Forget-Me-Not Child

Sean and Gerry were terribly excited to be given the chance to travel on such a magnificent ship and they read up all they could about it. Mary was absolutely astounded that her two other sons wanted to go to America too. ‘You’ll be next I suppose,’ she snapped at Barry.

Barry knew she wasn’t cross but frightened and he said gently but firmly, ‘Not me, Mammy. I’ve no yen to go travelling.’

‘What if they lay you off when you finish your apprenticeship?’

‘Shall we cross that bridge when we come to it?’ Barry said. ‘But even then I promise I am going nowhere.’

Mary let out a sigh of relief, but she didn’t want Sean or Gerry to go either, but what could they do? The slump seemed deeper than ever in Britain. There was a slump in America too but Finbarr and Colm seemed immune to it and they had guaranteed they could get their brothers jobs as soon as they came over. Matt could see the lads’ point of view though he too would miss the two of them sorely. Mary could see it, though wished she didn’t have to, and Angela felt a deep sadness that two more brothers were going to live an ocean away from her.

The boys did their best to reassure their mother. They showed her a picture of the ship and told her about all it had on board and everything, but as Mary said to them, there was always the chance they might fall ill or something. A few years ago the people in Ireland were leaving in droves for America and so many perished in the ships they began calling them coffin ships.

‘I know,’ Barry said. ‘Things are much improved now. I mean Fin and Colm gave a good account of their journey and the Titanic is supposed to be the best of its kind.’

They were travelling down to Southampton on Tuesday 9th April, which was Angela’s sixteenth birthday. Fin and Colm had paid for their train fare to Southampton and booked them into a lodging house near the docks and they would board the Titanic from there the following morning. ‘Get a good night’s sleep,’ Finn advised, but Sean and Gerry were far too excited to sleep. This was the start of the greatest adventure of their lives and they didn’t want to waste the whole night sleeping, and spent most of the night talking of the journey which they were looking forward to and of arriving in America where their lives would really begin.

On Monday 15th April a very excited woman arrived in the shop with news that the unsinkable Titanic had gone down in the Atlantic Ocean, sunk when it hit an iceberg. Apparently the news had appeared on an American newsreel and her aunt in America had sent a telegram to her as her son had been due to sail on the Titanic. But he had been taken ill and had to cancel.

The blood had drained from Angela’s face and eventually the woman noticed. ‘God, Angela, you’ve gone ever such a funny colour.’ Then she clapped her hands over her mouth and said, ‘Oh me and my big mouth, blurting it out like that. Your brothers were on it weren’t they? I remember talking about it when my Tom was due to go too.’

George had heard every word too and he said consolingly to Angela, ‘There will be lifeboats to get the people off, don’t worry. A big new boat like that will have enough to cope with any eventuality. And the ship might not even be fully sunk, people might still be on it.’ Then he turned to the woman and said, ‘Did it say anything else about those rescued, the survivors?’

The woman shook her head. ‘Don’t know if there’s any more to tell yet, not that you can get it chapter and verse in a telegram.’

‘No, course not,’ George said and he turned to Angela and said, ‘You should go home. What this woman has heard others can hear. You should be with your mother and send for Barry and his father. You need to be together.’

Angela went round for Barry before going home, for if Mary had heard any inkling she might need their support. When she told Stan what she had heard that morning he was upset himself and fully agreed Barry and Matt needed to be at home and when they were sent for she told them both what she had heard that morning. Matt gave a sharp intake of breath and his face drained of colour, but he said only, ‘This will hit your mother hard, Barry.’

It would hit Barry hard if anything bad had happened to them. They were his big brothers and he loved them. And yet he said to his father, ‘We know nothing concrete yet, Daddy. We must hold on to that.’

‘You’re right, Barry,’ Stan said as they left. ‘Sometimes these snippets of news are anything but helpful. Come and tell me as soon as you know anything definite. I was very fond of those young men.’

They walked home almost in silence, each busy with their own thoughts, but all were relieved to find Mary knew nothing, and they were able to tell her gently and hold her as she wept.

