THE CITY COULD BE A LONESOME PLACE. EVEN THOUGH MARY WAS surrounded by the constant noise and sounds of the teeming, overcrowded neighbourhood with its packed tenements, abundant stores, back-lane saloons and brothels, and busy streets, she still, at times was heartsore and longed for the peace and quiet of the countryside. She missed their cottage in the sea of green fields and the stillness there. Her homesickness gnawed at her like a pain some days, as she knew that she would never set foot in her native land again.
When she thought of Con, she longed to hold him close and never let him go, to banish the memory of his death. It still grieved her so but she took comfort in the other five children and the joy they brought her, for she now considered Jude and Sarah very much her own children too.
Tim had taken to drawing and sketching. The school master said that he had a talent far beyond his years.
‘Ma, I made you this,’ he said proudly, handing her a sheet of paper one day with a picture on it. ‘It’s our cottage. The way I remember it.’
Mary gasped. Although it was simply sketched and coloured, the cottage was exactly as she recalled.
‘There’s your vegetable patch, and the hen-house.’
Mary couldn’t believe how their son had managed to capture with his pencils the place that meant so much to them.
‘That’s where Da had to fix the hole in the thatch, and there’s where Patch used to lie in the sun.’
‘Ah, Tim, this is the grandest present I ever got in my life,’ she said, hugging him close.
‘I wanted to always remember our home place,’ he said softly.
John had studied it carefully, tears welling in his eyes.
Mary insisted on getting it framed, and made John hang it up for them all to see.
She and John both worked harder than they had ever expected. John continued to find work in construction, and proving himself a good carpenter he had been promoted quickly. On every street and piece of land, frame or brick building after building was being thrown up to house the city’s growing population.
Nora often watched her sewing at home. One day, Mary took out a spare needle and began to show her daughter some simple stitches.
‘That’s the way, and try to keep the stitches even and the same size,’ Mary urged her gently.
Nora chewed her lower lip, her hazel eyes filled with concentration as her fingers worked lightly. Mary could see her satisfaction when the neat square she had sewn was examined.
‘Good work!’ she said, praising her.
Sarah, on the other hand, like Kathleen, had no instinct for sewing. She pricked her fingers and tangled her threads and stitches terribly.
‘I hate sewing, Auntie Mary!’ she declared. ‘I much prefer baking and cooking.’
A few weeks later, when Nora asked to be allowed to try to make a skirt, it came as no surprise.
Watching the children grow and settle in this new land made Mary accept that New York was their home now, and she must learn to get used to it.