Bridget
Only when she reached Galway did Bridget fully appreciate the scale of the leave-taking. They were everywhere: townsfolk and country people, families and couples. Almost without exception, they looked as if they were struggling to survive. Some were clearly unwell. All were reed-thin and dressed in flimsy clothes. At times, there was a hysteria about them. They panicked for fear they might not have enough money for the fare or because they’d been separated from their family. When the crowd moved, they didn’t walk so much as swarm. Nevertheless, after the lonely journey through Clare and south County Galway, she welcomed the noise and bustle.
She hadn’t spent every day on her own. Along the way, she’d met and walked with countless people, many of them America-bound. ‘I’ve a brother in New York,’ they’d say, or ‘Half our parish is in Philadelphia.’ Others were going to Canada, yet more to England. There were ships galore in Galway, she learnt, but the fare was expensive, and you needed to bring as much food as possible because the rations onboard were meagre.
Frequently, people asked why she’d chosen Boston. She told a version of the truth. ‘I’ve a brother there,’ she’d say. ‘Francie Markham’s his name.’ What she didn’t say was that she had no idea how to find him. When he’d left, she’d been a child. It was doubtful she would even recognise him now.
Some of the places she passed through had been stripped of people, the houses levelled, the fields abandoned. In others, life remained. In a village in the Burren, she watched three small girls at play. The youngest had the same enquiring look as Norah, the same wide smile. Bridget imagined picking her up and kissing her and was forced to turn away. She came close to changing her mind and returning to Hackett’s Cross.
It wasn’t the only time she considered going back. Early one morning, she was climbing a wind-battered hill when, amid the sparse grass, she noticed a lone daisy. Bridget believed she’d been hardened by everything she’d witnessed. Yet, for some reason, that one miserable flower, clinging on despite the elements, brought tears to her eyes. She wondered if she was losing her mind. What sort of woman could walk past dead bodies and ruined villages but cry over a wild flower?
It occurred to her then that she felt empty because she had no one left to love. Most of those she’d loved were dead while Norah was no longer hers. Her love had turned to grief. Shortly afterwards, she fell into step with a family from Doonbeg, and their company helped to sweep aside her melancholy.
During the weeks it took to reach the city, she became accustomed to sleeping outdoors. On some nights, she found a lovely soft bed of new grass. On others, it was almost impossible to stay dry and warm. In Galway, she slept on the streets. The local people were frightened of newcomers and reluctant to give them shelter. The workhouse on the Newcastle Road provided refuge for some but, remembering the hardship in Kilrush, Bridget balked at sleeping there.
On her second day in Galway, she found the shipping office and took her place in the queue. A ship was due to sail for New York the next day. Another was bound for Québec. Then she saw the notice she’d been looking for. The following week, a boat would leave for Boston.
For the Flourishing city of BOSTON
The splendid ship, the Mary and Elizabeth,
will sail for the above port (wind and weather permitting)
in or around Monday, the 22nd of May
Commanded by men of experience in the Trade
When she reached the office, she asked for one ticket.
The man behind the counter gave her a concerned look. ‘Have you no husband or children?’
‘I’m on my own,’ she replied.
From a distance, the Mary and Elizabeth was impressive. While not as large as other ships, her two masts stood clean against the blue sky. Closer examination revealed that the timber was in poor condition and, in places, was rotting away. As they waited to board, Bridget pointed this out to the heavily whiskered man in front of her.
He laughed, displaying a mouth with more gaps than teeth. ‘If you’re waiting for better, you’ll be a long time here. Every ship in the port’s the same. No one would waste a valuable boat on the likes of us.’
Bridget pushed aside her misgivings. She’d spent most of her money on the fare and the rest on food and a thin mattress. She couldn’t afford to be fussy. She’d passed the week in Galway trying to find someone, a woman preferably, who would be making the crossing on the same ship, but with so many people travelling in so many directions, it had been impossible.
As they boarded, the passengers’ names were checked against a roll and a doctor gave them a brief examination. Even though most were pale and weak, and many were coughing, none was considered unfit to travel. She suspected a person would have to be wrapped in a shroud for the doctor to reject them.
Moments before they set sail, she shut her eyes, pressed her hand around the shell she’d taken from Norah’s collection and asked for strength. When she opened her eyes again, the crew were scurrying about. A series of shouts and a clang of the brig’s bell announced their departure. On the quayside, those left behind waved with an enthusiasm they couldn’t have felt. Seagulls circled overhead.
