reading

SOMETIMES YOU REMEMBER a moment so clearly it is as if you have a painting of it. I was sitting with an Indian man. Actually, that’s not right at all. I have a big tale to tell you and I don’t want to start by making a mistake. He wasn’t just any Indian man. He was a Choctaw, and that matters. It’s wrong to think all people are the same even if at first glance you think they look alike. My little brother Toby thought all the Indians in America would be scary but that certainly wasn’t true. There were lots of kinds of Indians, just as there are lots of kinds of all sorts of people everywhere you go, and you need to pay attention to detail. Da taught me that.

‘The Choctaw are a great people who have fought to keep their identity.’ That’s what my friend Louise told me. I don’t really know what that means except that they had a tough time, just like we Irish did.

It was early morning, a bright morning, and I was waiting outside Weston’s Wagon Shop in the town of Independence, Missouri. I suppose I should paint a bit more of a picture for you. I mean, I know everything that happened but you’re just catching up. Well, it was spring, 1848, and I was thirteen years old. My big brother, Henry, and my friend Jack were inside the shop buying us a wagon. It was a particular one called a Weston Wagon, which the advertisers said would ‘never wear out’. That was good! We had a long trip ahead of us.

I wanted to go into the shop too, but Henry was older than me and he had started trying to boss me about. ‘If Jack’s coming in, then someone has to stay outside to keep an eye on the cart. You stay put.’

I don’t know why I listened to him. No one seemed at all interested in our old farm cart. It had come all the way from Ireland and was quite battered by now, but I stayed beside it just the same. I think the fight had gone out of me. I’m not sure I cared about anything.

‘What you got there, girl?’ A large woman in a bonnet the size of a barn stood in front of me. Her huge hat came between me and the sun and the world went dark.

She pointed to the cart and the giant piece of metal which stood on it. ‘What the heck you got there? Some kind of monster?’

‘It’s a printing press. It makes newspapers and … posters and books. My Da made it, and my Uncle Aedan. Uncle Aedan’s a blacksmith. In Ireland.’

I realized I still felt excited about the press. It was a wonderful thing, but instead of being impressed the woman scowled at me.

She shook her head. ‘Damned Irish get everywhere these days.’ She turned to leave and I heard myself shout after her:

‘It’s the printing press which will help bring democracy to the United States! You wait and see!’

And for the first time in ages I grinned. It’s what Da would have shouted, I was sure.

Then it hit me again. Da was no longer with us. There was just us Hannigan kids now, and we had no idea really what we were doing, or what lay ahead.

I don’t know why I remember that particular morning so well. Maybe it was the small book I was holding. Jack and I had just finished printing it. Writing made me feel better somehow, so I had put down the story of how we came to be in America.

‘But it’s not finished!’ I protested to Jack, my gentle giant of a friend, when he said we should print it.

It was a start, but I couldn’t imagine the tale ever being finished. There were too many things I didn’t know – like what had happened to Da. He was missing and I could hardly understand how the whole world was just carrying on anyway. And not just carrying on but doing it with such energy.

It seemed to me then that if I could have flown into the sky and looked down, I would have seen that Weston’s on that day was the busiest place on the planet. That spring, hundreds of people were getting ready to head out to the prairie. Have you heard of the prairie? It was once the wildest bit of land. Thousands of miles with nothing on it, but you had to walk across it if you wanted to seek your fortune in the wild west of America. Customers from every land in the world were coming and going as they got ready for their trip. From inside the wagon shop you could hear the steady bang of the blacksmith’s hammer. Wagons were being built, and horses and oxen were having their metal shoes put on. It was a sound which made me homesick because it reminded me of my Uncle Aedan’s forge back in Ireland. I wanted to cry, but I think I was running out of tears. I was such a long way from home.

I was sitting on a hay bale abandoned at the side of the road on the corner of streets called Liberty and Kansas. Perhaps the hay had fallen off some passing wagon. I was so busy thinking that I didn’t even notice the old Indian man arrive.

I don’t think I replied. I thought he was probably right. I was just a kid but I felt old. I carried on sitting, but so too did the man. Indeed, he sat so still that after a while it caused me to look up in case something had happened. Under a wide-brimmed black hat, his eyes smiled at me in silence. He had grey hair and a lined face of deep brown. I knew he was an Indian. Back then people told terrible tales about them, but he seemed nice. To be honest I was too tired to feel frightened. I think I thought that all the worst things in life had already happened to me. After a moment though, I felt I ought to say something.

