The Girl from Ballymor

by Kathleen McGurl

  But, whatever happened, she would never go to him again. Not once Michael was safely aboard the Columbus and on his way to the land of freedom and opportunity. For her part, she would rather starve than throw herself on Waterman’s mercy.

  It was growing dark as she walked up the long track towards Kildoolin. For the first time in many months she did not feel weak and tired – the meal she’d eaten had put strength in her legs and hope in her heart. It was a pleasant, mild evening; the dusk sky shimmered purple and orange and the vanilla scent of the gorse hung heavy on the evening air. At a time like this, she felt glad they lived away from the town, up here in the hills, tucked away amongst the rocky crags, the gorse and the heather. She smiled as she adjusted the heavy basket on her arm. Michael would feast tonight, and she would feast her eyes watching him eat his fill. Tomorrow she would buy him a passage on the Columbus and present him with the ticket. She decided not to tell him she had enough money for the ticket today, in case he insisted they spend it on food. No, she must buy the ticket first so he had no choice but to take it, and go. Her heart would break to lose him, but she would comfort herself with the knowledge that she had secured a future for him, away from this land of sorrow and hunger. She was determined that this was how things would be.

  Michael was already home when she reached the cottage. She found him lying on her mattress, his boots still on, his face grey and shrunken, lined beyond his years. She dropped the basket beside the fireplace and rushed to his side.

  ‘Michael, my love, my son, what is the matter? I have food for you. One minute and I’ll have it on a plate in front of you.’ She felt his forehead, praying he was not sickening as Grace had done. Not now, not when she was so close to saving him.

  ‘I’m all right, Mammy. I’m just after having done a long day’s work. I’m tired, is all it is. Did you say you have something to eat? You have your share first, while I rest a while.’

  ‘I’ve eaten already. Here, look, there’s bread, cheese, ham, a tomato chutney . . .’

  He opened his eyes wide and stared first at her, and then the food that she was pulling out of the basket and setting out for him on the battered old table. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘I was given it,’ she said. It wasn’t a lie.

  ‘Who by?’

  And now it was time to lie. She couldn’t say she’d sold the brooch. Not until she had the ticket. That lie was for tomorrow. ‘James O’Dowell gave it to me. He’s away on the Columbus in a few days’ time, and has food to spare.’

  ‘When did he give it you?’

  Why wouldn’t he just accept it and eat it? she wondered. It was food, wasn’t it, such as they’d not seen in this cottage for far too long. ‘I saw him in town on my way home.’

  ‘I’d heard he left for Killarney this morning to say goodbye to his sister. He wouldn’t be having cakes like these anyway. Mammy, where did you really get the food?’

  ‘Ah, Michael, does it really matter? Eat up now, fill your belly, and the world’ll seem a better place.’

  ‘Mammy, what are you after doing to get this food? There are no shops in Ballymor selling this kind of thing. I want to eat it, I do, but I must know where it came from.’

  She turned away, tears of frustration pricking at her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s food, and you’ll eat it if you don’t want to die. I’ve lost enough children to the hunger. I’ll not lose you as well. Eat it!’ These last words came out as a scream, her voice sounding harsh even to her own ears. She hadn’t had to do anything immoral to get the food, but so what if she had – it was her choice. She’d do anything to save him. The least he could do would be to accept what was given with good grace and not ask too many questions.

  ‘I’ll eat it, Mammy, for you need me to be strong,’ he whispered, but she noticed out of the corner of his eye that he’d shaken his head sadly.

  He ate in silence, while Kitty busied herself about the cottage, and made her plans for the next day. She’d need to go back to Cork to buy Michael’s ticket. She hoped Jimmy Maguire would be travelling that way again. At least this time she would be able to pay him a few pennies for his trouble.

