The Girl Who Came Home - a Titanic Novel

by Hazel Gaynor

  THE GIRL WHO CAME HOME

  A Titanic Novel

  by

  Hazel Gaynor

  The Girl Who Came Home – A Titanic Novel © Hazel Gaynor

  Kindle edition Copyright 2012 © Hazel Gaynor

  This is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact and those identified in the Authors Note, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to organisations, places, things or events is purely coincidental and entirely unintentional.

  All rights reserved in all media. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form other than that which it was purchased and without the written permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the author.

  Cover design by Andrew Brown @design4writers

  Cover image ‘Maiden Voyage’ is used with the kind permission of the artist ©Jim McDonald.

  Visit www.titanicart.co.uk to purchase prints of the original painting and other Titanic art by the same artist.

  This book is dedicated to the memory of The Addergoole Fourteen and all those who lost their lives on Titanic on April 15th, 1912.

  Never since the dawn of history was such disaster known

  Fifteen hundred human bodies on the waste of waters thrown

  Ah! The loss of the Titanic is deplored in every clime,

  And the story sad recorded even to the end of time.

  From a poem by Mitchell O’Grady, Connaught Telegraph, 25th May, 1912

  And as the smart ship grew

  In stature, grace, and hue

  In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

  From ‘The Convergence of the Twain’, Thomas Hardy, 1912

  PART I

  Dorothy Gibson Carpathia: ' Will be worried to death till I hear from you what awful agony. Julie'.

  Marconigram message sent from Julie [Jules E Brutalom], New York via Cape Cod to Miss Dorothy Gibson, Titanic on 16th April 1912

  CHAPTER 1 - County Mayo, Ireland, 10th April, 1912

  Maggie Murphy stood alone and unnoticed at the small window of the thatched, stone cottage which three generations of her family had called home. She twirled one of her rich, auburn curls around and around her index finger, as she did when she was anxious, and watched as the day she had been dreading dawned in the sky above the distant mountains.

  Narrowing her usually wide, chestnut eyes against the glare of the early morning sun reflecting on the glass, she wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her jacket sleeves to try and keep warm as she quietly observed her friend Peggy Madden outside. Peggy’s laughter filled the air as she vigorously scooped up armful after armful of cherry blossom and, giggling like a schoolgirl, threw it into the air, the pale pink and white petals cascading down onto the heads of her cousin Jack and his wife Maura who were sitting on the dewy grass. Peggy had caught them kissing under one of the trees a few moments earlier.

  ‘Just like your wedding day Maura,’ she cried. ‘There’s confetti enough here for all of us to be brides and then maybe there’ll be some kissing for us too.’

  The two women laughed. Maggie wondered how they could be so carefree when her own heart was heavy and troubled.

  Unseen, she continued to watch her fellow travellers for a few moments longer, Peggy fussing with her new hat and Maura placing a hand protectively over her stomach. Her baby wasn’t due for another few months yet, but her belly was already large and swollen. Maggie was mildly fascinated by it; by the fact that an actual person was growing in there and she wondered how Maura would fare on their journey. She’d heard talk of the difficulties and strain which a crossing of the Atlantic could place upon a person and for a woman with a baby growing in her belly she was certain that it couldn’t be such a good idea. She’d expressed her concerns to her aunt Kathleen a few days previously.

  ‘You certainly don’t need to be worrying about Maura Brennan, I can tell ye,’ Kathleen had replied, brushing Maggie’s naïve fears easily aside. ‘She’s crossed that ocean more times than most men ever will and a baby in her belly won’t make one bit of a difference. Anyway, we’re sailing on the Titanic, the biggest ship in the world. Unsinkable y’know. No better crib for any of us.’

  Her aunt’s words hadn’t really reassured Maggie and neither had the adverts in the Western People which Peggy had insisted on showing to herself and Katie.

