Last Port of Call: The Queenstown Series Read online

  Her mother explained that Mrs Devereaux left a trust fund for the upkeep of the house and the care of Mr Devereaux, but it was a paltry sum and the remainder of her money had gone to Mr Devereaux’s brother, Ralph, who was in India. Harp had never met Ralph; he’d left Queenstown before she was born and had never returned. There was a portrait on the stairs of Mr Devereaux and his brother when they were younger. Mr Devereaux looked very much like he did now, just younger, but Ralph was dashing and handsome. Harp had pointed out how attractive he was to her mother one day, but Rose had dismissed it as foolish talk and told her that it was not appropriate for her to speak of their employers in that manner.

  As Harp wandered back downstairs, having forgotten to do whatever her mother had instructed her, she saw Mr Devereaux’s door open. His rooms were made up of a bedroom, a sitting room and a library. The sitting room and library had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the books were arranged first by subject, then alphabetically. There were a pair of huge red leather Chesterfields either side of the enormous fireplace, the leather cracked on the arms, as well as three Queen Anne chairs, each upholstered in dark-green velvet, all worn now on the seat. The fireplace was red Cork marble, and the polished walnut floorboards were covered with oriental rugs Mr Devereaux’s father had brought back from Japan when he retired in 1880.

  Her favourite piece in that room, apart from the harp that some previous Devereaux had played years ago, was the maroon Edison Gem gramophone. It was new, and both she and Mr Devereaux loved it with its huge red horn, beautiful mahogany casing and brass handle. It featured both two- and four-minute gearing as well as a combination reproducer, which meant it could play all cylinder records.

  He loved the modern jazz music coming out of America and ordered records, which he played over and over. But the music they returned to each night was O’Carolan – phonograph recordings filling the silent room with his harp music.

  Harp music had soothed her to sleep since she was a baby, and one of her earliest memories was her mother lifting her upstairs to bed with the recording of ‘Eleanor Plunkett’ ringing peacefully in her ears.

  ‘That’s one of the reasons I called you Harp,’ Rose said once, in a rare moment of introspective nostalgia. ‘Because I knew you would love that sound. When you were in my belly, the moment that music played, you settled.’

  When she was younger, it hadn’t occurred to Harp to question how her mother could listen to harp music when she was pregnant far away in another house with her husband, Harp’s father, but now it did. However, like all other questions pertaining to her mother’s life before coming to the Cliff House, it was shut down.

  Her mother was right, though. Nothing could soothe her like the pluck of the strings, but it didn’t make for an easy life. Harp was not a name, as the children at school were apt to point out; it was a thing, like a table or a chair or a bucket. And the fact that she played the very instrument she was named after was even sillier, not that anyone at school knew she could play. But it was her name and yet another thing about her that was unlike everyone else. She sometimes wished her mother had not been given to such a flight of fancy and just called her Kate or Hannah or Mary…anything normal.

  And it wasn’t as if her mother was one for mad notions – quite the opposite. If Mr Devereaux was eccentric, her mother was every inch a perfect lady. She dressed in sombre colours, every garment pressed and stitched to perfection. She never showed any flesh, except her face, which was unlined and porcelain white and framed by her perfectly set dark hair. Harp thought her mother was beautiful. Her lips formed a natural cupid’s bow and were never tinted but were naturally red, her long dark eyelashes framed her brown eyes, striking-looking with her dark colouring, her cheekbones were high, and the hollows of her cheeks and her jawline were as contoured as if Michelangelo himself had sculpted her.

  ‘Harp, come in here. I want to show you something,’ Mr Devereaux called as she passed. He so rarely spoke, his voice startled her.

  She stepped into his room that smelled of pipe smoke and woody cologne. Her seat by the large bay window was as it always was, ready for her, her current books in a pile on the small table beside it. His desk was pushed into the bay of the other window, piled high with papers and drawings and books open to various pages. Rose knew never to tidy it; it might look chaotic but it was perfectly ordered to him.

