What Our Fathers Were

It was worth risking a stern talking to- I was up past bedtime that night for a quick glimpse down the stairwell to see my Father’s cheerful red face after stumbling home, full to the brim with Guinness, on what he’d called the proudest day in all me’ life.

I don’t know how anyone had expected me to sleep, after all. We knew the men who’d been working construction for Harland and Wolff the last three years had thrown their hats in the air at half past four that cloudy Friday, ringing a bell that could be heard clear across Belfast.

They’d done it.

They’d finished building the Ship.

It was 1909; I was only a wee lad of 10 when Dad got the job.

“You’re re-assigned to the White Star Line?” Mom leaned over the twins and snatched the sheet out of his hands as she whirled around the kitchen like a hurricane, per usual. “What are they buildin’ now?”

“There’s to be a new Ship,” Dad said, oozing his usual high spirits, his eyes bright with wonder. Coffee dripped onto his shirt as he failed at balancing the cup, saucer, his toast, and gurgling baby Brodie. “I’m to start tomorrow.”

“I thought you were assigned to that new row of houses up on Bolton Road.” She banged close the oven and slathered some butter on new toasts for the table. “It’s supposed to take in the highest dollar, no?”

“Not anymore, my love,” Dad said, smashing a fresh toast into his mouth, winking at me. I smiled. He always looked at me like I understood the grownup nuances, me being the oldest of his brood. It developed into a smug, lifelong habit of me assuming I understood things that I didn’t quite grasp.

“Declan, let’s get the girls and off to school, now. Quickly, come on!”

“Yes’m!” I slurped back my milk and grabbed the twins, their bright blond heads bobbing and giggling together at the end of the table. It seemed our family all moved as an enmeshed, rolling ball, a gaggle of voices and shoelaces and barely-combed hair flying behind us in our wake.

I was responsible for walking Kate and Ellie to their 1st year classrooms, before I made my way to mine. I liked school. 4th year was already promising- I had my old best mate Connor, and we’d made a new best mate Liam, who’d just moved to Belfast with his family from Galway. His Father was working on the Ship, too.

“Yep! The White Star Line! Dad says they’re makin’ the biggest Ship in the world!” Liam puffed out his chest, very proud to make this declaration.

It was three vivid, swirling years. My memories from that time all seem to have the hazy backdrop of the Ship. It dictated our every mood. Dad was exhausted and consistently surprised at the demand of its scope. But through it all, he was always so excited. It was as though his bulb had turned on even brighter: creativity and invention, he would tell us kids over pea soup and our wide eyes, are important. Big ideas can come from YOU. Mom would stay thin lipped and quiet, scrubbing the dishes, her head down. “Fanciful notions,” she’d whisper through gritted teeth. The ship’s impending grandiosity would incite late night arguments between Mom and Dad, heard through the thin walls in our flat, about money and travel and the world, or lack thereof it in our small circle. Kate and Ellie would climb into my bed when the yelling got bad, or when Mom had snuck some whiskey. She didn’t do it much, nor did Dad, thank the Gods- I saw how alcohol corroded Connor’s family from the inside out- but that didn’t mean there wasn’t the occasional night when tempers were flared, and words were sharp, and baby Brodie wailed in the background of our parents’ fights over dreams, and what was or wasn’t possible for our little family.

But the Ship also incited much joy- halfway through building the men were allowed to bring their families down to the yard past the gates to see its progress. Why, there must have been over 2000 people- we gasped and hollered at its immensity over picnics of ham and eggs and beer. Children screamed and jumped up toward the enormous propellors- they may as well have been giants. Wives burped their babies while tossing their curls, batting their lashes as folks laughed and marveled at the builders’ anecdotes. Something grand was happening in Belfast, and we were there to see it. Our teachers talked of it, as did our neighbors. We were a part of it. It meant something to us- and to the world.

It meant something to our Fathers.

High street was alive and singing, with all the Harland and Wolff men pouring in and out of pubs, the night the Ship was complete. It was a rowdy chatter heard into the wee hours, and even Belfast’s mean old Mr. McConnell who ran the hardware store downtown was seen, it was rumored, having a Guinness and toasting to the merriment.

The day the Titanic sailed from England, the April Irish skies were raining, but we didn’t let that stop all the construction families from piling into the shipyards once more to give a final toast and cheer to their grand accomplishment. Although the Ship was sailing far away, we all felt like we were on it.

The following week, I was walking Kate and Ellie home on a cool Tuesday afternoon- they were 9, now, and I was 12, acting every part of the bossy big brother that I felt. After all, we were one of the ‘Ship builder’ families. I assumed I had a little clout. Liam agreed, of course, as he and I traversed the school grounds, our shoulders high.

