by David Rees
“What shall we do?”
“Make the best of it. There’s no going back now.”
“And if the doctor will not let you on board?”
“Oh, he will,” Noreen said. “He sits in a little booth with a tiny window, and as you pass by he only wants to see your tongue. It is not right I’m thinking; that way so many people already half dead with the fever slip through and infect every other passenger.” She saw the alarm this remark was causing, and said “You needn’t be anxious. The Cedar of Lebanon is a big ship, stoutly made, in much better trim than some of the leaky old coffins that have sailed out of here. I looked at it myself, yesterday; there will be people of substance on that ship. A mountain of baggage, all of good quality, was piled on the quay for loading. Why, I heard some desperate, starving family in rags complain of the price of the tickets: much dearer, they said, than other boats, out of their reach. There won’t be fever aboard; you may depend on it. God is good.”
Despite Anthony’s condition it was a relief to be going. The two days at the shop had been like living in suspended animation, not of one time and existence or any other. Noreen was all easy talk on the surface but nothing below, and her husband was worse, a fat, florid, silent man with mean eyes; Michael felt the cost of every mouthful he ate was being added up in John’s mental till. Nor was William an attractive child ― a plump, sulky creature with the same eyes as his father’s. He was totally without the Tangney good looks and tall slimness.
Noreen came down to the ship, threw herself on her brother’s neck and wept the statutory tears. “You will write and tell us everything!” she said, between sobs. “Two hands to watch for now, Madge’s and yours. Oh, you will meet over there, and it will be the most joyous celebration and reunion New York has seen!” On the ship they leaned against the rail and looked back. I’m not in Ireland now, Michael said to himself.
They continued to look as the ship parted from the harbour wall, as the grey slot of water grew into a yawning gap, as they progressed out into the bay and the city slowly blurred to an indistinct smudge. Then there was Clasheen, sharp and close to, and Eagle Lodge: on the drive was a carriage, a man walking from it to the house. “Richard,” Anthony said.
“Richard!” Michael yelled, waving his arms madly. “Richard!! We are here!!!”
“Idiot,” Anthony said, laughing.
Another figure was bent over a flower-bed, picking up broken glass perhaps. “It’s Ty! I’m sure it’s Ty!”
Anthony stared. “It is. Good! Now may we go and find our cabin? I shall catch my death if I’m up here too long, warm though it is.”
A mild, dull summer day, and the sea calm as the surface of a lake. It augured well.
AT the grocery shop, John said “I think it very fishy. A prosperous Irishman may sail for America with his possessions in a few trunks, but an Englishman! I would appear to have more money than he. There is a story behind it, I am telling you. He will be wanted by the peelers.”
“The story behind it,” Noreen said, “is that he has beggared himself by giving all his wealth to the sick and the starving.”
“God would not want me to think it, but that only happens in little books about the lives of saints. People don’t do that.”
“It is peculiar,” Noreen agreed.
“He and Michael are not master and servant. They are friends. They are in some cahoots together.”
“My brother Michael? He is too innocent for that.”
“They have done some wrong thing and are vanishing. It will out, and we shall hear of it.”
They did hear of it, before the day was over. Noreen started to read the newspapers; she had previously been too busy to find the time with Anthony and Michael in the house. She saw the paragraph on the Lord Kingston, and decided to go to Clasheen at once. Her parents told her of the wrong thing her brother had done, and she, realizing they still thought he was at Eagle Lodge, told them he had sailed that morning for the United States. It was a complex plot ― sex, sudden death, flight, scandal and grief ― that she relayed to her husband when she returned.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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THERE were passengers and passengers, they discovered.
Noreen was right in saying The Cedar of Lebanon was a superior class of ship, that it was carrying a number of well-to-do emigrants, and that its ticket prices were expensive. But she had not seen the crowds of starving ill-clad paupers, some of whom had the fever and knew they had it, stuffed into the hold. These were the tenants of two great estates that had been cleared, every person evicted and their cabins pulled down, their passage to America paid for by the owners.
The conditions they had to endure were dreadful: flimsy beds for some, but most slept on the floor. They had no food with them and were relying on the weekly seven pounds of provisions that the captain was legally obliged to give to each person. Their world was darkness, filth and stench. It was very different for Michael and Anthony: they were cabin passengers, among people with means and in good health, who supplemented the wretched seven pounds with their own food, and who had access to proper sanitary arrangements. Their world was the daylight, reasonable cleanliness, and fresh air.
The ship was overcrowded, but whether dangerously or not would depend on the weather, the adequacy of the provisions and the water supply. As Anthony had thought, two men in one berth produced no comment; even in the cabins whole families were sharing a bed. Overcrowding meant he and Michael at least could sleep as they always had done. And the weather remained calm. The gentle rocking motion of the ship soothed; the creak of timbers reassured.
