Chapter 4 #20
Tomás cut and sewed a little bag out of canvas—such tasks came easily to him, from his time in the boot-mending workshop—and wove a long drawstring of leather through its top, and into this he put every coin he was paid.
The drawstring he then tied around his waist: he slept with it under his shirt, to the amusement of the sappers around him.
What are you saving for, Tommy? they cried. Drinks for all of us? A tumble with a woman? New boots for you to wax? A fine suit of clothes to go a-courting? Come on, Tommy, don’t be shy, you can tell us.
He ignored the taunts but privately he wondered: what would he do with this money?
The revisions project was coming to a close and his division was being disbanded.
There would be more work for him, he had been told, and he should present himself soon at the offices in Dublin.
But what should he do for now, and where should he go?
This question was pressing on his mind as they came, like the closing of a compass’s circle, to where he had begun, the town where the workhouse was located, at base camp for the mappers.
That night, he slipped out of his hayloft, climbing down the ladder, easing open the door, and tiptoeing through the barracks—he needn’t have worried, as everyone else had disappeared into the town, in search of drink and more.
The dark was thick and absolute, clouds standing resolute between him and the moon, but Tomás could have found his way about a place he didn’t know with a blindfold over his eyes.
He kept to back-streets and lanes, to the shadows, hoping he wouldn’t meet any of his division, because he didn’t want to be asked where he was going, or why.
It wasn’t something he could have explained to himself.
The walls of the workhouse were visible from the main street as Tomás crossed it, moving from one alley to another.
Further down, towards the river, was the sound of carousing and shouting, the light of an inn spilling like shattered glass onto the cobbles.
He barely glanced towards it but kept going.
When he came to the gates, locked of course, he paused for a moment, then moved left, skirting the walls.
No lights here, no candles illuminating the windows.
He saw the hulk of the main building, with the children’s dormitory behind it, and the shoe-workshop; he saw the yard, where he used to find the chalk stones; he saw the warden’s office, with a line of light under the door.
His sharp eyes noticed two figures flitting across the yard from the kitchens towards the dormitory: he recognised, somewhere in himself, the bandy-legged gait of a barefoot workhouse child, the risk such a being might take to grub around like an animal at the back door of the kitchens to find even a morsel of extra food, and he let out a low whistle.
One child froze, causing the other to barrel into him. Tomás whistled again, and the first child took a step towards the railings, then another.
“Who’s there?” the child whispered.
“Tomás. You might remember me—I used to be here myself. Come on over here, will you?”
“We will not,” the second child said, in an urgent tone. “We’ve to go.”
“I won’t hurt you. Come,” he beckoned to them, “just for a minute.”
The children approached the railings, warily. Tomás saw that one was clutching a handful of peelings, the other a strand of cabbage.
“Have you anything to eat, mister?”
Tomás felt in his pockets. “I don’t,” he admitted, anguished. “I’m sorry.”
“Ah, sure, I remember you,” the first child said, leaning up against the railings, unfazed, as if it weren’t at all extraordinary to disappear from this place for almost two years, then reappear in the middle of the night. “You’re the lad who got taken away by the redcoats, isn’t that right?”
“It is,” Tomás said. “I was.”
“And how did they treat you?” the child said conversationally. “Aren’t they a terrible fierce lot and—”
“Let’s go,” the second boy hissed, tugging at the sleeve of his friend. “What do you want with us, anyway?”
“I…” Tomás felt his words desert him, as if they had been written in chalk and sudden rain had washed them away. What did he want? Why had he come? “Would you know…a girl…?”
The child grinned. “There are lots of girls here. Would there be one in particular you were thinking of?”
“She’s called Seraphina.”
The boys, listening, considering, shook their heads.
“Or Phina?”
Again, they shook their heads: no.
“The wardens call her Frances.”
The taller boy, the more gregarious of the two, pushed a carrot peeling into his mouth and chewed energetically. “Isn’t that the one whose daddy came back from Merikay for her?” he mused, addressing his friend. “She has the yellow hair, and the curls, a—”
Tomás gripped the railings with both hands. “Her father came for her, did he, all the way from America?”
