by Charles Egan
Back outside, he joined the cab again.
‘Where now?’
‘The Workhouse.’
‘I hope that fellow doesn’t have fever.’
‘Of course not.’
When they arrived at the Workhouse, he paid off the cabby. The man with fever was admitted to the fever hospital. Danny did not go in, not wanting to see it. The sick man’s friend insisted on staying with him. He was concerned though that he could still join the rest when his friend died. Danny thought about that. If he stayed with his friend, he might contract fever, and that could be a problem later. He gave the man two shillings.
‘Here you are, this should get you to Stockport.’
Then he scribbled out a non-existent address on a scrap of paper, and left him with his dying friend.
When he returned to Buckley’s, the men had finished their breakfast – sausage, corn and cabbage, as much as Mrs. Buckley would allow them. Some of them were doubled over.
‘I tried to stop them taking too much, but I couldn’t,’ Mrs. Buckley said.
‘I know.’
Now he examined them all. There were no further signs of typhus, but he could see many were very weak. He told them they would all have a day and night to rest, while he arranged for money to be sent back to Mayo. Then he had a long discussion with the old man.
‘How do they call you?’
‘Seán Donn O’Bhriain.’
‘You can handle men it seems.’
‘They respect the old in Baile Chruaich.’
Danny decided to appoint him as a ganger, and, on his advice, a younger man as a second ganger. Then he wrote down all their names for the first roll call. Eighteen left.
He took his two new gangers down to the Post Office, warning the other men not to move. He organised four different postal orders, writing four letters to different addresses in Erris, explaining how the postal orders could be cashed, together with details of the families they were destined for.
That night he left the men in Buckley’s sleeping on the floor and on ropes, while he again slept in the hotel. Next morning, he brought them to Lime Street and settled them all into a third class carriage. As soon as he did, a few English labourers who were already there got up, and left that carriage for the next. Danny himself travelled first class to Manchester. It was raining when they arrived.
He rented a cab for the weakest men. He himself travelled outside with the cabby, leading the men at a slow walking pace towards Stockport.
When they arrived at the cutting, he negotiated a cheap rent at some of the shacks nearby. Then he left them, and walked to a nearby boarding house where he fell into a deep sleep, and slept until dawn.
Next morning, Danny penned a quick note to Murtybeg in Leeds. Then he made his way back up to the shacks. His first shock was to discover that one of the weakest men had fever. He left him in the shack while he brought the others out along the line. That day he had to borrow picks and shovels from some of the other gangs. He explained his requirements to the two gangers, and watched as the work began. It was even slower than he had expected.
He took a cart back to the shack. He loaded the feverish man onto the cart, and brought him to the fever hospital in Stockport Workhouse. From there he went into the hardware store and bought all his requirements.
He went back to the Works. Seventeen left. He addressed them all.
‘You’ll have to work faster than this. I’ll be paying you tenpence a day, but at this rate, you’re not worth it.’
He called the two gangers to one side.
‘It will take time to work so fast,’ Seán Donn said.
‘I know that,’ Danny said, ‘and I know it well. But I’m paying you fellows more so as to bring the work up to what we need. We’ll feed them well over the next few days, and see how things turn out.’
He had negotiated part payments with Anderson, but he did not dare to go to him until a reasonable amount of work had been completed, and a good work rate had been built up.
The next few weeks passed in hectic activity. One evening Danny was still working on accounts late in the evening. The landlady came up to his room.
‘You’ll kill yourself doing that, Mr. Ryan.’
‘I’ve no choice.’
‘Perhaps you need another assistant.’
He stopped, holding his pen up from the paper. ‘And where do you think I’d find an assistant?’ he asked, intrigued.
‘There’s a niece of mine working with a solicitor in Manchester. Her parents are only a half a mile from here. She’d rather be back working close to her family.’
A week later, Murtybeg arrived. He asked his way out along the cuttings and embankments until he found where Danny was working. As he walked, he was startled to see the gaunt appearance of the workmen and their sluggish pace.
Danny was standing at the end of the cutting, a notebook in his hand. He looked up in surprise. ‘Well, by God,’ he said, ‘so you’ve arrived. You took long enough coming.’
‘What did you expect?’ Murtybeg said. ‘You don’t think I could walk out on the gang just like that.’
‘Maybe not. But come on, anyhow. I’ll show you the Works.’
Murtybeg followed him. They walked through a cutting.
‘You’re not paying them four shillings a day here,’ Murtybeg said.
‘No way. Ten pence more like it. A shilling if they’re lucky.’
‘They’ll work for that!’
‘What choice do they have? And anyhow, we feed them too. From all we hear they’d be dead of starvation if they’d stayed in Mayo.’
‘Mayo! They’re from Mayo?’
‘Where else? But don’t worry, Murteen, we’re not taking the fellows from around Kilduff. Only from the sea coast. That’s where they’re really dying. Fever’s the big killer.’
Murtybeg shook his head.
A few days later, Danny despatched him to Liverpool. He explained how to find the men. This might bring him beyond two gangs, but it would help in finalising the first part of the contract so he could claim his part payment. In addition, he knew he would soon start losing men to other gangs, or else have to pay them more. The new workers would help to keep wages down.
