Men of No Property (2 page)

Below, a shout and a curse exploded with the clap of the hatch. The silence then amongst the emigrants was leaden. A solitary lantern, smoke-grimed and flaring fitfully, hung from a stanchion. The bunks were scarcely visible, and the wide furtive eyes of the occupants gleamed as from the depth of a pit. The slough of water and the creak of the ship as she buoyed up with the tide was like the sigh and the crackle of bones in an old woman’s rising to a dreary chore. A child whined. His mother muffled the cry, his mouth against her breast.

“Let him cry. It’s the sound of life in him, and it’s a good thing hearin’ it.”

All eyes followed the dark shape of the speaker. He strode down the center passageway, swung around each stanchion until he stood, his face level with the lantern. It was he who had spoken up to Young Ireland on the dock. Now his face was softer and there was the promise of an easy smile about his mouth.

“I’ve heard tell they batten us down till we’re on the high seas,” he called out and lowered his voice when it came pounding back at him from the low ceiling. “There’s no malice in it, yous understand. It’s only they don’t want us pollutin’ English waters.”

There was no response to his words except in the steady blinking eyes on him.

“Well,” he tried again, “’Twas a poor joke but the best I had on no notice. I’m Dennis Lavery, and I come from Henry Street, Dublin city.”

Again he waited.

“Have none of yous tongues?” he shouted.

A boy’s head poked over an upper bunk near him. “Eee! Vincent Dunne here, Mulberry Square.”

This brought a shiver of welcome laughter. Mulberry Square was amongst the most elegant of Dublin’s residential sections.

Lavery leaned away from the light to see the boy’s face. “Ah, that accounts for the tuppenny loaf I seen you with,” he bantered. “Did you save us a crumb itself?”

“Och,” a woman said from the bunk below, “if he’d only a potato he’d give you the skin. Come down and stand on your feet when the man’s talkin’ to you, Vinnie.”

“Aye,” said Lavery. “Come down and be introduced proper. We’re all to be gentlemen in America.”

The boy shinnied down the post, his bare toes groping for the floor. Standing beside Lavery, he cocked his head up at him and grinned. The eyes had mischief as well as cunning and the nose was saucy as a cork on water.

Lavery smiled and extended his hand. “Here I thought it was a giant in the loft and you’re no more nor a mite of a boy.”

The lad put his full grip into the handclasp. “Gi’ me any gam under five stone an’ I’ll miff wi’ him.”

“Oh an’ flatten him,” Lavery said, flexing his fingers. “I give yous Vinnie Dunne, the mighty Irish mite. Which is your ma, Vinnie?”

“Me ma’s dead. Her there’s Granny, takin’ us over.”

“It’s him takin’ me an’ the little one,” the woman said, easing herself off the bunk. She was a big, puffy woman who would take on weight if from nothing but water. She jerked a self-conscious bow out of herself. “I’m Mary Dunne, an’ the little one’s name is Emma. Vinnie was only spoofin’. We lives on Townsend Street.”

Lavery moved toward the bunk, his arm about the boy’s shoulder. He stooped and squinted in at the child, who after the look at him, slipped behind her grandmother and sucked on a piece of sugared rag.

“A broth of a girl,” Lavery said.

“Good as gold, she is. No trouble at all. The father’s waitin’ the first sight of her, him goin’ off to America after dottin’ his ‘i’. But that one. He’s no notion what he’s gettin’ with him at this age.”

Lavery agreed, but winked at Vinnie when he spoke. “’Tis a troublesome age.”

Together the man and the boy moved down the aisle. They paused at every bunk and took the hands of its occupants. Those in their wake clustered with them that were greeted before, and those ahead moved to the front of their bunks, the quicker to meet Lavery and the boy.

At one halt Lavery stayed beyond his introduction of himself. “By a foul light here’s a fair sight,” he said.

Two girls drew deeper into the shadows, but one of them laughed aloud, her teeth gleaming in the near darkness.

“Don’t be bold, Peg,” the other whispered fiercely.

“Ah, but do be bold, Peg,” Lavery said, and gave the boy a nudge to carry on by himself. “It’s a bold country you’re goin’ to. And if you be Peg,” he moved closer to her companion, “who would this be?”

“Norah, my sister,” Peg said. “We’re Margaret and Norah Hickey.”

