Last Port of Call: The Queenstown Series

by Jean Grainger

  She looked up and shielded her eyes from the bright light. ‘Dean Jonathan Swift said that,’ she explained, speaking slowly so they would understand. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him?’

  Before she had a chance to turn, Jimmy hooked her parasol from her hand with his foot, throwing it to Emmet, who opened it and twirled it around.

  ‘God, you are such a weird girl. D’ya hear her, lads?’ Emmet hooted and Harp felt her cheeks burn.

  ‘Give that back,’ she demanded. But her outrage only fuelled their foolishness. She should not have riled them; she knew that now. If that parasol got ruined, her mother would be furious.

  Emmet threw it to Donal, who threw it to Jimmy, now perched on the pillar of the smithy’s gates.

  ‘Or what? You’ll get your da after us?’ Emmet jeered.

  ‘Oh, she can’t, her da is dead, supposedly.’ Jimmy Mullane placed heavy emphasis on the last word. ‘Or what about that quare hawk, Mr Devereaux?’ He said the name in a poor approximation of an English accent. ‘Maybe he’ll come to your rescue? Maybe he’s the daddy? You look just like him, Harp, all thin and creepy. Maybe your high-and-mighty ma isn’t so posh after all, offering all the services to the master of the house, eh?’ Emmet guffawed, pulling a grotesque face and wiggling his fingers menacingly. ‘Is the quare hawk your papa, Harp? Is he?’

  None of the boys saw Mrs Delaney emerge from the draper’s, and all three were once again sitting on the bar between the pillars. Harp watched in fascinated horror as her mother came out of the shop, quick as a flash walked behind them and in rapid succession hooked each boy’s trousers with the cane of her parasol, pulling them clean off the bar and landing them in the muddy puddles below. They howled as they each landed painfully on their bottoms, and Harp could scarcely believe what she’d seen.

  ‘Come along, Harp,’ her mother said briskly, picking her daughter’s parasol up from the ground, making no reference whatsoever to the events of the previous two minutes. ‘Don’t dawdle.’

  Harp had to skip along to keep up with her mother, who, though she was wearing her lovely brown suede kid boots, walked at the speed most people ran. The only sign that the exchange with the boys had meant anything were the two points of colour on her mother’s high cheekbones.

  Rose Delaney didn’t adorn herself with powder or jewellery, and if anything, Harp had to admit she looked stern, but when she smiled, her face transformed. Harp could make her smile and so could Mr Devereaux, but almost everyone else was terrified rigid of her. Sister Alphonsus had slapped Harp when she was in high baby infants for wetting her underwear by mistake, and when Harp came home, wet and miserable, still in the same clothes but with two reddened palms from the stick to add to her woes, the nun had had a visit from Mrs Delaney she wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Likewise, the butcher might have a reputation for leaving other housewives a little short if he could get away with it, but not Harp’s mammy. He and all others who supplied the house knew it was wisest not to cross her. Now Emmet Kelly knew it too.

  Harp hurried along the main street, taking care to keep her petticoats and skirts out of the dirt underfoot. Her mother’s face was set in that way it always was when they went out, as if only the most audacious person would dare to interrupt her.

  The ship dominated the skyline as the crowds milled about. One hundred twenty-three mainly third-class passengers were embarking and only eight were getting off. Of course it was the last port at which the vessel could take on mail for the United States, so the post workers had been working since the dawn to get it all ready for delivery to the ship.

  Lots of people had come down from Cork for the day on the train just to see Titanic, and Harp realised how lucky she was to live in the most beautiful town in Ireland, maybe even the whole world, where she could see her and all the other ocean liners from her bedroom window.

  St Colmans’s Cathedral stood proud and majestic high over the town, daily Mass almost filling the huge church as people from all over Ireland knelt and prayed for a safe passage, a better life, and prosperity and peace for those they’d left behind. For most liner passengers, particularly those in third class, the sight of the coloured, stacked, terraced houses of Queenstown, the imposing cathedral, the green park, the bandstand and the handsome main streets were the last images of their native land they would ever have. Only a tiny percentage ever returned to Ireland again, and Harp was proud that their last view was of Queenstown. She imagined old people telling their American grandchildren about this place, pride in their voices.