‘My brother Henry … and my friend Jack, they’re buying a wagon so we can carry on. Jack’s done drawings of what is wanted,’ I explained.

He was right. We were about to head west in a covered wagon, just like the hundreds, maybe thousands of others in the town. My unexpected companion sat looking at our cart and its heavy load for a long time without saying a word. I think it made me uncomfortable.

‘It’s a printing press.’ I felt I ought to explain. ‘You use it to …’

I carried on anyway: ‘… tell stories. Make books and newspapers. We’re going to make a newspaper. In a place called “Oregon”.’

The old man sat so still and silent that I felt I needed to say something else. In my family there were so many of us that I wasn’t used to such quiet.

‘Ireland,’ he repeated as if he liked the sound of it. ‘You wear funny boy’s trousers,’ he added.

I looked down at my trouser legs. They were funny, I suppose. Not just that I was a girl wearing trousers but that I was Irish and my clothes were silk with Chinese patterns. Such a lot had happened.

Now I nodded. ‘We’re going to Oregon, and I’m hoping I’ll have a horse. If I have a horse, I will need to wear trousers, although maybe not these ones.’

I’m not sure how an old Indian man and I ended up washed against each other in the sea of people streaming through the town of Independence that morning. You would have supposed there were no quiet corners where a conversation might even have taken place. Certainly no one else seemed to have time for a chat. Noise erupted from every living thing, and everyone was busy being, well, busy. Bearded men in boots and long coats with hoods hurried past, jingling coins in their pockets, while Mexican fellows in bright colours called out in a strange tongue as they herded dozens of braying mules. Their unbelievably wide straw hats hid their faces as they pushed along the noisy animals. Smoke spilled out from the men puffing on foul-smelling cigarettes rolled in what looked like the husks of corn.

Giant wooden wagons – some carrying sacks of wool or the hides of animals, others filled with people of every age and size – were trundling along everywhere. They creaked and groaned with the weight of their burdens as whooping riders on ponies galloped between them, racing through the mud to get a drink at Colonel Noland’s tavern. There they leaped down to drink cheap, strong whiskey called 40 Rod, slapping each other on the back and calling out, ‘Are ye for Oregon or California?’ Herds of cattle lowed in the distance, and every minute, it seemed, new people were arriving from the east, excited by the promise of a new and better life.

I looked at the passing crowds. We had been travelling for a long time and I already knew you could tell something about a person just from their clothes. The Germans looked smarter than the Irish. The men wore neat felt hats and the women had embroidered aprons over their skirts. We Irish usually looked poorer, wearing whatever we had rather than what we actually wanted. The Choctaw man had leggings which were like trousers made from buckskin except there was a separate piece for each leg. They had fringes down the outside and were tied onto a belt, over which hung a long flap of deerskin. The flap fell down in front and behind. On top he wore a plain rough shirt and round his neck a bright red piece of cloth. Like me, he had no shoes. I looked down at our two pairs of bare feet – his brown, long and thin, mine short and stubby but brown too from the dirt in the street. You couldn’t tell who we were from our feet, I thought.

I had thought a lot about this. ‘I like the name “Chronicle”,’ I answered immediately. ‘We had a paper before … in New York … that was called Éire Nuacht, which means “Irish News”, but I’m thinking we should try and sell to more people by making news for everyone.’

‘“Chronicle”,’ repeated my new friend as if the word pleased him. ‘And your name?’ he asked.

‘Nashobanowa,’ I repeated, enjoying the sound of his name as much he had liked the word ‘Chronicle’. I nodded. ‘Does it mean anything?’

He smiled. ‘Nashobanowa is “walking wolf”, but I am old. I don’t walk so much any more.’

As we sat there, a tall man walked past having a debate with his friend about which wagon train to join. It was something almost everyone in the town talked about. This man had a drawling way of speaking which I was learning came from one of the American states down to the south.

‘But I don’t want to join a train with a bunch of suckers,’ he was protesting.

‘You know, people from Illinois. Suckers – like the bit of a tobacco plant you don’t want.’

I sat for a minute thinking about the adventure that lay ahead. I thought about Ma and Da and how much I missed them. All I wanted was to travel with them.

