A woman spoke, and I turned to face her. She was thin too, but her hair shone in the firelight, a glorious deep red. She nodded at the child on the floor. ‘She’s not long for this world, the poor wee mite. But I’ll not let another child die. Never.’
And then I was the child on the floor, unable to get warm, with a deep ache of hunger in my belly, and the red-haired woman was stroking my face and trying to spoon a thin hot broth into me. The cottage was in ruins about us and a howling wind blew all around. Rain fell, heavier and heavier, soaking through the thin blankets that were wrapped around me. The woman knelt, pulled me into her arms and held me tight, her arms imparting warmth and strength, in a way I’d never felt from Jackie, and I knew while I was wrapped within them I was safe.
*
I’d set an alarm on my phone but woke before it, disturbed by both my dream and the dawn chorus outside my window. The dream dissolved around me as I struggled to recall it, like trying to catch wisps of smoke on the breeze. Although the images were gone I was left with the feeling of security I’d had in the arms of the red-haired woman, the way her love had kept me safe and warm. It was still dark, but there was a glimmer of light in the eastern sky, and I was filled with the urge to get out there and find Sammy. I made myself a cup of tea using the kettle in my room, and added cold water so I could drink it quickly. There were some little packs of ginger biscuits, so I ate those too, hoping that Aoife’s advice that ginger staved off morning sickness was accurate. It wasn’t raining and looked like it was going to be a fine day. There were worse things to do than go for a walk on the moors as the sun rose, and I had a feeling I knew where Sammy might be. My dream had to have meant something. I’ll not let another child die. Never. That phrase rang again in my head and I knew what I needed to do. I threw on my walking trousers – thankfully they’d dried overnight – and a warm fleece, and left the pub a full hour before the Gardaí had expected to resume the search.
It was still dark as I walked through town, but the eastern horizon was gradually lightening so I could easily see my way. The air was still, fresh and invigorating. I wasn’t usually an early riser but on a morning like this I could see the attraction of early morning dog walks or pre-work jogs. I headed out of Ballymor up the now familiar route to the moors, and turned left up the track to the abandoned village, walking quickly. It was some way from where the boy had last been seen, and I wasn’t sure that the search party had covered that area last night – they had rightly concentrated on the old mines and the thick heather moors surrounding them.
It was a tough climb in the half-light. I tripped a couple of times and felt the lack of breakfast inside me. I was pushing myself hard – the sooner I reached the village the better – if the child was indeed there he needed to be found as soon as possible. Was it my dream that had made me think of the village? I wasn’t sure, but it was worth a punt.
At last, as the eastern sky turned pink and orange, the row of ruined cottages came into sight. I began calling Sammy’s name, startling a rabbit, which bounded across the path in front of me. Up above, a skylark was singing somewhere, sounding full of joy at the new day. Didn’t it realise a child lay frightened, possibly injured, somewhere on these moors? If only we could see through the bird’s eyes, maybe then we’d be able to spot him. I hoped the police would be able to deploy a helicopter today.
I reached the first cottage, and went in and around it, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Same with the next few. The stream that cut through the village was much faster and deeper than it had been – yesterday’s rain had massively increased its flow. It was now severely undercutting the already broken side wall of one cottage. I didn’t want to go into that one – the remains of the wall looked extremely precarious. But something inside me insisted I check out every cottage, this one included, so I ducked under the lintel and entered.
‘Sammy?’ There was a dark bundle lying amongst the rubble of that undercut wall. A rivulet from the stream was coming through the cottage now, and the floor was a muddy quagmire apart from the area where the bundle lay. ‘Sammy, is that you?’ I picked my way across and crouched down. Oh God don’t let him be hurt . . . or worse . . . I was shaking as I reached out a hand to touch his shoulder . . .
CHAPTER 22
Michael 1849–1860
April 1849
Dearest Mammy
I’m writing this letter on-board the Columbus, but of course I will have to wait to post it when I reach New York. Starting it now, while still on the ship, is a way of passing the time. I think of you constantly, and hope you are well, and that you have plenty to eat, and that you aren’t missing me too much.
Life on-board the ship is hard as I knew it would be, but because I know it is only for a short while that makes it easier to bear. There are many people here, sleeping side by side in the hull of the ship, but I have a space near a porthole for light and air when it is not stormy, and I have a blanket and am comfortable enough. James O’Dowell and his family have their own cabin and he lets me come and lie in it during the day when they are strolling on deck if I haven’t slept well in the night. I suffered a little from the seasickness in the first few days but that has passed and now I am quite well.
The steerage passengers are all given dried biscuits with a cup of tea every day and beef jerky every three days. Of course for most of us it is more food than we’ve had regularly for some time, so although our bellies are still sunken we are not as hungry as we were. The richer passengers, including Mr O’Dowell and his family, have brought some food of their own.
