The Girl Who Came Home(10)
‘I hope so Séamus Doyle, I do. I hope so.’
Their last, tender embrace among the falling blossom was one of many which took place that morning in their small village and in homes across the parish. Promises to keep in touch and sentiments of love were exchanged on almost every doorstep; mothers wept for their departing sons and daughters, sisters held onto sisters, brothers grasped brothers, friends embraced friends and neighbour held neighbour.
*
Kathleen Murphy stood for a moment in the doorway of her Irish home. She watched a spider in the doorframe, wondering how long it had lived among those cracks in the wood, cracks she hadn’t noticed until now. She wondered how much of this house, of this parish she would recall in the future, aware that with Maggie in America with her, there would be little reason to return here again. She wondered whether those who dwelt in this home in years to come would ever know the names Maggie and Kathleen Murphy; ever know that they, and twelve others, had departed from this small village on a calm spring morning in search of a better life.
*
With the last of the luggage loaded into the traps, the fourteen travellers took their seats. Still clutching the packet of letters, Maggie climbed up to take the last seat in the last trap alongside her Aunt Kathleen. With a final blessing of holy water and a prayer for protection from the Parish Priest, the jarveys gave a sharp tug on the reins. The horses and donkeys skittered to attention, the harnesses jolted taught and fourteen hearts lurched as the carts rumbled slowly forwards.
CHAPTER 4 - Chicago, April 15th, 1982
Grace Butler gathered her long black hair at the nape of her neck and held it loosely to one side as she bent forward to blow out the twenty one candles on her cake. The bright flames swayed in mesmerising unison as a light breeze drifted in through the open kitchen window, the motion reminding her of the late-summer cornfields around their small farm. One last dance before harvest time her father had said to her one August evening, as they sat on the old gate and watched a beautiful sunset turn the ripe cornfield to a dazzling display of liquid gold. One last dance.
As a man of few words, this unexpectedly beautiful remark had stayed with her ever since. She remembered those words again now as she blew out her birthday candles; remembered him, as the small group of friends and family who had gathered in her mother’s kitchen sang Happy Birthday and clapped with love and admiration for a girl who had come of age; for a girl who had returned to this humble, family home two years earlier to bury the father she adored.
Until that very dark jolt, life had been satisfyingly predictable for Grace; safe and unremarkable. Hers had been a contented childhood, spent playing in the hayfields with her twin brother Art and the kids from the other smallholdings around their Illinois River Valley home. She had fond memories of lazy summer days spent splashing her bare feet in the cooling streams and running her fingers through the crystal clear waters of the rivers which flowed around their farmland, catching sticklebacks and bullheads in jam jar aquariums, eating honeysuckle flowers and rubbing nettle stings with the large, flat dock leaves which nature had cleverly planned to always grow nearby.
The rivers which meandered and intertwined across the countryside, lazily in the summer and more violently after the winter rains and snow, were as much a part of Grace’s life as they were a part of the landscape. For as long as she could remember, she had felt curiously drawn to the water; entranced by the sight of it, soothed by the sound of it and intrigued by the dangers and mysteries hidden within it. Grace knew that just below the gentle, inviting surface there were dangerous eddies and deceptive currents, which even a strong swimmer like her would not be able to kick against. She respected the water for this, never underestimating its power and admiring its beauty with a cautious eye.
Her father had once told her that water has a memory; that every rock, every stone, every grain of muddy sediment leaves something of a fingerprint in the water which flows over it. Grace liked this idea, imagining the water of the great lakes and oceans of the world to echo with the memories of the places, people and events which it had passed on its meandering journey.
Grace, Art and the other kids were a familiar sight in their neighbourhood; at one with the wildlife and nature around them, free to roam at will until the inky blue skies of dusk signalled that it was time for them to trudge home along the dusty pathways forged by the tractors and heavy machinery of harvest time.
From the carefree life of a farmer’s daughter, Grace had settled quickly into the routine of school, excelling academically and socially. During the summer of ’75 she’d blossomed, quite literally overnight, into a stunning teenager, her natural beauty and developing female form not going unnoticed by the hormonally-charged boys in her class. She’d had her first kiss that fall and lost her virginity the following spring. Sam Adamson was his name. They’d locked themselves into a barn one rainy afternoon and fumbled with zippers, buttons and bra straps on the dusty floor while a chicken pecked at husks of grain in the corner. It was all over in minutes. She couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.