Standing beside her on deck, a young boy began to cry. He made small snuffling sounds, as if embarrassed by his tears. She placed a hand on his shoulder. His name was Anthony McDonagh, he told her. He was twelve and would miss his friends in Claddaghduff.
‘I promise you, it will get better,’ she said, echoing John Joe’s words on the day they’d buried her brother, Michael. She needed to believe them.
Within a short while, they were sailing past Mutton Island lighthouse and along the Connemara coast. Like Anthony, many on board were from that part of Galway and they wept as the land faded into the silvery distance. Others gripped rosary beads and prayed for a safe journey. When next they saw land, it would be their new home, America.
As the Mary and Elizabeth gathered pace, it started to sway, and the sea spray hit Bridget’s face. Taking in the keening and praying around her, she wished her own feelings were more straightforward. She was fleeing from a place where her family had been persecuted and allowed to die, so of course she felt sorrow. But she also felt anger. A hot, unrelenting anger. Shame was there too. Shame that she hadn’t saved them or been capable of looking after her daughter. And, finally, there was another sensation. As small as a ladybird and as delicate as a butterfly wing, it was so unfamiliar that she barely recognised it. The sensation was hope.
The ship’s hold was gloomy and cramped, with rows of narrow bunks, one stacked on top of another. Voices rose around her as men and women argued over who should sleep where.
Advancing as swiftly as the tight space allowed, she claimed a lower bunk. She sat with her belongings spread around her, determined not to be moved.
Almost immediately, a young woman arrived. She had light brown hair, large brown eyes and was carrying a baby. Starvation had made it increasingly difficult to gauge a child’s age, but Bridget guessed the baby was no more than eight or nine months old.
‘We have to share,’ said the woman.
Bridget stared as her, as if to say, No I don’t.
The woman raised her chin and tried again. ‘Are you on your own?’
‘I am.’
‘So am I.’
‘Can’t you find another berth?’ asked Bridget. ‘There isn’t room for three of us.’
‘If you don’t share with me and Delia,’ the woman dipped her head towards the baby, ‘you’ll find yourself sleeping beside a man. Or someone who’s sick. Or mad. Then where will you be?’
Bridget looked around. People were still entering the hold. Others were shuffling and squabbling. She did a quick calculation. There were more than a hundred of them on board. The woman was right. There wasn’t a berth for everyone.
She gave a nod of understanding. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We can share.’
‘I’m Alice,’ said the woman, as she eased herself onto the bunk. ‘Alice King from Tulla in County Clare.’
Alice smiled. ‘We’re pleased to meet you, aren’t we, Delia?’
The baby sent a shy smile in Bridget’s direction.
‘That’s her way of agreeing,’ said Alice. ‘Not everyone gets a smile.’
‘She’s a beautiful girl,’ said Bridget.
‘She is,’ said Alice. ‘She’s an absolute blessing.’ She squinted at Bridget. ‘What’s your story then?’
Little by little, they got to know each other. Alice was twenty years old, and her husband had died shortly before Delia was born. Both of her parents and three of her five siblings had also passed away. Her fare to America had been paid by their landlord, a man called Crofton Blake, who was desperate to be rid of them. She had an uncle living outside Boston but hadn’t been able to contact him. Despite this, and despite the tragedies that had befallen her, she was strangely confident about life in the new world.
What was most impressive about Alice and Delia was their ability to sleep. No matter that they were crushed into the hold like sheep, no matter the coughing and hacking of others, no matter the putrid smell, the blistering heat and the scuttling rats, both mother and daughter slept as soundly as princesses on a feather bed. Bridget was less fortunate. Their surroundings were too rank, and she missed Norah too much, for her to settle properly.
Alice maintained that when Bridget was established in America she could send for her daughter. She said as much one evening as they prepared their shared dinner. Cooking on the Mary and Elizabeth was an ordeal. The fire on the deck was small and contained by bricks and two iron bars. People queued from morning till night for their turn.
If their food portions were mean, the allocation of water was even more miserly. The captain, a huge slab of a man named John Talbot, insisted it had to be rationed. ‘If we run out, you’ll know all about it,’ he’d said, in a voice that suggested he might welcome such a calamity.
Bridget and Alice were making stirabout with their oatmeal. They were ten days into the journey, and the extra food they’d brought on board had been eaten. She thanked her new friend for her thoughts about Norah but doubted a reunion would happen.
