Maggie's Door (3 page)

SIX

NORY

Who was watching her? She couldn’t run from whoever it was, she knew that.

Anna’s lined face came into her mind. Anna’s angry face.
You have come this far. Be strong, child, fight back.

Nory lay as still as she could, letting the person think she was asleep. At the same time she reached out around her, digging her fingers into the cold sand, searching for a rock or a shell. It would have to be something large enough to fell a man with one blow.

And there it was, a rock so large it would take both her hands to raise it. As he came nearer she’d roll over, her hands underneath it, and lift herself to her knees.

She’d have to do it in one sure motion, rolling, lifting, hurling it so hard he’d fall onto the sand, and somehow she’d crawl back to the road, back and back until there was somewhere to hide.

The man didn’t move. He stayed there, bent almost double.

After a while her arms and legs ached from keeping them so rigid. Still he didn’t come.

She watched him, trying not to blink for a long time, so long that at last her arms and legs went limp in spite of themselves. Her breath slowed, and there was a dream.

A ship was moving away from her. The path of water spread between the stern and the quay as it sailed toward the open sea. Someone held one hand out to her, calling,
Nory, Nory.

And then she woke. The sky was a bowl of deepest blue, and a path of gold lay across the sea as the sun touched it. It seemed as if she might walk across it, dance across it.

She sat up awkwardly and ran her hands through the tangle of her hair, brushing out the sand. She thought she had never seen anything so beautiful as that sea and that day. But as she moved her foot she could feel the ache in it.

It all came back to her: her foot and then . . .

The man at the top of the hill!

She twisted around, but no one was there. Had she dreamed it?

And another thought. How could she walk the rest of the way? How far did she still have to go? She knew very little of this road, only that there was still most of Galway to be walked before she reached the ship.

She had to eat. She pulled the cloth bag up on her lap and opened it, feeling two pieces of brack as hard as the stones on the road, and a bit of dried meat no larger than her thumb.
Oh, Anna, meat.

She reached for a piece of brack, and as she took the first bite a shadow fell across the sand in front of her.

It was too late for the rock. Too late to scramble away.

Nory dropped the brack and stared up at a strange-looking girl, her face filthy, her curly hair thick and snarled, and so long it hid her eyes. Under her torn clothes with one sleeve almost gone, Nory could see the shape of her bones.

The girl scrambled over Nory’s legs to reach for the brack. Without stopping to wipe off the sand, she bit into it, and before Nory could stop her, it was gone.

The girl licked her fingers, then ran her tongue over her lips, looking at the bag.

Quickly Nory pulled it under her skirt, then looked up. Suppose the girl found out about her foot! She glanced down at the piece of cloth that was wrapped around it, and with one hand she rearranged the fold of her skirt to cover it.

“You have something to eat,” the girl said. “And I have had nothing this day.” She grinned, showing darkened teeth. “Except for your miserable brack.”

Nory narrowed her eyes. “I have nothing else for you,” she said in her fiercest voice.

“I could take the bag,” the girl said. “I don’t think you can come after me.”

“I won’t let you.”

“But I will not.” The girl stood up, edging her foot toward Nory’s skirt, lifting a bit of the hem with her toes. “You are trying to get to the port,” she said. “But you might never get there with that.”

She nudged Nory’s foot with hers. “You with your wound that may fester.” She leaned over. “You’ll be lucky if it doesn’t turn black.”

“Black,” Nory repeated, thinking of a woman in Ballilee who had somehow infected her leg on a wire fence. It
had
turned black, and grown to twice its size.

The girl pushed back her hair. “I’ll reward you for your food. There’s something I saw. . . .” She leaned forward, covering Nory’s foot with the skirt again and giving it a small pat. She turned to wander along the edge of the water, following a piece of wood that was caught in the surf.

She called over her shoulder, “You were like a scrap of rag blown onto the sand, not worth a look. I watched you.” She broke off as the plank was caught by an incoming wave, and reached out for it, soaking herself.

“There,” she said, dragging the plank toward Nory. “You’ll have something to lean on.”

She stood there, still looking at the bag. “I should see if there’s more food,” she said. “But I won’t.” She showed those darkened teeth, almost smiling. Then she was gone, up and around the dunes toward the road.

SEVEN

SEAN

The day was full of wind: it tore up the sand in front of him and curled the waves back toward the sea. He found Mam’s three-legged stool on the side of the road, hidden in the reeds and almost covered by the fine grains from the strand. Why was it there? What did it mean?

He might have stayed there forever, circling back and forth, knowing they had been there, asking people who shook their heads dumbly, but then he saw a girl who put out her hand. Her nails were cracked and broken and she looked as if she was starving.

The girl’s face reminded him of his sister Mary’s, the dark curly hair, the large eyes, but this girl’s face was smooth, without the marks of the pox.

He broke off a small piece of the bread crust for her, lowering his head against the wind, feeling the grit in his eyes. “I have lost my family,” he said, willing his mouth to stay firm, his eyes dry. “My mam and a small boy. They had a cart.”

