Contents
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
By the Same Author
Copyright
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
A. W. E. O’Shaughnessy
Chapter One
The small isolated fishing village of Kilmar has grown up on that stretch of Ireland’s coastline where the turbulent Irish Sea is squeezed through the narrows of St George’s Channel on its way to the vast Atlantic Ocean.
Viewed from the sea, the land hereabouts has the shape of a giant crouching dog, tailless rump rising high above County Wicklow, its nose nudging a rounded bone in County Wexford. The bone is the lone hill of Kilmar. Here, Dark Age missionaries once looked eastward, hoping to catch a distant glimpse of a heathen land wherein lay canonisation and the promise of immortality. Just below this hill, on the water’s edge, the missionaries built simple huts and prayed to the one true God to still the angry waters and allow His dedicated servants to set forth on their perilous journeys. When their pious patience was rewarded, each aspiring saint stepped into his curragh – a frail craft of animal skins stretched over a frame of saplings – and, setting a precedent for millions of fellow-countrymen yet to be born, crossed the sea into nostalgic exile.
The huts these men of God left behind were soon occupied by their followers, who waited hopefully for the return of the saintly evangelists and fed themselves with fish they caught from the sea.
The saints never returned to Kilmar, but the fishermen remained. The wood-and-grass huts became houses and the village extended up the slopes of Kilmar hill. When a stone wall was built to give Kilmar its own little harbour the picture was complete. A ten-mile-long reef of rock and sand half a mile out from the harbour entrance ensured that nothing larger than a fishing boat would ever come to Kilmar, but it afforded additional protection from the fury of the sea and fishing gave the villagers a good, albeit dangerous, living.
In this year of 1845, the fishermen still used the traditional curragh, constructed in the same fashion as the flimsy shells used by the Celtic saints, but now canvas was stretched over the light wooden frame in place of the less manageable animal hides. To the people of Kilmar the future lay ahead of them as comfortably predictable as their past. But already changes were beginning to nibble at the fabric of their lives, spreading a disease for which there is no known cure. The disease known as Progress.
With the wood of the fishing boat’s stem pressing in his stomach, Liam McCabe leaned far out and plunged his hands into the sea. Just below the surface he gripped the water-stiffened rope from which hung a small-meshed fishing net. Above the rope a long line of cork floats extended seaward from the boat.
Liam’s arm muscles tautened and protested as he began slowly heaving the net hand over hand into the boat. Suddenly, a long low wave passed on its way to the shore and lifting the boat slewed it sideways on to the line of the net.
The agony of maintaining his grip on the rope showed on Liam’s face as he fought against the boat’s movement. Looking over his shoulder quickly, he saw his younger brother leaning on the heavy wooden oars, his eyes fixed upon the shore but seeing only faraway places of his mind.
‘Dermot! Stop dreaming and hold the boat steady. There’s enough to do without having you fall asleep over the oars.’
Dermot McCabe started guiltily and dug the oars deep into the water, leaning back from them as he pulled the boat around to face toward the horizon once again.
‘This damned boat is too heavy for just the two of us,’ grumbled Dermot in an attempt to divert attention from his lapse of concentration. ‘She’s a cow to hold in a swell.’
‘Perhaps we should sell it and go back to using a curragh again.’
As another yard of dripping net cleared the water Liam glanced again at his brother and grinned at the indignation he saw on his face. Their twenty-feet-long, clinker-built wooden boat was the subject of fierce pride for both of them. In order to buy it they had worked desperately hard for three years, spending every daylight hour fishing from an old and much patched curragh, putting to sea in stormy weather when every other boat was drawn high up on the beach. With the help of their mother they had salted most of their catches and, once a week, one of them would pull a home-made cart laden with salted fish to Gorey market and stay there until every fish was sold.
At the end of those daunting three years Liam took the money they had saved and set off for Wexford Town. There he sought out the best boat-builder and ordered the craft that had been a dream for himself and Dermot for so long. There was only one other wooden boat in Kilmar, a second-hand English coble, owned by the red-haired Feehan family.
‘You must be out of your mind,’ snorted Dermot. ‘I’d manage the boat single handed rather than sell her – and so would you. But there must be an easier way to earn a living. We slog our guts out catching fish – and for what? Nobody has the money to buy.’
‘They’ll have money when the potatoes are dug. Meanwhile we carry on salting. Anyway, what would you rather be doing? Bending your back on somebody else’s land? Eating nothing but potatoes, morning, noon and night?’