A telegram arrived the followed day from Finbarr. He didn’t know if the news of the sinking of the Titanic after hitting a massive iceberg had reached British shores so he explained that first and explained another ship called Carpathian had picked up survivors and was estimated to be arriving in New York on 18th April. The news gave everyone renewed hope. The men returned to tell Stan, who relayed the news to the workforce. Angela went to tell George, and neighbours hearing of the sinking of that gigantic vessel with two of the McClusky sons on it came to say how sorry they were, and they too went home cheered that survivors had been picked up by another ship.

They existed in a kind of limbo for a couple of days. Norah Docherty, knowing the same fate could have happened to her son, was great company for Mary in keeping her spirits up and Mick took Matt to The Swan for a pint. In fact, Matt, the very moderate drinker, had far more than one pint since many of the men wanted to buy him one – their way of showing sympathy – and it ended up with Mary and Angela helping the very drunk Matt up the stairs to bed. As they lowered him on to the bed, Angela said, ‘Are you going to undress him?’

‘I am not,’ Mary said emphatically. ‘I’m not even trying to move his hulk around to get him more comfortable. I’ll just remove his shoes, that’s all, and I’ll tell you, I’d not have his head in the morning for a pension, and yet I can envy him because for the last few hours he has been able to stop worrying about those lads.’

‘They’ll be all right,’ Angela said. ‘They probably had a fright and might have got a bit wet, but they are big strapping lads and know how to look after themselves.’

‘Of course they do and you are right,’ Mary said and Angela so hoped she was right as she followed Mary down the stairs.

On 18th April just before eight in the evening, Finbarr and Colm had stood just outside the harbour in New York and watched the Carpathian sail in. And once the Carpathian had docked, the two young men surged through with the rest to check the list of survivors to see if their younger brothers had been among the lucky ones. A sailor from the rescue ship, seeing their anxious scrutiny of the lists pinned up, asked who they were searching for, and when they told him he said that few men had got off. ‘I heard as how there weren’t even enough lifeboats for everyone.’

‘Not enough lifeboats?’ Finbarr repeated almost in disbelief.

‘Well wasn’t it supposed to be unsinkable?’

Finbarr nodded. ‘That’s what they claimed wasn’t it, Colm?’

‘Yes,’ said Colm in agreement. ‘I mean, that was one reason we encouraged them to travel on the Titanic.’

‘Well it hit a gigantic iceberg, see. Most of an iceberg is below the water, you only see a bit of it, and whatever way it happened, it hit the iceberg and started to sink. I heard this from the sailors we pulled onto our ship,’ the Carpathian sailor said. ‘One of them said when the iceberg was spotted there wasn’t time to turn such a large ship to avoid it. He said if they hadn’t tried to avoid it and had hit it head on it probably would have been all right but, as it was, it crashed into the side and the iceberg ripped straight through it and it started to fill with water.’

‘What were you doing picking up sailors when more passengers could have been in the lifeboats?’ Finn asked.

‘They were the sailors chosen to row the lifeboats,’ the Carpathian sailor said. ‘If they hadn’t rowed away from the ship as quick as possible when it sank it would have pulled the lifeboats down with it. Then we’d have had no survivors at all to rescue. There were a few other men as well. Travelling first class, some were let on the boats straight away, but then the crew found out how dire the situation was and after that it was women and children only that were loaded into the lifeboats.’

‘And the rest of the men?’ Finbarr asked, though he knew the answer.

‘They went down with the ship,’ the sailor said bluntly. And then, looking at the clothes Finbarr and Colm had on, which marked them as working men, the sailor went on, ‘Would your brothers be travelling steerage?’

‘They were,’ Finbarr said. ‘What of it?’

‘Nothing,’ the sailor said. ‘That is, nothing good. It’s just that these sailors told us that few steerage passengers, carried in the bowels of the ship, made it to the lifeboats anyway, not even the women and children. One told me some hadn’t even got to the deck when the ship sank without trace.’

‘People wouldn’t have been picked up by other ships, would they?’ Colm cried, desperate to find some glimmer of hope. ‘Like if they were clinging to some wreckage or something like that to keep afloat?’