  ‘Look girls,’ she’d enthused, hurling herself down onto the grass between them and shoving the pages of the local newspaper under their noses. ‘It’s amazing isn’t it? Listen to what is says: ‘The Queen of the Ocean, Titanic, The Finest Steamer Afloat, over 45,000 tons of steel and triple screws.’ Can you believe we’re going to be sailing on that? They say it stands higher than Nephin Mor and that there’s a hand basin in every cabin, even the third class ones!’

  Peggy’s enthusiasm about the journey to America and this fancy new ship which they were to sail on was hard to ignore. Most of them had never been on a train or a boat. Were it not for the fact that this journey didn’t come with a return fare, Maggie assumed she would have been quite excited at the prospect of the journey ahead. As it was, she had her own reasons for wishing to stay in Ballysheen and since she didn’t care for water, barely dipping the tips of her toes into Loch Conn on warm, summer days, the prospect of travelling across the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean filled her with a hollow anxiety.

  Not wanting to dampen Peggy’s excitement and well aware that her pragmatic aunt Kathleen had no time for the silly notions and unfounded worries of young girls, she hadn’t mentioned her doubts or anxieties about the trip to anyone, not even when Joe Kenny had read the leaves in his sister Katie’s teacup last night and told her she would drown.

  ‘For the love of God Joseph Kenny, don’t be tellin’ me stuff like that you eejit,’ Katie had hissed at her brother, hoping that Maggie hadn’t overhead. ‘Especially not in front of Maggie, she’s nervous enough as it is.’ But from her perch on the butter churn in the corner of the kitchen, Maggie had heard, and wished she hadn’t.

  Maggie was very fond of Peggy and Katie. They were more like sisters to her than old school friends and she was glad that, along with the others from the Parish, they would be making the journey to America together; Peggy to join her cousin in St. Louis, Missouri and Katie to join her sister Catherine in New York. Maggie would be travelling to join her aunt Mary in Chicago along with her aunt Kathleen, who would act as her chaperone for her journey.

  Peggy Madden was the perfect balance to Maggie’s reflective, considered nature; renowned for her sharp sense of humour and flighty notions. She was also renowned for her good looks with a pretty, heart-shaped face, long blonde hair and full, rosy lips which the boys seemed to especially like. Maggie was slightly envious of Peggy’s hair which she would leave to hang loose about her shoulders whenever she could. Maggie would often frown in the mirror at her own unruly, auburn curls which barely reached her shoulders, brushing and teasing them to try and make them lay sleek and flat like Peggy’s. They never did.

  Katie Kenny was a blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked girl who was well-known in the parish from her job at O’Donoghue’s shop and well-liked for her caring and kind-hearted temperament. Maggie knew how much Katie missed her sister Catherine who had been in America for the last three years and how much she was looking forward to seeing her very soon.

  Maggie enjoyed listening to her two
friend’s romantic notions of sailing to America, where they imagined a life of wealth and independence waiting for them. They aspired to the American way of life which they saw in the women who returned from there, like Maura Brennan and Maggie’s aunt, Kathleen Murphy. The self-assurance and poise displayed by these women was undeniably inspiring to the naïve younger girls of the parish and they could often be found gawping at the ‘American ladies’, whispering remarks to each other about their fancy hats and shiny brass buttons.

  Maggie often wished she could join in with their enthusiastic conversations, share in their excitement and dream about the prospect of a new life in America, but if the truth be known, all she really wanted to do was stay here and continue her present life with Séamus. Staring out of the cottage window now, she recalled one such conversation between the three girls last summer. They were sitting in their favourite spot by the fairy fort at the lake, skimming stones.

  ‘Did ye see that fella Tom Durcan passin’ through again yesterday?’ Katie had asked casually as she hitched up her skirt and bent down to search for the perfect, flattened, smooth skimming stone. ‘Y’know, that shippin’ agent from Castlebar?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see him. Is he that roundy lookin’ fella with the piggy eyes?’ Peggy’s rather unkind description of the man was so perfect it made Katie and Maggie giggle.