While Liam was talking, silver-bodied fish were twisting and flapping in the bottom of the boat. The brothers had a good catch. Bringing it into the boat would be hard work. A light breeze was blowing toward the shore and, pulling the oars inboard, Dermot moved to the stern of the boat. Swiftly and skilfully he rigged a small mizzen sail. It would hold the boat steady and prevent her riding over the net as they hauled in the catch.
Liam made way for his brother, and shoulder to shoulder they hauled on the net in pra
ctised unity, concentrating on the work in hand. Then Dermot said, ‘We’ve got a meeting of the Association at the inn tonight, Liam. Why don’t you come along and give us the benefit of your superior learning?’
The good humour left Liam’s face for a moment. He did not approve of Dermot’s involvement with the All-Ireland Association. Liam believed that a fisherman had nothing to gain by involving himself with the political aspirations of any of the many associations in the land. Politics had brought nothing but misery to Ireland. He doubted whether the All-Ireland Association would improve upon that sad record.
But Dermot had not finished talking. ‘Eugene Brennan is going to be there. You should hear him speak, Liam. He means every word he says. You won’t find a finer man anywhere. He’s done more to unite Irishmen than any man for centuries. The best day’s work County Wexford ever did was to elect him to Parliament. Oh, I know he’s getting on in years now, but he is a great man. They listen to him in London, I can tell you. If it wasn’t for him, we’d still be paying tithe duties on the fish we catch. One day he’ll have union with England repealed and we’ll have our own parliament in Dublin again. You wait till we rule ourselves, Liam—’
‘Enough!’ growled Liam. ‘Keep your spiel for the meeting and your breath for the fish. If we don’t get this net in, you’ll be out here talking politics to the moon. Bend that strong arm of yours and heave.’
Dermot obeyed his brother’s order, but not without a rueful shake of his head, and he continued to express his views while hauling in the net. ‘I despair of you, Liam. To hear you talk no one would dream that your own grandfather was a leader in the ninety-eight rising – that he marched on Dublin at the head of half the county—’
‘And left behind a widow and eight small children when they hanged him for it,’ retorted Liam. ‘Will you shake out that net – or shall I put you back on the oars?’
Dermot fell silent, but Liam knew that nothing he had said to his younger brother would make any difference. Dermot was fired with the need to free Ireland from England’s domination. It had been the dream of hot-blooded young men for centuries, urged on by the religious fervour of their womenfolk. The vast majority of the Irish were Catholics. Those who ruled over them were Protestants. For generations Catholics had been barred from representing their people in Parliament and unable to hold public office or even vote. Eldest sons could not claim the estates of their fathers unless they renounced their religion. True, much had been done in recent years to right such gross injustices, but the changes in the law had been made with such obvious reluctance that the resentment of the Irish people remained and would smoulder for many years to come.
Liam knew much about the history of his people. The village priest, Father Clery, had given him a thorough schooling, grateful to have found a boy with such a thirst for knowledge; but Father Clery had not taught Liam how he might persuade his brother that changes in Ireland did not have to come about through violence.
Liam wished, as he had on many occasions through the years, that their father was alive to take the responsibility from him. Liam remembered the quiet strength of the pipe-smoking man who had taught him to fish and to handle a boat. Eamon McCabe had been a thoughtful and patient father, a rock against which all the troubles of a small boy might break.
But Liam’s childhood had been brutally brief. He had been a ten-year-old boy, waiting on Kilmar jetty with his five-year-old brother for their father’s return from a day’s fishing, when a sudden storm swept off the land and fought its destructive way out to sea. When it moved on, seven Kilmar fishing boats had disappeared without trace. Eamon McCabe’s boat was one of them.
Holding Dermot’s hand so tightly that the small boy cried out in pain, Liam had fought back his own tears and taken his young brother home. From that day he had been the man of the family, fishing by day and learning all he could from Father Clery’s books at night. He still spent many of his evenings reading the village priest’s books, but now Liam was a serious young man of twenty-seven – and a fisherman who owned a wooden boat.
For an hour Liam and Dermot were kept busy hauling in their net and disentangling the larger fish from its mesh. Before long the baskets in the stern of the boat were full to overflowing and the deckboards in the bottom of the boat slippery with feebly flapping fish. They were mostly herring, although they had also netted a shoal of some two hundred mackerel, frightened up from the depths by a larger fish.
When the whole of the net was lying in an untidy heap in the bottom of the wooden boat, all the smaller and lighter fishing curraghs were already well on their way back to Kilmar with their catches. Only the Feehans were still hauling, a quarter of a mile farther out to sea.
‘Let’s have the mast up and sail home in style, Dermot,’ said Liam.
