And yet, walking back, I began to feel that I wasn’t finished. Something had to be done. And what I did next was to walk the length of Ireland.
I’d always wanted to, had occasionally thought about it, and now here near the century’s beginning, the country unspoiled, this was my chance. And in the morning I bought what I needed: hiking shoes, canteen, knapsack, map. I talked to store clerks, to hotel people, and got plenty of advice. Shipped my luggage ahead by train, and set out the following morning.
This isn’t the story of that long almost happy journey, but I saw what visitors to Ireland always see, that the fields truly are a shade of green seen nowhere else. I walked dirt roads, standing aside for great flocks of sheep, shepherd and I nodding, touching caps. Stopped at a farm for water, was welcomed by a shy, truly charming couple with faces and hands permanently dirty, seldom—ever?—washed. Who gave me water, and food I hadn’t asked for in a kitchen through which live chickens wandered. Back on the road, miles ahead, I looked for a place to throw away the sandwiches, empty my canteen, felt ashamed, and ate them and drank.
I stood staring across fields at the strange castlelike fortresses of centuries past, still standing, their entrances high above the ground, against siege from—Vikings? I wasn’t sure. Sometimes I stayed overnight, a couple days, a week if I felt like it, in a village or town that took my interest. At the local inn or hotel, getting clothes washed, walking around, talking to people, usually friendly though not always. Twice I camped near a cliff overlooking the sea, once for almost a week. And spent days mostly sitting on the edge watching the waves far below flood up onto the stony beach, then wash back down; not actually thinking, not quite, but letting the problem waiting for me move through my mind. Spent a month in Dublin, walking it, visiting Joycean pubs. Was he here in Dublin now? I couldn’t remember, if I ever knew. If he was I never saw him, or if I did, didn’t know it.
And then finally, on a late afternoon of the following spring, the necessary time pleasantly killed, I walked into the little port called Queenstown, almost only a village, its houses scattered over a series of terraces rising above the enormous bay of Cork harbor. At the edge of a wide dirt street I stood looking down at the great enclosed sheet of water flashing under the late-in-the-day sun, two small ships at anchor, a lightship far out at the harbor entrance. An almost empty harbor now, but not tomorrow, and I felt abruptly tired, depressed, the problem with no answer back. I found Queenstown Inn then, and a hot bath, a drink, another, then dinner, and bed.
At just past eight next morning I stood in a short line in the downtown office of James Scott & Co., agents for Cunard, Hamburg-American, White Star, and apparently every other steamship line calling in Queenstown. I wore a white shirt now, a tie and suit, weightless after tweeds and heavy boots, which I’d left behind in the Queenstown Inn closet along with my knapsack. My luggage had been waiting for me a long time now, and I had it sent to James Scott & Co. In the line ahead of me stood two men, both wearing caps and worn suitcoats with unmatching pants; and at the head of the little line, talking to the twenty-year-old clerk at the wooden counter, a young woman and an eight-year-old girl, wearing shawls over their shoulders and black straw hats.
I felt sick, looking at the child, wanting to tell them, knowing I could not, and stood watching and listening as the young woman bought a second-class ticket. Leaning to one side, I saw it, a surprisingly big sheet of buff paper imprinted with the White Star legend, and a cut of a four-funnel steamer. Thirteen pounds it cost her, which she had ready in her hand.
The clerk glanced at the two men in caps then, and without asking brought out two identical-looking tickets, but on white paper. “Steerage,” he said, not even a question, wrote on each ticket, and said, “Ten pounds, ten shillings,” and again, each had exactly that ready in his hand. I’d edged forward, curious about the ticket lying on the counter, and saw that it was actually a contract, everything spelled out including Bill of Fare: Breakfast at eight o’clock: Oatmeal porridge and milk, tea, coffee, sugar, milk, fresh bread, butter . . .
My turn, then, three more men in caps now behind me. “Sor?” said the clerk. Sounded like sor, anyway.
“One first-class.”
“First-class? First?” He smiled, happy about it. “Never before have I sold one of them.” He had to hunt through two drawers to find a first-class ticket, looking about like the others but on tan paper—and with no bill of fare. Then—no hurry, everyone behind me could wait—he brought up and unrolled on the counter, turning it to face me, a deck plan. He weighted it at two corners with an inkwell and a paper-spike. “And where would you like to be, sor? We have vacancies on every deck, many a cancellation; Southampton telephoned me only last night.”
“The boat deck. Which is the boat deck?”
“That would be Deck A, sor, the top deck.” He touched the deck plan, but I saw that all the cabins were well forward: they’d rise and fall with the sea, and I’d had enough of that. But Deck B just below, also a promenade deck, had cabins along its entire length except for restaurants near the stern. “Maybe Deck B would be better; something near the middle and as close to the staircase here as you’ve got.” I touched the little printed stairs on the plan which led up to the boat deck and boat number five. Closest to the stairs was a three-room suite with its own private promenade, but next to it, a single. “This one?”
“B-fifty-seven.” He looked at a typed list, then at a penciled list of cancellations. “Taken, sor, but B-fifty-nine beside it is available.”
“I’ll take it.” I brought out my wallet, looking at him questioningly, and he had his big moment: watching me slyly, not sure I understood what I’d gotten into, he said, “Yes, sor. That will be five hundred and fifty American dollars.”
“How about a hundred and ten English fivers?”
“That will do very nicely indeed.”
I had ready, in an inside coat pocket, an inch-thick sheaf of the strange English five-pound notes printed on one side only of a sheet of white paper big as a dog’s blanket. The little room was absolutely silent, every eye watching as I counted out a hundred and ten of these. The clerk picked them up, tapped them into alignment, and—I admired this—put them into his cash drawer without recounting. He pushed over my ticket. “Safe voyage, sor.” And I thanked him, and left, every eye following me out to the street.
Around noon I walked onto Scott’s Quay with my suitcase, set it at my feet, then stood with several dozen Irish immigrants staring out toward the distant harbor mouth. I had my camera again and, not really wanting to, I took this. There she lay waiting for us, lazy wisps lifting from her funnels; arrogantly waiting, my enemy and the enemy of us all, the great evil blackness under whose riveted hull I had stood helpless. She knew, and she knew that I knew, I alone. And I looked out at that black smoking silhouette and did not know what to do with my knowledge of what—far over the horizon ahead—lay waiting for us.
We left Scott’s Quay here, standing crowded together on the deck of the tender America, following this tender crammed with mail for the States. Plenty of excited chatter and laughter, though one young girl stood silent and white-faced. As we chugged across the bay, the waiting ship ahead began to grow, and the murmur of talk lowered. Our steady passage across the calm took maybe half an hour, details slowly emerging on the great silhouetted ship: a thin gold sheer line at the hull’s upper edge . . . a roughening of the black surface of her side becoming rows of rivets. I’d seen one of our passengers, as he boarded the tender, wearing kilts, but hadn’t noticed his bagpipe. But now as we drew near the waiting ship he began to play, a mournful squealing, and a young woman in a shawl murmured respectfully, “ ‘Erin’s Lament.’ ” Fortunately he wasn’t too close to me—when you’ve heard one bagpipe tune you’ve heard them both—but the crowd listened quietly. When he finished, the enormous ship filled our view, and the vibration of our steam engine suddenly slowed under our feet, and now I looked far up at the great white letters that spelled Titanic.