  *

  By the following evening, Kitty had been to Cork city, purchased a ticket for the Columbus, and returned to Ballymor. She’d even been able to pay Jimmy Maguire for the ride this time. A mix of emotions churned inside her – delight that she had the means of saving Michael, sorrow that she might never see him again once he was on the ship, and fear that he might come to some harm on the crossing or in the New World. But she was sure she was doing the right thing. Her faith, rocked by the loss of Grace, was back and she had prayed endlessly for Michael to be kept safe on his journey and in his new life.

  When Jimmy Maguire dropped her off, she realised it was about the time that Michael would be walking through town on his way home from the road works. She decided to try to catch him, to tell him he’d not have to break stones any more, to show him the Columbus ticket – the boat sailed in just a couple of days! – and to take him to O’Sullivans for a pint of stout, as she had a small amount of money left over, and if you couldn’t have a drink with your son who was going away to start a new life, when could you have a drink? There was still food at home so there was no need to save every penny. Kitty realised she was not thinking beyond Saturday, beyond the day that she would wave Michael off on the ship. It was as though there was no life for her beyond that. There was, of course, and she would have to begin again the daily battle – working to earn enough to buy food to keep body and soul together – but on her own.

  She caught sight of Michael as he passed the church, and hurried to catch up with him.

  ‘Michael! There you are! Come with me – let’s just sit a while in O’Sullivan’s.’ She took hold of his arm and began to pull him across the town square towards the pub. He looked worn and weary. Thank goodness they had food and he would not have to work on the roads any more. A few more days of the hard labour and little food and he might have collapsed, like so many before him.

  ‘O’Sullivan’s? But the landlord won’t like people to sit inside if they are not his customers, Mammy.’

  ‘He doesn’t mind, sure he doesn’t. But anyway, we can be paying customers today! I have some spare money – enough to buy us each a glass of stout. And there is something I must talk to you about.’

  Michael’s face clouded with suspicion again, as it had last night. ‘Where did you get the money?’

  She ignored his question and instead steered him into the pub, where she ordered two glasses of stout from the barman. There was a small table free, in a snug near the door. She sat on a stool and patted another for Michael. But he remained standing.

  ‘Mammy, the money. Where did it come from?’

  She smiled, in what she hoped was a reassuring way. It was time to lie, and may God forgive her for it. ‘You remember that brooch I found? The one Gracie had hidden away under her mattress?’

  ‘Yes?’ Still he would not sit, although she knew his legs and back must be aching after his day’s work. The barman brought the drinks through and placed them on the table. Kitty put her hand in her pocket to find some coins to pay him, and realised she still had her brooch in there. Thankfully it did not fall out. She paid the barman and watched as Michael took a first sip. The pint of stout would do him good.

  ‘Mother Heaney always said it was valuable. I took it to Cork, to the goldsmiths there.’ She had not lied yet. Perhaps he would make a guess at what had happened and she could just let him assume the brooch had sold for a good amount of money.

  He rose to the bait. ‘You sold it?’

  She simply smiled in response.

  She watched as his face split into the widest possible grin. ‘So that’s how you could afford the food we had last night. Why did you tell me you were given the food?’

  ‘I wanted to tell you over a pint, as a celebration, but you were too tired last night to come back into town.’ It was a poor lie, b
ut it would have to do.

  ‘Well, I will enjoy my pint, ’tis long enough for sure since I last had one. But the rest of the money you must keep to buy food for tomorrow, next week, next month – however long it lasts.’

  ‘I have already spent most of it,’ she said, and pulled the envelope containing the ticket for a place on the Columbus out of her bodice. ‘This is for you. And I’ll hear no arguments about it.’

  ‘What is it?’ He stared at the envelope, but did not reach for it.

  ‘Well now, open it and see!’

  He did, and she noticed his fingers were shaking and his jaw set firm. ‘The Columbus? Is that not the ship James O’Dowell and his family are sailing on?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ She nodded.

  ‘There is just one ticket.’ He raised his eyes to hers, and she saw heartbreak in them.

  ‘Just one, yes, for that is all the money I had. It is for you.’ Be strong, she told herself. Don’t let him see how hard it will be to lose him.

