Cold Is the Dawn

by Charles Egan

  ‘Just coming into Kilduff,’ Sarah said. ‘There were two fields on the right.’

  ‘That’s near a mile away,’ Michael said.

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor said. ‘Could it come closer though?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Michael said. ‘My fear is that even if we don’t see it, the potatoes will rot after we’ve dug them.’

  ‘Let’s pray they won’t,’ Eleanor said.

  She had cut back on the size of the meals she was cooking. She hoped no-one noticed.

  Next time, she went up to Kilduff to buy corn, she glanced across into fields. She saw the blight in the distance, little enough, but still there. If there had been much less, she reckoned Sarah would not have been able to see it. She guessed it had not spread.

  She bought corn in Dillon’s. The other women were silent, and she did not ask any questions.

  The tension increased.

  *

  At last, the time came to dig. Michael, Sarah and Eleanor went to the first ridges, Michael carrying a spade, Eleanor a knife. There were still no signs of blight on the leaves.

  Michael dug into the ridge. Eleanor scrambled in the dirt, grasping the potatoes.

  ‘They’re big enough anyhow,’ she said. She looked at the eyes of the potato. No purple. Carefully, she cut around the eye. The potato was white. Then she cut straight through it. No blight.

  ‘And pray to God it stays that way,’ Michael said.

  They filled two sacks. Michael carried one down to the house on his back, Sarah and Eleanor carrying a second one between them.

  They washed potatoes and peeled them. Again and again, Eleanor cut through, looking for blight. Michael came over and squeezed one of the potatoes.

  ‘They’re good and hard. These ones won’t rot.’

  Now, it was back to hard work among the potato ridges, digging out all the potatoes and carrying them back to the house. Every night, one of them stood guard over the field.

  They were stored in the loft over the kitchen.

  The first day, Sarah ate too much, not realising that her stomach was unused to it. She vomited. But it no longer mattered. The potato was back and there was plenty of it.

  When it was finished, and the last potatoes were stored, they sat at the table. ‘Let’s see your hands,’ Eleanor said.

  Sarah held her hands out.

  ‘They’re toughening up well, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Carrying the water from the well,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Yes. And you were able to work good and hard digging out the potatoes.’

  ‘Digging potatoes is a lot tougher than digging turf, that’s for sure,’ Sarah said.

  *

  When the potatoes were harvested, it was time to harvest the corn and hay. Corn for rent, and the hay to feed the animals during the winter.

  Sarah and Eleanor were out threshing one morning, when Sarah stopped and doubled over, gasping. She walked to the corn barrel at the edge of the threshing ground, and held on to it.

  ‘What’s wrong,’ Eleanor asked in alarm.

  ‘I’m feeling sick,’ Sarah replied. ‘I’ve had it these past three days. Always at the same time.’

  ‘Well, one thing’s for certain, you shouldn’t be out working.’

  Eleanor led her back to the house, and sat her at the table.

  ‘At this time of the morning too? There’s one thing that could be.’

  ‘I know,’ Sarah said, ‘and I’ve missed my bleeding too.’

  ‘Well, sick or not, this is a great surprise,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t expect it.’

  *

  That evening, Pat arrived in Carrigard.

  ‘Pat!’ Eleanor exclaimed, ‘you’re back.’

  ‘I am,’ Pat said, ‘back for good.’

  Sarah stopped dead in front of him.

  ‘For good!’

  ‘They won’t be needing me anymore.’

  ‘What’s that you say?’ Michael asked.

  ‘The workhouse can’t afford it. And anyhow the Grand Jury is reckoning there’s a good harvest. If there hadn’t been a good harvest, I’d have left soon for lack of money, and if there had, there’d be less call for me. But sure didn’t we know all of this already.’

  ‘We did,’ Eleanor said. ‘But still, we were hoping.’

  ‘So was I. One way or another though, I was lucky working so long. Lord Lucan himself, he wanted me sacked earlier.’

  ‘Lucan? He wanted you sacked?’

  ‘That’s what he wanted, but he didn’t get his way. I spent three days in Castlebar Jail, though, but Gaffney got me out.’

  ‘Three days in jail,’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘What in God’s name for?’

