I SMELL AQUIDNECK ISLAND before I see it, the briny odor of the ocean leaching through the open windows of the bus from Providence. A suntanned woman in the seat across the aisle sees me place my hand to my nose. “It’s the kelp, honey,” she explains. “You get used to it.” I smile politely, wishing Mrs. O’Driscoll was poised with her smelling salts.
I already miss her company and her funny little ways. After standing together on deck to watch Lady Liberty and the Empire State Building loom from the mist, she’d accompanied me to Providence, only willing to leave me when she was sure the bus wouldn’t stop until it reached Newport and delivered me safely to Harriet Flaherty. She’d insisted on taking Harriet’s address, giving me the address she would be staying at in return. “If you need anything at all, just write,” she’d said, pressing the piece of paper into my hand as we said a surprisingly emotional goodbye.
As the bus rumbles on, I take the piece of paper from my pocket, and unfold it. Beneath the address of her relative on Long Island, she’s written the word Courage. I lift the paper to my nose, inhaling the familiar scent of lily of the valley and wishing, more than ever, she was sitting beside me.
The bus takes us over a long stone bridge that spans the vast expanse of Narragansett Bay. I press my nose against the glass to get a better look at the view. Yachts and sailing boats speckle the water, stretching as far as I can see. My eye is drawn to two lighthouses on rocky islands in the bay, as I wonder which one Harriet Flaherty keeps. Everything looks pretty with the sunlight reflecting off the water. It is a warm welcome that momentarily shushes the nagging doubts and uncertainties that hang over me.
Over the bridge, the driver turns down a wide boulevard before taking a series of left and right turns down a labyrinth of narrower streets with pretty names like Narragansett Avenue and Old Beach Road, each lined with trees and colonial-style clapboard houses in shades of green and white and rusted pinks. Letterboxes stand on posts in front gardens. A yellow school bus rumbles past. It is all so . . . American. A quiet smile forms on my lips as I think about everyone back home in small provincial Ballycotton. I wish they could see me. I feel a little proud, brave even, to have traveled so far.
With a crunch of brakes the bus stops at the end of a wide long street. The driver leans around his seat.
“This is your stop, Miss. Corner of Brewer and Cherry.” Hurrying to gather up my things, I make my way to the front of the bus and walk down the steps. He wishes me good luck in a way that implies I’m going to need it. The doors close and the bus rumbles off.
I am alone again. Like a guest suddenly aware they’re at the wrong party, all my optimism and courage depart in a hurry.
Fidgeting with my gloves and tugging at the rayon crepe fabric of my dress that clings to my legs, I start to walk. The damp sea air sends my hair springing into childish ringlets beneath my hat. A quick glance in a shop window confirms that I resemble a crumpled sack of potatoes, but I’m too tired to care. I duck and dodge around people on the pavement, trying not to stare at the American women who wear their clothes in a way that makes me feel as dowdy as a nun beside them. As the first spots of rain speckle the tarmac, I run the final few yards to Harriet’s house, stepping in beneath a white wooden porch.
I knock on the door. Wait. Knock again, a little more firmly. Nothing. As I open my purse to check the address, I see movement behind the screen door. It opens with a slow, grating screech, like fingernails running slowly down a blackboard. A tall woman leans against the doorframe, smoke spiraling lazily from a pipe that dangles from her bottom lip. She is dressed in a paint-spattered jersey sweater and navy corduroy trousers tucked roughly into wellington boots. A patterned headscarf frames her angular face. We quickly assess each other, forming judgments and opinions, measuring the actual against the imagined, wondering what this stranger might become to us in the weeks and months ahead.
“Matilda.” It is more announcement than question, a faint hint of surprise carried in the word.
“Yes.” I smile, remembering my manners even though I want to run back to the bus. “Matilda Emmerson. All the way from Ireland.” She doesn’t smile back. “You must be Harriet?” The question in my voice betrays my meager hope that I’m at the wrong house, and will be sent next door to a sweet old lady who will welcome me with a soap-scented kiss and a warm apple pie. The woman in front of me looks like she’s never baked a pie in her life.
She thrusts a nicotine-stained hand toward me. “Harriet Flaherty. Welcome to America.” Her voice is low and gravelly, her accent an odd mix of Irish and American. She wraps her hand tight around my cotton glove, studying me closely as we shake hands like business partners sealing a deal. Her expression is serious, but there’s something about the way she looks at me that makes me feel a little uncomfortable. “Well? Are you coming inside then,” she says, striding back into the house. “Or were you planning to stay in the porch for the rest of the summer?”
