The Hunger

by David Rees

  “It’s as if he thinks we know nothing,” said Michael. “Does he imagine an island of surpluses here? Every tenant-at-will with his belly full of warm potatoes?”

  “I have to ask myself this,” Richard said. “How is it my brother succeeded in obtaining the entire rent for last year? He must have forced every cottier to surrender his last penny, thus, presumably, pushing whole families into the workhouse, or shovelling them onto the roads to beg their sad way round the countryside. Whatever has happened, he has sent them to an almost certain death from sickness or lack of food. I hope to God that this is not the case, but I am unable to see how it can be otherwise.”

  Much to Michael’s astonishment, Anthony laughed. “If I did not,” he said, “I would weep, rage, scream! The irony is… breathtaking!”

  “The care I took composing those false figures!”

  “The money I sent him out of my own pocket!”

  “The letter he wrote saying you should tumble cabins for a grazing farm!”

  “I have evidence that leads me to think I am correct in my surmise,” Richard continued, “evidence, alas, which shows I have been utterly mistaken in my judgement of your character, which suggests that you are not only unfit to manage my estate, but should be barred from any career a man of position and breeding might normally pursue.

  “I am referring, sir, to the repugnant and unnatural relationship between yourself and your so-called servant. I am not so far out of this world that I am ignorant of such behaviour, but I had always supposed it confined to bestial creatures, benighted Asiatics and Polynesians whose customs have not altered since the Stone Age. It had not occurred to me for one instant that an officer and a gentleman, British by birth and Christian in upbringing, a product of all that is civilized in the civilized nineteenth century, would harbour such lickerish tendencies, such lubricious proclivities …”

  “His hand is beginning to shake,” Anthony said. “See here! He has worked himself up into a fine old lather.”

  “What is lubricious?” Michael asked. “And lickerish?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They roll off the tongue … like quicksilver.”

  “I order you,” Richard said, “to dismiss this thing, this male strumpet immediately. I shall arrive at Eagle Lodge two days after you receive this letter, and I do not want to find any evidence whatsoever that this person has been on the premises. I shall expect you to pass over to me all the documents and moneys relating to the estate, together with the keys of the house and any bills that are unpaid. You will remove all your personal possessions forthwith. I intend to secure a qualified, trustworthy agent as manager. I shall not, of course, impart to my dear wife, or to any other members of the family, my knowledge of the character of one whom I was proud to call brother; but the dishonour and sorrow you have heaped upon me I shall bear with me to the grave.”

  “Strumpet,” Michael said. He shivered. “How can people be so … unkind?”

  “Inhuman,” Anthony answered. “Dogs don’t savage their own. Wolves don’t. Rats don’t. But men and women do. Christians are particularly good at it.” He crumpled the letter into a ball, and kicked it across the room. “We will not be here when he arrives. We will leave tomorrow.”

  “Where can we go?”

  “To Galway. To your sister Noreen; I imagine she has not yet heard. We can try to change our tickets for the first ship available. I don’t care what destination, New York, Boston, Quebec, Montreal…”

  Michael nodded. “I agree,” he said.

  “Come here.”

  They stood by the window, holding each other very tightly, not worrying now if anyone saw them; Anthony feeling that the only precious goodness in the world was the man he was embracing, Michael feeling that never had he needed this loving protection so much.

  Ty Keliher, hidden in the larches, saw.

  “I’m sorry,” Anthony murmured, as he kissed Michael’s hair. “I’m sorry …”

  “For what?”

  “That I’ve led you to this.”

  “You haven’t led me. I was, I am, most willing. But… what is to become of us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m frightened. Afraid … for our very survival.”

  “They can’t destroy that. They can’t destroy us.”

  I shall be here to warn them, Ty said to himself.