  ‘Attacking a man!’

  ‘But…who?’

  ‘A Scot, by the name of Carlyle. England’s greatest philosopher they say. His philosophy of love leads him to believe that the Irish are lazy swine. Believes the Irish caused the famine all on their own. If we worked as hard as the Scots, there’d be no famine.’

  ‘But isn’t there famine there too?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Only in the Highlands, I’d heard,’ Pat said, ‘and he thinks the Highlanders as lazy as the Irish. He visited Westport Workhouse too, Sarah, just so you know. He described that as a right human swinery, nothing but lazy people swinging sledgehammers at stones.’

  ‘That’s not lazy,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘I know. So I slapped him across the face. Hard.’

  Eleanor poured four cups of poitín.

  ‘You’re a damned fool,’ Michael said.

  ‘I know,’ Pat said, ‘and you’re not the first to say that. I know too I shouldn’t have let my temper get the better of me. But I don’t regret it. The bastard deserved a better beating.’

  ‘So? No wages from you,’ Michael said. ‘They’re not building roads now neither. No need for Relief Works with the potatoes looking so good. And Sarah’s mother, dead. There won’t be any earnings from there either.’

  Sarah was crying.

  ‘It shouldn’t be money you think of, Michael, and the poor woman dead,’ Eleanor said, her arm around Sarah’s shoulder. ‘And sure there’s a good crop of potatoes too. And corn. We’ll have enough to eat, and pay Burke his rent too. There’s not many people around paying rent yet, I can tell you.’

  ‘And what if the blight returns?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘That’s a year away,’ Eleanor said. ‘It’s a great harvest this year, anyhow,’

  ‘I’ll say it is,’ Pat said. ‘I’ve been seeing it as I was travelling. All the way from Castlebar to Kilduff, potatoes good and healthy. Less begging too. And no bodies on the road, thank God. And when the potatoes are back, the fever will lessen too – the fever and cholera both.’

  ‘You might have the right of it,’ Michael said, ‘but it doesn’t lessen the fact that you’ve lost your job.’

  Pat looked away. ‘And what of Luke?’ he asked. ‘Wasn’t he sending money back, with the great job that he had?’

  ‘Arra, what,’ Michael answered. ‘Sure that was months ago. We haven’t heard from him this long time.’

  ‘But when…?’

  ‘Six months, I’d say. Could be more.’

  Eleanor stood and took Michael’s elbow.

  ‘Sure that’s nothing,’ she said. ‘We can’t be expecting him to write every month to be telling us what’s happening. Can we?’

  No one replied.

  Do I really believe that? she thought. He’ll have heard enough of the hunger in Ireland, and if he was earning good money, he’d have sent more back by now. This Lackan place sounds fine, but if it was that good, we’d have heard from him. He must be dead. Oh, may the devil take it. I’m only working myself into a fret. He’ll write soon, that’s for a certainty.

  But what of Pat? There’s more pain there. And a deeper silence than before. There’s things we’ll never know; things he’ll never tell us. Not me, not Sarah, no-one.

  *

&nb
sp; That night, Sarah told Pat that she was expecting a baby.

  ‘That’s wonderful news,’ Pat said.

  ‘It is. Except, of course, that’ll we’ll have to feed the mite, and like your father says, that won’t be easy. So what do we do now? Have you go to England? At least you’d get wages there.’

  ‘Sure,’ Pat replied. ‘Working with Murtybeg, and a woman like Irene. Yes, I’d have work, grinding men into the dirt. No, I’ll never work with Murteen again, and anyhow I’ll have to stay and take care of the farm, even if there’s damned little earnings out of it. What else can I do?’

  ‘I don’t know. What else is there? Have us go to join Luke in America? We don’t want that.’

  ‘We don’t, and even if we did, father is getting old. No, my love, Luke going to America has trapped us here, and we’ll just have to put up with it. I might have some chance working on the English harvest next year. It’s what all the lads around here do.’

  ‘But they don’t pay much, do they?’

  ‘It’d be enough to pay the rent, though I’d have to leave ye and father to look after the harvest over here.’

  ‘That mightn’t be so hard as you might think,’ Sarah said. ‘We managed it well this summer, didn’t we?’

