The Hungry Road
Page 28
He badgered her over the next three days, wearing her down about the house and opportunity that he would miss out on.
‘Oh … I don’t know.’ She gave in, exasperated. ‘Tell Pat to come here and talk to us about it.’
‘The worst that will happen, Mary, is that we improve the old building and sell it at a higher price than we paid for it,’ explained Pat, his face serious. ‘I promise you that we both will still have our proper jobs. We will do the renovations in the evenings and at weekends when we are free. We’ll get a few of the men we know to give us a bit of a hand if need be.’
‘But when will you have the time?’ she asked with worry. ‘You already work so hard.’
‘You find time for extra dressmaking work,’ John reminded her gently. ‘It will be the same for me.’
She smiled. ‘God knows we are both hard workers!’
Despite her reservations, Mary agreed reluctantly to John using their meagre savings to go in with his brother on the house. She prayed that he was not being foolish or wasteful.
The two brothers nearly killed themselves fixing up and repairing the house, month after month. John was so tired he would nearly fall asleep standing up.
By September, the work was finished and it was ready to be rented out.
‘It’s a lot better than Mrs Beatty’s,’ Mary had to admit when she went to see the finished Mott Street building.
The wood was freshly painted, which was basic, but the place was at least now dry and warm. They rented it quickly to six families, who were glad to find rooms with a stove and proper outside water closet.
‘Isn’t it a bit crowded?’ she asked, worried.
‘We could have rented it out ten times over,’ Pat reminded her dryly. ‘Remember, it’s the tenants who help us to repay the loan.’
CHAPTER 89
Skibbereen
March 1851
AS DAN DROVE FROM BALLYDEHOB INTO TOWN IT GRIEVED HIM TO SEE field after field with tumbled cottages, their stones now used to make low walls, and all the overgrown potato patches covered with weeds and nettles, ferns and gorse, terrible reminders of the hunger. Large areas of land all across the Mizen had been cleared and now lay empty as family after family had been evicted. Those people were now scattered to the winds like birds across the Atlantic to Canada and North America.
From reports he had read, the attrition rate on sea voyages was a disgrace and many died on board. Coffin ships, some called them. Even if they survived the journey, many died in the quarantine hospitals, and for what? The herds of cattle and sheep that now grazed these forlorn grassy fields! What a travesty, he thought as he urged his horse homewards.
He looked into the crib at his newborn daughter, Catherine. A perfect, healthy baby. He prayed that she would stay well.
‘She looks like you, Dan,’ Henrietta said with a smile. ‘See that serious look on her little face, and the way she scrunches her nose?’
‘She is a beauty like her mother.’ He laughed, noting the pert little upturned nose of his daughter and perfect tiny rosebud lips.
The older children were all delighted with their new sister, especially three-year-old John, while one-and-a-half-year-old William was naturally a little jealous of the baby.
‘Now, go run and play, children,’ Henrietta urged them with a smile. ‘Give your dada and me some peace.’
It did Dan good to see the family happy, and Henrietta was in her element with this latest baby to attend to. It had been a straightforward birth and Catherine seemed a good child so far.
He kissed his wife’s head. She seemed surprised by his sudden show of affection.
‘You and the children are everything to me,’ he declared. ‘You do know that?’
‘Of course I do. We all do,’ she said, reaching gently for his hand.
Dan took her in his arms and held her close. His wife was the one constant in his life. Her love gave him the strength and courage to carry on, even on the darkest of days.
‘I love you, Hetty, and I always will.’
‘Dan, I’ve loved you practically from the minute we were first introduced,’ she teased, ‘and I will love you till I am a very old lady.’
Satisfied, he held her close to his heart, where she always was.
CHAPTER 90
New York City
April 1853
MARY AND JOHN STROLLED PAST MR BARNUM’S AMERICAN MUSEUM ON the corner of Broadway and Ann Street, with its exotic Siamese twins and strange and terrible wonders of the natural world. A place she longed to visit!
They stopped to admire the recently opened St Nicholas Hotel. It was magnificent and even more decadent than New York’s renowned Astor Hotel.
‘It cost a million dollars to build,’ said John admiringly. ‘There are six hundred rooms, but soon it will have one thousand.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ murmured Mary.
She watched a little enviously as the crowds of wealthy women and gentlemen in their fine style passed through its tall, polished brass doors, noting the finer details of the ladies’ dresses so that she could endeavour to copy them.