  Ireland was heartbreakingly beautiful, but centuries of occupation by the British had brought it to its knees economically. Harp didn’t remember the famine, of course, as it was seventy years ago, but there were people who did, and the scenes at Queenstown then were inscribed indelibly on the memories of the old people. The ones who made it to Queenstown were the lucky ones. They got the price of a steerage ticket to the New World, and they boarded, half-starved and in rags, while the remains of their family either died or went to the workhouse. Harp had read about the ships that left during those years, laden down with oats, grain, livestock, whiskey, beer, as the population died of hunger.

  Nobody would guess, speaking as he did with an English accent, how appalled Mr Devereaux was at how the Irish were treated. Even now he felt that Mr Redmond wasn’t going far enough in looking for Home Rule for Ireland while remaining part of the Empire; he advocated for total and complete independence. When she’d asked him how that could be achieved, he’d replied quietly but with a gleam of triumph in his eye, ‘By revolution, Harp, all-out rebellion.’

  Such talk was seditious and dangerous and people were arrested for less, but she didn’t worry about him; he didn’t see anyone so there was nobody to tell on him to the police. But even hearing him say the words gave her a chill of fear fused with a thrill of excitement.

  They learned nothing of the Irish struggle against oppression in school. But she read privately all about the O’Neills and O’Donnells fighting the British in 1601 in Kinsale with the help of the Spanish; then Wolfe Tone and the French at Bantry Bay in 1798, trying to follow in the footsteps of the sans-culottes who cut the head off their king; then poor Robert Emmet, who led the United Irishmen in 1803. Throughout the centuries the Irish had fought and died for their sovereignty and had failed every time. But it did not daunt them. Harp believed in her heart that one day Ireland would be free, that the glorious green island would come out from under the thumb of British oppression for once and for all.

  Those hungry days felt lost in the mists of time that day as peace and prosperity abounded. Those leaving were of course seeking a new life, an adventure perhaps, but they were not leaving with empty bellies and no shoes.

  Her mother too recalled people being evicted for not paying the rent, battering rams taken to their homes, leaving them destitute. Mammy told a story of how a widow woman she knew was accused of stealing a gold brooch from the Protestant family she cleaned for. She was dismissed, her reputation in tatters. Nobody believed her capable of theft but that didn’t matter; the Protestant landlord’s wife said she did it, so therefore she did. She had to send her children to the workhouse because she had no money, and she threw herself in the river. The mistress of the house later found the brooch on a cape she seldom wore, but by then the woman was dead and her children forced into a life of drudgery.

  There were no repercussions for the accusers. That was just part and parcel of being British ascendency – one law for them, another for the Irish people. Her mother wouldn’t like to hear such talk, though, not because she didn’t agree but because such sentiment drew the authorities down on one’s head and that never ended well.

  The people there that day didn’t look oppressed, Harp had to admit. Business in the town was booming, and she got the impression that people were happy enough to give their allegiance to the British king, but perhaps that was because they knew no other way.

  Thoughts of revolution, Home Rule or anyt
hing else political was far away that day. People licked ices and children sucked sweets. Men, some in working clothes, more in their Sunday best, stood and took it all in as the women pulled little ones by the hand or pushed them in prams. The excitement in the air was tangible.

  ‘Let’s go to the railing, Mammy. It’ll be going again soon,’ Harp urged as the tugs sounded their horns. Titanic was only in port for enough time to get the disembarking passengers off and the new ones on and to take on enough supplies and mail before setting sail once more.

  Her mother allowed herself to be pulled across the road, into the park and to the railings, where they could see all of the activity on the quayside below. Seemingly thousands of bags of mail were being thrown from the shore to the tender, as well as boxes and crates of supplies for the ship. Harp gazed as boxes of bright-yellow lemons and ruby-red strawberries were handed from one docker to the other, forming a human chain of produce.

  ‘Imagine eating strawberries on the ship, Mammy?’ she said, her eyes bright with the sheer bliss of it all.