  His needs were few. He ate whatever Rose brought up to him, and Harp sometimes wondered, if Rose didn’t bring his three meals a day up to his study, would he ever stop to eat?

  Because he’d been sent to school in England, as was the norm for people from his class, he spoke with a British accent, but he held that country and all it represented in disdain. Harp knew he was fiercely pro-Irish independence. He read the writings of Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Charles Stewart Parnell and Daniel O’Connell, gently directing Harp to read them too. He’d hardly left the house for years, except for the funerals of his parents and one reluctant visit to a doctor in London last summer.

  He beckoned her closer and opened a parcel that had been delivered earlier that morning as she was eating her porridge in the kitchen. It was a velvet box, the size of two decks of playing cards side by side but thicker. He handed it to her. ‘It’s for you. Open it.’

  Should she refuse it? Her mother was anxious to always remind Harp of their position within the house, how they relied on the Devereauxes’ good graces for all they had – a roof over their heads, food in their bellies – and hammered home how they should be grateful, but Harp had a different relationship with Mr Devereaux. They understood each other in a way that nobody else could. He didn’t talk down to her, or make her feel like an oddity. She could be herself with him. He was an important part of her life. She could never say it, of course not, but he was. She didn’t have a father, or a grandad or even an uncle, but she had Mr Devereaux and he was worth more than all of those rolled into one.

  Chapter 2

  Harp heard her mother’s light tread on the stairs and silently prayed she wouldn’t enter the room. She wouldn’t approve. Sometimes she thought her mother wished Harp would spend more time downstairs and not up here filling her head.

  But Harp thought all she learned in this room would prove enormously useful once she finally got out into the world. She often dreamed about where she would go – to America, Japan, Australia, China even. She longed to see the poles, north and south, and she was following the adventures of explorers making bids to reach the poles avidly. She had followed in the newspaper the story of Peary and his efforts to reach the North Pole in 1909, and the excitement when she finally heard that Amundsen had beaten Scott to the South Pole last December was still as fresh in her mind as if it were yesterday.

  She gazed in wonder at the velvet box. The dark navy-blue of the velvet made the pale skin of her hands look almost translucent. Gingerly she took it from his hand, and the weight of it surprised her. There were two tiny hinges on the long side of the box, so she gripped it and opened it. Her eyes were drawn immediately to the contents. She barely registered the pale-blue silk lining, or the name ‘Kelly’s Jewellers’ written in gold inside the lid. There, nestled beautifully in the silk, a navy-blue swivel clasp ensuring it didn’t budge, was the most exquisite fountain pen she’d ever seen. It was gold, with a silver nib.

  ‘Take it out,’ Mr Devereaux said softly.

  She did as he asked and felt the cool weight of the pen between her fingers. And then she saw it, the engraving, the letters ‘H’ and ‘D’ fashioned to look like a harp. She was speechless. This had been tooled specially for her? She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asked gently.

  ‘I…I’ve never seen anything as beautiful in all of my life, but it’s too much, for someone like me, to have something so fine as this… H. D., for Harp Delaney. They’re my initials.’

  He looked solemn and shook his head. ‘Harp Devereaux,’ he said quietly.

  ‘My name is Delaney
…’ she began. ‘But it is the same initial as Devereaux, so…’ She didn’t want to cause offence. Perhaps he was mistaken, or maybe he wanted her to feel like she was more to him than a servant’s child; that thought made her glow inside.

  ‘I don’t make mistakes,’ he said quietly, guessing her thoughts. ‘You’re Harp Devereaux, and though your life has only had twelve short years so far, you will see many things finer than this as you fulfil your destiny.’

  ‘But I can’t take this! My mother would –’ she began, and then she saw her mother, standing in the doorway. She sent up a fervent silent prayer that Rose would not take away the magic of the moment by saying something dismissive.

  ‘What is it, Harp?’ she asked, but her voice lacked its usual brusqueness.

  ‘It’s a fountain pen, a beautiful one, the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. And it’s engraved.’ She held the pen out for her mother’s inspection.