  *

  Then the letter arrived. Eleanor spotted the stamp at once.

  ‘Sarah,’ she shouted, ‘it’s from America.’

  Sarah opened it, and the bank draft fluttered out.

  ‘Well, thank God for that,’ Eleanor said. ‘Now what does he say?’

  Sarah glanced through it.

  ‘Let’s see…there’s been a lockout…and a strike… They’ve had no wages!’

  ‘No wages!’

  ‘That’s what he says. They’ve been hungry too…’

  ‘Hungry! In America!’

  ‘But wait…he’s a new job…some kind of boss…fifteen dollars a week!’

  ‘Fifteen dollars? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘And a house of their own. And we’re to send some money to Winnie’s mother. And hold a little for Brigid.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Eleanor said. ‘I knew we could depend on Luke. Not only for Brigid neither, for your baby too when the time comes. And we’ll never go hungry again.’

  *

  That afternoon, Sabina came to the house. They showed her the letter.

  ‘That’ll sort a few things out,’ she said.

  ‘It will, won’t it?’ Eleanor said.

  ‘And only two weeks till school opens.’

  ‘Hear that, Brigid,’ Eleanor said. ‘School. Won’t it be great?’

  ‘School,’ said Brigid. ‘I want school.’

  Sabina laughed. ‘She wants school, and she not even knowing what it is. She’ll go far.’

  ‘She will,’ Sarah said.

  ‘And she won’t be the only one,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Sabina.

  ‘Sarah here. She’s expecting.’

  Sabina swung around, and hugged Sarah.

  ‘Oh Sarah, I knew you would. Another child that’ll go far in life. So what will it be when it grows up?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait till it’s born?’ Sarah said.

  ‘Arra, not at all,’ Sabina said, a hoarseness in her voice. ‘Sure we can plan now. If it’s a little girl, she’ll follow Brigid to teacher training college. Isn’t that it?’

  ‘And if it’s a little boy?’ Sarah asked, mystified.

  ‘University.’

  Eleanor looked across from where she had been peeling the potatoes. ‘University!’

  ‘Yes,’ Sabina said.

  Silence.

  ‘Do you think it’s possible?’ Sarah asked at last.

  ‘Of course, it’s possible. Everything’s possible when you have the money.’

  ‘But not if it’s a girl,’ Sarah said. ‘They don’t allow them into Universities.’

  ‘Isn’t that what I said?’ Sabina said. ‘If it’s a girl she’ll be a teacher. If it’s a boy, it’ll be University.

  ‘And what will the child do at University?’ Eleanor asked, intrigued.

  ‘Medicine? Law? Who knows?’ Sabina said.

  ‘And what University?’ Sarah asked. ‘Trinity won’t allow Catholics.’

  ‘Shush a moment,’ Sabina replied. ‘There’s other Universities. Queen’s College in Belfast. I hear they’re taking Catholics.’

  ‘Queen’s College,’ Sarah whispered. ‘You really think…’

  ‘Sure why not?’ Sabina said.

  ‘But how do you know all this?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Stephen Martin. He’s one of the teachers in Kilduff School. A Belfast man himself. I know him well through the bar.’

  ‘But how would we pay for all this, with Pat not working?’ Sarah asked. ‘Would Luke handle all that, if Pat couldn’t?’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sarah said, ‘A lot of it depends on the potato now. Is the blight really gone? We saw already, the amount that was around. Not much, but it’s not gone. It’s been doing that before, playing cat-and-mouse, great harvest one year, and when you plant everything you can the next year, it destroys it all.’

  ‘You’ve the right of it,’ Eleanor said, ‘but sure how do we know for sure? It’s hard to plan ahead, but we have to do it. Aren’t they going on with the new schools, right through the hunger and fever?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sabina said, ‘though there was talk they’d be stopped during the fevers. Not that they ever did.’

  ‘Nor ever will,’ Eleanor said. ‘So our babies will be schooled for free for the next six or seven years. After that, we’ll depend on Luke, and we can forget Murtybeg.’

  ‘Wait till Michael hears this one,’ Sabina said. ‘I’d love to see the look on his face.’

