Land Of Promise

America is the backdrop of this charming short story by Alison Carter.

Immigrants came through Ellis Island every day – and Sinead knew each one had a story to tell . . .

IT was busier in the hall than Sinead had expected, and far grander, with whitestuccoed galleries and a great vaulted ceiling. “You’ve someone coming?” the woman at the desk asked.

“Coming?” Sinead said, confused. She was tired.

Her exhaustion had held off while she was on the boat. The White Star Liner from Queenstown, with its overcrowding and noise, had been home for a while.

Perhaps the movement of the Atlantic had kept her awake, but now she was on Ellis Island and dry land, fatigue had hit her.

“Coming to fetch you, dear,” the woman said.

Her face was kind. It appeared America could be kind to the thousands of Irish people arriving on its shores each day.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Cillian O’Grady. Aged twenty-nine, metalworker.”

The woman coughed and slid aside a piece of paper.

“I see that your name is Byrne.”

“That’s right.”

“This Mr O’Grady is not your brother, I take it.” Sinead blinked.

“I have no brother. I’ve four sisters back in –”

“And he’s not an uncle?” “No, ma’am.”

His age, Sinead reflected, would not preclude him from being her uncle; there were many large families back home in which an older daughter might have a child before her own youngest sibling was born.

The woman smiled briefly and gave another cough.

“Given that he cannot be your father, I must explain that I am discouraged from discharging you into the care of a . . .” Her voice trailed away.

“A lover?”

The father of a young family being registered beside Sinead looked offended and moved his two small daughters away. Sinead nodded to him.

The registrar tried again. “Can you give the name of a relative or a female friend who could be sought in New York or beyond?”

Sinead felt suddenly alone. It had seemed simple back home when she bought her passage.

Cillian had been her best bet, a young man she’d danced with and kissed once or twice before emigrating.

They had written to each other after that until they both lost interest, and she had decided to hang her hopes on him.

Another letter, a good three weeks before she set sail, had asked Cillian to sponsor her on her arrival.

How was she to know a young woman could not be met by a young man?

The papers she had, and her boat ticket, rustled in the pocket of her old twill dress and she sighed.

Perhaps if she had read every word on the papers she would have known.

She didn’t need Cillian O’Grady.

Sinead was well known in Knockanoran as a girl able to stand on her own feet.

She even suspected that if her parents had to send one daughter away, to try to save the rest from destitution, then the least distressing choice was bold, difficult Sinead.

“A female to fetch you?” the registrar said again.

“I will consider the matter,” Sinead said, and she retreated from the desk to a bench.

She had nobody in New York, nor anywhere else in America.

The fact that lovers (or near enough lovers) were not allowed to fetch a girl from Ellis Island became immaterial as day turned into night.

The hall of the Immigrant

Inspection Station emptied and it was clear that Cillian was not coming, even if he’d been allowed to.

Sinead knew that she ought to have waited for a reply to her letter before leaving Ireland, but she also knew that, even if he’d said “No” to being her sponsor, she would have sailed anyway.

It had been insupportable to stay in Knockanorn and watch her mother grow hungrier and her sisters scrabble around for hope.

She had decided to make her stab at building something in America that they could come to.

America was the Land of Opportunity and a new century was just around the corner; 1895 felt like a year of possibility.

Or at least it had before she found herself alone in a new land.

Fortunately it was not the same registrar who approached her as the clock ticked towards ten.

It was a gentleman who stood over her with a board in his hand on to which was clipped a sheaf of papers.

“You are Miss Sinead Byrne?” he said.

“I am, sir,” she said. “I gather a young man failed to arrive.”

“If he had he’d have been sent away, I was told.”

The man nodded.

“True enough. No unmarried woman arriving at Ellis Island may leave with a man not proven to be husband, father or brother.

“I am the Immigration Commissioner, and it is now my task to hand you into the care of this gentleman.”

He stepped back as a younger man walked up. He was strikingly handsome with dark hair and eyes that glittered.

“I note, though,” Sinead said, “that this gentleman is also not my husband, father or brother.”

The commissioner smiled narrowly.

“You are sharp, Miss Byrne. The United States is in need of young women who are sharp.

“This is Edward Carson, assistant to the agent of the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary for the Protection of Irish Immigrant Girls.”

“My goodness, there’s a name,” Sinead said.

The two men glanced at one another, and she wondered if the first one would now make a new note – impertinent.

She didn’t care.

Mr Carson spoke up.

“The mission is less grand and less complicated than its long name suggests.

“We have a temporary boarding house where all young Irishwomen with nowhere yet to go are provided with safe shelter, while in transit or waiting for work. There is also an immigrants’ chapel.”

