1865, Boston
Bridget
Bridget had difficulty accepting that she was ill. At first, she’d tried to ignore the tiredness. Then, she’d ignored the weight loss and the jabbing pain in her chest. Her family wouldn’t allow her to ignore the coughing. ‘You ought to go to a doctor,’ Martin would say. In response, she would flap one hand and claim she always got sick in the winter. It was a legacy of the hard times in Ireland. She’d been through too many cold, damp nights. He knew that, didn’t he? ‘I’ll be better when the weather improves,’ she would argue.
But the winter became the spring, and her cough persisted.
Patrick was the first to see that she was coughing up blood. Once, she would have been able to buy his secrecy, to bribe him with extra pudding or another hour with his friends. He was thirteen now, though, and knew his own mind. He told his father, and Martin insisted she seek help.
It was consumption, the doctor said, in a voice that suggested he’d given the same diagnosis a thousand times that morning. What she needed was fresh air, a nutritious diet and a moderate amount of manual labour. Bridget explained that her life already contained all of these.
‘Well, then, there’s nothing else I can do for you, Mrs McDonagh.’
‘Do you know what’s causing it?’ she asked. ‘What I mean is . . . there are others on our street who are ill in the same way. Do you think that maybe we’re infecting each other?’
‘It’s unlikely.’
‘But, back in Ireland, people in the workhouse caught the fever from others living there. And on the ship too, lots of passengers became sick, my daughter among them.’
He gave her a cool appraisal. ‘This isn’t Ireland, Mrs McDonagh. It would be a mistake to assume that what occurred there could happen here.’ He pronounced ‘Ireland’ with the same level of condescension as Henry Frobisher.
‘Isn’t it worth considering?’ she said.
‘Greater minds than ours have found no such connection. I don’t think we’re best placed to contradict them, do you?’
She thanked him – because what else could she do? – and went on her way. On her route home, she called into the new church. Gate of Heaven, they called it. She usually found peace there, sometimes from others, more often from herself. Increasingly, she felt guilty about Delia. There were days when she had a compulsion to talk about Alice and about the Mary and Elizabeth. She wanted to say, This was how it was, and I did what I thought was best. She blamed Francie, except blame was the wrong word. All her brother had done was point out the obvious. Delia was entitled to know the truth. Unfortunately, Martin was holding firm. He believed they’d left it too late to confess.
Dropping to her knees sent pain shooting up Bridget’s legs, and perhaps that was why she did it. It was a form of penance. She blessed herself and thanked God for Martin, Delia and Patrick, and for returning Francie to her life. She prayed for the souls of her parents, for her brother, Michael, and for John Joe and Alice. She prayed, too, for the soul of President Lincoln, newly in his grave. And she prayed for someone whom she trusted was still living. She prayed for Norah.
The arrogance of the doctor’s delivery didn’t detract from the substance of his words. Bridget knew what he meant. What she didn’t know was how she would tell her family. Martin had two colleagues who’d died from consumption. Delia had a friend whose mother had suffered the same fate. It was a vicious illness. ‘The White Death’, they called it, on account of how pale its victims became.
As she prayed, another thought crept in. She would never go back to Ireland. There was no chance of her seeing Norah again. Without thinking, she moaned. Although the sound was small, she was relieved that no one else was there to hear it. In Irish, the language she loved but rarely used, there was a special word for the sound a cow makes when her calf is taken. Diadhánach described a particular type of loneliness. To the best of her knowledge, there was no English equivalent.
Over the following weeks, Bridget tried to get as much fresh air as possible. Most days, she brought a kitchen chair to the front of their building and sat with the sun on her face, like she’d done as a young girl in Clooneven. With the family, she continued to put her best side forward. She gave them her diagnosis, then acted as though nothing had changed. When her chest pain was particularly sharp or she felt especially weak, she hid herself away. Oh, she knew this was dishonest, but she couldn’t bear their downcast faces or anxious glances. She hated the conversations that stopped when she entered the room and the looks they swapped when she went to bed early.