When Murtybeg arrived in Liverpool, he went straight to Buckley’s, and spent the night with twenty men in a room, sleeping with his back to a wall. Early the following morning, he gulped down a bowl of hot porridge, and walked down towards the Docks. It was early in the day, and he reckoned he would have enough time to find men later in the morning. For now, he wanted to see Liverpool Port, see where the Irish were coming and going, and understand a city he knew he would see many times again. He walked north around the docks. Close up it was overwhelming. He could see dozens of ships, many more riding at anchor, waiting to come in. Cranes, funnels and masts. Flags of countries he had never seen. Chests of coffee and tea. Sacks of cane sugar. Thousands of tons of timber, some planed almost white, some dark and some almost black. Cattle, pigs and sheep. And cotton, hundreds of bales of it, whole warehouses of it.
Then, there were the girls. He could tell the difference between the accents of Liverpool, Wales and Scotland. But most were Irish. A young boy approached him, eyes down. Murtybeg reckoned he couldn’t have been ten. ‘Hey mister, I’ve got what you’re looking for. My sister, very clean. Thruppence only, whole night. Best deal in Liverpool.’
Murtybeg turned on him in fury. ‘Get lost, you little bastard.’
‘Sorry mister, I was only trying to help.’
He went on, dodging between dockers and carts, threading his way between cargos being loaded and unloaded. Docks, more docks and docks within docks. Princes Dock, Trafalgar Dock and Clarence Dock. And then all the way back south again – the Canning Dock with the old dock of Liverpool inside it. The Albert Dock, the Duke’s Dock, the King’s, the Queen�
�s, the Coburg, the Brunswick and the Toxteth.
He walked back to the George’s Dock. As Danny had advised him, he made his way through lines of ragged Irish families, listening for groups of men speaking in Irish, listening to their accents, always listening. In a short time, he had six more Mayo men for Danny.
He led them north along Waterloo Road, east at Waterloo Dock and so to Scotland Road and into Buckley’s.
The next morning he brought them down to the dirty dining room. He was surprised to hear his name called from the other side of the room. ‘Murteen!’
He spun around. ‘Mikey! Where the devil…’
That evening, he and Danny sat down to dinner.
‘You’ve done well,’ Danny said.
‘I could have done better. We could have got twenty or fifty if you’d wanted them.’
‘Give it time. There’ll come a time when we might have call for them.’
‘Oh, and there’s something else I didn’t tell you. I met a friend of yours in Buckley’s.’
‘Who’s that?’ Danny asked.
‘Mikey Jordan.’
‘Mikey! What was he doing in Liverpool. Going back to Mayo, was he?’
‘Mayo? No way. He was heading for America.’
‘America? What’s he doing that for?’
‘I think he got fed up of it all. Reckoned you left him in the lurch, and the money’s better in America. He’s going with Martin Farrelly.’
‘Martin! Martin’s going to America?’
‘That’s right. Mikey says Martin was mad at you.’
‘I’m sure he was.’
‘Says you ran off on them all.’
‘Yes,’ Danny said. ‘I’m sure he’d think that. But if Martin’s gone, who’s running the gangs?’
‘Bernie Lavan – he took over after you left. John Roughneen too.’
Danny shook his head. ‘So Martin’s gone to America. By God, I’d never have thought that would happen.
‘Neither did anyone else.’
‘So damned fast too, and the pair of them not saying a word to any of us.’
‘He’s a deep fellow, Martin is.’
Danny turned back to his dinner. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that cutting,’ he said between mouthfuls.
‘Forget that for a moment,’ Murtybeg said. ‘I’ve other news for you too. Jimmy Corrigan’s in Liverpool.’
Danny took the fork from his mouth. ‘He’s what?’
‘In Liverpool. Mikey met up with him only the day before he was talking to me.’
‘But where…’
‘Outside Buckley’s. He wasn’t staying there though, but it seems wherever he’s living, it’s not far.’
The news that Jimmy Corrigan was in Liverpool galvanised Danny. The next time Murtybeg was to go to Liverpool, he decided to accompany him.
When they arrived in Lime Street station, Danny stood before the train had even stopped. He brought down both packs, slung one over his shoulder, and threw the second to Murtybeg.
‘Come on, time to go.’
Murtybeg followed.
‘Where are we staying tonight? Buckley’s?’
‘Don’t be silly. That’s the last place I’d dream of staying.’
Murtybeg followed his brother across from the station into the foyer of a hotel close by. He grabbed Danny by the arm.
‘Hey, hold on. Isn’t this a bit beyond…’
Danny turned around, took his younger brother by the shoulders, and stared straight into his eyes.
‘Now let’s get this straight, for once and for all. Nothing is beyond us. Nothing. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Murtybeg said.
Danny went over to the reception and booked a double room with single beds. Afterwards they sat in the restaurant, and Danny ordered dinner for both. Murtybeg stared at the chandeliers around him. Copying Danny, he unfolded the white linen napkin and spread it across his knees. As soon as the soup course had arrived, Danny took a spoonful. Then he leant across the table, gesturing with the spoon. ‘Right, Murteen, here’s our plan.’
