The Girl Who Came Home - a Titanic Novel

by Hazel Gaynor

  She paused then as she handed a small, black notebook to Grace. ‘I used to fancy myself as a bit of a writer too you know.’

  ‘What is it?’ Grace asked, turning the book over in her hands and flicking through the pages.

  ‘It’s my journal. I started to write it the night we got to Queenstown. I thought I might like to show it to my aunt Mary when we arrived in Chicago; thought I might sit with my children one day and tell them all about the fantastic ship I had sailed to America on. I was writing my last entry when we hit the iceberg. You can even see the shudder in my handwriting. Look.’

  Maggie pointed to the last written page, about half-way through the book. There was, indeed, a definite jerk in the handwriting, followed by the words the ship is shaking, maybe we are slowing down.

  ‘Maggie, this is incredible. I just can’t take it all in. How do you feel seeing all these things again now?’

  Maggie sat and thought for a moment.

  ‘D’you know something, I thought I would feel sadness. But I don’t. I think I finished with all my sadness a long time ago. Now? Now, I guess I feel comforted. I feel at peace.’

  ‘I’m glad Maggie. So glad. I was terribly afraid this would all be far too upsetting for you.’ Grace stood up then to stretch her legs and walked over to the window. She liked to watch the birds which always flocked to the feeders and nesting boxes dotted around Maggie’s garden. ‘What were the letters you mentioned by the way?’

  ‘Ah, now that’s a different matter altogether. That does make me feel a little sad.’

  ‘Why? What were they?’

  Maggie laughed to herself. ‘They were from my boyfriend. I left him in Ireland. He wasn’t so good with his words but he gave me a packet of letters the morning I left our village. I remember him saying it would mean I didn’t have to wait on any deliveries; that I could read a letter from him whenever I wanted to. He’d put fourteen letters in, one for each month we’d known each other. I’d only read one or two of them. I thought I should wait until I reached America to read the rest, thinking that I might read one a month as if he’d actually just sent it to me. That way I could be reminded of him whenever I was missing him the most.’ She paused then, remembering him; his gentle manner, his soft eyes, his beautiful red hair. ‘We used to meet under a blossom tree after market on a Wednesday morning. It was a nice arrangement.’ She smiled to herself.

  ‘So, what happened to the letters?’

  ‘I lost them all that night Grace. They were in my coat you see, and I have no idea what happened to it. I had it on when I got into the lifeboat and it was gone when I left the hospital. I seem to remember a well-to-do lady who was on the lifeboat with me giving me her overcoat because I was shivering so much with the cold. She was an actress – Vera or Violet or something; I can’t remember her name now. I often wondered whether my coat was mistakenly returned to her along with her own, or maybe it was just lost somewhere in the hospital. It was all so confusing you know, trying to track people down, trying to find out if they had survived or gone down with the ship. I’m sure nobody paid much attention to a simple black coat. I’ve often wondered what those other letters said. It would be nice to know.’

  Grace waited for a moment, before asking, ‘And did you ever write to him again? You know, afterwards?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Once or twice. He only wrote back once though.’ A gentle smile crossed Maggie’s lips as she remembered him, but Grace sensed that she didn’t to want to dwell on this.

  ‘And did you never go back to Ireland?’

  ‘No Grace. No, I didn’t.’ Maggie spoke quietly, as though this were the hardest thing to say. ‘I never wanted to set foot on a ship again after that terrible night. And I felt so guilty you know. Why had I survived when so many others, even tiny little babies, had died? I knew I could never go back home, knowing the sadness there would be there and knowing that I escaped with my life while I had watched so many others die.’ She paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts. ‘I was sailing to America to start a new life, and in a funny way, that was the only way I could carry on after Titanic; with a new life. The girl who had left Ireland was gone to the bottom of the ocean with the rest of them. I had to start over. Start again, and that meant never talking about Titanic again. Not with my own family and not with those we had left in Ireland.’

  The two sat then for a good while longer; Maggie leafing absent-mindedly through the newspaper cuttings and touching her belongings, Grace reading through the journal. There was no need for either of them to talk.