She closed her eyes, sucking on the bread. It took her a long time to swallow that wee bit, and she didn’t answer until she had finished. “A cart,” she said. “I think I saw a cart going south toward the port. A woman and a boy, maybe.” She shrugged and held out her hand again. “Maybe it was a girl after all. I’m not sure.”

Something was in his eye, scratching; he rubbed at it with his thumb, then broke off a second piece of bread, a piece no bigger than his thumbnail.

She put the bread in the sleeve of her dress, cupping her hands over her eyes, her long dark hair blowing against her face. “They were going down the road, each holding one of the cart poles. I don’t know how long ago.”

His eye was tearing now. He sank down on the ground, using the edge of his sleeve to get rid of the sand, then reached into his pocket to find something, anything, he could use to take it out.

“A ribbon!” she said. “Look.”

He opened his eyes, squinting, to see Nory’s ribbon caught by the wind, held against one of the reeds, then free again and blown across the strand.

He reached for it but then it was gone, with the girl scampering after it.

He stood there thinking about the ribbon and all he had lost. He could still feel the grain of sand in his eye. He picked up the three-legged stool and went on, walking the last miles, hurrying, sometimes running. He’d catch up with Mam and Patch. How much slower they’d be than he was, even though he kept crisscrossing the road, climbing the dunes, searching the water’s edge. Why hadn’t they waited for him? And he was tortured by worry: Maybe the cart the girl had seen hadn’t been his cart at all.

Two days later he reached the port. His eye was still sore but the sand had washed itself out. He carried the stool over his head. He had thought about leaving it a dozen times. Once he had even set it down on the road, but he had gone back for it. When Mam had closed the door of the house for the last time she had taken it with her.

“There’s no room on the cart,” he had said. What was she thinking of?

She had shaken her head, her face rough. “It’s what I have.”

How unlike her it had seemed. Mam, who told him he was wasting time when he watched the sunlight sliding across the floor in patterns, who became angry when she saw him petting the goat’s wiry head.

Her stool had rocked back and forth in the wagon. Pa had taken the wood from an old tree, cut it and smoothed it, and at the end carved a small rose in the center. Strange for him to remember Mam’s words:
“It’s what I have.”

How many of them had sat on that stool when they were all home, he or Francey, Liam, Michael, Mary, Da, or sometimes Granny, leaning a little to even it out on the rough earth of the floor. On dark evenings Granny had told stories, and so had Da, and he had listened, staring into the glow of the peat fire, seeing the shapes of the people they talked about there. A dreamer, they all called him, laughing.

All he had now. Even his ticket was gone, tucked in under a loose board in the cart.

He had eaten the Englishman’s food, a little bit each time, saving some for when he found Mam and Patch. But the crumbs of bread and the lard that filled his stomach made him feel worse. Would he ever see them again?

On the pier below there was an explosion of noise and color. Men rolled barrels and shouted at each other. An endless line of people with packages and boxes, and even a few with squealing shoats in their arms, waited in front of an office door. Beyond them was the ocean, gray and angry as the rain began. The harbor was dotted with ships.

He went down the hill and wandered back and forth across the quay. Were Mam and Patch on one of those ships? And always he wondered: Why hadn’t they waited for him?

He crouched on the filthy quay. Should he keep going? And how could he do that without a ticket?

He went to the line of people and stood at the end. The line moved slowly, and he began to talk with the man ahead of him. “It’ll take two pounds for a ticket,” the man said. “And they’ll give you enough food and water to stay alive. Just alive.”

Two pounds.

More money than he had seen in a lifetime.

He wandered off the line, the stool on his head protecting him from the driving rain. He tried to ignore a woman who called after him: “Thinks he’s Queen Victoria, he does, with his own seat to perch on.”

Ahead of him was a sailor, wearing a striped uniform with bows fluttering from his cap. Sean followed him into a small shack and found a short line of men signing on for ship’s work. All of them were older than he was; all of them acted as if they knew what they were doing.

“I’m a good worker,” he said to the man in front of him, his mouth dry. “I need a job on a ship.”

“So does every other man on this quay,” the man said over his shoulder.

Sean waited anyway, until only that man was left in front of him. “There’s a place for me on the
Clarence,
” the man told the woman at the window. “O’Brian.”

“Able-bodied seaman,” she said, nodding. A paper was shoved out the window at the man, and he disappeared with it into the crowd.

And then it was Sean’s turn. He looked up at the woman and was startled by what he saw. She was as large as any man, her face pitted with the marks of the pox much deeper than the small marks on Mary’s cheeks. Her eyes were so small they almost disappeared into that massive flesh. “Well?” she asked, and even her voice was unusual, with an accent that wasn’t familiar.

“I can do anything.” He could hardly get out the words.

The woman, toothless, grinned at him. “Climb to the top of the mast in the midst of a storm?”

He nodded. “Anything.”

“Next man,” she said.

“Wait.” He put the stool down and gripped the edge of her counter, feeling so dizzy he thought he might faint. “Please.”

