Holding His Hand by Tyson Goddard (first e reader txt) 📖

The Lovers.


This is their story.


Lost at Sea.

In a land called Ireland, on a bustling billowy harbor, stood Sara. She shivered underneath her hood as she watched her possessions slowly get carried up the boardwalk and onto the ship in a funereal procession. At her side was her eldest son, Jack, who still at the age of three could not understand why everything that had been inside his house was now being loaded onto the “big boat” as he called it.

Sara turned back to look at her Ireland. It would be about two hours before the ship left port. She felt sorrow envelop her heart as she looked back at her suffering nation. Her only consolation in leaving was that she would no longer have to look upon the starving faces of the little children that now adorned the streets in numbers that rivalled the rats and alley cats. The potato famine had crippled an entire nation. Sara often looked back on the days of plenty with disbelief. Had those days of splendour really existed? Or even, did anyone remember those days? Who now would wear silken white gloves? Who could afford them?

With a heavy heart she looked down at her growing belly. The little life inside would know nothing of the desolation in the “new land”. Australia; it was the haven for those who could no longer afford to live in Ireland, but afford to move there.

After the last item was loaded she took Jack by the hand, and started up the boardwalk to meet her husband who was awaiting her on board, making sure the transport of their possessions went smoothly. Sara cried underneath her hood, each tear carried away with the wind to mingle with the salt of the sea. Jack looked up at his distraught mother, confused.

As she daintily stepped off the boardwalk the stairway was hauled aboard. The last bridge to Ireland was no more. As far as she was concerned she was no longer on Irish soil and would never be again. The infant inside kicked, and Sara’s expression sobered as she was reminded why she was going so far away. She would not let her unborn child see the horrors of a dying land.

A decade later, on another shore, on the beaches of the Island of Emai, Vanuatu, a little boy listened. “Come aboard” the white man had said. He’d looked so important in his clean clothes and shiny buttons. His voice heralded excitement and enticed the people from the small village to come out from their huts. Thomas stood on the edge of the water
with the other villagers who listened to the white man in awe. The man, in his own language, spoke through a translator to the people of Emai, and told them that on board their massive ships, so much more daunting then the little wooden canoes that the villagers were used to, were treasures from distant lands.

The promise of newer sturdier tools made by western machines made the men stir and nod in approval. The women giggled in excitement as the man produced from his pocket a shiny gold chain with creamy white pearls and other gems. It dangled from his hand.

“This....” said the man gesturing to the jewellery, “can be yours. Its all waiting for you on deck, so come aboard and claim your prize.”

There was a false laughter in his voice, a forced cheeriness that aroused Thomas’s suspicions. He was the only one who seemed to notice it, yet soon enough the excitement of the villagers running to the water’s edge and tumbling into their canoes over took the brief moment of hesitation in Thomas’s mind, and he like the others paddled excitedly through the water, trying to be the first to reach the ship. Little did they know that once aboard they would never see the island of Emai again.

Scurrying up the ladders with broad smiles on their faces, the villagers climbed over the side of the boat. Fourteen year old Thomas was the last of the villagers to reach the deck, but when he did he and the villagers were met with a daunting situation. The deck was empty, absent of the treasures that had been promised them. They all stood in an awkward silence, waiting for the goods to be procured from below decks. Some nervously looked around at the sailors as if they had already caught onto the sinister plan. Again the white man began to speak through his translator, “The captain feared the weather might ruin the bounty, so for your convenience the goods have been placed below deck.” “Please,” said the man while gesturing to the trap door that led to the depths of the vessel, “make yourselves at home at the captain’s generous expense.”

The villagers looked at one another curiously. The women began to move closer to the men. When it looked like no one was going to descend below deck one man, a much respected warrior in the village, stepped forward with zeal. He turned to another and nodded towards the trapdoor with a smile, “Come, we need the tools for next season. Their tools of iron are far better than our ones of stone. What are you waiting for?”

With that, one by one, finally a steady flow of villagers began to continue down into the
hold. Thomas again was last. He put one skinny foot on the first step then remembered the man’s words, “The captain feared the weather might ruin the bounty….” Thomas looked up at the clear blue sky, then at the advancing sailors. “Quickly it’s a trick, it’s a trick! The white man lied…,’ but his little voice was cut off as rough hands pushed him down the steps into the inky darkness of the hold and the trapdoor slammed shut above his head.

