The Wild Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Seamie had smiled at that and folded the letter away. Sid had married India only days after he arrived. They’d had another child, a boy, in 1908. They named him Aloysius—Wish for short—for India’s cousin. And then baby Elizabeth had arrived four months ago. She was named for Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Elizabeth Blackwell, two of the first women doctors. They were happy, Sid and India. Seamie hadn’t been to visit them yet, but Fiona and Joe and their children had. Fiona said that their house was filled with light and love and laughter, and that one could see and smell and hear the ocean from every room.

  Seamie thought now that both his sister and his brother had had lives that seemed as if they’d come from a fairy story, complete with happy endings. He thought it must be nice to have those things. Not everyone got to have them. He hadn’t. His happy ending had run away from him, all the way to the other side of the world.

  “Oh, Joe, we must go to California again next year. I miss them all so much,” Fiona said, still gazing longingly at the photograph. “The baby’s already four months old, and we’ve never even seen her. Well, Maud’s going at the end of the summer. That’s something.”

  Maud Selwyn Jones was India’s sister and now Seamie’s, Fiona’s, and Joe’s sister-in-law. She was also Fiona’s good friend. The two women had worked together for years on women’s suffrage, and a close bond had developed between them. A widow and enormously wealthy, Maud scandalized British society by doing exactly what she pleased, when she pleased—whether it involved traveling to unsuitable places, indulging in unsuitable substances, or dallying with unsuitable men.

  “I’m going to give Maud a trunk filled with presents for the children to take with her. She said she’d be happy to do it. I saw her the other day, you know. We talked about the trip, and how much she was looking forward to seeing her nieces and nephew. She joked that she’s finally become the thing she most feared—an old spinster aunt.” Fiona laughed. “Hardly! She’s still very beautiful. She must’ve been something else when she was younger. Well, weren’t we all?”

  Seamie looked at Joe. He looked mortified. Seamie knew Joe and Maud had been lovers once, many years ago, before Fiona and Joe were married.

  “Oh, sorry, luv!” Fiona said sheepishly, noticing Joe’s expression. “Forgot about all that. I suppose I should be jealous, shouldn’t I? I would be, Joe, but the problem is, good women friends are so hard to find.” She reached over and patted his hand. “Almost as hard to find as good husbands. And anyway, Maud’s not after you anymore. I think she’s quite taken with Harriet’s cousin, that handsome Max von Brandt. She told me he’s too young for her, but then again, Jennie Churchill married a man twenty years her junior, didn’t she? It’s the fashion now, and why not? Men have been doing it for ages. I saw Lady Nevill in the park the other day. She’s in her eighties now and as wicked as ever. She was walking amongst a whole gaggle of children. I asked her what she was doing there, and she said, ‘Well, if you want to know, my dear, I am searching in the perambulators for my next husband!’ ”

  Joe rolled his eyes. Seamie laughed. He poured himself a second cup of tea, downed it, finished the last of his kipper, then said, “Well, I’m off, Fee. I’ve a busy morning. I’m going to visit Admiral Alden again.”

  “How is he?” Fiona asked.

  “Worsening, I’m afraid,” Seamie said.

  “I’m so sorry to hear it. We’ll go to visit him soon. In the meantime, please give him and Mrs. Alden our best.”

  “I will, Fee. And after I’ve seen him, there’s a lunch at the Royal Geographical Society. Shackleton’s going to be there.”

  “Oh, no,” Fiona said, frowning. “Not again! We just got you back.”

  “Very possibly,” Seamie said, grinning. “Rumor has it his latest expedition’s actually coming together. Don’t wait for me for tea. I’ll be back late.”

  Fiona was looking at him thoughtfully as he spoke. He knew his sister well enough to be worried when she did that.

  “Seamie, luv …”

  “Yes, Fiona?”

  “Since you’re going into the city anyway, would you do me a favor?”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What? Why uh-oh? All I wanted you to do was to drop off a check at the Wilcotts’. Joe and I are making a donation to Jennie’s school.”

  Katie looked up, giggling. “Croydon, here I come!” she said.

  Seamie ignored his niece. He gave his sister a long look. “Ever heard of a post office, Fee?”

