The Banished Children of Eve (53 page)

The husbands
tried not to look at Catherine but couldn't help themselves. Even with her graying hair and the lines in her face and around her mouth, Catherine Murphy was still near to the girl they remembered from their youth, same body, same smile, same way about her. The wives, their eyes hard and fixed, looked at their husbands, but they, too, thought mostly of Catherine, the easy life of city women, the luxuries they had, the clothes they wore, and the airs they assumed even though they had been born and reared under thatched roofs. Only the daughters made no attempt to hide the awe in which they held Catherine, an apparition from another order of existence, like the visitors from Dublin or London whom they caught glimpses of in Macroom, the wives of government officials or military officers on their way to some other part of the empire.

Margaret and Catherine stayed for a week with Jeremiah. At first, Margaret took delight in the novelty of what she saw. She enjoyed walking the lanes, the look of the countryside in high summer, and the talk of the people, the accents so thick that if you didn't listen carefully, you might think they were talking Irish instead of English. But by the middle of the week, she was already growing tired of the place, cow droppings everywhere, flies swarming around them, the remorseless routine of her uncle's life, the same chores done the same way every day. It took less than a day to see the sights there were to see, a ruined castle, the remains of an abbey, a new church, the tree from which, it was said, Cromwell himself had hanged Bishop Boetius Mac Egan—martyr's scaffold or not, it was a sorry-looking tree.

Jeremiah employed two spalpeens. Young men with no English, dressed in ragged clothes, their mouths already half empty of teeth, they never came near the cabin. There were scores of men like them in the area, but they lurked in the background like half-domesticated dogs, living tentatively on the edges of the community. Jeremiah worked beside them, and spoke to them in Irish, but his tone was usually harsh, and Margaret felt sorry for them.

When he had
been drinking, Pagan O'Driscoll had been vitriolic on the contrasting fates of the spalpeens and of the tenant farmers, who had not only survived the Famine but increased their holdings.

“Calluses on the arse of landlordism,” he said. “When the Hunger was at its height, they closed their doors to their own people, Irish like they were, serfs to the same masters, and then, when it was done, they feasted on the carcasses of the dead and the departed, licking their master's hand when he threw them the crumbs of lands that had been seized from the starving. Fat and prosperous now, they're like crows back from a battlefield.”

It was hard for Margaret to think of her uncle and his neighbors as prosperous. Their cabins were spare and stark, and whatever surplus they had they hoarded, scared the landlord's agent might raise the rents to levels they couldn't pay, and perpetually afraid that the potato blight might strike again, destroying whatever margin they had managed to amass. And although the Famine was never mentioned, although there was more talk of Cromwell's presence two hundred years before than of the events of the previous decade, the memory of what had happened hung over the countryside like the morning mist that shrouded the stubby remnants of cabins in fields and on hillsides, clusters of shattered walls where cows now grazed.

On her last night at her uncle's, Margaret attended a dance in Macroom. It was held in a hall brightly illumined by gaslight and filled with many of the same girls she had met the Sunday she'd arrived. They all stood to one side of the room. On the other side were boys who looked as if they had just stepped out of the bogs, red-faced and heavyset, with hands like their fathers'. They reeked of whiskey. The music was the kind heard coming out of the lowest shebeens in Cork City, the fiddle tunes that emanated from cellars and back rooms choked with tobacco smoke. The next morning Margaret awoke happy with the thought of going home.

It wasn't until her uncle married that she and her mother returned on another visit. They came down at Eastertide. Jeremiah's wife was in her twenties. She was shy, sitting by the hearth to have tea with them but saying little. Jeremiah, however, was more talkative than he had ever been. At one point, he suggested that Margaret accompany his wife out to gather some eggs, and she did, glad for the chance to get away from the stinging smoke of the turf fire.

That night, when
they went to bed, Catherine told Margaret that her uncle had made a proposition. “He wants to arrange a marriage for you.”

Margaret had been on the edge of sleep, her back to her mother. She opened her eyes.

