by David Rees
Anthony, worried he might be lost in the blizzard, came looking, and found him in the nick of time. Michael was dragged back to Eagle Lodge, still convinced of the third man’s presence. Death, he said to himself; the man of grey shadows is Death. He hasn’t come for me. It’s Anthony he wants.
The following morning he had a touch of flu, but, surprisingly, no frost-bite, no other ill-effects. He stayed in bed for a few days, recovering in time for the wedding. He whiled away the hours reading Disraeli’s Sybil: “Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse, and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are governed by the same laws.”
He was surprised to find ― as Disraeli had intended ― that the two nations were not England and Ireland, but the rich and the poor. Did the author think the Irish and the English working classes were alike? They were not: the English were not dying of starvation because they had been forced for centuries to live on nothing but potatoes.
The Leahys did not come to the wedding; they were too embarrassed that they had nothing to wear. Once every member of the family had possessed a decent set of clothes, but, despite the hanging of the rent, they had had to sell suits and dresses to buy next year’s seed. Only five people came to the church ― Madge and Dan, Michael and Anthony, and Jim, the eldest Sullivan boy, Dan’s closest friend. Madge was grateful for Anthony’s kindness: he had insisted that some sort of celebration after, the service be held at Eagle Lodge rather than in the Leahys’ overcrowded cabin. Also, he was giving her a wedding present.
“What do they need most?” he asked Michael.
“A bed,” Michael replied. “Could they not have one we don’t use?”
Anthony laughed. “You would think of essentials! But… are you suggesting I should give them a piece of my brother’s property?”
“You told me the other day you were thinking of selling a bed.”
“I am.”
“Have Leahys ever slept in a bed?”
“The parents. They share it with as many of their children as can climb into it.” Anthony came to a decision. “We might as well be hanged for a sheep. Richard will throw us out for what we’ve done already; it makes no difference. They can have it.”
The bed, for the time being, was to stay at Eagle Lodge as the cabin Dan was to build had not yet been started; it was impossible to do so in such severe weather. The ground was iron with frost, and thick snow still covered it. Where they were to live meanwhile Michael could not find out. “We have a place,” Madge said, but she would not tell him what it was, nor where. It wasn’t, she insisted, a corner of the Leahys’ floor. Were friends in town taking them in, Michael wondered. Perhaps. But he feared Madge’s “place” could be on some estate nearby, a tumbled cabin from which the tenants had been evicted, a scalpeen, a hole made in the ruins. Or worse, a scalp ― a hole dug in a field, roofed with sticks and slabs of turf.
The wedding celebrations were a needed relief, not only to Michael and Anthony, but to all the guests. Every tenant had been invited, but the Cronins did not come; they were not friends of the Leahys, and, as Patrick O’Callaghan had said, they didn’t care “to traipse in and out of the Lodge.” There was little to celebrate with ― no special foods, no wedding cake ― but each family brought some poteen. Not enough to get drunk on; nobody could afford that, but it was sufficient for people to think that times could be worse, that the potato next autumn would surely prove a superb crop, that even the Government might relent and do something. The furniture had been cleared from the parlour, and in the light of dozens of candles the guests danced to Patrick O’Callaghan’s violin.
Anthony produced from the cellar a bottle of champagne that had been there for years. The principal actors in the drama should have it, the tenants insisted, and, besides, they didn’t know, they said, what such peculiar foreign waters would taste like. “It would do me great harm,” the Widow O’Gorman said. “Poison!”
Anthony, glass in hand, surveyed the scene; the dancers, the poteen drinkers, old men with pipes ― they were smoking dead leaves, not tobacco ― and Patrick by the fire, playing fast and furious music on his fiddle. “If Richard walked in now,” he said, “imagine the expression on his face! I would like to see it.”
“I wouldn’t,” Michael answered. “In two minutes he’d have us all put out in the snow.”
“He would need half a regiment of men to do that.”
