CHAPTER TWO
“Oh, Rose, I wish I’d never set foot on this ship,” Mary moaned. She was curled up in a hammock directly above Rose, and she had been making a terrible racket, complaining mightily about her queasy stomach ever since the storm started several hours ago. Rose herself wasn’t feeling much better, having already made two trips up on deck to vomit over the side of the ship as it pitched and rolled in the storm’s fury.
“Don’t think of it, Mary,” Rose said. “Sure and it’ll blow itself out after a time. Say your prayers, and it’ll take your mind off the situation.”
“It’s saying my prayers I’ve been doing this whole blessed night,” Mary said, groaning. “And my mind hasn’t stopped. It’s telling me we made a mistake leaving Ireland, and we’re going to perish before we ever get to America. God is punishing us for our hunger for money.”
“Now you’re talking nonsense,” Rose said. “God wouldn’t punish us for trying to help our families. We’re just trying to do our best for the people we love, and what’s the wrong in that?”
Just then the ship shuddered and plunged down a great wave, and the hammocks swung against the walls while the belongings of the people around them below decks crashed and there were moans and cries of, “God save us!” from every quarter. The storm had come on them just after sunset, and it had been thrashing the ship about for what seemed like an eternity. Not only that, but the ship groaned and creaked with every buffet, as if it were about to splinter apart with each wave.
“If I ever get off this ship I’ll kiss the ground and never leave it again,” Mary said, as the ship settled itself before the next wave. “I’ll never get on another one of these floating coffins as long as I live.”
“Sure, and you’d never see Ireland again if you did that,” Rose said. “Unless you know another way of getting home, you’ll have to take a ship to come back.”
“God help me, if I have to take a ship I’ll never see my home again,” Mary said, as another boom of thunder roared in the background.
“Now, Mary, don’t talk such nonsense,” Rose said. “We’ll all be going home again, God willing.”
“We should have stayed,” Mary said. “If I was you, Rose Sullivan, I’d never have left, not with that fine McCarthy boy making eyes at me like he did to you.”
“He did more than that,” Rose said, mischievously. She was trying to distract the two of them from the terrible storm, and she thought talk of Sean McCarthy might do that.
“What do you mean?” Mary said.
“Why, he kissed me, don’t you know,” Rose said, feeling the color rise to her cheeks.
“Kissed you?” Mary poked her head out of her covers, and looked down at Rose. “Why the devil didn’t you tell me this before? That black-haired boy kissed you? What was it like, Rose? Tell me this instant.”
“It was like a spark of fire on my lips, and it spread through my whole body,” Rose said. “I can tell you it kept me warm the rest of the night.”
“You don’t say! How many times?”
“Just once! What kind of a girl do you think I am, Mary Driscoll? Do you think I’d be kissing a strange boy the whole night through?”
“No, but I can tell you what I’d have done,” Mary said. “I’d have sold my ticket on this blasted ship, and home I’d stay if a boy who looked like that kissed me.”
For the twentieth time in the last couple of days Rose wondered the same thing. The very thought of Sean McCarthy’s kiss made her heart pound and her breath come short. Strange new feelings welled up in her, and she could hardly think straight. Should she have stayed home, abandoned her plans to go to America and save her family?
One look at the miserable conditions around her was enough to quell those thoughts. Everywhere she turned there were ragtag Irish, dressed in tattered clothes and clutching their few possessions close to them, moaning in misery in the dank, smelly bowels of the ship. Desperation shone in their eyes, and a hunger for something better. They had been pushed to this point by a country that had nothing left for them, no hope of anything save a life of poverty on land that was not their own, in a world that could find no use for them.
She thought of her own family, her damaged mother wandering the fields talking to herself about “The Good People”, the fairy folk, whose name must never be mentioned, her poor father whose body was stiff with rheumatism, her brother who was already turning bitter at 18 about his prospects in this hard land, and her two younger sisters whose bodies were thin and whose faces were hollow with hunger.