Some days, she shook with anger at the unfairness of it all. She wanted to howl with rage and regret. She wanted to smash crockery and spit at strangers. Martin had already lost one wife. Delia had lost two parents. And for all his brave talk, Patrick was only a child. Not that she was completely selfless. She wasn’t yet forty years old. Her hair was still red, her body still firm. She wanted more of this life. She wanted to dance and tell stories and walk by the sea. She wanted to see her children grow up and marry.
Occasionally, she found respite in anecdotes about people who’d survived for many years after becoming ill.
‘My uncle got five years,’ one neighbour said.
‘My cousin lasted for seven,’ said another. ‘And she was in fine form until a month before she passed away.’
‘That’s nothing,’ said a third. ‘I worked with a fellow who recovered entirely. You’d never know there’d been anything wrong with him.’
Still, Bridget couldn’t deny how sick she felt. On her worst days, the pain in her lungs was so intense that her knees gave way, and she was forced to lie down.
One day in the middle of August, she was sitting in her usual spot beside the front door when the mail came. The deliveries had begun a couple of years previously. Unlike many in the neighbourhood, the McDonagh family rarely received letters. They had no one to write to them.
That morning was different.
‘Mrs Bridget McDonagh?’ said the mailman, as he handed her a cream envelope. ‘A letter from Ireland, no less.’
The writing was meticulous, which meant that even in the sunlight, it was easy to read the return name and address: Mrs Norah Nugent, Gortagowan, Hackett’s Cross, County Clare.
Even though she’d decided against writing, Bridget had hoped for this day. She’d convinced herself that, while it would be wrong to contact Norah, it wasn’t wrong to wish that, somehow, her daughter would find her. Francie had failed to see her logic. They’d argued and argued, until she’d told him that if he didn’t bring a halt to his wheedling and cajoling, she would stop talking to him.
Despite having pictured what she would do if a letter came, she was reluctant to open it. The contents might not be what she’d wished for. Norah might be angry. She might ask why her mother had abandoned her.
While she sat there, the rag man passed with his weary horse. ‘Any rags, any bones, any bottles today?’ he called out, in his County Kerry accent.
The vegetable man, originally from Mayo, came too. ‘Potatoes,’ he hollered. ‘Fresh potatoes and tomatoes.’
Groups of neighbours bustled by. And still she sat, desperate to know what the envelope contained, but equally desperate to avoid disappointment. She already had three important pieces of information. Norah was married, she lived close to where she’d grown up and, judging by the quality of her penmanship, she’d been good at school.
What Bridget couldn’t understand was why she had written now, for even if Mary Ellen and Thomas had told her the truth, it didn’t explain her knowing Bridget’s married name and address.
Then it came to her. The letter hadn’t been prompted by divine intervention but by the intervention of Francie Markham.
There were eight pages. Eight wonderful, vivid pages. Having finally found the courage to open the letter, Bridget spent the rest of the day reading and rereading. As she’d suspected, Mary Ellen had only told Norah about her in recent weeks, a development prompted by a letter from Francie.
Before writing, Norah had taken a few days to digest the information. In the beginning, she’d been furious. How they treated you was disgraceful, she wrote. I wouldn’t have believed them capable of such callousness. The beautiful letter you left for me makes it clear that you didn’t want to leave, and I can’t imagine how difficult those days must have been. My mother – I think of you both as mother – is remorseful, however, and I have accepted her apology. As of now, I can’t forgive her but perhaps that day will come.
Norah explained that she hadn’t spoken to Thomas because she felt confrontation would only make life harder for everyone. This worried Bridget. Had he been a controlling father? Had he been bad-tempered or violent? Then she told herself that, even if this had been the case, there was nothing she could do about it.
Everything Norah wrote revealed her to be thoughtful and kind. If this brought comfort to Bridget, it also tore at her heart. While reading, she was in her daughter’s world. She imagined her voice, her face, her movements. She pictured her drinking tea or walking through the fields or sharing a meal with her husband. She saw the waves washing against the shore, the clouds drifting in from the Atlantic and the way the grass looked at this time of year when the green had faded and burnt. These were the images she’d never been able to let go of, and for all her gratitude to Boston, she never would.