On that first day their anxiety was water, which was strictly rationed to six pints per person, an allowance that had to suffice for washing and cooking as well as drinking. Some people had their own casks, so were able, for a while, to enjoy more than the daily six pints, but Anthony and Michael had not thought to bring one. Anthony was feverish still, and thirsty. Michael gave him a large share of his own ration. If the voyage took longer than expected, there would be problems: some of the ship’s casks had once contained wine; they had not been properly cleaned, and the water in them was found to be undrinkable.
Cooking was done on deck, on a big makeshift stove the size of a double bed ― it was a wooden box lined with bricks, the coals in the centre, the top iron bars. It worked efficiently; its heat was adequate. But the overcrowding meant waiting one’s turn for ages; it was constantly surrounded by hordes of people from both worlds of passengers, squabbling and arguing. One family took too long, another pushed in, a third left a terrible mess. Fights broke out, and often the precious food was spilled, or stolen by those who could not bear the endless wait. Many people abandoned the idea of using the stove, and swallowed their dinner raw.
Michael, on that first evening, did not. He was in too good a mood to become impatient, and as Anthony was not at all hungry he decided to leave cooking until the crowd had dispersed a little. His meal ― a lamb chop Noreen had given him, and carrots from the garden at Eagle Lodge ― was, he thought, worth waiting for. It was the envy of those who watched him eat it. More than one man begged for a share. Michael refused, and was met with black looks. He would have to be on his guard, he realized; it would be easy to get involved in a brawl, or discover his supplies had mysteriously vanished.
Why are they begging, he asked himself. They had all got out of Ireland; starvation was behind them: there was food on board. It had not occurred to him, yet, how terrible was the plight of the steerage passenger living on the seven pounds a week ration. This was doled out each day by members of the crew, a pound per person. All it consisted of was Indian corn, not enough to prevent people feeling very hungry indeed.
Anthony did not stay up late. “My mother used to tell me to nurse a cold,” he said. “So … I will nurse it.”
“You have more than a cold,” Michael answered.
“Yes. A touch of influenza. Don’t worry! It will need more th
an that to kill me.”
Michael was reassured; Anthony was probably right: it didn’t seem to be anything dangerous. He was too excited to go to bed himself, too awake, so he set off to explore those parts of the ship he had not yet seen. A few moments looking into the hold disgusted him. It was the black hole of Calcutta. The smell was already sickening. A swarm of grey, ragged, emaciated bodies was eating, quarrelling, vomiting, defecating into buckets, trying to sleep. Perhaps in some dark corner even trying to make love. Not an inch of privacy between one human shape and another. Conditions on slave ships transporting negroes from Africa could not be worse. The only difference was these men and women had no chains, at least not visible ones, though it could hardly be said they were here of their own free will. And the blacks were given better food.
He went up on deck, and though he was unable to scrub the hold from his mind, he could not, at the moment, feel depressed. Ireland had disappeared from sight: the ship was in the centre of a perfect circle of calm sea. It was the one disturbance wrinkling an endlessly flat surface, a question mark on a blank page. On the water jellyfish drifted. The crew bustled about; industrious, sober men, confident in their ship and their tasks, Michael thought. The grey dull day had gone; the sky was blue, and sunset was beginning to redden the horizon. He leaned on the rail, and sang:
“When first her gentle bosom knows
Love’s flame, it wanders never,
Deep in her heart the passion glows;
She loves, and loves forever.”
“When the candles are out all women are fair,” said a voice beside him. One of the crew: Michael had noticed him earlier. A little older than he was, a sunburnt lined face, long blond hair; in physique, massive, built like a bull.
“And who said so?”
“I don’t remember,” the man answered. “It’s just a saying. Tell me now, are you one of the gentlemen in cabin number three?” The blue eyes searched him up and down. Michael shivered inwardly; he felt he was being stripped naked, and it was not at all pleasant to be stared at, nude, by this hulk of a stranger.
“Who are you that you want to know?” Michael asked.
“The other gentleman isn’t well. Is the fever upon him?”
“It is not.”
“If it is, why, you may want my services.” He smiled, but it was a mirthless smile, like that of a predatory animal gauging its evening meal.
“You don’t look to me like a doctor.”
The sailor laughed. “No, I am not a doctor,” he said. “Well … you will find out.” He walked off. Michael watched him go, and thought there couldn’t possibly be any services anyone would need from him. He stayed on deck, looking at the sun sink and the scarlet ribbons that stained the sky afterwards like a scribbled message. The colour began to pale to a delicate flush, then a faint glimmer in the west, a hint that the United States, still far below the horizon, had lit a beacon to summon him.
It was turning cold, so he went to the cabin and climbed in with Anthony, who was sleeping soundly, a deep, heavy sleep unlike the restlessness of the last two nights. The sickness is over, Michael thought; he is better, even if his body is as hot as a furnace. He wriggled himself into his usual position, on his side, curled like a question mark, the skin of his back and the back of his legs touched by and protected by the bigger question mark. Well, I shan’t be frozen tonight, he said to himself as Anthony’s heat began to make him sweat. He was not long awake, and his sleep was filled with sweet dreams of New York, of Madge and Dan, of little children and himself climbing the branches of green trees in a plot where lilac bloomed.
