The Girl Who Came Home - a Titanic Novel (2 page)

‘
Right so, Maggie, the traps are ready. It is time.’

Maggie jumped at the sudden sound of her aunt’s, clipped voice behind her; her heart leaping in her chest and her breath catching in her throat. This was it then, it was really going to happen.

Even when she had seen the words ‘
Gone to U.S.A’
written alongside her name on the school register, she hadn’t quite been able to believe that this stark fact, written in the distinctive handwriting of Miss Gallagher, her school mistresses, actually related to herself. But it did and after the months of discussing, planning and hat-buying, it was time.

‘
Fetch the others will you,’ her aunt continued as she busied herself wrapping the still-warm bread rolls in muslin cloths before placing them in the top of her suitcase where she could easily reach them during the several hours of journeying which lay ahead of them to the port of Queenstown in County Cork. ‘And tell them to hurry. We still have to collect our tickets from Mr Durcan in town and we don’t want to be late for the train.’

Eager to please her aunt, as always, Maggie walked out of the narrow farmhouse doorway to inform the others that it was time to leave. Shivering in the cool, morning air she pulled her green, woollen shawl tighter around her shoulders as she stepped over the cat which was curled up on the doormat. She envied its ignorance to the events unfolding around them.

‘
And never mind the train,’ her aunt called after her, ‘I doubt whether that big ship will wait on us either.’

Maggie turned. Kathleen stood in the cottage doorway, filling the space with her ample frame. Her hands were placed on her hips, an authoritative stance she often took even when she was chatting casually to a friend. Her long black skirts skimmed the top of the stone step, the billowing tops of the leg-of-mutton sleeves on her fashionable, white blouse touching either side of the doorframe, her thick, chestnut hair swept up impeccably around her angular face in the American style. Maggie thought she could almost detect a smile at the edges of her thin lips. Her aunt wasn’t usually one to express many emotions other than a sense of satisfaction for a job well done, so the slight smile was somewhat surprising.

For her aunt Kathleen and two other women, Maura Brennan and Ellen Joyce, who were among their party of fourteen, this was a journey without the uncertainties which preoccupied Maggie’s imagination and the sorrow which troubled her heart. For them, this was a journey back to their American homes as much as it was a journey away from their Irish ones; her aunt would be returning to the sister and the Chicago home she loved, Maura and Jack Brennan were heading out to start a new married life together and Ellen was returning, along with her wedding trousseau, to marry her beloved fiancée. No wonder these women could afford a moment of carefree laughter under the blossom trees or a wry smile on the doorstep of the home they might never see again.

Almost as quickly as the smile had crossed her aunt’s lips it faded and Maggie watched her turn back into the house then, with a swish of her skirts, to fetch the last of their belongings.

Maggie wandered over to Peggy and the Brennans’ who were still messing about under the trees.

‘
It’s time,’ she announced, noting how beautiful the blossom looked in the early morning light.

Her words caused the others to stop their playing and a more sombre mood fell over them immediately. It was Jack Brennan who spoke.

‘
Right so Maggie, we’ll be right there.’

She nodded at him in reply before stooping to pick up a few petals, admiring their fragile construction and breathing in their sweet scent. She put them, absent-mindedly, in her coat pocket and went on her way. She walked briskly, her sturdy black boots feeling unusually heavy as they crunched on the shale and stones which formed the roughshod road through their village.

Maggie felt an eerie stillness about Ballysheen that morning as she walked from house to house, knocking at the door and quietly telling those inside that it was time. It was as if the village, and all its inhabitants, had taken in a deep breath and were afraid to let it out.

Her duties complete, she started to make her way back up the road, watching a solitary cloud drift across the pale blue sky, casting a shadow across the sheep which grazed in the fields at the foot of Nephin Mor. A handful of men were already at work in the lower fields and she imagined their hands muddied from cutting the turf and sowing the potatoes. Taking in the scene around her, it struck Maggie that to anyone passing through, this would seem like any ordinary, unremarkable spring day in a small, rural village.

And then she saw him.

CHAPTER
2 - Southampton, England, 10
^th
April 1912

Harry Walsh looked at his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace one last time. The crisp white jacket, brown waistcoat, blue serge trousers, black shoes and White Star Line cap suited him, making him look taller somehow. He had slicked his dark hair, parting it down the centre in the fashionable style and was clean-shaven for the occasion. He was pleased with how he looked and turned to his mother.

‘
I don’t scrub up too badly really when I try, do I?’

His mother was a short, sleight woman with a permanent air of dissatisfaction about her. She fussed around her son now, brushing flecks of dust from his trousers and stray hairs from the shoulders of his jacket. He smiled at her, glad of the attention she paid to him and pleased to see the unmistakeable look of pride on her face, pride in the fact that her only son was to work as a steward on the Titanic’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.

‘
Not bad love, not bad at all… for a Walsh,’ she replied, tugging at his waistcoat to remove a slight pucker and pulling at his cap to straighten it. ‘Now, you remember to work hard Harry Daniel Walsh,’ she added, ‘and mind that you look after those third class passengers just the same as you would any of those wealthy Astors and Guggenheims. The poor might not have the fancy hats and the fancy shoes but they deserve to be treated good n’ proper, you hear?’

With her family roots set deep within the working class society of Southampton’s docks, Helen Walsh had no time at all for the stuck up, obnoxious American millionaires and socialites who, it was believed, were to sail on the Titanic to make business contacts or to give them something to boast about at one of their fancy dinner parties. Nevertheless, her background didn’t prevent her from being a proud mother, and she was absolutely delighted that her son was going to be one of the three hundred stewards who would work on this much talked about ship, taking great pleasure in telling all her friends and neighbours about it. And although the gossip-loving, spying-on-the-neighbours part of her would have quite liked to know exactly how ostentatious the first class accommodations were, she was especially pleased that Harry had been assigned to steerage class, to look after people like themselves.

