Last Port of Call: The Queenstown Series

by Jean Grainger

  She thought of the line in David Copperfield, when he admonishes Dora for the manner in which she dealt with a servant. ‘Unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to us.’ But Dickens was wrong. The rich had no duty where the servant class were concerned; they owed them nothing. Her mother had served the Devereaux family for years, and now it was over and she was to be cast aside. It had never occurred to any member of that family what would become of the servants once the last Devereaux died. Try as she might to channel her anger at Mr Devereaux, as surely he would have known this would happen, she couldn’t find it in her heart to blame him. He would never have meant for this to happen, but such matters would not have entered his head.

  She had brought her pen to school that day, just once, to let people see how beautiful it was. Master Tiernan remarked upon it, held it up reverentially and showed everyone the exquisite craftsmanship. She’d told him and the entire class that it had been a gift from Mr Devereaux, but she knew as she did that it was a mistake.

  Emmet had teased and tormented her all through the day, still bitter from her mother’s pulling him off the railing. In the schoolyard at breaktime, he followed her, his cronies behind him. ‘Oh, the quare hawk gave it to ya, did he? A parting gift for his darling girl?’ He laughed that horrible laugh of his, the one that made everyone look. ‘’Tis a pity your dear old daddy didn’t leave you something better than an old bit of a pen, isn’t it, considering yourself and your strumpet of a mother are heading for the workhouse now?’

  Harp hated to listen to him, hated even more that everyone was paying attention. She couldn’t bear to hear him talk of her mammy and Mr Devereaux that way, but she had no answer for him.

  She tried to walk away but he stood in front of her, so close she could smell his foul breath.

  ‘Maybe your mammy can find another quare hawk with a load of money and a big auld creepy house, and maybe she can warm another man’s bed to keep a roof over your clever little head? And not leave you high and dry now without tuppence to your names.’ He ruffled Harp’s hair roughly, and she could feel her heart thumping in sheer terror.

  ‘Mr Devereaux didn’t leave us nothing. He left me this pen because I’m a Devereaux and…’ she began, but the words wouldn’t come. She couldn’t defend him, her mother, herself. It was all so hard. Her heart felt like it was actually broken – she had a pain in her chest – and the worst was that nobody could know. She had to pretend like she was fine, but more than that, she had to try to look like she didn’t care that the most important man in her life was gone.

  ‘Shut up, Emmet. You’re nothing but a gob on a stick – nothing to say, but the loudest voice.’

  Harp swung around. Nobody had ever stuck up for her before. Was it a trick?

  It was the undertaker’s son, and he was with three older boys; they must have been sixteen or seventeen, almost done with school. The Quinns lived on the beautiful curved terrace at the top of the hill with large three-storied houses, so while they weren’t gentry in the way the Devereaux family were, they were well off.

  The gathered crowd laughed and Emmet fumed. He opened his mouth to say something cutting to his cousin but shut it again upon seeing the school principal ringing the bell.

  Harp turned and felt her face burn. She knew she should say something to him, to thank him, but she feared that she might cry so she mumbled something, her head down as she passed him.

  He put a hand out to stop her and she looked up. ‘Are you all right, Harp?’ he asked as the other children all made their way noisily back to the classrooms.

  She nodded and swallowed.

  ‘Don’t mind that eejit Emmet,’ he said kindly. ‘He’s just jealous because you live in a lovely house and you’re miles brainier than him.’ He smiled and it crinkled his china-blue eyes, the same kind eyes she remembered from the day of Mr Devereaux’s funeral. He was very tall and thin and had freckles and close-cut red hair.

  ‘Thanks.’ She felt embarrassed that she didn’t know his name when he knew hers.

  ‘Brian,’ he volunteered.

  ‘Thank you, Brian.’

  Mr O’Flynn, who taught the older class, had emerged from the teachers’ tea room and was bearing down on them across the schoolyard.

