June 1900, Clooneven
Norah
Norah sat on the strand, a warm breeze moving across her face, the sun’s rays glinting on the water. No matter how many times she visited this spot, she always thought of Bridget, the woman who’d first brought her here to collect shells and watch the waves.
More than thirty years had passed since her mother’s death. Her other parents, Mary Ellen and Thomas, were also long gone. She had no memories of the days she’d spent with Bridget, but that didn’t matter. The bond between them had been firm and unbreakable.
Norah was fifty-four years old, no longer a young woman, but not elderly either. Considering that the first two years of her life had been a constant battle for survival, her health was strong.
She’d never known what to tell her two sons about Bridget, and in the end, she’d decided to say nothing. Her husband, Barney, had agreed. ‘Let them think that life is fair and straightforward,’ he’d said. ‘They don’t need to be tormented by the cruelties of the past.’
Tomorrow their younger boy, Seánie, would marry Gertrude O’Meara. Gertie was from Boherbreen, the townland where Norah had been born. Although all of Norah’s neighbours from that time were dead or gone, memories lived on. There was every danger that someone would tell Seánie the truth. Norah Nugent? they might say. Wasn’t she born around here? Wasn’t she Norah Moloney then? Didn’t her father die? And didn’t her mother go to America?
That they would mean no harm was beside the point. Seánie would be confused – and hurt.
Norah had concluded that their sons needed to be told about Bridget. Discussing the rest of the family in Boston was more complicated.
James, her elder boy, had left Ireland. He was in Liverpool with his wife and five children. Five children Norah had never met. Times remained hard, and she worried that having cousins in America would lure Seánie and his new wife across the Atlantic.
She’d lost enough. She couldn’t bear to lose him as well.
And so, with Barney’s blessing, she’d decided to tell them about Bridget and John Joe but not about her first mother’s life in America. As far as they were concerned, the next chapter of Bridget’s story would remain a mystery.
There was always the chance, she supposed, that one day someone would take an interest in what had happened in these towns and villages. That they would want to know about the courageous young woman who’d been forced to leave Clooneven in the spring of 1848.
Almost as quickly as this thought came into her head, she dismissed it. Would the generations to come really care about the Famine? No, she reasoned. They’d have their own lives to lead, their own problems to solve. They wouldn’t want a reminder of the years that had torn lives and families apart, the years when people had been buried without coffin or shroud.
If Norah’s wisdom was limited, there were two things she could say for certain. Extreme circumstances brought out the best in some people and the worst in others. And history rarely recorded the lives of people like her and her mother.
As so often before, she picked up a shell and passed it from hand to hand. Then she turned to Seánie who was sitting beside her, his handsome face tilted towards the sun.
‘I want to tell you a story,’ she said.