‘Some day we will dine there,’ promised John.
‘We will never afford it,’ Mary said with a laugh, as instead they walked on until they stopped at the corner of Broadway to buy oysters from the busy oyster cart.
‘This country is different from Ireland, for here one man is as good as the next,’ John said seriously, adding a shake of salt to his oysters. ‘And one man’s money is as good as another’s! Once you work long and hard there is an opportunity, even for the likes of us.’
‘And heaven knows we both work hard enough,’ she said, squeezing his arm.
‘Do you recall the narrow brick house down at the very far end of our street, with the broken windows?’ asked John.
‘Not very well. Is it the derelict one? ’Tis in a terrible state. A piece of shingle fell off it and nearly killed a poor messenger boy. It should be condemned.’
‘Aye. Pat heard that the owner is moving away and selling it next month. I was wondering if we should consider trying to buy it.’
‘You and Pat want to buy it?’
Mary sighed. She wasn’t sure she wanted her husband borrowing more money or undertaking so much work again.
‘No, it’s nothing to do with Pat,’ he protested. ‘I was thinking that it might suit us to live in.’
‘How can we possibly buy a home of our own?’ she argued hotly. ‘John Sullivan, you know well we don’t have that type of money!’
‘I admit it needs a whole heap of work, but Pat and I, and young Tim can do much of it, and Pat says the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank might consider lending us the money.’
John sighed heavily as they inspected the inside of the ramshackle house on Mulberry Street. Its decrepit condition was far worse than Mary could have imagined.
‘The floorboards are rotten and there is a big hole in the roof. The staircase has collapsed and half the windows are broken,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose that is why it is so cheap.’
Mary’s heart sank with disappointment. A strong musty smell pervaded the property and one wall was running with damp. The yard was infested with cockroaches. It was a wreck of a place. No wonder it was lying abandoned and empty. She doubted there was any hope of salvaging such a place.
‘However, there is more room than I expected,’ declared John. ‘I know that it will take months to make the building even habitable, but I believe it could make a decent home for us.’
‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted, ‘that I’d ever want to live here.’
‘Pat and Tim will give me a hand. With the right amount of work, I think that it will suit us and our needs. There is even a little room that you could use for your dressmaking.’
Mary could see how excited John was at the prospect of taking the old building and renovating it.
‘It’s an opportunity for us, Mary,’ he pleaded. ‘If the savings bank lends us the money, then it’s a ch
ance for us that we may not get again – to have a few rooms that we can call our own.’
Three months later, despite her reservations, John had borrowed from the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank and the broken-down house was theirs.
CHAPTER 91
September 1854
MARY RAN HER FINGERS OVER THE NEW DRAPES, CUSHIONS AND counterpanes that she and Nora had made for the house on Mulberry Street. She and her daughters had scrubbed every last inch of the place. John, Tim and Jude had done much of the carpentry and repair work themselves. Pat too had helped with the rebuilding work and she was grateful not only for this but for everything he had done for them since they had first arrived in New York.
‘Mam, look at our proper bedroom!’ eleven-year-old Annie laughed as she jumped on the bed that she and Nora would share, while Tim and Jude were happy to no longer have to share with the girls. Instead, they would have the narrow room that overlooked the street.
The large kitchen was warm, with a fine new stove, and there was a smaller room that looked out on the yard that would serve as her sewing room. The top floor, with its two attic rooms, they would rent out.
She had never imagined that in time they would have a home of their own here in the city.
‘I know that it’s not in the best of neighbourhoods and still needs some repairs, but at least it is ours,’ she said proudly.
‘No one will ever take the roof from over the head of a Sullivan again,’ pledged John firmly. ‘Not while there is still life in us.’
‘This place reminds me of a meitheal back home,’ suggested Pat as he hammered some nails into the last step of the wooden staircase. ‘Where everyone helps out, whatever way they can.’
Mary smiled, remembering when neighbours and friends gathered together to help bring in the harvest, mend a thatch roof, or repair a cottage damaged by gales or storms. Or even to give a hand to a young couple to build a simple cabin of their own. A meitheal always meant food and drink and hospitality.
Pat was right – so many had helped to turn this place into a home. She and John happily drew up a guest list for a housewarming, surprised by how many new friends they had made since they had first arrived in New York.
