Tell Them I'll Be There Read Free Page B

was good. But he was not a bad lad. He was a good worker. He would work hard and long to earn a living. Might turn out it was he who made a success in America. Danny was never one for dirtying his hands.
    There had been many stories of success over there, some of them true, most of them not. One of the best known concerned a certain Patrick O’Doherty who had arrived penniless in America, worked as a labourer on railways and bridges and saved every spare cent he earned. Within a few months he had sent home enough money for his wife and family to join him. Within ten years he was employing his employer and he had more than $100,000 to his name. O’Doherty was a shining example to all of what could be achieved and Ma knew his story was true because her niece had read it in a magazine. The magazine , though, had pointed out that O’Doherty was a non-drinker and a non-smoker, something that could not be said of Michael.
    Dan decided there was no point in lingering, best just to say goodbye and go, and they had all agreed. They had gathered up their worldly goods but none of them had much to carry. Dan had a small hold-all he had haggled over at a market stall. After walking away twice he had bought it for next to nothing. Tim had a trim little suitcase loaned to him by Father Delaney, ‘not to be returned until the bearer is wearing the collar’. Michael, in his usual state of disarray, had a carrier bag from the corner shop.
    One by one they kissed Ma and left her standing at the door of the crofter’s cottage where all three of them had been born. No looking back, Michael had ordered, and again they had all agreed. But it was Michael who was first to turn and wave from the crest of the road where the house would drop away and be lost from view.
    As frequently happened with Michael’s arrangements – usually made in a bar at the end of a session and in an alcoholic haze – this one didn’t work out. They were supposed to walk over the hill and down towards Donadea where a friend of Michael’s would pick them up at the crossroads and give them a lift in his battered old truck a good part of the way. They waited by the side of the road for over half an hour without seeing a soul or a vehicle of any kind before starting to walk. Almost an hour later they came to a village where they begged a lift in an old school bus and travelled the rest of the way in comparative style.
    The driver said the bus was used to pick up his boss’s workmen at six every morning and take them to the quarry. He wasn’t really going this way, he said, but he could take them a little of the way. They looked at each other and knew their best chance of going all the way was to keep him talking and, once they told him they were off to America, this proved easy enough.
    They were off to board the packet to Liverpool, they told the driver, and from there they were off to New York. The driver said he was going to New York one day. He was going to ‘seek his fortune’ in the New World. There was nothing here. The old country was done for. But as he was already twice their age and more they merely nodded and accepted what he said, mentally consigning him to the army of dreamers they had left behind. 
    He took them nearly all the way and as he was reversing to drive off he broke into Give my regards to Broadway and with a final flourish Tell them I’ll be there . And they laughed and waved until he was out of sight.
    Standing in line, the boys had their first view of the people who would accompany them across the Irish Sea. The queue was made up mostly of men but there were several families, some with small children. Many would go to relatives in England but many would take the longer, more adventurous step and board the big ship to what those back home regarded as the land of promise.
    The ‘little’ steamer was the biggest vessel the brothers had ever seen and they wondered, if this is