October 1864, Boston
Fourteen years later
‘Patrick McDonagh,’ she shouted from the doorstep, ‘you’re to come in for your dinner.’
He looked at his friends, who were milling around in front of the house, as if to say, Here she is, embarrassing me again. ‘Aw, Ma,’ he said, ‘it’s not dark yet.’
‘Your father will be home before you know it,’ replied Bridget, ‘and we’ll see what he makes of you being out on the corner at this hour of the evening. He’ll have plenty to say, I’m sure.’
They both knew this was untrue. Ever since Patrick was a baby, the story had been the same. Martin would spend hour after hour playing with his son or talking to him, but when it came to discipline, she took over. ‘Listen to your mother,’ he would say. ‘She’s in charge here.’ It wasn’t that he saw domestic matters as Bridget’s responsibility, more that he was so grateful for his second family he couldn’t bring himself to chastise either Patrick or Delia. As much as Bridget cherished her second chance, she believed there was something purer about her husband’s gratitude.
Despite the emptiness of her threat, Patrick did as he was asked. He was too keen on his food to be late for dinner. In truth, he was a fine fellow who rarely caused her trouble. As she liked telling him, he was her favourite son.
‘And I assume Delia’s your favourite daughter?’ he’d say.
‘She is indeed. I chose quality over quantity.’
As far as the world was concerned, she was a mother of two: twelve-year-old Patrick and seventeen-year-old Delia. And, as far as Martin and Bridget were concerned, that was all the world needed to know.
She would have liked one more child, but when they’d married, Martin had already been in his forties and what they’d been through had taken a toll. While it was amazing how much the body could withstand, Bridget didn’t expect most of the Famine survivors to live to old age. Too much damage had been inflicted upon their hearts and lungs and bones. At times, she felt far too tired for her years. She wanted to lie down and never get up again.
Martin had proposed two months after they’d met beside the harbour. After the wedding, they’d made a pact not to dwell on their past lives. They couldn’t spend their days with one foot in Boston and the other in the west of Ireland. If they were to move on, if they were to find contentment, they couldn’t become sentimental about the country that had starved them and forced them into exile. Neither could they allow their lives to be blighted by anger. Instead, they would devote their energies to becoming American. They’d also decided to use their first language sparingly. Irish became their secret code when they needed to keep something from Patrick and Delia.
After fourteen years together, Bridget couldn’t claim that they’d always kept their promise to forget the past, but they’d done better than many. Sometimes, it wasn’t easy. After all, they had bonded over their shared history of loss. She could choose what she spoke about, but she couldn’t subdue her memories or control her dreams. Every day she thought of Norah. Her girl was eighteen now. At the same age, Bridget had married John Joe. According to everything she’d heard, conditions in Ireland had improved a little. She prayed that this was the case for her daughter. She also hoped that one day she’d see Ireland again. This wasn’t a wish she could voice out loud.
Alice, the real Alice, was also in her thoughts. Forgetting her would be impossible: Bridget spent every day with her ghost. Delia had the same snubbed nose and heart-shaped face, the same cowlick in her hair and the same ability to sleep. She was also an elegant young woman with a job in a dressmaker’s studio and a trail of suitors.
In their early years, Martin and Bridget had discussed what to tell her. In the end, they’d decided the truth would be unsettling. As far as Delia was aware, she was Bridget’s daughter from her first marriage in Ireland. Her birth-father had been called John Joe and he’d died of Famine fever. She rarely referred to their first two years in Boston, and Bridget assumed she had no reliable memories of their time with either the Edgecombes or the Cusacks. Nor did Delia ask many questions about the country of her birth. She was young and cared mainly about the present and the future.
Bridget had reconciled herself to the fact that, in such an enormous country, she would never find her brother. In her imagination, Francie was on the plains, herding cattle, or out west, mining for gold. On other occasions, he was somewhere warm, one of those places where the air was sweet with the smell of oranges and grapefruit. Or he was in New York, working hard and raising a large family. These were comforting thoughts.
There were times when she yearned to talk about her missing family members. When she felt a sharp desire to remember them aloud. Still, if keeping part of herself locked away was the price she paid for a stable – and in many ways happy – life, then so be it.
‘Shouldn’t we eat?’ said Delia, who was standing in front of the stove warming her hands.