There is a family here with six children, many of them with auburn hair. Their mother is expecting another and is tired and needing to lie down most of the time; their father stays with her, nursing his wife. I have taken it upon myself to do what I can to amuse the little ones. They remind me so much of my own dear brothers and sisters. Mammy, I know you will shed a tear reading this part, and I admit I have found it painful to look upon these children and wonder why did they survive while Gracie, Little Pat, Éamonn, Nuala and Jimmy did not. It seems unfair that you lost so many and this family lost only one, a baby of under a year, as I understand it. But these children are happy and lively and they deserve a chance, just as you insisted that I deserve a chance. I have swallowed my grief so that I can help out this family, and Mammy, playing with the children has brought me some comfort – I see Gracie living on in the little girl, who smiles coyly at me from her blanket; I see Éamonn in the youngest, who burbles happily if tickled after he’s eaten; and Jimmy in the cheeky boy who hides behind a bulkhead and tries to startle me as I pass.
I paint a happy picture of life on-board, but, Mammy, you should wait until I can send you enough money to buy a passage in a private cabin. I would not want for you to lie cheek by jowl with the other steerage passengers. You deserve better than that – a cabin such as James O’Dowell has.
It is three days since I began this letter and Mammy, something horrible happened – the mother I wrote of went into labour and delivered a stillborn child, a girl, right here in the middle of the deck. She had no privacy. Her husband helped, and James O’Dowell sent his wife down to assist and I did what I could to keep the other children calm and out of the way. The poor little mite did not draw a single breath, but was wrapped in a shroud within an hour, and ‘buried’ at sea.
Only ten hours later a man, who’d been sickly since he boarded the ship (I suspect with typhus, and I have tried to keep the children away from him), died peacefully in his sleep. He was also buried at sea, after a few prayers.
We are less than a week from New York, and I pray that we will have no more tragedy.
Mammy, yesterday we docked at last in New York, and what a relief it was to leave that dark, stinking hull. The red-haired children looked about them with eyes wide with wonder, and I think I had much the same expression on my face as well. It is hard to describe the differences I can see between Cork and New York, and for the moment I am not going to tr
y, for I promised I would write and tell you of my safe passage the moment I landed, and so I must hurry with this letter to the post office. And then I must go in search of lodgings and work.
With all my love,
Michael
May 1849
My dearest Mammy
It is now two weeks since the Columbus docked in New York and already the time on-board seems like a distant memory. You will not yet have received my first letter and, indeed, you might get this one at the same time. I send them in good faith that sooner or later they will make their way onto a homeward-bound ship, and once in Ireland will be ferried by the usual routes to Ballymor and thence to the post office, for you to collect as we agreed.
Anyway, my principal news is that I have found a job, and it comes with food and board, and so I am very comfortable here. I am washing pots in a hotel on Manhattan island – a lowly job, I am told, but one which ensures my basic needs are met, and after breaking rocks and road building, indeed, after potato farming, it is easy work, to be sure. I have a small room at the top of the hotel. It contains an iron bedstead with a couple of blankets, a washstand, basin and ewer, a bentwood chair and a small cupboard for my belongings. There is a small fireplace and I can fill a basket with wood from the store in the basement. Along the passageway is a bathroom, with a flushing toilet and taps you twist for running water – something I never thought I would see, let alone use daily! Mammy, it is luxury indeed for those just off the boat from Ireland, and I thank God daily for my good fortune, in having a mother such as you who enabled me to come here and live like this. Think me foolish, but I thank God too for dear old Mother Heaney’s brooch, that made all this possible. I pray too that you will be able to join me before too long. I have opened a savings account in a bank and am putting money aside every week towards your passage. I have met up with the O’Dowells once or twice – they have found lodgings and work as well. Truly this is a land of opportunity!
The chef in the hotel, Mr Corbin, caught sight of my sketchbook yesterday and he was impressed. I was after wondering if he was just being kind to the poor Irish waif, fresh off the boat, but it seemed not. He suggested I take my sketchbook, walk into Central Park on my day off if the sun is shining, and offer to sketch the well-to-do couples who stroll there, arm in arm. I will try this tomorrow. Mr Corbin says people might buy my drawings. I don’t expect they will, but I enjoy sketching, and it sounds like a pleasant thing to do on my day off.
At the top of this page I have included my address at the hotel – you may write to me there. I think of you daily and cannot wait until I hear from you and know you are safe. Please God the hunger is over and the potatoes grow blight-free again this season.
Your ever loving son,
Michael
August 1849
My dearest Mammy
I am calculating that the first letter from you will arrive next month at the earliest, for you would have to wait to hear from me, my last letter, to know where to write to. And then the letter must survive the six-week crossing of the Atlantic. Still, although I know I must be patient, I cannot wait to hear from you.
My most momentous news to report in this letter is that Mr Corbin, the chef of the hotel where I am employed as pot-washer, was right. I took my sketching things as he suggested into Central Park and installed myself on a bench, sketching the smartly dressed couple who sat opposite. After a while the gentleman came over to see what I was about, and when he saw my work he called his fiancée (as I was to learn she was) to see. They exclaimed with delight, sat down again in the same position to allow me to finish, and then offered me a dollar for the picture. Mammy, a whole dollar – more than a day’s wages! – and for just a simple sketch!