  “In fact, yes. I have. I thought you taking it would be safer, that’s all.”

  “Fine. I’ll take it. All I have to do is slide it through the Reverend Wilcott’s mail slot, right?”

  “Well, it would be nice if you could give it to the Wilcotts in person. It’s for a rather large amount, you know. I wouldn’t want it to go missing.”

  Joe, still working on his speech, snorted. “You’re about as subtle as a freight train, lass,” he said.

  “What?” Fiona said, feigning innocence. “You don’t … you can’t think I’m matchmaking?”

  “Yes, I can,” Seamie and Joe said together.

  Fiona made a face at them. “All right, then,” she admitted. “I am. So what? Jennie Wilcott’s a lovely young woman. Any man in his right mind would be madly interested in her.”

  “Stop, Fiona,” Seamie said. “Just stop.”

  “I’m only concerned about you, you know. Concerned about your happiness.”

  “I’m perfectly happy,” Seamie said. “Deliriously happy.”

  “How could you be? With no home of your own? With no wife and family? I don’t worry about Sid anymore—”

  “Lucky sod,” Seamie said under his breath.

  “—but I do worry about you. I wish you had what he had. You can’t spend your best years alone at the South Pole with only icebergs and penguins for company, you know. What kind of life is that?”

  Seamie sighed.

  “I just want you to be happy, Seamie. Truly happy, I mean. As happy as Sid and India are. As happy as Joe and I are. I just want—”

  Fiona’s words were cut off by the sound of a loud and terrible crash. It was followed by shouting, swearing, barking, and crying.

  “Bloody hell,” Joe said.

  Two seconds later, the dogs, Tetley and Typhoo, came tearing into the dining room, yipping and covered in paint. Six-year-old Rose, eleven-year-old Peter, and the twins, Patrick and Michael, who were four, followed, clutching on to their thirteen-year-old brother, Charlie. All five were also covered in paint. The three painters came next, covered in paint, followed, most alarmingly, by Mr. Foster, also covered in paint.

  Rose stamped her foot and sobbed that it was all Peter’s fault and he’d ruined her favorite dress. Peter blamed Charlie. Charlie just blinked through the blobs of white paint dripping off his head onto his clothing. Patrick and Michael, howling, blamed no one. They just sought comfort—in their father’s lap. Joe tried to fight them off, but in no time at all he, too, was covered in paint. The dogs trotted about, tracking paint everywhere. Then one of them shook himself, spraying paint all over Fiona. The head painter swore he wouldn’t come back, not ever.

  Seamie shook his head in disbelief. He had sailed to Antarctica, often on rough seas, in a small ship with men and dogs and livestock, but that had been a peaceful stroll through the park compared to the noise and commotion he was witnessing now. He poured himself another cup of tea, drank it, then said, “You lot can keep Croydon. I’ll take the South Pole any day of the week!”

  Chapter Eight

  The London Omnibus turned onto Wapping’s High Street. It bumped and banged over the rutted cobblestones, belched and sputtered as it picked up speed, then careened dangerously around the bends and turns of the narrow and winding dockside thoroughfare.

  Seamie, sitting on the bus’s open top deck, lifted his face to the sky. It was a fair day, but the locals wouldn’t have known it. The sun didn’t shine on the streets of Wapping; the warehouses, dark and lo
oming, blocked it out. A stiff breeze carried the smell of the Thames on it, muddy and low, with a tang of salt.

  An image suddenly shimmered across Seamie’s mind, a quick, fleeting picture of a handsome man with black hair and blue eyes. They were sitting together on a flight of stone steps at the river’s edge. He was small, only a tiny boy, and the man had his arm around him. The man’s voice was low and beautiful and full of the music of his native Ireland. He was telling him the names of all the ships in the river and what they were carrying and where they were from.

  And then the picture faded. As it always did. Seamie tried to call it back, but he couldn’t. He wished he remembered more about the man, his father. He was only four when his father died and his memories of him were few, but he knew he’d been happy then, sitting by the river. He knew even then, at the age of four, that he loved ships and the water, but not nearly as much as he loved his father.

