An Ocean Between Us

by Rachel Quinn

  ‘And she gave him a son. Little Ryan certainly changed him, and they’re both young enough to have more.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ he says. ‘Anyway, to answer your question—’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Whether I worry or not.’

  ‘Oh, I know you worry.’

  He frowns. ‘So why did you ask?’

  ‘Because you kept yammering on about me worrying, but I know you worry too but you usually won’t admit it, so I wanted you to remind yourself of that fact.’

  His frown turns to a look of extreme confusion and he spends a few seconds squinting at the cab’s headlining. Then he says, ‘I guess that’s the kind of reasoning I’ve come to expect from you over all these years.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ Aileen says, ‘you say the most romantic things.’

  He puts on an exaggerated Irish accent. ‘Aileen will be Aileen.’ The corners of his mouth twitch and even his nose quivers as he tries to keep a straight face.

  Aileen starts to laugh and he loses the battle. They both lose control. Aileen catches sight of the cab driver glancing at them and trying to suppress a sneer.

  The cab crosses over East River and Aileen happens to look through the window toward the far side, where two lovers kiss as they stroll along the footpath at the side of the bridge. Aileen’s laughter quickly subsides as she’s taken back to a very different bridge, in another country, in a time so far back it might as well be another life.

  Leetown, County Wicklow, October 1943

  Once Aileen had received that one letter from Niall she knew his service number, so she wrote back telling him to address his future letters to Briana for safety.

  So Briana had her uses. But Briana could also be confusing. There was the Autumn Strand Dance – the final one of the year before it became too cold. Briana had egged Aileen on to come along and she’d eventually agreed. Many local men attended – some mere boys, some who Aileen would have seen as quite handsome and full of charm if it weren’t for Niall and the bitterness in her heart. Briana pointed many of them out – isn’t that one smart; hasn’t he lovely blond hair; the tall one with the blue eyes – and Aileen felt the need to show a little disdain each time. Aileen wondered whether Briana was really on her side, or whether she was testing her.

  For the rest of 1943, as the days became shorter, the wireless was on more than off. The Irish stations apparently didn’t like referring to the war at all – only to ‘The Emergency’. It was the British – the BBC – that most people listened to for news of the conflict. It was strange, Aileen thought, that the likes of Daddy and Fergus kept moaning about Britain but were happy to listen to the very same country’s broadcasts. On one occasion Aileen’s mother asked why they listened to something they always complained was British propaganda. The reply was that it gave them something to talk about.

  Aileen liked to listen too – initially in the hope of hearing the word ‘Dodecanese’ and having some idea where it was. More importantly, she sensed that the whole family – the whole country, even – had a reluctant but understandable curiosity for what was happening in Europe.

  She’d heard the stuffy official government announcements on the BBC before, but, like others, preferred listening to discussion and comment by BBC staff. Now, however, one particular type of announcement piqued her interest. It was a request of sorts. For most Irish people the request might have been merely a way to earn money, but for Aileen it was a way out – a way out of Leetown and a chance to escape her father’s ironclad opinions.

  For weeks she agonized over this request, keeping her thoughts to herself, not even mentioning it in her letters to Niall.

  By December, the Leetown sky was so dark and low that it threatened to take the thatch off Sweeney Cottage, and in one letter from Niall, Aileen got the news she was half-fearing but half-expecting: he wasn’t coming home to Ireland on Christmas leave because he was still in hospital recovering from his leg injury. It was difficult news to accept, but Niall had inadvertently given Aileen hope. It was due to him that she’d started listening to the broadcasts in the first place – those broadcasts that had made the request she agonized so much over.

  And now, with Christmas approaching, she had made up her mind. The more immediate problem was telling her family of her decision.

  Telling her mother was an ordeal best left alone for now. No, Briana would be her sounding board. There was no rush, and one mild day the week before Christmas the two sisters were on the beach, washing themselves in the shin-deep water. At this time of year the washes were shorter and the run back to the cottage fire – now blazing – was faster.

