Bridie's Fire

by Kirsty Murray

  It was in Muiris MacMahon’s house that they found the party of people who’d come up from the beach. The door was open to the road and a single candle illuminated the small front room. No one spoke as the two children entered the house. Laid out on a door, his wet clothes gripping his still limbs, lay a giant of a man with a sharp, craggy face. For a moment Bridie didn’t recognise him, and then it was as if her heart froze and the cry that was forming in her throat was stilled by horror. Brandon ran to the body and took a cold, swollen hand in his own, but Bridie backed away and stood in the doorway, staring at her father’s corpse.

  ‘Stay, child,’ said an old woman. ‘Muiris has gone for your mamai.’

  Bridie looked down at the water pooling in the bottom of the basket and the swollen, useless crosses. The women all began to keen, their voices rising in a spiral of grief. Bridie turned and ran. The cobblestones of the village bruised her heels as she raced to the cliffs. She stood face to the wind, fighting to hold her feet on the narrow winding path, and flung the basket of crosses out into the churning sea, roaring with rage and misery. Brandon reached her side and took one of her trembling hands in his. They stood watching as the basket swept skywards in an updraft before it plummeted into the ocean, the crosses scattering in the wind and water.

  ‘Oh Brand, I heard the banshee keening last night – heard it in the wind, and didn’t stop our dad from stepping out! I never thought we could lose our dad!’ She pushed her fists against the front of her worn dress as if trying to stem the pain.

  There was no one at home when the two children returned, but the door was open. Mam must have run, with baby Paddy in her arms, down the long, bleak slope to the road. Bridie pushed the door shut, closing out the wild night and huddling close to the turf fire. She put her face so close to the smoking embers that her eyes stung and the tears ran free, coursing down her numb, cold face.

  For months after her father’s death, Bridie felt as if the fire that flared inside her had been turned inside out, and her skin was alive with heat and flame. Most mornings she would leave the house at dawn and scurry across the wet grass. She scoured the beach and hillsides for food with a wild fervour, searching in the hedgerows for nests and nettles – anything that could be thrown into the pot to stretch out the last of their stored meal.

  Spring began to unfold, with tufts of green in the drystone walls, pale yellow primroses in the lanes, and foxgloves spreading their velvety leaves across the damp ground, but none of it was beautiful to Bridie. At night she lay in bed with Brandon and listened to the wind off the Atlantic battering against the stones of her house, but it sounded with a different voice. The hearth she sat beside, the brown and green landscape with the clouds hanging low over Mount Eagle, none of it was the same without her father in his place. Her dadai was underneath the earth, underneath the crowds of snowdrops pushing up through muddy soil and Bridie found no joy in seeing new life sprouting in the fields, no pleasure in the birdsong from the hedgerows.

  On a cold spring morning she walked along the beach, staring down at the speckled pink, purple and mauve of the pebbles. Brandon sat on the shore, curled into a little ball, staring out to sea. Beside him was a small pile of limpets that he’d scraped from the rocks.

  ‘Why do you sit here every day, doing nothing but staring out at the sea? We’ve got to keep moving, you’ve got to keep searching for something for the pot, boyo.’

  ‘The island out there, the Sleeping Giant. It’s not an island. It’s our dad out there, see.’ Brandon traced the outline of the dark island with his finger. ‘See, that’s just what he looked like when he was laying on the lid. His spirit’s gone out to the island and he’s there. The magic is in it and it’s singing out to me.’

  Bridie sat down beside him and followed his gaze to the island Inishtooskert, a wild, dark shape rising out of the Atlantic.

  ‘That’s not our dad and there’s no magic in it. You’d best be believing there’s no magic in this place any more. There’s only misery and hunger,’ she said, scraping his small pile of limpets into her skirt and turning her back on the sea.

