As Maggie drove the cart home after a good morning’s sales at the market in Dundalk, she recounted an incident concerning her brother James when he was a child. Catherine marvelled at the ability of her aunt to remember so much from her youth.
“If my father knew the half of what you told me about him, he would be mortified, Aunt Maggie.”
“Well now, I won’t tell him if you don’t,” the older woman said, before going on to recount yet another story.
As the cart drew close to the post office in the village of Blackrock, a tall, dark haired man emerging from the building caught Catherine’s eye. She gasped and pulled her shawl over her head, to hide her face.
“What’s wrong with you, girl? It’s a glorious day, you should be letting the fresh air into your lungs.”
“I can feel a wee bite in the air. All those years in the doctor’s house softened me, Aunt Maggie. I’m not as hardy as yourself.”
Although tempted, Catherine was afraid to look behind her, for fear the man might recognize her if he was the person she thought he was. She tried to convince herself that it was a mistake and felt sure that Blackrock was not the kind of place someone of his sort would travel to. Reprimanding herself for being so foolish, Catherine focused instead on yet another of her aunt’s tales of the mischief her father had gotten up to as a young boy.
Later that evening, Catherine’s younger brother arrived at her house, panting.
“Come in, Jamie, and catch your breath. Is there trouble at home?”
The young boy shook his head vigorously before replying to his sister’s question.
“No. No trouble. I raced over here to catch Patrick before he left for the boat,” Jamie turned to face his brother-in-law. “I want you to take me out in the bay with you tonight.”
There was an awkward silence and Catherine placed a hand on her brother’s shoulder. She found it too difficult to say what was on her mind, but one look at her husband told her that he was thinking the same thing.
Jamie looked from one to the other of them and saw the closed expression on their faces. His mother had forbidden him to go out on a boat until he finished his schooling and no amount of begging on his part could ever change her mind.
“I’m past the age of twelve now and done with school. Ma always told me I could go when I was twelve. She knows I’m here.”
“What did she have to say about it, Jamie?” asked Catherine.
The young boy told them how his mother was angry at first and had opened her mouth to give him her usual reprimand, whenever he broached the subject of being a fisherman.
“Then a strange look came over her face and she turned away saying, ‘Go on, so. You’re your father’s son,’ and I ran out the door before she could stop me,” Jamie never took his eyes from Patrick as he spoke.
Knowing how her husband would respond, Catherine prayed he would let the boy down gently.
“I’m sorry, Jamie lad, but you’ll have to bring me your father’s permission, too. I cannot take you out tonight without it.”
A big smile brightened the boy’s face at Patrick’s words and he jammed his cap onto his head as he turned on his heel to run into the street.
“Why did you get his hopes up like that?” asked Catherine. “You know my father will never let him crew your boat.”
“It’s not my boat, it belongs to Mrs. Murphy.”
“I don’t care who owns it. You should have said no to him as soon as he asked,” Catherine replied sharply.
“What, and do his father’s dirty work for him? If it were up to me, I’d have brought him along with us tonight. Let James McGrother watch the face of his own son crumple with disappointment when he withholds his permission.”
Later that evening, as Patrick and Petey Halpin, along with two other men, brought their boat out into the bay alongside those who had left earlier, the low hum of men saying a rosary at midnight echoed across the still water. There were many superstitions the fishermen adhered to, some more than others, but the saying of the rosary was one that all the men took part in, even Patrick, who prided himself on being the least superstitious man in the village – and an atheist at that.
Just as the nets were being shot into the water, a boy’s voice rang out, clear and strong.
“Patrick, over here? My da has me on his crew. Isn’t it a -”
Jamie’s sentence was cut short by a man’s rebuke and there was a lot of muttering and laughter to be heard.
“Sorry, I meant to say Mr. Clarke’s crew,” the young voice shouted out.
Patrick Gallagher exchanged smiles with the men on his boat and waved back at the silhouette of young Jamie McGrother, his twelve year old frame a dark shape against the star studded midnight sky. One of his father-in-law’s endearing qualities, was that he couldn’t bear to disappoint anyone, if it was within his power to avoid it. ‘The only exception he makes is in his dealings with me,’ thought Patrick. ‘James McGrother would happily spend the rest of his life making me miserable, given half a chance.’