‘When I gave her to Mary Ellen,’ she said, ‘that was the end of it.’
‘What if she’s unhappy without you?’ replied Alice. ‘When she’s older, she might come and find you.’
‘But I don’t want her to be unhappy.’
‘Well, then, perhaps she’ll decide that, as good as life is in Hackett’s Cross, it would be even better with her mother in America.’
‘Ba ba ba,’ said Delia, in what sounded like agreement.
Bridget had to laugh. ‘I don’t know how you keep on seeing everything in such a positive way.’
‘Our fortunes will have to change,’ said Alice. ‘No one can have bad luck all their life.’
Bridget wanted to say that what had happened to them was more than bad luck. They’d been allowed to starve in a country with plentiful food. She held her tongue. It was at times like this that she yearned for the conversations she’d shared with John Joe. And yet she’d also come to admire Alice’s attitude. Given the tragedy she’d endured, it took more than resilience to face into every day as though it held promise. It took bravery.
Her own pleasure came from the sea around them. Unlike many passengers, who became ill when the ship rolled, Bridget found that she enjoyed the thrashing of the waves. On the calmer days, when others complained they’d be stuck on the boat for ever, she sat and looked at the ocean as it took on different colours. Depending on the angle of the sun or the type of cloud, the Atlantic could be twenty different shades of blue. Or it could be green or grey or black. She also kept watch for flying fish or for the grey-headed dolphins that leapt through the foam.
‘Look at them dancing,’ she’d say to Delia. ‘They’re putting on a show for you.’
She liked to think her love of the water had come from her father. But if, in life, William Markham had encouraged her to appreciate the Atlantic, his death had taught her how cruel and unpredictable it could be.
From the day they’d left Galway, there was sickness on board. Not just vomiting caused by turbulence and the stagnant air below deck, but more serious illness too. The further west they travelled, the more people fell ill.
Bridget was terrifyingly familiar with the symptoms: the headaches and dizziness that became a swelling pain until the patient felt their head might burst; the throbbing temperature; the disfiguring rash. At night, as the Mary and Elizabeth creaked and groaned, she listened to the moans of her fellow passengers. Some became delirious from pain and fever, their voices changing from an incoherent babble to a hideous roar. More struggled for breath, their chests wheezing and rattling. Others lost control of their bowels so that the stench below deck was worse than anything she could recall. No matter how hard she tried to keep the smell at bay, it filled her nostrils until she too felt ill. Accustomed as she was to hardship, she was shocked by the intensity of the suffering. And, unlike the workhouse, she had no means of escape. There was no doctor on board, so passengers with a small bit of learning or experience attempted to tend the sick. For the most part, their efforts were futile.
When John Joe was ill, Bridget had been able to ease his thirst with fresh water. It might not have saved his life, but it had helped to alleviate his distress. On the ship, water remained rationed. Not only was there not enough to drink, there wasn’t a spare drop to clean their living quarters.
The families of the sick pleaded with the crew to show some generosity. Every time, the answer was no. A deputation of men went to the captain. He, too, rejected their request.
Afterwards, they were divided over what to do. Eugene Hester from Ballinasloe, who had the spindliest arms Bridget had ever seen, suggested they try to seize a barrel or two and distribute the water themselves. Others cautioned against. Billy Joyce from Clifden pointed out that even the sturdiest of them was malnourished while the sailors were strong and well fed.
‘It’s likely they’ll batter any man who tries to take the water,’ he said.
Reluctantly, the others agreed.
The first person to die was an elderly woman, Biddy Feerick from County Mayo. Within a week, six others were gone, among them a young mother who left behind a husband and four children. There was a brutality about the treatment of the dead that made Bridget’s heart ache. In the absence of a priest, the family of the departed prayed over their remains. They were given only a sliver of time to mourn before their loved one’s body was thrown overboard.
Bridget thought of the man in Kilrush who’d claimed the Atlantic was rancid with Irish flesh. He’d been wrong. The water was still rippling when the sharks arrived. Within minutes, there was no flesh left to rot.
Eleven people died the following week, including Anthony McDonagh, the young boy whom Bridget had attempted to comfort as the ship set sail. Although she knew the tears weren’t hers to cry, she wept as if he’d been her own brother.
When his body splashed into the water, she looked up towards the hard sun and square white sails and prayed that she, Alice and Delia would keep their health.