It was only a matter of minutes before the boat was heeling over away from the wind with the sea slapping noisily against the wooden planking. Liam headed the boat toward the small harbour. Behind them, Tomas Feehan and his two burly sons finished hauling in their nets and prepared to row back to Kilmar. The Feehans had followed the McCabes’ example in buying a wooden boat, but had struck such a hard bargain with the seller that he had ‘forgotten’ to include the mast and sails.
From the glassless window of a tumble-down sod-and-thatch cottage, perched high on the slopes above the village, Kathie Donaghue watched the last of the curraghs nose into the small stone-walled harbour. Reaching for a faded black shawl, she threw it over her hair and shrugged the edges about her shoulders.
Kathie had almost reached the door when a man’s voice called querulously from the shadows in the corner of the room.
‘Is that you, Kathie? Are you going out, child? Where would you be off to at this time of the day?’
The girl crossed the room as the man struggled to a sitting position on the misshapen straw pallet. The movement caused him to belch noisily, and Kathie wrinkled her nose as the odour of stale ale and whiskey reached her.
‘So you’re awake, are you? It’s not before time. I’m away to the jetty to see if I can do some fish-gutting in return for a few fish.’
‘Is that the truth of it, girl? You wouldn’t lie to your own father? You don’t have a sweetheart among those good-for-nothing fishermen?’
When Kathie made no reply, he went on, ‘You’d best be careful, Kathie. These fishermen are all for getting young girls into trouble.’
‘I know exactly what you’re talking about, Father – and the “young girls” they’ve been getting into trouble is one young girl of fourteen. If it’s of any interest to you, she’s marrying the father of her unborn child on Sunday.’ Kathie threw up her head angrily. ‘I’m no young child. You may not have remembered it, but I turned twenty last week.’
The thought that he had forgotten his daughter’s birthday embarrassed Tommy Donaghue. ‘Ah well! I’m just saying you should be careful, that’s all.’
‘No, that’s not all. I may be reduced to wearing clothes that are more patches and darns than material, but the body inside them has never belonged to anyone but me – and it won’t until I’m good and ready.’
Kathie swung away to the door and, opening it, called back, ‘Will you be here when I return, or shall I look for you in the ale-house?’
‘Now, is that the way to be talking to your own father?’ Tommy Donaghue spoke with the fiat unmusical accent of the north of Ireland. ‘Anyone would think I went to the alehouse for my own pleasure. You know very well it’s where I earn my living, Kathie.’
He reached out an unsteady hand and plucked a string of the fiddle that lay on the broken chair beside the rough bed. The note hung on the air in the small room.
‘Being a fiddler is hard on a man with responsibilities, girl. Do you think I enjoy spending long hours away from a daughter who is all the family I have? You’ll never hear me complaining about it, Kathie, but I do expect you to understand.’
‘Understand what? That you’d sell your soul for a drink? That you’
ve sold everything we ever owned to satisfy your thirst? You play your fiddle in an ale-house for as long as there’s a man left to buy you a whiskey – or until you’re too drunk to hold your fiddle. Is that what you’re asking me to understand?’
‘Now, Kathie,’ The words came out as a pathetic whine.
‘All right, then, so it’s your “work”. Will you let me have some of the money you’ve made from this “work”? If there’s no gutting to be done, I’ll have to buy fish and I’ll need money.’
Tommy Donaghue sank back on to his rough bed. ‘Ah well, that’s not quite so simple as it sounds.’
‘Just as I thought. You collected your pay in a pint pot again.’
Tommy Donaghue looked across the room to where his daughter was framed in the doorway of the tiny one-roomed cottage. She stood with feet planted firmly apart, her hands resting on hips as slim as a young boy’s.
‘Kathie, when I see you angry you’re the spitting image of your poor dear mother … the spitting image! If she had lived to see you today, she’d be a proud woman, God rest her dear soul.’
Kathie held on to her anger for another minute, then her hands dropped helplessly to her side and she shook her head, acknowledging defeat. ‘Father, you’re an impossible man. Why do you have to go and say something like that just when ‘I’d got good and angry with you? You’d charm the blemishes from an apple. Oh, you needn’t worry about giving me money. I’ve got some here.’
‘You’ve got money? Where did you get it?’ The words were out before Tommy Donaghue could check the ridiculous suspicion that leaped to his mind. He well knew that there were still ways for a pretty girl to earn money, even in these hard times. But he should have known his daughter better.
‘I earned it. Six pennies for weeding potatoes on the Earl of Inch’s lands, while you snored your head off in bed. Will you need to see my hands before you believe me?’
She spread fingers before him that were cracked from hard work and stained from weeds and earth.
‘Now, Kathie….’ As Tommy Donaghue struggled up from the pallet his daughter drew the shawl tight about her shoulders.
The Music Makers Page 1