  Eventually, the clock on the mantelpiece chimed midday, the first chime startling them both and causing them to laugh.

  Grace got up then and walked through into the kitchen. ‘Are you ready for another cup of tea yet? I’m gasping!’

  Maggie looked up and smiled. ‘Yes dear. That would be lovely. And Grace…’

  ‘Yeah?’ Grace popped her head back around the doorframe.

  ‘Have you called that newspaper editor of yours yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, you should y’know. I think he might just be interested in my little story. Do you?’ She winked at Grace and started to put everything back into her small case. She imagined, for a moment, a small packet of letters, wrapped in brown paper and tied up with a fraying piece of string, and wondered where they had gone that night. She thought about the man who had written them.

  ‘What day of the week is it Grace?’

  ‘It’s Wednesday Maggie,’ Grace shouted back over the sound of the kettle boiling. ‘Why?

  Maggie smiled to herself. ‘No reason. I just wondered.’

  CHAPTER 10 - New York, 11th April 1912

  Catherine Kenny placed her empty teacup carefully on the saucer and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, the rhythmic tick, tick, tick a comforting constant in her perfectly ordered, peaceful home. If she had the hours of time difference correct, Katie would be sailing by now. She wondered how her young sister was feeling, having never been on an ocean liner before, or on the ocean for that matter.

  She looked into her teacup, a cursory glance over the scattered leaves showing, she noted with relief, nothing remarkable. Reading the tealeaves was a bit of a tradition in their family. She remembered her grandmother pointing out the vague patterns and images to her. It had entranced Catherine as an impressionable young child, although she was never quite sure whether her Granny was pulling her leg or could actually foresee the things she claimed to see in the leaves. As she had grown up and witnessed various predictions come true, she’d started to take it a bit more seriously and took pride in reading the leaves herself now, although she was yet to predict anything successfully and often wished she had paid more attention to her Granny’s mutterings.

  She stood up to look in the large mirror over the fireplace while she fiddled with the tiny buttons on the high collar of her blouse. She found the tightness around her throat mildly discomforting, hence her reluctance to fasten the very last buttons until it was time to leave. She considered her reflection in the mirror; she looked a little tired, older than her thirty four years. She wondered how she would look to Katie and how Katie would look to her, nearly twenty-four years old and no doubt with an enviable lust for life and an even more enviable, healthy complexion, both of which came from a life spent outdoors.

  Carrying her breakfast things through to the small kitchen of her one bedroom, East Side apartment, Catherine filled the sink to rinse them through. As she swirled the soapy water around with the dishcloth, washing her teacup, saucer, bowl, plate and spoon methodically, it occurred to her that Katie might not have boarded the ship at all. She’d sent money home to Ireland once before for Katie’s passage but, by all accounts, their parents had decided to spend the money on a cow rather than on the intended ticket to America. The regular discussions about Katie coming to America to join her sister had lessened in the intervening months and it was only recently, when several others from Ballysheen, her good friends Pegg
y and Maggie included, had begun to purchase their tickets, that Katie’s interest had surfaced again.

  The two sisters had exchanged letters regularly over the years, Catherine enjoying hearing about news from home and Katie enjoying Catherine’s descriptions of her life in America. Tell me about the motor cars she would ask, in her own letters, and the buildings that reach into the sky. And, is it really true that the theatres on Broadway can seat thousands of people at a time?

  The latest letter from Katie had arrived just a few weeks ago, stating that she would like to be able to travel over with the others from Ballysheen, it seeming like a good opportunity to be amongst friends, rather than making the long journey all on her own. Of course, Catherine had sent the money immediately, including with it a note to Katie and their mother assuring them both that she would meet Katie herself at the docks in New York. I am, after all, quite keen to see this ‘Titanic’ for myself, she’d written. As a post script, and fearing that they might think it too late to buy a ticket from the local shipping agent and spend the money on another cow instead, she’d emphasised that Katie would be able to buy a ticket in Queenstown, or on the ship itself.

