Tom and Cassie Wedding (1911)
“The port of Derry, “Tom said with evident relief as the Scotsmans sailed up the Foyle. He leaned on the rail and breathed in the cool early morning air glad to be free of the underdeck fetid smell of cattle, vomit and diesel. It had been a long noisy 12 hours since he had boarded at Broonielaw Quay in Glasgow the night before. The revellers had drunk and sung Irish and Scottish songs for most of the night. As the dark sky was illuminated by a bright frosty moon the deepening cold night forced the drinkers and the singers to quietened down and find a space to get their heads down on the hard wooden benches or floor
He cast his eyes on the unloading bay. There was never a time he sailed into Derry but he thought of his mother Bell’s story of when she had brought his father also named Thomas home for burial and had met the man who was working his passage to Glasgow. She wasn’t to know that renting her home in Clyde Street to him would lead to her casting her son and daughter aside when she married him. Now, his mother and her second husband were dead. And the uncle who had reared him was dead. He sighed. Death seemed to be his constant shadow.
His mood lightened. In a few short hours he’d seen his bride-to be, his childhood, Catherine. This time next week we’ll be man and wife, he thought.
His stomachs rumbled reminding him he hadn’t eaten in a long while. He wished he had taken his sister Margaret’s advice and brought a bit of a parcel of food with him. He smiled ruefully. His sister was only three years older than him but she had been mother and father to him all his life. She had wanted him to get a cabin for the crossing. He had cast that idea aside. Paying steerage was a third of the price of a cabin. The money he had saved would be needed for his wedding.
Waiting in line to disembark his grip tightened on his cardboard suitcase. It held all he owned in the world. He’d bought it with his first pay as a labourer. It went everywhere with him. Still only 23 it seemed such a long time since he had crossed the Irish Sea to work in Scotland when he barely out of short trousers. Straightening his crumpled suit coat he stepped off the gangplank shivering in the fresh wind coming off the Foyle. He had a bit to go yet but a bit of breakfast was the first thing before he took the train for Strabane, he thought stepping around the horse and cart delivering milk.
As the train drew into Strabane black smoke puffing out smoke like an impatient dragon, anxious to be on his way across the Border and in to Donegal the tiredness fell from him. The carriage door made a dull thud against the puffing train as he threw it open before the train had stopped at the platform. Almost at a run he made for the Camel’s Hump and took the familiar road to the small market town of Lifford.In no time he was crossing the old stone bridge that spanned the Rivers the Finn and the Mourne that separated the border towns of Strabane and Lifford.
A great sense of exhilaration washed over him. He was nearly home.
A couple of miles out of Lifford he came to Murlog Chapel. It was where his father had been christened a dozen years after the Famine by an old doting priest. It was him who had named his father Thomas. He stood at the chapel gate looking up the slight incline that led to the whitewashed structure with its arched stained glass windows and below on a spread of green grass the huge Pilgrims’ Cross mounted on a platform of kneeling steps surrounded by the graves of past priests. He could hardly believe he’d shortly be marrying Catherine there.
Catherine had been carried there from Tober to have her christened in the marble christening font just inside the door to the woman’s entrance when she was a few days old. He had been baptised in Glasgow. That had been one of the things that stopped us getting married last year, he thought. No baptismal record could be found for him. Involuntarily his hand went to the inside pocket of his coat. He had it now after trailing around all the churches in Glasgow …
His eye scanned the old bell tower at the right hand side of the chapel that was the entrance to the Mens’ aisle. He wondered would he still have to go in that way on the morning he got married. Catherine would come in the woman’s aisle and meet him at the altar rails in the middle of the church.
He heard the clang of a gate and turned around to see a tall gangly boy, his arms full of sticks he’d gathered from the hedgerows coming from the Ballindrait direction. Tom watched as the boy pushed open the gate of St Patrick’s National School. It was still early so it must be his turn to light the fire for the new Headmaster, Master Marron, Tom thought. The new school looks alright but I’m glad I’m done with all that he thought as he picked up his case.
At the turn of the road near Mc Dougal’s the smell of cow mature assailed his nose. ’ Across the fields he heard the rattle of the train on its way from Strabane to Letterkenny. He stopped for a minute and followed its leisure trail of smoke and the windows of its yellow and red carriages still sparkling bright after only a few years of use. A feeling of pride swelled up in his chest. He nearly wished now he had stayed at home after he left school and got a job as a platelayer labouring to create the railway tracks.