FROM IRELAND TO AMERICA

A Tale by Slim Hannigan

Printed by Slim Hannigan and her friend Jack on a printing press made by Patrick & Aedan Hannigan

It’s hard to know where to begin. I mean, I know perfectly well that a story ought to begin at the beginning. It’s the obvious place, but it’s often hard to know exactly where that might be. There’s always a bit that happened before the beginning and a bit that happens after the tale is told, which might just add something to the end. It’s like a journey. There is the moment when you set off on a trip, but the part where you get ready to go is important too.

Perhaps my tale is no stranger than any of the thousands of stories of those who made a new life for themselves in America in the 1840s. My name is Slim Hannigan and I come from a small town in Ireland called Ballysmaragaid. It’s a tiny place which we Hannigans called home until the great famine came. That was in 1845. That was the year everything changed.

There were six of us then – Ma; Da; my big sister, Bea, who was sixteen and thought herself quite the lady; my older brother, Henry, who was fourteen and liked to settle things with his fists; then me, eleven, and finally my little brother, Toby, who was eight.

We didn’t have much but we had enough land to grow potatoes. No one in our village had much money so everyone pretty much lived on potatoes, but that year the crop in all the fields got a terrible disease. It was dreadful because suddenly there was no food. You can’t imagine a famine till you’ve lived through one. We had absolutely nothing to eat from our fields and nothing even to sell to buy food. We were so poor we didn’t even own our own land. Our neighbours were the same. In our village almost everyone we knew rented their land from a landlord who didn’t live in Ireland. The landlords were English, and ours was called Lord Cardswell. He lived in London, but he also had a grand house in Ballysmaragaid called Cardswell Manor. When the potatoes failed and we had nothing to eat, it wasn’t long before we had to do something desperate.

Now you’ll think it strange, I’m sure, but my little brother Toby had a pet pig called Hamlet who he loved very much. When things got very bad Da took the poor creature to market. No one was happy about it and I remember Ma waiting at home for Da to return with some money so they could get some food and pay the rent, but Da, well, he never does things quite like other people. Instead of getting us something to eat and a few coins he came back with a big box of silver letters. He’d bought them with the money from the pig. He told us he had met a printer who was going out of business. Da said it was as though he’d had a ‘date with destiny’.

We had no food, but Da was always cheerful. He said the box of letters was going to ‘change the world’. He explained that he was going to make something called a printing press and start a newspaper which would spread the word about how awful everything was. He believed that a newspaper would help the starving Irish by giving people information. If the world knew how bad it was, then someone would help us.

My big brother, Henry, wanted to change the world too, but not like that. He didn’t want to use words. He wanted to fight. He thought Da was foolish and gradually he became more and more angry.

Our landlord, Lord Cardswell, didn’t help us even though we were starving. Instead he carried on asking for our rent once a week, but he didn’t do it in person. He sent a terrible man called Parker Crossingham to do it. Parker Crossingham was what they called an ‘agent’. He worked for the landlord and he didn’t much care how he got his money or what state we were all in. When we were all weak with hunger, he still came banging on the door demanding that we pay, but of course we had no money on account of Da getting the silver letters for the pig instead of cash.

Da refused to give up and began making a printing press for his letters with my Uncle Aedan. Everyone was in a dreadful state in Ireland, but Da was certain it would help. Henry had had enough. He was furious with Da, saying that no writing would ever be enough to make a difference. For Henry there was nothing to do but fight, so he joined a gang of boys and men called the Ribbonmen, who were battling the English landlords. It all turned very ugly. Parker Crossingham was so angry he tore down our house, and Henry got into so much trouble that in the end we had to run away from Ireland and head for America. We had no choice. Henry was going to be arrested and sent to Australia as a convict. If we hadn’t run away, we would never have seen him again.

We decided to go to a place in America called Portland, Oregon, because Da’s other brother, Niall, already lived there. It is as far west in America as you can go without falling in the ocean. Uncle Niall had written and said it was wonderful.

Leaving your home causes quite an uproar and I have found out all sorts of surprising things. It turned out that Ma wasn’t Irish at all but English, and that her father was none other than our own landlord. Ma and I went to Cardswell Manor to ask for help, but the only person who was kind was Esther, Ma’s sister, who I hadn’t even known existed. It seemed that years ago Ma had fallen in love with Da, but he was very poor and Ma was very rich. Ma’s family didn’t approve, but she loved Da so much she refused to give him up. This made her father cross and he wouldn’t see her after she married Da. They hadn’t spoken for years, so when Ma and I went to get help it didn’t go well. Lord Cardswell still wanted Ma to come home and not be with Da, but she loved Da too much for that. I thought we would end up with nothing, but Esther secretly gave us a small bag of money and some food, and with that we set off to Dublin to find a boat to America.

