Anne Bennett - A Mother’s Spirit

The three Rs Joe had learned at the school in Buncrana run by the Christian Brothers where, if you weren’t inclined to learn in the normal way, the lesson would be beaten into you. Joe had always had a healthy respect for the cane. His mother had had a similar one and he had felt its sting often. So he had learned as much as he felt he needed, and more than enough to please the Brothers, and now could give a good enough account of himself.

Everyone entering America had to have a sponsor waiting for him or her. Joe might have easily been on the next boat back if it hadn’t been for a neighbour, Patrick Lacey, who had travelled the same route as Joe five years earlier. He would never have touched American soil himself if it hadn’t been for an uncle willing to sponsor him until he got settled, and he offered to do the same for Joe Sullivan.

Joe stood at one side of the table and three stern-faced men sat the other side of it, checking all the tests he had passed and scrutinising the letter closely. Then one said, with a slight smile as he returned the letter to him, ‘That seems to all be in order, Mr Sullivan, and as you passed everything else satisfactorily, there will be no need to detain you on Ellis Island any further. Pack up your things. You will be leaving on the tide today.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Joe. ‘And thank you, sir.’ A frisson of excitement began in his toes and spread throughout his whole body. Friday, 18 November 1921, and he was on his way.

Gloria was blissfully happy having her daddy to herself. The steamship he was waiting for hadn’t begun unloading yet, so Gloria was able to drink in the sights, sounds and smells of the docks as they walked together.

There were sailors everywhere, shouting and calling out to each other, and the steamship funnels belching out grey smoke into the much greyer sky. Goods being unloaded clattered down the gangplanks, and barrels being rolled rumbled along the dockside.

And everyone was so pleasant. Some of the sailors, mostly the foreign ones, Gloria noticed, gave her a wink or called out to her, for she was a pretty child with a ready smile.

Bert Clifford, who managed the factory that her father owned, was especially nice to her and always called her Miss Gloria, as if she was a real lady. He knew which side his bread was buttered, for his boss doted on the child. It was easy to be nice to her too, she was such a comely little thing.

Whispery trails of vapour escaped from people’s mouths when they spoke, and yet Gloria hardly felt the cold, wrapped as she was in a beautiful blue woollen coat with a cape of the same material over her shoulders. A matching bonnet was tied under her chin over the golden ringlets, framing her face and making her eyes look bigger than ever, thick black stockings encased her legs, soft black leather boots went halfway up her calves, and her hands were buried in a black fur muff.

‘Funny how you like the docks so much,’ Brian mused. ‘I must admit I was much the same when I was young. Course, there were some sailing ships about then, but not many. Some ships used steam, but had sails as well. What a sight it was to see those – majestic almost – and yet totally inefficient. A ship could be becalmed for days, weeks even sometimes, whereas now, why, the passage from England takes two weeks or less, they tell me. Like that one there, with the passengers waiting to disembark.’

The passenger ships’ pier was a little further along the harbour than those of the trading boats.

‘So, that one’s from England?’

‘Aye, and Ireland,’ Brian said. ‘It picks up first at a little place called Moville and then Belfast and on to Liverpool before coming here.’

‘I’d love to go to Ireland,’ Gloria said. ‘See the place where you were born and raised, Daddy.’

‘And so you shall, my dear, one day,’ Brian said. ‘But Ireland at the moment is not a place for anyone to visit. It is a bed of unrest, I believe. And for the life of me I cannot see what is so wrong in wanting to govern your own country. Anyway, it means the poor unfortunate people are all coming here, hoping for a better life, though it often turns sour for them.’

There was a sudden cry from Bert Clifford and Brian turned. ‘They’re beginning to unload,’ he said to Gloria. ‘You sit in the carriage for a while now and wait for me.’

‘Oh, Daddy …’

‘No,’ Brian said. ‘You must obey me in this. You will only be in the way and anyway, I’ll not be able to watch you.’

‘I don’t need watching, Daddy.’

‘You think not?’ Brian said, with a lift to his eyebrows. ‘I didn’t at all like the way some of the sailors were smiling and winking at you.’

‘I didn’t think you noticed.’

‘I notice everything about you, my dear,’ Brian said with a smile. ‘Now then, you be a good girl and I will take you for tea at Macy’s afterwards. What do you say?’

Gloria’s answer was in the smile she gave her father, as she kissed him on the cheek before climbing into the carriage without another word of complaint. Macy’s afternoon teas were not to be sniffed at.

She watched her father hurry away towards Bert. She knew there was no reason for him to do this himself, as her mother had said the previous evening. Bert Clifford was an honest and trustworthy man and she couldn’t understand why Brian didn’t just leave him to it.

‘Because it is my business, not his,’ Brian had said. ‘And I want to count those supplies coming off the boat myself, and that is the end of the matter.’

Her mother hated the thought of her husband consorting with common sailors, considering it so unnecessary and degrading. Gloria understood, however, how much her father liked the vibrant clamour and bustle of the docks. He was now lost to her sight in the crowd, and she turned her attention to the immigrant ship just in time to see the gangplanks lowered.

Joe couldn’t wait to explore the place. Those on Ellis Island had changed his money to the American currency before he left, and he jingled the coins in his pocket and thought of the wallet packed with dollar bills, pleased that he had so much of it left. He had been careful and taken part in none of the card schools so many of the other men seemed hooked on. His father had never approved of cards and none had been played in their cottage to while away the winter evenings.

‘A fool and his money are soon parted,’ Thomas John had said when Joe had queried this. ‘Gambling can get a grip on a body. I have seen more than one bet his whole wages on the throw of the dice or a card game, and lose the lot. However did they explain that to their wives and hungry weans when they got home? I often wondered about that and decided a long time ago that gambling wasn’t for me.’

It wasn’t for Joe either because his brother, Tom, still back on the farm in Buncrana, had sold a field and the sheep in it so that Joe could have this chance in America. It had been incredibly generous, and he had been extremely grateful, but he knew there would be no other money if he was to squander this. Although officially Tom was owner of the farm, now that their father had died, their crabbed, spiteful mother held the purse strings. Joe knew he would never get a penny piece from her, and he didn’t know how long the money he had would have to last him until he landed himself a job.

He hoped, though, that Patrick Lacey would help there. Joe’s sponsor had said he would offer him lodging, at least until he got himself straight, and Joe intended looking him up as soon as possible.

The gangplank was down, a cheer went up, and the passengers moved slowly forward, hampered by their cases. Joe’s attention was taken by an altercation on the dockside between a well-dressed man and a sailor over a cask that the man seemed to be demanding the sailor open.