A Song Across the Sea (7 page)

It was reassuring that the ship carrying them there was so large, though she had nothing with which to compare it, since this was her first time on the high seas. Perhaps many ships were this big. She leaned over the rail to read the white letters painted on the hull. Even its name denoted size, she thought with satisfaction.

Titanic
. Now there was a grand name for a ship.

B
y the second day of the voyage, Tara grew accustomed to the rolling motion of the sea. Others were not so lucky. They stayed below in their bunks most of the time, suffering from queasiness and groaning in discomfort.

Paddy felt seasick not at all. He quickly became pals with another Irish emigrant his own age, one Danny Flaherty. Tara had some misgivings about the friendship. Little Dan had a wild streak in him. She could see that at once in the crooked grin and the cocky walk that was much too precocious for a six-year-old. The way he spoke to her bordered on insolence! Very soon Padraig and his cohort were busy exploring every corner of the ship, including areas where they were forbidden to go. The third class steward had to return the pair of sheepish-looking boys to her several times, after they were caught in some minor misadventure or other.

“They sneaked into Boiler Room Number Six,” the steward told her on one occasion. “It’s dangerous—no place for a couple of kids.”

The steerage passengers quickly settled into shipboard routines. The men smoked pipes and played cards, while the women passed their time sewing and gossiping with each other.

Tara tried to be friendly with some of the other Irish, but she soon realized she was the target of gossip. “Too young to be traveling alone,” she’d heard one old biddy sniff, when she thought Tara was asleep. “And a girl lookin’ like that? She’ll come to no good when we land, mark me words. She’ll end up in the clutches of some evil man, rougin’ her cheeks and makin her work on her back.”

Tara was stung by the crude prediction, then furious. These stupid women knew nothing about her! How dare they presume that she had loose morals? That she was destined to be a lowly prostitute. They were jealous, she thought. Jealous of her youth and—she admitted to herself, feeling a little foolish—of the way she looked. Well she couldn’t help either of those things, could she? And despite her age, she’d already had what she felt was a lifetime of heartache and responsibility. They’d no idea how mature it had made her.

The unfriendliness of the other women only strengthened her determination to make good in America.

So except for sleeping she forsook Third Class quarters and spent most of her time up on the starboard well deck, reading in the open air, though April in the Atlantic was not what one would call balmy.

Padraig and Danny were, on this, the third full day of the journey, racing around the deck with a dozen other children in some wildly improvised game of tag. Tara kept a watchful eye on them while she read. The children and their parents hailed from many different countries. It made the attire on the deck a colorful mishmash of peasant skirts, vividly striped aprons and kerchiefs covering women’s heads.

Something on a deck above them caught Tara’s eye. She looked upward. There stood one of the First Class passengers, a woman in a billowy ankle-length gown of polka-dotted peach organza. She carried a matching parasol trimmed with ribbon. Her lavish hat was so adorned with feathers it looked, Tara thought, as if a flock of birds needing rest from the stiff winds buffeting the North Atlantic was resting on her head.

The woman leaned over the rail, laughing and pointing at the quaint native costumes she saw below. Several other First Class passengers joined her at the rail to take a look.

Tara was livid. Who were these arrogant people, who gawked so freely at others? They regarded those meandering on the deck below with undisguised amusement, as if they were animals in a zoo.

The woman in the polka-dotted dress said something to another woman, whom Tara took, by her plain gray dress and starched white apron, to be a maid. The maid disappeared and returned a few minutes later. She handed some small items to the woman, who turned and tossed them into the air in front of her.

The children’s game came to an abrupt halt. Coins, pieces of candy, even some oranges rained down into their midst, causing a mad scramble. Padraig dodged several other children to grab for his share. Tara was ashamed to see some adult passengers also leaping forward for the trinkets.

The woman and her companions were delighted by the commotion she’d caused.

“Look, Tara! See what I’ve got.” Padraig opened his grimy fist to reveal three small coins and a piece of hard candy.

“You’ll return them.”

