The Girl Who Came Home(8)

The wedding day had brought with it a sprinkling of snow and a rousing hoolie, family and friends travelling from the outlying villages of the parish to join in with the céilí and the craic late into the night. Maggie’s heart had fluttered when she’d noticed Séamus amongst them.

She knew him from school and from Sunday Mass in the parish church. For as long as she could remember, she’d admired him at Wednesday market and the annual summer fairs. She knew that he always walked the three miles from his home to Ballysheen; his father being unable to afford a donkey and cart, and she knew that he sold his sheep at market and sold their wool for the Foxford Mills. She knew that he played the melodeon well and that he had once ridden a horse faster than anyone else during the races in Michael Philbin’s field. She knew all this about him, and had often wondered if he’d noticed her at all.

How her heart soared as they danced together that evening, her entire body seeming to lift skywards with the whirling, soaring music, spiralling high up into the rafters along with the stamping of feet and the clapping of hands in time to the beat of the bodhran as Séamus guided her awkwardly in the dance. She knew then that she never wanted this man to leave her side. He never would; it was she who was leaving.

It was exactly a year to the day since they’d danced at the Brennans’ wedding when she finally found the courage to tell him.

‘I’m goin’ to America Séamus,’ she’d told him, as they sat by the fireside playing cards on a wet, dark January evening. ‘It’s all decided. I’m to go with Aunt Kathleen to Chicago. Peggy Madden, Katie Kenny and the Brennans are to travel with us, and some others.’ The crackle and spit from the fire filled the silence which descended upon the young couple then. Séamus didn’t speak. ‘We’re to go in the spring.’

The rain lashed against the windows. There was no other sound. Even the fire seemed to momentarily hush itself.

‘We’re to sail on a new liner called Titanic. They say it’s the biggest, finest, safest ocean liner there’s ever been built,’ she added, more to break the unbearable silence than anything. She felt silly then. Why had she told him this? Who cared about the ship or how big it was? That was the sort of stuff Peggy Madden and Pat Brogan were interested in, not her. To Maggie, the ship they would sail on was an entirely insignificant fact amid the reality of what the departure meant for her and Séamus.

He maintained his silence, throwing another peat brick onto the fire which sent a wave of moist, earthy smoke billowing across the room.

‘Would you think of coming too?’ she added hesitantly, already knowing his answer.

He looked at her, this man she adored with the uncomplicated certainty of youth, his cheeks rosy from the warmth of the flames. ‘Ah Maggie, you know I can’t. Not with Da so sick an’ all. Anyway, we haven’t a shillin’ to our name. I could never be affording one of those boat tickets, never mind two, even if he had been well enough.’

They’d talked before about the prospect of emigrating, it being a common occurrence in the Parish. Séamus had a brother in Philadelphia but with his mam dead and his da ill, he knew that a trip to America would not be his for the making. Maggie’s fate in the matter lay entirely in the hands of her guardian, her Aunt Kathleen, who had first made the trip to America herself twenty years ago and was completely enamoured with the place and the opportunities it offered. She’d written often to her niece about the prospect of joining her in Chicago, but one thing or another had always prevented it from happening. This time she had made up her mind; Maggie would go back with her in the spring and no matter how much this arrangement might break Maggie’s heart, there was no changing Kathleen Murphy’s mind once it was made up.

‘Well, what of it then?’ Maggie’s voice was tinged with anger, frustration and despair. ‘What are we to do with me set on goin’ and ye set on stayin’?’ Her eyes filled with tears, the flames of the fire reflecting in them.

‘I don’t know Maggie, sure I don’t.’ Séamus sighed, placing his cards down on the fireside. He stood up, seeming so tall in their small cottage, his head nearly touching the beams. ‘You’ll be able to write me. You’re good with your letters and words and I’ll enjoy readin’ all about your adventures. You can write those stories you’re always talking of.’

Maggie smiled, unable to sustain her anger at him. It was an impossible situation they faced, their destinies shaped, not by their own decisions, but by nature and economics and politics and things they were too young to even understand.