by Rhys Bowen
The little ones giggled and glanced up at me. I forced a grin too. “Our little secret,” I whispered, and touched my finger to my lips.
“Time to go on board now,” Kathleen said. “Seamus, my love, are you big enough to carry the bundle?”
“I can do it.” He took the bundle from her. It was half as big as he was, but he staggered along manfully with it.
Kathleen handed me the tickets. “How are you with the readin’ and writin’?” she asked.
“I do both just fine.”
They’ll ask you questions when you get to America,” Kathleen said. “All the questions are on that sheet there—my maiden name and the village I came from and the date of my wedding. They might ask you any of those things, so make sure you learn them before you get there.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Don’t worry about a thing. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Bridie seemed to realize for the first time what was happening. She clung to her mother’s legs. “I don’t want to go without you,” she wailed. “I want to stay here with you, Mammy.”
“Hush now,” Kathleen said, stroking the child’s head. “You can’t stay with me, little one. You have to go with Miss Molly. It won’t be for long. I’ll be with you very soon, I promise.”
“You hurry up and catch the next boat, Ma,” Seamus said. “Daddy will be wanting to know what has happened to you.”
“I’ll come as quickly as I can.” There was a catch in her voice and I watched her press her lips together for a moment. “The days will just fly by and you’ll have such fun.” She put her arms around the children and buried her face in Bridie’s scarf. “Be good children,” she said. “Remember what I’ve told you. Remember to say your prayers and make sure you mind what Miss Molly tells you.”
They nodded, looking at her solemnly as if they sensed what was going on.
“Go on then. Get going,” she said. “I won’t come any farther. I’ll watch you from here.”
“We’ll wave to you when we get up on deck, Ma,” Seamus said. “I’ve got my handkerchief. You watch and you’ll see something white waving and it will be me.”
“And I’ll wave my handkerchief back.” Kathleen tried to smile. “Go on. Away with you or you’ll miss the boat!”
She gave Seamus, then Bridie, a quick kiss, then put her hands on my shoulders. “God go with you,” she said. “May the Blessed Mother watch over the three of you.”
“And you, too.”
We looked at each other for a moment and then she turned and ran away. I took Bridie by the hand. “Come on, then. Let’s go and find our cabin.”
The dock was now bustling with activity. Carriages were arriving and disgorging passengers. Luggage was being put on a belt to be taken up into the boat. As we passed onto the water-front a woman ran up and grabbed my arm. “You look like a kind person. My boy Sean. I haven’t heard from him in three years. If you come across him, ask him to write his old mother, dying of a broken heart until she hears from him.” She shoved a piece of paper into my hand. It had Sean O’Neil, formerly of Balymore, county Antrim, written on it in childish printing. I didn’t like to tell her that my chances of meeting her Sean were very small. I nodded solemnly. “I’ll do what I can.”
“I’m here for every ship,” she said. “I’m sure that in the end someone will find him for me.” Then she ran and melted back into the crowd.
There was a broad gangway, draped with the White Star Line banners, going up to a deck festooned with flags where a band was playing. I led the little ones toward it. An arm reached out and stopped me.
“Where do you think you’re going, then?” A seaman demanded.
“On board. We have tickets.”
“Steerage passengers embark down there.” He jerked his head to another gangway at the far end of the ship. It wasn’t going up onto one of the decks this time, but straight into the bowels. And there were no banners. A long line of scrawny, ragged people were making their way up it, bundles and suitcases balanced on their shoulders, little ones in their arms. From behind closed gates came the sounds of wailing. A crowd pressed against those gates, reaching out arms, holding up babies. Every now and then a voice would rise over the communal wail. “God go with you, Eileen! Conor, my boy. My darlin’ boy! May the Blessed Mother bring us together in the next life, if not in this one.” A hand reached out and tried to grab me. “If you meet my man, my Mick O’Shae, tell him that his Mary wants to know he’s all right. Mick O’Shae—have you got that?”