He walked on. He was almost at Ballinabreen when he met more boys and girls coming to school. They looked curiously at his case wondering who he was. One boy lagged behind the rest a bit as they passed. Tom thought he recognised him. “Are you Catherine’s brother,” he asked crossing the road to speak to him.
The boy nodded. “I’m not going’ to yer weddin and Uncle Ned is not goin’ ether,” he said flatly, walking away. Tom stood for a minute looking after him. He hadn’t thought much about who would be at the wedding. He just wanted to marry Catherine. He didn’t care if it was just him and her and the two witnesses. “I hope things are alright in Catherine’s house,” he mused. He knew Katie, Catherine’s mother didn’t want her daughter to marry him because. He’d been reared by the O Callahan’s in Gortinreagh.”Marrying below herself,” was what she had said. But he had thought old Ned, the shoemaker, Catherine’s uncle, liked him. Catherine was Ned’s favourite. She delivered the shoes he mended and collected the money for him. A confirmed bachelor, he had never married. Catherine had told him once that her uncle Ned jokingly said he never married because a woman would spend all his money and eat half of his food.
As Tom nearer Burndale Burn on the outskirts of Ballindrait village he noticed a brown and black collie dog sitting on a ditch outside one of the new labourers cottages. Catherine had written and told him her uncle Ned had a ‘bit of land’ was hoping the County Council would build him a cottage. As Tom drew level with the dog it backed away and set up a frenzied barking. The door of the cottage opened and Ned Floyd stood there.
Tom felt his stomach tense. “I knew you wouldn’t get by without Gypsy letting me know,” he said wiping his hands on his trousers. “Come inside. I want a word with ye, young Cannon,” he said turning away “And bring a armful of them peat when yer comin’ he called disappearing in through a green painted door set in the side gable of the cottage. Tom’s eyes fell on the untidy sprawling mountain of bog turf. It strayed over the ground as if somebody had upended a cart and left it to find its own shape. He left his case down and filled his arms with the dry peat and followed old Ned into the cottage. He dropped them inside the black iron fender and waited. Ned went to his work bench and picked up a pair of black leather boots spat on an old rag and polished until the leather gleamed “Try them on,” he instructed holding them out to Tom.
Tom’s hand trembled as he took them from him. “There’s a pair for Cassie too,” Ned said.
“It’s not what I expected,” Tom stammered out. “I met Catherine’s brother on the road…he said you…”he stopped. “You know Catherine’s mother doesn’t want me to marry her.”
Ned took a long poker hooked at the end and deftly drew the fire plate back that covered the glowing embers of the fire. Immediately an orange flame tinged with yellow gold shot up and licked the black Stanley range. .Ned didn’t speak until he’d fed the open mouth with some of the turf before replacing the plate and rattling the poker through the bars of the fire. “Me sister Kate is a good woman for the house but she’s always had notions above her station,” he said pulling the heavy black iron kettle onto the range. “She’ll change her tune soon enough when she sees how happy ye make our wee Cassie.”
He pulled a small flat pan forward. Reaching above his head to the mantleplace he drew down a dented tea caddy decorated with dancing girls. Tossing a handful of dark brown tea leaves in the pan Ned covered them with the bubbling water from the kettle. “You will make her happy,” he said handing Tom a steaming mug of tea. The way he said it Tom knew that old as Ned was, he’d have him to deal with if he didn’t.
“I will.”
A silence fell between them.
Tom blew on the scalding tea to cool it and wondered what was coming next. “You get the birth lines?” Ned asked.
Tom felt the letter inside his coat pocket. “I did,” he said. “It has both my mother and my father’s name on it.”
Ned slapped his hand on his left knee and rose to his feet. “That will keep our Kate happy for a while or ‘til ye get the weddin’ over anyway, “he said under his breath. He searched around for a bit of brown paper and string to wrap the boots in. Tom took the clumsily wrapped parcel unsure how to thank him. He ended up blurting out his gratitude and shaking Ned’s rough work worn hand. “It’s what John James would have ordered me to do if he wasn’t six foot down in the oul Clonleigh graveyard, Sure didn’t he always keep you well shod,” Ned said with a grin. Then his face sobered and his countance grew dark and troubled. “It’s a changed place up there where ye were reared since yer uncle died.” He straightened his rounded shoulders. “You know there’s a bed for you and Cassie here…if ye need it,”
He stood at the gate of the cottage a sad look in his eyes and watched until Tom had turned the bend. “It’ll not be an easy road, “he sighed. Calling the dog he went in and closed the door behind him. He had plenty of work to do. He didn’t need oul Cather’s wife from the pub in Mill Street coming looking for information when she saw young Cannon passing by.
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