The letter ended with expressions of concern for Bridget’s health. I pray that you’re on the road to recovery. I don’t know if you want to write to me or if you’d like to hear more about our lives here in County Clare, but please believe me when I say I would welcome anything you choose to put on paper. She signed the letter, Your loving daughter, Norah.
Initially, Bridget couldn’t decide what to do. She considered hiding the letter and writing back without saying anything to anyone. But that wouldn’t be wise. Francie had set the process in motion, and she needed to talk to him.
By the time Martin got home from work, her mind was made up.
The bright evening meant that both Delia and Patrick were out with friends, giving Bridget and her husband an opportunity to talk. While it wasn’t a word he used, it was clear he was scared. He feared that Norah’s sudden emergence would disrupt their lives and hurt Bridget’s other children. He paced the room, tension in every line on his face.
‘I can see why you’re pleased to have received the letter,’ he said. ‘Of course I can. Especially with . . . especially with things being the way they are. But I’m not sure you’ve thought this through. Your illness has been difficult for the children, and now you want to tell them that you’ve . . . that we’ve misled them.’
‘It’s because I’m sick that I need to talk to them,’ she said. ‘They deserve to know the full story while I’m still . . .’ She allowed her sentence to fade away, but they both knew how it would have ended. She tried a different approach. ‘It feels wrong that Norah knows about me while Delia doesn’t know about Alice.’
Martin sat down and took her hand. ‘Like I’ve said to you before, you’re assuming she’ll accept our explanation, and I don’t think you can do that.’
‘I’m not,’ she said. While she desperately wanted to believe that Delia would understand, she knew she couldn’t take it for granted. How many times had she said as much to Francie?
‘And what about Patrick?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t there a danger that we’ll lose his trust? That he’ll wonder what else we’ve been lying about?’
Lying. The word sounded so grubby. She’d rarely allowed herself to think of what they’d done as lying. But Martin was right. That was what it was.
The next morning, the four of them sat around the kitchen table, and hesitantly at first, Bridget spoke about her departure from home in the spring of 1848. Rather than bringing her daughter with her, she said, she’d boarded the ship on her own. She described how Delia’s mother had drowned and how she’d adopted Alice’s name. Finally, she revealed that the girl she’d left behind had written to her.
Patrick latched on to the details before his sister. It was easier for him. His part in the tale was more peripheral, less personal. ‘What would have happened to Delia if you hadn’t pretended she was your daughter?’ he asked.
‘I can’t say,’ replied Bridget. ‘She might have gone to live with the richest family in Boston. Or she might have been sent to a home for the destitute. I didn’t have much time to consider the situation. I did what I thought was right.’
Delia, who’d been staring at her fingers, looked up. ‘I don’t care that you didn’t give birth to me. And I understand why you took me. I think I would have done the same. But . . .’ She stopped and tried to compose herself. ‘What I can’t understand is why you didn’t think I deserved the truth.’
To Bridget’s relief, Martin spoke. ‘We thought of you as our daughter,’ he said. ‘We always did. And when you were younger, we worried that telling you about your other family would unsettle you. We didn’t want you to feel different.’
‘If Norah hadn’t written, it’s unlikely I would ever have discovered the truth. That’s wrong.’
‘It is,’ said Bridget, ‘and we’re sorry.’
‘How much do you know about my family back in Ireland?’
Bridget sketched out what Alice had told her. She had to admit that it wasn’t much.
Delia’s eyes were wet. ‘I’m never likely to find out any more than that, am I?’
‘You’re not, pet,’ said Martin. ‘I wish I could say otherwise, but we don’t even know what Alice’s name was before she married.’
As the years passed, Bridget had grown to understand that, far from being unusual, her experience of separation and abandonment was common. The Irish had been forced to scatter around the world, and while some families had remained intact, more had been torn apart by time and distance. Bonds had been severed, graves forgotten, decades of family history wiped away. Thousands upon thousands of families would never be quite the same.
