by Hazel Gaynor
‘And what about the other thirteen? What about them?’
The scent of camellia washed over the room as the breeze strengthened outside. Maggie looked at Grace and took a long, deep breath.
CHAPTER 5 - Private Journal of Maggie Murphy
Queenstown, Co. Cork
10th April, 1912
At last we are arrived in Queenstown. At times I thought we would never get here, the journey across the Windy Gap in the traps seeming to take forever and then the endless train journey from Castlebar – Lord! I lost count of how many times we changed trains at this station and that station - it’s a wonder we didn’t lose any of our luggage on the way we were in and out of so many carriages. We nearly did lose Pat Brogan – he’d fallen asleep what with the rocking motion and all, and nearly didn’t get off at Limerick. Thank the Lord for Maura Brennan’s quick counting up and noticing we were one short or God only knows where he would be by now!
Other than that, nothing much happened on the train journey, other than a lot of weeping and sniffling, the girls missing their mammies and all. We didn’t talk to each other much which was a strange thing as we’d usually never be short of a joke or a story or a song. We was all too busy thinking our private thoughts and watching the fields fly past the windows. I saw a hare dart across one field, startled by the noise of the engine, and a hawk hovering above another. I wonder whether they have hares and hawks in America? I honestly don’t know.
Peggy was the only one to make any sort of a noise on the journey to Claremorris, getting a fit of the giggles at the sight of a fat woman trying to get something down from the luggage rack. She kept falling backwards and forwards and sideways with the movement of the train – she looked drunk so she did! Kathleen chided her for sniggering and said it was poor manners.
We was starving by the time we reached Cork and were glad of Mrs Brogan’s oatcakes and Aunt Kathleen’s soda bread. It’s strange to think that she baked that bread in our kitchen just this morning. I can hardly remember what our kitchen looks like it seems such an age since I was standing there.
By the time we boarded the train to Queenstown, most of the weeping had stopped. Katie cheered us with her songs and Jack Brennan took to playing cards with Michael Kelly – he told me he thought it might stop the young lad’s mind from dwelling too much on home. I’ve watched Pat take the sovereign out of his pocket a few times. His mam gave it to him this morning as a good luck token but he dropped it as he climbed into the trap – I saw it and I know some of the others did too, but we all pretended not to notice and he hasn’t talked of it. I know what he’s after thinking though as he turns it over and over in his hands because it’s bad luck to drop a sovereign.
Queenstown is a strange town. I’ve never seen a place like it in my life. There wasn’t a spare inch of space around the train station without a person or a cart or a horse or a piece of luggage on it - half of Ireland seems to have come here tonight. The sea air feels damp on my skin and there’s an awful, foul stench of salt or seaweed or something hanging over the place. It makes me feel like I want to be sick. The seagulls make a horrible noise, a sort of shrieking cry, like a bawling baby. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Aunt Kathleen arranged the lodgings for us all, speaking with one of the runners at the station who found this place, the ‘McDonnell Rooming House at The Beach’. Kathleen is familiar with boarding houses, running one of her own in Chicago and all and seems pleased because this one is close to the cathedral for Mass in the morning.
We are split up across three rooms, the two boys and Jack Brennan sharing one, Maura Brennan, Eileen Brennan, Katie, Peggy and Ellen Joyce in another and myself, Kathleen, and four of the other girls in this room. I heard Ellen telling Pat that it has cost 7s 6d each for the night’s lodgings. Pat told me that’s practically a week’s wages and that the owner must be making a fortune. She seems like a nice enough woman but she breathes heavily when she goes up and down the stairs and an awful smell of sweat comes from her. Thanks be to God we only have to stay for one night.