  ‘Well, you’ll never guess what?’” Katie continued dramatically, clearly keen to tell her story about him.

  ‘What?’ her friends chorused.

  ‘Well, didn’t he only stop me in the street and ask whether I might be lookin’ for passage to the United States. Bold as you like. Practically shoved the tickets under my nose he did.’ She threw her stone then, getting six decent bounces as a distant rumble of thunder echoed beyond the hills.

  ‘Ah sure, he’s been toutin’ his tickets around here for years Katie. Don’t mind him,’ Peggy replied, throwing a stone herself which sank straight into the depths of the lake. ‘What are you after tellin’ him anyway?’

  ‘I said I might be,’ Katie replied, ‘but that it was none of his feckin’ business.’ Katie, like Peggy, had a sharp sense of humour and was usually able to get a smile out of Maggie who was lost in her own thoughts as usual. ‘And then, the cheek of him,’ she continued, ‘he said it would be his business if I did decide to go, because he has the tickets!’ The three girls had roared with laughter then, gathering their coats and hats to make for home as the first drops of rain started to fall.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell ye now girls,’ Peggy had said, brushing the fluffy, white dandelion seeds from her skirts as they strode through the long grass, ‘if I ever do cross that ocean, I’m buying the finest hat I can. I’ll not be arriving on American shores and scaring the livin’ daylights out o’ those poor yanks. Peggy Madden will arrive as she means to live among them; as a lady with style.’

  Maggie remembered the conversation as clearly as if it had happened yesterday and she thought it amusing that Katie had, as it turned out, bought her ticket from Mr Durcan with money sent from her sister Catherine in New York and that, true to her word, Peggy had made a special trip to Crossmolina to buy her new hat and gloves for the journey. ‘As fashionable as you might find in any store in St. Louis,’ the shopkeeper had apparently told her.

  The sound of laughter outside caught Maggie’s attention again and she smiled as she watched Peggy adjusting that very hat on her head now. It was olive green; wide-brimmed with a silk ribbon and organza detailing, secured with a fancy peacock-feather pin. The gloves were of a matching olive green; suede day gloves, with three, dainty, silver-tone buttons at the wrist. Peggy carefully brushed some dust from them as the strengthening breeze caused the slender blossom trees to sway easily.

  There were fourteen trees in total, flanking the lane between Maggie’s stone cottage and the lake. Fourteen she thought to herself. One for each of us who will make this journey. She had loved the blossom trees and their candy-coloured blooms since she was a young child, loved watching the fragile petals as they fluttered like snowflakes to the ground. Over the last year, she had developed a particular affection for the sixth tree on the lane as it was here that she and Séamus met every Wednesday after market. It had been his idea and the arrangement had suited them well. She thought about him now and wondered whether he might change his mind and come to see her one last time. She almost didn’t dare hope and closed her eyes to stop the tears coming.

  ‘Right so, Maggie, the traps are ready. It is time.’

  Maggie jumped at the sudden sound of her aunt’s, clipped voice behind her; her heart leaping in her chest and her breath catching in her throat. This was it then, it was really going to happen.

  Even when she had seen the words ‘Gone to U.S.A’ written alongside her name on the school register, she hadn’t quite been able to believe that this stark fact, written in the distinctive handwriting of Miss Gallagher, her school mistresses, actually related to herself. But it did and after the months of discussing, planning and hat-buying, it was time.

  ‘Fetch the others will you,’ her aunt continued as she busied herself wrapping the still-warm bread rolls in muslin cloths before placing them in the top of her suitcase where she could easily reach them during the several hours of journeying which lay ahead of them to the port of Queenstown in County Cork. ‘And tell them to hurry. We still have to collect our tickets from Mr Durcan in town and we don’t want to be late for the train.’

