, but he can’t come home again. There’s a price on his head.”
“But you’re going to join him now, aren’t you? That’s wonderful.”
A strange look came over her face. “Yes. Wonderful.”
At that moment the two little ones burst back in with the bag of chips.
“Seamus ate some on the way home,” Bridie exclaimed until she remembered there was a stranger in the room. Then she hung her head and slunk over to her mother.
“No doubt there’s plenty for all,” her mother said. “And we’ve meat pie left from yesterday. It’s a feast we’ll be having.” She spread out the newspaper on the small round table. “Help yourself,” she said to me.
“No, I couldn’t.”
“There’s plenty. We’ll not go hungry tonight and tomorrow we’ll be dining in luxury on the boat.”
“Will there be lots of food on the boat?” Seamus asked, in between cramming chips into his mouth. “Meat and sausages and everything?”
“Sure there will. As much as you can eat,” his mother said.
We washed the food down with a cup of tea, then Kathleen got the little ones tucked into the bed. She and I sat by the fire until the glow began to die down. We talked of home. She told me of her village in county Derry. I told her of my life in Ballykillin and swimming in the ocean with my brothers and running across the headlands with the wind at my back, making me feel as if I were flying. Already it seemed like a dream, or something I had read of in a book.
“So what will you do now?” Kathleen asked, leaning across to poke some life into the last of the fire.
I shrugged. “I have no idea. I had enough money to get me here but not farther. I was hoping to find a job in one of the factories, but it doesn’t seem as if that’s going to work, either.”
“You’ve no kinfolk, nobody who’d take you in?”
“Nobody. My own family always said I’d come to a bad end. It looks like I’m going to prove them right. If only I could have come up with the money, maybe I’d have sailed with you on that lovely ship to America. You must be looking forward to seeing your man again, after so long.”
She was still staring into the last of the fire. “Aye,” she said quietly. She got up, went over to the bed, and pulled out one of the pillows. “You’ll be warm enough in front of the fire,” she said. “You can borrow my shawl.”
“You really don’t mind if I sleep on your floor tonight?” I asked. “I don’t want to get you into trouble.”
“You’re not going anywhere else,” she said. “And now that the little ones are sleeping, I’ve a favor to ask you in return.” She sat down on the hearth rug beside me.
“Me?” I couldn’t think what was coming next. Surely in my current state I was the last person on earth who could do anyone a favor.
“I want you to take the children to America for me tomorrow,” she said.
I couldn’t have been more caught off guard. “What?”
“When that ship sails tomorrow, I won’t be going.”
“Why not?”
“They won’t let me,” she said flatly, staring away from me into the dying fire. “We had to have a medical exam before we could sail. The doctor says I’ve got consumption—the wasting disease. TB, he called it. He said they don’t let you into America with TB.”
I couldn’t think what to say. We just sat there, staring at the coals.
“So I can’t go there but their father can’t come here to get them,” she said. “I want them to have a chance at a good life. They say there’s opportunity in America. That’s where they should be. I want you to go in my place, Molly. Take them to their daddy.”
“But what will happen to you?”
I looked up. Tears were welling in her eyes. “You don’t normally recover from consumption, do you? But if the Blessed Mother worked a miracle and I did get over it, then I’d be on the next ship, believe me. Until then, I’ll go back to my family in county Derry. I don’t doubt they’ll take care of me.”
“What were you going to do if I hadn’t come?” I asked.
“Take my chances. I’d be turned back, of course, but I hoped I could persuade them to hand over the little ones to their daddy. But now I know they’ll get there safe and my mind’s at rest.” She looked up for the first time. “I think the Blessed Mother must have sent you here. You will do it, won’t you?”
What could I say? The next morning I sailed for America with another woman’s name.
Three
The first streaks of a red dawn were barely showing over the black silhouettes of chimney stacks when we made our way in silent procession to the docks.
Neither Kathleen nor I had slept much. We had sat there by the dying embers of the fire, talking in a way you can only talk to strangers you know you’ll never meet again. When our conversation died, too, she went to lie down beside the little ones, her arms wrapped fiercely around them. I couldn’t begin to imagine what she was going through right now. I pulled my shawl over me and tried to sleep, too, but my dozing was troubled by such terrible dreams that I chose the security of staying awake.
I must have nodded off just before dawn because I woke to find the little ones sitting up and Kathleen bustling around the room.
“There’s the rest of that pie from last night if you’re hungry.” She pointed at the unappetizing remains on the table. “She’ll have porridge going in the kitchen later but it’s better maybe that she doesn’t know you’ve been here.”