“Margaret and Norah Hickey,” he repeated. “Poor, poor Ireland, her fairest blooms blowin’ out to sea.”

“Are you a poet, Mr. Lavery?” Peg asked.

“The name is Dennis and I can scarce write my name.”

“I can read and write,” Peg said. “I could teach you.”

“I’ll wager there’s much you could teach me,” he said, “and me willin’ to learn it. How ever did they let the two of yous leave home?”

“We’re run away,” Peg said. “Sick we were of Ireland.”

“Peg, will you keep your wits about you? You’ll have us took off the boat,” her sister said.

Lavery, accustomed now to the murkiness, explored Peg’s face. She would be under twenty and fair indeed with a bit more flesh on her bones and color in her face. Her eyes were too large, but dark and full as her tongue of the daring. In her good time she would rule a man, a house or a country—or all of them at a stroke.

“’Tis a sickness in the guts of all of us, Peg. Else why would we be here?”

“We paid our own passage,” Norah said, lifting her head.

“As I did myself,” said Dennis.

“Worry your pride, the two of you,” Peg said. “I was all for stowin’ it in my shoe and swearin’ myself a pauper. I don’t see the why of bein’ so bloody honest in a kingdom of thieves.”

“Peg, for the love of heaven, hold your tongue. Have you no modesty left?”

“I’ve more modesty than money. You seen to that.”

Norah drew away, easing herself along the bunk, her feet not touching the floor for fear of the dankness there.

Dennis extended his hand. “We’ll be friends, Peg. We know our enemies, you and me.”

She grasped his hand firmly and clung to it to pull herself out of the bunk. With him and the boy, she made the rounds of the quiet, fearful people.

They ranged one side and then the other of the wide aisle, barking ankles and knees on the barrels, boxes and bundles heaped there. The women and children had one side and the men the other. Many a man was the more sullen for the thought that he might see his wife only in the daylight. And the girls amongst them were the more apprehensive for thinking that one bunk was like another in the darkness, and maybe one woman were she sleeping. Fierce tales had come home of unholy crossings. The air was already foul, stale with the dampness of a quick wash after too many long, crowded voyages.

The screech of the anchor chain suddenly broke over the muffled talk.

“Mother o’ God, we’re collapsin’,” a woman cried.

“We’re weighin’ anchor,” Lavery shouted. “We’re throwin’ off our chains! To hell with England, and God deliver us safe to America!”

The Valiant
gave her first great heave toward the sea and Lavery raised his voice above the lamentation of the women and the muted clang of the harbor bells. He sang the words of an old hymn which came to him first, and remembered all of a rush his mother fastening the stiff white stock about his neck for Sunday Mass. Even in the dankness he could recall the smell of fresh bread about her, for she baked on Sunday mornings, and he could remember the softness of her bosom as she pulled his face into it. It was better than the last sight he had of her, her eyes watered with the thought of his going. Louder he sang until his voice was near cracking.

“Holy mother, heav’nly queen,

List while thy children pray thee.

Guide us through the shoals of life

And o’er its storm-tossed sea…”

Margaret Hickey joined a fine soprano voice to his, and some then mouthed the words tunelessly while others had the tune but not the words. Soon everybody joined in the hymn.

The long night’s singing blended into talk, and through it the rumble and grind and even the motion of the ship grew familiar. Those not possessed of too great a stomach misery clung together. The quickest friends to all the emigrants were those who spun aloud legends and dreams of New York, the wages and homes they hoped for, the sights they expected…New York, where beeves were herded by the hundreds into a dozen markets every dawn, where the streets were crowded with stalls, and the stalls spilling with greens, the barrels bursting with treacle and honey; where milk came in buckets and meal by the bushel, where potatoes rolled in the streets overflowing all measure, where you could drink your choice and your fill for a thrup’ny bit; where no man was more than your equal and no woman beyond your hope, where the gaslights spun around in circles, and music crowded the stars into daylight; where they vied on the dock for your service, paying cash and the work not begun; where they hoisted the green flag of Erin alongside the stars and stripes, and sent runners to meet every emigrant ship, shouting and waving and crying out, “Welcome home!”