The next morning they walked across the centre of Liverpool to Scotland Road. They stopped at a corner about fifty yards away from the boarding house.
‘That’s Buckley’s over there,’ Danny said.
‘I know.’
‘It looks quiet enough.’
‘It should be, this time of the morning.’
‘If you’re lucky, everyone is out. Now go on.’
Murtybeg walked across the road, dodging carts and carriages ,and disappeared into the boarding house. Danny stood at the corner, watching. After a few minutes, Murtybeg came out again, forcing himself to walk rather than run.
‘Well?’ Danny said. ‘How did you do?’
‘Not a hope,’ Murtybeg said. ‘I asked the landlady. She asked four of the girls in the kitchens and two of the girls cleaning. Three fellows over their breakfast too. No one knew of Jimmy Corrigan.’
‘Maybe they didn’t want to know of him.’
‘Maybe. But one way or another, they’re not talking.’
‘Damn,’ Danny said.
‘But I do have this,’ Murtybeg said. He handed a sheet of paper to Danny.
‘What’s this?’
‘A list of just about every boarding house along Scotland Road.’
‘My God, there must be twenty. How did you get this?’
‘I told them Jimmy was my long lost brother. The mammy said I couldn’t go home to Mayo without him.’
‘You know,’ Danny said, ‘there’s times I think you’re smarter than you let on.’
But it did not work. All that morning, afternoon and night, they followed the leads through boarding houses, bars, tenements and even two Workhouses. Every lead came to a dead end. They returned to their hotel. Once again, Murtybeg spread his white linen napkin across his knees.
‘Maybe he’s gone to America.’
‘Maybe he has,’ Danny replied. ‘But there again, maybe he’s not. No, I reckon Jimmy Corrigan is in this city, and someday I reckon we’ll find him.’
Next day, when Danny returned from the Works, a young woman was waiting for him in the dining-room. She rose as he walked in.
‘Irene Miller, Mr. Ryan,’ she said, extending her hand. ‘I understand you need an assistant.’
Chapter Twenty
Telegraph or Connaught Ranger, January 1847:
On Thursday a poor woman traversed our streets carrying a dead child in her arms, begging alms to enable her to buy a coffin wherein to bury her poor offspring, cut off by starvation.
Over the next few weeks, Luke threw himself into his work. It was a depressing time. Now he had all four Works running close to what they should have been. Nearly four hundred men, women and children working. Pain all around him and pain within him. But he tried to concentrate on his duties – filling in the wage sheets, paying out miserable wages to thin men and women, accompanying the priest around the mountains, paying more wages to the dead and dying.
At one cabin, they knocked on the door and waited, but there was no answer. Even through the door there was an overpowering smell, not of gangrene, but worse. Luke pushed the door open. On the bed, there was the decomposing corpse of a woman. Her face – cheeks, eyes and nose – had been eaten by rats. Three of them scurried away as he and the priest entered. The skull stared at the roof from empty sockets, the lips picked clean from the teeth. The last rites were administered from a distance. The two men looked at one another.
‘We’ll have to bury her,’ the priest said.
They gripped the corpse by the wrists and ankles, and carried it out to the bog twenty yards from the cabin. Luke had noticed a sleán by the wall inside the cabin. He walked back, and brought it out. They dug a hole through soft slushy turf and moss, passi
ng the sleán back and forward between them, black water seeping back in as they dug. They took off their boots, and dug on, sloshing through the mud. When they thought it was deep enough – less than two feet, Luke reckoned – they threw the corpse into it with a splash. They covered it in again, and washed their hands in a shallow bog-hole beside them. Then Luke tied on his boots, looking back to the rough grave. There was nothing showing, but the brown, black and green of the turf and moss.
They left.
‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ the priest said. ‘I’ve been arguing with myself, wondering if I should, or should I wait.’
‘More bad news?’
‘I don’t know. It might be good news. In fact it might be very good news indeed.’
Luke looked at him in surprise. ‘Good news?’ he echoed.
‘Maybe, though I don’t know yet. I never told you, an old friend of mine at Maynooth, Eddie McQuillan, I wrote him a letter. He stayed on at the college after we all left, he’s some sort of theologian now. He reckons it’s a better sort of life than being a parish priest, from all I hear. But I wrote and told him about you and Winnie, and asked him his view about it. There was something I couldn’t bring to mind about consanguinity and all that, so I asked him about it. I got a letter back from him yesterday, it took a few weeks in the coming. It seems there might be a way around it all.’
‘There might?’
‘We’ll have to ask for an Episcopal Dispensation.’
‘A what?’
‘An Episcopal Dispensation. If you’re only a second cousin of Winnie’s, the bishop can let you marry. He’s the only one can do it.’
Luke stared at him, unable to speak.
‘Go on,’ he said at last, ‘go on, go on.’
‘I’ve already written to the bishop in Achonry, and now I’m waiting to hear back. It could be a while though.’
‘And what if he refuses?’
‘If he refuses, just move to another diocese. Ask another bishop, and get married there.’
They had come to the next house, the familiar stink of typhus and gangrene. The priest put his hands on Luke’s shoulder.