by Charles Egan
‘A fifth!’
‘And they’ve caved in on the question of lien too.’
Luke remembered his puzzlement at this expression on the field in Pottsville.
‘Now would be a good time to explain that one to me, Ned.’
Ned refilled Luke’s whiskey.
‘It’s very simple, Luke. It means that if an Operator goes bankrupt, the miners have first claim. We get paid ahead of any of the suppliers, or the banks for that matter. One way or the other, they’re pushing it through the Assembly in Harrisburg. It’s going to be State law.’
Luke shook his head. ‘I can’t believe this. I’ve never believed in miracles.’
‘Well, you’ve got one now. And there’s more too.’
‘But Bates asked for nothing more.’
‘They gave it anyhow. The weigh stations. The Union demanded that a Union member should be present all the time, and check for short measure. They even agreed to that. Can you imagine it?’
*
He was working with Mick and Jack at the coalface.
‘Shows you the strength of Union power,’ Mick said. ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’
‘I don’t remember that you said anything much about it, at all,’ Luke said.
‘Will you stop arguing the pair of you,’ Jack said. ‘It doesn’t matter which or whether, they gave in and we got all our demands. And who would ever have expected that?’
Luke hacked angrily at the anthracite. Then he held a spike, as Jack hammered it home. The anthracite cracked, and fell out. Luke heaved the coal out.
‘I don’t know. There’s something too easy about this. I’ll tell you, in all the years on the railways, I’ve never seen anything like this.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Mick said, ‘and I’ll tell you why. They had their revolution, but the government faced them down. The English – they had the power. They had an army.’
‘And what are you saying?’ Luke asked. ‘The Operators gave in because they didn’t have an army?’
‘You’ve a point there,’ Jack said. ‘I wonder what would happen if they did have an army.’
‘Let’s not worry about that,’ Mick said. ‘They’ve no army, and we don’t have to worry about things that will never happen.’
‘And one thing that might,’ Luke said, ‘look at that crack in the roof.’
‘Christ! It’s getting wider. Get back.’
They moved back, and watched. Sometime later, the roof collapsed.
‘That was nasty enough,’ Jack said.
‘And how many tons do you think were in it?’ Luke said. ‘None of it coal, neither. We’ll have to clear all that out of here, and no payment on any of it.’
‘There’s our fifth for the week gone,’ Jack said.
‘Arra, no,’ Mick said. ‘It’s little enough. Let’s get at it.’
As they smashed the grey rock, and loaded it into the low wagon, Luke was thinking of other things. Whatever else the Operators had given in on; they still were not supplying enough props to support the roof of the drift. Much of what they got was rotten too. Even so, many of the miners resented having to carry the timber down and drive it into position, seeing it as wasted time. The only time that mattered was time in mining anthracite, and building up the tonnage.
And what of black lung?
They pushed the wagon into the tunnel. Jack untied the mule, as Mick tied it between the shafts of the wagon. Luke slapped the mule, and led it out. Why worry? Black lung could wait till later.
*
One day, Luke travelled into Scranton. Winnie came with him, carrying Liam in her arms. She looked at the shops, but bought nothing. Luke was bored, and arranged to meet her at a bar he had spotted.
While she was shopping, he went to the Chemical Bank and arranged a money order for Carrigard. Then he walked to the bar, wrote a letter to Carrigard and waited for Winnie.
When she arrived, she read through the letter.
‘You make Lackan sound a lot better than it is,’ she said.
‘Why not? Sure there’s no need to be worrying them. There’s not much they can do about Lackan. We’re on our own over here.’
‘We are.’
‘And I told them to send a pound up to your mother while they’re at it.’
‘She’ll need it too. From all we hear, the famine is getting worse. And at least we can half afford it now.’
The Operators had kept their word. Higher wages certainly.
‘And scrip abolished,’ Ned said one night. ‘Whoever would have believed it?’
‘There’s still the truck shop,’ Luke said. ‘Not that we have to buy there, but the supervisors sure as hell won’t like it if we don’t.’
‘Arra, what can they say?’ Ned asked. ‘Sure they’ve no power no more.’
Every Saturday, the Union man was waiting at the payment desk. Dutifully, everyone dropped their dime into the bucket.
*
One Saturday afternoon, Farrelly approached Luke.
‘Luke, we’ve just been having discussions with Stan Cantwell. We need a Union man to check the weigh station as agreed with the Operator. Seeing as it’s mostly Mayo men in this drift, we thought it best to put your name forward. There’s so much sums required on the weigh station, we’ll need someone who understands figures. Would you do it?’
‘I haven’t thought about it,’ Luke said. ‘How long would it take?’
‘It’s a full-time job. Sure there’s always cartloads coming in and going out.’
Farrelly introduced Luke to Cantwell, who offered him six dollars a week. A reasonable wage, but he quickly realised it was a safer job, carrying far less chance of black lung. He accepted at once.
Winnie was delighted. ‘Six dollars, it’s not bad. And at least you won’t be coughing your lungs out. We’ll have you around a few years longer.’