“And the strays here at the end of each day are rounded up to go there?” Sinead asked.

Mr Carson looked annoyed.

“We’d rather not use that word, but yes, I attend here daily and escort young women to the mission.”

“If you’re Irish, then I suppose a few of them are your sisters, daughters and . . .” she knew she was going to say it; it would just have to come out “. . . wives.”

“Miss Byrne,” Edward Carson said, “I do not have all night –”

“I am sure the young lady will be glad of the help,” the commissioner interrupted.

Sinead felt her arms drop limply at her sides and exhaustion wash over her.

“Yes,” she said, and she felt tears prick her eyes.

“Follow me,” the young man said. “We will conduct the interview on the way.”

When he turned his back and set off across the hall, suddenly she felt that she’d follow him to the ends of the earth, as long as he’d give her a bed that didn’t sway, something to eat and a kind word.

Now was not the time to be feeble. Irishwomen were never, ever feeble.

It was less an interview with Mr Carson, and more a list he went through.

He had a set number of things to tell her about

New York, the mission and her rights.

Then, he had a series of questions for her, and Sinead was impressed that he didn’t need them written down. The man was a walking notebook.

“Your age?” he asked. “Nineteen.”

“Birthday?”

“Will you be sending me a gift, Mr Carson?”

“It’s for my data.”

Sinead didn’t know what “data” meant, but she said, it was December 12.

“So you are nineteenand-a-half now,” he said. “Your county of birth?”

“Cork. The best of the counties.”

He should have smiled at the joke, but he didn’t.

He wanted to know about her employment back in Ireland (none paid, she told him, though 17 hours a day working the smallholding, cooking, cleaning, carrying peat and trying to keep her sisters fed had felt like work).

He asked for confirmation that she had sailed from Queenstown on a White Star Liner.

“How else would I come?”

“It’s my data,” he said. Against her better judgement she was finding Mr Carson funny, with his data.

“So you’re the agent at this mission?” she said.

“Assistant to the agent, whose name is Mr McCool. My task is to find you a suitable position with a good family.”

“That’s quite all right,” Sinead said, “but no, thank you. I will see what I can find for myself.”

She didn’t want a family; she had just left the drudgery of one of those, and she had loved that family dearly; there was no way she was going to start slaving for a different one.

“You don’t understand,” Edward said. “Finding you a position is the mission’s rule, its method.”

“But not mine.” He stopped walking.

“It’s all above board.” His hand went to his forehead. “Of course it is! Prospective employers must submit written recommendations from pastor or priest.”

“Very nice. But I am not available for such a position.”

He looked down at her. “You look available to me.”

In that moment she knew there was to be a fight between them; one of those battles of will between a man and a woman that (while they consume energy) can be thrilling and fun.

Cillian had not been a man to fight with. But she had known a boy in Leamlara who had come to learn to read at their church.

He and Sinead had argued so much that one of Sinead’s sisters had said they were flirting.

Sinead held out against domestic service with a family, and in the end Mr Carson and Mr McCool gave in. Mr McCool was more flexible.

He was well-known at the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary for the Protection of Irish Immigrant Girls for his cap, which was embroidered with a harp and a shamrock.

One of the girls told

Sinead that a girl passing through the mission had made it for him as a gift and a reminder of home.

“And you know about the silver dollar?” the girl said. Her name was Bridget. “What silver dollar?”

“Mr McCool gave a brand-new silver dollar to Annie Moore, who was the first steerage passenger through Ellis Island in ’92. I think it was by way of a symbol.”

“A symbol of what?”

“Her future? Chances?” “One dollar won’t get you far.”

“You’ve no romance in your soul,” Bridget said.

It was Mr McCool who finally told Sinead, three days after her arrival at the mission, that she could work as a cook in the very building she stood in.

“Mr Carson wanted to know if you can cook.”

“I cook all the time,” she told Mr McCool. It was true – she’d had no choice back home.

But she was not a good cook by any means. Even her soda bread would not come out right.

The head cook at the mission, Mrs Regan, a no-nonsense woman from Roscommon, spotted quickly that cuisine was not Sinead’s strong suit.

“I’ve other talents,” Sinead said as she ladled out soup, a task Mrs Regan assigned to Sinead to keep her away from the stove.

“I am sure you have,”

Mrs Regan said tersely. “Move the bowls near the pot, child, or you spill.”

Sinead revealed her actual talent to the one friend she made in the kitchen, Eileen.

They were awake late in the dormitory, watching new girls sleep the sleep of the righteous, and talking about themselves.

“I don’t want to tell you what I can do,” Sinead said.

“Why? Is it wicked?” “Don’t be stupid. No, I am quite good at dancing.” “Waltzes? Polkas?” “Irish!”

