For I Have Sinned

Chapter 1

HAD THE LITTLE WEE MAN GONE AWAY? Salome could not be certain. When you’re only seven years old there are lots of things about which you cannot be certain. True, he was no longer calling out, ‘Little girl?’ and endlessly repeating that he didn’t want to harm her. And when she looked through the knothole in the wood, he was no longer in sight. But there was a sort of noise out there that could be someone breathing and other noises that could be someone going about on tiptoe. Not that it was easy to pick out vague noises like that amid all the hustle and bustle on the quayside. She was lucky to have found the empty packing case, really. Samson was an awful long time fetching Mammy to come and rescue her.

She began counting to a hundred once again. Surely this time it would work?

Samson, still down on the quayside, saw his Mammy standing at the farther end of the gangway for the steerage passengers. She was peering anxiously downward – straight at him, or so it seemed to him in his guilt, even though he realized she’d hardly notice him in all that jostle. And anyway, the people around her were arguing and shaking their fists. She was blocking the way. Daddy was beside her, shouting at one of the seamen.

Suddenly the little boy was afraid. The Da would surely whip the skin off his back if he told them what he and Salome had done – or Salome, really. She was the divil. It was all her fault. The Mammy would never believe it, of course. Her darlin’ little Salome was a saint on wheels. But it was Salome who had spotted the gangway for the quality and bet him they could get down there and come back up the steerage gangway a second time. It was Salome had led the way under the rope with the sign that read FIRST CLASS PASSENGERS ONLY PAST THIS POINT. And it was Salome had stuck her tongue out at the little wee man and got him to chase them. But, of course, the Mammy would never believe any of that.

Samson turned from the wrath to come and raced back up the gangway for the quality. At the top a man in a white coat tried to stop him, but he ducked under the outstretched arm and raced among the startled and outraged passengers toward the rope with the sign that, on this side, read simply STEERAGE.

One of those passengers, Paul Delaroux, said to his wife, Georgina, The little rascal! He can’t be more than eight or nine.

Sign of the times, darling, she replied coolly. We must learn that bits of glorified string with notices hung from them are no longer enough to restrain our Irish peasantry.

Several people around them turned and looked at her askance. The trouble with Georgina – one of the troubles with Georgina – was that one never knew whether her tongue was in her cheek, and, if so, how deeply. Her tone seemed to be one of hearty contempt for what she called ‘our Irish peasantry’, yet there was a merry glint in her eye and a fleeting lilt at the end of one or two words, enough to suggest a certain glee that the Irish giant was at last waking from its troubled slumbers. She was English by birth, which ought to have put her firmly into one camp; but, on the other hand, she was also a Roman Catholic, which would put her – though rather less firmly – in the other. And then again, she was neither fiercely patriotic nor devoutly religious… so where did that leave one?

Not that young Samson was troubled by such ambiguities; he was, in any case, well beyond earshot before Georgina spoke. Now he was leaping down the companionway three steps at a time, hastening bravely toward a punishment he knew would be swift and terrible. People cursed his haste and tried to cuff him as he sped past them. His feet did not drag until the last dozen paces or so.

I assure you, ma’am, no little girl and no little boy have gone back… one of the seamen was saying – or trying to say.

But didn’t three people see them shlip under that rope, the Da objected.

Would you stand aside in the name of God and let the rest of us aboard, shouted a perspiring man with a roly-poly wife and fourteen children at his heels.

All I want is to go back down there and satisfy meself they’re not left behind, his Mammy pleaded.

And I’m giving you my personal assurance… the sailor tried again.

And all the while, from farther down the gangway, came cries of anger, frustration, and dismay: What’s the hold-up? Who’s that eejit?… and worse.

Samson could not believe that their little prank – down one gangway and up the other for the second time – could lead to all this turmoil. His courage began to ebb.

It deserted him entirely when the Da spotted him and gave out a roar that rang around the whole of Queenstown. Samson! Come here you bold monkey!

He took one look at his father’s purple face and, with a cry of Mammy! fled to the sanctuary of her embrace.

She took a pace toward him, freeing the gangway once more. Behind her, like bubbles in an uncorked lemonade bottle, the perspiring man, his roly-poly wife, and their cartload of children – and all the complainants behind them – came flowing up the incline and erupted onto the deck.

Is that one of them? asked the triumphant sailor, nodding at Samson.

It is, so. Finbar McKenna began fingering the buckle of his belt.

Not now! his wife snapped. You know how it robs him of speech. She shook her son and tried to make him look her in the eye. Samson! Tell me the truth now – as God is your witness. Did you and your sister go beyond that rope?