  NEWS of a calamity Michael would have considered far worse than the discovery, the denunciation, the scene with his father, or Richard’s letter, was mentioned that week in The Freeman’s Journal. Neither Anthony nor Michael saw this edition of the newspaper and nobody told them; it was half a year before Michael found out. If he had known at the time, it would have broken him utterly. Mr Peacock was the first to read of it; he thought he had better tell Father Quinlan. It was possible that any ship now sailing from Galway might be carrying some of the Catholic priest’s congregation. The Lord Kingston, as it neared the American coast, had run into a terrible storm and had sunk; the entire crew and the three hundred and eighty-nine passengers had all drowned.

  Father Quinlan knew the significance, and that it was his extremely painful task to break the news to Mr and Mrs Tangney, and to Mr and Mrs Leahy.

  The Tangneys had not heard Mass at Clasheen since names were named. Their only trip out of doors was to the village of Kilgarrin, a five-mile walk up the Coolcaslig road, to hear Mass celebrated by Father Coakley, the shy, gentle curate who had married Dan and Madge, and whose sermons were quite the opposite of Father Quinlan’s in substance and tone.

  Father Quinlan thought this shift of loyalty was to be expected, considering what had happened. But it never occurred to him that he had caused immense and unnecessary suffering to two innocent people by speaking out, and he was therefore genuinely surprised by the coldness, indeed the hostility, which enveloped him when he arrived at the Tangneys’ house. He was the bearer of tragic news, but the chill, unfriendly atmosphere was obvious before he spoke of the Lord Kingston. He was still puzzled when he left: such is the Jansenist mentality, that perceives the world only as very black and very white; mostly very black.

  Disasters come in threes, he said to himself; the Tangneys had now had their three: the consumption of their supplies, Michael, Madge’s death. Things could only improve from now on. This was not logical of Father Quinlan. In fact it could be called untypically superstitious, unless, of course, one chooses to think the whole paraphernalia of Roman Catholicism from first to last superstitious nonsense, and its priests the arch-purveyors of sublime irrationality.

  Things did not improve for the Tangneys. They both came to believe that life was all predestined, that neither they nor anyone else had control over what happened to human beings, that people were straws blown helplessly hither and thither by the wind of an accursed history or a malevolent Fate. Such thinking, too, is Jansenist, though the Tangneys had never heard of the famous heresy. They were only trying to make sense of the colossal depression that now overwhelmed them.

  The superb potato harvest of 1847 and the recurrence of blight, famine and disease the following year found them to a great extent immune to the joys of the former and the woes of the latter. They died, she a week before him, in January 1850, well before they should have died ― they were only just older than the century ― and their deaths were not caused by hunger or its consequent illnesses, nor indeed by any illness known to medical science. Dr Lenehan would have diagnosed it correctly, but the new man, Dr O’Hara, was baffled. They died simply because they had given up the will to live.

  MR Peacock, after he had handed the paper to Father Quinlan, was about to mount his horse ― he already had one foot in the stirrup ― when voices in a nearby alley made him hesitate. What he heard incensed him, though he took no action other than galloping home instead of trotting. “I will not put up with this!” he shouted to his wife, who was sewing a new hem in one of her old dresses.

  “What on earth has happened now?” she asked.

>   “The hobbledehoys and slubberdegullions of this God-forsaken town are planning an assault on Eagle Lodge! I shall stop it!”

  “It is what those two … men … deserve, and it is nothing to do with us. You would be far better advised to let nature take its course.”

  “Nature? It is not nature we are concerned with here! Or are you thinking of the hopelessly evil nature of the Irish peasant? If private property is not protected against the mob, then this country is ruined?”

  “These bees in your bonnet. I shall never understand you.”

  “And I shall never understand how you never understand. Though women always made ill-matched bedfellows with political thought.”

  “I should like to point out,” Mrs Peacock said, positively stabbing her needle into her sewing, “that the present monarch, the head of state, the defender of the Protestant churches, is a woman. And Queen Victoria is a very capable woman.”

  “Where is my blunderbuss?”

  “You are surely not going to carry fire-arms!”

  “Not only that, my dear, but at ten o’clock tonight I fully expect to be using them to the utmost of my ability!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  _____________________________

  TY Keliher arrived just after dark, breathless with haste.