We sailed away on a terrible old sailing ship called the Pegasus. It was a shockingly bad thing and an awful journey. It took weeks to get across the sea to America. Lots of people died. So many, in fact, that they called the boat a ‘coffin ship’. The woman in the next bunk to us, Kate Kavanagh – her tiny baby passed away and was buried at sea. A lad of seventeen called Liam Byrne lost both his brothers. Others got very sick, including my big sister, Bea, and a lovely sailor who I became friends with called Jack. I hadn’t realized when we left home that Ma was having a baby. I think she must have been awfully weak from all those months of not eating properly because when the baby, my little sister Hero, came along, Ma didn’t survive. She died at sea and never saw America at all.

It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, well, all of us. Da missed Ma so much that he went to pieces and stopped speaking. He was so sad and it made life very difficult. Da had carefully hidden the bag of money we got from Esther. Now we couldn’t get him to tell us where it was, and we couldn’t find it. We found ourselves in New York City with no money, a baby to feed and no parent to tell us what to do. My sailor friend Jack and I had become good friends. I think he fancied an adventure because now he left the boat and came with us. Jack was very strong, so he pushed the heavy cart with the printing press. Thank goodness. Without him we would have had to leave it behind and it was all we had. Liam Byrne, the boy from the boat who had lost his brothers, lent us a little money, and slowly we began to make a life. We had never intended to stay in New York City, but we had no money to travel on to join Uncle Niall in Portland, which was thousands of miles away.

We needed to make some money so, with the help of some new American friends, Jack and I got to work with the box of letters. We started a newspaper called Éire Nuacht, which means ‘Irish News’, using Da’s press. We printed news about people who had just arrived; there was a column to help people find family members who were missing, and advice about how to manage in the big city. It was good and people wanted to buy it. A few cents at a time we made a start on gathering the money for our trip west.

Meanwhile we lived in a dreadful room in a place called the Old Brewery – me, Bea, Hero, Toby, Henry, Da and poor Kate Kavanagh from the boat who I bumped into by chance one day. A man who had been with us on the Pegasus had sold her a ticket to take her all the way to her sister in California. It had cost Kate all her money, but when she tried to travel the ticket turned out to be a fake. So she stayed with us too and looked after my little sister.

I think we started to get used to life in the city. Da slowly got better. He began talking again. He made friends with Kate, and I know that helped. One day Toby found a pig in the street, He was sure it was his old friend Hamlet. He taught the new pig to do tricks and they were both so happy. Bea also loved it in New York, and we might have stayed if it weren’t for Henry getting us into trouble once more. Da says my big brother is like ‘a moth to a flame’ when it comes to getting into a scrape. I know Henry wanted to help, but he chose a funny way of doing it. He began stealing to get us money and was arrested for it. We got him out of prison and back to the Old Brewery – only to find that the Dead Rabbit gang were after him and the Byrne boy, Liam. Henry and Liam had thought they could make money by gambling but it hadn’t worked out. Now they both owed lots of money to the rough gang who were chasing after them to get it back. It was terrifying. Henry was in so much trouble. Even more than he had been in Ireland. Now it wasn’t about him being arrested; it was that he might be killed.

A Chinese neighbour called Mr Liu helped us escape through a tunnel dressed in Chinese silk trousers and tops. He thought the men who were after us would be looking for an Irish family and not a Chinese one. We managed to get to the dockside on the Hudson River in the dead of night where we caught a ferry heading south – me, Da, Kate, baby Hero, Bea, Henry, Toby (and the pig, of course), Liam, and Jack with the cart holding our precious printing press. We loved New York but once more we had to leave our home in a hurry and set sail.

The ferry was very wide and had a huge iron chimney. Steam billowed out as the two great paddle wheels began to turn to take us away. We were tired and frightened and it was hard not to be suspicious of everyone else on board. Why were they leaving the city so early in the morning? What did they make of the large and odd-looking Chinese family who huddled together against the cold? Most of the passengers were men. A lot of them were chewing tobacco and spitting the juice on the deck, where it lay in great brown puddles. We had read about travelling to Oregon in Uncle Niall’s letters, but he had written about a trip made with wagons pulled by oxen. He had told us about the prairie and about herds of buffalo and dangerous Indians but never mentioned steamships. I knew things were bad that day as we left New York, but somehow I thought it would all work out. I had my family. Da was back to his old self. We had Kate to look after the baby and I had my friend Jack. I thought it would be all right. Even with all our trouble I felt safe. How wrong I was—

Nashobanowa finished reading what I had written. He put the printed pages down on his lap. He didn’t speak, but instead picked up a piece of straw off the bale and began sucking on it.