  Assuming Katie was on board with the Ballysheen group, Catherine imagined that she would be quite excited. With so many familiar faces from home around her, she was sure that any doubts and anxieties about the journey would be soon forgotten. She might even stop fretting, for a while at least, about her younger brother William who she’d been reluctant to leave behind. William had been deaf from birth and had always been Katie’s favourite among the six brothers in their family. They seemed to share a special bond which allowed Katie to communicate with him much better than anyone else in the family was able to. She understood him when no one else could and she was worried about what would happen to him now that she wasn’t going to be around.

  For her own part, Catherine was very much looking forward to seeing her beloved sister again. It had been over three years since she had seen her last, before she had made the trip across the Atlantic herself. Travelling with her friend Maura Byrne, theirs had been a quiet, discreet departure from Ballysheen. Nobody even knew the name of the ship they were to travel on; it had never occurred to anyone to ask. How different Katie’s experience would have been, leaving amid such a fuss and flurry of activity as so many homes waved off a loved one and to be sailing on the most celebrated ship man had ever built, a ship whose name everyone knew.

  Catherine pictured her sister now, sure that she would make the most of every minute on board. Unlike her own reserved, practical demeanour, Katie was a confident, impulsive girl with all kinds of fanciful notions running around her head; a trip on the world’s largest and most luxurious ocean liner with some of the world’s richest businessmen would no doubt have her planning her own wedding to a rich socialite before she had even disembarked!

  She glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall. It was only three days until Katie would celebrate her 24th birthday. She always enjoyed a party and celebrating a birthday aboard a ship would be the perfect excuse for singing and merry-making if ever there was one. Yes, Katie would enjoy America, Catherine thought to herself as she put on her coat and her hat; in fact, America would enjoy Katie.

  She left her apartment block and, crossing the road, walked the short distance to the Ninth Avenue Elevated line at South Ferry. Although the elevated line took longer, she preferred not to take the subway system, being slightly claustrophobic as she was. The idea of speeding along in a small, underground train made her feel dizzy so she preferred to travel over ground by the El for her day of work as a domestic at the Walker-Brown’s residence.

  As she took her familiar journey across the city that morning, along Greenwich Street and Battery Place to Gansevoort Street in lower Manhattan and on to Ninth Avenue in midtown and finally on to Columbus Avenue and the leafy suburbs of the Upper West Side, it occurred to Catherine that she might take a trip to Macy’s one evening after work that week. She thought it would be nice to pick up something special for Katie for her birthday present, a hatpin maybe, or a nice pair of gloves, she wasn’t really sure. Perhaps I’ll ask Mrs Walker-Brown, see what she would suggest, she thought to herself. Mrs Walker-Brown was very au fait with matters of style and taste and with her daughter, Vivienne, being a well-to-do actress in the silent movies she always seemed to be aware of the latest fashions. By a strange turn of coincidence, Vivienne Walker-Brown was also sailing on board Titanic, returning with her fiancée from a European vacation.

  Seated in her favourite position by the window, Catherine watched the hustle and bustle of a normal New York work day taking place on the streets below; the noise of the tramcars rising up along with the crashing hooves of the horses pulling carts laden with crates of fruit and vegetables, the honking of the horns of motor cars and the young newspaper vendors shouting the morning’s headlines from their stands. All of these sounds were familiar to Catherine now, but she remembered how strange and loud and unpleasant this had all sounded to her when she had first arrived in the city, such a contrast to the peaceful hush of their quiet, country village. Now these were pleasing sounds to her ears; they were noises which suggested excitement, industry and prosperity. She smiled to herself as she took this all in, acknowledging how far she had come in a few short years and wondering what sounds Katie was hearing at that moment; what sights she and Vivienne Walker-Brown and the thousands of other passengers would be seeing. With the Walker-Brown girl travelling on a First Class ticket and Katie travelling on a Third Class ticket – assuming it had not been exchanged for the purchase of another cow – Catherine suspected that the view the two girls had from Titanic would be a very different one; defined not by the eye, but by their social ranking.

