The Music Makers

by E. V. Thompson

  Her mouth moved hungrily. His body was aroused and his right hand slid beneath her arm, caressed her breast, then moved down her body.

  ‘No, Liam. No, please. Not here. Not here.’

  She gripped his hand in hers and, still not believing this was really happening, Liam allowed himself to be led from the room, across the hall and up the wide staircase.

  He walked behind her into a room that breathed the perfume worn by Lady Caroline. Then her silk dress was lying on the floor and he was stepping over it, following her to a wide soft bed. Cool sheets caressed his naked body and long fair hair brushed his face as he kissed her lips, her neck.

  Minutes later her body was responding to his own and her hands upon his back cajoled and kneaded, fought him and drew him to her. His body no longer belonged to him but moved in a primeval rhythm he had never before known. Finally, Liam sank down into a state of ecstatic weariness, his lungs roaring for oxygen.

  ‘Oh, my darling! Liam! Liam! Liam!’

  Lady Caroline held him fast in the well of her body as her lips brushed like a butterfly against his mouth, his eyes, the tip of his nose. Liam felt as though his body was floating away from him.

  ‘Go to sleep now, my darling,’ she whispered and he slept, his face against hers, while she gently stroked the back of his neck.

  Liam woke early, as the old lamp-lighter, with his long brass-hooked pole, whistled his way along the street beyond the window, turning off the gas-lights.

  He had not yet reached the light outside the house and, starting up, Liam looked down at the face on the pillow beside him.

  A wedge of light came through a broad gap beside one curtain and lay diagonally across the bed, not quite touching Lady Caroline’s face, but showing the dark smudges beneath her eyes and the trace of a worry-line across her forehead.

  Liam believed there could be no other woman quite so beautiful – and last night he had made love to her. The memory had the impact of a physical blow. He felt both elated and frightened. She was a lady, the sister of an earl. He was a fisherman. Then a frightening thought came to him. He had been drinking. Had he forced her?

  Lady Caroline’s eyes flickered open just before the light went off outside the window, plunging the room into darkness. Before Liam could say anything, could mumble a confused apology, her arms reached out for him and she drew him to her, finding his mouth with her own.

  They made love again, until the grey dawn touched the rooftops of London and outlined the windows of the bedroom. Then, with sounds of movement elsewhere in the house, Liam left Lady Caroline’s bed and made his way silently and secretly to his own room.

  When they met at the breakfast-table, Liam found it almost impossible to behave as though nothing had happened between them. He felt an overwhelming urge to touch her, to hold her to him and ask about the future, but Lady Caroline was behaving as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, as though the world might even go on as before. Liam was hurt and bewildered, but he took his cue from her.

  He returned the friendly smile she gave him, and Lady Caroline said, ‘You are certainly happier than you were last night, my dear. When I came in I thought you looked almost suicidal.’

  ‘It was Eugene’s club. The contrast between what I was saying and the luxury I saw there.’

  ‘I am afraid you will have to learn to accept such contrasts, Liam, if you wish to raise money for your cottiers. People who live in humbler surroundings would undoubtedly give your cottiers more sympathy, but that will not feed a hungry child.’

  Liam knew she was right. He would remember her words when he gave his next talk.

  She put her napkin on the table before her and stood up. ‘I am afraid I must leave you now, Liam. An aunt of mine is passing through London on her way to Italy. I have to spend the day with her.’

  Liam’s spirits sank. He had hoped they might spend the day together, just the two of them, as they had on his first day in London.

  ‘Will you be home when I return from my talk tonight?’ he blurted out.

  Lady Caroline pretended to be shocked. ‘Oh dear! What slumbering beast have I awakened in you, Liam McCabe?’

  Liam coloured up, and when she laughed it embarrassed him even more. The realisation came to him once again that he was an inexperienced and clumsy fisherman from Kilmar who had stepped out of his own world into another that he neither knew nor understood.

  ‘I’m sorry….’