Bridie grasped my hand tighter. As I led her to join that line up the gangway, I noticed two policemen, standing in the shadows, watching. I had almost forgotten that this wasn’t an adventure—it was a desperate flight. Another few yards and I’d be safely on that ship. I lifted Bridie into my arms, so that her little body hid my face from the police.
Another man was checking names off a list at the bottom of the gangway. “Kathleen O’Connor, son Seamus, and daughter Bridie,” I said, loudly. “Here are the tickets.”
He checked me off and we went up the gangway, into the ship.
It was dark inside there and the line of people swept us along into a sort of staging area. It smelled unpleasant—the same kind of boiled cabbage and urine smell as the rooming house had, but with something added that I couldn’t quite identify.
“Name?” A uniformed figure barked at me as we drew level with a desk.
“O’Connor. Kathleen, Seamus, Bridie.”
“Just yourself and the two children, then?”
“That’s right.”
“And your husband? Where is he?”
I was tempted to tell him it was none of his business. After all, we’d paid for the tickets, hadn’t we? “He’s in New York. Waiting for us.”
“He’d better be,” the man said. “If he doesn’t come to collect you from Ellis Island, they’ll just send you straight home again. They don’t want women and children who’ll be a burden on the state.”
“He’ll be there,” I said. “It was he who sent us the tickets. Now if you’d please direct us to our cabin, so that we can leave our belongings and then get up on deck to wave good-bye.”
The man turned to another who was standing in the shadows behind him. “Hark at her,” he chuckled. “Who do you think you are—lady muck? Women’s quarters are down that way. Find yourself a bunk. You can take any one that’s not occupied. And as for going up on deck—steerage means steerage. Next.”
I had been dismissed. The crowd behind me shoved us forward. There was nothing for it but to lead the children down the dimly lit passage. Bridie had begun to get scared. “I want to go back to Mammy,” she wailed.
“Remember our little secret?” I whispered. “You have to call me Mammy until we get to New York.”
“I want my real mammy.”
I looked around, hoping that nobody was listening. The passage was lined with cubicles, half shut off with slatted wooden doors. Inside each cubicle I could dimly make out six bunks—three on either side. Most of them seemed to be occupied by shadowy figures.
“Is there any space in here?” I demanded several times.
At last someone replied, ungraciously. “Top bunk and you’re welcome to it.”
“Where do we sleep, then?” Seamus asked.
A hollow eyed-woman poked her head out from the bottom bunk. “The children have to share with us, unless the boy is over twelve.”
“I’m eight,” Seamus said.
“Well, then, he belongs in here,” the woman said. “Send him up the ladder and he can lift up your belongings.”
“Go on up, Seamus,” I said. “Stay up there with our things and I’ll go check to see if there’s anywhere better.”
With Bridie still draped around my neck and holding on for dear life, I went up and down the hallway until I was convinced that there were no better quarters lurking around any corner. I helped Bridie up the ladder and examined the bunk. There was a thin mattress, nothing more. No sheets, blanke
ts, nothing.
“Where do we get our bed linen?” I asked a neighbor.
“Bed linen?” Her chuckle ended in a rasping cough. “You’re supposed to bring your own, dearie. Didn’t they tell you that?”
I opened the bundle and found that there was a sheet in it, but no blanket. My shawl would have to do then. I was just trying to stow away our belongings on the little shelf at the end of our bunk when I became aware of a rhythmic thudding sound that echoed from the very walls. It was the ship’s engines, now working up enough steam for us to sail.
“When can we go up and wave good-bye?” Seamus asked.
“I’m sorry, but they won’t let us,” I said, stroking back his hair the way I always did to my youngest brother. “It seems that we have to stay down here, because we haven’t paid enough for one of the fancy cabins.”
“But she’ll be looking for us. I said I’d wave.” He had been so brave until now—the man of the family, staggering across the dock with his big bundle. Now his lip quivered.
