TransAtlantic (11 page)

He stopped, swelled his chest, held his ground, almost a fake fury, then walked on in his camel-hair vest.
Nigger. Filthy nigger
. For the first time, the word felt strangely welcome. An old shirt that he would have to wear in the future. Something to unbutton and tear off and rebutton again and again and again.

A FEW DAYS
before he left Cork—a day that would stay with him quietly, a flag, a kite, a remnant—he heard a knocking at the door on Brown Street. He was in the midst of writing. His forearms were splattered with ink. His back ached from the bend over the desk. He pushed back in the chair and listened to the voices drifting up from below, then leaned into the work of writing once more.

Later that evening he bathed and dressed and descended the stairs for dinner. A young woman sat at the end of the table, next to Isabel. She seemed at odds with the manner with which she had been seated. Hunched, awkward, but pretty. With fair hair. Her skin so very pale. He thought he knew her, but he did not know from where. She stood up and said his name.

—Good evening, he replied, still confounded.

A hush came over the table. It was obvious to him that some other response was needed. He coughed into his fist.

—Such a pleasure to see you, Madame, he said.

He could feel the embarrassment swell the room.

—Lily is leaving for America, said Isabel.

It was then that he recognized her. She seemed so very different out of her uniform. Younger even. He remembered her shape on the stairs. She had, it seemed, left the employ of Mr. Webb and journeyed from Dublin.

—She will leave from Cove in a few days, said Isabel.

—That’s wonderful, said Douglass.

—She walked here.

—Good Lord.

—Lily was inspired by you. Isn’t that right, Lily?

—By me?

A small panic seized him. He could see a blush come over the young woman’s face. She seemed to want to vanish. He wondered if she had left Webb’s house without rancor. He certainly had not meant to cause consternation. He nodded politely, tried to avoid her gaze. He recalled with a sharp pang the way she had whispered good-bye. He was glad nothing more had come from his presence in Dublin.

—Your speeches, said Isabel. They were a great inspiration. Isn’t that right, Lily?

The maid didn’t look up.

—Boston? said Douglass. Is that your intention?

She nodded and by degrees lifted her head: a surprising shine to her eyes.

—Perhaps I’ll try New York, she said.

A murmur of approval went around the room. Douglass ate quickly, quietly. He kept his gaze on his plate, but glanced upwards every now and then to see Isabel and her sisters lavish attention on the young maid. They served her and poured her a ginger mineral from a pitcher.

The maid seemed to balance a weighing scale about her eyes: she
seemed at any moment as if she could easily launch into a volley of words, or just as easily burst into tears.

When Douglass stood to excuse himself—he had more writing to do, he said—he raised a glass to Lily and said that he wished her well, that she would have Godspeed on her adventure, that he, too, hoped to return to his native land and to his wife and family soon.

The toast was taken up around the table. A clinking of water glasses. The maid flicked a brief glance at him: he was not sure if it was one of fear or anger. He made his way up the stairs. Her appearance had unnerved him. What exactly was he expected to do? How should he have reacted? He did indeed wish her well, but what more could he have said? Perhaps tomorrow he could recommend a prominent family for her to work with? Maybe Garrison or Chapman might know someone? Or he could suggest an area of the city where she would be at ease? Why, he wondered, had she come all the way to Cork by foot? And in such weather, too?

He sat at his writing desk, buried the nib of the pen in the inkwell. He had much to do, but he could not write. He tossed and turned beneath the covers.

The birds woke furious with dawn. A blanket of dark had been lifted from Brown Street. He heard his name called from below. He parted his curtains. Isabel stood in the puddled yard at the rear of the house.

—Lily left in the middle of the night, she said.

He could feel the cold against the pane of the window. A rooster crowed in the yard and a young hen rose in the air and scrambled away.

—Can you come with us, Mr. Douglass? she said.

An alarm in her voice.

—One moment, please.

There were letters to write. Correspondence to sign. Meetings to
arrange. A debate to prepare with the clergymen of the North Cathedral.