Padraig looked crestfallen. “A lady threw them away. She didn’t want them anymore.”

“We’re not beggars, Padraig, to be crawlin’ on the ground after rich people’s leavin’s.”

“But she didn’t want them!”

“Neither do we.”

She took him by the hand and walked to an open space in the center of the deck. Standing there, her shoulders set defiantly, she looked up until she’d caught the eye of the woman in the organza gown.

“Throw them down, Paddy.”

“I won’t!”

“Throw them down, Paddy.”

Sullenly, he dashed the trinkets onto the deck. A little girl quickly picked them up, squealing in delight.

Tara, still looking at the woman, made sure her voice was loud and strong, so that her words wouldn’t be blown out over the sea. “We’re not beggars and we’ll not be needin’ your charity!” she called out. The woman, taken aback, looked embarrassed and turned away from the rail.

Tara sat down again to read, but soon became aware that she was being scrutinized. The young man who came and sat beside her was about her own age. He didn’t look at all like the lads in her village. His skin was deeply tanned, his lustrous, curly hair as black as his eyes. She noted that his body looked muscular and strong beneath the white homespun shirt and brown trousers that he wore, then chided herself for thinking such thoughts—and about a foreigner, no less!

“Forgive me if I am making a…an interruption. On your book.”

Curious, she put the book down. “I don’t mind.”

He looked around him. “It is nice out here, no? I like it better outside. So…sunshine. Like my village.”

His accent intrigued her. The awkwardly chosen words had, nonetheless, a pleasing rolling sound.

“Where do you come from?”

“Is near Perugia. In Italia.” He corrected himself. “Italy. I go to America to work with my brothers. We are…” There was a long pause while he groped for the word, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. “Stonemasons.”

He broke into a smile. His teeth were startlingly white against his bronzed skin.

“My English is…is not so good. Forgive me”

“It’s fine,” she said, smiling back and relaxing. This would certainly give the old cackle-hens in steerage something to talk about. She was sitting on the deck, bold as brass, talking to a strange man. A foreigner.

“Is your brother?” He motioned in the direction of the children.

“The one in the blue cap.”

He nodded. “I see you with him. The lady with the money, she make you angry. You are proud. Proud and very beautiful. That is why I had to talk to you.”

She stared at him, openmouthed.

He looked momentarily alarmed. “I did not use…right words? I have all respect for you.”

Tara hardly knew how to reply.

“Oh, they were the right words. I’m just wonderin’ if you’re always so bold.”

He smiled again, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

“No, not always. I am on a ship to America so I feel brave. And you are very beautiful. That makes a man brave, too.”

•  •  •

She spent the entire afternoon with Dominic Morelli. They talked without pause, learning more about each other in that short span of time than Tara would have thought possible. His father and four older brothers had been in America for three years, working to save money. Now Dominic was escorting his mother and grandmother there to join the rest of the family.

“She no wanna go to Philadelphia, America, my grandmother. She don’t speak English like I am. But my father, he say go. So we go.”

He asked her all about herself, never taking his eyes off her face as he listened to each detail with flattering fascination. He clicked his tongue sympathetically when she told him about her parents.

“So sad. So young. You are…what is the word? The word for no mama and papa.”

“Orphan,” she said. It was the first time she’d said it aloud.

He looked at her with grave concern then nodded as if he had come to some conclusion. “But you will do good in America. I know. Even as orphan.”

About her plans for America she said little. In truth, she had no specific plans, just a tenacious resolve to find work and a place for herself and Padraig to live. Dominic didn’t find this at all silly.

A thought occurred to him. “You are not going to live with family? Maybe you come to Philadelphia! It is…great city. My father, he writes letters about it. It has big buildings. So many people. You would like it, Tara.”

Why not? Philadelphia was probably as good a place as any—although New York had always been fixed in her mind as her only destination. It was almost an unconscious choice, planted there, perhaps, by the long-ago boasts of Brigid Connelly.

It was mealtime before they knew it.

“I must go now,” said Dominic. “You meet me later, please? I will show you stars. I know them. Their stories.”