  Aileen told Briana to stop splashing, to listen, that she had something to ask her. So Briana stood still and Aileen unburdened herself of her plans.

  ‘You’re going to Belfast?’ Briana said. ‘But why Belfast?’

  ‘Because they need the labour, of course – women to make things in factories, even some in the Forces themselves.’

  Briana’s face reddened at the thought.

  Aileen held up a hand. ‘Ah, no. I’m not talking about joining the Forces, only working in the factories. Tis good money.’

  ‘And what will Daddy think? Have you thought of that?’

  ‘I have.’ Aileen splashed water over her body and shivered. ‘I’ll say I’m helping fellow Irish men and women.’

  ‘But Aileen, ye can’t go.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because . . . well . . . because I’ll miss you, ye daft eejit.’

  ‘Ah, thanks, Briana, and I’ll miss you too, but it won’t be forever, only until the war is over at the very most.’

  ‘And have you thought how long that could be?’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you should. And what about the bombs? Half the place is in ruins, so I hear.’

  ‘Sure, twas bombed years ago. And that’s why they need the labour. Half the people are busy rebuilding the place, half busy making things for the war effort.’

  ‘Making what?’

  ‘Armaments, uniforms, parachutes, medical equipment. They give you a job and arrange some lodgings, so he said.’

  ‘So who said?’

  ‘The man on the wireless.’

  ‘The British man on the wireless? And you believed him?’

  ‘Don’t be starting, Briana.’

  ‘Ah, no, I’m sorry. That’ll be me listening to Daddy too much. I know what you mean. I was talking to a woman in Cready’s whose cousin has gone up there. But I can just hear what Daddy will say.’ Briana put on as gruff a voice as she could muster: ‘Sure, it’s a fool who believes the word of the British government.’

  The laughter warmed up both women for a few seconds, but Briana stopped quickly enough and told Aileen she was serious, that he wouldn’t like it at all.

  Aileen thought for a moment. ‘I’ll just have to deal with Daddy when I really have to and not before.’

  ‘All right,’ Briana said.

  Aileen expected more, but Briana’s reaction hadn’t been too negative, although sometimes with Briana it was hard to tell.

  They washed in silence, save the barely suppressed screams at the cold, then Briana waded over and gave her sister a hug. ‘Do it,’ she said. ‘I think you should go.’

  ‘You’re not against the idea?’

  ‘I am a little. I’ll get awful lonely without you, so I will, but . . . ah, no, you might be happier up there. Aren’t you the lovesick one stuck in Leetown? A little time in a big city might show you Niall isn’t everything.’

  Aileen scowled at the remark.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Briana said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant—’

  ‘Briana. You’re not . . . jealous, are you?’

  Briana nodded toward the cottage. ‘Freezing is what I am. C’mon, let’s get in front of that fire.’

  ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ Aileen blurted out.

  Briana’s mouth fell open on hearing t
he words, but no answer came and she looked away – out to sea, back to the row of cottages and up to Bevanstown.

  ‘I’m serious, Briana. Twould be company. For the two of us.’

  ‘I’ll see. Perhaps. Or perhaps another time – I’ll think about it.’

  Aileen tutted and threw her gaze to the sky.

  ‘What?’ Briana said.

  ‘Your problem is that you’re always thinking but never doing. Twould be so much better if we went up there together. I know you’ve thought about moving out of Leetown once or twice. Why not now?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m . . .’

  ‘Scared?’

  Briana sighed. ‘Aileen, d’you not think I’ve wanted to get out of this place before?’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘I’m worried for Mammy.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re scared, aren’t you?’

  ‘Perhaps I am. But whatever it is, it’s just the way I am.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Briana, eyes low and pain drawn on her face, didn’t reply.

  ‘So, what if I were to say I’d only go if you came with me?’

  ‘Oh heck, Aileen. Please don’t be like me.’

  ‘Like you?’

  ‘Weak. Don’t be weak.’