He licked his lips. What rope? he croaked, not meaning to lie, really, just playing for time. If the Da would go away a moment, he thought he might be able to confess the truth to her.

That rope! She pointed up the companionway, which was too thronged with people for the barrier to be visible. There’s a rope slung across the deck up there with a sign on it saying for first-class passengers only. Did you and your sister shlip under it?

We did not, he assured her. And it was, indeed, the literal truth, for, though Salome had slipped beneath the rope, he had vaulted over it.

Even if they did, they could never have got down the first-class gangway. The sailor managed to finish his sentence at last. Amn’t I after telling ye? ’Twould be against regulations entirely.

Samson wanted to tell him how they’d managed it when the officer was distracted by the lady with the ostrich feathers who’d fainted for half a second when she reached the deck and then demanded a glass of iced water.

Where’s Salome? his father asked.

The boy buried his face in his mother’s bosom. Hiding, he mumbled.

What? he roared.

Hiding! his wife snapped back at him. She wanted to be angry with her son but knew from long experience how tongue-tied it would make him – and there just wasn’t time for all that. Where? she asked Samson, in as gentle a tone as her agitation would allow.

Were you playing hide and seek? his father put in. Is that it? He was also making a valiant effort to master his rage.

Samson nodded, not wanting to risk a spoken lie. Anyway, surely Salome would soon realize she was safe by now? Then she’d come out and skip up the gangway, just like she said. Wasn’t it her idea in the first place? Would it be his fault if people didn’t stick to their own ideas?

What? his father asked, beginning to let his anger show again.

He said yes, his mother cried, furious that he would not curb himself and let the boy calm down. So – she’s hiding somewhere here on this boat. Is that it? Lord, such a time to go playing games! She held the boy at arm’s length and tried once again to see into his eyes.

He stared at the deck and shrugged. Sure she could be anywhere, he mumbled, artfully laying the foundations of a future defence. Anywhere at all.

Well, you make sure she isn’t, his father put in. Go and find her – and bring her to me.

Finbar… His wife laid a restraining hand upon his arm. Go aisy, now. Don’t be putting the fear of God into them.

He forced a smile. Away with you! he said, giving his son a playful cuff.

They waited by the rail but the boy had still not returned by the time the crew raised the gangplank to the steerage. Then Finbar McKenna let out a mighty oath that he’d skin the pair of them and went off in search of either.

Deborah McKenna’s renewed agitation touched the sailor who had earlier barred her return to the quayside. Look ma’am, he said, isn’t it all but deserted down there now? And wouldn’t you see any wee shlip of a colleen in a pretty dress?

She was in plain gingham, Deborah told him.

Wouldn’t you see her, even so, and you her mammy? And didn’t the gossoon say she was hiding here aboard ship? And anyway, the first-class gangway is still in place. If she’s down there at all – which is impossible – she has that way still.

Deborah leaned against the rail, trying to accept his reassurance, trying not to cry, and wondering why such a terrible sense of foreboding oppressed her; and all the while her eyes quartered the quayside, up and down, back and forth, looking for the smallest patch of blue gingham that would prove them all wrong.

She wanted to join Finbar and help him turn the ship upside down but she dared not leave the rail nor take her eyes off the quayside for one moment. Suppose little Salome was down there somewhere, hiding – perhaps as a game, perhaps in genuine fear of something… And suppose she crept out at last when she thought the coast was clear? Who would notice her then? Who would put two and two together and say, ‘Aha! There’s a little girl who should be on that ship!’

She turned to the sailor. Don’t let them leave until we’re sure she’s aboard.

I’ll go and speak to the officer meself, missiz, he promised.

She would have felt even less reassured if she had seen how he raised his eyes skyward once his back was turned to her.

Down on the quayside the heat of the July afternoon, reflected back and forth between the shed and the great iron cliff of the SS Knysna’s hull, grew more oppressive by the minute; inside the packing case Salome was beginning to wonder how much longer she could stand it. She put her eye to the knothole yet again and moved her head this way and that to see whether or not the little wee man had returned. Her two previous inspections – between each of which she had counted to a hundred – had revealed no sign of him; she promised herself that if there was still no sign of him this third time, she’d risk flying out of her hiding place and making a bolt for the gangway.

But it was not to be. The little wee man, having made one careful search of the quayside, was about to start all over again, this time even more carefully.

He did not dare let that pretty little colleen go free to inform on him, even though he’d barely touched her – as yet. They’d never believe him, no matter what he said. And this time he’d get two years – and a flogging. Two years was just about bearable but the flogging would kill him. They flogged Jamjars Quin last time he was inside. Fifty strokes of the birch – fifty times God-knows-how-many cuts from a bundle of whippy quicksets. The poor fella had never been the same man since. And that was just for ringing a horse. For this offence they could make fifty seem worse than five hundred. There’d be places where the skin would never grow back. He had to find the colleen and silence her.