Poor Peggy is in a dreadful state. I don’t know how it happened ‘cos not a one of us saw him, but she says that a strange man dressed all in black approached her at Queenstown train station. He appeared from nowhere and tapped her on the shoulder. She says she leapt nearly ten feet into the air, not knowing who the man was at all. She tried to pass him a few pennies from her purse, thinking he must be a traveller, but he refused them and told her that she was going on a long journey and there would be a terrible disaster but she would survive. He then disappeared into the crowds. She’s a bit shaken up with it all. What with this and Joe Kenny’s tea leaves, I’m almost beside myself with the nerves now. Kathleen says we’re letting our imaginations run away with us and reminded us that we couldn’t be sailing on a safer ship.
I’ve been thinking about Séamus a lot since we left Ballysheen and wondering what he says in his letters. I have them in my coat pocket for safe keeping - I haven’t opened the packet yet. I think I should wait until we’re far out at sea before I read them – I’m half afraid that if he has written too fondly, or offered a proposal of marriage I might do something silly and run off to be with him again. Kathleen wouldn’t be best pleased if I did something like that so I’ll wait until we’re on the ship. I can be sure I won’t be doing any running off to him when there are miles of cold, dark, ocean stretching between us.
Kathleen says that Titanic will be on her way from France by now, and should arrive to Queenstown by mid-morning. All going well, we should be sailing by mid-afternoon. I can’t imagine what it will feel like to be on the water - I’ve never seen a steam liner, other than the pictures Peggy showed me in the newspaper. I wonder what I’ll think of this ship after all the talk and the fuss. It is only a ship when all is said and done. I might not think much of it at all.
Anyway, it’s getting late now and Kathleen is fussing about getting a decent sleep for the journey tomorrow so I’ve told her I’ll be finished in a few minutes. Most of the others are already asleep, tired out from our journey today. It already seems to have taken so long to get here and New York is another week away. How in the name of God we are going to fare on a boat for seven days I do not know.
CHAPTER 6 - Queenstown, County Cork, Ireland, 1912
‘For the love of God girl, would you look at the time, it’s gone eleven. Put that book down, whatever it is you’re scribblin’, and get some sleep now. We’ve an early start in the morning and there’s plenty more miles to be travelled yet before we reach America.’
Although tired from the long day of travelling, Kathleen Murphy was restless herself. She was relieved to have finally started their journey but anxious to be back in her comfortable home in Chicago with her familiar belongings and just her sister and her niece for company. She didn’t mind most of the others in their party - with the exception perhaps of Ellen Joyce who she found a bit superior - but large groups were not something Kathleen usually surrounded herself with. She found them a bit unnecessary.
It was no surprise to those who knew Kathleen that it was she who had galvanised the group of travellers to make this journey to America, that it was she who had brought back tantalising tales of prosperity and opportunity which had captured the imaginations of the women and men of Ballysheen who wished for more in life than failed harvests and employment in the cotton mills of England, that it was she who had mentioned, quite matter-of-factly, that the Titanic would sail from Queenstown in Cork on 11th April and anyone who wished to be aboard could obtain their ticket from the local White Star Line shipping agent, Thomas Durcan of Castlebar, at a cost of £7 15s. Kathleen Murphy was a formidable force when she set her mind to something.
Her demeanour over the past weeks had been one of prudent efficiency and a resolute impatience to get going. Now she enjoyed the opportunity to lie still, glad of the silence. As she watched her niece settle under her eiderdown and glanced around the room at the sleeping forms of the
other young girls sharing the room, Kathleen was reminded of her own emigration journey as a nineteen-year-old girl. Far from all the tears and worry she’d witnessed that day, she’d considered it all a prodigious adventure.
Painfully aware that she was an unremarkable girl in many respects, ordinary enough to look at with her square set jaw, rugged complexion and deep set eyes which made her look older than her years, it was only her determination and resolve to improve her situation in life which made her stand out from the other girls of her age. With two of her sisters already settled in America, Kathleen had sat for years in the bedroom she shared with her two brothers, consuming every word of the letters her sisters wrote about their alluring American lives; the employment prospects, the gaily coloured clothes, the opportunities to get away from the social constraints of Irish life. Their words, transported on the steam liners which would remove another batch of emigrants from Ireland’s shores, offered enticing prospects for a farmer’s daughter whose domestic duties were drearily predictable, whose clothes were dour and whose social position in life was defined from the moment she was born. Undaunted by the fact that she was leaving with little money, Kathleen had revelled in the prospects America held for her and had departed without much emotion.