  ‘I won’t, Briana. Believe me, I won’t. But I’m thinking of you too. I mean, are you really going to just stay here and wait for a man to come and sweep you away?’

  ‘You don’t understand, Aileen. It’s harder for me. You were right when you talked about this being Tinytown. It’s stifling, so it is. But the longer you stay here, the more fear you have, the more time Tinytown has to put its hooks in your back.’

  ‘So, you’re just going to wait here and do nothing for the rest of your life?’

  Briana thought for a few seconds, then shook her head. ‘I’m just not as strong as you, Aileen. And now I’m freezing. C’mon and let’s get to that fire.’ She shivered and broke into a run.

  Aileen knew Briana’s words should have made her think long and hard about how to tell her father of her plans. She knew that more than anything. But the days passed and it seemed mean to spoil Christmas for everyone, so she left it until the last week of the year, when the time seemed right, while she and her mother were alone, collecting water from the well up the lane.

  ‘Belfast?’ Aileen’s mother stopped pumping the well.

  ‘I need to do it, Mammy,’ Aileen said.

  Her mother’s face was visibly shaking. ‘But . . . but why Belfast? Why not Dublin?’

  ‘They have jobs in Belfast.’

  ‘They have bombs in Belfast.’

  ‘That was a few years ago.’

  Aileen’s mother started to pump again, driving the handle back and forth furiously until the bucket was full, then spent a few moments staring at it. ‘It’s still a city at war, Aileen.’

  ‘The world is at war, Mammy.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care about the world. I care about my daughter.’ She swapped the full bucket for an empty one and gestured for Aileen to take her turn.

  Aileen took a breath and set to work. ‘I’m going, Mammy,’ she said between grunts. ‘Would you prefer it if I went to London or Birmingham or Liverpool?’

  ‘Pah! I can’t see your father being too pleased about any of those.’

  ‘That’s the point, Mammy. To him it’s Ireland. I’ll be helping Irish people. I’m trying, Mammy. I’m trying hard to please everyone.’

  A flat smile slowly appeared on her mother’s lips. ‘I suppose I can see your point there.’ She nodded. ‘Let’s get these buckets back to the cottage and I’ll think about it.’

  Aileen grabbed a handle on each side. ‘You can think about it, Mammy. But I’m going.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘On my own. And I’m not going to tell Daddy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can tell him if you want to, Mammy. I won’t be.’

  ‘Right.’ Her mother nodded to herself. ‘Right you are.’

  Chapter 11

  Belfast, Northern Ireland, January 1944

  One chilly winter afternoon a nervous Aileen stepped off the train at Great Victoria Street Station, the case she’d borrowed from her mother grasped tightly in her hand. The air was distinctly cooler than back down south and that helped, somehow awakening her, invigorating her.

  The journey from Leetown had been uneventful, although the leaving of the village had been a blur at the time. Her mother had wished her well, the boys of the household too, despite their disagreements. Only Briana and their mother saw her off at the station. A wordless wait on the platform, a long hug from the mammy she would miss, and a longer hug from the sister she would miss even more. And then, at the last moment, as Aileen stepped toward the carriage, Briana hugged her again and managed to thrust something into her coat pocket.

  ‘It came yesterday,’ she whispered. ‘I thought you’d appreciate something to read on the journey so I kept it back.’

  Aileen wanted to thank her sister, but was also angry for a moment. If Niall had written her a letter she wanted to read it as soon as possible. But this was no time for anger, and then the whistle sounded and the feeling was gone. She waved her mother and sister goodbye, and as the train started moving the enormity of her decision hit home. She would no longer be able to talk to Briana, let alone share an embrace or go for a walk together along the shore or across the River Crannagh.

  As the train pulled away from Leetown, Aileen felt her heart resist the motion like a leaden weight. She waved out of the carriage window until she was merely waving to the arc of the train as it pulled away and across the river, past the beach where she’d first met Niall.

  Niall.

  She sat and hurriedly opened the letter. Better that than cry.

