She put her hands on the railing and looked for footholds to climb. She put one leg over and then the other and sat on the railing, staring down at the water below. It would be so easy to simply let herself fall into the sea. Jim would be much better off on his own. They would never find her in the waves. Would they even turn the ship around? She would sink into the dark depths in a welcome sleep without pain or guilt or misery.
Jim had negotiated for hot water and soap in the upper galley for tuppence and was on his way back to her when he spotted her at the railing, her body poised. He approached slowly, not to startle her, trying to calm his own pounding heart.
She was drawn out of her reverie by Jim’s voice.
“Johannah? I’m here.”
She stared at the waves.
“Johannah. Give me your hand.” She did not move.
“My love? Please. Give me your hand.” She did not move.
“If anything happened to you, Jo, it would kill me.”
At this she raised her eyes and held his for a moment. Then, still considering her option below, she slowly took her hand from the railing. She held it out. Jim dove forward to grab it firmly and then he could breathe again. He put his arms around her and lifted her up off the railing and set her down on the deck. He placed a bucket of hot, steaming water before her with a cloth and bar of lye soap.
“Look my love, you can wash. Nice and hot. Come on, darling. It’ll be all right.”
Slowly she gathered herself and knelt beside the bucket. Jim helped her as she soaked the cloth, rubbing it hard with soap. The crewman on deck turned discreetly away. She began to clean herself under her shirt, arms, shoulders, breasts. She began to scrub with the determination of a survivor, and after she was fully clean, Jim brought a second bucket of hot water and helped her wash her hair with lye soap. And after that, wearing her second dress that her inspection had found without fleas, she washed and scrubbed her clothes in a tub. In the clean dress, combing out her long hair, she was calm now. It was all right, and she resolved that she must not ever lose control of herself like that again. She had to be stronger than that for Jim. She smiled and touched Jim’s worried face beside her.
“I’ll be all right now,” she told him. “As long as you’re here, I’ll be fine.”
* * *
By that evening, the old man who had been ill was dead, his blank eyes staring upward. His wife was holding him, whispering to him as a mother would to her child, as if he were still listening. Johannah could see the pretty young girl deep in the woman’s aged face, a girl once newly in love, now an elderly woman in grief. This old couple’s lifetime together had just ended. Jim and Johannah had watched the soul depart. Though neither spoke of it, both thought about how this time would one day come to them.
Jim whispered to Johannah, “I should tell the crew.”
“Give her a little more time with him.”
But the situation had been reported and the second mate and two crewmen came, with handkerchiefs over their mouths against the fever, to take the body away. The old woman resisted.
“No.”
“He’s dead, ma’am.”
“No, no! He sleeps sound. Leave him for a bit.”
Jim and Johannah and their neighbours witnessed the scene.
“He’s dead. I know a dead man, ma’am,” the mate repeated.
“No, he can trick you. He’s fine. Leave him. Don’t take him yet. Leave him with me. Please. I tell you he’ll be all right!”
“Sorry, ma’am.” He gestured to his crewmen. The woman began to howl as they gently but firmly extricated the corpse from her arms and put him on a stretcher to take away. Jim and Johannah and the others watched sympathetically. On impulse, Johannah went and put her comforting arms around the old woman, who cried and keened and Johannah cried with her and the woman held onto her as would a child.
Jim watched his wife and his heart was lightened. Yes, she would be all right.
Headway
The old man was not the only one to die aboard ship during those first terrible days at sea. Some had boarded in a state of illness and starvation, so several more deaths had occurred. Their burials took place one calm morning. The passengers, those physically able, were allowed to assemble on deck for the service. There was not the complete pall of gloom one might expect at such a ceremony, for if one could attend, one had survived the storm. And if one had survived, one was alive and very aware of the sun on one’s face, the murmur of human voices and the sweetness of the sea air in the morning. The captain was a thin man, scholarly in appearance, but with the broken hands of a crewman. In the absence of a priest on board, he conducted the service and, although he held the book of prayer open, he spoke the service entirely from memory.
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to receive unto Himself…”
There were seven bodies, each wrapped up in thin canvas—four adults and three children, one a tiny infant—all lying parallel on smooth boards, feet to the sea. Even though they were arranged on the lee side so the odour of corrupting flesh would escape downwind, a waft would occasionally come to the passengers and several had handkerchiefs to their noses.
“…the souls of our dear brothers and sisters here departed. From dust we come and to dust we surely return. James Flynn, Marguerite O’Halleran, Michael Reilly, Robert O’Connor…” The old woman could be heard tearfully grieving her husband as his name, John Hodgins, was called.
The first mate placed spoonfuls of Irish earth from a ceramic jar, brought for the occasion, on the chests of each of the dead. Two crewmen lifted up the end of the first board and the body slid smoothly into the sea. They went to the second and did the same.
“… Maggie Tooley, Pat Rouke and little James Connell, stillborn.”
