Brooklyn Page 0,14
she would be free of them for the day. She found herself thanking him in a tone that Rose might have used, a tone warm and private but also slightly distant though not shy either, a tone used by a woman in full possession of herself. It was something she could not have done in the town or in a place where any of her family or friends might have seen her.
She saw Jack as soon as she descended from the boat. She did not know whether she should embrace him or not. They had never embraced before. When he put his hand out to shake her hand, she stopped and looked at him again. He seemed embarrassed until he smiled. She moved towards him as though to hug him.
“That’s enough of that now,” he said as he gently pushed her away. “People will think…”
“What?”
“It’s great to see you,” he said. He was blushing. “Really great to see you.”
He took her suitcases from the ship’s attendant, calling him “mate” as he thanked him. For a second, as he turned, Eilis tried to hug him again, but he stopped her.
“No more of that now,” he said. “Rose sent me a list of instructions, and they included one that said no kissing and hugging.” He laughed.
They walked together down the busy docks as ships were being loaded and unloaded. Jack had already seen that the transatlantic liner on which Eilis was to sail had docked, and, once they had left the suitcases in the shed as arranged, they went to inspect it. It stood alone, massive and much grander and whiter and cleaner than the cargo ships around it.
“This is going to take you to America,” Jack said. “It’s like time and patience.”
“What about time and patience?”
“Time and patience would bring a snail to America. Did you never hear that?”
“Oh, don’t be so stupid,” she said and nudged him and smiled.
“Daddy always said that,” he said.
“When I was out of the room,” she replied.
“Time and patience would bring a snail to America,” he repeated.
The day was fine; they walked silently from the docks into the city centre as Eilis wished that she were back in her own bedroom or even on the boat as it moved across the Atlantic. Since she did not have to embark until five o’clock at the earliest, she wondered how they were going to spend the day. As soon as they found a café, Jack asked her if she was hungry.
“A bun,” she said, “maybe and a cup of tea.”
“Enjoy your last cup of tea, so,” he said.
“Do they not have tea in America?” she asked.
“Are you joking? They eat their young in America. And they talk with their mouths full.”
She noticed that, when a waiter approached them, Jack asked for a table almost apologetically. They sat by the window.
“Rose said you were to have a good dinner later in case the food on the boat was not to your liking,” her brother told her.
Once they had ordered, Eilis looked around the café.
“What are they like?” she asked.
“Who?”
“The English.”
“They’re fair, they’re decent,” Jack said. “If you do your job, then they appreciate that. It’s all they care about, most of them. You get shouted at a bit on the street, but that’s just Saturday night. You pay no attention to it.”
“What do they shout?”
“Nothing for the ears of a nice girl going to America.”
“Tell me!”
“I certainly will not.”
“Bad words?”
“Yes, but you learn to pay no attention and we have our own pubs so anything that would happen would be just on the way home. The rule is never to shout back, pretend nothing is happening.”
“And at work?”
“No, work is different. It’s a spare-parts warehouse. Old cars and broken machinery are brought in from all over the country. We take them to pieces and sell the parts on, down to the screws and the scrap metal.”
“What exactly do you do? You can tell me everything.” She looked at him and smiled.
“I’m in charge of the inventory. As soon as a car is stripped, I get a list of every single part of it, and with old machines some parts can be very rare. I know where they’re kept and if they’re sold. I worked out a system so everything can be located easily. I have only one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Most people who work in the company think they’re free to liberate any spare part that their mates might need them to take home.”
“What do you do about that?”
“I convinced