When he shuffled away Salome closed her eyes and began another slow count to a hundred. At twenty they lowered the first-class gangway to the quay but she did not see it. She had still only reached fifty when the lines and hawsers fore and aft were slipped from the bollards and pale water began to open up between the ship and the land.

Out on the quayside Marion Culham-Browne gave way to the tears that had threatened to overwhelm her ever since Maude O’Brien had walked up the gangway – and out of her life for ever. Or at least for the next five years, which was just as awful. She waved her damp and inadequate little hanky at the departing boat but could no longer be sure which pale blur above the rail was Maude. She went on waving until the vessel was well offshore and the pale blurs had themselves coalesced into one long smear.

Then she was startled out of her misery by a shriek from somewhere behind her. She turned to see a little girl in a blue gingham frock hurtling toward the quayside as if she intended taking a flying leap out into the bay. And hard on her heels was a grotesque little man who bore an extraordinary resemblance to Mr Punch. Marion’s first impression was that the fellow was chasing the girl; then she realized that he must, in fact, be trying to stop her from carrying out her obvious intention of leaping into the sea. A moment later she herself had intercepted the child and, almost bowled over by her momentum, swept her up into the air, carrying her around full circle. Whoo! You’ll make me giddy! she cried, hugging the skinny little thing tight in case she broke free again.

Marion almost yielded to tears once more. To hold a little girl in her arms again – a girl of just this age – was more than she could bear. She even had the same jet-black hair and the same smoky grey eyes – it was uncanny. Is that man your Daddy? she asked.

The slim, pale lady smelled nice. And she had a voice like an angel. Perhaps she was an angel. Her hug was so loving and warm that all Salome’s fears were lifted; somehow she just knew she was safe once more.

Marion had to repeat her question; she was surprised at the speed with which the child had gone from the extreme of agitation to this astonishing calm.

No! Salome said, shivering with rekindled fear as she glanced at the man.

Marion turned to him and asked in much more peremptory tones than she would otherwise have used, You! Were you chasing this child?

Oh God, indeed, I was not, your ladyship, he replied anxiously. A second later he wished he could have bitten his tongue off.

Of course, what he ought to have said was that the colleen was his niece and a bold little creature she was, too, that had him kill’t with the worry the way she’d run and hide and think it great gas to see him searching high and low. Had he said that, he could have walked off with her under his arm.

But it was too late now.

Be off with you then, Marion ordered. I don’t care for the look of you at all. She glanced around the quayside, obviously searching for a constable.

Mr Punch took to his heels.

She smiled reassuringly at the child, whom she still clasped tight in her arms. That’s the way to deal with such blackguards, she said.

Salome chuckled and tightened her grip around the angel’s neck in case she tried to put her down. How old are you? the angel asked her.

It’s my birthday today, she replied.

The angel closed her eyes and stopped breathing. And you are seven today? she asked, almost in a whisper.

Of course, an angel would know things like that. Salome nodded. To her surprise a large tear rolled down the angel’s cheek.

This is more than uncanny, Marion said aloud but to herself; she clutched the little girl even more tightly and began to sway, twisting now right, now left, with a soothing rhythm. For Rachel, too, would have been seven today if she had lived – little Rachel with her jet-black hair and her smoky grey-green eyes. Marion had been struggling not to remember it all day long. It was surely more than uncanny.

Is that ship coming back? Salome asked.

The angel nodded. In three months, darling. First it’s going to the Cape and then onward to India. And then it’s going to turn around and come back.

Three months meant almost nothing to Salome; but the fact that the ship was coming back gave her all the reassurance she needed just then.

Why d’you ask? the angel prompted.

For as long as she lived, Salome was unable to say why she did not reply with the plain truth. In later years she came to accept that she must have had an intuition of some kind that Mrs Culham-Browne did not want to hear the plain truth. She accepted this explanation although she knew it was absurd – for little girls of exactly seven years old simply do not have intuitions of that kind.

Chapter 2

FEW INDEED WERE THE HOURS OF SLEEP that Deborah McKenna snatched over the next three or four days. When the Knysna cast off, she was still fairly sanguine that little Salome was aboard, hiding somewhere, as her brother had explained. Her mood then was more of anger than alarm; and her anger only increased as a search of the more obvious places drew a blank. She might have exploded in full-blooded fury if Finbar’s rage had not exceeded her own. He was utterly beside himself. The things he’d do to that wretched colleen the moment he got his hands round her neck! The leathering he’d give her would take the skin off her backside. She’d pass the voyage on one serving of bread and water a day. After they reached the Cape she’d never hide again, not if the entire Zulu nation was to come charging at her over the veldt.