“She’d never have picked us out among all those people,” I said. “She’ll think she sees us waving with everyone else up there.”
We had no idea when we left the dock but a gentle motion finally gave us the hint that we were at sea.
Four
Anyone who thinks that Atlantic crossings are glamorous should have traveled with us on that ship. It wasn’t terrible—it was clean enough and they fed us, a big pile of bread and butter, tea and coffee, plus a hot meal once a day. When I say hot meal, it was actually a big pot of stew, dumped at one end of a table with the cry, “Come and get it while it’s hot.” Some people said it was better than they got at home. I don’t know what their homes were like but it certainly wasn’t as good as the meals I used to make for my da and the boys. But it was edible. I’ll say that for it.
The worst thing for me was the darkness and lack of air. I was always in the open air. It was a two-mile walk from our cottage to the village and I did that most days. On fine days I was only inside when I had to be. My mother always said I was too wild for a girl, and I suppose I was—always clambering over rocks or even swimming in the ocean when nobody was looking.
We steerage passengers were allowed up on deck for an hour a day. The rest of the time we were locked away down in the hold, with the constant throb of the engine and the stale smell of unwashed bodies and worse. We were all herded together in a big open area with pipes running across the ceiling, lit by a couple of electric lightbulbs. There were benches around the walls and two long tables in the middle where we had our meals. The tables had sides to them, like trays—to stop the crockery from sliding off in bad weather, I supposed. There was nothing to do but to sit and hope that the time passed quickly and pray that the sea didn’t get too rough. The children quickly found other little ones to play with. Seamus was off right away with the other boys. They’d huddle in the farthest corner, playing marbles, or disappear down the passages, trying to find ways out of our prison—only to be caught and sent back by the stewards. I didn’t try to stop him. The children needed something to keep them occupied and it was good to see the boy playing.
Bridie, on the other hand, clung to my skirts and refused any suggestion that she join the other girls. She hid behind me when other children made friendly overtures and sat playing quietly with a sorry apology for a rag doll and a few scraps of fabric, which were her treasures.
We adults sat around with nothing to do, waiting for the next meal to break the monotony. The men smoked or played cards. Some of the women knitted and gossiped. I kept myself to myself. I didn’t want to risk making any kind of slip of the tongue. So I soon got the reputation of being standoffish and snooty, but I didn’t care. Just let me get as far as New York and I would be free.
By the end of the first day that gentle swell had grown to a real Atlantic roll that sent plates and cups sliding down the tables. People started to feel sick. Then I realized what the other smell had been—it was stale vomit. Myself, I believe that more people were made sick by the smell and lack of fresh air than by the rolling. I tried to tell the steward that, when he came to swab up the floor for the tenth time.
“If you’d only let some good fresh air into this place, or let us take a quick stroll on deck,” I said.
“If I let you up on deck, you’d have the little’uns blown away in no time at all,” he said, not unkindly.
It didn’t affect me, but little Bridie took one look at the green faces around her and decided she didn’t feel well, either. I was happy enough to tuck her in the bunk and stay with her. It gave me a good excuse to be away from the smell and the noise and the stale air of that room. If only I’d had a book to read and enough light to read by, the time would have sped by. But as it was, each day seemed like an eternity. That deep, dull thud, thud of the engine went through my whole body and pounded in my head until I wanted to scream.
I sat there in the dim light and made myself think about America. All my life I’d had big dreams—too big, according to my mother. Only lead to trouble in the end. It all came from educating me above my station. She’d been against it from the very beginning. She’d not even been grateful that I’d saved the family from being thrown out of our cottage. Because that was how it had all started. The landowner’s agent had been around, trying to raise the rent again, bullying and threatening the way he always did. I was ten years old at the time. I’d stood there in the shadows, watching my parents bowing and cringing and pleading. Then I’d stepped out of the shadows and told that fat bully just what I thought of him.