In this way, one body after the other went down into the sea, the slide a silent moment, a distant splash below marking the sound of the water’s embrace.
“We look to the life to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ. We therefore commit their bodies to the deep and look to the resurrection when the sea shall give up her dead. Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for they have rest from their labours.”
Johannah suddenly put her arms around Jim and hugged him as hard as she could. She looked into his eyes and told him quietly, “I am not thinking of the next life to come and I don’t want to rest from my labours. We will make a good life out of this one.”
“Yes, my love. We will. Nothing will stop us.”
During the past days, Jim had been thinking about what his sister had thought of him, that he was all talk without substance, and about the family curse.
“I’ll work and make some money. Then we’ll find some land and buy it,” he said now. “Somewhere between fifty and one hundred acres should do. With some water on it and close to a town.”
“And a church. I’d like to be close to a church.”
“Of course. And I’ll build you a house and there’ll be friendly neighbours all around that will welcome us. We’ll have animals. Pigs and chickens.”
“And horses.”
“Yes, of course horses.”
“And children.”
“Them too.”
When the other passengers had returned below, Johannah approached the second mate and showed him her string of pearls.
“Mallorcan. Finest quality.”
She broke the string with her teeth and counted out three pearls into his hand. She would save the rest for Canada. He went down below to his personal larder for her and brought back an impressive offering of cheese, several oranges and bread.
Below again, she went to the two feverish young girls and gave the very thankful mother an orange and a half, a half loaf of bread and an extra ration of water. Next she went to the old woman who had lost her husband and gave her half an orange and extra water. She arr
ived next at the grubby boy who was alone and feverish. She cut a slice of the orange and put the piece between his lips. He sucked the juice hungrily, then chewed the flesh. His blue eyes opened briefly to look up at her and attempt to focus. She cooled his sweaty forehead with a damp cloth and gave him an encouraging smile.
“We’ll get you through this, lad,” she told him, and the boy stared intently up at her and then simply closed his eyes again and fell asleep. Johannah returned to Jim.
After six weeks at sea, Jim and Johannah stood at the starboard rail. The early storm had blown them two weeks off course but the weather had stayed agreeable since and passengers were allowed up on deck in regular shifts. The grubby boy to whom she had given the orange had recovered from his fever and it was good to see him now conscious and upright, playing ball on deck with his friends. Two or three days after Johannah’s ministrations, his fever had passed and he had made his way above decks and approached them with surprising vigour. He had washed himself, combed his hair and turned into quite a handsome young fellow.
“There she is! My beauty of the night. I could have sworn you had wings.” He had held out a hand of introduction to Jim. “Vincent Matthew O’Toole. But you can call me Vinnie. You know, of course, you’re married to an angel.”
Jim kept an arm protectively around Johannah at the enthusiasm of this starry-eyed youth, but he addressed the boy with good nature.
“I do, Vinnie. I’m Jim Donnelly and my wife is Johannah. Glad to see you recovered. So…what is it you’re hoping to find in Canada?”
“Oh, I’ve got big plans. Big plans. I’m heading west through the deep forests and across the Great Lakes and over the Prairies to the Rocky Mountains.”
“What’ll you do the day after that?”
“I know it’ll take more than a day. But I’ve got to see the Rocky Mountains.”
“Can’t farm mountains.”
“I want to see ’em first. Then I’ll decide what to do with them. See, what I’m thinking is that first I’ll build a rowboat, ’cause I have it on good authority there’s lakes and rivers all across the deep woods. Then when I gets to the Great Plains, I put wheels on her and a big sail ’cause, I have it on good authority there’s no trees and plenty of wind there to sail across the Prairies, ha?”
“But then what good is a boat in the mountains?”
“Snow runners on the bottom, of course! A sleigh! Hard going on the way up, it’s true, but just think about the coming down!”
And they laughed, enjoying his enthusiasm. “It’s good to meet someone who has it all figured out.” They remained good friends with Vinnie from then on.
As Johannah and Jim watched Vinnie playing ball with his friends, she took his hand. She guided him down the starboard deck under the boom of the mainsail away from other passengers and they looked out over the calm sea.
“I have something to tell you.”
“What is it, Jo?”
“You’ve gone and done it now, Mr. Donnelly.”
“What?”
“My time has come and gone.” She placed his hand on her belly and looked at him.
She gauged Jim’s surprised reaction carefully as he paused to assess this news.
“I don’t want to have her aboard ship.”
“We’ll be on land long before it comes, Jo. It’ll be fine!” He broke into an enormous grin. “A baby! Oh, sweetheart, this is wonderful! A new land and a new little soul.”
Johannah allowed the relief to flow through her at Jim’s reaction. “I think it’s a girl. A little girl, can you imagine?”
“We’ll be all right, Jo. We’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“More than anything. It’s more than just us we’ll be working for now. Thank God we’re not in bloody Ireland.”
