by Rose Doyle
'I'm sorry for you, Ellen.' James squirmed and I loosened my hold on him.
'I never knew my mother,' Ellen went on, 'nor my father either. My aunt kept a whiskey store in Cork and I grew up with her. There was just the two of us and she worked all the hours. She was hard but I never wanted for anything. I think she was my mother's sister. When I was seventeen an artilleryman came to the store. He was a big man and he lifted me up on to the counter and laughed and asked his soldier friends if they'd ever seen a living doll like me. He came back when the store was closed.'
She stopped, sighing. I waited in silence until she went on.
'He'd been ordered with his regiment to the Curragh by the time I found I was carrying his child. I followed him when my aunt said she'd have none of me. She didn't want the bastard child of an English soldier under her feet in the store.'
She turned her back to me and was quiet for another few minutes. I wanted to ask her to spare me the rest of her story until after I'd found the father of my own child. I couldn't do it, any more than she could have stopped telling me.
'I found him in the camp. It wasn't easy. You'll see that for yourself. When I did he was a different man altogether from the one I'd known in Cork. He ridiculed me in front of his companions, calling me a whore and worse. He took his hand to me and would have kicked me when I was on the ground too but for a soldier who stopped him saying it was shameful to hurt a woman who was with child, or any woman. I was nearly the nine months gone. My brave lover told me then that I should join the wrens in their bush houses like others of my kind.'
She fell silent again and I waited, watching the fire dancing red under the saucepan. I told myself Jimmy Vance would not have changed.
'My child was born in this very nest,' Ellen Neary went on. 'The birth was hard but the women were good to me. They were good to my little Victor too but he was born feeble and he couldn't feed. He was a good baby, very quiet. He never cried, not even once. I kept thinking that if he cried he'd be saved. But he didn't and he died in the evening of the fourth day.' Her voice dropped. ‘I would have died myself but for the wrens. They saved me and I stayed on in the village. There wasn't a whole lot else I could do.'
'And his father never knew he'd a son?'
'Never, any more than my child ever knew it had a father. He was sent away from here and bad cess to him, wherever he is.' She sat up, hugging her knees. 'When I lost my good name I lost everything. Everything.'
My grandmother's voice, telling me to guard my name, echoed in my head. 'Is it hard,' I said, 'living here?'
'It's hard all right,' she looked down at me, then around the nest. 'It's hard in the wintertime, with the bitter winds to contend with. It's hard when the rain goes on for days and weeks together. The beating of the one and the pelting of the other destroys the nests. Sometimes they fall in on top of us. When they do we build them again and keep some sort of shelter going for the bad months. The snow is the worst. It covers the plains and sometimes cuts us off from the camp and the towns. We lose wrens every winter, to sickness and the workhouse.' She shook her head. 'But it's man who treats us the worst.'
'What do you mean?'
'You'll see for yourself,' she said, 'and it'll be time enough then for you to know.'
'Why do you stay? Wouldn't you be better taking your chances in Cork, or even in Dublin?'
'The wrens are my family now. We hold for one another. I never had that before.' She inched towards the wooden box in the corner. 'In any event, I might as well wait here as anywhere.'
'What're you waiting for?' I said.
Without answering she took a bundle of letters and a photographic portrait out of the box. She put the portrait into my hand and brought the candle closer. A soldier with a round, open face looked out at us. He was wearing a bandsman's uniform.
'I met him one day on the road to the camp,' Ellen said. 'He's a different kind to the other. We were together twice and then they sent him to Malta. He'll be gone for six years. He writes letters to me.' She put the picture back into the box.
'When did you last see him?'
'I walked to Dublin to see him before he sailed. He wanted to see me one more time before going. He was heartbroken as I was when his ship left harbour.' She looked at the letters. 'Can you read and write?' she asked.
'I'm not bad at either,' I said.
'You might help me make a better hand of my next letter to him so . . .'
'I will,' I said.
I wished I had a likeness of Jimmy Vance to show her. While she put the letters away I told her about my letters to him.