‘No,’ said Bridget. ‘It’s better when we all sit down together. You know I prefer it that way. Your father will be here soon.’
‘A boy could die of starvation in this house,’ said Patrick. His sister sent him a warning look. He didn’t seem to notice. Ireland meant little to him, and that was how Bridget liked it. Later, no doubt, he’d have questions, but she’d worry about them when the time came.
Irish people continued to make the journey to Boston. Perhaps not in quite the same numbers, perhaps not in such a wretched condition, but they came nonetheless. Like the tens of thousands who’d arrived before them, most were looking for opportunity. More were hoping for adventure. Others were running away from the drudgery and unfairness of their home place. On Bridget’s street, every second family had given shelter to a family member or an old neighbour. She wondered if the haemorrhage would ever end. Or was this what Irish people did now? Had something fundamental changed so that if she lived to be a hundred and fifty, the story would remain the same?
Bridget and Martin had moved to South Boston shortly after their wedding. When they’d met, he’d been living in a boarding house basement in Fort Hill. It was grand, he’d maintained: cosy in the winter, cool in the summer. She had balked at raising children in such a cramped place. She’d wanted sunlight, a proper kitchen, neighbours with purposeful lives. They’d been in their current home on the ground floor of a brick tenement for the past five years. While modest, it was enough for their needs. The McDonaghs would never be rich, but they were respectable.
There was no point in claiming that her second marriage was like her first. With John Joe, she’d experienced extreme highs and lows. Although their time together had been brief, it was scorched into her memory. By contrast, she’d had years of getting to know Martin. While she couldn’t say their relationship contained the same passion as her first marriage, it did offer other pleasures. Bringing happiness to her husband was a reward in itself. In return, he gave her contentment and a sense of belonging.
Most of the families on their street were Irish, and many had walked a hard road. A considerable number had sons fighting in the war. They were proud of Massachusetts’ 9th and 28th Regiments, both founded by Irish men. ‘No Yankee can accuse us of being disloyal to America,’ her neighbour, Christina Kelly, liked to say. ‘Aren’t we giving the country our flesh and blood?’ Unfortunately, she also made it clear that her sons weren’t fighting to liberate slaves but solely to preserve the Union. More than once, Christina and Bridget had traded words on the issue. Finally Martin, who shied away from friction, had urged his wife to keep her convictions to herself.
Despite her firm support for the Union cause, Bridget was relieved that one of the men in her life was too old to fight and the other too young. Reports would drift back from places with magical names – the Shenandoah Valley, Cold Harbor, Spotsylvania – and she would shiver at the number of casualties.
If the war had brought death to the neighbourhood, it had also brought benefits. Every morning, thousands of men poured from their homes and headed for the factories, armouries and shipyards. They made guns, cannons and shells. There was less talk about the ‘Catholic Menace’ and fewer signs warning that ‘No Irish Need Apply’. No longer were school children forced to read Protestant versions of the Bible or recite unfamiliar prayers. The Irish had become useful. Where once it had felt as if they’d been grafted on to the city, now they were part of it.
‘Please can we eat?’ said Patrick, shaking Bridget from her reverie. ‘If we don’t have dinner soon, it’ll be all dry.’
‘I suppose we’d better,’ she said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. ‘It’s unlike your father to be so late, mind.’
She was starting to worry. Martin’s long years as a dock-worker meant he enjoyed more freedom than the newly arrived, and he was always home on time. She turned to the pot where the stew was simmering. Although Delia and Patrick laughed at her tendency to cook what they called ‘Irish food’, simple dishes were what Martin preferred. They also made fun of her cleaning rituals, but she’d been taught well, first by her mother and later by Cook and Mrs Hogan. She found comfort in her routines.
As she ladled the meat and vegetables onto their plates, she heard the door. At last, she thought. Unusually, there were two sets of footsteps. Not to worry: Martin occasionally brought a man home from work for a proper meal. Luckily, she didn’t have much of an appetite, so there was food to spare.
When she looked over her shoulder, she saw that her husband was accompanied by a man with a threadbare grey beard. He had the furrowed face of someone who’d spent a considerable amount of time outdoors and the clothes of someone with neither money nor vanity.
‘We have a guest for dinner,’ said Martin. ‘I told him you wouldn’t mind.’