‘I don’t think all Indians are dangerous any more,’ I explained hurriedly. ‘It was what we were told.’

Just then Henry came out of Weston’s. He was frowning and seemed in an awful rush. ‘Come on, Slim. We’ve to hurry.’

Henry quickly shook hands with him and then said, ‘Yes, well, we haven’t the time now. We must hurry. Come on, Slim!’

‘Where’s Jack?’ I asked. I wanted Nashobanowa to meet my friend, who had helped me do the printing.

Henry grabbed a handle of the cart and indicated I should take the other. He began pushing almost before I was ready.

‘I have your story!’ shouted the old man, waving the pages in the air behind me. But there was no time to go back. Henry was rushing along as best he could, considering how heavy the cart was, and I had to keep up.

I looked at the bright blue spring sky and was confused. ‘What snow? It’s spring.’

Henry was exasperated with me. ‘You don’t know anything, Slim, so just do as I say. We have to leave Independence within the week and we’re nowhere near ready.’

I stopped pushing and stood still in the mud street. ‘We can’t leave, Henry. We need to wait here for Da.’

Henry was blind in his right eye and he was on the wrong side of the cart to be able to see me. Now he turned and looked straight at me.

CHAPTER ONE

IT’S A FUNNY thing about the potato. It came to Ireland from the Americas in the first place, and yet it’s also the very thing that made us leave home and head to the New World. You wouldn’t think something so ordinary as a potato, something I used to eat every day of my life, could have had such an effect – but, well, it did. The potato once grew in the ground right by our front door, but because of it, me and my family left home and travelled six thousand miles to find a new life. This is the story of that journey – and I’ve quite a tale to tell, so you’d better make yourself comfortable. Some of it is unbelievable, but it’s the truth, sure as my name is Slim Hannigan.

Ah, well, I should stop right there. Everyone calls me ‘Slim’ but my real name is Rosalind. Rosalind? I ask you. What kind of a name is that for a girl who can ride a horse and fire a gun? For a girl who once wrestled an Indian boy with a feather in his hair and won? For a girl who started her own newspaper and sold it on the streets of New York aged twelve? But I’m getting ahead of myself. My father chose Rosalind from some play called As You Like It. Well, I don’t like it, so ‘Slim’ I’ll be, thank you very much.

I was always making my own mind up about things and I don’t think I was an easy child. The story my family always told was about my hair. I was about ten. It was Christmas and we were going to have a small party. Ma had told me a hundred times, ‘You tidy your hair, Rosalind Hannigan, or I will cut it off with your father’s knife.’

Da’s knife always lay ready to use by the fire. It says something about me that I didn’t like to have tidy hair – I didn’t like having long hair at all. I just found it annoying. I wasn’t anything like my big sister, Beatrice, who loved nothing better than to try different styles. I just thought long hair got in the way. Refusing to brush, I simply took Da’s knife and cut it off myself to save Ma the time. When she saw me with my new haircut she nearly dropped the pail of milk she was carrying. She stood completely still and I thought she was going to be cross.

‘It was you who suggested it,’ I said, quietly waiting for her anger to burst out, but instead she was silent before she suddenly began to laugh.

‘Oh, Slim, whatever shall we do with you?’ she wondered through peals of laughter. I loved her laugh. It brightened our little house every day.

Anyway, Da – that’s my father, Patrick Hannigan – always said that a story has to start some place, so I need to take you for a little while to the great green fields of Ireland. We’re not stopping for long as I don’t live there any more. Despite that, and everything I’ve been through, there’s still something about even the thought of Ireland that makes my heart pound. The symbol of Ireland is a little tiny green clover with three leaves called the shamrock. I can’t even picture the shamrock growing by the lane alongside my old home without a tear coming to my eye. I don’t approve of being too soppy, but my big brother, Henry, says it’s all right, it just proves I’m still Irish in my heart.

Henry. He’s the one who started a lot of the trouble. Not that I blame him. If I had been a bit older I might have caused some trouble too.