It had almost got us thrown out, there and then. But somehow word of it got to the landowner’s house—Broxwood Court, it was called—and my choice of descriptive words had made the Hartleys chuckle at their dinner party. The landowner’s wife, Lady Hartley, was visiting from London, where she spent most of her winters. She expressed a wish to meet me and I was scrubbed up and brought up to the big house. I can remember my first sight of all that grandeur. I was too interested in taking it all in to be humble and mind my manners. Lady Hartley found me bright and refreshing, so she said. She thought it was a shame that a quick wit and a silver tongue like mine should go to waste, so next thing I knew, I was having lessons up at Broxwood with Miss Henrietta and Miss Vanessa.
I loved those lessons. There never could be enough books in the world for me. I devoured them all, geography and history and even Shakespeare and Latin. The governess said I was a joy to teach. Miss Henrietta and Miss Vanessa decided I was a teacher’s pet and there was something really wrong with a girl who liked studying. Men don’t like clever women, they told me. I suppose they must have been right. They were both married by twenty and I was still an old maid at twenty-three.
Reading all those books had started to put big ideas in my head. I’d move to London or go to Trinity College in Dublin and be an educated lady and move in the highest circles. Unfortunately it had all come to an abrupt end when my ma died and I had to stay home to care for my brothers. That had pretty much snuffed out my big ideas. There was only one thing to do in Ballykillin—get married and raise a lot of babies of my own. I’d hoped maybe to take over from the schoolteacher one day, but she didn’t look like she would be dying or retiring for a while.
And now suddenly I discovered that my dreams hadn’t died at all. They had merely been sleeping in a far recess of my mind, ready to wake when opportunity knocked. And now it was knocking loud and clear. America—land of opportunity. I had heard the other women gossiping about it in the common room, how so and so’s brother had gone there ten years before and now he had a fine house and carriage, or land of his own, or a business employing hundreds. Maybe I’d find my own way to prosperity in such a land! I lay on the bunk beside Bridie and let my fantasy roam—I’d start small, maybe working in a shop. And with the money I saved, I’d open my own shop—a bookshop maybe, and all the educated folk would gather there and we’d sit around talking, with me at the center of it all . . . if I could just
get safely ashore and deliver these little ones to their father, then it would all be possible.
Then, on the third day out, I met O’Malley. I’d noticed him right away, of course, sitting with the card players at the table in the center of the room. He had the loudest laugh and I heard one of the men say, “You’re a card yourself, O’Malley. I’ll say that for you. A proper card.”
There was something about him that made him different—the swagger, the way he showed all those big white teeth when he laughed and looked around to see if everyone had noticed how witty he was being. He was a big-boned man, almost handsome in a way, but he used too much brilliantine on his hair and he wore a bright red silk cravat around his neck. He talked too loudly. He laughed too loudly at his own jokes.
As I watched him, a young lad walked past the cardplayers’ table.
“Well, look who we have here,” he bellowed in that booming voice. “ ‘Tis the pretty boy himself, off to sing soprano in the church choir. Of course, he’ll be singing soprano all his life, that one. If you handed him a naked girl, he wouldn’t know how to rise to the occasion!”
The boy blushed, which made the men at the table laugh even harder. I took an instant dislike to that man O’Malley, even more than the teasing should have warranted.
Not having to hear his loud voice was another reason I was glad to stay out of the common room. On the fourth day out, however, Bridie was feeling a little better and declared she’d like a piece of bread and butter and a sip of tea. I went to find them and was coming back with the cup and plate in my hands when someone stepped out in front of me, blocking my entrance to the passage.
“Mrs. Kathleen O’Connor, so I understand.” It was O’Malley and the way he was leering at me made me feel that my first opinion was entirely justified.
I nodded, politely. “That’s right, sir. Now if you’d just let me pass to take the food to the little one in the cabin.”
Instead he moved closer to me. His breath smelled of smoke and liquor. There was supposed to be no drinking on board, but I’d noticed him passing the flask around.