  4

  The going away

  On a bright May afternoon, Bridie set out with the last of her father’s possessions, his boots, his nets and his good knife, hoping to find a buyer. The earth was warm beneath her feet, but the lanes were too quiet. There were no children’s voices any more, not even the low, whining sound of the dying. Nearly everyone was gone. Mick O’Farrell had died on the public works, building walls and roads that led nowhere while his family starved. All six of the O’Farrell children had died one after the other, their bellies swollen with hunger, their eyes too big for their faces. There had been no funerals. The last three had died within days of each other and Mrs O’Farrell had waited until she could wrap all three of the little wizened bodies in sacking and take them to the cemetery to be buried together. One day Bridie had seen Mrs O’Farrell sitting huddled on the doorstep of her home, and then a week later the door was blowing open.

  All along the laneways, houses lay empty, as if the people had gone out for an evening walk but then never returned. In some houses, the dresser stood with the crockery still upon it. Every day, a steady stream of people climbed over Mount Eagle or took the rugged road around the coast to Dingle.

  In the end Bridie had to walk halfway around the peninsula before someone would give her a few pennies for her dad’s things. Bridie went home to find Mam sitting close to the fire, rocking Paddy as he moaned in his sleep, with Brandon curled up near her feet. Paddy was starting to look like an O’Farrell child; his cheekbones were too big, his cheeks too sunken, and there was no softness to his little limbs. He didn’t want to play any more. Mostly he just slept in Mam’s arms.

  ‘We’ll have to leave, Mam,’ said Bridie. ‘We’ll have to go like the others or we’ll starve, right here in our home.’

  ‘There’s no cure for misfortune but to kill it with patience,’ said her mother, laying Paddy down on the bed that she’d once shared with their father.

  Bridie couldn’t stop the words and the fury spilling out. ‘The devil sweep your soul, you fool of a mamai, the hunger will kill us before patience can win!’ she shouted.

  ‘Can we go to America?’ asked Brandon, sitting up. ‘If we go to America, we could find Uncle Liam.’

  Bridie looked at her brother and scowled. ‘And bad cess to him, it’s never a word we’ve heard from him since,’ she said. ‘No, we’ll go to Dingle, to Aunt Mairead’s house. We’d be cracked to stay here. I’ve heard there’s a soup kitchen in Ventry. We can go through there on our way.’

  ‘That’s enough of your slack-jaw, girl,’ said her mother quietly. Though her words were stern, her whole body spoke of her exhaustion.

  ‘Your dad always said, “No matter how hungry we get, we’ll never stoop to taking the soup”,’ said Mam, stroking the pale curls away from Paddy’s brow.

  ‘But it’s the Quakers, Mam! They’re not asking anything of us. They’re not like the Church of Ireland. I wouldn’t go over to the Devil for a bowl of soup, but I’ll not watch my brothers die for want of it. I won’t be putting our boys in sacks like Kitty O’Farrell. We’ll be going to Dingle tomorrow,’ said Bridie firmly. ‘Blood knows blood, so Aunt Mairead will take us in – and the Quakers will feed us on the way.’

  Mam looked at Bridie as if she hardly knew the fierce girl who stood at the end of the bed. ‘God help us,’ she said, putting her face in her hands.

  Brandon wanted to go straight over the top of Mount Eagle, but Bridie said they had to take the coast road. Perhaps they’d be able to beg something from the folk along the way, and besides, none of them had the strength to carry the last of their possessions and Paddy over the high hill.

  The last time Bridie had travelled this road with her father, they had set out in the morning and reached Ventry by noon. But this time it took them a day and a half to walk the rutted track, stumbling behind the carts making their way around the peninsula
. Bridie took a wooden bowl and begged a morsel at as many doors as would open to her, but most folk were as hungry as the O’Connors. At night she lay curled up against her mother and thought of the man she had tried to feed with nettle soup before he died. Her dreams were full of dark images.

  They reached Ventry late the following day to find the soup kitchen closed. A great mound of empty cockle and mussel shells lay piled beside the door. Brandon squatted down and sifted through them with his fingers, sighing wistfully.

  Mam wanted to seek shelter in the shadow of Rath Fhionnain, the fort that lay above the town, but Bridie encouraged her to walk a little further to the other side of the village, so that Dingle would be in sight. They stopped in the shade of the Giant’s Bed, a huge dolmen like a table made of three slabs of limestone. The space beneath the dolmen was black and still. Some said it was an ancient grave and others thought it the entrance to a fairy world. Brandon climbed onto the biggest flat stone, but Bridie called for him to come down.