I was born in 1834 in a small place called Ballysmaragaid, which I’m sure you won’t have heard of. It’s about two days’ walk from Dublin, which is the biggest city in Ireland and which I suppose you might know. Ballysmaragaid. What a lot of letters! It means ‘Place of Emerald’, and sure enough it was so green that St Patrick himself was once said to have been struck almost blind with the beauty of it. I don’t know why a saint would have come to our village at all.

The last time I remember when everything was completely normal was a day off from school. Maybe it was a Sunday, I don’t know. Ballysmaragaid was so small, we didn’t even have a church so we didn’t go. I think Ma believed in God but she didn’t make a fuss about it. That day I was wandering through the woods. I used to spend hours amongst the trees by myself but I never got lost.

‘Look for the moss,’ Da taught me. ‘It’s a natural navigator. Find a bit of tree not too near the ground. If there is moss growing, it will be on the north side of the trunk. Moss needs moisture and it will grow there because that is in the shade in the middle part of the day when the sun is doing most of its drying.’

It was 3 July 1845. The day before my birthday. I was ten, nearly eleven, when my story begins. I was probably wearing a pair of my brother’s old trousers, and certainly no shoes. In fact I never had a pair of shoes at all until much later. We were poor but it didn’t feel like it. With my short hair and trousers I must have looked like a boy.

I was happy in the woods. The woodland went on for miles – great oak trees made a canopy of green but there were also crab apple trees, wild privet, and little Irish whitebeams covered in a fine mist of white flowers in the spring and small red berries in the autumn. I loved the place. Ma was good with nature too. She taught me about the delicious mushrooms you could eat for free and how to look carefully at everything that was growing.

‘Look closely and you will see great wonders. See this?’ She picked up a green plant with rounded leaves and little pink flowers. ‘They call it Enchanter’s Nightshade. Isn’t that a beautiful name? Now, most people will tell you it’s a sort of weed but even if it is, I think it’s lovely. If you look carefully you can see it has delicate little downy hairs all over the stems.’

No matter what the season, the woods seemed to be alive with colour – the richness of the early purple orchid, the tiny shaft of sun from the yellow pimpernel and the red of the wild strawberry.

‘Who needs great museums and galleries of art when we have this?’ Da would say as he picked bluebells to take home for Ma.

Anyway, this last normal day I was in one of Da’s old shirts with the sleeves rolled up. I had been fishing in the stream. I wasn’t supposed to. Beatrice said it wasn’t right for a girl of my age to still enjoy ‘such nonsense’. She wanted me home, in the house but I could never settle to sewing or cooking like my big sister, Beatrice. I liked outdoor things. I had caught a little brown trout and was feeling very pleased with myself. Ma might well be cross about me going fishing but she would appreciate the fish. We never had a great deal to eat and a trout would be welcome. I walked along carrying my fish on the end of the long stick I had been using as my fishing pole and no doubt whistling, which I was not supposed to do either. I had played in these woods all my life so I think I was surprised to come across a turning through the trees that I didn’t recall taking before.

I had only walked for a few moments when the woodland seemed to give up and I came out into a clearing. I looked up and saw the grandest house you could ever imagine. It was a great grey square place, the size of a castle. It stood on a small hill with lawns the size of fields rolling up in waves towards it. The late-afternoon sun was shining on the windows. I had never seen so much glass. We didn’t have any windows at all in our little stone house. To my young eyes this magnificent place seemed to have hundreds. The light glinted back at me, bouncing off the shiny surfaces as if the place were on fire. It was beautiful. Three long sets of stone stairs swept up towards the front door, with fancy marble columns set on either side. I had never walked this far before, but I knew what it was.

This was Cardswell Manor, a grand house that belonged to a lord so English that he didn’t even stay there. Ma said they had linen on the beds and a fireplace with a chimney in every room. A child living in such a place had a room all to herself just for sleeping and was never cold in the winter. There was even a library of books which the people in the house could read whenever they liked. How Da would love such a thing!

I was mesmerized by the house and stepped forward onto the lawn. I could see roses growing over a small wooden house to my right. They were red and yellow, pink and white. I had never seen such lovely flowers, so I headed towards them, thinking I could perhaps take just one for Ma. As I got closer the scent was enough to knock you over. It was wonderful. I couldn’t resist putting my head down to a particularly large flower and had just plunged my nose into the soft petals when I heard a gentle voice say, ‘Well, hello there.’

