Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [48]
Bridie and Maria, the two Irish girls who had been so amused by Sam, suggested she claimed the bed next to theirs. Their lilting voices full of warmth and friendliness reminded Beth of Kathleen and acted as a salve to her bruised heart.
‘We can meet with the single men in the family quarters,’ Maria said with a hint of mischief in her eyes. ‘My uncle emigrated last year and he wrote home to say there was dancing and singing in the evenings. Miss Giles is only here to make sure no men come into this room, so she is, but she can’t stop us having fun outside it.’
‘Have you left your sweetheart behind?’ Bridie asked. ‘You have the red-eyed look of a girl who’s been crying for days.’
All at once Beth found herself confiding in them about Molly, crying again as she described how hard it was to leave her. Maria put her arms around her and drew her head down on to her skinny shoulder. ‘Sure, and don’t we know how hard that is! When I said goodbye to Mammy and the little ones I thought my heart would break. But we’re on our way to somewhere better, Beth. We’ll do well there and before long we’ll get them to join us. You can do the same for Molly.’
By the following morning they were out in the Atlantic and as the sea became rougher many people began to suffer from seasickness. Beth felt well, but knowing the sound of retching and the smell of vomit in the stuffy quarters were likely to make her ill too, she went up on deck.
It was very cold and windy, but after the constant noise of the ship’s engines and people shouting to one another over it below decks, it was good to have quiet and solitude. Beyond the railings which separated the steerage passengers’ small part of the deck from the remainder, a couple of stewards were exercising dogs, and one lone man in a heavy overcoat and a fur hat with ear-flaps was walking briskly up and down the deck.
Beth stood at the ship’s rail staring out at the huge expanse of empty grey sea before her stretching to infinity and smiled at the memory of the previous evening.
She had gone with Bridie and Maria into the family area to be introduced to some of the people they had come over from Ireland with. At first she had been repulsed because almost everyone was very shabby and rather dirty, and they all seemed to have so many children. They made her think of the Irish back in Liverpool who lived in such terrible squalor in the slum courts. Her parents had brought her up to think that the men were good-for-nothings, always drunk and fighting, and that their women bred like rabbits and neglected their offspring.
But she was soon to see that however poor these people were, and whatever conditions they’d lived in back in Ireland and Liverpool, they loved their children and wanted a better life for them. She found it impossible to remain aloof when she was greeted with such warmth and interest, and when all about her were such gaiety and optimism. One man with a beautiful tenor voice began to sing, and before long everyone was joining in. An old man got out his fiddle and two little girls were encouraged to show off their Irish dancing talents.
It turned into a real party when Sam and some of the other single men came in to join them. Drink was being passed around, but most were just drunk on sheer delight to be on their way to America. The fiddler broke into a jig and to Beth’s surprise Sam began the dancing by catching hold of Maria’s hands and urging her up on to her feet. Beth would have been content to sit and watch, but as others began to get up and dance, the jig became faster and soon her feet were tapping. When a young man with red hair and an even redder face held out his hand to her, she was only too happy to be his partner.
It was not the kind of sedate dancing she’d learned at school but an outpouring