  ‘That’s the Munsterman’s Grave, boyo. You don’t want to go waking him now,’ she said. ‘Come sit beside me, here, and I’ll tell you a story about the great giant that lives under these stones.’

  Brandon climbed down slowly and snuggled close to their mother.

  ‘I want Mam to tell me the story,’ he said.

  Bridie put her hands on her hips and glared at Brandon. ‘Don’t you go bothering our mam. She should be saving her strength for the morrow.’ She took out the sticks and turf she’d pilfered along the coast road and set about lighting a small fire to warm her family. The harbour looked blue and inviting in the summer afternoon, yet it was cool in the shelter of the Munsterman’s Grave.

  ‘What’s that mountain, over there to the north, Mam?’ asked Brandon, pointing.

  ‘Why that’s Mount Brandon,’ she answered, smiling. ‘After his blessed self, our own St Brennain.’

  ‘Am I like St Brandon, Mam?’ asked Brandon, staring up at the mountain.

  ‘Well, he was a great adventurer, like you, my darling. And he sailed to the Promised Land with his brothers and they found the Paradise of Birds and other wonders and that’s how the Irish discovered America.’

  Bridie sat on the far side of the fire, feeding it with twigs and watching Brandon gazing at Mam’s face, and Paddy, like a kitten curled against her side. She longed to crawl over and lay her head in her mother’s lap, to shut her eyes and listen to a story. She willed herself to be strong, strong enough to make sure her family reached Aunt Mairead.

  Bridie woke early the next morning. There was a mist across the landscape and the Munsterman’s Grave looked silver-grey in the half-light. Bridie looked into the face of her sleeping mother. Every line seemed to have grown deeper, her features more careworn than ever. She lay with one thin arm around each of the boys and her hand resting on her swollen, hungry belly. Bridie felt a pang of fear that her mother would be too weak to travel any further.

  As her family slept, she hurried across the green fields towards a cluster of houses. Even if she could only beg a crust of bread to start the day, at least that might give her mother enough energy to walk on. She knocked on the first door of the village but no one answered. The quiet chilled her. She hugged her arms around her and walked to the next door. At the end of the lane, the top half of a doorway stood open. She peered into the dark room. A sickly, sour smell wafted out and there was no glow from the fire. In the corner lay a heaped pile of rags. Bridie pushed the door open and stepped into the gloom. She put her fist in her mouth to stifle the scream that swelled inside her. The pile of rags was a group of bodies, huddled together in their last moments, a whole family, their stick-like limbs entwined. Bridie turned and ran, the slap of her feet on the ground echoing through the empty houses.

  Dingle was teeming with homeless folk, many of them as ragged and desperate as the O’Connors. People pushed past each other without greeting as if they weren’t even there. Bridie tried not to look into their haunted faces. A man stepped out of his shop and waved away the crowds, shouting at them in a language she couldn’t understand. ‘What’s he saying, Mam?’ she said pulling at her mother’s ragged dress.

  ‘He’s speaking English, girl. I’m not sure of the words but you can take his meaning,’ she said.

  They turned into the laneway where Aunt Mairead lived, where the narrow houses were already cast in shadow. Bridie felt the barrenness of the place before they’d even reached Aunt Mairead’s door. The windows and entrance were barred over, and the inside was dark and empty. ‘She’s gone to America,’ said the neighbours. ‘Left for Tralee months gone by.’

  Mam slumped in the doorway, folding her thin arms around Paddy. Brandon squatted down beside her, uncertain if she was going to cry and whether he should keen with her, but Bridie stood looking up and down the length of the lane, trying to think what their next move should be.

  ‘Mam, we should go to America too,’ said Brandon quietly. ‘We could go to Tralee and get on a ship and go to find Aunt Mairead. I’d like to go to America.’

  ‘Husha,’ said Bridie, angrily. ‘Can’t you be quiet about America. We none of us want to go there.’

  ‘I do,’ said Brandon. Bridie scowled at him and put one arm under her mother to help her stand again.