I looked up into the face of a woman. She was beautiful – about the same age as Ma but dressed completely differently. She had a long silk gown in an emerald green with white lace at the shoulders. Her hair was dark, with lovely curls that peeked out from a matching green bonnet, also trimmed with lace. I had never seen a woman like her. She smiled at me and I thought she seemed nice.

I was about to say something when I heard a man behind me shout angrily, ‘You, boy, what do you think you’re doing?’

I spun round, and in my haste my fish swung out from the stick on my shoulder and slapped straight into the woman. She gave a gasp of surprise and I turned back in horror. The trout had fallen from the line onto her chest, and she stood there for a second with the fish hanging from her gown. I didn’t know what to do.

‘You little beggar!’ yelled the man, moving towards me. He was old but he looked quite fit, so I’m afraid I ran. I wanted my fish, but didn’t feel this was the moment to try and get it back. Instead I ran as fast as I could across the lawn. I thought for a moment that someone was calling my name but I didn’t stop. I carried on racing through the woods and all the way back home. I ran past the stream, past the giant oak where Ma liked to picnic, and on past Uncle Aedan’s small blacksmith’s shop. I could tell he was there because smoke rose from the chimney where he worked the forge. As I sped past the open door I could see him raining blow after blow, down with a giant hammer on to hot metal as easy as I might lift a spoon to my mouth. He was the strongest man I’d ever seen. Under his buckskin apron the muscles on his arms and legs bulged like something that might hold up a small bridge … But I didn’t stop. I ran past the other little teachs or houses that made up our small clachan or village. There was no proper road, just a dirt path worn down by our feet, but I knew every step. Our two chickens, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, nearly tripped me up as they flapped about at my arrival. I sprinted towards our small house; it was built of such rough stone that from a distance it almost looked like part of the ground. I dashed inside and slammed the door behind me. It was just one room, with no windows to let the light in. The only light came from the fire. It was dark and smoky, and I thought it would be easy to hide.

Once inside, I raced up the ladder which rose up to a platform where we kept the potatoes. Sometimes I slept up there and it was the place where I felt safest. My chest was heaving as I lay on the wooden boards looking at the door. I tried to calm myself. I looked at the great wooden beam above the door where Da, long before any of us children had come along, had once carved his name with Ma’s. Pat & Peg, it said, with the shape of a heart neatly marked around it to keep them together. Peg was Ma’s nickname. I liked looking at that. When I saw their two names joined together, it made me feel safe and happy; as though everything was all right. Slowly I started to get my breath back.

The first person back was my little brother, Toby, and our pig, Hamlet. I could hear Toby coming before the door even opened.

‘We won! Me and Hamlet won!’ he was shouting. You always knew where Toby was for he had the loudest voice you ever heard in your life. As soon as he could talk, out came this booming sound, like a grown man in a tiny boy. It was hilarious and used to make us all laugh. He was eight then and he had the roundest, happiest face. Toby loved nothing better in the world than eating and laughing – usually at the same time. He was slightly out of breath but still managing to chew on a piece of bread while Hamlet grunted behind him, hoping for a scrap. Da had named him for some other Shakespeare play, even though Ma said he ‘shouldn’t be giving a name to a poor creature we would some day have to sell at market’. We weren’t supposed to be fond of Hamlet, but he was a funny little fellow, more like a dog than a pig. He was the palest pink you ever saw, with small, slightly darker pink nose and ears. His eyes seemed huge in his head and his hair lay smooth across his body. He loved to play with a ball and he followed my little brother around like a small shadow.

Toby must have been racing the rest of the family home as they were a way behind him. My big sister Beatrice was next in. She was sixteen and a miniature of Ma, with the same curly red hair. She was carrying great bricks of peat bog and looked hot and bothered. She dumped the lumps of soil down by the fire. I realized with a sinking feeling that I would be in trouble; that I should have been with the family digging out the peat instead of fishing and wandering in the woods. The land was soft in the summer and it was easy to dig, so we gathered in enough to last the winter. Usually we worked together, digging and collecting the ‘bricks’ which Ma and Da would then leave to dry. Once it was all dried it would burn better than wood on the fire. We used it to cook with and to keep us warm. It was important work and I should have been helping.

I watched Beatrice push her hair back from her hot face and try to smooth out her dress. Even though she was my sister I could see that she was a beauty. We were so different. She always worried about her appearance in a way that never crossed my mind.