The sailor shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate. First off, there were no other ships in the area. Ours was the only one who answered the distress call, so probably any other ships were too far away to be of any use. And secondly, even if someone had managed to hang on to wreckage, how long do you think they’d last in water cold enough to have huge icebergs floating in it? One minute? Maybe two, but no more than that before they froze to death.’

Colm staggered at the news. They bought papers on their way home and read the reports of the collision that sank a ship claimed to be unsinkable on her maiden voyage. It was news that shocked the world, and their brothers had died, and the way they died was horrendous, and Finbarr in particular felt as guilty as Hell for urging Sean and Gerry to follow them.

When they returned to their lodgings they decided to say nothing to their mother and father about the things the sailor from the rescue ship told them. ‘It would serve no purpose and only upset them further,’ Finn said. ‘Anyway, it’s not the thing to put in a telegram, and that’s what we must send first thing tomorrow and we can write them a fuller letter later.’

Colm agreed, ‘Aye and it will be hard enough to cope with the loss of two sons and enough to be going on with.’

And so the bare telegram just said that neither Sean nor Gerry were among the survivors on the Carpathian. They had been waiting for the telegram and yet Angela’s fingers shook as she took it from the telegraph boy. ‘Any message?’ the boy asked.

Angela shook her head. ‘No message.’

She shut the door and turned and gave the telegram to Barry, for she couldn’t bring herself to open it. Barry took it from her and read the few bald words out to them all as his own voice was breaking with emotion, and tears sprang from his eyes as he felt the aching loss of his brothers. Angela did too, but she pushed aside her heartache to deal with Matt and Mary who were in pieces.

She knew that until the arrival of the telegram Matt and Mary would have hoped it wasn’t as bad as they feared. They had encouraged this. They had all hoped themselves because it’s what people did. But now all hope was snuffed out, Sean and Gerry were gone and she would never see them again, and if she felt the pain of that loss so keenly, she could only imagine what it was doing to Matt and Mary, and the anguish etched in both their faces tore at her heart.

Even after the telegram Barry and Angela couldn’t understand the scale of this tragedy and in the papers Barry had brought in they had both read about the proverbial unsinkable liner, on its maiden voyage, that had indeed sunk and sunk so quickly when it struck an iceberg that though 705 had managed to get into lifeboats and so were saved, 1,517 perished. Most of the fatalities, the papers claimed, were steerage or third-class passengers and any that were rescued were women and children. The lack of enough lifeboats for all the passengers was also discussed, and the fact that a lot of the lifeboats were not full when they pulled away from the ship, for the Titanic sank quicker than anyone thought it would.

The newspapers made grim reading and Angela hid the papers away in the cellar with the kindling for the fire, intending to burn them when she got the chance, for she and Barry both thought dealing with the death of their sons was quite enough to be going on with, without constantly reading about such a disaster. But that was hard to do without Matt or Mary catching sight of the headlines and so on, because they seldom left the sitting room.

Coming into the room the evening following the arrival of the telegram, Mary had sobbed afresh as Angela helped get her ready for bed. Angela said, ‘I understand Mammy’s distress really because I suppose the telegram snuffed out the last glimmer of hope that she kept burning in her heart. I know it did for me, for I loved them just as if they had been my true brothers.’

‘Yes,’ said Barry with a sigh. ‘I know you did and they knew it too. And I know the casualty figures are shocking, but knowing that two of those left to die are your own flesh and blood is hard to take. But that is what happened, and they are dead and gone, so that neither of us will see them again. But that’s how it is and we must deal with it.’

Everyone felt sorry for the McCluskys and many understood the spiral of depression Matt and Mary had sunk into when the telegram arrived, cutting off all hope that either of their sons might have survived. So they continued to pop in and out as they had when the news first broke and didn’t usually come empty-handed. Unable to do anything to ease the situation, they brought a bit of stew they had left over and cakes they’d made, and Angela marvelled that these people, some of whom had little enough for themselves, were willing to share with them. Norah also visited, and Stan were always popping in and out.