  ‘There’s a hut, down the other side of the town, I saw it when we came in. We’ll take the boys back there, Mam.’

  As they walked out of town in the late morning sunshine, they saw a man lying dead on the side of the road. Mam put her hand over Brandon’s eyes and steered him away from the sight, but Bridie stared hard. She never wanted to forget. The man’s mouth was stained green and Bridie looked up at the fields and swore to herself that no matter how hungry she became, she would never eat grass.

  The hut had been made in the side of a bog, just four walls cut clean into the dirt. It was eerily still, just like the village of the dead that she’d run from that morning. Bridie looked about for some turf to make a fire with. She didn’t want to think why the owners had left the hut.

  When she had settled her mother and brothers, Bridie walked back into the village to beg their supper. She stopped and stared again at the dead man with the green mouth. No cart had come to take his corpse away. Around his neck was a small pouch and on his feet a pair of worn boots. Glancing either way along the road, Bridie squatted down beside him and with one swift jerk she pulled the pouch away. Fighting off her disgust, she knelt back down and checked the pockets of the dead man to be sure that was all he had on him. Then quickly, before revulsion could stop her, she pulled the boots from his stiff, cold feet and put them on her own. She walked away swiftly, prying open the leather pouch. The big boots slapped against the road as she walked. Inside the pouch was a single bright shilling. Bridie stopped and stood staring at the coin for a long moment, her mind whirling, her heart on fire. Why had he eaten the grass before spending his last coin? Why had the desperate soul been wearing boots? Was it stealing to take a coin from a corpse?

  ‘Before God,’ she said to herself, ‘I don’t care if I’m a liar and a thief, I’ll not have my brothers starve.’

  Later that evening, when she’d returned to the hut in the bog with some bread and oatmeal that she’d bought with the shilling, Bridie glanced across at her mother, sitting with Paddy in the crook of her lap. She’d told Mam a kind man had given her both the food and the boots. She knew she couldn’t tell Mam what she’d done to the corpse by the wayside that afternoon. Nor would she ever tell her about what she’d seen at the death village that morning. It suddenly made her feel grown old too quickly. She set to work making a small, smoky fire to keep the cold of the night at bay.

  5

  Fever and changelings

  Paddy took ill with the fever that evening. He couldn’t even take any of the bread that Bridie had brought back from the town. Mam chewed the crusts and took a tiny morsel out, balancing it on the tip of her finger, trying to feed him as if he was a baby bird and not a boy any more,
but he lay limp, his eyes unseeing. That night, his fever grew. His body was a tiny brazen furnace, and his pale gold curls were plastered to his forehead. Mam rocked him in her arms. When she looked too weary to hold him any longer, Bridie took him. His body was like a little bird’s, all fine brittle bones folded in her arms. Bridie curled down on the ground and sang to him, a babble of mouth music. She woke to find him cold and stiff. She knew even before she was properly awake that his soul had flown away while they slept.

  Mam just wanted to hold Paddy. She sat huddled by the little turf fire that Brandon had rekindled that morning, the small boy in her lap. Bridie took Brandon and led him away from the dirt hut.

  ‘Listen, we have to help Mam,’ she said. ‘We have to leave her be with Paddy for a while and go down to the marsh. Have you got your little knife?’

  Bridie sat on the edge of the marsh while Brandon gathered rushes. At first he only brought her handfuls but when he understood her purpose he worked with a fury, staggering across the marshy ground with armfuls of the dry gold rushes and laying them beside his sister. Bridie wove them together swiftly, fashioning the rushes into a golden basket.

  ‘This can be for Paddy, to hold him for the last. You see, I’ll make the sides high so he’ll feel safe inside there and the cold breeze won’t get to our darling boy,’ she said, not even feeling the tears that streamed down her face as she worked. Brandon stared at her with bright eyes, his mouth twisted with grief, and then sat down on the damp ground beside her and put his face in his hands.

  When Bridie had finished, she carried the basket back to the bog and set it before their mother. Mam looked up at her as if Bridie was the grown-up and she the little child. Bridie reached down and took Paddy’s still body from her mother’s arms and laid him tenderly in the rush basket. Mam bent over the basket and kissed him and then turned away.