Despite his mother’s obvious delight that it would be Titanic that her son would sail on, it hadn’t actually been Harry’s intention to work on the ship at all. He’d originally been assigned to work on a smaller liner, the Celtic, which should have left Southampton a week ago. As a result of the coal strike she had been berthed, along with most of the other transatlantic liners. Harry had got word just a week ago that he had been re-assigned and would now work a return shift on White Star Line’s new ship, Titanic.

Adjusting his cap one last time, Harry leant down to give his mother a farewell kiss. Her cheeks were flushed and glistening with perspiration from all her fussing and rushing around.

‘
I love you and I’ll send word when we dock in New York, alright. And tell Dad I’ll bring him back a memento of some sort. If I find my way up to the first class decks, it might be something half decent this time!’

They shared a final embrace, for some reason both of them happy to linger a little longer than they usually would.

‘
I love you too son,’ she replied, rubbing a slight toothpaste mark off his cheek with her thumb. ‘I’ll be coming down to the docks myself you know a little later, to have a good look and wave you all off.’

‘
Well, then I’ll wave back,’ he said, smiling as he slung his small duffle bag over his shoulder and walked out of the narrow, terraced house into the bright morning sunlight.

‘
And Happy Birthday again love,’ she shouted after him. ‘I’ll make you a cake when you get home.’

He turned, gave her a thumbs up and strolled casually to the dockside, whistling as he walked.

Helen Walsh closed the door softly behind her and wiped away the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

For all of the twenty three years of his life, Harry had watched his father head out to work at the docks every day, with the exception of Christmas. He had never heard him complain, grumble or fuss, even when the bitterly cold winds which blew in off the Solent in the winter almost froze his hands solid. He had fond memories of scampering down to the pier with his father’s forgotten lunch, or walking with him, hand in hand, to watch as yet another newer, bigger steam liner sailed into view. Living by the docks wasn’t just a choice of home for Harry’s family, it was a way of life and it was probably no surprise that Harry had loved boats since he was a little boy; no surprise that the ocean had called to him for his vocation in life.

For the past five years, his father had been employed as one of the construction workers, building the new White Star Line dock which would accommodate the huge transatlantic liners. Jack Walsh was proud of his work and liked nothing better than to sit with his son on an evening and tell him all about the impressive new dock they were building. ‘It spans
sixteen acres
,’ he would tell him, ‘sixteen! And it’s been dredged to
forty feet
!’ It was a scale on which nobody in the community had worked before and they could barely even begin to imagine the sight of the ships which would sail from there.

Although she had been berthed in the White Star Dock for almost a week now, Harry hadn’t seen Titanic yet. His father’s health had been suffering recently so his mother had decided that the family would go and stay with her sister in the Devonshire countryside for a few weeks, until his father felt better and the coal strike was over, when there would be the chance of employment for the men again. Harry and his mother had arrived back into Southampton the previous evening; his father had stayed on in Devon for a while longer, feeling too unwell to make the return journey. It bothered Harry that after all these years of work his father wouldn’t get to see the biggest liner in the world set sail from his hometown and he had tried to persuade him to come back to Southampton the previous evening.

‘
Stop fretting lad,’ he’d said, ‘you’re as bad as your mother. I’ll come down to see her when she comes back. She’s not planning on anchoring in New York for the next forty years y’ know.’

As he reached the top of the steady incline of his road, Harry could see in the distance the distinctive black tops of Titanic’s four funnels towering into the sky, the red flags of the White Star Line fluttering in the bright sunshine at the tops of the impossibly high masts at bow and stern. He smiled and broke into a steady jog, his heart racing with excitement.

After weeks of unemployment and uncertainty in the town, there was a definite sense of jubilation in the air that morning. As he approached the new, purpose-built dock, he caught the sounds of drums and trumpets from one of the many local bands who had been hired to entertain the First Class passengers as they waited to board. The chatter and cries of hundreds of passengers who thronged the dockside grew steadily louder as he walked nearer, the hooves of the horses bringing more passengers clattered on the road beside him, the wheels of the carts generating a steady rumble which reverberated through his body, the incessant cries of the seagulls a familiar sound to him among all that was new; all the noises amalgamated into one exhilarating melody of thrill and anticipation as he turned the final corner.

And then he stopped.

Nothing could have prepared Harry Walsh for the sight of that ship in Southampton docks. No amount of description or expression could have conveyed what his eyes saw now. The sheer enormity of her caused him to stop dead in his tracks as he gazed in silent awe; the black steel bow soaring into the sky, the letters TITANIC emblazoned across the front in white. Her funnels reached so high above the waterline that he almost fell over backwards he had to lean his head so far back to take them in, the gleaming steel hull, the endless lines of portholes, every single iron rivet completely fascinated him. She was, quite simply, the most unimaginable thing he had ever encountered, towering above every other vessel in the dock. Even the other mighty liners
Oceanic
and
New York
which were berthed, out of action due to the coal-strike, seemed to resemble mere children’s toys in Titanic’s mighty presence. Harry and all the passengers already massing around the dockside were dwarfed by her and he felt suddenly insignificant, totally overwhelmed.

‘
She’s a beauty, ain’t she?’

Harry turned to the voice behind him.

‘
Billy Wallace!’ he exclaimed, relieved to see his good friend who would also be working as crew on the Titanic, slapping him on the back as they shared a comfortable embrace ‘She’s bloody unbelievable alright. Bloody
unbelievable
!’