IN the morning when he woke Michael wondered, for a minute, where on earth he could be: then he remembered. And felt happy.
He shifted slightly and stared at Anthony. “I’m deucedly ill,” Anthony said. “I think you’ll have to fetch a doctor. But don’t worry! It’s not the fever.” For Michael was already out of bed and putting on his clothes. Anthony’s face was as white as a blank piece of paper, and sweat poured from him.
There was a doctor, unusual at that time on a passenger ship: he had been paid for by one of the landlords whose evicted tenants were part of the misery in the hold. And the man in the next cabin was a well-known Galway physician, Dr Coffey, who had not wanted to emigrate at all, but his wife had pestered him to distraction ― “for the sake of our dear children’s lives!” ― ever since the first potato rot nearly two years previously. Michael found both men. They removed the bedding so they could see Anthony’s skin; they felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, then said they couldn’t be sure what the matter was. “He doesn’t have any obvious signs of typhus,” was Dr Coffey’s conclusion. “No rash on the chest, no darkening of the face. He has not vomited, you say?”
“No,” Michael said. Annoying, he thought, that the question was directed to him; it was as if Anthony was no longer a human being, but an object incapable of speaking up for himself.
“Then I doubt it is the relapsing fever, either,” Dr Coffey said. “Though we cannot rule it out at this stage. He is certainly sweating too much.”
“A severe dose of influenza,” declared the ship’s doctor.
“Has he lice? I do not see any.”
“No!” The suggestion made Michael very indignant. But, in order that they should not imagine his knowledge to be questionably intimate, he said “As far as I am aware.”
Anthony smiled. “I’m the one who knows if I am louse-ridden,” he told them. “And I’m not.”
“There is much argument in medical circles about the cause of both diseases,” Dr Coffey explained. “I myself think they are spread by lice, and have no connection at all with the hunger. There is a prodigious quantity of lice on people’s bodies at the moment. My learned friend here, Dr Moylan, would disagree, and I have to admit I have seen men and women who never harboured a louse die of one or the other sickness.”
“We have lice always,” Dr Moylan said. “But the yellow fever and the black fever we do not have always. These two follow starvation.”
“I’m not starving,” Anthony said.
“It is odd. Perhaps we will never know.”
This discussion irritated Michael hugely; an intellectual analysis of the origins of typhus and relapsing fever seemed to be of more concern to the doctors than the health of the patient. “What are we going to do?” he demanded. “How are we to set about curing him?”
“We’ll think of the cure,” Dr Coffey said, “when we know the ailment. It is best that he should not eat much. Give him liquids. Water. Soup.”
“I’m dying of thirst!” Anthony cried.
“The ration is only a little,” Michael said. “But he can have mine as well as his own. I do not need to wash, and food is food, cooked or uncooked.” He filled a glass with water and gave it to Anthony, who swallowed it greedily. “But what shall I do if that is not enough?”
Dr Moylan shrugged his shoulders. “You could ask people, perhaps. They might let you have some if you offered them a few pence.” He then said Anthony should be taken to the steerage, a section of which had been earmarked as a ward for the sick; someone who was not ill could change places and share the cabin.
Michael was adamant in his refusal to allow this, particularly when Dr Moylan said five people from the hold had become feverish during the night and had already been transferred there. “Do you want to sentence him to death?”
“It is for your own good. Do you want to be close to a man who may have typhus?”
“I’ve paid for this berth,” Anthony said, “and I will not be shifted from it! Unless my friend wishes me to go.”
“I do not!!” Michael yelled.
“Stay then,” Dr Moylan said. “Confined in this cabin you are not infecting anyone else. This is the love of David and Jonathan! Between an Irishman and an Englishman that is queer.”
“If every Englishman and every Irishman were so well acquainted,” Anthony said, “there would not have been a nation of paupers living on n
ettles and sea-weed. No famine and no fever.”
“True for you,” Dr Coffey said. “True for you! What sends you both to America? You are not paupers.”
“We hope to buy a piece of land and farm it,” Michael said.
“Well… may God grant you your wish. I will keep an eye on you.”
“I’m thirsty,” Anthony said. “I’m burning!”
Michael only left the cabin that day to fetch the water ration and to cook. I never thought I should be giving him stirabout, he said to himself as he concocted a soup on the communal stove. Already they were both wishing they were in New York. The voyage might have some attraction of novelty, but, as with the two days at Noreen’s, it was a period outside time, between existences. They speculated at length on the future ― how they would live in America ― but Anthony was too fatigued to talk much. His skin was still very hot, and he was consuming vast quantities of water.
Michael read to him: Blake. “ ‘But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.’ ”
“How true it is!” Anthony said. “The Peacocks, Father Quinlan, your parents ― they see human behaviour through the narrow chinks of their caverns. They’ve closed themselves up.”