“He’d find them.” He watched Madge dancing with Dan. The other dancers stopped and looked too; here was a performance superior to anything they could stage, a rhythm, a co-ordination that was perfect. As if they were not two people, Michael said to himself, but one… one what? He couldn’t think of the right word. They were very much in love: very physically in love. He was still jealous, and surprised and annoyed that he was jealous. He had everything he could possibly wish for with Anthony, yet… he would like Dan to make love to him. The suit Anthony had loaned fitted perfectly, though Michael found himself wanting Dan in his usual rags: more of his body would be visible; legs, chest, arm muscles. “It’s a crying shame they cannot spend tonight of all nights,” he said, “in the bed you have given them.”
Anthony refilled his glass. “What are you saying? That we should let them sleep here?”
“I wasn’t. But…”
“It would be a kindness,” Anthony said. “Well, ask them if you wish. If they do, you must sleep in your own room.”
Michael was much intrigued by this suggestion. Did he want to lie awake and listen to what would be happening on the other side of the wall, the creaking bed springs? He did. I don’t much care for myself at the moment, he said as the dance finished and he walked up to Dan. Ty Keliher was gazing at him. Ty no longer looked so innocent: solemn, Michael thought; he had big, solemn eyes that knew more than they should. But what did they know that was so special? Anthony and me? Rubbish! Ty was not quite right in the head, people gossiped. A lanky, loose-limbed boy of seventeen; a solitary who liked to wander by himself all over the countryside. The village idiot.
Dan was happy with the invitation. “But I’ll have to ask my wife,” he said. Michael watched them speak, but in the shouts and laughter of the guests he could not hear their words. Madge shook her head; she did not want to. Dan returned. “It is good of you, but she would rather we were in our own place,” he told Michael.
They left soon after. It was the end of the ceilidh; the crowd began to drift off into the night. “We can clear this up tomorrow,” Anthony said, looking at the empty glasses, ash on the floor from pipes, the guttering candles. In bed Michael was much more passionate than he had been for weeks: he was imagining Anthony was Dan. What was Dan like, his touch, his mouth, the way he made love? Oh, he would know how to make love! As well as he could dance. “Hey, hey, what is this?” Anthony said. “Though don’t think for a second I’m grumbling!”
Michael felt drained, exhausted. “Protect me from myself,” he said.
AT the blacksmith’s house a rather different scene was taking place. Madge’s letter to her parents, telling all, had been discovered that afternoon. “As she says, it’s a mouth less to feed,” said Mr Tangney, in tones of disgust. Margaret was in hysterics. Dr Lenehan was summoned; he gave her a sedative which calmed her down, though it did not send her to sleep.
“Will you go out for me again?” she asked, later. “I should like to talk to Father Quinlan. It would be a comfort.”
“Oh, very well.” Eugene was not anxious to venture out a second time in the frost and snow, but the presence of someone else would mean he did not have to spend the whole night alone with her discussing the subject. He had nothing to say, he realized. It was just one more blow on the head of a man who was already reeling. He was angry with his daughter, and shocked, obviously, but these sensations were covered, cushioned al
most, by an overwhelming cloud of depression.
He was appalled that he had been unable to stop his perpetual craving for food. He loathed stealing from the family’s supplies: he had created wretchedness for Margaret and Madge ― and himself. Madge. Madge! Deserting, like a rat from a sinking ship, and wed to that oaf; what was Dan Leahy other than a big, brainless, human hulk? Married! Madge’s decision, he knew, was the result of his own behaviour. And Margaret had sold possessions ― her wedding ring! ― in order that they should eat. He would never lift his head up again.
Nobody outside the family was aware of what had happened, but he felt an intense loss of status; the community would soon know the Tangneys’ plight ― you couldn’t keep anything to yourself in a place as small as Clasheen. He had dragged his wife and family down to the level of evicted bog-trotters; they would starve to death or be forced to emigrate.