  ‘Or the sound of his voice,’ Eleanor said. ‘Can you imagine him? ‘Mad. You’re all mad…’

  *

  That evening, the women told Michael of Sarah’s pregnancy, never mentioning their plans for the baby.

  ‘We’ll wait till the little one is born,’ Eleanor said to Sarah, later. ‘That’ll be time enough to talk of Universities.’

  But time passed fast enough in other ways. One Sunday evening, Sabina came to take Brigid to Kilduff. She and Eleanor walked the child along the road.

  ‘School tomorrow, Brigid,’ Sabina said.

  ‘School. School. School…’ Brigid answered.

  When they arrived, they took Brigid up to the third floor, well above the bar. Sabina had already heated the room, and made up a small bed. They tucked the child in, and within moments Brigid was asleep.

  ‘And there was me thinking she might be upset,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Arra, not at all,’ Sabina said. ‘Sure little ones like that get used to anything. Another few weeks I’ll have her serving in the bar.’

  ‘The devil, you will,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Sure she has to learn her numbers. What better way?’

  ‘I swear; I’ll kill you if you do.’

  Sabina laughed. She poured out two whiskies.

  ‘The potato is back,’ she said. ‘There’s better times coming.’

  ‘There are,’ Eleanor said. ‘But when?’

  *

  As she walked home, it was a still night, cloudless and clear, with thousands of stars. To the north, the sky was rippling with red and green, stretching all across the Mountain and on as far as Nephin.

  The question still echoed through her head. When will it end?

  Will it ever end?

  They died in their thousands and their hundreds of thousands. All the suffering, the screaming pain, the grisly dying and the bodies scattered over mountains and bogs. Why did You do it? Was this the price that had to be paid? Your price. For what?

  The coming years, what are they to bring? More of the same? More famine, more fever, more dying, more death. Enough to send the people fleeing; escaping a blighted land.

  No different to
before. Michael’s brother, sixty years past or more, he died before Michael could even know him. Michael’s mother and father both died too with the fever that came with the hunger, long before the cholera of ’32. The same cholera that killed so many of my children. Since then, fever in every year, more dead children. They paid the price. I paid the price. For what? For living? Or for the crime of motherhood?

  Luke and Pat are still living, but how many did not? My only daughter and my first son, they died. And more? Yes, five more who only lived a few days. Seven of my children dead, but did You care? They were innocent, but they died anyhow. All of my daughters, most of my sons. Two left from nine. Your price again. Why complain? You do it to all of us mothers. Mothering is nothing but burying children.

  A hard life, but not hard enough for You. Did we ever think it would turn into this? Famine and fever, the most savage sacrifice, the heaps and trenches of stinking bodies. All the wretched aftershock of our never-ending war with death. And for what? No reason given, only the infinite silence of the endless Void.

  And all these new schools they gave us, teaching our children. Yes, we needed them, but still wasn’t that what destroyed Murty’s school and forced him to go to England? What is he now? Nothing more than an Irish navvy. And Aileen too? Once proud to be the teacher’s wife, now she’s only a navvy woman, working with Kitty in a Bradford mill. We should have expected that; we should have known the spinning and weaving machines would make the mills and kill off the outworkers on the farms. So now that they’ve got their big cities instead, Aileen can work in the mill, and Murty can work out his old age as a labourer on the railways. Is this the way it was meant to be? Is this their future? The future You made, the future You wanted. Is it?

  Danny gone too, and dead. Dead from his own fierce ambition, thinking he was a hard man, but he wasn’t. All we heard of him in England, the cruel brutality of a man who never cared for Mayo. Yet he was willing to pay for Brigid’s schooling. Paying for his own sins perhaps? Who knows? He’s dead now. He alone knew the agonies that drove him to it, and the price he had to pay. Your price.

  Are they the same agonies as Murtybeg must suffer? Or can he conquer his own conscience, caring nothing for anyone? Little Murteen? Cruel and pitiless? I’d never have believed that of him. But now? All England needs from Mayo is cheap men for navvying, and cheap food to feed the English people. Is Murteen the one who will squeeze the price from County Mayo? How will he justify the pain he’ll cause? Does he even know the pain he’ll cause to himself, and the price You’ll claim from him?