  ‘I better go. Mind yourself, Harp,’ Brian said as he sprinted back to the senior section of the school.

  Feeling a little better, she returned to her classroom.

  It was hard to concentrate and the master had to call her three times to hand up her work, she was so lost in thought.

  Harp knew that every day the postman passed without a letter, her mother sighed with relief at another day’s reprieve. Then by afternoon she would be worried again, thinking the solicitor handling the estate would call in person and be horrified to find them still there.

  She’d packed up their things so that should they need to make a speedy departure, they could, but where would they go? Mammy had a little money in the post office, but she told Harp that it would only last a week or so. After that, well, she had no idea what would become of them.

  Harp felt the sting as the spitball of wet paper hit her cheek. The master had his back to the class and Emmet was grinning again. She wiped it off her face and then from her desk to the floor. A second later another one landed, this time on her blotter. There was more sniggering from behind. She brushed it off with her sleeve, keeping her head down so they couldn’t see the tears.

  Normally if they were being particularly mean, she would go home and sit in the library and read a story in which the villains got their comeuppance, but she couldn’t bring herself to go in there now. Mammy was too worried about their future to bother her with this, and anyway she would just tell Harp to ignore them.

  ‘Is Brian the giant your boyfriend, Harp?’ she heard someone hiss.

  ‘Brian the giant and Harpy the smarty – what a pair.’

  A few of the others giggled.

  ‘Would the babies be huge or tiny? Or would they be mousy or foxy?’ Emmet was warming to his theme.

  Harp couldn’t take it any more. ‘Leave me alone, Emmet Kelly! Please just stop it and leave me alone!’ Her words ended in a sob as she put her pen in her pocket and stormed out of the classroom. She heard the master call her from the door but she ran on, ignoring him.

  She ran all the way towards the Cliff House, blinded by tears. Her books and lunch bag and everything were still at school and she would probably get slapped the next day for running away, but she couldn’t bear it; she couldn’t listen to Emmet and the others for another second. But she couldn’t go home. Her mammy would be so cross, and besides she couldn’t explain – it was too hard to find the words. She ran all the way to the Protestant church on the top of the hill. The gate was too heavy to open, but she’d noticed a gap in the wall the day of the burial, so she went round and climbed in that way. She made her way across the uneven ground of the churchyard. In contrast to the day of the funeral, the sun was warm, and she sat beside the grave, the earth still dark and loamy where the gravediggers had replaced it.

  Everything was terrible. Emmet Kelly was always mean, but it never hurt this much before. She had not one friend, and now she and her mother were going to lose the only home she’d ever known. She had not even been able to play her harp since he died as the pain of the music he loved so much was too difficult to bear.

  ‘Mr Devereaux,’ she began, ‘I…I can’t… Please…p-please come back… Don’t leave…’ The words would not come. They stuck in her throat, and hot burning tears coursed down her cheeks. She sat there, hugging her knees, sobbing.

  Chapter 6

  ‘And you are only telling me this now?’ Rose Delaney used her most imperious tone on the Reverend Mother.

  ‘Mrs Delaney.’

  Did Rose imagine it or was there a slight emphasis on the ‘Mrs’?

  ‘Your daughter left the school without permission from her teacher, just stormed out. Do you exp
ect the teacher to abandon the other children and go in search of what is proving to be a very highly strung and difficult girl?’

  ‘Harp is not difficult. And if by highly strung you mean intelligent and sensitive, then yes she is. And of course she is not like other children, but to dismiss your duty of care to her in this fashion is frankly unacceptable.’

  The nun’s face tightened, but Rose did not break contact with her cold blue eyes.