A headlong exodus from Ireland had already begun: ships were leaving Galway every week, packed with men, women and children bound for America and the chance to begin new lives. To abandon one’s native earth! For him it was out of the question. But what else? He would sell the forge if he could, but there was nobody who had the money to buy it, and, in any case, it provided no work, no income now. He had resigned from the Relief Committee that afternoon and refused to give a reason. “Why?” Mr Peacock had asked, more than once. “Why? We need you!” He would have said, if he had not felt so ashamed, and if Mr Peacock had been able to understand, what Michael had once said to Margaret: non sum dignus. I am not worthy.
Father Quinlan was not only reading, Michael would have been surprised to hear, Anthony’s copy of The Rights of Man, but agreeing with every word Tom Paine had to say. He really didn’t want to go out in that evening’s sub-zero temperature, particularly if it was to listen to more of Margaret’s imaginary little sins, but it was urgent this time, Eugene said. “No rest for the wicked,” the priest replied as he donned his coat. “What is the matter now?”
“If I tell you,” the blacksmith said, “you will only have to put up with it again when you greet herself.”
Very true, Father Quinlan thought, so he spent the five minutes walking to the forge asking why Mr Tangney had resigned so abruptly, and obtaining no satisfactory answers.
Mrs Tangney burst into tears once more as she read out the letter. Father Quinlan, the blacksmith suspected, might have been a party to Madge’s plot, but the expressions on his face of astonishment and concern showed otherwise. “The Leahys are good people,” he said, when Margaret had finished. “You may have no worries there. God-fearing, sober Catholics, honest and hard-working — when there is work to be found. Dan is on the road-building; we need men like him, strong as an ox.”
“I never imagined a daughter of mine would stoop to marry a road-maker!”
“You must not think of him just as that,” said the priest. He was using his official voice now — the tones he used in the confessional, pronouncing Acts of Contrition, Hail Marys and Our Fathers. (Mrs Tangney usually got the minimum quantity, three of each.) “He is your daughter’s husband, your son-in-law, the father of your future grandchildren. And a decent man.”
“The son of an Irish-speaking peasant!”
“Mrs Tangney, when you come to be judged before the Lord our God, as surely all of us will, your lack of charity ― pardon me for saying it ― will be your undoing. There is nothing in the Gospels to show that Jesus had such attitudes to the poor. The evidence is quite opposite, indeed and indeed.”
“He didn’t marry one of them,” Eugene said.
Father Quinlan glared at him. “He told us that it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to gain the Kingdom of Heaven.” He laughed. “I am thinking these days it will not be so hard for any of us to get tickets!”
Mrs Tangney thought for some moments about the priest’s words. “Madge did it behind our backs,” she said. “Some hole-in-the-corner affair. It is not right!”
“I agree it is not right. Every child has obligations to his parents. When he or she has become an adult as Madge surely has, it is no longer a question of blind obedience, but there are other duties ― openness, consideration, honouring one’s father and mother. I will talk to her about it.”
“You will? Good.”
“Not in anger, as you may wish. It is not my business to be angry with her.”
“You can understand now, Father,” Eugene said, “why I resigned from the committee.”
“I do not understand it at all! What has the one thing to do with the other?”
“I can no longer hold up my head.” But he did just that: looked up and stared Father Quinlan, several inches taller than he was, full in the face.
Father Quinlan sighed, and made for the door. “Learn to love your new son,” he said, “and remember your children are all you will have in old age.”
“We will not live to see old age. The hunger is upon us.” “Eugene, the worst sin you can commit is the sin of despair! I will preach on that one Sunday. Maybe the whole parish could be helped by a sermon on hope; Mr Peacock said so yesterday.”
He went off into the night, wondering why people only saw trivialities as sinful ― cross words, coveting their neighbours’ goods, telling a few little fibs to extricate themselves from an awkward situation. Such burdens were not crushing enough to prevent souls passing through the eye of that needle. Real sins were legion, and went unrecognized. Refusal to accept the grace of God. Refusal to love God, and the consequence of it: the inability to love others.