Bridget turned around and put out her hand to introduce herself. Then she stopped. She looked beyond the beard and the lines, beyond the worn jacket and patched trousers. For a moment, she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t hear. She just stared.
She was looking at someone she hadn’t seen for almost thirty years.
It was only after Delia and Patrick had gone to bed that they heard Francie’s full story. He’d been back in Boston for eighteen months, getting work wherever he could find it. That was how Martin had met him. Prior to that, he’d spent ten years in California. Like many, he’d been lured by the gold rush. He didn’t have to tell them that he hadn’t found gold.
Bridget still couldn’t believe that he was sitting in their kitchen. He was a ghost made flesh, a memory brought to life. She calculated his age. He’d been twenty-two when he left Boherbreen, which meant he would be fifty next year. Although several years younger than Martin, he looked at least a decade older. His body was as thin and buckled as one of the trees in their hometown while his voice sounded as though it was fraying around the edges. His accent was almost entirely American, with only the occasional word revealing his roots.
When she’d told him about their father’s death, his reaction had been muted. ‘Poor Mammy,’ was all he’d said. Then she’d revealed how the Famine had claimed their mother and brother and her first husband. At this, he’d cried. There’d been nothing dramatic about his tears. They’d fallen silently down his cheeks until he’d rubbed a hand across his eyes and apologised for becoming emotional.
This had irritated Bridget. If you cared so much, why did you stop writing? she’d wanted to say. You could have told Mam what you were doing. You could have sent money and saved her life. Frightened of driving him away again, she’d held her tongue.
‘I never thought my own sister would be here in Boston,’ he said now. ‘If I’d known, I’d have come back sooner. I’d have tried to find you.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes, when you’re young, you think family ties don’t matter. You think you can go and make your own way, but the earliest years keep coming back, don’t they?’
‘They do,’ she said.
‘You were always in my thoughts. You might have difficulty accepting that, but it’s the truth.’
This time, with Patrick and Delia no longer present, Bridget couldn’t stop herself. ‘If that was the case, why didn’t you write?’
‘Because I couldn’t.’ For what felt like ten minutes, but was probably only thirty seconds, he said nothing further.
‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this,’ she said. ‘The way you disappeared was very hard on Mam. Like I told you, Daddy had been lost at sea, so even before the Famine, her life was tough. A few lines would have meant everything to her. You must have known that.’
He peered down at his boots, examining them as though the scuffed leather held the answer to every mystery in Heaven and on Earth. Finally, he spoke again. ‘I couldn’t send a letter home because I was in jail.’
‘You said you were in California.’
‘That was later. I was in jail here in Boston first.’ His gaze remained rooted to the floor. ‘Between 1840 and 1848, I was locked up, mainly in Leverett Street. When I got out, I was scared to write home again. I didn’t know what to say. How would I explain where I’d been? And I’d heard about the terrible situation back in Ireland. By that point, the hordes were arriving here, all in a desperate state. I decided the best thing for me was to leave the city and keep on moving.’
While Bridget’s mind was alive with questions, she believed he was telling the truth. It wasn’t a tale anyone would make up. ‘But—’ she started.
‘You want to know what I did? Of course, you do. I was drunk and I got into a fight. There was a crowd of us, eight or nine or more. A brawl, I suppose you’d call it. Anyway, one man ended up dead. I didn’t kill him, I promise you that. I was there, though, and I didn’t run quickly enough. Someone had to take the blame, and I was the man.’ He raised his sun-splotched hands. ‘There’s no reason why you should take my word for it, I know that. But, as God’s my witness, I didn’t kill anyone.’
Again, she accepted what he was saying. He appeared so defeated that not to do so would have been uncharitable. And he was her brother: he deserved her charity. She glanced at Martin, whose face was taut. Even after fourteen years, there were occasions when she found him hard to read.
‘Were you out west all that time?’ she said.
‘I was here, there and everywhere. I worked on farms and railroads and anywhere they’d have me. I found that once I’d left Boston no one ever asked where I’d been or what I’d done. They only wanted to know if I could work.’
‘And you never married?’ asked Martin, the first time he’d spoken in several minutes.
‘Oh, I did. That was the reason I stayed in California. Consuela was her name . . . still is her name. It didn’t work out. She was too young, and I was too tired. Too confirmed in my ways.’