  Arriving at her destination, she stepped down onto the sidewalk, just as she had done yesterday and as she had been doing for the last three years and walked down the tree-lined avenue to the Walker-Brown residence. She admired the smartly dressed ladies who passed her by and gazed wistfully at the elegant couples, strolling casually along with their arms linked, laughing at something one or another of them said.

  Catherine hadn’t married; had never been asked, and hers had sometimes felt like a lonely existence among the thousands of people who inhabited this city. But, in just a few more days all that would change. In just a few more days, her darling sister would be with her and from that point in their lives, any journeys they had to make, they would make together. To Catherine Kenny, that was all that mattered. That fact alone gave her far more comfort than that which any of the fancy furs and soft silks draped about the bodies of these Upper West Side ladies walking past could ever give her.

  As she walked up the stone steps to the imposing front door of her employer, it occurred to her that although people like the Walker-Browns, and those who occupied the other lavish houses on this street, may live a life of opulence and wealth, with her beloved sister arriving on these shores in just six or seven days, she considered herself to be the fortunate owner of riches far greater than any which their money could buy.

  CHAPTER 11 - County Mayo, Ireland, 11th April 1912

  Dusk was settling over the rugged landscape, casting long shadows and shrouding the mountains in a blanket of mute darkness as Mary d’Arcy and eight other women walked slowly to the Holy Well on the edge of the village. They were a sombre group, making their short pilgrimage to pray for the safe passage of the fourteen who had left their homes just a day ago. To these eight women; some of them mothers, some of them sisters and some of them grandmothers of the departed, it already seemed as though their loved ones had been gone for many, many months, rather than a few short hours.

  There was something of a tentative silence hanging over the women who, on any other day, could be heard exchanging friendly banter as they went about their work and daily chores in the village, laughing at a shared joke or a snippet of juicy gossip as they enjoyed a drop of porter in the ale houses. Theirs was not normally a quiet existe
nce, but at that moment it was very much so. Only the haunting sound of a barn owl’s screech broke the silence around them. Approaching the well, they attended to their familiar rituals and said their own private prayers before kneeling on the hard, stony ground, and taking their rosary beads in their hands, began, as one, to recite their Hail Mary’s.

  To a distant observer such as Séamus Doyle, who watched now from the window of his father’s small farmhouse, this was a particularly moving sight, serene in its setting and mesmerising in its solemnity. How touched Maggie and the others in the group would be, he thought, to know how deeply their departure was felt in this small community; how heartened they would be to see this declaration of absolute faith being made in their honour. But they could not know, would not see.

  Like most people in the parish that day, Séamus’s thoughts had returned often to the fourteen people who had left the previous morning, most particularly to his beloved Maggie.

  After giving her the packet of letters he had written and saying a final farewell, he had stood silently to watch the travellers leave. He’d thought them an oddly colourful group considering the solemnity of the occasion, with the bright woollen blankets draped about their shoulders and knees to keep them warm against the chilly April morning and the vivid green of Peggy’s new hat bobbing along. He’d watched the carts as they made their way like a funeral procession down the village; the wheels sounding like distant rolls of thunder as they rumbled across the stone road. He was familiar with the route they were taking, having travelled it himself on a few occasions to help the men buy grain or new farm tools and supplies from the town of Castlebar. They would pass out of Ballysheen, through the small, familiar towns of Knockfarnaught, Tobernaveen, Levally, Bofeenaun, Curraghmore and Cuilmullagh and on to the top of the Windy Gap. The terrain was rough up there and he imagined the carts jostling their passengers around like rag dolls as the wheels struggled over bumps and rolled in and out of the many potholes. They would then follow the winding road down to the Burren and Sion Hill before clattering into the town of Castlebar itself. Séamus knew that some of the women would also have made this journey before to sell their eggs, but he didn’t recall Maggie ever having gone. To her, it would be unfamiliar territory; beyond the train station at Castlebar, it would be unfamiliar territory to them all.