'The army's a funny thing,' she said when I finished, 'it may be that he never got them. Then again he might. You'll have to go careful when you set out to find him. There's extra soldiers on guard on account of fears about the Fenians.' She sighed. 'There's bad feeling about the wrens in the camp these days too, with fines and imprisonment for women from the village caught in the camp. They blame us for…'
'They can say what they like,' I'd heard too much, 'and do what they like. I'm going to the camp in the morning.'
Something was happening outside. The sounds were familiar enough: the screaming laughs and howled obscenities of drunken men and women, the roars and thuds of drunken fighting. I'd heard it all before, on bad nights in the kip house. Sometimes too in Henrietta Street. It got louder and nearer by the minute.
'The women are back early,' Ellen was calm, 'and they've got soldiers with them. Things could go well enough or they could turn bad. We'll be all right as long as we stay inside the nest.'
The nest was fragile. The plains were lonely. I felt a sick fear for James, stirring in his sleep and making small, grunting sounds like an old man. I sat up, wanting to rush from the nest and run with him.
'Stay where you are.' Ellen was sharp.
Then I heard the gunfire, five shots in all, each one sounding closer to the nest. I sat and rocked James.
'Lie down, in the name of God, and stop your caterwauling.' Ellen Neary squeezed my arm. 'It's only a picket from the camp out looking for the soldiers. If you keep that up you'll have them in on top of us, poking around and destroying the place with their bayonets.'
I stopped. I'd never been the type to whinge and cry but motherhood had changed me. I worried about James as I'd never worried. I anticipated danger as never before.
I hadn't anticipated the bayonet's shining point before it came through the door. It stood in the air for a terrifying minute before it was followed by the face of its soldier owner.
'Are you alone in there?' He didn't shout, just looked from me to Ellen and then James, who had started to cry.
'You can see for yourself there's no soldiers here,' Ellen said.
'Sorry,' he said and his head disappeared.
There were no more gunshots and the shouting, though it didn't stop, became less. The violent mood died slowly into occasional, muttered oaths. Ellen crawled to the door of the nest and called, 'How well did ye do?'
'Well enough,' Lucretia Curran's voice came from close by, 'the summer weather had them in generous mood.'
Ellen lay down again. 'We'll be able to stock up on market day so,' she said.
She was asleep and gently snoring long before I got James to stop crying. Before Lil and Lucretia, stripped of their gowns and back in their frieze petticoats, fell into the nest and wormed themselves into comfortable positions for the night. Before sleeping myself I whispered to James that his father was close and promised to find him the next day.
It was as well he couldn't understand. It's bad to make promises to a child that you cannot keep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Allie
Moll was turning the pages of Gray's Anatomy. She couldn't read a word of it, but her sharp eyes devoured the drawings. Her absorbed face was guileless, but I wasn't fooled. It was a trick of the morning light. There was nothing innocent, and not very much that was young, about Moll Hyland. She was a child of her rearing and I couldn't help li
king her.
All around us wrens were beginning their day. Moll ignored them. She ignored her mother too, who was briskly washing and spreading clothes to dry. Clara Hyland looked none the worse for her drunkenness and fighting in the night.
'What's this?' Moll looked with magnificent distaste at a skeleton. 'Is there a disease can take the skin from a man?'
'None that I've heard of,' I said. 'That's a drawing to show how the body's made up. It's called a skeleton.'
She traced the drawing with a finger. 'So the doctors know everything that's inside of us then?'
'They should,' I said.
'You can have your old skeleton.' She dropped my precious Anatomy on the grass, 'I don't like the look of it at all.' She took the point lace handkerchief I'd given her earlier from her pocket. Her look calculated its value and I'd no doubt she would sell or trade it at the first opportunity.
'I've never heard tell of a lady doctor,' she said.
'You will.'
'I think it would be a much grander thing to work in a big shop, selling lace and other finery,’ she folded the handkerchief 'That's what I'll do with myself, when Mama dies.'
'When your mother dies?' I stared at her.