“He said that he looks on you as he would a daughter and is willing to settle a dowry on you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I'd talk to you.”

“That you'd talk to me?”
Margaret sat up. “What kind of an answer is that?”

“A good one. Ireland is hard on its children, hardest of all on its daughters.”

“Especially on them that spend their lives scrubbing out troughs.”

“The man he has in mind owns a grain store in Macroom. His name is Murphy, too, but no relation. Not the worst sort. I knew his father.”

“
Not the worst sort?
Well, now,
there's
a recommendation. How could I resist such a match?”

“I thought that you should at least know of your uncle's offer.”

“Now I know.”

“There aren't a lot of choices, Margaret.”

“You refused to settle for such a life. What do you expect of me?”

“I don't offer my life as a model. You can go back to Cork City; no one will stop you. Spend the rest of your days sweeping out other people's houses. But, to be honest, if
I
knew that lay ahead, I might think twice about being the wife of a grain seller in Macroom.”

Margaret threw her head onto the pillow. She put her hands beneath it and shut her eyes. “I'll go to America.” She had often had the thought, a fleeting, indistinct desire. This was the first time she had spoken it.

“And do what? Clean the houses of Yankee Protestants instead of staying home and cleaning those of Irish ones? Small reason for such a great journey.”

The vision
Margaret had of America was always of the West, tall men with faces turned so brown from the sun that they were practically indistinguishable from the Indians. And rivers. Rivers that poured over mountains and plains, torrents of raging water, untamed.

Catherine put out the candle. She rolled onto her side with her back to Margaret. “It's no holiday in America. Some of them that went over are already coming back. It's as hard for the Irish there as here, they say.”

Margaret faced the window. Her tiredness was gone. Outside, moonlight bathed the far hills and turned the land to a single shade of gray. One girl had come back, that's all, and she to enter a convent. Molly Foley had spent a few years in New York. She had returned with boots for her father, a silk shawl for her sister, and a sewing machine for her mother. Pious, sincere, quiet Molly. If she wasn't so kind and sweet, Margaret would have hated her. But none of the others had come back, and the remittances they sent home had become a regular part of life for many of the families the O'Driscolls knew, money that paid the rent and put food on the table. The blessings of the Yankee dollar. It brought more comfort to Ireland than all the deliberations of the Parliament in Westminster ever had.

It was on
that night in bed with her mother that Margaret decided she would leave Ireland for America. She didn't sleep. It was as if she were leaving the next day. In the morning she still felt sure of her decision, but, perhaps because she was so tired, she was less enthusiastic than she'd been the night before. Her uncle was unusually talkative, bantering with Margaret and Catherine when he came back from the fields for his breakfast. Margaret was sure that he supposed the offer had been conveyed to her. She was sure also that he believed she would jump at the chance to be a townsman's wife, the opportunity her mother had lost. And he'd generously settle the dowry, happy to help his niece—and not ignorant of the benefits of a personal tie with Murphy the grain seller. In bad times it was such connections that could make the difference between holding your land or being turfed out. But Jeremiah was also happy for Murphy, maybe for him most of all, a girl from Cork City as his bride, with her city ways and city dresses, and her grandmother's hair,
Kate of the red-yellow tresses.
Such things were important to townsmen, especially those determined to rise in the world as Murphy was, a lovely girl on his arm, the envy of the other merchants,
that river of crimson gold so lightly on your shoulders rests.

Margaret wasn't sure of when her mother told Jeremiah of Margaret's refusal to avail herself of his offer. Probably late the next afternoon. He was still friendly and full of talk at breakfast. But he didn't come home for dinner. His wife said that he had gone to look at a cow that was for sale. “He's a great one for seizing an opportunity,” she said. He was there the next morning, but had little taste for conversation. He barely spoke a word to Margaret for the rest of the visit.