  The bus slowed, coughed, and came to a stop at the Prospect of Whitby, an old riverside public house. Seamie hopped off. Fiona had told him that the Reverend Wilcott’s church was on Watts Street, just north of the pub. He planned to say a quick hello to the Wilcotts, drop off the check, and be on his way.

  He’d just come from visiting the Aldens and would have to go all the way back west again to get to the dinner at the Royal Geographical Society. He was running late, too, for he’d stayed at the Aldens’ house longer than he’d planned.

  Seamie was no doctor, but he didn’t need to be to see that the admiral’s condition was worsening. His face was waxen and he was in a great deal of pain. He’d been happy to see Seamie and eager to hear about Ernest Shackleton’s plans for another trip to Antarctica, but he’d needed morphine twice in the scant hour that Seamie had been with him.

  “It’s cancer of the stomach,” Mrs. Alden had said tearfully, as he’d sat with her in the drawing room afterward. “We’ve known it for a while, but we haven’t talked about it much. I suppose we should have. But we’re not terribly good at talking about such things, Albie and I. Dogs and the weather, those are our preferred topics.”

  “Does Willa know?” he asked.

  Mrs. Alden shook her head. “If she does, she’s given us no word. I’ve written her. Albie has, too. Several times. But I’ve received nothing from her. Nothing at all.”

  “She’ll come,” Seamie said. “I know she will.”

  He’d promised Mrs. Alden to call again soon, given her Fiona’s and Joe’s regards, and then left for Wapping. It was too much for him, seeing the admiral suffering so, and seeing all the photographs of Willa in Mrs. Alden’s drawing room.

  He tried to shake the sadness off now, as the church of St. Nicholas came into sight. It was old and unlovely, as was most everything in Wapping. Seamie first tried the door to the rectory—a sooty stone building built cheek-by-jowl to the church, but it was locked. He then tried the church door. It was open. He went inside, hoping he might find the Reverend Wilcott in there, tidying the altar or some such thing. Instead, he found Jennie Wilcott and two dozen children.

  They weren’t in the classroom he passed, but were all seated—some on chairs, some on tea chests—around a small black stove in the sacristy, reading words chalked on a portable blackboard. Jennie looked up at the sound of his footsteps, startled. He was startled, too—startled to see how pretty she was. She looked so different from the last time he’d seen her. Her eye was no longer swollen; the bruising around it had faded some. Her blond hair was neatly combed and pinned up in a twist. Her clothes, a white cotton blouse and blue twill skirt, were clean and pressed and showed off her lovely curves and tiny waist.

  She’s more than pretty, he thought. She’s beautiful.

  “Hello, again, Miss Wilcott,” he said. “I’m Seamus Finnegan. Fiona Bristow’s brother. We met a few weeks ago. At the … um … well, at the prison.”

  Jennie Wilcott’s face lit up. “Yes, of course! What a pleasure it is to see you again, Mr. Finnegan!” she said.

  “Cor, miss, was you sent down again?” a little boy asked.

  “It’s ‘Were you sent down again?,’ Dennis. And yes, I was.”

  “You’re in the clink more than me dad, miss!” a girl said.

  “Do you think so? I’d say it’s pretty close. Luckily, I had Mr. Finnegan to help get me out last time. Boys and girls, do you know who Mr. Finnegan is?”

  “No, miss,” twenty-four voices said in unison.

  “Then I shall tell you. He is one of our country’s heroes—a real, live explorer!”

  There were cries of “Get out of it, miss!” and “Blimey!” and “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”

  “Yes, he is. He went with Mr. Amundsen to the South Pole in Antarctica, and he’s here now to tell you all about it. He promised me that he would come and here he is!”

  Jennie’s voice was excited. Her eyes, as she looked at the children seated all around her, shone.

  Seamie had quite forgotten about the promise he’d made. “Actually, Miss Wilcott, I came to give you this,” he said, pulling an envelope from his breast pocket. “It’s from Fiona and Joe. It’s a donation.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see,” Jennie said, disappointment in her voice. “Forgive me, Mr. Finnegan, I thought …”

  Twenty-four little faces, upturned and eager, suddenly fell.

