‘It does sound likely,’ said Lucia. She took a sip of champagne.
‘Apparently Niall called Essie, Mo stórín.’
‘Irish. “My treasure” or “my love”,’ Lucia translated. ‘Now that’s a beautiful story for those earrings.’
Lucia turned her head and surveyed the room. ‘We have a roomful of stories here tonight, don’t we? Look at all these people tripping over themselves to touch Sophie’s pieces. I bet they wish they could touch the images on the wall too.’ She gestured to where a group was staring open-mouthed at an image of some enamel and bejewelled gold necklace blinking on the wall. ‘I mean, the lure of priceless jewels is one thing, but each of these antique pieces was designed for one person and crafted by another. Each piece has a special story.’
Kate nodded. This was probably why she was so intrigued by the little diamond ring.
‘That individual piece becomes an heirloom,’ she continued. ‘Like your sapphires.’
Kate swallowed as she recalled the broad laugh and untamed curls of her great-grandmother Essie. The same curls had covered Noah’s tiny head.
‘When people pass—’ Lucia was speaking softly now, and Kate had to strain to hear her over the music ‘—sometimes it is enough just to bury yourself in something so exquisite, so beautiful, that it reminds us that there is hope. That people can be beautiful, thoughtful and kind.’ The older woman put her hand on Kate’s arm. ‘Keats was right, you know: Beauty is truth, truth beauty and all that.’
Beauty is truth, truth beauty … The words drew Kate back to another party, another time.
It was too late by then, of course. You could unpick the past, but never undo it.
Chapter 7
KATE
LOUISBURG SQUARE, BOSTON, 2002
Kate hadn’t known that her eighteenth birthday would be the last time she’d see Essie.
‘Here you are!’ Kate grinned as she poked her head around the study door and saw her great-grandmother standing in front of the bill of sale for the SS Esther Rose. ‘The party has started without you. They’re all in the conservatory admiring the croquembouche. I brought you a glass of champagne.’ Kate held out a cut-glass flute.
‘Thank you, my dear. Happy birthday!’
They clinked glasses.
‘What’s that?’ Kate pointed inside the desk drawer her great-grandmother had just opened.
‘Oh, just random clippings and pictures from England that take my fancy. I never returned to London. It’s my biggest regret—and that door has closed to me now.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘Still, I like to know what’s happening in my homeland …’
Essie pushed the drawer closed with her hip, but not before removing something.
‘These are for you.’ She passed Kate a tiny wooden jewellery box. ‘Consider it an eighteenth birthday present … coming of age, whatever you want.’ She waved her hand and collapsed onto the couch with a sigh.
‘Essie, you’re already giving me this party,’ Kate said in protest. ‘I don’t need another gift.’
‘Pfft. I just couldn’t stand the thought of standing around in that concrete and glass mausoleum your mother insists on calling a home.’
‘It won Wallpaper House of the Year!’
‘I have no idea what that means, my darling. Your mother doesn’t design homes. A home has spirit and warmth. A history. I’m always afraid if I stay at your house too long she’ll whisk me into one of those hidden storage cupboards. Now, open the box!’
Kate chuckled and opened the box to find a pair of sapphire earrings. And not just any earrings—they were Essie’s favourites. She snapped it closed. ‘I can’t accept these. Niall gave them to you.’
‘Nonsense. I insist. I never had any heirloom passed to me except trouble, if you count that …’ She looked sad, and suddenly a decade older. ‘Besides, I can’t wear them anymore; my earlobes touch my shoulders. Look!’ Essie tugged an earlobe under her mop of wild white curls.
Kate laughed. ‘They do not.’ She unfastened the earrings from the box and held the sapphires up to the light. It felt like gazing into the ocean. She’d played with these very earrings hundreds of times as a little girl, rolling them about on her great-grandmother’s dressing table.
Essie’s expression was a strange mix of love and melancholy as she drew out a long necklace tucked under her collar and let the gold run through her fingers. As if somehow she didn’t quite deserve it.
‘Take the sapphires, Katherine. I insist. Every young woman needs a little something in the hem of her skirt when she sets sail. And you, my dear, are setting sail.’
Kate sat on the arm of the couch, touched by the gift, but slightly confused. Essie’s quip about jewels in the hem of her skirt seemed an odd thing to say. Then again, she was always repeating little Irish sayings … Essie wrapped her arm around her great-granddaughter’s waist.
‘They’re beautiful—thank you,’ said Kate as the tears welled in her eyes. She’d miss her weekly visits with Essie. ‘Will you phone me every week?’
‘I certainly will not! I detest those hand-held phones, or whatever it is you young people use. I only have a phone because your father insisted on being able to contact me at all times. But who wants that? It’s none of your father’s business what I get up to.’
‘What if they can’t reach you in an emergency?’
‘A woman has to keep a little mystery about her.’
‘Speaking of mysteries, remember how I asked for your permission to write about you in my college admissions paper?’
‘You had my blessing, child. Lord only knows why you wanted to. There are far more interesting women getting about than me.’
‘You’ve never much talked about your life in London. Why you left all by yourself …’
Kate hesitated, regretting her lack of subtlety. She knew the bare bones of Essie’s childhood: kippers on Fridays, the clanging sound of Big Ben striking on the hour, suffragettes in white striding around the Monument. Skinny kids kicking a football made from sheep guts in narrow cobbled lanes. A poor Irish immigrant family dossing in a garden flat. Some of the siblings never made it to adulthood. No wonder Essie preferred to make her early years in London sound like a fairytale—the reality must have been awful.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that I’ve always been curious about how you made a new life on the other side of the world. Colleges want to know how we overcome challenges, but …’
She blushed as her grandmother sipped champagne.
Kate pulled a copy of her college entrance essay from her purse. ‘I brought you a copy. I thought you might like to read it sometime.’
‘You read it to me now.’
‘No!’ said Kate.
‘Please? My eyesight is so poor …’
There was no use arguing. Kate cleared her throat and began to read:
‘Perhaps it is the Irish blood in my veins that makes me yearn to tell stories. My Irish great-grandmother Essie crossed the Atlantic to find a better life in the New World for herself and the family that was to come.