  ‘Strawberries in April? They must have come out of glasshouses. But yes, it would be very glamorous, I suppose,’ Rose conceded. ‘Harp, if you get smuts on that white dress, I won’t be able to get them out, so don’t lean forward so much. Those railings have never seen a cloth, you may be sure.’

  The breeze was brisk and not altogether warm as Harp reluctantly took a step back. Her bonnet was tied with a ribbon, but it didn’t feel that secure, not that she cared. The tender was arriving from Titanic to the shore, and the people who were disembarking there in Queenstown were aboard. She and her mother, along with the entire town it seemed, watched as people came ashore, waving to the gathered crowds. A priest came as part of the group. He had a camera and was taking lots of snaps of the ship at anchor, the crowds gathered at the dock, the people waiting to take their place on the tender, embarking on the most exciting trip of their lives on what must be the world’s most magnificent ship.

  ‘I’m going to sail to America on Titanic one day, Mammy,’ Harp said.

  ‘Are you really?’ Rose asked with an indulgent smile. ‘And where are you going to get fifteen pounds and ten shillings for your fare, would you mind telling me that? Do you plan on finding yourself a rich husband?’

  ‘I’ll earn it,’ Harp replied indignantly. ‘I’m going to be a writer and I’ll discover something amazing and write a book about it and then I’ll have loads of money. And you and Mr Devereaux can come too, and we’ll get a suite of rooms, not just a cabin. The chef in first class is from a famous restaurant in Paris, you know. We’ll eat like royalty.’

  Rose chuckled – Harp loved how she could make her do it. ‘Well, since Mr Devereaux isn’t able to come down to the town here, I can’t see him wandering around Broadway in New York City, can you?’

  All around them the people bustled and inched forward to see the spectacle. Harp put her hand to her bonnet, fearing a gust of wind might take it away. She didn’t know why she said it, but the words tumbled out. ‘Before you came in this morning, Mr Devereaux gave me that pen and said that it was for me, but he called me Harp Devereaux. At first I thought he made a mistake, but he said he never did, and he doesn’t. The boys at school say he’s my father.’ Her eyes never left her mother’s. ‘They’re always saying I look like him and that my real father didn’t die…’

  Despite hearing this rumour since she was five years old, it was the first time she’d ever raised the possibility with her mother. It never felt right, not that it did now, but being there, beside the ship with all its infinite potential and her complete certainty that one day she would sail on it, the small-minded gossip of a port town seemed less important.

  Her mother’s face was inscrutable, but she looked taken aback. She even opened her mouth to speak and closed it again. ‘Let’s walk,’ was all she said, leading Harp away from all of the crowds.

  They walked in silence with their backs to the ship, up the quayside where the people thinned out to where the railway line ended. Carriages sat on sidings, waiting to transport the day trippers back to Cork once Titanic sailed away.

  There was a bench at the very end of the quay, and Rose Delaney stopped and sat, an action that surprised Harp. Such public amenities had never been part of their lives; it was as if Rose didn’t think such places were quite seemly.

  Harp sat beside her mother, knowing something momentous was coming. She didn’t believe what the boys said, of course she didn’t. Mammy and Mr Devereaux would never lie to her, and anyway she knew how babies were made and there was no way Mr Devereaux and her mother ever did that – the whole thing was ridiculous.

  ‘Harp, I need to tell you something, and it might come as a shock.’

  For the first time ever, Harp saw her mother as something less than sure and confident.

  ‘I should have said something before, I suppose, but there was never the right time. I didn’t know people had said things like that to you. I would have been more honest if I’d had any idea…’ She seemed to struggle to find the right words.

  ‘More honest about what?’ Harp asked, feeling very unnerved by this turn of events.

  ‘Those boys, what they said…’ Her mother exhaled. ‘It’s not… Well, the thing is… Oh, Harp, I…’

  ‘Are they right? Is Mr Devereaux really my father?’ Harp asked, trying to process the information.

  Her mother looked pained. ‘Look, Harp. It’s complicated, but yes, you are a Devereaux. But it is Ralph, not Henry Devereaux, who is your father.’

