The Girl Who Came Home(4)

Her duties complete, she started to make her way back up the road, watching a solitary cloud drift across the pale blue sky, casting a shadow across the sheep which grazed in the fields at the foot of Nephin Mor. A handful of men were already at work in the lower fields and she imagined their hands muddied from cutting the turf and sowing the potatoes. Taking in the scene around her, it struck Maggie that to anyone passing through, this would seem like any ordinary, unremarkable spring day in a small, rural village.

And then she saw him.





CHAPTER 2 - Southampton, England, 10th April, 1912





Harry Walsh looked at his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace one last time. The crisp white jacket, brown waistcoat, blue serge trousers, black shoes and White Star Line cap suited him, making him look taller somehow. He had slicked his dark hair, parting it down the centre in the fashionable style and was clean-shaven for the occasion. He was pleased with how he looked and turned to his mother.

‘I don’t scrub up too badly really when I try, do I?’

His mother was a short, slight woman with a permanent air of dissatisfaction about her. She fussed around her son now, brushing flecks of dust from his trousers and stray hairs from the shoulders of his jacket. He smiled at her, glad of the attention she paid to him and pleased to see the unmistakeable look of pride on her face; pride in the fact that her only son was to work as a Steward on the Titanic’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.

‘Not bad love, not bad at all… for a Walsh,’ she replied, tugging at his waistcoat to remove a slight pucker and pulling at his cap to straighten it. ‘Now, you remember to work hard Harry Daniel Walsh,’ she added, ‘and mind that you look after those third class passengers just the same as you would any of those wealthy Astors and Guggenheims. The poor might not have the fancy hats and the fancy shoes but they deserve to be treated good n’ proper, you hear?’

With her family roots set deep within the working class society of Southampton’s docks, Helen Walsh had no time at all for the stuck up American millionaires and socialites who, it was believed, were to sail on the Titanic to make business contacts or to give them something to boast about at one of their fancy dinner parties. Nevertheless, her background didn’t prevent her from being a proud mother, and she was absolutely delighted that her son was going to be one of the three hundred stewards who would work on this much talked about ship, taking great pleasure in telling all her friends and neighbours about it. And although the gossip-loving, spying-on-the-neighbours part of her would have quite liked to know exactly how ostentatious the first class accommodations were, she was especially pleased that Harry had been assigned to steerage class, to look after people like themselves.

Despite his mother’s obvious delight that it would be Titanic that her son would sail on, it hadn’t actually been Harry’s intention to work on the ship at all. He’d originally been assigned to work on a smaller liner, the Celtic, which should have left Southampton a week ago. As a result of the coal strike she had been berthed, along with most of the other transatlantic liners. Harry had got word, just a week ago, that he had been re-assigned and would now work a return shift on White Star Line’s new ship, Titanic.

Adjusting his cap one last time, Harry leant down to give his mother a farewell kiss. Her cheeks were flushed and glistening with perspiration from all her fussing and rushing around.

‘I love you and I’ll send word when we dock in New York, alright. And tell Dad I’ll bring him back a memento of some sort. If I find my way up to the first class decks, it might be something half decent this time!’

They shared a final embrace, for some reason both of them happy to linger a little longer than they usually would.

‘I love you too son,’ she replied, rubbing a slight toothpaste mark off his cheek with her thumb. ‘I’ll be coming down to the docks myself you know a little later, to have a good look and wave you all off.’

‘Well, then I’ll wave back,’ he said, smiling as he slung his small duffle bag over his shoulder and walked out of the narrow, terraced house into the bright morning sunlight.

‘And Happy Birthday again love,’ she shouted after him. ‘I’ll make you a cake when you get home.’

He turned, gave her a thumbs up and strolled casually to the dockside, whistling as he walked.

Helen Walsh closed the door softly behind her and wiped away the tears which rolled down her cheeks.

*

For all of the twenty three years of his life, Harry had watched his father head out to work at the docks every day, with the exception of Christmas. He had never heard him complain, grumble or fuss, even when the bitterly cold winds which blew in off the Solent in the winter almost froze his hands solid. He had fond memories of scampering down to the pier with his father’s forgotten lunch, or walking with him, hand in hand, to watch as yet another newer, bigger steam liner sailed into view. Living by the docks wasn’t just a choice of home for Harry’s family, it was a way of life and it was probably no surprise that Harry had loved boats since he was a little boy; no surprise that the ocean had called to him for his vocation in life.