Another Man’s Child

‘It was,’ Norah said with a sigh. ‘Now, to keep Celia out of your clutches, she is being sent there. I doubt it would help if you disappeared off the scene now because my father wouldn’t know where you’d gone to and whether you’d be back. Celia’s fate, I’m afraid, is sealed.’

‘I still can’t take her with me,’ Andy said. ‘It wouldn’t be right.’

‘Is it right to send her to America where she doesn’t want to go?’

‘Maybe not,’ Andy conceded. ‘But your parents have rights over Celia until she is twenty-one.’

Andy was silent and Norah heard the ticking of the clock and she felt quite desperate. This was maybe the only chance she would have to talk to Andy alone. She thought he would have jumped at the chance. The silence between them had begun to feel uncomfortable when Norah gave a shrug and said, ‘That’s that then. Celia will be going to America. That’s if she’s well enough to make the crossing.’

Andy’s head shot up. ‘Why wouldn’t she be?’ he cried. ‘Is she sick?’

‘In the mind only,’ Norah said. ‘She is locked in her room every day and let out only for meals, not that she eats much of anything put before her. Andy, her clothes are hanging from her and she looks pale and listless. It’s like she is pining away and I think she is pining for you. Don’t desert her now, Andy. It would be too cruel and might indeed be the last straw for her.’

Andy was greatly affected by Norah’s words and they changed his mind-set completely. He had seen Celia’s wretchedness and it was to help her that he had decided to leave, but if she was actually becoming ill and if Norah was right and his leaving now would not help the situation, then he had to do something else. And so, despite any misgivings he had about taking Celia with him because of her age and immaturity, and also despite the jurisdiction her parents had over her, he knew he had to get her away from her tyrannical father before he killed her altogether. How could he live with himself if something happened to her because he didn’t act?

‘Has the ticket for America arrived yet?’

‘No and it would be well to be away before it comes,’ Norah said. ‘If now you’ve decided to take her with you?’

Andy nodded. ‘I’ll take her because I feel I must.’

‘She will die if she stays,’ Norah said. ‘Either before she goes or on the crossing, when she will be completely alone. Once that ticket arrives I think Daddy will have her on that liner faster than the speed of light.’

‘You’re right,’ Andy said. ‘I will not be able to work my notice and I do feel sorry about it because the Fitzgeralds have been good to me. And I’ll have to borrow Mr Fitzgerald’s horse too, because we’ll need a horse to get to Letterkenny by dawn to get the train down to the docks in Belfast before dawn and we daren’t use the roads. The horse’s hooves will sound in the night.’

‘So how will you know the way if you don’t use the roads?’

‘We’ll follow the rail bus tracks.’

Norah knew all about the rail buses, the little red trains that ran on narrow-gauge tracks that people said had opened up the north of Ireland. ‘I’ve never travelled on one of those.’

‘Nor me,’ Andy said. ‘In fact I had never left home before I travelled from Killybegs to Donegal to look for work, but some in Killybegs had travelled on them and they said they go all the way to Letterkenny. The tracks pass through Donegal so if we pick them up and follow them we should get there all right.’

‘And you’re making for the docks?’

Andy nodded. ‘We must make for England for there is nowhere in Ireland I would consider safe. If they were to find us they could demand Celia’s return and I doubt I would have a leg to stand on. I suppose she is agreeable to all this?’

‘She will be,’ Norah said confidently. ‘But as yet she has no idea.’ And she explained how she had sneaked out of church pretending to be sick. ‘I must go soon or I will be missed.’

‘How will I know if Celia agrees?’ Andy said. ‘I will force her to go nowhere.’

‘She will be agreeable, I tell you.’

‘I must know. Can you get out with a message to me?’

‘No I can’t,’ Norah protested. ‘What possible reason could I give for leaving the house without arousing suspicion? I am not locked up like Celia but I am watched like a hawk.’

Andy thought for a minute and then suddenly said, ‘I have it. If I get halfway down your lane I can see your house. Where’s your bedroom?’

‘At the front to the right of the front door.’

‘Right,’ Andy said. ‘If Celia agrees to this, light a lantern and put it in the window tomorrow night. And if that lantern is lit then I will be there to fetch her on Wednesday night at midnight.’

‘Right, that’s settled then,’ Norah said. ‘And now I really must be off before they send a search party out.’

Norah had felt a bit guilty as she walked home that morning because, though every word she had said had been the truth, she had been thinking about herself as well. She knew that Celia thought the world of Andy McCadden but she wasn’t absolutely sure that the love her sister had for him would give her the strength to sneak out to go with a man who intended to take her to another country altogether, one which she had never expressed a wish to go to.

First though, she had to deal with the wrath of her mother who couldn’t believe she had left the church without a word to anyone.

‘I told Celia,’ Norah protested. ‘I hadn’t time to tell anyone else. As it was I only just got out of the church before I was as sick as a dog.’

‘So why then didn’t you come back in?’

‘Because being sick didn’t make me feel any better,’ Norah said. ‘I went for a walk to see if it would help being in the fresh air.’

‘Which it obviously did for you look as right as rain to me now.’

Norah thought it best that she didn’t recover quite so quickly and so she said, ‘My stomach still feels a little delicate.’

‘Well I don’t know what’s up with you,’ Peggy said, almost impatiently as if Norah had been sick to spite her. ‘You’ve never been the sickly type and you’ve had nothing to eat that the rest of us haven’t had. Still, if you say you felt sick then I suppose you did and I won’t give you any porridge this morning – that’ll give your stomach a rest.’