She embraced Jim’s attitude. “Yes. Thank God. We’ll be all right.”
* * *
With the cry of “LAAAAAAND!” everyone crowded the deck, struggling to contain their excitement as they squinted toward a distant dark line on the edge of the horizon, their first glimpse of the new country. Over the next three days, the Naparima tacked her way slowly against the current into the mouth of the broad St. Lawrence River, which drained a huge portion of the continent. As they drew into it, they could see the long, parallel verdant strips of farmland on either side of the river, each coloured with different crops: golden barley, purple clover, the green of feed grass coming down to the river’s edge, to the shore where the posts of makeshift docks leaned east from the current. Small cat boats could be seen skirting the north shore between the villages. Here they spoke French, the passengers were told, and Jim, Johannah and Vinnie stared hard at the shore, trying to spot the exotic people in this new land and wondering what they would be like. Vinnie had become a close friend, like a little brother to Jim and Johannah, and they decided they would all stay and travel together.
Their first landfall was Grosse Île, a quarantine station still thirty miles downstream of Quebec City in the Province of Canada where they had been told they would have to stay until it was proven they had no illness and their numbers could be absorbed into the country. Other ships were anchored off the island. It all seemed almost idyllic from a distance, a pleasant green island in the river, a portal to a continent. The island was a high fist of granite, two miles long and half a mile across, punched up through the middle of the river with a rocky highland to the west tapering off downstream to provide fields enough for modest cultivation. Once the ship anchored in the current of the river, Jim and Johannah, along with fourteen others in the first party, disembarked into rowboats and broke away from the dreadful confines of that vessel, one step closer to the Promised Land. Dropped off on the island, they hauled their few belongings up from the docks and made their way toward a disorganized collection of customs houses and large sheds near the shore, overseen by soldiers and uniformed officials. Most, with Jim and Johannah among them, were slowed in their walking by the heaving of the earth under them as they tried to get their land legs back after so many weeks at sea. Yet Johannah could not contain her relief and excitement to be taking in the sights and earthy smells of this island. And just across the wide river was the new land that would be their home. They were nearly there.
As they approached the closest building, customs officials, wearing masks for inspection, began shouting at them in French and English:
“En trois lignes! Tout droit! Trois lignes! Three separate rows!”
Three long lines of immigrants from other ships, complete with worldly possessions and an abundance of children, stretched out and worked their way slowly toward the tables. Jim tried to be patient. Two French-speaking nuns were identifying and ministering to the sick. A masked English official worked his way down the line with a clipboard.
“Name and town of origin?”
Jim noticed that at the end of the line, all the passengers were going into a wide fenced area with a row of large sheds and a sign that read “Quarantine Camp.” As the official came closer, Jim addressed him.
“How long do we have to stay here?”
“’Til spring.”
“Spring! We were not told this!” Jim almost shouted at the man. “My wife is having a child. We have to find our land before winter!”
“There is a backup of you on the mainland. They want to keep you here for a while.” And the official moved quickly along to avoid further argument. They were ushered together with the other families into one of the huge dormitory sheds. Inside, their hearts sank. The shed had rough walls on the perimeter and mud-stained canvas dividing sheets for privacy, and the structure went on forever. It was filthy and already overcrowded, many of the occupants showing signs of malnutrition and illness. Jim’s anger was simmering.
“God. This is worse than the ship!”
“At least it’s not moving,” Vinnie offered bright
ly.
“I am. I feel I’m still at sea,” Johannah remarked, losing her balance and almost fainting as Jim caught her. Jim held her tight as they watched two men wearing cloth masks hurry past them with a covered body on a stretcher.
They found a small section of floor available between a roof pole and a gloomy family, the Kellys from Sligo, four children under nine with identical frowns of exhausted desolation. But they dutifully made room for Jim and Johannah to sit, and for Vincent too.
“We’ll get through this too, Jo. We will.”
“Yes, my love. We will,” she whispered.
Quarantine
After two weeks on Grosse Île, they had settled in as much as was possible. There was little to break the monotony. Though the island was large, with the coastline visible through the trees, they were not allowed outside the fence to walk in the woods or on the rocky beach. It was fall now and the cold nights foreshadowed the winter they would face in the open wooden sheds. The officials installed a small woodstove at both ends of each shed for warmth and supplied hardwood to keep them going all night, but in the mornings they could still see their breath. Nuns in their black habits, silent and grave, came among them to distribute thin wool blankets.
When word had circulated, they suspected through Vinnie, that Johannah was pregnant, a gnarled grandmother offered to determine if she was carrying a boy or girl. The woman held a ring on a thread over Johannah’s belly. The ring swung first in a straight line but then swivelled and began to swing in a circle. The fortune teller declared the “child” was both. Johannah was having twins! Johannah was immediately convinced it was true, though she was not without worries.
Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys Page 11
