Brigid the Girl from County Clare Read online

  Brigid The Girl from County Clare

  ~~~

  Vicky Adin

  Like making lace – she pieces together a

  new life from a single thread of hope

  (Set in Australia and New Zealand)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Brigid The Girl from County Clare

  1 | The Leaving

  2 | Hobnobbing and Fighting

  3 | Misgivings

  4 | The Art of Coquetry

  5 | Distancing of Heart and Mind

  6 | Prejudices, Conceptions and Opportunities

  7 | Mixing It Up

  8 | Truths Spoken and Unspoken

  9 | Love, Fear and Death

  10 | The Tide Turns

  11 | Consequences

  12 | New Beginnings

  13 | Double Jeopardy

  14 | Make or Break

  15 | Making an Impression

  16 | The Proposition

  17 | Resolutions

  18 | Coming of Age

  Author’s Note

  BOOKS | by | VICKY ADIN

  Gwenna The Welsh Confectioner

  The Cornish Knot

  The Art of Secrets

  The Disenchanted Soldier

  From the author of Gwenna The Welsh Confectioner and The Cornish Knot,

  whose writing has been compared with that of Catherine Cookson.

  The award-winning author,

  recipient of:

  Indie B.R.A.G medallion

  Chill with a Book Readers’ Award

  Gold Standard Quality Mark

  ~~~

  The historical aspects of the story are so accurate and described so perfectly that the reader will frequently need to remind herself/himself that the story is fiction ... This is a thoroughly satisfying read. It is the kind of story that passes the test as a work of history and is equally satisfying as a novel that will have your attention from first to last.

  **** 4 stars – Frank O’Shea, The Irish Echo, Sydney

  Copyright 2015 Vicky Adin

  www.vickyadin.co.nz

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-9941305-0-1

  Ebook edited and produced by Adrienne Charlton

  www.ampublishingnz.com

  Also available as print book on Amazon or

  visit www.vickyadin.co.nz – books

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as

  the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, information storage and retrieval systems, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the author, with the exception of a book reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Book Cover Image: Photo by Brandon Morgan on Unsplash

  Other books by Vicky Adin (see end)

  Gwenna The Welsh Confectioner

  The Cornish Knot

  The Art of Secrets

  The Disenchanted Soldier

  Children’s book by Vicky Adin

  Kazam!

  PART ONE

  The Journey

  1

  The Leaving

  Gravesend, London

  Tuesday, 19th October 1886

  Brigid’s nose wrinkled at the odious mixture of oil, coal and scummy seawater. “Ah, Mammy. What have I done?”

  Any enthusiasm she had once felt soon turned to trepidation on the journey from her village in County Clare to the docks of London. She’d been told all sorts of tales about England, as foreign to her as her destination, but she hadn’t expected it to be quite so different from her native Ireland.

  Bells clanged, engines churned and animals bayed. Hordes of anxious people chattered, sailors shouted and cargo thumped and banged as the crew loaded it. Her ears buzzed from all the noise. She’d never seen so many people and so many buildings in one place. A sudden ear-piercing screech from the steam whistle drowned out every other sound, and Brigid clamped her hands over her ears to ease the pain.

  “Breeda!” her cousin Jamie shouted. “Breeda. Do ye hear me?” A head taller than most people, Jamie pushed his way through the throng of passengers and around stacked crates to reach her.

  His touch startled her.

  “I was calling you, our Breeda.”

  “I didn’t hear you above this frightful din.”

  “Never mind that now. Come on, come with me.” Jamie picked up her small trunk and marched off again. Brigid felt for her great-grandmother’s brooch to check she still had it firmly pinned to her petticoat. She treasured it as a good luck charm. Satisfied, she gathered up her bag stuffed with clothes, her rosary, Bible and other precious things and followed him.

  It had taken her and Jamie two weeks to get to London. She knew all the reasons why she was here facing the start of her new life, but the reality of the decision was vastly different from the talk. And there’d been plenty of that over the last few years since the potato crop had failed – again.