  Lady Caroline leaned over him as he sat at the breakfast-table and put a finger to his lips.

  ‘Shh! You have no need to apologise – for anything. Of course I will be here when you return from your meeting.’

  She removed her finger and kissed him quickly. ‘While I am getting ready you can try on your new clothes. The tailor sent them round this morning.’

  A note with the clothes stated that they were intended merely to give him something to wear while he waited for the bulk of his order to be fulfilled, but the suit of fine-quality cloth fitted tolerably well. Liam was particularly pleased with the heavy overcoat; there was bitterly cold wind blowing through the London streets with an occasional flake of snow escaping from the morose grey-clouded sky.

  Eugene Brennan was as pleased as Liam with the clothes. He was taking Liam for lunch with some of his fellow-Irish Members of Parliament and few of them cared to be reminded of the rough-serge-and-corduroy-knee-breeches image the British had of the Irish. It was not snobbery. Each of them had fought a hard and bitter battle for many years to gain equality for their electors and to prove the Irishman as good a man as his fellows in England. Their efforts had not been helped recently by the enforced exodus of the dispossessed cottiers. Practically penniless, and ignorant of the ways of what was, after all, an alien country, they had set up a wave of anti-Irish feeling that would soon surge through Liverpool and other large cities in the land, counteracting the sympathy around by their country’s plight.

  Some of this feeling had already reached London. That night’s meeting was the only public meeting of Liam’s tour. It was held in a hall in the City of London, the small business heart of the capital. Here, for the first time in his brief experience of speaking, Liam encountered hecklers.

  The jeers and catcalls began when Eugene Brennan was speaking, but the old MP was far too wily to allow them to distract him. He ignored most of their interruptions and scored points from those he chose to answer.

  For Liam it was different. He had come to tell his story to what he had believed would be a sympathetic audience. He could not understand why men would bother to come to a meeting to protest against helping people who would otherwise die. When the heckling became too persistent and Eugene Brennan would have stood up to intervene, Liam expressed his surprise to the crowd.

  Immediately, there were cries of ‘Why can’t the Irish feed themselves, the same as we have to?’

  ‘Because the potato crop has failed,’ said Liam simply. ‘The potato is the sole food for hundreds of thousands of cottiers.’

  ‘Then let them eat the grain they’re sending to England,’ demanded a voice. ‘I have seen three shiploads of Irish grain pass through the docks this week.’

  ‘No doubt it came from the farm of an absent English landlord,’ retorted Liam. ‘We have many such people in Ireland and they use the Army to make sure starving cottiers don’t steal so much as a handful of the grain they bring here to you.’

  ‘What about all the Irishmen who come to England to take our jobs from us?’ called another unseen man. ‘If they don’t give a damn about us, why should we help them?’

  ‘If there was work or food in Ireland, they wouldn’t need to come here. The men you see here are the lucky ones. They will live. Left behind in Ireland are wives and little children who will not—and I have watched them die. That is why I have come to England. I am just an ordinary fisherman who is giving a share of his catches to help those who are starving – but it is not enough. I am here to ask for your help, too.’

&n
bsp; When Liam went on to tell his audience of some of the harrowing sights he had seen, the hecklers allowed him to speak without further interruption and when he sat down Eugene Brennan took the opportunity to give one of the few political speeches of the tour. He slated the unfair Corn Laws that encouraged Irish farmers and land-owners to ship their corn to England for resale, at the same time preventing cheap corn from being allowed into Ireland. He berated the Tory administration of Sir Robert Peel for doing nothing to provide governmental aid to the Irish. Finally, he spoke against the union of England and Ireland which had taken the control of Irish affairs out of the hands of the Irish and left them at the mercy of politicians who neither knew nor cared about their problems.

  The meeting broke up in an uproar of cheers and counter-cheers, and the collection was hastily abandoned when one of the collectors was badly man-handled by a small group of ruffians. When the noise had gone on for ten minutes and showed little sign of abating, one of the hall officials helped Eugene Brennan and Liam to slip away through a side door.