I had promised the twins we’d stop at Milton’s Soda Shoppe after school that day, where Mom said I was to buy one item each for the girls and myself, and a chocolate for baby Brodie- who at this point, was now 4, but much to his chagrin the nickname would stick with him- amongst his family and old neighborhood chums- for the rest of his life.

Immediately when we turned on High Street, I knew something wasn’t right. I instinctively stepped in front of the girls, which was silly- there wasn’t any sort of clear and present danger. But adults were walking out of stores in slow motion, hands to their chests, staring at the paper.

It was silent, save for a few gasps, and murmurs. A sob caught my attention. It was Liam’s mom, having just stepped out of Murphy’s Fabric with her newborn baby girl in tow.

I tentatively walked over to her, my sisters quietly at my heels.

“Er, Mrs. Doyle? Hi. It’s me, Declan.”

Mrs. Doyle looked down at me in a tearful daze, clutching a paper to her chest. I noticed- a lone newsboy was sprinting down the street, running from shop to shop throwing papers at the doors. That’s funny. There must be a special afternoon paper, I thought. Usually we only got the Chronicle in the morning.

As a kid, it’s always a strange sensation when adults are upset. I will never forget Mrs. Doyle’s eyes, in that moment, conveying a loss I’d yet to understand. She stared at me, and through me, and somehow managed to usher us kids home where I was swiftly sent upstairs straight away to work on my Maths; Kate, Ellie, and even baby Brodie eventually made his way to my little work table, all of us kids assembled. Somehow, we always wound up together when there was something to be scared of.

It was ridiculous, the men knew, to blame themselves. The top construction brass gathered the men round to discuss the very notion that anyone on the crew was ‘at fault.’ “This was an act of God,” one of the supervisors said. “Nothing more, nor less, eh?”

I was sleepless, for a while. Images of floating bodies in the Atlantic jostled me awake. I remember the vague sense of unease that dripped into every pocket of life as we all attempted to adjust to the horrific news of the sinking. We shopped, and went to school, and ate our dinners, but there was a lack of noise, and my Mom’s attention. Dad would try, ever the optimist- he wanted to go for walks with me, and talk. I’d shake him off- and particularly, any feelings HE might have had about the events- and run to play ball with my mates.

For the grim truth was inescapable: our Fathers were heroes for having built the grandest Ship in the world, but now that the Ship was at the bottom of the ocean, what did that make our Fathers?

I wrestled with this question, in my body, in my bones. Adolescence encroached upon me, using the confusion of the tragedy to quickly propel me into a teenage web of anger and judgement and sadness. It was a like a terrible force I couldn’t stop- why had no one foreseen this? How could this have happened? Who were all these Belfast men, with their loud bellows and chirpy guffaws, the men we’d cheered for up and down High Street: should we have trusted them in the first place?

Had my Dad been part of something great at all?

My anger surprised even me. It was like the Ship took down all my childhood innocence with it, and in its place, gave me my own, internal, personalized block of ice: that of disillusionment.

I wanted to yell: but Dad, I BELIEVED you when your eyes were bright. I sided with you instead of Mom, with your ‘fanciful notions’ of what’s possible for our lives, for MY life. The Ship had given him, and therefore me, hope in tomorrow, and of a future filled with wonder and possibility and grandeur.

Did I blame him for the sinking?

Of course not.

Maybe.

We didn’t really speak of it as I receded into a stubborn hole.

And by the time my late teenage maturation finally quelled my childish anger, Dad had volunteered for World War 1, and perished in battle on the frontlines.

******

I began having a recurring dream about twenty years after Dad had passed. Most of our family was now living in Doolin near the sea cliffs- when the War ended we’d suffered the loss of Dad as well as financial struggles, and watched, in horror, as Belfast reached its boiling points from the widespread political and social unrest that grabbed hold of the land with fervor. It was when my old mate Connor lost his life around Bloody Sunday when Mom stared at all four of us kids: “We’re going to your Uncle’s farm.”

The twins kicked and screamed, for what it was worth- the girls were 17 and coming into their beauty and zest and they’d be damned, they hollered, if they would leave behind friends and the school where everyone knew their name. Baby Brodie, as a somber lad of 12, had had a youth saturated with War and politics and loss and grownups and, in a manner beyond his years, simply asked if he could stay behind and attend a Boarding school toward Bangor on the coast. Resigned and exhausted, Mom acquiesced, making him promise he wouldn’t get himself into trouble amidst the conflicts. With that, she, the girls and I all stepped foot on a train away from our memories, and into the unknown of the future.