  “They are coming!” he shouted. Wide-eyed with fear and excitement, he stood on one leg, on the kitchen door-step. “They are coming! Do you understand? Look to yourselves!”

  Michael stared at him, dumbfounded. Anthony came in from the parlour and said “What is it?”

  “The mob,” Michael answered.

  “There is a power of men,” Ty said. “They have sticks and stones!”

  “ ‘If you want to throw a stone, every lane will furnish one’,” Anthony said. “Dean Swift. The gates are locked, but they’ll climb over the wall, just as you do, Ty.” Ty blushed, and grinned. “There are shutters for the downstairs windows, which won’t prevent them being smashed, but it will minimize the damage to the rooms. The upstairs windows … well, there’s no defence. We’ll close the shutters now.” Michael ran to do so; Ty made to follow, then stopped. He did not know if he was wanted. “You may help if you wish,” Anthony said. Ty smiled from ear to ear, immensely glad to join in; it was a great game: nothing as thrilling as this had ever happened. “Are you sure that what you’ve told us is true?” Anthony asked.

  “I am sure I am sure,” Ty said, pulling at one of the shutters. “But never tell my father I am here. He will kill me!”

  “Is he one of the mob?”

  “No, he is not! Nor any of your tenants; they are all at home by their fires.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Ty scratched his head. Because he thought it more evil than what he had observed through the window, Michael wanted to ask, but he did not put the question; such delicate balancing of moral problems would be beyond Ty’s reasoning faculties. Ty, however, gave him part of the answer. “Neither of you has hurt anyone,” he said.

  When the shutters were closed, the doors locked, and the lights extinguished all over the house, they went upstairs to the master bedroom and waited. Anthony held his pistol. “If I have to fire it,” he said, “I hope to God I won’t hit anyone.”

  Ty was disappointed. “It would help,” he said. “They would scatter like leaves in a great wind.”

  Michael laughed. “You would make an excellent soldier, Ty. Have you ever thought of joining the army?”

  “I have not. The army! Pooh!”

  “Sssh!” Anthony said. “I hear them.”

  A foot kicking a stone. A body creeping stealthily through the vegetation. Michael’s eyes had grown accustomed to the dark: out on the lawn were the dim outlines of men. A dozen, fifteen, perhaps twenty still shapes. The night was black: no moon, but not so much cloud as to obscure the starlight entirely. His heartbeat quickened, and his body was full of tension. Anthony’s too, and Ty’s: he could hear them breathe more rapidly than normal. Anthony was touching him, searching for his hand; kissed him, and said “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I am terrified!” He was trembling, uncontrollably.

  “Michael Tangney, come out!” someone shouted. “We know you are there!”

  “Don’t move,” Anthony whispered.

  “It is the Flanagans’ Maurice,” Ty said. “He is the leader. May he boil in Hell!”

  A long silence. Everyone, outside and in, was a statue. “Michael Tangney! Michael Tangney! We want you!” a voice called. This was followed by a few laughs, some jeers, and several obscenities. A third voice cried “You thought you would like to be a woman? We will show you what it is to be a woman!” Loud guffaws. “We’ll put you in a pretty dress,” mocked a fourth voice. “And paint your face,” said Maurice Flanagan. “And give you the pleasuring of your life!” the second man shouted. “A score of us are here, and we are men!” They all hooted with laughter at this. A stone was thrown. Glass splintered, crashed to the ground. “We have nice things for you.” It was the man who had called him a bastard. “You don’t think we’d use you as we would our wives, surely? We have clubs instead. Long, thick wooden clubs, Michael!” “The necks of broken bottles!” another yelled. “You did not want to be a boy, Michael? Well, you need not have that worry any more. We can grant you your wish!” “All the handsome fine lads of Dublin will kiss your sweet arse, Molly Michael Tangney!” The shouts and obscenities rose to a crescendo, then stopped, leaving one cry: “It’s so easy, Michael! One swift cut and you’re changed for ever, Michael!”

  “Why me? Why not you?” Michael hissed.