It was up to her, Rose, to do something about it. She had long assumed the role of caretaker in the family, doing the chores and the nurturing that her mother had abandoned. She was “little mother”, as her father Abraham had called her since she was a young girl. She could not abandon that role to run after a handsome boy with tender lips. She must do her job; do what was expected of her, no matter how hard. It was up to her to save the family.
“Ah, it wasn’t meant to be,” Rose said. “I have a task to carry out, and I can’t let my head be turned by one kiss from a handsome boyo.”
“Rose, you’re a better girl than me,” Mary said, as the ship shuddered and groaned and rolled down another wave. “I’d give anything to be back in Skibbereen right now, sporting around with a boy like Sean McCarthy.”
“Now, Mary, think of the wonders we’ll see in America,” Rose said. “Besides, there’ll be plenty of handsome boys there, I’m sure. Doesn’t your sister Kate say so in her letters?”
“That she does,” Mary said, warming to the subject. “She says they have dances there that all the folks from home goes to. She says the girls get all dressed up in their finest clothes, and they have the money to buy the latest fashions, you know. She sent us a picture of herself in a dress with buttons all the way up the front, and a fancy hat, and looking like the Queen herself she was. She says everybody has money in America. The people she works for have a big house with fine furniture and silver forks and spoons, and they eat steak and kidney pie every night for dinner. They have a fine carriage with handsome horses, and they dress in the latest fashions from Paris.”
“And she says there’s work for us?” Rose said. “She can get us jobs in such a grand place?”
“To be sure,” Mary said. “Kate says they need more serving girls, and she told them we’re two respectable girls who’ll be arriving soon. We’ll be living the high life yet, Rose Sullivan.” She groaned as the ship lurched again and the thunder boomed. “If only we make it across this terrible ocean in the first place.”
They did make it across, much to Mary’s relief, and she did kiss the ground as soon as she came down the gangplank. They were in Philadelphia, and a crowded, busy city it was, with more people than they had ever seen in their little town of Skibbereen. The scene at the dock was pure chaos, with people shouting for their relatives and friends, police bellowing orders, children crying, Irish runners strong-arming the new emigrants with offers of a room or a job for a price, and everything a whirl of noise and activity.
In the middle of all this pandemonium there suddenly came a terrible clanging noise and a horse standing only yards away from Rose reared up and threw its rider, a mounted policeman.
People screamed and backed away, while the horse went racing about, its eyes wide in terror, the smell of its animal fear blanketing the air. Suddenly there appeared something that looked like a red and black train car, running along tracks in the street and connected to wires overhead. There were sparks coming from the wires and a burning, acrid smell everywhere. There was a driver visible in the front window, in a blue uniform and cap. He was waving his hands frantically, and Rose saw with horror what he was looking at.
There was an old Irish man directly in front of the car. He was sitting on a large brown steamer trunk that he had put down on the track -- probably looking for a spot to rest after the long sea journey -- and he was frozen in terror, incapable of moving in time to get out of the way of the terrib
le contraption that was bearing down on him.
“Move!” a policeman cried. “Get off the tracks!” but the old man just sat there, his eyes as wide as saucers, an unlit clay pipe sticking out from between his teeth.
Someone in the crowd screamed, and Rose put her hands to her face, expecting the old man to be run over any second, but then, just before the moment of impact a young policeman ran over, dove headfirst into the man, and the two of them went sprawling onto the cobblestoned street next to the tracks. The train car collided with the steamer trunk and its top popped open, spilling its contents everywhere, along with the remnants of the trunk itself.
A large police sergeant ran over to the old man, and said, “What the devil do you mean, sitting down on a streetcar track?” His face was red with anger, and he was shaking his billy club at the old man. “You almost killed Officer Brooks over there, and you could have been killed yourself.”
The old man had tears running down his face, as he surveyed the wreckage of his trunk. “Begging your pardon, Your Honor, but that’s all the possessions I have in the world. I didn’t want to lose them. I never seen such a thing as that machine coming at me, and I froze.”
“Stupid Irish,” the policeman said. “God help me, dealing with the likes of you potato farmers.”
“Aye,
Rose Of Skibbereen, The Beginning Page 2