She felt the urge to cough but didn’t want any of them thinking she was looking for pity. Instead, she took a cautious breath. ‘I feel very lucky that Norah has written,’ she said, ‘and it’s my intention to reply to her. What’s important, though, is that you both know how much I love you. What matters most to me is what I have here in America.’
It was only as she spoke that she realised how true this was.
Afterwards, Delia was guarded. She didn’t ask many questions about Norah, and she was more prone to silence than before.
Bridget became flustered. ‘Why can’t she talk?’ she would say to Martin. ‘Why can’t she tell me what she’s feeling?’
‘Give her time,’ he would reply.
He didn’t point out that he’d warned this might happen.
Then, one day, when they’d been talking about something else entirely, Delia looked at her and said, ‘You saved my life.’
‘I suppose you could say that. Then again, you saved me. I’d have been a right misery those first few months in America without you there to entertain me.’
Delia cast her eyes heavenwards. ‘That’s not the same at all.’
‘It is to me.’
‘I’ll have to tell the authorities that I was stolen by a madwoman. You do realise that, don’t you?’
For half a moment, Bridget feared she was serious.
Delia winked. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘that wasn’t what I meant. You saved my life twice. You stood up to the ship’s captain, and he slapped you across the face.’
Bridget felt her lips curve into a smile. ‘You’ve been talking to your father.’
‘I have. Why didn’t you tell me what you’d done?’
‘Ah, it’s a long time ago now. Your father was the first person to support me. Did he tell you that?’
‘He didn’t.’ Delia paused. ‘For fear I haven’t said it, thanks for saving me.’
‘It was no trouble,’ replied Bridget, as she placed a hand on her daughter’s cheek. ‘No trouble at all.’
In the months that followed, Norah wrote frequently. Bridget valued every detail, from her daughter’s childhood memories to funny tales about various neighbours to her thoughts on the campaign for tenants’ rights and the political situation in Ireland. Reading between the lines, it seemed that, rather than shattering her bond with Mary Ellen, the truth had sent their relationship in a different direction. They spoke more often and more openly. This new honesty didn’t include Thomas, who remained unaware of the shock delivered by Francie’s letter.
In reply, Bridget wrote about her family in Boston and about the events that had shaped her. In a way, she was chronicling her life. After the first couple of letters, a pattern developed. She would write to Norah and then she’d tell similar stories to Patrick and Delia. At the start, she was wary of recounting some of the darker episodes. There had been a savagery about her final years in Ireland. Gentle people had been trampled upon, and they’d lacked the means to fight back. Did her children need to know about her own mother’s lonely death at the side of the road? About the torment she’d witnessed in the Kilrush workhouse? About the nights she’d gone to sleep fearing she wouldn’t wake again?
Gradually, her approach changed. She felt an obligation to tell the truth, no matter how difficult or ugly. She told them more about the ship and the storm; about her job on Beacon Hill and why she’d been forced to leave; about Peggy Russell’s snobbery and the Cusacks’ house, where she’d spent every day looking over her shoulder. She showed them her mementos: the cockle shell she’d taken from Hackett’s Cross and the books given to her by Charlotte Edgecombe, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Wuthering Heights and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Stupid as it might sound, the books had always meant more to her than the money that had accompanied them.
Sometimes the stories made them laugh. Delia, in particular, loved small, whimsical things, like the rivalry between Cook and Mrs Hogan.
‘And there I was,’ she said, ‘trotting around in the middle of it all. It’s such a shame I can’t remember anything.’
To Bridget’s surprise, Patrick enjoyed hearing about her youngest days in Boherbreen. She’d always assumed he had scant interest in Ireland, but her tales about their family home before the Famine appealed to him. Maybe the passage of time had gilded her memories, but there had been happy days when people gathered in each other’s cabins, sang songs and played music. It was important that she recall those days too. In one of her letters, Norah had said that older people fretted because traditional songs and stories were being forgotten. The Famine hadn’t just killed their neighbours, it had also changed their way of life.