She looked down at the papers in front of her, shuffling them with dirty fingers. “Why should I give you something?”

He shook his head, trying to think of a reason. “Food,” he said, knowing he wasn’t making sense; he had none of the Englishman’s food left, and hadn’t eaten today. Then he saw her looking at the stool in front of him, Ma’s stool with the small rose in the center.

She pointed at it with one massive finger.

He knew what she wanted. She would give him passage in return for the stool. He had no choice.
Ah, Mam,
he thought. Then he nodded at the woman.

She raised her eyebrows, shuffled the papers one more time. “Cook? Is that it?”

“No, I . . . ,” he began, remembering Mam draining the potatoes in the rush basket. He didn’t know one thing about cooking food. “Yes. I will cook.”

She looked up at him from under bushy eyebrows. “The pay,” she said, “is just a few coins for the whole trip.”

“Yes.”

“Cook’s assistant,” she said.

“Yes.”

She jerked her head. “Bring the stool around the back.” But as she pushed a paper through the bars at him she said, “There’s something first, though.”

Sean leaned forward.

“Ballast,” she said. “You’ll have to act as ballast on the
Manchester
to Liverpool. The ship will be in soon.” Her eyes slid away from him. “The cargo of the
Manchester
is no longer . . .” She hesitated. “Alive.”

Sean’s eyes widened.

“Pigs,” she said. “Diseased. They were cast into the ocean.”

“What’s ballast?” he began, but already she was waving him away.

He picked up the papers and backed away from her.

“Ballast?” he heard someone say. “I wouldn’t do that if I had to lie down dead in the street instead.”

Sean shrugged. What difference did it make?

EIGHT

NORY

Nory watched the road beneath her; it was swept with sand in patches, or mud where the sea had reached it at high tide. Once she stopped to pick up a blue stone, the color of Patch’s eyes.

Oh, Patch,
she thought, remembering.

“I will give you my best blue stone, Nory, because you are my best sister.”

“I thought it was Maggie.”

He had shaken his head, his hair swirling.

“Well, Celia then.”

“Never.”

Patch with the blue stone eyes.

She stopped to rest often, but she was careful to choose a spot out of the way, where no one would see her. Once she traced the letters on the plank the girl had given her. English letters, English words. Granda knew all of them. He had fought in a war long ago and had traveled all over speaking that language. She knew some letters, of course. The
R,
the letter that began her last name,
Ryan,
and an
S
too. She had seen Sean Red scratch his own name in the earth often enough. What had he said?

“When I’m rich someday, Nory, I’ll buy a writing stick, and silk paper.”

“How are you going to be rich, Sean Red?”

“I will get me a farm in Brooklyn, America, and have fields of food to sell.” He had waggled his eyebrows at her. “If you are lucky, I might give you a head of cabbage or a bit of garlic to hang around your neck.”

“
Fuafar
garlic! Keep it for your own self.”

She traced a third letter with her finger. It was a pointy roof without a house to go with it, and she thought it might be in her own Ryan name but she couldn’t remember.

She sat back, wondering about the plank and its letters. Could it be from a ship? Why was it floating along by itself in the surf? What might have happened to that ship and all the people who were on it?

She thought instead of the girl with the blackened teeth and the curly hair who had taken her food and left her the plank.

With the plank she was able to hobble along. The rough wood bruised the soft skin under her arm and blistered her fingers, but by the second day she could feel the pull in her foot as the cut slowly began to heal. All she had to do, she told herself, was to climb one more hill, to circle around one more curve in the road.

Sometimes as she walked she lifted her head to watch the birds wheeling far up over the sea. She always hoped to see the white bird and remind it of the biscuit, but all she saw were the smaller, darker cliff birds. She tried not to think of the food the bird had dropped into the sea. Did it mean bad fortune for her journey? Bad fortune for Sean Red, for Patch, for Granda, Celia, and Da?

She moved around a mother and a little girl huddled together. The daughter mumbled something and was still again.

Nory knew she had to sleep; it was hard to keep her eyes open. But the place she chose had to be away from those who might take her bag or her shawl while she slept. She looked for somewhere in the dunes where she could hide, or for boreens, those small paths that led away from the sea. She even followed one for a short distance, but nowhere seemed safe.

At first there were still people to be seen. A couple crouched in the high grass and stared at her as she passed. And down below women searched uselessly for food at the water’s edge.

By the time she reached the top of the boreen and the ruined shed she was alone. Here the sound of the sea was muted; there was only the swish of the sea grass as it rubbed against the stones of the shed. The field was picked bare, no plants showing their leaves, no lazy beds of potatoes, only a cart with one of its wheels propped up against it.

She slipped into the shed, ducked under the pieces of roof that had fallen inside, and rolled herself tight in one corner with the bag in back of her. It would be hard for anyone to see her, she told herself.

She fell asleep looking up at the sky with its dark gray clouds and the threat of rain and dreamed of Granda telling her the story of white birds, and strange worlds under the sea.