Catherine Ryan and her husband, James, insisted on bringing a large maple-glazed ham for the party, while Mena had made her a fine tablecloth and napkins. Lily Connolly and her new husband, Michael, brought along a porter cake, John’s boss, Jerome Daly, arrived with a large bottle of poitín, and Sarah brought along a friend who worked with her.
‘They never get proper home cooking, Auntie Mary,’ confided Jude, who had invited two of the other apprentices who worked with him at the printer’s.
Pat, much to their surprise, arrived, eyes shining, with a pretty, dark-haired young woman in tow.
‘This is Ellen Cleary,’ he said, introducing her. ‘She works in the haberdashery shop near Broad Street.’
‘I sell buttons and bows, mostly,’ she said with a laugh.
‘Welcome,’ Mary said, smiling, delighted to meet the kind, blue-eyed girl who she suspected had stolen Pat’s heart finally.
‘I bought you this.’ Pat laughed as he unwrapped a large slab of cooked corned beef in the kitchen. ‘Try as I could, I couldn’t find a hare to catch!’
‘Mary and I thank you all for coming this evening and for your help in making this old house into a home,’ John said to everyone, as all the guests cheered and clapped.
Smiling, they looked around them proudly at their family and friends, and everything this new life and hard work had brought them.
Later, with the house quiet and their friends gone, Mary and John sat out on the narrow back step together. The night was still warm and, as Mary gazed up at the starry sky and moon glowing over the city, she pondered the past. The calamity and sadness they had endured; the terrible hunger and crossing the wild Atlantic Ocean, where they had lost their beloved boy Con. She would never forget the ravaged streets of Skibbereen and all those dear to them who had been taken, and how she and John had been forced to leave their home place for ever.
Life had been so cruel, but somehow they had survived. Fate had surely brought them and their family here to this new life in New York.
Mary laid her face against John’s. She still loved her husband as much as the day he had asked her to marry him. She had no idea where time would take them, but as long as they were together that was all that mattered to her.
They spoke little of the past. Instead, they looked to all that life here in this new land, America, would bring them and their children. Their heads and hearts were full of dreams and plans for the future, and the years together ahead of them …
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Skibbereen Heritage Centre where I did much of the research for the book.
Huge thanks are due to Philip O’Reagan of the centre for his invaluable assistance, his patience and kindness, and his insights into the life of Dr Dan Donovan and Skibbereen at the time of the Great Famine.
Thanks also to Margaret Murphy, Skibbereen Heritage Centre’s genealogist, who helped me with Dr Donovan’s family history.
Thanks to Father Patrick Hickey for meeting me. His book, Famine in West Cork, is a huge source of local information.
To the town of Skibbereen. Walking its streets and lanes, and seeing Abbeystrewery graveyard and the Old Steam Mill on Ilen Street where the soup kitchen once was, made it easier to write such a story.
Special thanks also to Professor Christine Kinealy for her absolute dedication to researching the period of the Great Hunger, and to the Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University, Connecticut, US – a wonderful resource.
To Caroilin Callery of Strokestown Park House – the National Famine Museum – in Roscommon, for her huge commitment to creating even more awareness of the Great Irish Famine.
To my cousin Paddy Murphy for a piece of Skibbereen lore he shared with me.
My thanks go to my publishers, Transworld, and the team in both Ireland and London.
Special thanks to my editor, Fiona Murphy, for the enthusiasm and support she gave to me and the book during the long journey from page to print, and also to my London editor, Francesca Best. Huge thanks are also due to my copy-editor, Rebecca Wright, for her insightful suggestions and her patience working on such a big book, and to production editor Viv Thompson, Donna Hillyer, Josh Benn and Orla King.
To Fíodhna Ní Ghríofa in Dublin and Katie Cregg in London for their creative publicity campaigns, and huge thanks to Marianne Issa El-Khoury for her great cover design.
To my agent, Caroline Sheldon, for her constant support and friendship over the years, and to Rosie Buckman, my foreign rights agent.
To all the bookshops and booksellers, your support over the years is very much appreciated.
Thanks to all my writer friends for their encouragement and wisdom, especially Sarah Webb, Martina Devlin and Don Conroy.
My final thanks go to my wonderful family. My kind and patient husband, James, who has been by my side since I started this writing journey.
My children, Mandy, Laura, Fiona and James, and their partners, Michael Hearty, James Hodgins, Mike Fahy and Se Young An, and my grandchildren, Holly, Sam, Ben, Max, Evie, James, Alex and Harry.
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