  Brigid had fretted during the idle hours spent waiting to board. Under the command of Captain Sayers, the SS Dorunda, a new-style steamship owned by the British India Steam Navigation Company, would take her thousands of miles away from her homeland, across the oceans to Australia. They’d been pushed and shaped into endless queues in order firstly, to pass inspection by the ship’s officers and get their tickets stamped, and secondly, for Dr Goodall, the ship’s surgeon, to examine their persons. The doctor had placed a long trumpet-shaped object against her chest, with his ear pressed to the other end: checking for infectious diseases, she’d been told. Whatever he hoped to hear she never knew, but thankfully, she and Jamie were both waved on through.

  “You’re down the back in the single girls’ quarters, and I’m up front with the men,” Jamie shouted over his shoulder. His muscles bulged as he manoeuvred the trunk through the crush of people and obstacles on deck. Even at eighteen, he wasn’t one to be messed with. He’d developed enormous strength through a life of hard farming on stony ground.

  “Ah, Jamie. Can’t I stay with you?”

  “No luck there, Breeda, my love. There’s rules. You’ll be grand, that you will.” His lilting Irish brogue comforted her.

  Trapped between the shoulders of the other passengers, she would have had an elbow in her eye if she hadn’t moved her head in time. The distance between her and Jamie grew.

  “Wait up,” she cried and surged forward to grab the tail of his jacket, unsettled by the strangeness around her.

  British seamen shouted orders to dozens of brown-skinned sailors wearing strange, brimless black hats, decorated with colourful kerchiefs. Their long cotton tunics, tied with a scarf and worn over baggy trousers, looked stained and unkempt, but the men seemed cheerful enough as they lifted and tossed endless sacks of mail and crates of goods. She hadn’t expected to see people who looked so, so ... she searched for the word to fit. Exotic, or fanciful, came to mind.

  “Keep close, Breeda. We need to get in quick to get ye the best bunk. First in, first served, they said.”

  As they moved further aft, the crowds thinned out, and Brigid saw families nervously gathered together around their possessions; a woman stood alone, straining her neck to look for someone; a child cried. With no one to bar his way, Jamie led her down the aft ladder into the dimly lit compartment between decks. Blinking to adjust her eyes to the shadowy light, Brigid could see the chamber ran the full width of the ship. What little light seeped in came from the occasional small porthole on either side.

  The ceiling rose high enough, but the darkness made it feel low. Bunks stacked two high and two deep line
d the outer walls. Jamie slouched his shoulders and bowed his head as he shuffled his way along the central passage. At the far end he spied a set of empty berths – narrow bunks with barely enough space between them for him to stand front on – and shoved Brigid’s trunk under the lower bed.

  “Oi! You,” shouted a woman, appearing out of the shadows. “Yer not supposed to be in here. Yer a man!”

  “That I am, for sure, miss.” Jamie took his cap off and flashed her a cheeky grin. “And I’m just leaving, ma’am. Only here to help ma cousin with her luggage. Little t’ing that she is couldna manage on her own. I’m sure you understand, a woman as canny as you.” He winked at the woman, who laughed and tucked a stray strand of her unruly strawberry-blonde curls behind her ear.

  “Gerraway wi’ ya, young ’un. You canna flatter me, even if you do have manners.”

  Jamie kissed Brigid on the cheek and gave her a wink as he disappeared up the ladder.

  “Well, lass, looks like we’re neighbours. I’m Sally.”

  A curvy woman dressed in a dark blue full-skirted dress with a rather low-cut neckline scrutinised her. Brigid guessed she would be at least twenty-five years old but couldn’t be certain.

  “I’m Brigid O’Brien, but they calls me Breeda.”

  “Well. Glad to meet you, Miss Breeda.” She paused. “I know – Breeda Kneader, Pudding and Pie, kissed the boys and made them ... wild.” Laughing at her own joke, she gave Brigid a friendly push in response to the girl’s mortified look. “Ease up, a’ways, hen. We’ve a long way to go together. Just a bit of funning.”