  In the carriage on their way from the hall, Liam expressed incredulity that a meeting held to raise money for starving people – British people – should attract such violent opposition.

  Eugene Brennan gave a short humourless laugh. ‘When you have been politics for as many years as I have there are few surprises left. The men who were carrying out the heckling were in the pay of Sir Robert Peel’s party, have no doubts about that.’

  ‘But why should our appeal attract the attention of politicians?’ Liam was puzzled. ‘The cottiers have nothing to do with politics.’

  ‘No, but I have. The hecklers were in the hall tonight to discredit me. Sir Robert Peel’s mismanagement of the famine has gained me many supporters. Certain men of influence are beginning to realise that Ireland can only be successfully administered from Dublin. Peel’s position as Prime Minister is far from secure. If he loses any more popularity, he may well find himself out of office.’

  The old MP sat back in the carriage seat and looked appraisingly at Liam.

  ‘I was impressed with the way you handled Peel’s men at the meeting tonight. I almost wish I had arranged a few more public meetings so that you could perfect your technique. You could easily become a very effective speaker with your directness and lack of guile. But I realise you have not come all this way to help my political career. You are here to get money for the cottiers – and, by God, that’s what we’ll do, Liam.’

  Eugene Brennan shrugged the carriage blanket about him and gave Liam a wry smile.

  ‘We may not have made much money tonight, but it did me good to tell an English meeting what years of direct rule has done to Ireland. They will go home with something to think about, at least.’

  Liam shook his head sadly. ‘I understand little of all this. I only know that people are dying in Ireland while you play games here. Perhaps Dermot should have come to London instead of me. He claims to understand politics.’

  But Liam was glad he had not missed the opportunity to come to London, although for the remainder of the drive his thoughts were not of politics, or of the money he would help to raise for less fortunate countrymen. Looking out of the carriage window at the snow beginning to fall in silent heavy flakes upon the London streets, he was thinking of Lady Caroline Dudley, of her touch, her kisses and the feel of her slim body.

  As the iron-clad wheels of the carriage rumbled along a narrow alleyway and the hoofs of the horses struck sparks from the cobbles, Liam lapsed into a contemplative silence and dreamed of sharing his hostess’s bed.

  Chapter Eleven

  In Kilmar, a week of appalling weather had prevented any fishing. The wind howled off the sea and brought angry waves crashing on the shore sending spray high over the stone wall of the fishing quay. The two wooden boats were dragged to safety, high up on the beach, and the curraghs lay upside down along the narrow village streets or were tilted against sheltered cottage walls.

  Because of the severity of the weather, more and more dispossessed cottiers were pouring in from the surrounding countryside. The promise of work on the Earl of Inch’s estate had brought salvation to a hundred families, but only misplaced hope and ultimate despair to a thousand more. In a last desperate bid for life men brought their starving families with them and begged that they, too, should be given work.

  The Earl’s man appointed by Lady Caroline tried to apportion the work to different men each day, in an attempt to spread relief farther, but it only resulted in the cottier men fighting bloody battles for the right to work. Since the famine the price of foodstuff in Ireland had risen alarmingly. A day’s wage was barely enough to feed a small family for two careful days, and the men had to work regularly to keep their families alive.

  As the fights grew daily more desperate, the Earl’s man had no alternative but to sign on a regular labour force and order the others from the estate.

  The cottiers without work descended upon Kilmar, begging piteously by day. At night the more agile amongst them braved the high wind on the steep seaward slopes of Kilmar hill, snaring sleeping seagulls for the cooking-pot.

  The Kilmar branch of the All-Ireland Association held an emergency meeting to discuss the latest development in the situation, but broke up without arriving at even a temporary solution. They felt there was nothing to be done until money from Liam’s fund-raising tour in England beean to arrive.

  The decision did not please the younger members of the Association.

