Marcus began to read the columns: ‘Latitude, Longitude, Distance, Run …’
He turned a page and read what was before him, then sucked in his breath.
‘Listen to this: Today I met the woman I’d like to marry. Esther Murphy, but she prefers Essie. Irish by birth, she has a smile I’d juggle forever to keep.’
He turned over some more pages. ‘Shipping info, a list of supplies … Oh, wait, we’re into mid-December 1912 in this section. That’s, what, two weeks later?’
He put the diary on the desk. On the left-hand page was a drawing of gulls swooping into waves. On the right-hand side was this entry:
In the two weeks I’ve taken to having the cook leave a pitcher of Guinness and some dry crackers in her cabin every night after our walk around the length of the deck.
E. thinks I haven’t noticed the dry-retching, the clammy hands and sweat at her temples. My mother and sister were both the same when they were with child …
‘What? Essie was pregnant already? But they’d only just met.’
E. thinks I haven’t noticed …
But Essie had noticed. The story of how Essie agreed to marry Niall Kirby during the Atlantic crossing had become family folklore. It had been during the beginning of a storm, when the boat was lurching and heaving across the top of the swell. Essie was on deck clinging to the rails, wobbly with seasickness. Niall coaxed her back to the cabin, then went to fetch Guinness and dry crackers.
Kindness and hope, Katherine—that’s what you should look for in a man. Your great-grandfather Niall spent the entire Atlantic crossing tending to the ill, instructing the newer sailors on the ship on their ropes and seamanship, helping them practise navigation, fixing ropes … I never heard him raise his voice or utter a sharp word.
It was the same when Joseph was learning to sail the little dinghy or ride a bike. Or—heaven help me—learning to drive his first automobile. Niall was always there right by Joseph’s side, like a true father should be. Essie had smiled dreamily.
Kate’s great-grandfather may have showered Essie with gifts over the lifetime of their marriage, but whenever Essie spoke of Niall, it was with the easy tenderness of one who loved deeply and knew she was cared for in return. In Essie’s stories, it wasn’t the jewels that sparkled—it was Niall. Gestures were far more important to her than gemstones.
Niall had brought her a cup of Irish breakfast tea in bed every morning until the day he died. Set the table for their breakfast before he went to bed each night—always with a little vase of roses, or forget-me-nots he’d picked specially from the garden. He’d planted roses outside her window for summer, and bulbs for winter.
Kate’s breath started to shorten as her eyes ran over and over the same lines:
… the dry-retching, the clammy hands and sweat at her temples. My mother and sister were both the same when they were with child …
Kate too had experienced all of these symptoms when she was with child.
She placed both hands on her stomach and closed her eyes for a beat—wanting the pain to pass, but clinging to the memory of those first flutters. Loss and hope knotted in her stomach.
Chapter 34
ESSIE
LOUISBURG SQUARE, BOSTON, 1994
Essie lowered herself into the swinging chair on her stoop. In her hand was a glass of fresh lemonade brought to her on a tray by her dear friend and housekeeper, Mrs Mackay.
It was a humid Sunday afternoon—the kind that promised a late afternoon squall off the Atlantic. But for now the sun was high and fuzzy, and Essie was grateful Mrs Mackay’s lemonade was not too far off sucking a lemon. She shook the glass to get the last drops then fished out a few ice cubes and wrapped them in her handkerchief, before pressing them against her neck as she watched her great-granddaughters Molly and Katherine play soccer across the road. The relief was immediate. How those girls could keep running about the park in this steamy summer heat was beyond her.
Her son and grandson were in the back garden with their glamorous wives—no doubt burning expensive steak and laying an elaborate lunch table with potato salad and corn with peppery lime butter. Once the dessert was cleared they were all going to have a little chat about the Sunny Banks Retirement Village being constructed in Cambridge. Glossy brochures had been left with her to have a think about a fortnight ago after a similar lunch culminating in a far-too-sweet sticky date pudding.
Aside from the fact there was no ‘sunny bank’ anywhere within a hundred-mile radius of Boston, Essie was not leaving her home. Her son and his offspring would never understand, of course. They just wanted her to be safe. Cared for. But how could Essie explain to her family—with their privilege, comfortable houses and education—that this house was as much a part of her as her arm? It represented everything she’d longed for as a child in London. Shelter, books, food. Family.
Someday soon this house would be passed to the next generation. She hoped they’d fill it to the brim with children, laughter and godawful plastic toys.
She loved it when these two energetic great-granddaughters visited and shrieked up and down the staircase, trailing sticky fingers down the wallpaper and carelessly spreading books and Lego across the floor for everyone else to trip over.
Molly had the ball but Katherine was making a determined tilt for it. Long skittish limbs flew in all directions. Their skin glowed with summer tans, and their hair fell in loose ponytails at their shoulders. Katherine sliced a goal past her older sister, and they slapped hands and danced around with their hands in the air, shaking their skinny butts. Gloriously gleeful and cocky.
She thought about the sheep guts the boys had used in the back alleys of Southwark and how they too shook their fists when they scored. She recalled the wistful way Flora and Maggie had watched them, desperate to hoist up their skirts and join in.
Essie’s breath caught, and she thought of the twins with their bandy legs. It had been over eighty years, and still the grief made her bones ache. Gertie’s recent passing compounded her sadness, though it gave Essie some comfort that her sister had slipped away quietly in her sleep instead of enduring illness or pain.
Nobody told you that, as you got older, grief and joy ebbed and flowed like the tides.
This afternoon, these filthy girls running about in denim cutoffs and bare feet were perfect.
As the girls leaned their freckled faces in together to share a secret, Essie caught a glimpse of her sisters, and it filled her heart to know that Gertie, Flora and Maggie’s blood—their spirit—ran through the veins of these glorious, healthy young girls. Molly and Katherine would finish school. Likely go to college. Choose their own paths.
Katherine—now bored with soccer—was climbing Christopher Columbus. She clutched at his rather bulbous nose and hauled a leg over his shoulder. What would become of them? Essie wondered. Molly was the more outspoken: precocious and articulate. Perhaps she’d become an attorney, like her great-great-aunt in London. Her younger sister Katherine—now sitting on Columbus’s shoulders, lost in her own thoughts—was quieter, more considered. She liked to steal away to the library, burying her head in Essie’s books. Last week she’d caught a pink-faced Katherine reading Jackie Collins when she’d insisted she needed to go upstairs and read Little Dorrit.