My father was not far behind. Da, with his scruffy beard and dark hair sticking out at all angles from under his old round hat with the battered brim. He had heavy boots and trousers to the knee. He was carrying a great load of peat, but I knew he would rather be reading the books that stuck out from both pockets of his jacket.

‘Where the devil is our Slim?’ he asked, looking around as he dropped the peat onto the pile Beatrice had started.

I moved to hide further back on the platform, but Toby looked up and saw me. ‘She’s up there.’ He pointed with a grin, giving me away with pleasure.

I sat up, expecting the worst, but just then Ma came in, and as usual everything became calm. She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw, with curly hair that was so bright it was almost like the pretend hair I once saw on a doll. She wore it pulled up in a bun with a single white clasp that Da said had been made from the tusk of an elephant. Imagine such a thing! She had so many freckles on her face that she never seemed anything except full of colour, but even so there was something so elegant about Ma. She didn’t speak like the rest of us, all in a hurry and a jumble, but chose each word with care.

‘Where have you been, Slim?’ she asked gently. Her accent was soft and she sounded nothing like Da. As she spoke she carried on working, taking down the wooden bucket we used to fetch water which hung on a nail on the wall.

Ma shook her head and raised her right eyebrow at Da the way she did when a subject was not to be discussed any further. Ma always found something good in everything.

‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t come with us, Slim,’ she said brightly. ‘That’ll mean you’re not too tired to help me sort the supper.’

I nodded and slowly climbed down the ladder just as my older brother, Henry, brought in the last of the peat. He was carrying too much but wouldn’t let Da help him. Henry was fourteen but he was a big lad. It wouldn’t be long before he was as tall as Da, but right now he was somewhere between a boy and a man. He banged into me, and I’m sure it was on purpose.

‘You’re in the way, Slim,’ he muttered, but he saw Da shoot him a warning look and moved away from me. Henry was strong and he liked to solve things with his fists. How he made Da sigh. I hoped no one would mention the fishing – I didn’t want my brother to think I had been too stupid to catch anything. I would never hear the end of it. I hated it when he teased me but I didn’t want to tell anyone the truth. Henry had no time for me. He thought girls ought to stay home.

Ma went about making supper and giving me jobs to do. I got our only chair to climb on so I could reach up to the single shelf by the fire and take down the only two tin plates we owned. As we worked I watched my mother in her long skirt, worn thin with many patches, and her woollen shawl pulled and holed in so many places. It was nothing like the dress I had seen earlier up at the big house but I thought Ma looked the perfect lady.

Ma sat in the chair darning a pair of socks. She shook her head at Toby. ‘No good will come of it, Patrick,’ she sighed. ‘There shouldn’t be a pig in the house. The boy treats the creature like a dog.’

Hamlet gave a little snore, confident he was not going anywhere. Da wasn’t really listening for he was lost in a book. He sat on the floor, frowning as he tried to read by the light of the fire. He was always frowning, which was odd because in all of Ireland there was never a man with a laugh closer to his lips. When I look back now I think maybe he frowned because he needed glasses to see properly but we couldn’t afford them. Most people’s fathers in Ballysmaragaid did something practical to make a living. They built things or planted things. My da told stories, which I thought was best of all. They were all different, his stories, but they all started the same. ‘Shall I tell you a tale?’ he would begin, and soon you would be lost in his imagining.

I looked around the familiar room. There was nothing in it really. A wooden table against the wall, Ma’s chair, the two tin plates and the water bucket. On a nail banged in by the door hung Da’s greatcoat. We didn’t have anything else but I don’t remember anyone thinking it wasn’t enough.

Beatrice was drawing on a scrap of paper, as usual. She could draw like an angel and she would sit for hours dreaming about a different life. I had no idea how she could sit so still for hours and not fidget. Bea could even sew, a job which made me frown as much as Da.

Henry laughed when he saw it. ‘That’s so fancy no one would be able to walk in it.’

Ma looked at me and smiled. ‘Do you now, Slim? And what would you know of such things?’

Beatrice gave a great dreamy sigh. ‘Lace! One day I will dress as fine as I like,’ she said. ‘I’ll go to balls and theatres and have lovely suppers and wine, and I shall have a big bed where I’ll lie all day just as long as I please, combing my hair.’

It’s not the end of the journey for Slim Hannigan and her family …

Read on for an extract from

by Sandi Toksvig

AVAILABLE NOW

CHAPTER ONE

FROM IRELAND TO AMERICA

A Tale by Slim Hannigan

CHAPTER ONE