The priest, Father Brannigan, came too, purporting to show support and sympathy in their loss, but managed to turn it round to slight condemnation against Matt and Mary for letting the boys go in the first place. While he drank two cups of tea he ladled three sugars into them and ate all the scones that one of their neighbours had brought round for them earlier that day.

Eventually, annoyed at the implied criticism Angela knew Mary and Matt were unable to cope with, she said, ‘Sean and Gerry had no permanent work, Father. They had to go each day to the factories to pick up a few hours’ work if they could. Often they arrived home empty-handed.’

‘Many work that way.’

‘But maybe they haven’t an alternative,’ Angela said. ‘But Sean and Gerry had two brothers already in America who could find them good jobs and have them lodging in the same house as themselves. It was a wrench for them to go for all of us, but I know they felt bad when they could contribute nothing at home. They saw themselves as a drain on the family and could see no future for themselves. No-one did anything wrong and yet Mammy and Daddy have lost two sons and maybe prayers, rather than censure, would be more helpful at this point.’

Had Mary and Matt been thinking straight they probably would have been surprised at Angela talking to the priest that way, but it all went over their heads and even Father Brannigan didn’t come back with a sharp retort as he would normally, for he was unused to any form of criticism from his parishioners. However, Angela’s words had hit home and he had seen the sadness lurking behind her eyes that glittered with unshed tears, and so they all knelt and said the rosary together and before the priest left he promised to say a Mass for the repose of the boys’ souls.

That comforted Angela a great deal but it didn’t seem to sink in to Mary and Matt. As the loss turned into a manageable ache, Barry had to go back to work, for they had to eat, and Matt made no effort to return. Mary seemed incapable of caring for the house or cooking anything and so Angela tried to give up the good job she had at Maitland’s grocer shop to look after them both.

However, Mr Maitland wasn’t happy losing his assistant who worked so hard and was a favourite with the customers because she was always so cheerful, and he said it had been a terrible tragedy and it was unreasonable to expect the parents to get over the loss of two sons straight away, and he gave her another week before he advertised for someone else. Barry was glad about that because he was the only one working and he hoped Angela could return to work before too long because money was so short.

However, the extra week was drawing to a close as one day slid into another with no change, and that night as Barry made his way home from work he’d made a decision, but first he had to talk to Angela. He had a bit of a wait but he was a patient man. Angela had cooked liver and onions and Barry tucked in with relish, glad that Angela was such a good cook and an economical one. His parents, he noted, had eaten little and he knew if they were to recover from this, he had to give them something to look forward to.

Eventually, with Mary and Matt helped to bed, Angela sat down on the settee before the hearth opposite Barry with a sigh. ‘Tired?’ Barry asked.

Angela nodded. ‘A little but it’s the emotional part of it that wearies me most.’

Barry shook his head. ‘I don’t know how you put up with it day by day.’

‘Well I owe your parents my life and love them dearly anyway. But I could cope much better if I could see some light at the end of the tunnel and for their sake more than mine.’

Barry suddenly moved to sit beside Angela and caught up her hand, something he hadn’t done since she’d been small and she wasn’t sure how to react. But she had no time to think because Barry looked deep into her eyes as he said, ‘What do you think of me, Angela?’

Angela looked at the dear and familiar face and his intense dark eyes and felt her stomach turn over like she had butterflies fluttering inside and her mouth was dry enough to make her voice husky when she said, ‘Wh … What d’you mean?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Barry said almost impatiently. ‘But if you are shy of saying so I will tell you what I think of you. That all right?’

Angela gave a brief nod and Barry went on, ‘I love you, every bit of you. I think I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you with your blonde curls, your lovely blue eyes. But those eyes in the early days were sad and confused, and I wanted to help you and so I was determined then to be the best big brother I could be.’

‘And you were,’ Angela assured Barry. ‘But you were more than that. You were my protector, my knight in shining armour. I wouldn’t have got on half as well without you and I loved you too.’

‘As a brother?’

Angela swallowed deeply and said, ‘Yes, as a brother.’

