Last Port of Call: The Queenstown Series

by Jean Grainger

  Sean released Gwen and rushed to Danny, kneeling to apply pressure to the wound, but the knife was still up to the hilt in Danny’s belly. JohnJoe started to cry as he knelt beside his cousin on the other side. ‘Danny, Danny… Please don’t… Danny!’ He was so distressed as to be almost incoherent.

  Harp watched the scene unfold in horror.

  As Rose returned with towels, she shouted, ‘Harp, go and get Doctor Lane!’

  Harp immediately sprang to action.

  Finbarr sat on the bottom step, his head in his hands, but Molly’s father stood and stared in horror at Danny, who was rapidly losing consciousness.

  Harp dashed down the steps to the doctor’s house, which was close by. Doctor Lane was in his pyjamas, but he pulled his overcoat on and grabbed his bag, calling to his wife to inform Inspector Deane and send him to the Cliff House immediately. Then, jumping into his car, they roared up to the Cliff House.

  Entering the hallway, Harp saw her mother had put a pillow behind Danny’s head and Sean was applying pressure to the wound with a blood-soaked towel. Eleanor was comforting JohnJoe, who was crying. Molly stood in pale-faced horror beside her father.

  The doctor shooed them all out of the way and examined the wound. He took his bag and removed some liquid and dressings. ‘Wet that with the antiseptic,’ he instructed Rose, handing her some gauze strips. ‘You did right in not trying to remove the knife. I’ll take him to hospital in my car.’ He bandaged the wound, securing the knife in place. ‘He’s lucky that I’m guessing the knife is short judging by the bleeding, and I’m hoping it hasn’t hit an organ. He’ll need to go to hospital and have this properly seen to, but I’d be hopeful he’ll be all right. I can fold the back seats down, and if you can find something to lie him on, a board or something, we could slide him in the back, keep him flat.’

  Rose thought for a moment, then turned to Harp. ‘The door from the attic – remember, it’s leaning against the stable wall. It swelled and wouldn’t fit so we took it off.’

  ‘Right. Harp, can you show me?’ Sean asked.

  Inspector Deane arrived at that exact moment. Molly was still standing beside her father; Finbarr was still on the stairs.

  As the inspector began to ask questions, Sean and Harp went in search of the door, finding it quickly and returning to hear Finbarr exclaim,

  ‘I never stabbed him, I didn’t! It was his own knife, I swear. I would never carry a knife…’ the young man was distraught.

  Sean carried the door back single-handedly, and he and the doctor gently lifted a groaning Danny onto it. They placed him in the back of the car and Doctor Lane drove away.

  ‘I want to go with him,’ JohnJoe begged.

  ‘You’d better wait here, JohnJoe, stay with us,’ Rose said gently. ‘They will do all they can for Danny and we don’t want you up in the city all alone.’

  ‘But what if he…’ JohnJoe couldn’t form the words. ‘I’ve only known him a few days but he’s the only family that…’ The boy stood there, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  Harp moved to stand beside him and took his hand. ‘Doctor Lane is very competent, JohnJoe. He has a lot of experience, and I think Danny will be all right. He will take him to Cork to the hospital, and we will telegram for word later tomorrow.’

  Rose and Sean were each giving statements as Harp drew the distraught JohnJoe away to sit on the stairs. Inspector Deane was in a rush to get away and they saw him depart a few moments later.

  ‘I know it’s silly, Harp,’ JohnJoe said, ‘but…but when my mammy died, my sisters and me, well, nobody cared about us. My da was all right when she was alive – well, we never really saw him, but he wasn’t like he is now. But when Mammy was gone, he was drunk all the time and then the court took us and I was sent to borstal. And now if I lose Danny, I’ll have to go back to my father, and he’ll just put me back in there again, and I can’t…’ His final words were incoherent as he was so distressed.

  Harp placed her arm around his heaving shoulders, and he turned his face towards hers.

  ‘JohnJoe, Doctor Lane said Danny had a really good chance of survival, and believe me, I know he’s not a man for exaggeration. He had to stitch my head when I was little – I was playing and I landed on the fire surround and I was split over my eye. See?’ She pointed to the faint silver scar from her eyebrow up under her hairline. ‘And he said, “Harp, this is going to really hurt and you need to stay very still even though it’s going to be painful, because I want to keep the stitches small and neat so you won’t see the scar when you’re older.”’