There were occasions when the storytelling saddened Bridget and further eroded her energy. After all, what she was doing was an implicit acknowledgement that there would be no fresh memories. At least her reflections would give Patrick, Delia and Norah something to hold on to. She didn’t want them to remember her as a fragile woman who’d struggled for breath. If she’d known cruelty and depravity, she’d also experienced great kindness and love. She needed them to understand that.
Frequently, Francie joined them. He further embellished Bridget’s recollections of their childhood. In his version of events, he was always the hero, the one who warded off local villains, caught even the speediest rabbits and pulled wriggling fish from the sea.
‘Don’t listen to a word he says.’ Bridget would laugh. ‘Not one of his claims is true.’
Step by step, Martin became involved in their ritual. He opened up to Patrick and Delia about growing up in Connemara and about losing his first family on the Mary and Elizabeth. He told them about his home place, Claddaghduff, and about a nearby island called Omey.
‘When the tide was right,’ he said, ‘we were able to walk across the sand to the island. There were fields there, and you’d swear they contained every flower on God’s earth. On a fine day, I used to lie on the grass and listen to the sea. It was like being in Heaven.’
He spoke too about the day he’d encountered Bridget and Delia walking beside the harbour.
‘I knew within a few minutes,’ he said, ‘that I wanted to be with you both. I went home that night feeling as though my life could begin again. Dá fhada an lá, tagann an tráthnóna.’
Bridget looked away then. She didn’t like the children seeing her cry.
For a while, she held her illness at bay. In October, she celebrated her fortieth birthday. Thanksgiving and Christmas passed, and in January, Patrick turned fourteen.
In the first weeks after her diagnosis, she’d felt as if everything was sullied, and that even if she lived for another decade, life would be stripped of its lustre. She closed in on herself, as if her heart was shrinking. That had changed. She appreciated now that she was living on stolen time. Every additional day mattered. She was greedy for another hot summer, another scarlet and gold autumn. She wanted to watch Patrick grow even taller, and she hoped to see Delia marry Jimmy O’Brien, whom she’d been courting for more than a year. She longed for the birth of the baby Norah was expecting and she craved more time with Martin. She knew he’d be able to cope without her, but he shouldn’t have to. He was fifty-six years old. He’d done enough, been through enough. For all these reasons, every day was important.
The problem was, the pain kept returning. It sat on her shoulder, sneering at her. If ever she relaxed, it swooped in again, stealing her breath and making a mockery of her intentions. Long gone were the days when she could cook dinners and clean the rooms. That all fell to Delia now.
One morning in April, she propped herself up in bed. Martin sat nearby. Spring sunlight filled the room. She would have liked to go outside and admire the blossom that decorated the city at this time of year, but she didn’t have the strength. Perhaps she would ask Patrick to cut some blooms and put them in water for her. At home in Boherbreen, the whitethorn would be in flower. She imagined she could smell it.
She was expecting a letter from Norah. Because it took weeks for letters to cross the Atlantic, their correspondence could be disjointed. That didn’t bother her. Any word at all was welcome, especially with a baby on the way. She was also expecting a visit from Francie, who usually called on Saturdays. She wasn’t in the form for reminiscing. Her storytelling had run its course. She would prefer to hear from the others. It occurred to her that Delia and Patrick were afraid to talk about the future for fear it upset her. She would have to put that right.
There was, however, something she needed to say to Martin. It had been bothering her for days, but she didn’t want him to think she was being silly.
‘I haven’t told you how much I love you,’ she said.
Martin blinked. ‘Of course you have.’
‘I haven’t done it enough, though. I should have said it more – to you and to Delia and Patrick.’
‘We’ve always known.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘I do,’ he said.
‘I think I’ll rest for a short while, so.’
‘Would you like me to stay?’
‘That would be good.’
Bridget closed her eyes. She felt surprisingly restful, as though everything she’d needed to say had been said. For that she was grateful.