'Are you a doctor or not?' With her hands on her hips she looked like a miniature of her mother. 'Don't you know that the drink kills women? I've seen plenty of them die. Mama's often in a worse way than she was last night.' She stared past me. 'Your friend's going somewhere, the one with the infant. She has her town clothes on her.'
Sarah, less than ten feet away, was headed purposefully our way. She was carrying James and dressed as she'd been the day before. Her face was pale and set. I went to meet her.
'I'm off to look for Jimmy and I want you to come with me.' She stood frowning at my petticoat. 'If you get dressed and carry your parasol, we'll pass for respectable women. I'm afraid that if I walk in alone, with James . . .'
'That you'll be stopped,' I finished for her. 'Of course I'll come with you, but it would be better to wait until later in the morning. At this hour there'll be very few about and we'll be noticed.'
'Put on your clothes, Allie, please . . .'
'Do you have a plan for finding him?' I said.
She was shaking, and jiggling James to disguise the fact. 'I hate to see you in your petticoat.' She went to where my dress and underskirt were stretched across a bush. 'We'll go now. I can't wait any longer. We'll make up a plan on the way.'
The sun was still low in the sky and the dew wet and cold under my feet. The air was filled with birdsong. An early morning mist, hovering low over the plains, blurred the outlines of the army camp and reminded me of a shroud.
'It's too early,' I said, gently as I could.
'They'll see you coming,' Moll was scornful, 'do you think soldiers stay in their beds once the dawn is up? They'll see you carrying the baby and it won't matter whether there's one or twenty of you they'll know you come from the village. You'll be stopped. You'll have to wait ‘till the Saturday market. That's when they let the wrens in.'
'You should be with the other children, or tending to your unfortunate mother.' Sarah looked at Moll as if she saw a deviant, or freak of some kind, in front of her. 'You're only a child.'
'I may be a child but I know more than you do about what'll happen if you go off to the camp now,' Moll gave a pitiless shrug. 'You'll be caught by the hair of the head and thrown back out on to the plains. Allie will be thrown with you and all for going there because you asked her to. Go on your own if you want to find your soldier that much.'
'That's enough, Moll,' I said as Sarah stared at her, speechless. Ellen Neary arrived and stood coiling her hair into a topknot as the argument went on.
‘I’ll go on my own.' Sarah's eyes were far too bright.
'You'll be sorry,' said Moll.
Sarah, fight and courage leaving her, sank to the ground with James. She sat weeping and rocking to and fro.
'We'll go in a little while,' I promised as I knelt and held her, 'we'll go in a little while.'
Ellen Neary sat beside us. 'I told her much the same things as Moll but she wouldn't listen. I hope to God he's a decent sort, this soldier of hers, that he's not a bastard, like a lot of the others.' When she reached for James Sarah let him go to her. 'You're her friend,' she said to me, 'talk sense to her.'
'Maybe it would be better to wait until the market day.' I held Sarah's shoulders. 'The weather's good. We'll be all right here until then. It's what we planned, after all, to stay with the women until you found a way of working things out. We'll build our nest today and tomorrow and then it'll be Saturday . . .'
'Two days!' Sarah wailed. 'I've been without him for nearly a year and now that I'm half a mile from where he is you want me to wait another two days!' I hadn't seen her so distraught since Mary Ann's funeral. Her eyes were wild and she was trembling as she pulled herself to her feet. ‘I’ll find him. Myself and James will find him . ..’
She took the baby from Ellen and walked up and down with him. He sensed her mood and began to cry, which made her walk faster.
She might have gone on like this for a lot longer, might even have taken off across the plains in spite of mine and Ellen Neary's best efforts, if Beezy Ryan hadn't come briskly through the bushes.
'You're putting yourself before your child.' She stood in Sarah's path. 'Go if you must but go alone. It's not right to risk harm coming to him. You don't know how harsh they'll be, nor what might happen. Give him to me,' she held out her arms, 'and be on your way.'
Sarah stood very still. She'd never been parted from James. The fire and panic went out of her. 'What am I going to do . . .' she said. 'What am I going to do?'
