Not the Same Sky (30 page)

Authors: Evelyn Conlon

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BOOK: Not the Same Sky

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The plane moved in over Ireland—a small island at the best and the worst of times.

When Joy saw Oscar she was suddenly shy and didn’t know why. These unexpected things happen when you decide to live your life with a stranger: moments of disbelief—surely this cannot be? Moments of puzzlement—what do I do now? And moments of extreme bashfulness. Presumably this strangeness was also because Joy felt that she was a different person now than when she had left a mere few weeks ago. She was going to have to live with those girls, they were inside her now.

They conversed their way across the city, Oscar giving her news of friends and thoughts he’d had while she was away, her giving him bits of pictures out of chronology. The chat would have to spread out over weeks. Even the dry talk, of which there wasn’t much, was charged with interest as they contemplated each other. And then they reached home.

Two days later Joy went back to work.

‘Well, what did they do?’

‘They lived, for one thing, and they had children, a lot of children.’

‘And is the fellow related to you?’

‘Well, we never really established whether he is or not. It didn’t seem to matter that much.’

‘What! After all that?’

And soon the butcher and the baker did not want to hear another word about Australia, which was a pity because Joy hadn’t finished with it yet, hadn’t taken out all the surprises. The florist, who stayed interested the longest, wanted to know if she thought a memorial here would be a good idea, but she said that she wasn’t sure, she thought the story was there, not here. All that was left of them here was their names. Many of them surely had sisters left behind whose hearts broke afresh every morning. Opened every single morning with the first light, and broke all over again, even though they might have mended a little during sleep. But in time, those sisters too would have realised that they needed the mornings to live. They would, however, have named all their first-born daughters for them.

‘And also, I don’t know what memorials are for now. Why pick one thing and not another?’ Joy said.

‘That’s an odd thought for someone in your job.’

But maybe it was because of her job that she thought names were all that mattered. But not the name itself, what was done with it, how the person had carried it.

In time Joy talked of these things less. She wanted to be where she was, the modern world, and she wanted to stay there.

Oscar and she were trying to ignore the incessant din that was making its way towards Christmas, and although they wanted to close their door, there were people to be seen. They went to visit her parents and had a sober, cared-for, evening. Joy’s aunt was there, her face puckered, her mind off searching for something to complain about, some disaster to remember, some grievance not dusted for a while. Joy and her mother raised their eyebrows together behind her back and the history of that made them happy. Oscar was happy too, nothing other than his presence being expected from him. And then there was Oscar’s parents’ party. And then their own. None of us have children, Joy thought.

‘So, Joy, are you going back to Australia to do the memorial thing?’

She told them that she didn’t know, couldn’t decide, but that she was glad she had gone. ‘It’s very far,’ she told them.

On Tuesday they had their drinks. They were all there, even the quarry men. Joy warmed the place as best she could before they arrived and made hot punch—she did not believe in mulling wine, she would not do that to wine.

On Friday, Christmas Eve, Oscar checked the last post. There was a letter from Australia.

Joy began to make a map of bird migration. She found a picture of Coronelli’s globe, and although New Zealand isn’t there and Australia is marked
inconnue
, and Ireland is not the shape of Ireland, it’s fine to mark the movement of birds. They can fly over and under Saturn and rest on flying horses. The swifts, being perfectly designed for life on the wing, can sleep as they fly. Marine invertebrates are carried by ocean currents, crustaceans migrate to reproduce in seawater, insects and frogs move too. But it is the flight of birds that interests her most. It is their fine art that moves her. They go from where they breed to where they winter. They may travel over the open seas or close to the coasts—even the most private of them become gregarious on these journeys and flock together, often making a comfortable V shape to help them in their travels. They have learned where the sun and the stars are. They move when their pituitary glands feel the darkening evenings. They go to where the food is, a lot like us. Some of them have altruistic tendencies and some don’t—also like us. And there are regional variations in some birdsong. They get their accents and put them in their mouths, so no matter where they are we should know from where they came.

Acknowledgements

This novel, which started with a personal ‘hungry grass’ moment in Gundagai in 1973, is based on the true story of the Irish Famine Orphan Girls, who were shipped to Australia between 1848 and 1850. Although the facts of their shipping are accurate the characters are fictional. A number of works were essential to the research:

Barefoot and Pregnant? Irish Famine Orphans in Australia
, Trevor McClaughlin, The Genealogical Society of Victoria, Melbourne, 1991, second edition, 2001.

A Decent Set of Girls
, Richard Reid and Cheryl Mongan, Yass Heritage Project, 1996.

The diary of Charles Strutt, La Trobe Library, Melbourne.

The Famine Girls
, a radio documentary by Siobhan McHugh, RTE and ABC, 2001.

I would like to thank my friends who have had to put up with the vagaries associated with a work like this. Particular thanks to Pat Murphy, Helen Carey of Mockingbird Arts, Gina Moxley, Patsy Murphy, Sean O’Reilly, Anne Haverty, Michael Cronin and Barra O Seaghdha. Thanks also to Rebecca Draisey-Collishaw and Deirdre O’Neill, the staff at
The Jeanie Johnston
ship on the Liffey and Mary Clemmey of Mary Clemmey Literary Agency, London. Most thanks have to go to Fintan Vallely, Warren, Trevor and all their care. Thanks are also due to Louth County Council, Monaghan County Council, Somhairle Mac Conghail and the Arts Council of Ireland.

In Australia my appreciation goes to The Writers’ House in Varuna, all at the Hyde Park Barracks Museum for their help, Cheryl and Edgar Mongan for times wandering in Yass, Gundagai and thereabouts, Jeff Kildea for, among many things, bringing me to hear the lecture by Tony Earls on Thomas Moore at The Aisling Society, and Tom Power for inviting me to give the 2010 Memorial Address at Hyde Park Barracks. Thanks to Meg and Terry, Liz and Lorraine, Rebecca and Trevor, Siobhan, and my nephew Andrew Roe. I am grateful to Perry McIntyre for encouragement.

The late, beloved Diana and Sol Encel have always been a constant for me in Sydney.

In Melbourne my thanks go to Frances Devlin-Glass, Mike Richards, Jenny Little, Greg Rochlin, but in particular to Marianne Wallace-Crabbe.

It has been a pleasure to work with Julia Beaven, Laura Andary and all at Wakefield Press.