  “You are one of them. One of us,” Ty said. “He is English.” Michael collapsed. Ty pulled him away from the window; the noise alerted the crowd: “They are in that bedroom!”

  “Where?”

  “Upstairs! Third window from the right!” Another stone smashed the glass in the room next to the one Anthony, Michael and Ty were in. Anthony pointed his gun out of the window, which he had left ajar, and fired, repeatedly.

  “I hope I have murdered a man with every shot!” he cried. He was shaking with anger; it had been difficult to hold the pistol steady. “They are animals. No, not animals! Filth that must be… ripped out of the world!”

  The men had scattered, but they had not run off. No one had been hurt. They came back, singly, in twos and threes, pressed themselves against the wall of the house, where they thought they would be safe from the gun. They started to demolish all the downstairs windows. Some of them were hammering on the kitchen door: if the lock does not hold, Anthony said to himself, what then? A running battle in the rooms and corridors, in pitch darkness? Three against twenty, even if one of us is armed; they can still get what they want: Michael.

  Ty was kneeling, Michael’s head resting on his legs. Michael had come to, and was sobbing, whimpering. Ty did not know how to restore him to his senses; he just held him and stroked him as he stroked the wounded birds he sometimes found on the estate. “I’d be glad if you would not kill any of them,” he said to Anthony. “I do not want to see you hang. Now a nice bloody gash in the flesh would be another thing altogether.”

  Anthony did not reply. He felt his way out of the room, and groped along the landing. On the stairs smashed glass crunched under his feet. He found the front door, threw it open, and fired into the night. At almost the same second a gun went off near the gates: two men leaped their horses over the wall and galloped up to the house. Someone, by the larch trees, was screaming with pain. The mob now ran away in earnest, not, as Ty had hoped, like leaves in a great wind, but as fast and as desperately as any scared gang of humans might disperse and disappear. The horsemen arrived at the door. “Mr Altarnun! Is that you? Is anything damaged?” The voice was the Reverend Peacock’s.

  “Come inside,” Anthony said. “And light one of the lamps, please. My hands are shaking too much.” He laughed. “I am out of practice. We never shot at Afghans after sunset; they played to the rules, as we did. Daylight fi
ring only.”

  Mr Peacock did as he was requested, and, when the lamp was lit, Anthony saw who the other horseman was: Father Quinlan.

  “There is some damage,” Mr Peacock said, as he looked around in the downstairs rooms.

  Anthony ignored him. “The Church Militant in strength,” he said to Father Quinlan. He subsided into a chair, still holding the pistol.

  “Sarcasm is not appropriate,” the Catholic priest said.

  “Mr Quinlan, has it ever occurred to you that your zeal for rooting out sin might cause you to transgress far more gravely than the blackest sheep in your entire flock?”

  “I do not understand you. I do not wish to hear ― ”

  “I hope your soul burns in the warmest fires of Hell. Inciting a mob to commit violence against two men who do nothing other than mind their own business I would call a mortal sin.”

  “It is not for you to ― ”

  “Do you know what I would like to do with this pistol, sir? Point it straight at your head and pull the trigger.” He raised the gun and aimed it. Father Quinlan ducked. “If I thought I could avoid the consequences, I would fire!”

  Mr Peacock attempted to intervene. “Mr Altarnun, your emotions are understandable, but ― ”

  Anthony did not let him finish. “You sir,” he said, “are a sanctimonious old humbug! Not as evil as the Vatican edition here, but almost so!” Ty came into the room, supporting Michael, who could hardly stand upright. His knees sagged, his arms twitched as if they were not in his control, his eyes were puffy, and he was breathing with immense difficulty. It was as severe an attack of asthma as any he had experienced.

  “Are you pleased?” Anthony cried. “You think you’ve broken him?” He stood up, walked across to Ty, and took Michael from him. He held Michael, kissed him. Then he turned to the clergymen and said “Get out of my house.”

  They left. The door shut after them: they climbed into their saddles; the hoof-beats of their horses faded away in the distance. The only sounds were the wind, the murmur of the lamp, and Michael’s strangled gasps as he struggled for air.