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1922
    An icy breeze blew, and sleet was falling, as the small boy stood, with his sister and his stern aunt, amid the huge crowd of people along the wharf at Pier 54. He was
dressed in a long coat, woollen gloves and a tweed cap, and he looked forlorn. The few possessions he owned in the world were crammed into the small leather valise which sat on the ground beside
him. He felt dwarfed by the crowd.
    He was five years old, feeling lost and bewildered – and angry at his aunt. She was taking him and his sister away from his ma and pa. His ma was in the cemetery and she wasn’t
coming home, he understood that much; that she had left for ever. She had gone to another place. She was in Heaven.
    But his pa might come home at any time. He wanted to wait, but his aunt wouldn’t let him. His pa wasn’t ever coming back, she told him. His sister believed her, but he refused to.
The big guy, with a silver rabbit on a chain around his neck, who hoisted him up on his shoulders, who pitched balls at him, who took him on the rides at Coney Island, and went swimming in the sea,
and kissed him with his bristly face, and smelled of beer and tobacco, and told him stories about the Man in the Moon, and sneaked off with him to the zoo when he had promised his mother he was
taking him to church – he was coming home.
    He
was.
He knew it.
    ‘I don’t want to go,’ he said petulantly. ‘I want to go home and wait for Pa. I hate you!’ Then he stamped his foot on the ground.
    ‘You’re going to like Ireland,’ she said. ‘It’s a better place. Safer. Less troubles there.’
    ‘Maybe Pa will be there.’
    Oonagh Daly said nothing.
    ‘Maybe? Do you think?’ he asked hopefully.
    She still said nothing.
    There was a tang of salt in the air, peppered with an acrid stench of burning coke, sweet snatches of cigarette and pipe smoke. All around was the constant grinding of machinery, men shouting,
the cry of gulls. A crate swung on creaking ropes, and pulleys clanked and squeaked high above him. The dark hull of the ship rose even higher, like a mountain. The boy looked around him. His pa
worked on the waterfront; maybe he was working here today? He watched every face. Every single face.
    It felt wrong to be leaving. He needed to find his pa. But now they were about to sail thousands of miles away. Away from his pa. He did not understand why.
    He stared up at tall people. At the cranes and the derricks, and the massive hull of the ship, the
Mauretania
, with its four funnels and gangways. A rope pulled at a capstan near him,
and groaned. He caught a glimpse of the dark-green water of the Hudson between the ship and the quay; heard the slop-splash of the water. It was glossy with oil, with bubbles of froth, and litter
suspended in it. They would be boarding soon. The ship was going to take them to a place called Dublin, in Ireland. His ma was in Heaven, and his pa had disappeared, taken by the bad men.
They’d killed him, too, his aunt said. But he did not believe her.
    Now his aunt Oonagh, whom he barely knew and did not like, was taking them to a new life, she said. A place where they would be safer. To a farm in the countryside where there were chickens,
cows, pigs and sheep.
    He didn’t want chickens or cows or pigs or sheep. He wanted his pa.
    He didn’t want to leave. He was crying. Every few minutes his aunt would dab his eyes with a handkerchief. His sister, who was three years older, clutched her ragged little bear, Mr
Stuffykins, under her arm and was silent. The three of them waited, watching an endless procession of people making their ascent up the gangway, some elderly, but most of them young and many with
babies and small children. They carried suitcases, packing cases, wooden and cardboard boxes, and sometimes dogs and cats in baskets. Occasionally one of them lugged a piece of furniture. One man
he watched was staggering under the weight of a wooden grandfather clock.
    None of them noticed the youth, with