Samson heard these threats and shuddered. Luckily both his parents seemed to have forgotten his rôle in Salome’s disappearance. He was not old enough to realize the truth; for they could not imagine that he would not have told them she was down on the quayside if he had known it. Therefore he had not known it. Therefore he could not be blamed. He looked after his other young sister, Martha, while his parents carried on with their frantic search. And Martha, to show that a little girl of four did not really need looking after, officiously minded her younger brother, David, who was only one.

As so often happened, Finbar’s excessive threats of punishment induced a countervailing caution in his wife. Angry as she was, she realized that it was precisely the fear of such dire suffering that might be keeping young Salome in hiding. Even as her blood seethed, a calmer voice counselled that the pair of them were simply prolonging their own agony. The child would never reveal herself while their passion raged like this; she’d wait until it turned to alarm – when they’d be at their wits’ end, and only half kill’t with joy to be reunited with her – and then she’d come out all tears for an orgy of hugs and kisses.

When Debbie said as much to Mrs Rourke, who was helping with the search of that small part of the ship to which they had access – the part at the back where there was a steady falling of soot from the funnels – the woman was amazed. Imagine! she said. The minxeen that could wrap ye round her little finger so!

It made Debbie think. Was Salome really so good at it – getting her own way by playing on people’s feelings? Compared with other children her age? Perhaps she was. Perhaps little Martha was, too – which would make it seem normal. Mrs Rourke would know more about it, her having eight of her own, five of them girls, poor soul!

I suppose she can, she admitted ruefully. Half the oul’ fella’s anger is that he knows she can do it, even to him. I’ve seen the tears of pity and disgust on his face even while he’s plying the leather to her.

Imagine! Mrs Rourke repeated. Her own private view was that a child with such skills needn’t be sought out of hiding quite so frantically as the McKennas were seeking their Salome; like fruit left to go oversweet, she could usefully stew in her own juice until she’d come out of her own accord. And even then she should only meet indifference, which would be far harder to charm away than this hot anger. However, she would also have conceded that the bearing of a dozen children, eight of whom had survived, would give a woman a different slant on things; so she held her peace and matched her outward concern to poor Mrs McKenna’s.

Their search ended in a large locker, large enough to walk into, on the deck beneath the padded cell in the after-deck housing. The discovery of the padded cell had, in itself, been quite a shock – almost as if they had found a room with a gallows set up ready for an execution. It had never occurred to them that people could go mad in the middle of the ocean just as readily as on dry land. And what would you do with them if you had no padded cell? To Debbie it seemed an obscure kind of omen – a warning of the fate that might overtake her if she didn’t calm down and take Salome’s hiding (she still would not call it disappearance) more steadily.

The large locker beneath the padded cell was packed with life jackets. Some were like men’s coats, made of white canvas and with wads of cork sewn into the lining all round. Others were like small overstuffed pillows, stitched together by two broad shoulders traps; their underarm strings were tied in neat, uniform bows. And there they all lay in great heaps, providing just the sort of concealment any child would adore.

Debbie, having convinced herself that Salome could not be hiding anywhere else in steerage, fell upon them with a cry of triumph. Come on out, you little divil! she cried, forcing herself to sound gay so as to lull the little girl’s fears. I know full well you’re in here somewhere!

Mrs Rourke said nothing until much later, when they had restacked the life jackets as best they could. As they rose, dusting their hands and smoothing down their aprons, she said, What would they be doing with all them things at all?

Debbie stared at them morosely, no longer seeing a child’s hiding place among them – just a heap of kapok, cork, and linen. Like the cell above, it was a reminder of things she would rather not face. A padded cell to prolong one’s madness. Padded jackets to prolong one’s drowning. "It’s since all that spleen they gave out after the Titanic, I suppose, she said. The captain could stand up and say they carried three life jackets for every man, woman, and child aboard."

Begod, isn’t that the truth! Mrs Rourke chuckled at their cunning – also to mask her growing conviction that Salome was, in fact, nowhere aboard the Knysna. It was a fear she did not yet feel able to articulate to her poor friend.

Mrs McKenna closed the locker door before the piles could disintegrate and come spilling out again. We must have missed her, she said despondently.

It could be your man has her found, Mrs Rourke offered.

But Finbar himself came clattering down the companionway at that moment, with an arch on each eyebrow and nothing in his hands. Well? he asked. There was little hope in his voice. He, too, was gripped by the same fear as Mrs Rourke and, like her, he shrank from voicing it yet awhile. What’s behind that door? He nodded toward the locker to distract himself.