  ‘And was it very sore?’ JohnJoe asked.

  Harp nodded. ‘Very, but I kept as still as I could and now you can hardly see it.’

  JohnJoe nodded. ‘I wouldn’t have noticed it except that you said it.’

  ‘I know. So the important thing to hold on to is that he tells the truth. And so if he says Danny has a good chance, then we should believe him. Besides, even if he died’ – Harp tried to be delicate – ‘it is your Uncle Pat who has sent for you, so you could still go to America, couldn’t you?’

  ‘On my own?’ JohnJoe looked terrified. His small freckled face was pale and his hair was standing on end.

  Harp shrugged. ‘Well, it’s just a matter of getting on the ship and someone meeting you on the other side. How difficult could it be?’

  JohnJoe shook his head. ‘I’m not brave or clever like you are, Harp. I could never go all the way there on my own.’

  ‘Of course you could. Look how much you’ve survived already, and you lived to tell the tale.’ She nudged him playfully and he gave her a watery smile.

  He coloured at her praise. ‘I suppose I could.’ He considered it. ‘But would there be reading to do, do you think?’

  Harp considered the question. ‘Maybe a little bit, but lots of people emigrate from all over the world who can’t speak English, so I’m sure there are pictorial signs too. But if not I’d say if you had to travel alone, find some nice family and just do what they do.’ She felt JohnJoe relax against her.

  ‘I know I’ve only known you one day, but you’re my best friend, Harp,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Well, I’ve never had a friend before, so I suppose that makes you mine too,’ Harp said with a radiant smile.

  JohnJoe leaned over and kissed her cheek. ‘I think you are the best person I’ve ever met in my whole life, Harp Delaney – except my mammy, of course – and also the prettiest, and I’d be honoured to call you my friend.’

  Harp blushed and smiled. Nobody apart from her mother had ever said she was pretty. ‘Friends then,’ she agreed.

  ‘Forever,’ he said solemnly.

  ‘Can I give my father and Finbarr a cup of tea please, Mrs Delaney?’ Molly asked, her face tear-stained. ‘I know what they did was so wrong, barging in here, but they never meant to hurt anyone…and they’re very shaken.’

  ‘I think we could all do with a cup of tea,’ Rose said wearily, and moved towards the kitchen.

  Harp and JohnJoe helped, getting cups and jugs, while Eleanor led Seamus and Finbarr to the table. Sean and Gwen turned to leave when Molly called them back.

  ‘Are you all right, Gwen?’ she asked, looking horrified at the cut on the girl’s face where a shard of china had nicked her.

  ‘I’m grand, it’s nothing,’ Gwen reassured her. ‘How about you? Are you all right?’

  Molly nodded and exhaled. ‘I’ve decided to go home. This is all my fault. I should never have caused such fuss, and maybe none of this would have happened and poor Danny would…’ Her voice choked. She reached into her pocket. ‘I won’t be using this now, and it’s not refundable, so if you would like it, Gwen, you could go with Sean tomorrow.’

  The young couple looked incredulously at her, then at each other. ‘But, Molly, are you sure? I mean, you don’t have to go home if you don’t want to…’ Sean protested. ‘Besides, we can’t take that… It’s too much…’

  ‘I know I don’t have to, but I…I
want to. I’ll marry Finbarr. He’s a good man despite what you saw tonight, and my family need me to do this. I’ll be fine. Honestly, if you don’t use it, it will go to waste. It’s second class, the same as Sean’s, so you can work it out on board…’ She handed Gwen her ticket.

  Gwen took it and grasped Molly’s hands, gazing sincerely into the taller girl’s eyes. ‘We’ll pay you back, I promise we will. Thank you so much, Molly. It… I can’t tell you what this means to us.’

  Sean reached out and hugged Molly. ‘Thank you. I can’t… Words can’t say what you’ve done for us. We’ll never forget you for it, and as Gwen says, we’ll pay you back just as soon as we’re able to.’