Eileen did not forget that secret.

She found an amateur fiddler among the three

young men who did odd jobs for the mission, and then a very good flute player in the shape of a girl who had just come over from County Kerry.

Aoife had trouble with her walking after an accident with a horse, and the mission had given her leave to stay longer than usual, until she found work.

Soon there was music and dancing twice a week, but only after the agent Mr McCool, Mr Carson and the priest had gone home.

The girls would dance, and sometimes the young men who lived and worked at the mission would join.

Sinead had used her other talent, which was talking the hind legs off a donkey, to persuade the matron to chaperone.

In fact, Mrs Foster liked to see fun being had; she knew that it would boost the spirits of newcomers.

Sinead did not mention the dancing to Edward Carson. Their paths crossed often but she guessed he would disapprove.

They met in passageways and, more often than not, Sinead would tease him.

She liked to see him react, and it relieved the routine of her day.

“Have the new floorboards come yet?” she would say.

She had learned that Mr Carson was the most organised of men, and other people’s lack of efficiency, especially when it impinged on his work, made him comically furious. “Not yet,” he would say. “And ordered a fortnight ago! You should hear the creaks at night.”

It made her laugh, how flustered he could become.

But she also liked him for it: he was dedicated to the care of dozens of girls, all of whom were strangers to him and had nothing. He knew what real charity was.

Weeks passed, and Sinead began to engineer her chance meetings with Mr Carson in the mission.

Once, she passed the door to the chapel just as he came out, bumped into her and stopped to talk.

The very particular movements he made as he emerged through the doorway suggested that he had been waiting there for her to pass by.

The deciding factor was that as she had walked the long corridor, light had been spilling from the chapel, tinted pink by the stained glass inside.

He must have been standing there with the door open for a while.

They fell in love. Sinead knew it was love because she had known nothing similar before, not with the boy from Leamlara and certainly not with Cillian.

It was exciting and all-consuming. She had no idea what to do about it.

Sinead was a bold young woman with ideas of her own, but she hadn’t the brazen courage to tell a man she was in love with him.

And there was a risk: if he didn’t love her, then she would have to work near him for who knew how long.

But weeks passed, and once in the hallway he took her hand as she turned to climb the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I wasn’t thinking. You have to go.”

There was to be a luncheon for the board of the mission, and the kitchen’s resources were stretched to breaking point.

“Sinead, you will serve the meal,” Mrs Regan said firmly. “Have you a dress with more of a collar?

Sinead was happy to act as waiter. It meant she wasn’t at risk of burning a stew or leaving lumps in the mashed potatoes.

In her mind was the sweet prospect of smiling on Edward as she poured his wine, and looking elegant for once.

She borrowed a dress from Eileen and stood before the dormitory’s only mirror, adjusting the waist and tucking back her hair.

Looking at her reflection, it did not seem so odd that she might become the wife of a man of Edward Carson’s status.

That was the point of the Land of the Free: a person could do anything.

There were eight gentlemen at the luncheon, all in stiff collars and silk cravats.

Sinead brought them soup, turbot, then pork chops with Mrs Regan’s smooth mashed potatoes.

As she was laying a plate of plums and cream before each man, Patrick McCool pushed back his chair.

“We will listen to my assistant’s talk as we eat, I think. I know

you all have work to do.” Edward stood up. He caught Sinead’s eye as he did so but his face was neutral. She longed to know if Mr McCool knew anything of their feelings.

Edward moved to the end of the table. He held no notes in his hand, but Sinead knew that he had hundreds of facts in his head, ready for any talk.

“My intention is to give you a review of the first twelve years of the mission’s work,” he said. The gentlemen nodded. “Forgive me if you hear some dry data,” he said. Sinead tried not to laugh. She had been told to wait with the cream jug in a corner, and was glad to be some distance from him.

“That’s your speciality, Eddie!” Mr McCool said, and the men laughed.

They knew him, but not as well as she did!

“We estimate that thirty-five thousand Irish Catholic females between the ages of sixteen and thirty have passed through these doors,” he said.

“We do not have accurate records from the very early years.”

Sinead was surprised by this blanket description of her peers. “Female” was a bald, technical word. But she smiled and listened.

Edward told the luncheon that one quarter of immigrants to New York were currently young women, that this had been the situation from the start, and that the females came because the Irish economy was still agricultural.

“Estate laws mean the oldest son inherits land,” Edward said.

“Females do not receive significant education, and employment opportunities are poor.

“You will be aware that the longer-term aim of the mission is to decrease this type of immigration.”

This was a surprise to Sinead. She had never imagined that the mission had any aim beyond compassion and care.