“He did.” The boy chewed again, then swallowed. “But he was asking at the office with her other name, Seraphina was it, and the warden was a new one and he only knew her as Frances, so he told the man there was no one by that name here, no daughter of his.”
“And he left?”
“He did.”
“Without her?”
“Without her.”
The three of them contemplated this story in appalled silence. Tomás was very aware of the painful thud of his heart, a compression in his throat.
“And then,” the boy continued, and even his jauntiness was dimmed, “she heard about it later, but it was too late, your man her father had gone, and she went wild, didn’t she?”
“She did,” the second boy said. “They’d to lock her in the shed.”
Tomás leaned his forehead into the cold iron of the railings; the images assailing him were disjointed and senseless.
The father sailing all the way back from the New World, in search of surviving family, him tracing her to the workhouse, and then to be turned away.
The girl realising her daddy had been so close, and no way to reach him, and then her restrained and shut in the shed.
He didn’t know how to piece these strands together, how to stitch them into a narrative.
“Did she…” He had no idea of what he needed to ask, he didn’t know how to proceed.
“But now she’s to go to the other side of the world in a big boat.”
“A boat?”
“Yes, her and all the older girls. The wardens said that there’s a penal colony, far away, on the other side of the world, stuffed to the gills it is with just men, and no women, so they’ve been told to send workhouse girls out there because—”
“A penal colony?” Tomás demanded. “Was it Australia? Phina’s being sent to Australia?”
The boy nodded. “That was the place. The dormitory for the older girls is empty now—they all went yesterday. They’re to be wives or servants for the—”
Tomás reached through the railing and gripped the boy’s arm. “Where were they sailing from? Do you remember?”
The child struggled against his grip. “Hey, leave off, I don’t know, it was a big boat, they said, but—”
At that moment, a cloud slid back and away from the moon and a silvery light splashed down on the place, the yard, the three of them, and the second child seemed to be struck by a thought: he opened his mouth and uttered a word.
It was an approximation of a placename, with one or two extra syllables to it, but recognisable as a port not twenty miles from there. Tomás swung his gaze towards the boy. He spoke the name of the town, and the boy thought about it, then nodded, yes, that was the place.
In his bed, in his home, years and years later, Tomás opens his eyes.
He sees: sunlight lying stretched out in a strip along the floor that rises up and over the table and a chair, down to the floor, over the rag-rug, and up again to lay itself over the bed, across his feet.
He sees: a jug held aloft over a bowl, and a twisting rope of milk reaching up towards it.
He sees: a pair of boots, his, by the door, one leaning its open mouth into the other.
He sees: a woman standing by the bowl, her hand attached to the handle of the jug, her face wearing an expression of abstraction.
Tomás parts his lips. He is fearful of looking around too closely, at the corners of the room or the black mouth of the hearth, in case his father might be lurking somewhere, looking at him reproachfully, perhaps missing a limb or part of his face.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep, weeks or even months, but he is aware that he is now awake and feeling several things: the inexorable swish-swish of blood along his veins, a strange stiffness in the joints of his hips, a healing itch in the skin of his wrists.
He finds also, to his surprise, as if it has been gathering itself together while he slept, like a mist, that in his head is a plan.
A clear and attainable plan. He blinks, awed by the glow of it.
He regards it from all sides, like a man who has come across a great heap of gold coins by the wayside, and cannot believe they are there for the taking.
Tomás moves his tongue inside his dry mouth. He blinks his eyes, open and shut. He clears his throat.
“May I,” he begins, and his voice is hoarse, “may I have some milk? I’ve a terrible thirst on me.”
The woman turns her head, puts down the jug, her face opening to him like a flower. He extracts his hand from the bedclothes and holds it out to her.
Tomás ran through the dark streets, his breath ragged.
At the barracks, he rolled up a blanket, strapped it to his back, and woke one of the sappers, a young lad not much older than himself who occasionally shared his tobacco with him.
I’m going off for a day or two, Tomás hissed into his half-awake ear.
Wha’? the lad muttered, turning over in his camp bed.
Reconnaissance, Tomás said, giving his nightshirt a shake, tell them for me, will you? The sapper nodded, blearily, and dropped back into sleep.