  Molly gave a weak smile. ‘There’s no need. I’ll have no need of anything once I’m home and married. I wish you both all the best and all the happiness in the world.’ She turned towards the dining room where her father and future husband waited.

  Chapter 20

  An hour later, Molly sat at the table in her bedroom, looking at the stars twinkling over the harbour below. Her father and Finbarr had been given beds in the parlour. It was too late to try to get home now; they would take the first train in the morning. It was 4 a.m. The new moon hung incandescent in the sky.

  After the night’s events, everyone had eventually retired, but she couldn’t sleep. The arrival of her father and Finbarr, the fight, poor Danny, who was only trying to stand up for her, the look first of disgust and then sheer horror on her father’s face, the policeman – the whole scene unfolded frame by frame in her mind, an endless loop of shame, humiliation and remorse.

  Such trouble she’d caused. Such embarrassment to her family. Her father in trouble with the police? Unheard of. There were probably not going to be any charges, as the knife was clearly Danny’s own, but still. The O’Briens were respectable people with no history of ever causing offence to anyone, and now this. It was all her fault. It was right that she go back, try to make amends.

  She sat, gazing out over the sea. She naturally settled her thoughts where they always went, in prayer.

  She said formal prayers each day, but her inner monologue was – she’d known all of her life – a conversation with God. She spoke to Him and she felt like He responded. Perhaps she was imagining it but didn’t think so.

  ‘What should I do?’ she whispered.

  Was she just running away from marriage rather than towards God and her vocation? Was she, as her mother said, afraid that no fat girl with flaming red hair and freckles would ever get a man so she’d put the obstacle of a religious life in the way to spare herself that humiliation? Round and round in her mind the questions went.

  Perhaps if she’d been blessed with a slender figure, sleek dark hair and olive skin, the notion of spending her life in the habit would never have occurred to her. If she looked like Gwen or Mrs Delaney, then would the idea of being a nun ever have entered her mind?

  She had a personal connection with God, she knew she did. She couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t like she heard a voice telling her to enter the convent or anything like that. She just knew that her soul was restless and that once she was within the walls of the convent, having dedicated her life to His service, she would feel peace. But that was a dream and it was over.

  Another wave of misgivings followed that thought. Had she been doing it for selfish reasons? For her own peace of mind, not to serve? She thought of Sister Brid that day. The nun was so serene and radiated a peaceful happiness. As she spoke about teaching children from slums and tenements, fighting against child labour, bringing the word of God to the most needy, she lit up from inside, and Molly remembered how she couldn’t wait to join her.

  She undressed and got into bed, staring at the ceiling as the moonlight lit the room with its eerie silver glow. She tossed and turned, but it was no good – there was no way she could sleep, though the bed was comfortable and the house was finally quiet. Her alarm clock ticked loudly on the locker, clicking out each long second, inching slowly to the dawn and the day she would return to become Mrs Finbarr Casey. Some story would have to be concocted; Finbarr should not be humiliated like that, with everyone saying she was a runaway bride. She should be grateful, she knew. He was a good lad, and not bad-looking – better than she could have hoped to get anyway.

  The seconds became minutes and eventually an hour passed and she was no nearer sleep. Sighing, she got dressed. She figured she might as well forget about sleeping now.

  She knelt by her bed and prayed. She begged God to make Danny all right. She felt responsible for him. She prayed for JohnJoe, that the life that awaited him in America was better than the one he’d left behind. She prayed that Rose and Harp would make a go of their guest house, and that Harp would get to live out her dreams of travel and an education. And she asked St Francis of Assisi, who had a special affinity with animals, to take care of Eleanor, whatever path she chose. Finally she asked him to watch over Sean and Gwen. She quelled the surge of envy that it would be the beautiful Gwen who would start her new life in America. She didn’t begrudge her it but just wished it could have been her, and she shed a tear for her lost dream.

  She crept downstairs as the dawn broke and the buttery yellows and pinks of a summer morning flooded across the sky. She let herself out into the garden, admiring the ancient mossy and lichened wall. It surrounded the lawn in front of the house and enclosed the house except for the entrance gate behind that led from the road and the small gate onto the steps, linking the Cliff House to the town. Molly would never forget this place, a house of such beauty, such history, mainly because it was the place where her heart broke.