  ‘The whole business is appalling.’ Dermot McCabe was in a small back room of the Kilmar ale-house with Kathie, Eoin and Sean Feehan and half a dozen others. ‘All that anyone ever says at these meetings is “Wait, wait, wait” – and at the end of the waiting they will no doubt talk some more. All the talking in the world won’t save a single cottier.’

  ‘In the meantime the landlords are still shipping grain from Wexford Town,’ growled Eoin Feehan. ‘They have been holding it back waiting for the price to rise as high as they think it will go. Two ships left last week, and I’ve heard there’s another waiting to be loaded at this very moment.’

  ‘That’s quite true,’ said one of the young men. ‘My father was in Gorey today. He said they are gathering corn-wagons together and by tomorrow will have thirty wagons of grain and two hundred head of cattle to take to Wexford Town with an escort of soldiers.’

  ‘Did he say how many soldiers there were?’ asked Dermot eagerly.

  ‘About twenty, he thought. Why?’

  ‘This could be the opportunity we’ve been waiting for. A chance to do more than talk. It will take the wagons two days to reach Wexford Town. During that time it would be easy enough to steal a couple of wagonloads of grain and a few head of cattle.’

  There was an instant build-up of excitement in the room. Only Kathie raised a doubt about the practicality of Dermot’s startling idea.

  ‘And how will we perform this miracle? The soldiers will have muskets. There are only ten of us here in this room and we don’t have a gun between us.’

  ‘We don’t need guns,’ said Dermot excitedly. ‘We’ll use a trick the Irish have used for centuries and the soldiers will not even see us. No, Kathie, don’t be asking any more questions just now. We’ve got plans to make. Now, this is the way I see things….’

  Dermot explained his plan, and when the others gave it their wholehearted support the idea that had been born out of a spirit of bravado became a reality. Each young man in the room was given a specific task.

  Kathie, who felt as fully committed as any of the others, was indignant that she was not included.

  ‘I have a special task for you,’ declared Dermot. ‘If we are to succeed, we will need to slow the wagons and keep them as close to Gorey as possible by nightfall tomorrow. That’s when we will take the wagons, and we will need to be back here in Kilmar before daybreak. If a Kilmar fisherman is stopped that far from his village at night, the soldiers will know for sure who is responsible. Your task will be to dela
y the soldiers for as long as possible – and you will need as many cottiers as you can find to help you. I don’t care how it is done – the cottiers can all lie down in the road and claim they are dying, if need be – bur the soldiers must be slowed. They will be going along the coast road; that’s the only way they will find enough water for the cattle, and it will be easier for the grain-wagons. After dark, tell the cottiers to go back along the road for about half a mile and wait there. They are to be ready to receive as much grain as they can carry off with them and must be off the roads by daybreak. Don’t tell them exactly what is going to happen, Kathie. It’s better they don’t know – whatever they may guess.’

  Kathie had a great many doubts about Dermot’s scheme. With so many people involved in its execution there was so much that could go wrong. But she said nothing – and would bitterly regret her silence for the remainder of her life.

  The English soldiers ran into trouble when they were only half a mile from Gorey. Soon after taking the coast road they found it blocked by a large crowd of cottiers. There appeared to be a celebration, with everyone joining in the singing and dancing.

  The officer in charge of the soldiers was a young untried ensign. His uncertain requests for the cottiers to clear the road were met with smiles and unintelligible replies in Gaelic, a language understood by none of the military men.

  The wagon drivers were no help. They gave the officer a number of widely differing interpretations. The cottiers were celebrating a wedding … a saint’s day … the departure of a family group to the Americas.

  Not until the column had been delayed for almost four hours did a long-serving soldier, Corporal William Garrett, take a hand. His experience had told him something unusual was afoot as soon as the cottiers began their delaying tactics. He had waited impatiently for the young ensign to take some positive action. Now he felt the farce had gone on for quite long enough. These stupid peasants were making the English Army look foolish – and to Corporal Garrett there was no greater crime.