  Brigid tried a wobbly smile, but couldn’t think of anything to say. She took off her bonnet and coat, revealing the deep purple bengaline costume with her own handmade lace collar – a copy of a hand-me-down donated to the convent – and felt indebted to the nuns for her two good dresses and the skills to make them.

  “Skinny wee thing, ain’t you?” remarked Sally, eyeing Brigid from top to toe. “And that’s a lovely bit of lace, an’ all. Did you make it?”

  “Thank you. Yes, I did.”

  “Clever you. Wish my hair’d braid as neat as yours.”

  Brigid patted her dark chignon self-consciously. “I could try and do yours for you sometime, if you’d like. The colour is beautiful. Like molten honey in the sunshine.”

  “More like scraggly straw!” she guffawed. “We’ll see. Get yourself sorted.”

  Anxious as to how bad the journey would be, Brigid took the advice of a sailor she’d met to claim an upper berth: ‘Ye don’ wanna be down below ’en people start chuckin’ up,’ he’d said. ‘An’ they will, when weather gets rough.’

  Sally sat on the edge of the bottom bunk she’d claimed. “Where you from and where you goin’ then, lass?”

  Brigid unrolled her sleeping mat and blanket, neatly tied her eating utensils together through the holes in the handles and hung them on a hook. “I’m from County Clare in the west of Ireland. I’m going to Brisbane. And you?” After rerolling some of her clothing Brigid shoved her bag hard against the outer wall.

  “Sally Forsythe from Dumfriesshire, Scotland, going to Townsville.”

  The women shook hands, but before anything more could be said, two newcomers wanting to claim the neighbouring berths jiggled past them.

  “And who might you two be?” Sally cheerfully greeted the newcomers.

  “I’m Annie McKenna,” said a shy, thin girl with lank, dark hair and shadows under her eyes.

  “And I’m Lettie, from County Derry,” announced her look-alike counterpart.

  “We’re sisters,” they said in unison, as they placed their belongings on the adjacent lower bunk.

  “Hello, Annie and Lettie. I’ll get out the way for a wee bit while you set up.” Brigid squeezed around them to give them some space.

  The mast, hatchway and ladder took up much of the ’tween deck, and the claustrophobic space was becoming even more cramped. A steady stream of women stumbled down the ladder in search of a bunk and a place to store their belongings. Brigid silently thanked Jamie for insisting she get in early to find a bunk.

  Benches of some sort hung from the near-black ceiling space, and Brigid puzzled how they would get them down – and where they were supposed to go. They had little enough room to manoeuvre as it was.

  Amidst the clamour, she heard some Irish voices, but most accents she didn’t recognise: Scottish ones, maybe, and lots of English. Many a time since leaving home she’d not understood much of what was said. Even the people looked different.

  On their journey, Brigid had seen the fashionable families in their stylish clothes and watched the ladies in their finery she’d heard so much about, but while some of the women in this section were dressed like her, in their Sunday best, there were also many still in rough peasant clothing.

  “Ow,” she squawked as a bag hit her across the back of the head and shoulder. She spun around in time to see a coarsely dressed woman with filthy hands push Annie out of the way.

  “I’ll have that bunk,” she snarled. “You’re little enough. Go get yerself a top bunk.”

  Annie tried to explain she couldn’t be parted from her sister, but before she’d finished talking, the woman had shoved the girl’s kit from the lower bunk towards her with such force she sent the girl sprawling on the deck. Lettie rushed to Annie’s side, muttering something Brigid couldn’t hear, but the wide-eyed fear in the girl’s face roused Brigid’s protective instincts. She leapt to her feet.

  “Can I ask ye to be kindly, now?” she said to the woman. “These girls claimed their beds first. I t’ink ’twould be better for ye to find somewhere else.”

  Her antagonist stood a good head and shoulders taller than her, and Brigid faltered. But reassured by Sally standing beside her, she tilted her head back and faced the newcomer.