  ‘Well, perhaps Star of the Sea is not the right environment for your daughter, Mrs Delaney, if we are so far beneath her intellectual ability.’ The words dripped like acid. ‘Harp has delusions of superiority. She’s been that way since she walked in the door as a junior infant, and it has done her no good whatsoever. Your rearing of her to be aloof has meant she has no friends. You would do well, Mrs Delaney, to consider your circumstances, and both you and your daughter should behave accordingly. Frankly the girl is deluded. She claims now that she is a member of the Devereaux family for whom you worked, so clearly she is not right in the head. Now, I must get on. Good day to you.’

  The nun swished past her, her habit rustling as she walked, and Rose grabbed her sleeve. ‘My daughter is perfectly fine in the head, and she is not a liar. She is a Devereaux.’ Rose fought the urge to pull the veil from the nun’s head. Her rage at being treated like that far exceeded offence on her own behalf, but how could someone be so cruel to poor little Harp, especially now. Could the Reverend Mother not see the child’s heart was broken?

  ‘Well, in that case, she’s no better than she should be.’ Sarcastic disdain dripped from every word. ‘Remove yourself from my school at once, and I’ll thank you to keep your sordid and tawdry past away from here in the future.’

  Rose maintained her composure, on the outside at least, and walked out of the school. Where would Harp go? Harp had run away two hours ago, and it was only when she didn’t come home from school that Rose had walked down to meet her. Discovering Harp left the school hours earlier and nobody saw fit to inform her or go looking for a grieving child astounded her.

  She hurried away from the school. Harp hadn’t come home. She had no friends – the nun was right about that – so there was only one place she could be. Rose trudged up the hill, past the Cliff House, further up and to the other side of the town. April would soon be giving way to May, and the sun was weak but persistent. She was overdressed for the climb up the 400 steps that were the spine of the town. She passed St Colman’s Catholic Cathedral, which dominated the skyline, taking full advantage of its place, overseeing the town and the harbour, representing the supremacy of the Roman Church. Beautiful, yes, certainly, and to hear the carillon of bells ring out over the harbour would gladden the hardest of hearts, but it left no ambiguity about who was in charge.

  No doubt it would be just a matter of hours before the canon would be informed of her revelation, and she doubted she would get much of a welcome in that church once the truth was out. For the first time since she discovered she was pregnant with her daughter, she didn’t care who knew her secret. She was at the bottom; there was nowhere to go from here.

  The nun didn’t have to tell her she needed to consider her position; she was well aware of the gossip. But they’d never had proof until now. The irony that her daughter didn’t look so much like Ralph but like her Uncle Henry was not lost on her. She might have got away with it, but there was no denying it now even if she wanted to. If people thought Harp was Henry’s, then at least that was something. The fine strawberry-blond hair Henry had in his youth was hers, as were his delicate features and his long fingers, and most of all his grey eyes that could on occasion look almost blue but not quite. Harp was beautiful, though not in the conventional sense, but Rose could see even now how she would capture a man’s heart in the future.

  Henry loved her and she him in their own peculiar way. They looked alike, and in so many ways they were. Neither of them fitted easily into society, and they both found interactions awkward. They were both bookish and quiet. She loved them both, and the need to protect them was overwhelming. Henry didn’t need her protection any longer, but Harp did. What could she do? Harp was right when she said she would be awful in service, but what else was there?

  Rose paused and turned, gazing out over the port. The islands of Haulbowline and Spike were hives of activity, pleasure boats, fishing trawlers and military ships all going about their business as if this were a normal day, as if her world weren’t crumbling to ash in her hands. The shock of the sinking of Titanic was still felt, leading to speculation that people would be too nervous to travel, something that would devastate a town so reliant on the transatlantic trade, but it went over her head mostly. She had bigger problems.

  She even considered writing to Ralph, begging him to help them, if not for her sake, then for their child’s, but no matter how desperate she was, she wouldn’t do that. It would be pointless anyway. Ralph was feckless and selfish; he wouldn’t help.

  She’d even thought about using the last of their savings to buy third-class tickets to America – maybe there was more opportunity there – but she knew nobody there. She didn’t know anyone here either, but she might get a job, and maybe one that supplied board… But with Harp it all seemed so hopeless.