As for me, I had grown into a quiet bloke of 20 years old, an academic that had folded in on himself and only wished for books and journalism and scholarship. I didn’t look at literature as filled with invention and hope, so much, as I subconsciously refused to be a dreamer like my Father, but rather like hard won writing facts, and good sentence structure, and the successes and failures of writers and their practical application. I studied and taught at schools around the county to help support the family, and always had my nose in a journal. Of course I managed to furtively glance at girls, but was so painfully shy that, come the invitation to leave Belfast, I secretly delighted at the possibility of solitude at the sea that my Uncle’s farm promised, away from the confusing morass of memories and industry and upheaval. Away from my Father’s imprints.

The dream shot me out of my sleep- I now lived in a small house near the Doolin cliffs with my wife and two sons- and I was drenched. It had been so vivid. It was my Father and me, in a boat on the ocean, floating under a clear, black night sky. In the dream, I was shivering, and conscious of the intimidating stretch of water all around us. How would we get back to shore? But my Dad- he just kept laughing, gesturing at all of it, saying – see, Declan? Don’t you see? Do you understand, now?

The dream would poke at me every week or so, and it was always the same. My wife Clare would sometimes wake and, ever the sweetie, grab me a cool washcloth for my damp face. I would lie there, staring out the window into the dark starry night, unable to get the image of my Dad’s cheery laugh out of my mind.

It woke me up again one rainy night. I was panting, and drenched.

I quietly got out of bed and walked to the front door, throwing on my coat and boots.

Stepping outside, the rain had turned into only a light sprinkle, delicately touching my face like a feather. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths of cool air. Looking out across the dark, silent landscape toward the ocean, I began walking toward the cliffs, the bright moon guiding my path.

I could hear the ocean waves crashing at the shore, way far in the distance and down below. My boots made a crunching on the gravel, while the wet air stroked my face, my hair, and tousled my hood.

Soon, I arrived at the peak. I stood, staring, into the great dark landscape of night and water, taking in the inky black ocean that stretched endlessly out from land. The moonlight rippled way down below on the shore. I took a deep breath.

What is it, Dad? What are you trying to tell me?

I trembled- something inside made me say it out loud: “What is it, Dad? Are you trying to tell me something?” My shaky voice felt lost in the wind, yet it pierced my heart to hear myself speak to him. I was shocked at how quickly a sob tore up and out of me.

I couldn’t stop crying. For my Father. For not having a Father. For my friend, Connor, having died before he could ever venture to escape his grim life in Belfast. For baby Brodie, and how much innocence he’d never even known he’d lost. For my Mother, and all she’d had to endure. For my own sons, who I knew, no matter how hard I tried, couldn’t be protected from the ills of the world that would eventually spill at their doorstep. For Belfast, itself.

It was like a voice whispered across my ear: you’re still not getting it.

I paused, mid-cry, staring out at the ocean. The deep sea was infinite- beyond, underneath. Its immense power felt like it could swallow me up, even from 700 feet below.

I stared at it. Hard.

I could feel my brain and body avoid thinking about it. So much had happened since, hadn’t it? It was a tragedy, sure. So long ago.

And yet…

It was like a primal scream being stopped, halfway. Or a reach for an embrace that never gets returned. It was a portrait of a happy family at the table, yet sickeningly distorted.

The very fact- that the absolute worst could have happened, and did- had been an understanding in real time for all of the people on the Ship that night. There was nowhere to go. Like a slow moving horror that they could not escape from: no one was coming. No one was coming to save them.

That’s what it was, I realized, staring out into the black night with the rainy wind spitting at my face. It felt like a muffled cry. Like life, stopped. A jump, with no ground. When most of those people on the Ship realized they might die, they were cut off at the pass, of any opportunity to resurrect hope amidst their personal despair.

I hadn’t been able to say this, at 12 years old. I hadn’t been able to ask about this, or scream about it, and let myself be held by my Father. I had turned all that shock and disbelief and non-understanding into a hard lump of disappointment in HIM- his work, his person, his life. “All idols are false. If you don’t have any idols, you’ll never need to rely on them,” I would say to my English students in my self approving way, thinking I understood the way life worked.

And all the while, my guilt and shame about never asking him how he truly felt about the disaster- and always wondering, deep down in my dark places, if his own complex reactions to the Titanic sinking had been a part of what propelled him into the War- finally grabbed me at my throat.

I hadn’t let my Father save me from my pain. I hadn’t let him talk about his own.

Cry, Declan. Cry for yourself.

I wailed into the air, under the moon, into the great sea below. I cried until I buckled and sat in the wet gravel and grass, soaking clear through my pajama pants and coat. I stared out at the ocean, nonchalantly crashing its waves against the shore. I felt like I was facing off with an enemy I hadn’t known I’d made. You took so many from us. You took so much from me.

I don’t know how long I sat there.

I sighed and shifted, staring out at the sea.

The sky began to lighten, ever so slightly, as faint blue light cascaded onto the ocean, dancing upon the surface. I sniffed, and laughed.

It was so beautiful.

A new day beckoned.