The Girl Who Came Home(18)
‘It’s from Maggie. She says she’ll come out for Christmas! What do you make of that?’
Her sister glanced up from her darning. ‘She won’t fare well on a ship on her own, that’s for sure. What else does she say?’
Kathleen glanced back over the letter. ‘She says that the Brennans are thinking of coming in the spring.’ She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. ‘Maybe I should go, Mary. I could spend Christmas in Ireland and bring Maggie back with me in the spring. We could travel together with the Brennans. It would be nice to see Maura again now that she’s married to Jack and expecting a baby. She would probably enjoy some female company on the crossing.’
Mary nodded and returned to her work. She already knew the conclusion Kathleen would reach.
‘Yes, that would be a grand idea. I’ll reply to her Mary, straightaway. I’ll go back to Ireland for Christmas and return in the spring and bring Maggie with me to settle here. There’s nothing much to keep her in Ireland that’s for sure.’
‘What about that Doyle fella she’s always pining over.’
‘Oh, she’ll soon enough forget about him.’ Kathleen didn’t disapprove of Séamus Doyle, she knew of him and his family, knew that he was a hardworking, polite boy and judging by Maggie’s letters, he clearly cared for the girl, but she also realised that at the ages of seventeen and nineteen this was a romance which would eventually fade out. ‘Right, that’s settled then. I’ll write to her in the morning.’
She’d written her reply the very next day, informing Maggie to wait. I’ll be back in Ireland in three weeks, and we’ll come together in the spring, she advised. True to her word, she sold her boarding house within a week and bought her own return passage to Ireland.
Crossing the Atlantic was almost second-nature to Kathleen by the time she’d set sail for Ireland that November, having made the journey between her American and Irish homes several times over the years. She was, however, well aware of the fact that her arrival back in Ireland that winter had not passed without remark. This time she’d returned noticeably different; a successful, astute businesswoman who, although connected to the stones, earth and rivers of her Irish home was somehow changed by her extended experience of a new life, by her knowledge that there were better prospects to be found elsewhere. For those who had neither the financial means nor the desire to travel and had stayed behind to continue their lives at the same steady, unremarkable pace, it was unsettling to witness the lightness in Kathleen’s step, the glare of her colourful overcoat and to hear the occasional, unfamiliar turn of phrase which the returning traveller brought with her.
The hushed whispers and furtive glances as she went about her business didn’t bother Kathleen, although the rumours that she had returned to Ballysheen to look for a husband, did. It was a subject which came up time and time again, and was one of few things in Kathleen’s life which unsettled her. It had started before she’d even left Chicago.
‘You know, it might not be any harm to consider looking for a suitable husband while you’re back in Ireland Kathleen,’ her sister Mary had mentioned, tentatively, as she helped Kathleen pack the last of her belongings. ‘You’ve a good dowry now from the sale of the boarding house and the prospects you can offer a future husband are much improved. You should think on it.’
It wasn’t the first time that Mary had raised the issue of a husband with her sister, whose apparent indifference to the matter was something she found completely incomprehensible. Unlike her friend Maura, and several of her other sisters, Kathleen had never really considered marriage, her successful boarding house business occupying most of her time and her thoughts. It was an issue which refused to go away though, as someone or other would make a remark or throw a suggestive glance in her direction whenever there was talk of engagements or weddings. Having read the excitement in the letters from Maura about her engagement to Jack Brennan, Kathleen’s thoughts had turned fleetingly to the matter recently, although never for too long. A fiercely private woman, the thought of discussing the matter with anyone else, even her own sister, left Kathleen feeling distinctly uncomfortable. As far as she was concerned, whether she had her mind set on finding a husband in Ireland or not was nobody’s business but her own.
‘May God have mercy on me Mary Murphy,’ she’d replied huffily, hoisting her luggage into the hallway, ‘I am certainly not going back to Ireland on some desperate mission to find a man who will spend all my hard-earned money on silly notions of running a shoe factory or making buttons. I’m going to Ireland to collect my niece and bring her safely across to America.’