A Mother’s Spirit. Anne Bennett
am so bored, and the docks are exciting. I like to hear the sailors calling to each other in their own languages.’
‘It’s the languages you can understand that worry me,’ Brian said grimly. ‘Sailors’ talk is not for the ears of young ladies.’
‘Oh, Daddy, don’t be so stuffy,’ Gloria said. ‘Anyway, I shall be too interested in everything else to listen to anything unsuitable.’
Brian gave a throaty chuckle. ‘All right, you cheeky monkey,’ he said. ‘You win. I was taking the smaller carriage anyway, because Bramble can pull that and a bit of exercise will do him good. The pony’s been a bit skittish of late, with you not being able to exercise him. I suppose you know that I will catch it in the neck good and proper for encouraging you to play truant?’
‘You didn’t encourage me, Daddy,’ Gloria protested. ‘It was me persuading you.’
‘Your mother will not see it that way,’ Brian said, with a rueful grin. ‘It’s a good job that I have such a broad back.’
‘Well, I think you are a lovely, kind daddy,’ Gloria said, winding her arms around his neck. ‘In fact, the best daddy in the whole world.’
Brian felt tears prickle the back of his eyes. This child was the only one he would ever have, because of what Norah had suffered at their daughter’s birth. Gloria, however, made up for any son Brian may have hankered after. Her hair was the colour of spun gold and hung in natural ringlets, which she tied back with a ribbon that always matched her dress. Then there were those unusual and very beautiful violet eyes, encircled with long, black lashes and the wide and generous mouth, the only feature she had inherited from him.
‘We must hurry,’ he said. ‘There is not much daylight in these winter days. I will send Tilly in to you to help you get dressed in your outdoor things. The day is bone-chillingly cold and you will need to be well wrapped up.’
Gloria watched her father leave the room with a smile playing around her mouth. At fourteen years old, she was well aware that she could twist him around her little finger.
Joe Sullivan had been appalled by the conditions on board the liner bound for New York. It had been anchored in the deeper waters of Lough Foyle, and he had boarded it from a tender sent out from the pier at Moville in southern Donegal in Ireland two weeks before. He had been excited and in good spirits at being en route to America – the one place to which he had so longed to go.
However, all the steerage passengers had been housed in the bowels of the ship, and many, including Joe, had been sick for the first few days as the ship was tossed about in the turbulent ocean. The weather had been too bad for the hatch to be opened often, to enable the passengers to climb on deck, and so the air in their quarters quickly grew fetid and stale, and soon smelled of vomit.
Joe took every opportunity to be outside, despite the fact that the wind cut through him. Throughout the voyage, the wind whipped the waves into gigantic breakers fringed with white, which constantly crashed against the ship.
November was not a good time to travel the ocean, Joe decided and he would remember that in future, and he had been extremely glad to reach Ellis Island. As he queued to disembark, he looked to the New York skyline with its skyscrapers, which some of the fellows on the ship had told him about. What a sight it was, and as unlike the skyline of his home town of Buncrana, County Donegal as it was possible to be.
The huge Statue of Liberty dominated the waterfront. Liberty was what every Irishman dreamed of. His young brother, Finn, had given his life in the Great War because Britain had promised the Irish their freedom if they helped them fight the Hun. Here in New York, America, Joe was sure he would experience real freedom, and he was filled with exhilaration at the prospect.
First, though, he had to go through the procedure on Ellis Island, where he would be prodded, poked, examined, tested and questioned, to ascertain that he was fit to enter America. He wasn’t worried about the physical examination, for he knew he was as fit as anyone else – fitter than most, in fact. Work all his life on the farm had seen to that.
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