  Rose took it and examined it, running her index finger over the engraving. ‘It is beautiful all right.’ She returned it to Harp. ‘See you don’t lose it, and say thank you to Mr Devereaux for such an extravagant gift.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Devereaux. I will treasure it all of my life,’ she said quietly, meaning every word.

  ‘You’re welcome, Harp. I’m so happy you like it. Use it to write your essays, your memoirs, whatever you want to do. You will travel far and do a great many adventurous things. I hope you’ll remember me.’ There was a note of regret in his voice and she longed to hug him, but her mother would most certainly not regard that as proper behaviour.

  ‘I won’t need to remember you because you’ll be here, won’t you?’ she asked, fearful it was a going-away present of some kind.

  Did she imagine it? The briefest of looks between her mother and Mr Devereaux? She was probably being fanciful.

  ‘I will, Harp, but you won’t.’ He smiled slowly. ‘You have a bright future far beyond the borders of Queenstown, County Cork.’

  ‘Yes, well’ – Rose began gathering the cups from his morning tea – ‘if you want to see this infernal big ship, though it’s just another one and we see plenty of them every day so I don’t understand what all the fuss is about, you’d better get yourself downstairs and this lot washed and put away.’

  ‘You’ll take me down to see it?’ Harp was incredulous. Could this day get any better?

  ‘I will, but we’re not hanging about all day, do you hear me?’ She looked sternly at her daughter, a smile playing around her lips. ‘Mr Devereaux thinks this is a momentous day and you should be part of the spectacle, so I’m going to take you down.’

  ‘Thank you, Rose,’ Mr Devereaux said warmly.

  Harp noticed how Henry Devereaux always spoke so gently and kindly to her mother, catching her gaze as he did so, not at all as she had read about how masters addressed their servants. But it was just another aspect of her life that was out of the ordinary.

  ‘Won’t you come, Mr Devereaux? Please?’ Harp asked as she stood with a tray of dirty dishes. He was the one who could truly appreciate the majesty and magnificence of the vessel. Her mother would just moan about the crowds and complain about getting coal smuts on her dress from the chimneys of the tugs that brought smaller ships in and out of the port.

  ‘I’ll see it from here, Harp. I don’t think I could make it back up the hill if I went down.’ She heard the sadness in his voice. ‘And when you come back, you must describe it all to me in glorious colour – the sights, the sounds, the smells, everything.’

  She knew why Mr Devereaux never went out – he wasn’t strong enough – and she didn’t press him on the subject as he was such a gentle person. But she was disappointed. Today of all days. Her classmates would surely be around the town, watching everything, and she would have loved to have shared it with him.

  Her mother left the room, taking the tray from Harp, instructing as she left, ‘Run upstairs and get your outdoor boots and your coat. It’s bright but chilly.’

  Harp was alone with Mr Devereaux and she stood there, watching his back as he gazed out over the harbour.

  ‘I really love the pen,’ she said quietly.

  He turned and his eyes were bright. His smile lit up the room. ‘You are special, Harp Devereaux, and I’m very proud of you. Never forget that.’

  Then he turned and faced the window once more.

  Chapter 3

  By the time Harp and her mother had walked down the ancient steep steps – worn in the middle from centuries of feet, the passengers boarding the ship had been processed through the White Star Line ticket office at the water’s edge. There was a carnival atmosphere, and everyone was decked out in their Sunday best. Tinker women sold paper flowers, and their men set up stalls on street corners to repair pots and pans. Ponies and donkeys as well as horses were tethered to the railing outside the Imperial Hotel, and Harp and her mother skirted around a steaming pile of dung. Harp knew Mr O’Donovan, the manager, would have a fit if he saw it, as it was positioned at an ideal location for a guest to tread on. Draymen cursed as people walked directly in front of them as they tried to make their deliveries to the various businesses that dotted the main street. The public gardens gleamed emerald green, and the bandstand had recently been painted.