They arranged a time and he left, to meet with his mother and grandmother.

For the first time in months, Tara felt lighthearted. Happy, even. She’d almost forgotten the sensation. The heavy burdens that had settled for so long on her young shoulders flew away like seabirds. Her life ahead was as open as the great ocean that stretched around her in all directions. A handsome man was paying her court. He seemed to find her lovely and charming.

Tara called Paddy to her and took him down to supper.

It might be an enjoyable journey after all.

•  •  •

“This way!”

Tara followed Dominic, feeling a little foolish. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.”

Dominic laughed, a rich, easy sound that pleased her. “No, we are not. We are going to see the rich people. See them as they eat. You want to go back?”

Curiosity won out. “No. I don’t suppose I do. But this is just the sort of mischief I’d scold me brother for.” Padraig was asleep in his bunk after hearing his usual allotment of stories from “The Fairy Ring.” The book was one of the few belongings besides clothes he’d been allowed to bring with him. “What about the stars you were after showin’ me?” she asked impishly.

“First the rich people. They eat now. Then, all stars in the sky, for you, Tara.”

Tara and Dominic inched their way precariously around a crane in the after well deck. Dominic started to crawl along a gigantic boom leading to the First Class quarters. Tara hesitated only a moment. She was nimble enough, after jumping over walls and running through uneven fields her entire life. Fear that they might get caught only heightened her growing appetite for adventure.

She got up onto the boom and crawled after him. It was while ascending a ladder to the deck that Dominic suddenly stopped and pointed.

Through a window beyond the ladder she could see into the a la carte restaurant that was frequented by the First Class Passengers. It was like glimpsing a bit of heaven. Suspended from the ceiling were magnificent chandeliers whose iridescent layers of dangling crystals served as prisms, refracting the light above and splashing it, in pinpoints of color, onto the walnut-paneled walls. There were flashes of liquid fire from the diamonds adorning the white throats of female patrons. Uniformed waiters in white gloves glided back and forth over the rose-hued carpeting, carrying burnished silver platters. At the center of each table stood a small light whose glow assumed the dusky pink blush of the silk shade that surrounded it.

Tara stared through the window, openmouthed in amazement. Without thinking, she let her grip on the ladder rung relax and nearly fell.

Dominic grabbed her wrist and held her steady until she regained her hold. “What you think?” he whispered. “Is nice, no?”

“Oh, it’s grand. I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t imagine such fine places existed, even.”

“Someday maybe I take you to eat like the rich people. In a restaurant like here.”

She studied the people who seemed so at home amid these opulent surroundings. So this is what it was to be rich, she thought. The men were dashing enough figures in their flawlessly cut black evening attire and white, stiff-fronted shirts, but it was the women who captured her attention. Their dresses transformed the restaurant into a rainbow of silk and satin. She spotted the woman who’d tossed coins and candy down to the steerage passengers. The dramatically low neckline of her plum velvet gown allowed her to show off a necklace of gold webbing studded with enormous emeralds. Her silky hair was upswept, exaggerating the sleek length of her neck.

Some day, Tara vowed to herself, I’ll dress like that, and sit in a grand restaurant eating…

“What are they eating?” she asked Dominic, then answered the question herself by leaning closer to the window for a better look. “Roast duck, I think. Yes. And asparagus—”

“Allo! Wot’s this? Wot the bloody ’ell’s goin’ on here?” A First Class steward stood on the deck, glaring down on them, his beefy build set in a combative stance. “Wot do you two blighters think you’re doin’? Peepin’ in windows? You bloody well know you’re not supposed to be up here! Now get back down to steerage before I report you to the captain. And keep to your place from now on, if you know wot’s good for you.”

His shrill orders were interrupted by a smoother, calmer voice.

“See here. Using language like that in front of a lady is simply unacceptable.”

The steward’s tone quickly changed to a submissive, conciliatory one. “B-b-b-begging your pardon, sir. I didn’t see you and Mrs. Rutherford standing there.”