“Of course, first and foremost,” Edward said, “it is compassion and care.”

Sinead wanted to kiss him.

He carried on, giving figures for numbers of White Star liners leaving Queenstown, Cork, in the 12 years.

He listed the counties they had left and the percentages from each.

He gave numbers for how many travelled onwards from Ellis Island with relatives, how many had other sponsors, and how many joined siblings.

The diners nodded, and one or two made brief notes in pocket-books.

“Examples can be helpful,” Edward said.

“Let’s see. We have a young woman here at the moment, Aoife Walsh, twenty-two and from Kerry, with bad legs and little prospect of being of use.”

Sinead opened her mouth to speak, but knew she couldn’t.

She was starting to get cross: Aoife was the most useful person she knew, possibly more useful than Edward or even Mr

McCool.

Aoife played the flute so beautifully that nobody could help dancing!

Edward continued. “A charming girl, but an example of the need to find ways to manage the flow.”

Sinead suppressed a gasp. The flow? Sinead did not think of the women she knew here as a flow.

Edward had heard the noise, and he looked in her direction for an instant.

“Ah! We have here another example,” he said, and the men turned to look at Sinead. “Sinead Byrne, nineteen-and-a-half on arrival at Ellis Island. A precise exemplar.”

He smiled at his own use of data.

“That is exactly the average age! Miss Byrne is in good health, and she was similarly healthy when she came to us, despite an average amount of deprivation in rural Cork.

“Young women typically arrive without chronic illness or infection, which is naturally attributable to their youth.

“Her height of sixty-two inches is also typical.”

Sinead knew she had to remain silent – she had no status in the room and would be disciplined if she spoke.

She was beginning to feel an unpleasant feeling of powerlessness sweep over her. The gentlemen were sizing her up – not rudely or lasciviously, but frankly.

The door opened and Eileen came in with a coffee pot. She slowly made her way to the sideboard.

“Miss Byrne’s skills are also typical,” Edward said. “She is a cook.”

Eileen spluttered, and every head turned to her.

“Have you something to say, Eileen?” Mr McCool asked.

The girl looked as though she regretted her outburst.

“Only that Sinead’s got many skills, but to be sure, she’s no cook, sir.”

This was too much for Sinead – the puzzled looks on the faces of the men, the comment of Eileen, who hadn’t thought before speaking, and (the worst of it) the way Edward had been making her into a mannequin, or some kind of museum exhibit.

She fled the room, returning the cream jug to an astonished Mrs Regan, and ran to the chapel.

There Mr Carson found her, half an hour later.

“Are you unwell?”

“Not at all,” Sinead said. She tried to get past him and leave the chapel but he stopped her with an arm.

“What is the matter?” His face was pleading with her.

“I am not ‘typical’,” she said, throwing the words at him. “I am not an

‘example’. I am me.

Nobody is an average, or a set of data to be used in illustration.”

She looked at the floor. “And I hoped that I was more than that to you, but I see I was wrong. I might be of average height, average origin, average usefulness, but . . .” She held back a sob.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I can’t cook. I can dance and I have value because of that and for my character and my –”

“Dance?” he said. He was staring at her.

She moved to the area in front of the altar. She was too emotional to stop herself as a jig crept into her head.

The joyous sound of Aoife and the violinist on fine form rang in her ears, and she began to dance.

Her torso stayed steady and front-facing in the way the Irish steps demanded, her knees lifted and fell like lightning, following the music, her toe just touching the floor before rising and kicking out again.

It was a difficult dance that looked easy; it asked for all her puff and all her flexibility and it was harder in her dress, but she knew she was dancing well.

When the music stopped and she came to rest she was standing opposite him.

“Now I know why Mr McCool gave Annie Moore that silver dollar,” she said, catching her breath but keeping her gaze steady.

“I thought it was simply an inadequate amount to be a help, but he was acknowledging that Annie must make her own way.

“It was a symbol, and a good one for all us average immigrants.”

“I am so, so sorry,” he said, and this time his voice was different. He was upset, humble, emotional.

“You’re right, Sinead. I was carried away by wanting to impress the board. My lecture was dry and . . . no – it was wrong.

“I didn’t know what to do about you because I love you, and that has been such a new thing for me.” Sinead smiled.

“Where I come from, there is an answer to that problem. What to do when you love someone.”

He was looking right into her eyes. She hoped her smile told him the truth.

“Maybe I should have solved the problem myself, and earlier,” she said.

She stepped forward and planted a kiss on his cheek.

With his eyes Edward drew her attention to Our Lady of the Rosary, smiling down on them in her blue robes.

“Perhaps not here,” he said, and he led her from the room.

The End.