Like many before her, she’d settled easily into the rhythms of metropolitan life in Chicago. So many of the neighbours were of Irish descent that she often found it hard to believe she was in America at all, catching the unmistakable Irish brogue in exchanges on the street or in the local grocery store: Offaly, Mayo, Donegal, Kerry; she was certain all the counties would be represented if you listened hard enough.
She wrote often to her niece Maggie, and to her friend Maura Byrne who had recently returned to Ireland to marry her childhood sweetheart John Brennan. In her letters, Kathleen described the buildings reaching up into the clouds, the grand homes, carriages and motor cars of the wealthy, the well-paid opportunities for women in domestic employment, the impressive avenues and the majestic department store at Randolph and Washington Street where you could buy anything and everything. She knew that the recipients of her letters enjoyed hearing about this ‘new world’, so far removed as it was in both distance and experience from their own.
But, no matter how settled and involved she became with the American way of life, a letter with news from home was always a welcome sight to Kathleen’s eyes and caused her heart to beat a little more rapidly than usual. It was such a letter which had prompted her recent return to Ireland; a letter which she realised, as she lay in the uncomfortable boarding house bed, had in many ways led to the fourteen of them being in Queenstown that night.
The letter had arrived on a crisp fall day, the leaves on the trees which lined the sidewalk outside the Chicago home she shared with her sister Mary glistening in the bright sunshine. It was a modest, but perfectly pleasant home on North Ashland Avenue, close to the boarding house she owned on Lincoln Street. Her sister had made a comfortable home, her choice of furnishing befitting two women who were doing well in life.
As she picked up the letter from the doormat, she immediately recognised Maggie’s familiar handwriting and the distinctive Castlebar postmark. Walking into the front room, she settled herself on the chair at the writing table and carefully opened the envelope.
22nd October, 1911
Ballysheen
Co. Mayo
Eire
My dear aunt Kathleen,
Just a few lines from home to let you know that we are all well. I’m sorry for not writing in a while; Esther was sick with the flu and needed me by her bedside. She is well again now, thanks be to God. Apart from the usual coughs and colds everyone else is in good health.
Maura and Jack Brennan were thinking of coming to America after Christmas, but now Maura is suffering with the morning sickness, so they’ll delay until the spring. Imagine, a baby for them! It’s grand news altogether.
Will we be seeing you at Christmas time? It would be lovely to have you among us again. If you’re not planning to travel, I wonder will I come to visit you in America for the Christmas it being a good while since we have been together? You might write to let me know your thoughts. Kitty sends her love.
Good bye
Yours faithfully,
Maggie
Relieved that there was no bad news, but surprised to hear of Maggie’s suggestion that she travel to America alone, Kathleen placed the letter on the table. She stood up, smoothing her skirt and turned to her sister.
‘It’s from Maggie. She says she’ll come out for Christmas! What do you make of that?’
Her sister glanced up from her darning. ‘She won’t fare well on a ship on her own, that’s for sure. What else does she say?’
Kathleen glanced back over the letter. ‘She says that the Brennan’s are thinking of coming in the spring.’ She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. ‘Maybe I should go, Mary. I could spend Christmas in Ireland and bring Maggie back with me in the spring. We could travel together with the Brennan’s. It would be nice to see Maura again now that she’s married to Jack and expecting a baby. She would probably enjoy some female company on the crossing.’
Mary nodded and returned to her work. She already knew the conclusion Kathleen would reach.
‘Yes, that would be a grand idea. I’ll reply to her Mary, straightaway. I’ll go back to Ireland for Christmas and return in the spring and bring Maggie with me to settle here. There’s nothing much to keep her in Ireland that’s for sure.’