We made tea and had some bread with it. The day got brighter and warmer and the village became a hive of the sort of tasks you'd expect in any household. There was washing and sweeping going on and some wrens even sat sewing. There was a peacefulness about it all.
'I hate this place,' Sarah said in a low voice as we sat, a little apart from the others, with our tea and bread. 'It's uncivil and it's heathen. I want my baby and myself to be out of here. I want you out to be of here too.'
'We're free here,' I said. 'We've no one behind us, telling us what to do and what to think . . .' I stopped.
'You're romanticising it,' Sarah was hard, 'all we've done is ally ourselves with a pitiful, shameful community of outcasts. The freedom you feel is rejection. We're unwanted, as these women are unwanted. What we have here is not freedom, Allie. We're slaves, we're without choices.'
I could understand how it was different for Sarah. She had her baby to worry about and she had her crippling love for Jimmy Vance tying her down. Her plight might have been what brought us to the Curragh but I was the one liberated and she the one repulsed by the women and free life we'd found there.
'We have choices, Sarah,' I said. I couldn't see, then, how right she was. To do so would have made a cripple of me too.
Beezy joined us. 'We've to decide on a spot for our nest,' she said, 'we'd best put what money we have together and go into Kildare for utensils and such.'
We chose a corner, not far from Ellen Neary's nest, where there was a depression already from an earlier nest.
'We'll have to walk to the town,' Beezy said, 'and take a horsecar back with our purchases.'
'I'm not taking James into that miserable hole.' Sarah was sullen and stubborn. 'You can go without me.'
It was enough that she'd agreed not to go to the camp; there was no point arguing with her further. The idea of making the trip alone, with Beezy, didn't appeal to me at all.
'Maybe you'd come with us,' I said to Ellen Neary, 'we'd be grateful for your advice about the best stores to do business with.'
'They're all much the same when it comes to doing business with wrens,' Ellen shrugged, 'in Kildare and Newbridge both. If you dress up grand enough you mightn't be taken for wrens and could get some civility. I'll come with you to point out the worst of the stores.'
I wore the lilac dress I'd travelled in and carried a parasol of the same shade. It was the finest of the three dresses I'd brought with me. Beezy wore her feathers, which I thought foolish but said nothing. Beezy Ryan would never have savoir-faire. She also put kohl around her eyes, and rouged her cheeks. This made the welts on her face more noticeable.
Ellen Neary got herself ready too. She looked neat and trim in a yellow cotton dress. I had no idea, and nor did she say, how much I'd asked of her.
The sun got warmer and the grass dried under our feet as we walked along. Beezy and I carried our footwear. Ellen Neary thought this uncivilised and wore her brown button boots all the way.
'We're not the savages people around here think we are,' she said. 'The army's wrong too, when it blames the wrens for the disease in the camp.'
'There's syphilis in the camp then?' I said.
'Give it the name we all know,' said Beezy, 'she's talking about the pox, Ellen. Is the pox in the camp?'
'All over it, they say. The army and local people both blame it on the wrens. You'd think that none of themselves ever did wrong.' She kicked so hard at a tuft of grass that it flew through the air and landed near a startled sheep. 'Sarah'll need to be careful. There are new powers allowing the authorities to lift women wherever they find them,' she waved an arm, 'on the highways, in the street, makes no difference. They can arrest wherever they like. I tried to tell Sarah this morning but it was like talking to the deaf.'
'It's the Contagious Diseases Act gives them the powers you mention.' Beezy was sour. 'I know all about it.'
'Wrens have been fined and put in prison already for being caught in the camp,' said Ellen. 'Some were taken away for examination and when some of them were found to be afflicted they were put in the Naas Union Workhouse and kept there for months, or until the doctors decided they were cured.' She knelt to loosen her boots. 'It's a while since I wore these and I'd swear my feet have spread.' She looked up at me. 'The doctors don't seem so good at curing the pox. Even with their mercury, and God knows what else, they don't seem able to fix it, do they?'