‘Arra, hell, why would you want a fellow like me?’
Winnie slapped him playfully on the ear.
‘Sure we’ve got to have a father to bring up the son. And anyway, you’ve no idea how much I worry about you every day. All of us women, always waiting for the alarm siren. You might not know it, but we’re edgy all day until we see the light of your lamp coming home.’
Luke thought it better not to mention the roof collapse. No point in alarming Winnie further.
*
Sometime later, he attended his second meeting of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. On this occasion, Ned accompanied him. Luke spotted Eddie, Tim and Gus at a table in the corner. He joined them and introduced Moran.
The conversation was of Ireland, and famine.
‘It’s terrible, by all accounts,’ Eddie said. ‘You know well yourself, it was a full-blown failure last year. The starvation is going to get worse and worse, until at least the first crop comes in, and that’s months away. And what if it fails?’
‘Oh God, don’t say that,’ Luke said.
‘There’s more too. The fever is back with a vengeance. Cholera too, I’d say. I don’t think the country has a chance.’
‘So what can we do?’ Luke asked.
‘Do what every good Catholic Irishman does, earn as much as we can and send as much home as possible. Then go on our knees and pray that it’ll be a good harvest.’
‘Much good prayer will do,’ Gus said.
‘We’ll have no blasphemy out of you,’ Eddie said, ‘Still, if it does fail, there’ll be an almighty famine. We’ll have to prepare for a huge flight out of the country. Food, jobs, whatever we can do. Before that we’d have to keep sending money back across to encourage them to buy the tickets to come out.’
‘Do you really think Ireland is finished?’ Luke asked.
‘God only knows. Like I said – we can only pray for a good harvest.’
*
They were home late that night. Winnie was sitting at the table with Ellen Moran.
‘I thought you’d have gone to bed by now, alanna,’ he said.
He saw she was crying
. ‘My God, what’s wrong? Is it Liam?’
Winnie shook her head, gulping.
‘Liam is grand. It’s the Operators that are at fault. There’s posters all over.’
‘Posters! But what…?’
‘It’s a lockout.’
‘A lockout!’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They’ve locked ye all out, and the mines are shut.’
Chapter 19
London Evening Standard. February 1849:
Imperial Parliament, London. Sir Charles Wood: He would also take this opportunity of doing justice to a nobleman, whose name had on former occasions been mentioned in this house with some reproach – he meant the Earl of Lucan – who had since devoted himself with extraordinary success to the improvement of his estates and the neighbourhood around him, had reduced his establishment, employed a large number of labourers, obtained loans of money from the government, removed a portion of his people to America, and effected very great improvements in that part of the county, the Castlebar Union, in which he now resides. The Chancellor of the Exchequer defends Lord Lucan’s ‘improvements’ in County Mayo.
A noise woke him. Pat stared at the blackened straw ceiling of a hut. He was desperately tired. He closed his eyes again and fell asleep.
He was half woken by a savoury aroma.
‘Awake, are you?’
He tried to waken, still remembering the vanishing dream of a beautiful woman.
‘’Tis time you ate,’ said a woman’s voice.
At last, he opened his eyes.
‘That you should open your mouth too.’
He did as he was told, and sipped as she spooned him a thin soup of cabbage. Herbs too?
She was very old. A hundred years, Pat reckoned in his confusion. She wore a faded red skirt. Covering her head was a black shawl tied underneath her chin. Even so, her hair was white, and her cheeks were wrinkled and sunken. The whites of her eyes had turned to yellow.
The rough walls of the shed were built of turf. One side had been dug away from the bog, the others built up with sods. Some rough branches held the straw roof in position. It might have been high enough for the old woman, but he knew he could not stand in the cabin.
‘They gave you a good belting.’
Slowly, the memory of the attack came back.
‘They did,’ he said. ‘There were four of them. Sure what chance did I have?’
He was remembering where he had been, and the reason for his being there.
‘Where’s my pack?’ he asked in alarm.
‘There was no pack with you when I found you.’
‘Oh God…’
‘I found this down the road though. Perhaps it’s yours?’
She handed him the notebook. He grabbed it, and clasped it to his chest.
‘Thank God for that. You gave me a terrible fright there; I can tell you.’
‘It must be of great value to you.’
‘It is.’
‘’Tis of none to me. The writing is beyond me.’
‘And there was nothing else?’
‘Nothing.’
She spooned more soup for him. He gulped it down.
‘How did you get me here?’
‘I borrowed a donkey.’
‘It must have been hard for you?’
‘Indeed. You’re a good weight. Not starving I would say.’
‘Not before that. I am now though. How long was I in dreaming?’
‘All through the night, and more. You were out cold when we found you, but you woke a while before the donkey’s owner left. Then you slept again. Do you not recall?’
‘I don’t.’
‘You took a sip of poitín with us, before you slept.’
He shook his head in bewilderment. Was he losing his memory too?
‘But where…where am I?’
‘Cruachán.’
‘Cruachán! In Achill?’ How had he gotten there?