  “Mind yer own business.” The woman turned and glared at Brigid and Sally’s determined faces. Immediately, she started wheedling. “I gotta have a lower bunk. It’s me legs, you see; I can’t climb up, and she’s young enough to move to a top ’un,” whinged the woman.

  Brigid let her breath out slowly, trying to keep her temper. “That’s as maybe, but being a bully about it will get you nowhere.”

  “Yeah. Now clear off,” said Sally. “We don’t want the likes of you next to us anyway.”

  Reverting to her natural bad temper, the woman lowered her head, stuck out her chin and growled, “Who’s gonna make me?”

  “I am.” Sally took a step forward, arms akimbo, her voice menacing. “Do you want to risk taking me on and losing before you start?”

  “And me.” Brigid’s eyes burned with fire. She’d never understood people who were mean or nasty. “But if it makes ye feel better, I’ll help you find somewhere,” she offered, hoping a bit of kindness would ease the situation.

  “Aye. I could do wi’ some ’elp. You’re a good lass.” While the woman spoke sweetly to Brigid, she spat at Sally. “You’ll regret this, you will. I’ll get you afore the journey’s over. That I will.”

  Wednesday, 6th October 1886

  Our journey to the other side of the world began when we piled into Da’s cart, me in the front and Jamie in the back, holding on to our stuff for dear life. Behind us, we could see our two families standing in the middle of the road, watching us go. There was little joy in the parting. My sisters stood huddled together, solemn and still.

  It had taken many a month to get ready for our leave-taking. Autumn began kindly enough with a just a little more sunlight than normal, and what rain came fell lightly. But by the end of September, the weather got worse. By the time we were ready to leave, the rain had set in.

  The damp seeped into everything – even our spirits.

  The goodbyes had started weeks before we left. I got excited when friends and neighbours called by to talk, or gave me a small gift – something useful like spoons or linens, woollens or precious, precious thread. But saying goodbye to my two sets of grandparents – Michael and Bridget,
and John and Mary – was the hardest part. Well, no, if I’m honest, leaving Ma was the hardest.

  Ma had kept busy in the weeks leading up to leaving day. She swept and baked, sewed and knitted, trying to remember everything she considered a mother should tell her daughter. She helped me gather what I’d need on the journey, packed things I could add to my dowry for when I might have my own home. She kept my bedding and clothing dry – draped over the rack above the fire, next to where she hung my Da’s and brother John’s wet clothing at the end of each day. It fair made the air fuggy with the rising steam and stale smells of peat, straw and pigs.

  It was Ma’s way of coping, keeping busy. She would sometimes give me a saying to write down, or remind me about one of her recipes handed down from her mother. She repeated what I would need, over and over again, and wouldn’t say goodbye, even at the last minute. All she said was, ‘Be safe’ and pressed the shawl pin that once belonged to her grandmother into my hand and disappeared inside the cottage again. I struggled not to let my tears fall as I said goodbye to my sisters gathered around the door: Norah holding Susan, and Nellie holding the baby Katie, while Máire stood alone – always alone was our Máire. Their tears flowed silently.

  Da said nothing as he coaxed the donkey to move along at a faster clip than it usually managed, and we soon reached the main road and turned east towards Ennis. Da couldn’t take us any further if he was to get home again before dark. He shook hands with Jamie and charged him to look after me, but when it came to saying goodbye to me, he just stared, as if memorising my face. Gruffly he said, ‘Travel well’ and headed off again at a fast trot. He never looked back.

  * * *

  Jamie dumped his bedroll and cloth bag in the dormitory for single men and barely gave the others a nod before heading back up on deck. He’d promised Brigid he would hold his temper and not get into a fight like he used to with the boys at home. The best way to keep out of bother was to have as little to do with anyone as possible, at least until he got to know them better.

  People and goods were still being loaded, and with scant room to move, Jamie found a position by the rails towards the stern where he could watch the goings-on.