  “Is he not going to talk to us, miss?” one boy asked.

  “Miss, won’t he stay?”

  “Won’t he tell us about Ann Tartika?”

  “Now, children. Mr. Finnegan is very busy and—” Jennie began to say.

  “Of course I’ll stay,” Seamie said hastily, finding that he couldn’t bear the disappointment in the children’s faces. Or Jennie Wilcott’s.

  He hastily stuffed the envelope back into his pocket, then sat down among the children. One boy stood to give him his seat, which was close to the stove, but Seamie told him to sit down again. The child was poorly dressed for a March day.

  Seamie began by telling them about his first expedition. He’d gone to the Royal Geographical Society one night to hear Ernest Shackleton speak about his upcoming trip to Antarctica, and his quest to find the South Pole. He’d been so impressed with Shackleton, and so determined to be a part of his expedition, that he’d followed the man home and stood outside his house for thirty-three hours, never moving, never so much as flinching, not when night fell, not when it poured rain, until Shackleton invited him in. He’d impressed the explorer with his enthusiasm and his steadfastness, and Shackleton had taken him on.

  The children’s eyes grew wide as Seamie told them what it had been like to set off for the South Pole at the age of seventeen. He told them of the endless seas, the vast night skies, the lashing storms. He told them of life on board the Discovery—Shackleton’s vessel—and of the hard work, the discipline, and the tedium of being cooped up for months in such a small space with so many men. He told them about his more recent journey to the pole with Amundsen. He told them what it was like to finally feel the air turn frigid and see ice in the water. To be watched by seals and penguins and whales. To work at twenty below zero, to set up camp, run dog sleds, take measurements and readings, to trek over treacherous pack ice, to force the body to perform miracles of physical endurance when it hurt just to breathe.

  And he told them that it was worth it. The long voyage, the loneliness, the bad food, the agony of cold—it was worth every second of pain and doubt, just to stand where no one had ever stood before, in a pristine wilderness of snow and ice. To be the first.

  He talked to the children for nearly two hours. He didn’t notice the time passing. He never did when he talked about Antarctica. He forgot time, and he forgot himself. He was aware of only one thing—his desire to make his audience feel the passion he felt for Antarctica and to see—if only in their imaginations—the beauty he’d seen there.

  When he finished, the children applauded loudly. Seamie smiled at their enthusiasm, at the curiosity and excitement in their faces. They had a million
questions for him, and he did his best to answer them. But suddenly it was four o’clock and time for them to go home. They thanked him and begged him to come back, and he said he would. They readied themselves to leave, and as they did, Jennie said, “There’s one more thing, children. One thing Mr. Finnegan forgot to tell you. Do any of you know where Mr. Finnegan was born?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “Who can guess?”

  “Buckingham Palace!”

  “Blackpool!”

  “Harrods!”

  “He was born in East London,” Jennie finally said. “Just like you. He lived with his sister and brother in Whitechapel.”

  There were expressions of disbelief, then searching glances and shy smiles—all evidence of some small, secret hope held in each heart.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Finnegan,” Jennie said, when the children were gone. “I didn’t mean to put you on show. I didn’t know you’d come to bring a donation. I thought you’d come to speak with the children.”

  “Please don’t apologize. I enjoyed it. Really.”

  “Then thank you. It was very kind of you.”

  “It was nothing, Miss Wilcott. I hope I gave them a bit of entertainment.”

  “You gave them more than entertainment,” Jennie said, with a sudden intensity. “You gave them hope. Their lives are very hard, Mr. Finnegan. Very hard. Everything and everyone conspires against them. Every voice they hear—a weary mother’s, a drunken father’s, a grasping employer’s—tells them that the bright and shining things of this world are for others, not for them. Today, you silenced those voices. If only for a few hours.”

  Jennie turned away then, as if embarrassed by her emotion, and busied herself with banking the coals in the stove. “I don’t know why I bother,” she said. “It’s a useless stove. It heats nothing. But at least it’s a stove. We don’t have any heat at all in our actual classroom.”

  “It’s Saturday, Miss Wilcott.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said, raking the embers into a pile with a poker.

  “You hold school on Saturdays?”