As he stood in line with a group of other stewards and crew, joking among themselves about how like the ladies with their corsets they must look trussed up in their lifejackets as they were inspected by a Junior Officer, they were approached by the Head Purser, Mr McElroy. He introduced a man with him as Father Browne, a Jesuit Priest from Cork, Ireland.
‘Father Browne has been recording life on board the ship with his camera since we left Southampton,’ Mr McElroy explained. ‘He will, sadly, be disembarking in a few moments, but wondered whether he might take your photograph beforehand.’
‘Quite a spectacle you are with your life preservers on,’ the Priest commented, smiling at the group. ‘Perhaps a picture taken by a Priest will bless them with good fortune and ensure they will not have occasion to be worn again? What do you say?!’
Spirits were high among the group and they laughed, charmed by the soft, Irish brogue and the distinguished manner of the man. They obliged, posing happily for his picture. He thanked them and moved on with Mr McElroy to photograph the Captain and some of the officers before getting off the ship.
The stewards returned then to the business of showing the remaining passengers to their cabins. Amid all the noise and disorganisation and wrong turns down long corridors as he guided the next group of wide-eyed passengers to their accommodations, Harry couldn’t get the Irish girl out of his thoughts, her impish face imprinted firmly on his mind. Maybe lady luck is smiling down on me on this mighty ship, he thought to himself. He’d already had an unexpected, albeit temporary, transfer to the First Class decks thanks to his mate Billy, they’d just had the lifejackets blessed by a Priest and a lovely Irish lass had landed in his midst. More importantly, his mother wasn’t there to frighten her off and there wasn’t much chance of a girl running off on him on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, no matter how big it was. He hoped he would have the chance to find out more about her over the coming days and realised that he didn’t even know her name, a fact he decided to rectify at the earliest opportunity.
As he continued in his work, whistling an Irish tune he’d heard a piper play on the deck, he recalled one of the posters for Titanic which had been put up around the town ahead of this maiden voyage ‘The Ship of Dreams’ was its mighty claim. Harry Walsh was beginning to wonder whether this might not be such a bold claim after all and smiled as he walked past cabin 115.
CHAPTER 13 - Chicago, April 1982
Grace sat in the swing-chair on the porch of her mother’s house, enjoying the rocking sensation and the light breeze that danced around her bare feet. It was a warm day, full of blossom on the trees and bees buzzing among the early azalea bushes. The first buds of wisteria were forming around the trellis that framed the porch door. Grace had always loved the wisteria with its fragrant cascading bunches of purple flowers; the pale, gnarled branches and stunning green foliage reminding her of the Californian grapevines she had seen on a family holiday. Her father had explained all about the harvesting process and the pressing of the grapes to make wine. It had seemed like a magical process to her and one that her father had described so poetically. Ever since, the wisteria had reminded her of that holiday and in turn, it reminded her of her father.
It was two years now since the accident, two years since she’d walked away from college life and a promising career as a journalist, two years since she’d walked away from Jimmy. Her life felt so different now; she felt so different now to the girl who had raced home that January day with Jimmy driving his Ford Mustang.
She’d been thinking recently about what Maggie had said to her at her birthday party, about going back to college and getting in touch with Jimmy again. He’d tried calling her and had written to her for about six months after the funeral. She’d pretended she was out whenever he called and hadn’t replied to any of his letters. She hadn’t even read them, putting them into a shoebox under her bed, not quite able to bring herself to throw them away.
Her reaction to her father’s sudden death had been to protect herself from ever again feeling that pain of losing someone she loved so much. She wouldn’t allow herself to love Jimmy that much she’d decided and having shut him out of her life, she hadn’t spoken to anyone about Jimmy again. As everyone was so wrapped up in the loss of her father, nobody had really stopped to ask about him.
But listening to her great-grandmother’s story, Grace had started to wonder. Here was a woman who’d had no choice in the direction of her life; no choice but to leave the home and the land and the man she loved and start over. Fate had intervened in the most dreadful way imaginable, leaving Maggie as a girl not yet turned eighteen, lost and alone in a strange land, with just a small case of meaningless possessions in her hand. She had suffered real loss, in so many ways, and Grace felt that she had maybe been a little foolish, a little hasty in locking herself away from the college life she had been so enjoying and from the man she had been enjoying it with.