I nodded and searched for my hairbrush in the bundle of possessions I’d hastily thrown together in my panic. Thank God I’d included it. I’ve always cared enough about my appearance that I wouldn’t want to be seen with my hair like a rat’s nest. The sin of vanity, my mother called it and made me confess it each week to the priest. I confessed it rightly enough, and said the three Hail Marys, but I couldn’t say you’d notice any improvement. I was stuck with being vain.
“Come, Bridie,” I said, showing the brush to her. “Let me make your hair pretty, too.” The child had better get accustomed to my taking care of her. I hadn’t really considered that aspect of it before. There had been too much to think of last night. But now it hit me—what if the children wouldn’t go with me? I knew my own youngest brother and how he eyed strangers suspiciously. Would these two be willing to leave their own mother without a scene—and if they made a scene, we’d be found out pretty quickly.
Kathleen must have been thinking along similar lines. She took the child and led her over to me. “Let nice Miss Molly make your hair pretty for you, Bridie. She has a fine way with hair.”
The little girl looked at me shyly, then let me run my brush through her straggly locks. I worked gently, careful not to tug. “My, but that’s lovely hair you have,” I told her. “They won’t have seen a girl as pretty as you in America.”
She giggled then, sensing that I was spinning the truth a little.
I glanced over her head at Kathleen, watching her with a look of hungry longing on her face. “Have you told them yet?” I asked. “Do they know what’s happening today?”
“We’re going on a ship,” Seamus said confidently. “We’re going to my daddy in America.”
I continued to look at Kathleen. She kept silent.
“You have to tell them,” I muttered as I leaned close to her on the pretense of helping myself to pie. “You can’t spring it on them at the last minute.”
“When the time is right,” she muttered back. “I’m still thinking of the best way to tell them.”
We dressed and packed up the remaining items, then we went out into the chill of the early morning. There was ice on the cobbles and our footsteps clattered, the sound echoing back, unnaturally loud, as we made our way along the alleyways. Our breath came out like dragon fire. You’d have thought the streets would be deserted that early in the morning, but there was hustle and bustle as we got closer to the docks. Workers were coming out of all those little houses, heading for the early shift at the factories. Women were already scrubbing steps. We passed into wider, grander streets and fine carriages and hansom cabs passed us, making for our ship, presumably.
Then there she was, the Majestic, with smoke coming out of both her runnels and people swarming around her like ants. A wave of excitement washed over me. In spite of all my worries and fears, this was, indeed, the kind of grand adventure I’d dreamed of during those long, silent days at the cottage in Ballykillin.
At the entrance to the docks a man was examining papers before letting people past. Kathleen pulled us aside, into the shadows, and rummaged in the bundle she was carrying. “Well, what do you know?” She managed a light laugh. “I’ve got tickets here for Seamus and Bridie, but I’ve gone and left my own ticket back home in Stabane. Isn’t that just the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard of.”
“Ma, how could you do
that?” Seamus demanded. “Does that mean we’ll not be going then?”
“I don’t see why you two shouldn’t go ahead,” Kathleen said. “Miss Molly has her ticket. You can travel with her. She’ll take care of you right enough and bring you safe to your daddy. And I’ll just pop back home and catch up with you on the next boat.”
I stared at her, but said nothing.
“But we want to be with you, Mama,” Bridie said. “We’ll come on the next boat with you.”
“Indeed you won’t,” Kathleen said. “Not when your poor daddy’s waiting for you, longing to put his arms around his little ones again. We’ll not be unkind enough to make him wait any longer, will we now? And who knows—there might not be room for all three of us on the next boat, and we’ve a beautiful cabin ready and waiting on this fine ship. Miss Molly will take good care of you, won’t you?”
“Of course I will,” I said, playing along with her, although I wasn’t very happy about the devious way she was doing it. Maybe she hadn’t endured childhood beatings for not telling the truth as often as I had. “We’ll have a grand time on the ship. Plenty of good food and games to play—and it’s only a few days till we’ll be in New York.”
“There’s only one thing,” Kathleen said, beckoning the children close to her. “We have to play a little secret game.”
The children were looking up with excited faces.
“Miss Molly’s cabin is away at the other end of the ship,” Kathleen said. “She wouldn’t be able to take care of you, being so far away. So I’ve suggested that she move in with you two and take my place instead. Only one thing—they have the name Kathleen O’Connor down for that cabin, so they wouldn’t let Miss Molly in, would they now?”
The two little ones were looking confused now.
“So what do you think we should do?” Kathleen asked.
“Ask them to change it?” Seamus asked.
Kathleen shook her head. “Too late for that. I think we should pretend that Miss Molly is me. That would be a fine game, wouldn’t it? A secret for just the three of you. No need to tell another soul—right?”