  ‘I cannot leave you alone.’

  ‘You’ll go, my son. You are young, with your life ahead of you. This is your chance!’

  He smiled sadly and reached his hand across the table, to take hers. ‘But, Mammy, you need me here. On your own you cannot earn enough. I won’t see you in the workhouse.’

  ‘I’ll manage. And when I’m after saving enough money, I’ll buy a ticket on another boat and come to join you.’ Even as she said the words, she knew they would never come true. How would she ever be able to save any money? An image of Thomas Waterman flashed through her mind, but she banished it quickly. She would not go to him again, under any circumstances. Besides, she could never go so far from the graves of her little ones. She hadn’t been able to save them, so the least she could do was to stay near their final resting place.

  ‘If I went, and earned enough, I could send you the money for a ticket,’ Michael said, thoughtfully. ‘But how I’d earn money I don’t know. I suppose they will need road builders over there as much as over here.’

  She squeezed his hand. ‘Michael, you have a talent for art. There are rich people in New York, who will pay you to draw their picture. That is how you will make your money. And perhaps, yes, perhaps you will earn enough to send for me.’ She smiled. ‘But only after you have bought yourself a house, settled down with a wife, and have enough money for all that you need. I won’t come, otherwise.’

  He looked down again at the ticket in his hand. ‘This ship sails on Saturday. That’s just two days away.’

  ‘I know.’ She gazed at him, blinking to stop tears from falling. He must not see her weakness in case it stopped him from going.

  ‘Two days,’ he repeated.

  ‘We’ll go and find James O’Dowell tomorrow, when he comes back from Killarney. We’ll tell him the good news that you have a passage on the Columbus too. He and his family will be company for you on the crossing, and perhaps you can help each other out when you reach New York.’

  ‘It’s so soon,’ Michael said.

  ‘It’s your chance, your time,’ she whispered in reply.

  CHAPTER 19

  Maria

  After leaving the presbytery I went back to O’Sullivan’s, my mind still reeling with shock at the revelations in Jackie’s email. I needed to spend time really thinking about it all. I’d planned a walk, but decided to have an early lunch at the pub first. I could begin reading that biography of Michael McCarthy while I ate. Sometimes when you’ve got something really huge to get to grips with, it helps to think about something entirely different for a while. Let your subconscious continue to process the problem while your conscious mind is otherwise occupied. The biography would be perfect for this.

  So I ordered a plate of cod goujons and chips from Aoife, sat in a window seat and opened the little book.

  The first chapter was a brief account of Michael’s early life, growing up in Kildoolin. The author, Martin O’Dowell, had clearly been able to talk to folk who remembered the village before the famine, and it was a wonderful little insight into what it might have been like. There was a mention that Michael was a few years older than his next sibling Patrick, but the author made no indication of any different parentage.

  In the second chapter, the author claimed that his great-uncle had been a kind of surrogate father to Michael after Patrick McCarthy senior had died, and had even given him his first ever sketchbook and pencils, thus starting a great career. I suspected a bit of embellishing here but nevertheless felt pleased that perhaps someone had kept a fatherly eye on the teenage Michael.

  After the deaths of all his siblings, Michael had sailed for New York during the famine, on a ship named the Columbus. Not a ‘coffin’ ship – the name given to the roughest ships in which starving and destitute people tried to escape their poverty, only to die at sea – the author stressed, but a relatively comfortable one. The McCarthys had been amongst the poorest people in Ireland, and it was not known how Michael had paid for his passage. O’Dowell made much of the way his great-uncle had looked after the teenager while on-board ship, and had kept in touch when they reached New York.

  My food arrived before I could begin the third chapter. Aoife hesitated a moment after she put it down.

  ‘Glad to see you’re eating a big lunch after your sickness earlier,’ she said. ‘Any time you need someone to talk to, you know where I am. I mean, I’ve not gone through pregnancy myself – not sure I’m cut out for all that – but I could listen for Ireland. Goes with the job.’ She patted my shoulder.