Catherine didn't mention the offer again, and when they returned to Cork City, neither did she bring up Margaret's announced intention to emigrate. They went back to their work as day-hire domestics, and instead of handing over all her pay to her mother, Margaret began holding back a few pennies from each job, determined to accumulate what she needed for a passage to America. It would take time before she had enough, but it would allow her to find out more about where she was going, to give some thought to what she would do and with whom she would stay. She was in no great hurry.

Walking home one
night from a triduum in honor of Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine, several months after they had come back from Macroom, Catherine finally brought up Margaret's plans.

“How much have you saved?” she asked.

“Saved?”

“Don't be coy, you're just after leaving church.”

“Near half a pound, I should think.”

“You're a long way from ever seeing America.”

“Eight pounds isn't all that much.”

“Eight pounds, is it? And what will you live on after you land? Do you think the Yanks provide free room and board?”

Margaret hadn't given it much thought, not yet. As determined as she was to go, she hadn't made much headway in fleshing out her plans. America was still so indistinct a place, rivers of roaring water, men panning for gold in them. The Mississippi. The Hudson. The Swanee.

“I'm making plans.”

“Plans, is it? Well, people make their way there same as here; ‘by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread.' You keep saving your money, all that you can. You may need it to carry you over once you land. I'll see to the fare.”

“And where will you find eight pounds?”

They were standing at the top of the street, and down below the Lee moved swiftly but gently. No one had ever looked for gold in it.

“Your uncle.”

“Jeremiah? He wouldn't give me the tail from a pig, not after I went and ruined his grand alliance with Murphy the grain seller.”

“Never
give
you anything, 'tis true. But perhaps he'd lend it to you at a small rate. He never turns his back on such propositions.”

A few weeks later,
Catherine returned from Macroom with the money. Suddenly the distant possibility of America was near, but along with a growing excitement Margaret felt hurt at the ease and speed with which her mother had made the arrangement, as if she couldn't be rid of her fast enough, one less person to crowd the basement where they lived, a daughter to send them remittances, from America, whatever she could afford after dispatching her uncle his monthly payment. It wasn't until the night before she left that Margaret grasped her mother's desire to have it done with as quickly as possible; her eldest child, the one she was closest to, sent on her way without a prolonged leave-taking, the equivalent of a slow dying. Few ever returned. They went by the thousands, sometimes whole villages, swearing never to forget. And yet their eyes and voices, their merriness or sadness, their marriages and spouses and children, were all reduced to the occasional letter, fewer as time went on, until the small death of emigration was eventually enveloped in the greater final one.

The last night, Catherine sat apart as Margaret's girlfriends buzzed about. The relatives had yet to appear, and the girls were still too excited by the thought of Margaret's departure to dwell on the loss they would feel, a truth they would comprehend only at the end of the evening. Catherine held her apron to her face and tried to stifle her sobbing. The girls stopped their talking and stood around her, each trying to offer some comfort. Then she began to keen: the cry of the country women, their shawls thrown over their heads, a low moan that gradually ascended to a shriek. The girls kept talking, trying to muffle the sound of the cries, but eventually gave up. Margaret hadn't thought her mother capable of such a thing, but then she began to sob too, which is most of what she would remember from that last night, tears and sobbing, her mother's keening, singing and music, the raucous sound of men with too much to drink suddenly coming to a stop for a song or more crying. Margaret stood like an observer at her own wake, and understood why her mother wanted it over as quickly as possible.

*

Margaret looked up at
the clock on the wall of the pantry. Twenty past seven. “O Christ,” she said. Mr. Ward would have expected his second cup of tea long ago. She jumped up from her stool, grabbed the pot, and put her hand on its side. Tepid. She should have brought it back to the kitchen and kept it warm, should have poured it ten minutes ago, should have cleared the table by now. No time to warm it. And she had no intention of giving Miss Kerrigan more inspiration for her speeches. She went into the dining room. Mr. Ward was sitting with one elbow on the arm of his chair, his hand propped beneath his chin. With the other he held open a book that rested on the table; his spectacles were laid atop it; his dishes had been pushed to one side.