F
ROM THE SECOND DAY
out the emigrants whispered amongst themselves at the wonder of a priest aboard who wouldn’t show himself amongst them. All of them able to go up to boil their water saw him at one time or another, walking, always walking the few paces there was room to walk on deck, and he would smile at them; a sweet, sad smile the women said which led some to speculate on whether he was not fleeing the temptation of a woman, for he was a handsome one, and Margaret Hickey said out in her quick way she would be tempted to tempt him herself. Others put his aloofness down to politics: there were priests, albeit only a few of them, with strong sympathies for Young Ireland, until a bishop put down his foot on them.

But before they were a week at sea many of the voyagers fell ill and lay upon their hard bunks day and night without rising and the captain was often sent for. His presence was the best part of his medicine, for he assured the ailing they would soon see land. One unfortunate, however, would have none of his assurances. Mary Dunne said that she was dying and asked for the priest.

“He has no powers on the high seas,” the captain said, and Peg thought it a strange thing, for a priest was supposed to be a priest the world over.

“Please, sir,” Norah said, holding the child Emma whose care had fallen to her, “tell him it’s not his powers but himself is needed.”

“Take that word to Mr. Russell, sir,” the captain bade the seaman who made the rounds of the sick with him.

“Russell, Father Russell,” the name was whispered among the emigrants.

The man was not long in coming, though by the way he stood groping near the steps he could not come quickly. He was blind from the light of day. Margaret Hickey caught the captain’s lantern from his hand and went to guide the priest.

“Her name’s Mary Dunne, Father,” the girl said, “and she’s terrible troubled, takin’ her grandchildren to their father, and thinkin’ now she won’t live till it’s done.”

“Thank you. I shall do what I can for her…and I’ll be as true to her faith as God gives me the power.”

For an instant their eyes met over the lantern, and Peg said, “Come, Father Russell,” although she was sure now he was not even a Catholic.

The ship’s captain made way for him. “I’ve done what I can for her,” he said. “I’m not a medical man.” He held his hand out for his lantern, but instead of giving it to him, the girl put it into the hand of the priest, and the captain went up in the dark.

Norah Hickey, holding the infant, pulled her sister into the opposite bunk beside her. “Do you want us to leave, Father? We can go some place else, but here’s the child.”

He nodded for them to stay. He lifted the lantern between his own face and the old woman’s as he knelt down beside her and took the puffy hand in his.

“Is it the priest?” she whispered.

“God bless you, Mary Dunne,” he said, and when he looked about for a place to set the lantern, Margaret Hickey leaped from the bunk and held it for him. He rubbed the swollen hand gently as though he would summon warmth into it. Yet on his own face the sweat was shining. “You’re a strong woman, Mary Dunne, to have come this far. It may well be you’re stronger than you know and will take the little ones safely on.”

“If I was an ox I’d never get up from here, Father. There’s a weakness in my bowels spillin’ the life out o’ me.”

“Tell me then what I can do,” he said, for the very smell of death hung about her.

“Go under my head and get my rosary.”

He groped about the damp pallet and drew the beads out. When he closed her fingers about them she lifted them up before her eyes. He dipped a rag lying by her face into the bucket of water beside the bunk and brushed her forehead with it. She thrust her hand toward his face then, her fingers poking into his cheek for she could not judge the distance between them, but he did not flinch. When he saw that she was trying to better see his face he took the lantern and held it close to him.

“Do you know, you put me in mind of my Tom a little? You’re awful young to be a priest.”

“I’m twenty-seven,” he said.

“Ah, ’tis me that’s awful old.”

Her eyes lost their cogency and presently she tried to move her body. The weight of it was beyond her strength. She began wandering in the mind then, sometimes scolding, sometimes crooning.

“Be easy, Mary Dunne,” the man said, trying to hold her hands. But they were the only part of her body she could move and the holding of them so chafed her he let them go.

She groaned and threshed her arms about. “I’m heavy, heavy and the pains is comin’ fast,” she cried. “Tom, run for your father, run!”

“She thinks she’s with child,” the man said, gazing up at the wide-eyed girl who held the lantern.

“Are ye never comin’, Tom?”

“I’m comin’ sure.”

“Father Russell” bowed his head. The words were spoken from the foot of the bunk where Vinnie Dunne had come to answer to his father’s name.

She grew easier then and searched the man’s face with her eyes, her imagined recognition warming them. “You’re a good boy, Tom. I don’t know whatever I’d ’ve done without you.”