  ‘Thanks, Aoife,’ I said, putting my hand on top of hers on my shoulder. ‘You’re being a good friend to me. I feel I’ve known you for ages. And Declan, and old Paulie.’

  ‘Ha, your Irish family, so we are,’ she laughed, and returned to her work.

  *

  It was mid-afternoon before I got myself organised for my walk. The weather wasn’t great – the wind was picking up and it was overcast – but it suited my mood. I wouldn’t mind getting wet and blown about a bit. Sometimes battling the elements helps put everything into perspective. So I donned my walking trousers, which no longer buttoned up, a fleece, and my mac and boots, and set off towards the abandoned village. Declan had said it was a good place to think.

  There were a few spots of rain as I made my way up the track, but the fresh air and exercise felt wonderful. I pushed my hood back and let the wind send my hair whipping around my face. My older half-sister – what colour hair would she have? Black, like mine, which I’d inherited from Jackie? Would my sister look anything like me? After a childhood as an only child it was hard to get my head around the idea that there was someone else out there who’d been born from the same mother.

  I reached the village, and perched on a broken down wall about halfway along, just to the side of the stream which ran through the village and across the track. The thick cloud was still high enough not to spoil the view across the moors to the sea, and I gazed into the distance while trying to put my thoughts in order.

  I might have had a brother. I tried to imagine Jackie’s anguish at the stillbirth, and with a jolt realised that could also happen to me. Even though I hadn’t been – still wasn’t – entirely sure I was ready for a baby, the idea of carrying it to term only to lose it was unbearable. I put my hand on my bump, protectively. My feelings were so conflicted still – I hadn’t wanted this baby but I couldn’t bear the thought of losing it either. What I wanted, I suddenly realised, was to begin to love it. I wanted to feel a connection to it – the connection Jackie had felt with her first child and then with her stillborn son, but which she’d refused to let herself feel for me. How did that work? You might assume it would come naturally, but as yet that had not happened for me.

  I gazed around the ruined village. Kitty had lived in one of these cottages. She’d lost so many children, and yet her surviving son had gone to some trouble to express his gratitude for her sacrifices. She must have felt that connection to her eldest, to have done whatever it
was that had inspired him to write those words on the memorial stone.

  The rain was a little heavier now, so I pulled up my hood, tucking strands of wet hair inside. My trousers were soaking but they were made of a quick-drying fabric, and despite the rain and wind it wasn’t cold.

  When I’d been born alive and well, why hadn’t Jackie let herself love me then? She was happily married, not a schoolgirl as she’d been when her first daughter was born, so there was no danger I’d have been taken from her. Why hadn’t she relaxed and enjoyed finally being able to be a proper mother? I tried to remember what she’d said in the email about this. Something about fearing I’d drive a wedge between her and Dad. But he’d loved us both, unconditionally. Jackie didn’t seem to realise that love was not a finite resource – you could love more than one person at a time without it diminishing your supply. Could I do this? I loved Dan unreservedly. Would I be able to love our child as much? Or would he or she come between us and spoil what we had?

  The backs of my legs were beginning to hurt from sitting on the crumbling cottage wall. I stood up, stretched, and debated what to do next. At that moment the rain stopped, and a break in the cloud over the hill revealed a rainbow. Didn’t the legends say that leprechauns hid their pots of gold at the end of a rainbow? On a whim I decided to continue along the track, past the mine ruins and on to the top of the mountain. It looked like the weather might clear up. Might as well take the opportunity to go to the summit and check out the views from there.

  Beyond the village, the track quickly petered out into little more than a sheep’s track. I passed the stone circle and the ruins of the mine buildings, looking stark and unwelcoming against the grey skies. The rainbow was short-lived, and soon the cloud and rain had returned, making me wonder whether I’d made the right decision in going on. But I felt committed to my quest, and the summit wasn’t too far away, so I persevered.