  Dotted around the grounds there were various stone seats, placed there by a generation of wealthy people who had nothing to do and all day to do it. Outside the drawing room bay window was a wooden bench, slightly rotten but recently painted a cheery yellow and surrounded by ancient pots overflowing with flowers, and Molly sat down, observing the harbour. She studied the star-shaped Fort Mitchell on Spike Island, a prison, then a British military base, a place of dread and fear. She wondered if the men incarcerated there looked back towards Queenstown from their small dank cells and felt as trapped as she did right now. Marriage to Finbarr wouldn’t have bars or jailers, but it was a prison nonetheless.

  She remembered her grandmother telling her how her brothers were imprisoned there during the famine on totally spurious charges because they were agitating for change, for respite for the starving women and children. Nana O’Brien remembered the days of hunger, when shiploads of food were sent daily by the British from the port below as the people of Ireland starved.

  It was hard to believe such an idyllic place could be the source of such deprivation. Those men, her grand-uncles, were transported to Australia as convicts in chains for their efforts, never to be heard from again. For so many, this location was their last glimpse of home; it very nearly was hers.

  She heard the crunch of feet on gravel and looked up towards the driveway, surprised to see Eleanor walking towards the house, looking chirpy. Behind her were two dogs, thin and malnourished.

  ‘Good morning, Eleanor,’ Molly said.

  ‘Good morning, Molly. Did you manage to sleep?’ she asked kindly.

  Molly smiled sadly and shook her head.

  ‘So you’ll go back with them, will you?’ Eleanor asked. ‘I saw you gave Gwen your ticket – that was kind.’

  Molly shrugged. ‘I’ve no need of it now. I’ve caused enough upset. I need to try to put it right.’ She looked at the two dogs. ‘You’ve made some friends here?’

  Eleanor laughed. ‘I found this one yesterday. He’s skin and bone but he’s a character, look…’ She dug into her pocket and produced a piece of bacon that Molly remembered her pocketing after the dinner last night. The little dog bounced up on his two back legs, doing a little dance, as she dropped the tasty morsel in his mouth. He had an adorable face, with a black patch around one eye. He wolfed it down and then nuzzled Eleanor with his silky head.<
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  Beside him a larger black dog, something between a Labrador and a collie, stood, looking despondent.

  ‘I found this one this morning. She needs worming, poor thing. I’ll get some caraway seeds from Rose and add them to this – I’ve robbed someone’s herb garden.’ She extracted a bunch of leaves from her pocket. ‘See? Parsley, chervil and dill. Mix them in with the caraway and she’ll soon feel much better, won’t you, darling?’ She went down on her hunkers to be eye level with the dog, who gave her a feeble lick on the face.

  ‘You know a lot about animals, don’t you?’ Molly asked. ‘Did you study animal welfare or something?’

  Eleanor smiled, still stroking the big black dog while the smaller one wound in around her legs. ‘Not formally, but over the years, trial and error. I learned a lot from the old people where I’m from, and from the travellers too.’ She took another bit of bacon from her pocket and fed a piece to each dog. ‘When I was a girl, they would come and camp on our land, in time for the fair. They would go into the town then, fixing pots and pans, and the women would sell paper flowers and things like that. But they knew about animals, cures, use of herbs and bark and seaweed that grew around the locality. They taught me how to make a poultice for an injured horse using milk and bread, or to make a mixture of wild garlic, salt and water if a cow ate ragwort and was poisoned. Using that trick, I saved a sea eagle that had eaten meat deliberately poisoned by a land owner. Things like that.’

  ‘That’s wonderful knowledge to have.’ Molly was impressed.

  Eleanor nodded and sighed.

  ‘So you’re going and you don’t want to, and I’m staying and I wish I didn’t have to,’ Molly observed calmly.

  The intimacy of the dinner they’d enjoyed together the previous night, followed by the dramatic events afterwards, had bonded them somehow, and the normal formality that would be expected between strangers had dissipated.

  ‘It will be fine, I’m sure. I have nieces and nephews and a sister-in-law to meet, and the sun shines there all the time apparently. So nothing at all like County Sligo.’ Eleanor’s eyes filled with tears.