‘No. The other Cruachán. More convenient to the town of Bangor.’
She ladled him more soup.
‘So where are you from, young man?
‘I’m from a place called Carrigard, near Kilduff. ’Tis over in the east of the County.’
‘You’re a long way from home so.’
‘I am.’
‘So why are you travelling here?’
‘I’ve been sent by the people in Castlebar to see just how bad the hunger and fever is in this part of the County. ’Tis long I’ve been travelling.’
‘Yes. I can see it from your tiredness.’
More soup.
‘And yourself,’ he asked. ‘Are you from these lands?’
‘Close enough. I came from Dún Flidhais.
‘Yes. I’ve heard of it.’
‘Not many have,’ she said. ‘Have you been there?’
‘I don’t know. The knock on the head has knocked my remembering. Where is it?’
‘You know Ráth Muireagáin, do you?’
Ráth Muireagáin, he thought. Rathmorgan, surely?
‘I do,’ he said. ‘Just by Carrowmore Lake.’
‘Indeed. ’Tis no great distance.’
More soup.
‘So you left when you married, did you?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘I left it the time my husband was murdered. Up by Dún Chiortáin, it was. He was much into cattle rustling, so his death was no surprise. But his family thought otherwise. They held my lover might have murdered him, though they had no proof. They were angry with me, so I had to leave that place.’
He noticed she had not denied her lover might have been responsible for the murder. Nor had she denied that she had lovers.
Was it all a silly story? Nothing but silliness. Forget it all. And yet?
He still had vague memories of a dream. This old woman had once had a lover. More than one? Who knows? There was something alluring about her. Her voice perhaps.
‘A hard story,’ he said.
‘It was. And not so easy since. It’s many terrible things I’ve seen in my life.’
‘Famine and fever?’
‘Countless times. The young people, they had forgotten that. When I was only an infant, there was starvation in Mayo. When I first came here, there was famine and fever too. Every year since – the hunger. Starving people waiting for the harvest. Isn’t that the way of it?’
‘It is,’ Pat said. ‘But what of now? The last few years?’
‘A terrible time. The people here starved.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘All about the hunger and fever around Mayo. The men in Castlebar, they want to know everything that’s happening, how bad it is in every part of the County.’
‘Do they not know?’
‘Not enough. They never have enough food nor enough hospitals for the sick. And never enough money to pay for either. Always they receive letters saying how bad things are, but they all make it worse in the telling. So they send me around the County to find the truth of it.’
‘Can’t they go themselves?’
Yes, why can’t they? To hell with it, who cares?
‘Perhaps they could,’ he said, ‘but they pay me for the travelling, and that pays for food for my family.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I can understand that. Still, if you travel everywhere, and if they send food on your word, then you have a mighty power.’
‘Perhaps I have, but it’s the truth of it I want. What has happened here around Cruachán, will you tell me?’
‘I will.’
She began to talk. Pat held his notebook on his knee, but his pencil was gone, and he wrote nothing. He listened, trying to commit it to memory.
More description of starvation around Cruachán. More and more testimony of famine and fever in Mayo. On and on, village by village, road by road, house by house. The horror was unrelenting. From time to time, he held his hand to stop her, to check what she was saying, and remember it all.
‘Sure I’m searching the depths of it for you,’ she said.
He smiled. Then she spoke more. When she finally paused for breath, he held up his hand.
‘And you? How did you live?’
‘I had little fear of fever. When a person lives alone, they have no need to fear fever from other men and women. Fever is the big killer; they all forget that.’
‘And for food?’
‘It’s little enough I need with the thinness of me. Turnip. Cabbage. And there are many herbs and mushrooms in the woods and all around. People are so used to eating potatoes and cabbage, they forget what else they can eat. The foods they see every day, the foods their forefathers lived on.’
Should he believe that?
Next morning, he had to leave. He was already late.
‘’Tis sorry I am to see you go, young man.’
‘And me to leave you,’ he said.
They stood outside. Without warning, she drew him towards her and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Go on now,’ she said. ‘Go back to your life, and forget that you ever met a half-starved, old beauty like me.’
He left, walking fast. As he went to go around a bank of turf, he looked back. She was still at the door. He waved, but she did not.
He walked for some time. At length, he found a blackthorn tree, where he sat and considered all she had told him. It was essential to memorise it all for his report in Castlebar.
Memorise it? He had never asked her name, nor had she asked his. Did it matter? Perhaps not, but how could he have forgotten?
*
No pack. And no food. How many days walking was it back to Westport?
He went on, again and again remembering what the old woman had told him. Blight, villages, deaths. He did not stop walking until he reached Srahnamanragh Bridge. It was raining heavily. He slept under the bridge, just above the river. He was wet, hungry and cold.
Another hard day’s walking brought him to Newport where he found a hayshed on the outskirts of the town. He hardly slept that night with the hunger. He knew, from all he had heard as a child, that the first two or three days were the worst. After that, the sense of hunger would fade as the body accustomed itself to not expecting food.