  There was a brass band playing, and the sea glinted azure in the spring sunshine. The weather had been unseasonably warm and the sunshine added to the sense of gaiety. Dinny Lynch had opened the front window of his sweetshop and was serving ices and cones of sweets, and the smell of molten toffee made Harp’s mouth water. She resisted asking, though; her mother would definitely say that eating as she walked along the street was far too unladylike.

  Though her mother was a servant – and she reminded Harp often how they had nothing to their names – Rose Delaney walked with the carriage and poise of a woman of much more elevated social standing. She never drew attention to herself, but she certainly never fraternised with the other women in the town who worked in the other big houses. She cautioned Harp constantly on the perils of having notions above her station but nonetheless seemed to embody those very notions herself.

  As they stepped out from the stone staircase with its high walls onto the street, they saw her. There she was, Titanic, the huge hull, the four black chimneys. From their vantage point at sea level, the ship looked even bigger than from the house. It was moored two miles away at Roches Point, but even at that distance, it was easy to see how it was the most celebrated ship in the world. Harp thought about the many facts she knew. The number of rivets, how many tonnes of coal it would take to make the crossing, the length from stern to bow, – she found it all fascinating.

  As they walked up the street, past the hotel and into the main square where the shops bustled with business, she soaked it all up. It felt nice to be part of something, to feel connected to the town on this most auspicious of days. People were everywhere, from the roughest to the finest.

  She was thinking about the three different classes of ticket, and how even the third-class passengers had napkins and menus for mealtimes, when she spotted him. Emmet Kelly. And beside him his henchmen, Jimmy Mullane and Donal Deasy. They were in her class at school and made a pastime of trying to torment her. Her mother went into the draper’s for some new shoelaces as Harp stood outside.

  The boys were sitting on the railing above Blackie Nolan’s blacksmith’s forge, their legs dangling low enough that they could knock a man’s hat off with their feet should they want to. The smithy was busy today, with horses throwing shoes on the rough cobbles, and the hammering and heat could be heard and felt even out on the street.

  The boys looked over at her, nudging each other and giggling, caffling and fooling as always, and Harp’s cheeks burned. She never told her mother about the boys at school, or the names they called her, or how they teased her for being clever.

  ‘Hello, Harp Delaney,’ Emmet called.

  She looked sharply upwards, trying to intimidate them. It was not seemly for boys to be shou
ting at young ladies in the street.

  ‘Are you going to America, Harp?’ he sneered. ‘Sure wouldn’t the Yanks love you with your lovely Irish name?’ He laughed as he mimicked playing the harp.

  ‘They’d deport her for being a know-it-all,’ Jimmy Mullane yelled. ‘Nobody likes a show-off.’

  Harp knew he was referring to the test they’d had in school the day before on the history of the harbour in front of them. She’d got one hundred percent as always, and the master had given her a gold star for her exercise book. Jimmy got five hard slaps with the switch because he got almost every question wrong, despite the master spending the whole week teaching them about the many events of Irish history associated with the port.

  Donal Deasy did have the grace to look embarrassed and urged the other two to shut up, but they were on a roll.

  ‘Oh, she’s a right brainbox, Miss Delaney,’ Emmet said, putting on a silly voice, ‘but brains won’t get her a husband. She’s going to need something else for that.’ Emmet winked and gestured with his hands that he was referring to a bosom. ‘Which is, I’m afraid to say, sadly lacking.’

  Harp normally did not respond to their jibes as it only encouraged them, but something about the ship sitting in all her glory in the middle of the harbour, the endless possibility it afforded those fortunate enough to have a ticket, made her brave. One day she would board such a ship, and she would travel and learn and write all about it. She might go to university, that was her dream, but whatever her future held, it did not involve staying there and seeking the approval of idiots such as these boys were.

  She mustered her strength, thinking of Lady Macbeth telling her husband to screw his courage to the sticking place. She could do this; she could stand up to them. In a clear voice that she was sure they could hear, she spoke. She made no eye contact but seemed to address the air around her. ‘“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him”’ – she paused and allowed herself a small smile – ‘or her, “by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him”, or her.’