The Tangneys were not his only parishioners in this way defective; the quarrels between the Sullivans and the O’Learys and the Leahys and the Cronins, so ancient the present generations did not know the causes, were evil too ― petty jealousies and spites destroying charity. The most Christian person he knew was, ironically, the atheist, Anthony Altarnun. Yet even in that man there was something short of one hundred per cent; Michael’s decision not to receive Communion for ― for five years it was now ― had, he guessed, some connection with Anthony. He would dearly like to know: it was his duty to bring an erring soul to God; but he hadn’t any idea, he admitted to himself, what that connection could be.
Well, we are all black sinners, he said aloud as he paused in the snow by Flanagan’s Bar, and fingered a coin in his pocket. He had not drunk a glass of poteen in weeks. If Madge’s wedding had not been so clandestine he would have officiated, attended the reception, imbibed more than one glass. The Leahys for years had been able to put their hands on a most potent, smooth concoction; an uncle of theirs out in the bogs distilled it. It’s time too, he said to himself, I asked how poor Flanagan is doing and his stout, red-faced wife; very little money would have passed over that counter in recent months. He went inside.
And saw, as he expected, that he was the only customer, and that Mrs Flanagan, though still red-faced, was no longer stout. They exchanged news of famished and ghastly living skeletons they had seen or heard of, babies sucking at breasts of mothers already lifeless, whole cabins of people dead and stiff for days, the stench intolerable, and no neighbour alive to bury them or send for help; the rush of people in droves to the ships, whole communities deserted ― the houses abandoned, the fields untilled, the only living things a few starved crows and rats.
“The Committee has no food left,” Father Quinlan said, as he began his second glass. “No food and no funds. But we have a ray of hope: Mr Peacock has a letter from Dublin; the Government is to invest money in soup kitchens. They will give the nation soup.”
“There will not be enough soup in the whole wide world to feed such millions,” Mrs Flanagan said. “May the good Lord save us!”
Father Quinlan did not mention a somewhat more ominous paragraph in the letter. The Government had decided to throw the whole cost of supporting the famine victims onto the Poor Law: the workhouse system. In doing so, it was turning a blind eye to the fact that workhouses were paid for out of the rates ― rates tha
t could not be collected in Ireland because people had no money to pay them. Many workhouses, as a result, were either bankrupt or closed and their inmates expelled, or so badly run that death and disease were more likely to flourish inside them than out.
As far as the soup was concerned, the Government would give half the money required to open kitchens and lend the rest; but once the transfer of Relief had passed to the Poor Law, the advance would have to be repaid ― out of the rates. Furthermore, the public works would be stopped.
The transfer to the Poor Law was a scheme that could not function: it was designed not so much to help the destitute as to free the Government of its responsibilities ― let Ireland save the Irish. “We must do all we can,” said Charles Trevelyan, “and leave the rest to God.” (A year later he became Sir Charles Trevelyan, K.C.B., an honour bestowed on him for his labours in the Famine.)
“Perhaps we could start up a soup kitchen here,” Father Quinlan suggested.
Mrs Flanagan was surprised. “In a public house?”
“It is the centre of Clasheen. The place where people gather to talk.”
“It was.”
Father Quinlan finished his drink. “So what is your opinion?”
“At least it would give us something to do,” Mrs Flanagan said.
“I will put it to the Committee, then.”
ONE evening, a fortnight later, Anthony and Michael, playing chess in bed, were surprised by a ring at the doorbell. “At this hour?” Anthony exclaimed.
Michael went downstairs: it was Madge. She looked almost blue with cold, and was shivering uncontrollably. “I am throwing myself on your mercy,” she said. “Michael! Please help us!” He took her into the kitchen and put some turf on the dying fire: she held out her hands to the heat, but could not stop trembling. “It isn’t the hunger,” she said. “Who is not hungry now? We get by ― Dan has been out to sea, fishing. No. It’s the cold.”
There had been no break in the weather and there was none in sight. That morning snow had fallen for hours, and the icy east wind was still ferocious. “What is this ‘place’ of yours, Madge?” Michael asked.