*
As he watched the women up at the well now, he wondered whether Maggie had opened his packet of letters. He’d written fourteen in total; one for each of the fourteen months they had been courting, one to represent each of the fourteen blossom trees she loved so much which lined the road from her aunt’s cottage into the village, one – as it had turned out – to signify each member of the journeying group she was part of. He had unintentionally ended each letter with fourteen simple words I will wait for you under our tree until the day you come back and was quite pleased with the symmetry of it all.
He wondered whether she was thinking of him at that moment and, if so, what scene she was observing right now as her thoughts travelled back over the miles already in place between them. He hadn’t really understood the notion of love before he’d met her, mainly considering it a foolish thing for fellas who’d taken too much of the poitín and didn’t fully possess their own minds. But he didn’t drink, and something had certainly affected his mind when he’d walked up to her and asked her to dance at Jack and Maura Brennans’ wedding. From that moment, he understood a little more about the notion of love, and over the fourteen months since that night, he’d grown to understand it and learnt to embrace it more and more.
Séamus wasn’t the type of man to dwell on misfortune or bad luck, so the fact that Maggie’s plans to travel to America had come about so soon after their courtship had started and during a time when his father was so sick, was, to him, just as life was meant to be. It wasn’t worth agonising over or wishing for things to be different or declaring that life was cruel in its playing out; that was just how it was, and how it would always be. So, Séamus did the only thing he could do, he disregarded what was done and looked instead to the future. I will wait for you under our tree, he’d said to her until the day you come back. And although he meant it, something deep within his heart told him she would not return to this land.
The silence was broken then by a sudden outburst from one of the women, Séamus couldn’t tell who.
‘Oh sweet Jesus. Look! Look at the fish.’ Séamus watched as the women stood up almost in unison, rushing to the edge of the well to see what it was, the woman pointing at something frantically, her hand clasped over her mouth, her eyes wide with fright. ‘It’s on its side.’
The group of women stared down into the water. A single, small, sliver fish was turned over on its side in the water. As they stared down, the fish gulped a last, desperate breath of air and was still.
The women were silent, every one of them thinking the same thought, that this was a terrible omen for their loved ones, travelling far across the sea.
‘Not a one of you say it,’ Mary d’Arcy said, speaking in a low, steady voice which belied the overwhelming sense of dread coursing through her veins. ‘It’s only a dead fish, that’s all. Nothing else. So I don’t want one word said about this again – not to each other and not to any of the others, d’ye hear?’
There was a mumbled chorus of acceptance.
‘Right then, let that be that and let’s finish what we came here to do.’
By the time the sun was fully set behind the top of Nephin Mor, the women had finished their prayers and started to make their way back along the dusty track to the village.
Séamus Doyle stepped back from the cottage window as they walked by, wondering what had passed between the women up there. They were not entirely sure themselves, but they returned to the village with their hearts troubled and their beliefs shaken, not wishing to answer the questions which swirled around in their minds.
CHAPTER 12 - R.M.S Titanic, 11th April 1912
Harry Walsh was known for being lucky. He could turn a final card and win an entire hand when the deck seemed to be completely stacked against him. His friends had lost count of the number of times he’d correctly called a toss of heads or tails and, as a result, had skipped his turn to go to the bar or pay for a round of ales. ‘Lucky Harry’, Billy had called him one evening when he’d won twelve tosses of the coin in a row. It was a nickname which had stuck ever since.
The only aspect of Harry’s life in which he wasn’t lucky was love and it wasn’t for want of trying. There had been plenty of girls brought home to dinner and tea or taken to a dance at the Town Hall or for a stroll along the quay, but despite his good manners, pleasant face, well-scrubbed fingernails and polished shoes, none of them seemed especially keen on him. They always lost interest after a couple of dates, spending more time talking to his mates than to him, until they eventually went to a dance with one of them instead, like Nancy Parker who was now engaged to Dave Ward or Barbara Lacy who was married to Brian Addison and had three kids. Harry sometimes wondered whether any of his mates would be married at all if it wasn’t for him providing their wives.