‘What about that Doyle fella she’s always pining over.’
‘Oh, she’ll soon enough forget about him.’ Kathleen didn’t disapprove of Séamus Doyle, she knew of him and his family, knew that he was a hardworking, polite boy and judging by Maggie’s letters, he clearly cared for the girl, but she also realised that at the ages of seventeen and nineteen this was a romance which would eventually fade out. ‘Right, that’s settled then. I’ll write to her in the morning.’
She’d written her reply the very next day, informing Maggie to wait. I’ll be back in Ireland in three weeks, and we’ll come together in the spring she advised. True to her word, she sold her boarding house within a week and bought her own return passage to Ireland.
Crossing the Atlantic was almost second-nature to Kathleen by the time she’d set sail for Ireland that November, having made the journey between her American and Irish homes several times over the years. She was, however, well aware of the fact that her arrival back in Ireland that winter had not passed without remark. This time she’d returned noticeably different; a successful, astute businesswoman who, although connected to the stones, earth and rivers of her Irish home was somehow changed by her extended experience of a new life, by her knowledge that there were better prospects to be found elsewhere. For those who had neither the financial means nor the desire to travel and had stayed behind to continue their lives at the same steady, unremarkable pace, it was unsettling to witness the lightness in Kathleen’s step, the glare of her colourful overcoat and to hear the occasional, unfamiliar turn of phrase which the returning traveller brought with her.
The hushed whispers and furtive glances as she went about her business didn’t bother Kathleen, although the rumours that she had returned to Ballysheen to look for a husband, did. It was a subject which came up time and time again, and was one of few things in Kathleen’s life which unsettled her. It had started before she’d even left Chicago.
‘You know, it might not be any harm to consider looking for a suitable husband while you’re back in Ireland Kathleen,’ her sister Mary had mentioned, tentatively, as she helped Kathleen pack the last of her belongings. ‘You’ve a good dowry now from the sale of the boarding house and the prospects you can offer a future husband are much improved. You should think on it.’
It wasn’t the first time that Mary had raised the issue of a husband with her sister, whose apparent indifference to the matter was something she found completely incomprehensible. Unlike her friend Ma
ura, and several of her other sisters, Kathleen had never really considered marriage, her successful boarding house business occupying most of her time and her thoughts. It was an issue which refused to go away though as someone or other would make a remark or throw a suggestive glance in her direction whenever there was talk of engagements or weddings. Having read the excitement in the letters from Maura about her engagement to Jack Brennan, Kathleen’s thoughts had turned fleetingly to the matter recently, although never for too long. A fiercely private woman, the thought of discussing the matter with anyone else, even her own sister, left Kathleen feeling distinctly uncomfortable. As far as she was concerned, whether she had her mind set on finding a husband in Ireland or not was nobody’s business but her own.
‘May God have mercy on me Mary Murphy,’ she’d replied huffily, hoisting her luggage into the hallway, ‘I am certainly not going back to Ireland on some desperate mission to find a man who will spend all my hard-earned money on silly notions of running a shoe factory or making buttons. I’m going to Ireland to collect my niece and bring her safely across to America.’
No more was said between them on the matter and once back in Ireland she chose to ignore the Ballysheen gossips. In any event, whatever the truth was about her real intentions of returning to Ireland that winter, Kathleen would board Titanic in the morning along with her niece and twelve others from the parish, but without a husband.
Marriage could wait. For now, she was more concerned about getting a good night’s sleep.
CHAPTER 7 - R.M.S Titanic, 10th April 1912
The journey from Southampton to Queenstown, Titanic’s final embarkation stop before heading out into the vast reaches of the Atlantic, passed smoothly enough – with the exception of the New York pulling loose from its moorings and nearly causing a collision with Titanic before she had even sailed out of Southampton harbour. This caused a few heart-stopping moments among the passengers and crew who saw it all from their vantage point on the decks. For the ship’s financiers and those in positions of authority and influence within the White Star Line, it was a near disaster.