I pick up my bag and step inside, the screen door slamming shut behind me.
The cool interior of the house is a welcome relief after the stuffy bus ride. The room is sparsely furnished with a shabby-looking rug, two chairs, and a low coffee table. A sideboard to my left is covered with small boxes and picture frames, all decorated with seashells. A wireless in the corner plays Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by the click click click of a ceiling fan. A bunch of browned lilies sits in a vase on the table, withered petals scattered apologetically on the floor beneath. The smell of stale flower water mingles with the bitter tang of kelp, reaching into the back of my throat and sending my stomach bucking in familiar lurching waves. I glance upstairs, gauging the distance to the bathroom in case I need to make a run for it.
Harriet perches on a chair arm, rests her pipe on a rusting metal ashtray and stares at me, clearly as surprised to find me standing in her home as I am to be here.
“Nice locket,” she says.
I hadn’t noticed I was fiddling with it. “Oh. This. Thank you. It’s been in the family for decades.”
“Yes. I know.” She motions toward the small traveling bag in my other hand. “Is that all your luggage?”
“The rest is being sent on. From New York,” I explain. “It should be here in a day or two.”
I can hardly remember what I’d packed, it feels like such a long time ago, but seeing how Harriet dresses I already know I’ve brought far too many pretty skirts and blouses. She looks almost masculine in her scruffy work clothes and her hair tucked inside her headscarf. In my neat primrose-colored cotton dress and matching hat and gloves I suspect I am precisely the sort of prim young thing that Harriet Flaherty loathes.
“Suppose you’ll be wanting to freshen up,” she says, standing up. “I’ll show you your room.”
I follow her up a bare wooden staircase, telling her about the awful sea crossing and Mrs. O’Driscoll being so kind, but my attempts at small talk are ignored as she stomps ahead, leaving sandy imprints from the tread of her boots. Halfway along a short landing, she pushes open a scuffed white door. “This is you. The bathroom’s across the landing. The chain sticks so you’ll need to give it a good hard yank.”
I step into the small bedroom and place my bag tentatively on the bed. A wardrobe, a nightstand, and a small chest of drawers are the only furnishings. There are no pictures on the walls. No photographs. Faded calico curtains hang limply at the window. A collection of painted shells on the windowsill lend the only sense of decoration to the room.
“Thank you,” I say. “It’s lovely.”
“Well I’d hardly go that far, but it’s yours for the duration, so you might as well make yourself at home.” Harriet leans against the doorframe. She looks at me again with that same, slightly surprised expression. “Will you be wanting something to eat? I made clam chowder.” I nod, even though the last thing on my mind is food, and I don’t have the faintest idea what clam chowder is. “I’ll leave it on the table downstairs so. Help yourself to anything else you find.”
“Are you going out?” For all that I haven’t especially warmed to Harriet, I don’t want to be on my own in this strange cold house either.
She nods toward the window on the opposite side of the room. The ocean glistens beyond, the outline of a lighthouse just visible through the haze. “Rose Island. Didn’t they tell you I was a light keeper?”
“Yes. My mother mentioned . . .”
“That’s where I spend most of my time. I told her to explain that you’d have to entertain yourself.”
“Well, she didn’t.”
Harriet walks over to the window and picks up one of the decorated shells. She’s younger than I’d imagined. I’d assumed I would be staying with an elderly relative, like Mrs. O’Driscoll, but Harriet can’t be much older than forty. “Probably just as well she didn’t tell you. You’d most likely never have agreed to come.”
“I wasn’t exactly given any choice.”
The acknowledgment of the real reason I’m here rushes into the room like a storm, hanging in the air between us. I perch on the bed like a bold child.
Harriet turns to face me, arms folded across her chest. “Whose is it then?” she asks. I stiffen at the unexpected question, color running to my cheeks. “What? Did you think we wouldn’t talk about it? Spend our days drinking tea and saying our Hail Marys and pretend you’re a good little Catholic girl?”
I stare at the whitewashed floorboards. “Of course not. I just don’t want to talk about it right now.” I glance up at her. “We’ve only just met.” I try to sound matter-of-fact but the high pitch to my voice betrays my deep discomfort. I kick off my shoes, suddenly tired of everyone poking around in my life as if I were a pincushion. Exhausted from the journey, fed up with feeling nauseous, and missing Mrs. O’Driscoll more than ever, tears well up in my eyes. I bite my lip to stop them. I don’t want Harriet Flaherty to see me cry. I don’t want her to write to my mother to tell her I’m a homesick little fish out of water, just as she expects me to be. “Besides,” I add, “it’s none of your business.”
