The Girl Who Came Home(32)

And, as luck would have it, whenever he did meet a girl who seemed genuinely keen on him, it seemed that Harry’s mother wasn’t especially keen on them. There had been many a time when one of his girlfriends had left the house after Sunday dinner, complaining that they were sure his mother didn’t like them. He would deny the fact, but knew that they were absolutely right. His mother knew just how to add a certain tone to her voice when offering another slice of apple pie which told a girl, quite clearly, that this would be the last time they sat at her kitchen table and ate her apple pie.

He wasn’t all that bothered about it really. He’d watched his friends settle down and raise a family in recent years and the more he saw this happen, the more he realised that he wasn’t quite ready for all of that just yet. He was enjoying his life too much for settling down and had a few more oceans he wanted to cross before he left a wife at home to worry about him coming back. Anyway, he felt instinctively that he would know when he met the right girl, a girl who would be good enough for him - and his interfering mother - and who would get along with his mates without running off with one of them; a girl like the pretty Irish one who had just boarded at Queenstown.

Amid the hundreds of people boarding the ship at this, the last embarkation stop, she caught his attention straight away. She and her friends were hard to ignore with the charming lilt of their Irish accent, their infectious giggles and the mass of luggage they had brought with them which bashed against their legs, and his, as he negotiated the narrow corridors to show them to cabin number 115 on E Deck.

He listened carefully to their excitable conversation and gasps of wonder as he walked them to their quarters deep in the lower section of the ship. In the time it took him to escort them to their cabin, he learnt that the girls were part of a group of fourteen friends and family who were travelling together from a small town in the north west of Ireland to join members of their family in America and start a new life. He didn’t quite understand why he found them so captivating, but he felt oddly moved by them and their story, by the notion that these young girls, and the people travelling with them, had left their homes and the land of their birth to take their chances in a distant and unfamiliar land.

With the words of his own mother ringing in his ears, it struck Harry that unlike the socialites and the honeymooners and the home-coming European travellers and the actresses with silly little dogs who had already boarded the ship in joyous and jovial mood at Southampton and Cherbourg, the many steerage passengers who were boarding at Queenstown seemed to have a strange air of remorse about them, a distinct sense of sadness which was lifted only by the chatter of these three young girls.

He couldn’t help but smile to himself as he listened to their irrepressible excitement at the spectacle of this vessel, their gasps of amazement echoing the feelings he’d had himself just twenty four hours earlier. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph girls, would you look,’ the pretty girl had said as they walked through the general room, ‘this room alone is bigger than the whole of Ballysheen!’

Titanic seemed to do that to people, inspire them, astound them, draw them together and connect them in a shared sense of awe at the magnitude and splendour of this spectacle which had been derived from riveted steel plates. Because, after all, that is all this was; a ship held together with steel rivets. And yet, it was much more than that. It was a ship which would transport some of its passengers towards a life of prosperity and others simply away from a life of poverty.

He hung around the girls’ cabin a little longer than usual to make sure they were happy with their accommodations (which, judging by their remarks about hand wash basins and towels and bars of White Star Line soap they clearly were), when the pretty girl turned to thank him very much for his help, smiling warmly at him. It was a smile which he gladly returned until he noticed the rather stiff looking woman glaring at him. She seemed to be minding the group of girls and Harry assumed she must be the mother of one of them, most probably the mother of the girl he was smiling at, judging by the disapproving scowl on her face. He could almost hear the words of his friend Billy in his head Bloody hell, that’s a face to melt steel if ever I saw one. He stopped smiling then, wished them a pleasant journey and returned to the gangway to collect more passengers.

Queenstown was a busy embarkation stop for the Third Class stewards, with the majority of passengers who were boarding there travelling on third class tickets. As was customary, the stop meant a routine lifejacket inspection. Harry was quite familiar with this, it being common practice now among the large transatlantic liners to ensure that all crew understood how to apply the cork-filled life jackets.