  10 January 1944

  My dearest Aileen,

  If you are reading this, it means you are still in Leetown and your lovely sister is still passing on my mail. Please tell me your new address in Belfast and I will write there directly.

  I’m supposing that going straight from little Leetown to Belfast will be hard for you. You will have to put up with the noise and traffic and sheer number of people, but I’m sure there will be compensations in the way of shops, cinemas, dances and suchlike. I wrote in an earlier letter how I visited London with a few of the chaps (I was based in Aldershot at the time so it wasn’t far). At first it was just too much for me. I hated it and longed for a deserted field like back home or a beach like at Leetown. But after a while there was a sort of beauty to it with so many lights reflecting off the river at night. You don’t see things like that in a small place.

  If there’s one practical piece of advice I can give you, it would be never to forget that there will always be a train back to Leetown should you need it. But hopefully you won’t need to heed that advice, Belfast will be to your liking and you’ll make friends there. I wish you the best of luck. You are a brave woman and should be proud of yourself for helping the war effort. I’m certainly proud of you. I absolutely detest being away from you, but the more I learn about the war and what that man Hitler is doing, the more I feel I did the right thing in joining the British Army.

  Anyway, to more mundane matters. I’m still in Aldershot, a patient in the Cambridge Military Hospital. If you don’t know, Aldershot is in Hampshire and nowhere near Cambridge at all. And this is a country where they make jokes about the Irish being odd!

  And I’m still bedridden – me and my bust leg. They say it was a bad break and it’s still very painful if I try to move. The good news is that the doctors tell me it should mend stronger and better than it was before. The bad news is I’m in and out of sleep with the pain, although thankfully they’ve stopped giving me morphine – it was giving me hellish nightmares of the day I broke my leg.

  The nurses occasionally sneak me in a little brandy to help with the pain. I keep telling them I prefer the black stuff. I don’t think they know what I mean. You c
an’t always get Guinness here, and when you do it doesn’t quite taste the same as back home. I miss it, but not half as much as I miss you, Aileen.

  Anyway, I’m really tired now, so I’ll sign off.

  I still miss you every day, and whenever I wake up you are in my first thoughts.

  Your loving fiancé,

  Niall.

  Aileen had read the letter countless times on the journey, and now that journey was behind her. In truth – or in all fairness, as Niall would have put it – she was halfway between nervous and scared. But she took a few steps along the station platform and told herself that Niall was right – there was a train back home if she needed it, and there always would be. That fleeting thought of Niall reminded her that he was enduring much greater hardships. If he could do what he was doing, then she could work in a factory.

  Just as she’d heard on the wireless, the posters were everywhere and they guided her out of the station and to the building where she would be allocated a job and somewhere to live.

  After queuing up there, she had a short conversation about what work she would prefer.

  ‘Dressings and materials it is,’ the man said, which didn’t make much sense to Aileen. But she was given a small map of directions to her workplace and lodgings, and set off.

  This was going to be a completely new way of life. She would have regular money coming in, but more responsibility: she would have to pay for her food and lodgings. This was a big city with no family to give her eggs and no local farms to provide a joint of pork in return for labour. And the first step in this new life was turning up for work. On time. As she walked through the Belfast streets she noticed it was just like Dublin in one important respect: there were clocks everywhere here, so turning up for work would be easy. She headed for the factory.

  Aileen had been adamant in her desire not to get into an argument with her father before leaving Leetown, and the parting had gone as well as she could have expected: few words had been exchanged, but none of them angry. That, she hoped, was because she’d told him she wouldn’t be working on weapons or their components, so he had no need to concern himself that she was helping to arm the Brits. It had been Briana’s idea to emphasize that so as not to burn her bridges. She really missed Briana, who had given her valuable advice: keep Leetown as a refuge in case she wasn’t happy in Belfast, because she’d have to go back there some day anyway. Avoiding a big bust-up would also make life a little easier for Mammy and Briana, which was no bad thing.