Harriet blanches at this. “Really? And there was me thinking you’d come to live in my house, which makes it very much my business.” Taking my silence as a refusal to be pressed any further on the matter, she walks out of the room, closing the door with a bang behind her. “I’ll be back at sunrise,” she calls, more as an afterthought than to offer me any reassurance.
After clattering about downstairs, she leaves with a squeak of the screen door, and I’m alone again. Alone with the awful feeling that I’ve just made an enemy of the one person I’d hoped would become my ally.
“That went well, Matilda,” I say, my sarcasm ripe as summer berries. “That went really well.”
With nothing else to do, I sulkily hang up my few clothes, place my book on the nightstand, and freshen up in the small bathroom across the corridor. I notice one other room at the end of the landing, which I presume is where Harriet sleeps, if she ever does sleep here. I creep downstairs, pour a bowl of clam chowder down the sink, nibble a piece of bread at the table, and sip a glass of water. I feel like an intruder and retreat back upstairs to the miserable little bedroom where I sit on the end of the bed and look out the window, idly picking up the painted shells from the windowsill. They are a mixture of scallop and cockle shells, all painted white and decorated in deep blue patterns of spirals and fleurs-de-lis. They remind me of the delft my granny once brought back from a trip to Amsterdam. The name Cora is painted on the inside of each shell. Whoever Cora is, she has a steady hand and an eye for beauty. Her delicate little shells feel out of place in this cheerless room, like they don’t belong here. Much like myself.
Despite my exhaustion, sleep will not come. I flinch at every creak and crack, at every strange sound from the street below, at the sweep of light from the lighthouse as it passes by the window. Everything feels strange. The pillow. The bed. The bare room. The house. Even my body feels unfamiliar: my appetite, my emotions, my sense of smell all altered by the invisible child that I refuse to believe is real.
I toss and turn until the small hours, when I give up on sleep, flick on the lamp beside the bed, and pick up my book, wishing Mrs. O’Driscoll had been a faster reader and given me her copy of Gone with the Wind. I’m sure Scarlett O’Hara would be far better company than a stuffy old book about lighthouses. Opening the front page, I run my fingers over the neat inscriptions. The first, to Sarah from Grace. The next, to Matilda from her mother, and then all the recipients of the book since, each mother passing it on to her daughter, a list of distant relatives diligently recorded over the years as the book changed ownership. I’ve always felt sorry for poor Grace Rose, her name struck from the page so bluntly. I wonder who she was, and what happened to her. An infant, lost tragically young, no doubt.
At the back of the book is a folded piece of paper, speckled with age. I remember the first time it had tumbled from the pages into my lap, remember the thrill of reading the neat script, written so long ago by a woman who knew my great-great-granny.
Alnwick, Northumberland. September 1842.
My dearest Sarah,
My sister tells me you have written several times in the past while, and I must apologize for my lack of response. Since returning from a trip to visit my brother at Coquet Island in the summer, I have been rather weakened and am to stay with my cousin here in Alnwick for a while. They tell me I am a dreadful patient—far too eager to rush my recovery so that I can get back to Longstone. I do not sleep well without the soothing lullaby of the sea at the window.
I was so happy to hear that you have made a new life in Ireland. I believe it is a very beautiful country. I know you will never forget what happened, but sometimes a different view in the morning, a different shape to the day, can help to heal even the deepest wounds. I hope you will find peace there.
You might tell George that I was thinking of him, if you hear from him at all. I do think of him often.
Wishing you God’s strength and courage, always.
Your friend,
Grace Darling
I have learned a little about Grace Darling through snatched fragments of conversation overheard at family gatherings, but I would like to know more. I return the letter to the back of the book, turn back to the start, and begin to read about lighthouse keeping. It turns out to be far more complex, and more interesting, than I’d imagined.
Eventually, I sleep, albeit intermittently. I doze and wake, doze and wake, the flash from the lighthouse playing at the window, my dreamlike thoughts drifting to Grace Darling and my great-great-granny Sarah, women whose lives are connected to mine and whom I know so little about. I also think about Harriet, an outcast, a loner. Like the little girl who made up stories about the people in the portraits inside her locket, my mind begins to circle and turn, wondering and imagining, eager to fill in the gaps.
Who are you, Harriet Flaherty? Whatever did you do?