The villagers had no word in their own language for what was happening to them, but the white men did. The people of Emai were being “black-birded”.

For what seemed like hours, Thomas sat crouched in the darkened hold of the ship. The villagers had given up on the tightly closed trap door, it would not yield. Many young eyes had dried after hours of weeping and many strong muscles had relented and lay exhausted after gallant efforts to break free from their prison.

Suddenly, with a scraping sound of wood against wood and the clinking of metal chains, the trapdoor opened and the villagers looked up into the celestial white shaft of light. Scurrying down the stairs with guns and knives in their hands came the sailors. So swiftly did they swoop down upon their prisoners that they caught the villagers by surprise, grabbing the women and babies and reefing them to their feet. An outcry arose from the humble islanders as the women and infants were dragged up the steps by whatever means, arms, legs, hair. Each cried out for their husbands or brothers to save them, each with their hands outstretched tried to grab onto something, anything to stop them from going into that light that came from above. In the confusion Thomas was accidentally caught in the midst of the scuffle and pulled on deck. Tripping on the top step, he fell flat
on the woody surface and was met with a horrifying sight. A sailor would grab a woman by her arms or hair and another would grab her by the ankles and together they would throw her overboard, many of the women still with tiny babies in their arms. Their screams were loud until they disappeared over the side and the sound of their wails washed away with the billowing sea breeze. Thomas reached his hand out for the women as he lay on deck.

He yelled, ‘STOP! DON’T DO THIS!’, but a pair of strong arms wrapped around his skinny middle and started to drag him back down into the hold. He struggled, flailing his arms and legs. Tears streamed down his face as the man carrying him pushed through the barricade of sailors that were blocking the other village men from coming above deck, and he was hurled into the crowd of island men pushing from the bottom of the steps.

With a final shove from the sailors the men were forced down the steps and Thomas was caught underfoot and was almost crushed by the force of the other confused men being pushed backwards. He heard a loud crack and looked up. One of the men was cringing with a bloody brow as one of the sailors raised his stick for another swipe. The men backed off pulling with them their injured friend, retreating into the darkness of the hold, and once again the trapdoor slammed shut. Thomas could hear the sound of chains above deck and finally that loud scraping sound that meant whatever was weighing down the door was being put in place. Thomas knew now that he was not going to return home. He wondered if he would ever run free on his island again.

As Sara lay gasping in the musty cabin air, did she ever think that the baby she birthed would cross paths with a boy who was taken from his home by sea only a decade after she was taken from hers? With an exhausted sigh Sara heard the cry of a tiny infant, and into her arms was placed a delicate porcelain doll. She still had that lily white glow to her skin that came from lack of sunlight, her lips were perfect delicate rosebuds and her precious little head was adorned with tufts of silky brown hair. With tears streaming down her blushed cheeks she glanced over at the chair that her husband favoured as his regular haunt. During many a night on their long voyage, Sara would awake to find Jonathan reading by candle light in that very chair, and by day he would sit pondering whatever fancy crossed his mind whilst staring out to sea. Yet here, at the birth of his daughter the chair was empty. Sara had noticed a change in him, a certain lack in affection, his days were silent and his nights troubled. In his sleep he would toss and turn, some nights he would even weep. Sara knew that he pined for Ireland, the land he knew and loved. Yet now with his absence Sara simply lay back on her pillow and cast her eyes upward, yet her eyes looked further than the planked ceiling of the cabin. She searched for answers, guidance, anything that would help her understand why her husband, of all times, was not in that chair now. Who would have thought that something as simple as an empty chair could evoke such feelings in an individual? The human heart’s ability to feel so passionately goes beyond any man’s comprehension. Who knows what sight the eye sees that prompts the random tear to trail down one’s cheek? Can anyone ever understand what sensation makes the heart leap in one’s chest?

The nurses in that cabin were used to mothers crying after giving birth, but there was something different in these tears. The nurses would never understand exactly what the expression on Sara’s face meant, or maybe it was simply that they could not understand how a woman could wear the face of yearning when she held in her arms a newly born life.

Nevertheless the mother and daughter