He closed the curtains and placed his washbasin upon the windowsill. He removed his nightshirt and dampened a towel. The water was cold to the touch. It tightened his skin. He heard his name called from below once more. Then the high whinny of a horse from the stables. The clop and splash of hooves. Two of the Jennings sisters, Charlotte and Helen, came from beneath the archway. They wore wide hats and green rain clothing. Isabel appeared again seconds later, holding a sturdy nag by the reins.

Douglass leaned out the window. He had forgotten for a moment that he was shirtless. He saw the two younger sisters turn away and giggle.

Isabel rigged a series of leather harnesses around the horses: she left the tallest horse for him.

He cursed himself. A maid. A simple maid. So, she had left early. And so what? It was hardly his fault. Yet he was eager to please. The inability to say no. He stepped back from the window, bumped his head on the frame. Perhaps it was a foolish desire on behalf of the young woman. It was not as if—not as if—surely not, no. He had not shown any impropriety. None at all. Certainly not.

He went to his writing desk, shuffled the papers. Weighed them up. Stacked them, then turned to pull on his shirt and boots. He had been given an oilskin slicker by Mr. Jennings. A fishermen’s coat. That, and a black hat, wide-brimmed and shapeless. He hadn’t yet worn it during his visit. He caught sight of himself in the swivel mirror. Preposterous. But he was not beyond laughing at himself. He clomped down the stairs, poked his head into the kitchen. Mr. Jennings slapped his teacup down and spurted tea across the thick wooden table. Douglass gave an exaggerated bow and said he was off for a few hours, he had been taken hostage, it seemed they were hoping to overtake
the young maid from Dublin, if he didn’t return by nightfall could they please send a search party and perhaps a Saint Bernard? The elderly Jennings sat back in his soft chair and laughed.

Douglass opened the latch on the back door, stepped outside and under the archway to the front of the house where the women sat on their horses, waiting. They smiled at the sight of him: the coat, the wide hat.

He had not been on a horse in a long time. He felt foolish as he swung up onto it. The stirrup bit hard into his foot. The animal was dark and muscled. He could feel its rib cage through his own body. He was surprised when Isabel got off her own mount and deftly readjusted the underbelly strap of his horse. A strength in the young woman that he had not seen before. She moved forward, patted the horse’s neck.

—We’ll take the Cove road, she said.

They went south along the quays, beyond the gaol, past the poor-house. Her sisters rode dainty and high-backed. Isabel was cruder in her style. She galloped up behind stagecoaches, glanced in, reared up, rode on. Looked around as she rode, calling out Lily’s name.

The streets were draped in an October gray. The wind pulsed wintry along the river. Rain spat down in flurries. Outside the fever hospital a man moaned with hunger. He stretched out his arms to them. He had a long, loping, simian stride. They rode past. He started hitting himself, like a man beset with bees and madness. They rode faster. A woman came out from an alleyway and begged for a penny. Her face was bearded, splotched with fever. They hurried again. If they stopped to give alms they would never get beyond the city.

Douglass was glad now of the green slicker and the hat. He realized after a few miles that the hat shaded his face almost completely, that nobody on the roadside could discern who was underneath.

The city seemed to stop at a brick warehouse and then suddenly
there were trees. The road curled and whipped out into parcels of green. They passed a stagecoach, waving at the passengers arrayed along the side. The coach was piled high with boxes and suitcases. It looked as if it might totter over. They inquired after the maid but nobody had seen her.

Douglass remained shaded beneath the brim on his hat.

—Fine weather, he said through the light rain.

He could not shake the American out of his accent.

—Indeed, sir, for a Yankee.

The Jennings sisters smiled as they pulled away from the stagecoach. He tried to gallop ahead of them, but the sisters were more than capable: they braided around him, spurred him on.

In the countryside small ribbons of smoke curled up in the air. He was amazed the way the poor Irish lived underground. He could see their hovels from the road, built from turf and sticks and mounds of grass. Their fields were tiny. So many hedges. An occasional run of stone wall. The children looked like remnants of themselves. Spectral. Some were naked to the waist. Many of them had sores on their faces. None had shoes. He could see the structures of them through their skin. The bony residue of their lives.