  She berated herself for not making plans. She should have considered this prospect. That day the Titanic came, she was carefree, the future not costing her a single thought, when she had no right to be so blithe. What a fool she’d been, breezing along as if nothing could interrupt her life, when she knew Henry wasn’t well. He’d never been robust – even as a younger man he’d been delicate – and so he was allowed to live as he did, away from everyone. It suited the older Devereauxes too; a son as odd as Henry wasn’t to be displayed. They had Ralph, the handsome, charming, devilish Ralph, to fulfil that role. His mother had spoiled him and told everyone who would listen how he’d been his father’s pride and joy. Ralph was the polar opposite of Henry in every way. Henry was slight and pale and one got the impression that he trod lightly on the earth. Ralph, on the other hand, was powerfully built and strong, an expert horseman, an accomplished hunter and cricketer. He liked fine food and wine and the company of his class, and to her knowledge, had never read a book in his life.

  And even now, all these years later, she hated the pang in her heart she felt at the mention of his name. Old Mrs Devereaux might have been an insufferable snob, but she was right about one thing: Rose had made a monumental fool of herself with Ralph, thinking even for one second that someone like him would ever have settled for a servant. Her face flushed at the memory of how easily he’d taken her in, by him promising the sun, the moon and the stars, how she made herself believe when she was in his arms that their fumbled lovemaking was more than what it was – an arrogant young man taking advantage of an inconsequential girl whose name he could barely remember. He gave her Harp, and despite the terror of those early months of her child’s life, she could never regret that. She loved her daughter with all of her heart. Quirky and bright, if a little dreamy, she was the best of Rose, and now Rose was going to let her down.

  The last happy day of Harp’s childhood was that day, the day Titanic sat in the harbour, a ship with a future full of promise and hope. And like that unsinkable ship, their lives too had struck disaster.

  There was no way Harp would survive in service. She’d not been reared to it for one thing, not like Rose herself who had never been under any illusion from childhood that anything but a life of skivvying awaited her. But also Harp was special. She was an intellectual, she preferred books to people, and Rose had never insisted she learn how to keep house. Rose had been short-sighted, like an ostrich with her head in the sand.

  A heart attack, the coroner had said. Doctor Lane told her it was an ongoing problem, that Henry would have been aware that his heart wasn’t in perfect condition. Doctors would have explained that it was unlikely he would live into old age. Rose knew Henry went to London in the past year to visit a specialist
, but she’d assumed he’d just go on as he’d always done.

  If only he’d have said something, given her some indication that their little world was about to come crashing down. They did talk occasionally, when Harp was in bed, but he never mentioned his health. He took his medication, didn’t exert himself physically and lived a quiet life. She’d had no reason to think that wouldn’t be the situation for years to come.

  Old Mrs Devereaux had made sure he was provided for; the trust fund for the upkeep of the house and the care of Henry saw to that, just about. But now there was nothing. No income, no security and no home. The thought of Ralph coming to claim his inheritance, seeing Harp, filled her with dread. Would he recognise Harp as his daughter? Would he even recognise Rose? She looked nothing like the girl she was then, silly and flirtatious, setting her cap at a jaunty angle, even risking a little rouge on her cheeks and lips. Now she wore conservative clothes, dark, buttoned up, old-fashioned if anything. Her hair was always pinned in a style more suited to an older woman. Never again would she allow a man to take advantage of her, that was certain.

  She finally reached the top of the steps and began the descent down the hill to the Protestant church. It was teatime now, and men were coming home from work, mostly on the quayside or in the shops and businesses of the town. She envied them their simple lives. The small terraced houses they lived in were not commodious by any means but they were secure, and they had their wives and children around them. They had enough – a roof over their heads, food on the table – and they knew where they fit in the world. She was neither one thing nor the other, and as for Harp, she was the squarest of pegs in the roundest of holes.