So now, on my days off, which are one a week, I come to the park whenever it is not raining, and I hunt to find someone to sketch and I draw them, and on maybe three occasions out of four I sell the sketch. Yesterday I was accosted in the park by a young lady who had heard of me from her friend, and she pleaded with me to sit for me, and I drew her with her little dog in her arms, and she was delighted with the result and paid me two dollars.
This money, Mammy, is all going into the savings account to pay for your ticket. At this rate it will not be long, and I will be able to arrange for your passage here to join me, and live as you should live – in comfort, not in fear of starvation or disease, not labouring in freezing conditions, not wondering where your next meal is coming from. You deserve better and I have the means to ensure you get it.
Your loving son,
Michael
May 1850
Dearest Mammy
I cannot believe I have been here in New York for a year already. The time has passed so quickly. My life in Ireland feels like a distant memory – except for when I think of you, Mammy, you are as clear in my head as you ever were, and as you always will be. I miss you, Mammy, and I wonder daily when a letter will arrive from you. For surely by now, enough time has passed, and at least one of my letters to you (I have written two dozen now, I believe) must have safely crossed to Ireland and found its way to Ballymor.
Anyway, I will continue to write every fortnight, to tell you of my news. My biggest news for this letter is that I have given up my job at the hotel – the first time ever that I have turned down work. The reason for this is that I am making enough money from selling my art, and I no longer need or want to spend the time pot-washing when I could be painting or drawing. I have rented a room in a boarding house, a very smart room which I only wish I could show you – well, I can show you! I shall sketch it, and include the sketch with this letter. The rich folk of New York commission me now, to paint their children, their loved ones, their pets, and themselves. I say ‘paint’ rather than ‘sketch’ as I have progressed now to using oil paints, and have set up a corner of my room in the boarding house as a studio.
One young lady who sat for me recently is named Eleanor. Mammy, she is beautiful and kind, and since I finished painting her portrait we have met and strolled together in the park on a couple of occasions. I wish you could meet her.
Do not worry that the expense of the lodgings means that it will take me longer to save the money for your passage, for I already have enough, and am saving now so that you may have a private cabin on your crossing so you are in greater comfort than I was. Only, I beg you, write to me soon so that we can make the arrangements.
Your son, waiting and hoping for a word,
Michael
July 1852
Dearest Mammy
I painted a picture of you this week, using oils. I wonder why I never thought of this before. Your face is so clear in my mind, even though the time since I saw you last in the flesh draws ever longer, like a thread stretching through time, but a thread that will never break. In the painting I imagined you on the quayside in Cork, dressed as a lady, waiting to board a ship, with a huge trunk beside you. Your expression is one of hope and joy, and on the bodice of your gown I painted the brooch – that beautiful Celtic knot brooch that you sold to buy my passage. The brooch that made it all possible.
I cannot enclose that picture for you, for it is oil on canvas. But I will copy it in a sketch and send you that instead, and hope that you like it.
You will see from the address above that I moved on from the boarding-house lodgings. I have taken a small apartment in a block in mid-town Manhattan. I have a whole room to use as a studio now, and I am booked for many weeks in advance, painting pictures of the rich and noteworthy people of this great city. The apartment is more suitable for receiving guests, such as Eleanor, whom I continue to see each week. Mammy, I intend asking her father for her hand in marriage, very soon now. She is truly the most precious of all women, and worthy of becoming your daughter-in-law.
In Ireland, the people imagine that the streets of New York are paved with gold, and if they could only travel here they would be able to simply pick it up. Well, Mammy, it is not quite like that, but it is certainly the case that if y
ou seize opportunities when they present themselves you can find that gold and make your fortune. I am not a rich man compared with many others here but I am beginning to think of myself as well off.
I always knew myself to be fortunate, for having had a mother like you, who did all she could to give me a chance in life.
I live in hope of a letter from you. As soon as I receive one, I shall send for you.
Your loving and grateful son,
Michael
September 1853
Dearest Mammy
It is done! I have married my beloved Eleanor! We had a simple ceremony by New York standards: her four sisters were bridesmaids, and some five dozen people attended, all who needed to be wined and fed afterwards. When I looked at all the food provided – paid for partly by me and partly by Eleanor’s father – and remembered how little we had in Ireland during the famine (thank God that is over, as I read in the newspapers), I could hardly believe how much my life has changed. I pray that your life has changed too, and for the better, perhaps away from Ballymor and that is why you have not responded to my letters. I cannot bear to think there is any other reason.
So now Eleanor and I live together in my apartment in Manhattan. We are as happy as newlyweds should be, and the only thing that could make me yet more content would be hearing news of your safety and wellbeing.
Yours in love and hope,
Michael
March 1860
My dear Mammy
I write to you in the vain hope that somehow this letter will reach you, where perhaps none of my others did. I write with news – momentous news that, if God wills that it reaches you, will delight you. I am to return to Ireland, home to the dear country of my birth! I can wait no longer to hear from you. I am coming home, to find you. And when I do, Mammy, I shall bring you back to New York with me. I am a rich man now, Mammy, and I can easily afford to do this, and, indeed, we shall travel first class on our way back to America. There shall be no expense spared.
The Girl from Ballymor Page 21