He cast his mind back to Dublin and the little boy who had welded himself to his shoulder. It seemed so long ago now. The people didn’t frighten him anymore. It was not so much that he had become immune, it was more that he knew he would not be harmed. He wondered what might happen if this road ran into a road in Baltimore, or Philadelphia, or Boston, how the people might meld into each other.

He wanted now to find Lily, to wish her a truly safe journey. He spurred his horse on. They found shapes on the road, shadows, but none of them were the maid.

In the small villages the rain kept curiosity at bay. They rode out into the beauty of the dripping fields. The sound of the hooves like
pistolfire. A rainbow hung on the sky. They halted their horses under a hazel tree where someone had built a low bench. Isabel unwrapped the sandwiches and took a flask of tea from her saddlebags. She had even brought cups. Her sisters sat on the bench. They melded well with Isabel: they were prettier and quieter, as if required by some strange law to balance her out. It was, the sisters agreed, a daring adventure, but they should not go too much farther. It was already near lunchtime. They would never find Lily now.

—We have plenty of time, said Isabel. It’s early yet.

—My sister has a mind of her own. Unfortunately she lost it a few years ago.

—It’s ten miles to Cove. And ten back, said Helen.

—We’ll lose the light.

—Oh, please do come. Please.

The road had become busier with stagecoaches and jaunting cars loaded with cases. The families had their eyes set on the distance. Their children were bundled into grim strips of blanket. The wooden tongues of the cars groaned. The carriages swayed in the ruts. The horses looked bound for the yard. They were bent over with the work of keeping to the road.

The Jennings sisters galloped west, then south. It was, said Charlotte, a prettier journey, and quieter, too. The road rambled and turned. Still, there were families upon them, all heading south, gathering, small rivers.

They asked in vain for any sighting of the young maid. The closer they got to the sea, the more the roads thickened with leaving. Vendors had set up stalls against the hedges. Families were hawking the last of their possessions. Douglass and the sisters had to slow their horses down to get through the crowds. All manner of things for sale. Fiddles, inkwells, pots, hats, shirts. Paintings strung on the hedges. Curtains hung from the branches of trees. Pieces of cloth with half-moons,
the once-gaudy colors faded with time. A beautiful silk dress, embroidered with thin strips of gold, draped sadly over the seat of a jaunting car.

They pushed their horses on through, towards the cliffs that overlooked the harbor.

A man came towards them. He wore two boards draped across his shoulders, tied with a string. On it were the prices to Boston, New York, Newfoundland. He called out the prices in a singsong. Some children tugged at his pockets. He slapped them away.

The crowd grew so thick that they had to dismount to guide their horses.

A young priest walked among the crowd, looking for the sick. To administer the Last Rites. He was fingering rosary beads as he went. He glanced at Douglass. They had never seen each other before, but for a brief moment they both thought they recognized one another and they stopped to say something, but nothing came, no words between them.

The priest stepped away, under the overarching green branches of a tree where a child’s clothes hung limp.

—Father, said Isabel. Excuse me, Father.

The priest turned and stepped towards them. His eyes were huge and tired. He pulled the rosary beads tight around his fingers. His face sharpened. His voice was bitter. No, the priest said, he had not seen anyone answering to Lily’s description. He toed his foot into the mud, as if he might find her there. He turned then and spat into his hands. No, he said again, sharply.

The priest went on, calling to the people around him in the Irish language.

Isabel shivered and touched the neck of her horse. Douglass pulled his hat down further and guided his horse away by the reins. The sisters, too, had fallen into a reverent silence. The wind came off the sea
and rose up to meet them. The harbor curved like a question mark. A dozen or more wooden ships were dotted on the water below. A small, sad flotilla of masts and tightened sails. Their names scrubbed off by the waves.

They walked their horses to within ten yards of the edge of the cliff. The town itself lay below them like a twitching thing. The thatch of the roofs. The bend of the trees. Carriages moving like small insects along the waterfront towards the square. Douglass knew what chaos lay down there, what desires, what fevers. Yet it was immense with beauty. The town of Cove genuflected to the water. Birds flew ravenously around the cliffs, weightless on the updrafts.