‘You were a child and I was a child,’ Barry said. ‘But my love for you has changed and deepened and now I love you as a man loves a woman and I need to know if you feel the same.’

Angela didn’t answer straight away but then what she did say was, ‘I think it’s wrong for me to feel towards you any other way than as a brother.’

‘Why?’

‘Well we were brought up as brother and sister.’

‘Yes but we are not brother and sister. There is no blood between us and that’s what counts,’ Barry said earnestly. ‘Look, I had no intention of speaking of this, not because I was unsure of my own feelings but because I know you are only just sixteen and I am only nineteen. I intended leaving it two years till my apprenticeship is over and I’m earning decent money.’

‘You might be in an even worse state financially then, if you are laid off when you turn twenty-one as your brothers were,’ Angela said.

‘Yes and I’m afraid it may well be,’ Barry said and it did worry him that he would end up the same, but there was nothing he could do about that. He shrugged. ‘It’s a chance I must take,’ he said. ‘But whatever happens I’ll want you by my side, loving me as a woman with a love strong enough to withstand anything life throws at us.’

He hoped she felt the same, for he would not force her, and so he said almost tentatively, ‘Angela, could you love me even a little bit?’

Angela had been having strange yearnings flowing through her body when she was near Barry, or sometimes even when she just thought of him for months. She wasn’t sure what they were and she had tried to ignore them, pushing them down into her subconscious, certain the Church would say they were sinful. Most enjoyable things were.

But Barry’s words and passionate eyes boring into hers had unlocked her feelings and so she answered, ‘No.’ She saw his face fall and she added with a smile, ‘There’s no way I can love you a little bit, I can love you an enormous big bit.’

Barry felt as if his heart had stopped in his breast and he looked at Angela incredulously. ‘You mean that?’

‘I most certainly do. I can’t say when I stopped loving you just as a brother; I just know that I tried to push the feelings down, but the thought of not having you in my life fills me with fear. But now we have admitted our feelings for each other I think we will have to keep them secret from Mammy.’

‘Well my brothers seemed to think she knows already.’

‘Oh, she’s maybe guessed a bit but she won’t know for definite,’ Angela said. ‘I think we must hide our happiness for a wee while.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, out of respect, I suppose.’

‘You knew Sean and Gerry as well as I did,’ Barry said. ‘And if it is as the priests say and they are in a better place and can look down on us, knowing them well, do you think they’d be happier in Paradise if we lamented long and hard and went round with faces that would turn the milk sour?’

‘Yes but …’

‘Angela, don’t think me heartless,’ Barry begged, ‘for I’m really not and there’s not a day goes by when I don’t miss my brothers, but they would want me to get on and live life. Besides, I’m not just thinking of me in this but of Mammy too, particularly Mammy, for if we wed soon she will have to take a grip on herself because there would be a wedding to plan and the thought of grandchildren to gladden her heart. It will give her something to look forward to, something to live for.’

Angela wasn’t at all sure that Barry was right in his assumptions, but now they had admitted their feelings for each other she doubted they could continue to be discreet, and anyway, she didn’t want some hole-in-a-corner affair. Barry had at least convinced her that they were doing nothing to be ashamed of, so she didn’t want to go skulking around her own home and perhaps lying to Mary and Matt, for that wouldn’t be showing either of them any respect at all. No, it had to be out in the open. ‘You’re right Barry, it’s only right that they be told as soon as possible.’

‘Yes,’ said Barry. ‘I’ll speak to them tomorrow after dinner.’

SIX

The following evening Angela had made an excellent stew from a selection of vegetables and a scrag end of mutton she had queued for hours in the Bull Ring to get. She wanted to make something a bit special for she knew Barry was intending to speak to his parents that night and in their present lethargy and sadness she wasn’t at all sure how they would react to it.

As they sat at the table Angela thought Mary looked just a shade better. There was a spark in her eyes that she hadn’t seen in a long while and she was pleased to see that Mary at least had got her appetite back, for she attacked her dinner with relish. Small signs of recovery, surely, and she couldn’t help feeling that what Barry was going to say might knock her right back again. When everyone had finished, Angela cleared away and made a cup of tea.