  Eager to please her aunt, as always, Maggie walked out of the narrow farmhouse doorway to inform the others that it was time to leave. Shivering in the cool, morning air she pulled her green, woollen shawl tighter around her shoulders as she stepped over the cat which was curled up on the doormat. She envied its ignorance to the events unfolding around them.

  ‘And never mind the train,’ her aunt called after her, ‘I doubt whether that big ship will wait on us either.’

  Maggie turned. Kathleen stood in the cottage doorway, filling the space with her ample frame. Her hands were placed on her hips, an authoritative stance she often took even when she was chatting casually to a friend. Her long black skirts skimmed the top of the stone step, the billowing tops of the leg-of-mutton sleeves on her fashionable, white blouse touching either side of the doorframe, her thick, chestnut hair swept up impeccably around her angular face in the American style. Maggie thought she could almost detect a smile at the edges of her thin lips. Her aunt wasn’t usually one to express many emotions other than a sense of satisfaction for a job well done, so the slight smile was somewhat surprising.

  For her aunt Kathleen and two other women, Maura Brennan and Ellen Joyce, who were among their party of fourteen, this was a journey without the uncertainties which preoccupied Maggie’s imagination and the sorrow which troubled her heart. For them, this was a journey back to their American homes as much as it was a journey away from their Irish ones; her aunt would be returning to the sister and the Chicago home she loved, Maura and Jack Brennan were heading out to start a new married life together and Ellen was returning, along with her wedding trousseau, to marry her beloved fiancée. No wonder these women could afford a moment of carefree laughter under the blossom trees or a wry smile on the doorstep of the home they might never see again.

  Almost as quickly as the smile had crossed her aunt’s lips it faded and Maggie watched her turn back into the house then, with a swish of her skirts, to fetch the last of their belongings.

  Maggie wandered over to Peggy and the Brennans’ who were still messing about under the trees.

  ‘It’s time,’ she announced, noting how beautiful the blossom looked in the early morning light.

  Her words caused the others to stop their playing and a more sombre mood fell over them immediately. It was Jack Brennan who spoke.

  ‘Right so Maggie, we’ll be right there.’

  She nodded at him in reply before stooping to pick up a few petals, admiring their fragile construction and breathing in their sweet scent. She put them,
absent-mindedly, in her coat pocket and went on her way. She walked briskly, her sturdy black boots feeling unusually heavy as they crunched on the shale and stones which formed the roughshod road through their village.

  Maggie felt an eerie stillness about Ballysheen that morning as she walked from house to house, knocking at the door and quietly telling those inside that it was time. It was as if the village, and all its inhabitants, had taken in a deep breath and were afraid to let it out.

  Her duties complete, she started to make her way back up the road, watching a solitary cloud drift across the pale blue sky, casting a shadow across the sheep which grazed in the fields at the foot of Nephin Mor. A handful of men were already at work in the lower fields and she imagined their hands muddied from cutting the turf and sowing the potatoes. Taking in the scene around her, it struck Maggie that to anyone passing through, this would seem like any ordinary, unremarkable spring day in a small, rural village.

  And then she saw him.

  CHAPTER 2 - Southampton, England, 10th April 1912

  Harry Walsh looked at his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace one last time. The crisp white jacket, brown waistcoat, blue serge trousers, black shoes and White Star Line cap suited him, making him look taller somehow. He had slicked his dark hair, parting it down the centre in the fashionable style and was clean-shaven for the occasion. He was pleased with how he looked and turned to his mother.

  ‘I don’t scrub up too badly really when I try, do I?’

  His mother was a short, sleight woman with a permanent air of dissatisfaction about her. She fussed around her son now, brushing flecks of dust from his trousers and stray hairs from the shoulders of his jacket. He smiled at her, glad of the attention she paid to him and pleased to see the unmistakeable look of pride on her face, pride in the fact that her only son was to work as a steward on the Titanic’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.