  Harp swallowed. ‘But you said my father was killed and that you were pregnant when he died and you came to work for the Devereauxes after I was born.’ She couldn’t understand what her mother was saying to her, not really.

  ‘That was a lie.’ The words fell like heavy stones.

  ‘So what is the truth?’ Harp asked gently.

  Her mother shot her a sideways glance, her face contorted in pain and something else – was it shame?

  ‘Please, Mammy, tell me,’ Harp urged.

  Rose inhaled and focused on a point on Haulbowline Island, directly in front of them in the harbour. ‘I began working as a housemaid in the Cliff House when I was fourteen. There were two footmen and a butler as well as a cook and a housekeeper in those days. I came from a poor background, so it was a good position to get.’ She swallowed. ‘Old Mr Devereaux was dead by then and Mrs Devereaux lived there with her two sons. Mr Henry, he’d always been a bit…well, a bit like himself really, I suppose. He’d gone off to school and everything, but he was in his mid-thirties, I believe, when I came and he was unusual. He didn’t like to go out or meet people – he wanted to be on his own. But his brother, Ralph, was different. He was handsome and charming and loved socialising. He was twenty-five when I came and well…’ Her mother’s cheeks flamed with the embarrassment of telling the tale. ‘He seduced me. I…I wasn’t forced, nothing like that, but he promised he’d marry me and I foolishly believed him. Of course someone like him would never marry a servant, but I was naïve and silly and so I…he and I…’ – she swallowed again – ‘began a relationship.

  ‘I would never have allowed him if I thought he was lying, but as it turned out, I wasn’t the only one. Some wife of a banker in Cork had also caught his eye, and so his mother found out. He had some debts built up as well, and so it was decided to send him away to India, to a cousin there who would find him some work. I never saw him again.’

  ‘Go on,’ Harp said, trying to take it all in.

  ‘Well, he was gone, I don’t know, maybe two months or so, and I realised I was pregnant. I handed in my notice and went home to my parents, but they wanted nothing to do with me – they threw me out. I lived on the streets in Dublin for a while but that was awful, so I came back here.’

  ‘And did you not tell Ralph? Write to him even?’ Harp asked.

  ‘No. I had no address for him, and besides, he’d gone without even saying goodbye so I knew I meant nothing to him. If it
had just been me, I would never have darkened this door again, but I had you to consider now and I needed help. So putting my pride in my pocket, I came back here and told old Lady Devereaux of my predicament.’

  ‘Did she believe you?’ Harp found she wasn’t appalled but fascinated.

  Rose nodded. ‘Funnily enough she did. She knew what Ralph was like. But she chided me for being so foolish as to give in to him. She agreed that I could stay so long as I concocted a dead husband from somewhere, and she would let me work and raise you here, provided I never told anyone who your father really was. She made me sign a legal paper to say I would never reveal the truth.’

  ‘Did Ralph know?’ Harp wondered.

  Rose shook her head. ‘He has no idea, unless Mrs Devereaux told him, which I doubt. You look nothing like him, so nobody ever suspected.’

  ‘The boys at school say I look like Mr Devereaux.’

  Rose smiled. ‘And you do, very like him. And believe me, Harp, Henry Devereaux is fifty times the man his brother is, so be glad you take after your uncle.’

  Her uncle. Mr Devereaux was her uncle and she was a Devereaux, not a Delaney.

  ‘But why did you never tell me?’ Harp found that she was delighted with the news. Of course if it ever got out, people would sneer and say things, but she was used to that anyway.

  ‘I wanted to, but I’m a respectable person now, Harp, and I’ve raised you to be the same. For so long I had to keep quiet for fear of eviction and destitution, and now, well, what would be the point? We don’t want gossip and we don’t need anyone else, so it’s best to keep it to ourselves. I fell so far, but through the, if not kindness, then at least pragmatism of Mrs Devereaux, we had a home and you had a future. It seemed a small price to pay.’

  Harp stood up and offered her mother her hand. ‘I’m glad you told me.’