‘Do you have children?’ asked Bridget.
‘No. We weren’t blessed with a family. That was one of the things that pushed us apart. Now I can see it was for the best. We weren’t destined to be together, not like the two of you.’ He smiled sadly. ‘It was good that you were able to bring your daughter with you, Bridget. It’s terrible that you lost your first husband at such a young age but thank God you’ve been able to start again.’ He looked around the kitchen. ‘You’ve done well. Mam would have been proud.’
‘Delia’s not my daughter.’
Bridget knew that afterwards, when Martin asked why she’d been so candid, she would claim she’d blurted out the words without thinking. That wasn’t the case, though. Francie had been honest with them, and he was entitled to honesty in return.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you said Delia was your daughter from your first marriage.’
‘That’s what we’ve told her. I did have a daughter, all right, but she’s with Mary Ellen and her husband in Hackett’s Cross. Or, at least, I assume they’re all still there.’
For the first time in more than a decade, she told her story: about leaving Norah in Mary Ellen’s care; about the shipwreck in Cohasset; about waking up to discover that everyone thought she was Alice; and about assuming Alice’s identity. Throughout, she kept her voice low, scared that either Patrick or Delia would hear.
‘These days, I’m back to being Bridget,’ she whispered. ‘Except on official paperwork – then I have to be Alice.’
‘And Delia’s never guessed?’ asked her brother.
‘No,’ said Martin.
Bridget was relieved to hear his voice. She was even more relieved when he clasped her hand.
‘Either way,’ he said, ‘her original father is dead. She’s happy with what we’ve told her. We’ve built a decent life here, and I’m sure you’d agree there’s nothing to be gained by dragging up the past.’
Martin was so softly spoken that no one, apart from Bridget, would have noticed the sting in his voice.
‘Delia asks the occasional question about Ireland,’ she said, ‘but she understands it’s an uncomfortable subject for us. Her own children will be American. They’ll be able to appreciate their background without being held back or upset by it. And isn’t that the way it should be?’
Francie raised his head. There was no light in his blue eyes. The rest of him appeared to carry the marks of every trench he’d dug, every track he’d laid, every crop he’d picked.
‘Don’t you ever wonder about Norah?’ he asked.
After that, they saw him from time to time. He’d learnt to be on his own, he said. He preferred it that way.
As happy as Bridget was to have found her brother again, she wished he’d had a more fulfilling life. When Martin, Delia and Patrick were there, they talked about America: about their lives in Boston or about characters Francie had met on his travels. When the two of them were alone, they were more likely to reminisce about Clooneven. Mostly, their conversations centred on their childhood, but occasionally, she spoke about the Famine and about leaving Norah behind.
‘I still think you should write to her,’ he said one day, as they meandered down Broadway. ‘She’s an adult and she deserves to know about you.’
‘Thomas and Mary Ellen might have shown her my letter.’
‘Or they might have thrown it on the fire.’
‘Please, Francie,’ said Bridget, ‘don’t make this more difficult than it already is. I can’t spend my days dwelling on what I lost or what might have been, especially when Martin lost more.’
‘Martin’s other children are dead. There’s nothing he can do about that. As far as we know, Norah’s alive.’
‘You’ve got to think this through. If I wrote to her, and it was the first time she’d heard the truth, how would she react? She might be angry.’
‘Isn’t that a risk worth taking?’ asked Francie.
‘But even if she wanted to know more and wrote back, there would be other consequences. I’d have to tell Delia the full story. Can you imagine how upset she’d be?’
‘She’s a clever girl. She’d understand.’
‘I’m not certain about that.’
‘Please,’ he said, ‘take it from someone who’s made every mistake possible, you’ll regret it if you don’t write to her.’
What her brother said was true and untrue, right and wrong. As much as Bridget loved her Boston family, Norah was never far from her thoughts. She longed to hear about her. Had she remained inquisitive? Did she still enjoy the feeling of warm sand beneath her feet? Did she have friends? Laughter? Someone who loved her?
But writing to the daughter she’d left behind wouldn’t be as simple as Francie claimed. Delving into the past would be disloyal, and not just to Martin, Delia and Patrick. In a funny way, she felt it would be disloyal to Boston, the city that had provided her with sanctuary.