Esty's Gold

by Mary Arrigan

  Esty’s Gold

  Esty’s Gold

  MARY ARRIGAN

  Esty’s Gold copyright © Mary Arrigan 2009

  Cover image © Chris Strong/Getty Images

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 and in the USA in 2010 by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 4 Torriano Mews, Torriano Avenue, London NW5 2RZ. www.franceslincoln.com

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-84507-965-9

  eBook ISBN 978-1-90766-687-2

  Set in Ehrhardt MT

  Printed in Croydon, Surrey, UK by CPI Bookmarque Ltd. in March 2010

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE: Ireland, late 1840s

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  PART TWO: Australia, 1852-1856

  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

  Epilogue

  Historical note

  For Joanna, with love

  Alannah is an affectionate Irish term of endearment for a young girl. Da is an old word for ‘daddy’.

  Sometimes, if I close my eyes and think really hard, I imagine I can smell Mama’s old sideboard and see again the carved flowers and twisty pillars. But if I linger too long over the memories stirred by the scent of beeswax and old wood, the other smell intrudes, the one that makes me cold and turns my thoughts to cheerless grey – the front-door smell of pale, damp people and poverty.

  It was always my chore to dust the sideboard’s dark oak surface and rearrange the china ornaments. I had to stand on a chair because I was small for my age and the sideboard was high. There was a mirrored back, which I’d look into and pretend the other me was part of another, brighter, magical world on the other side...

  PART ONE

  Ireland, late 1840s

  Chapter One

  I could see them through the parlour window, their ragged clothes flapping against their skinny legs.

  ‘They’re back, Mama,’ I cried. ‘Those children and their mother are back.’

  Mama joined me and shook her head sadly. ‘The poor things,’ she sighed. ‘What’s to become of them? I’ll get some eggs and bread. No, Esty,’ she said, as I stepped down from the chair I was standing on, ‘You stay here. I’ll deal with them.’

  ‘Why, Mama?’ I asked. ‘Why do you always send me away when they come begging?’

  ‘It’s better this way,’ she replied, closing the parlour door behind her.

  How was it better? I wondered, as I went back to work.

  ‘They’re hungry, Esty,’ Mama said to me, when the ragged people first began coming. ‘The potatoes are rotting in the ground and they have no food.’

  ‘I wish they wouldn’t come,’ I said. ‘They’re stealing all Papa’s time.’

  ‘Shush, child,’ Mama looked shocked. ‘You don’t really mean that.’

  But I did mean it. I was used to people calling on Papa to pay the rent. But that was before the Hunger, when they were just calling to pay the rent. Papa was the middleman for Lord Craythorn who lived in London, over in England. It was his duty to oversee the letting and sub-letting of land, because most Roman Catholics weren’t allowed to own their homes and farms.

  ‘But we’re Catholics too,’ I said to Grandpa one day. ‘And we have a lovely farm.’

  Grandpa smiled and shook his head. ‘We do,’ he said. ‘And that’s because your Papa has an important position. But we don’t own it, Esty. We are tenants of Lord Craythorn, just like everyone else who works on the estate. Most English landlords have an agent as well as a middleman, but His Lordship thinks so highly of your papa that he’s put him completely in charge.’

  Sometimes, of late, Papa said he wished Lord Craythorn would come back to his estate and run it himself. But Mama said he should be pleased that His Lordship trusted him with such important duties. Some days, during the time of the constant callers, I scarcely saw Papa at all. At night there were whisperings and subdued conversations between Papa, Mama, Grandpa and some of the farm workers who lived on the estate.

  And then, one drizzly day, some people took a huge pot in a horse and cart up to the Big House.

  ‘Is it a witch’s cauldron?’ I asked Mama.

  ‘It’s for soup, Esty,’ she replied. ‘We’re going to make soup for the poor.’

  ‘Does that mean they won’t be calling at our house any more?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Esty,’ Mama replied. ‘We’ll just have to see what happens. These are not good times.’

  After that, the Big House kitchen was filled with high-born ladies who bustled about and gave orders. I resented the way they spoke to Mama as if she were some servant. She’s the middleman’s wife, I wanted to shout at them. But Mama just went along with their requests. I used to watch the quiet, defeated people line up for the watery soup. It made me feel very lonely because I couldn’t relate to them; nor could I relate to the bossy ladies who shooed me away from the kitchen. When Mama said nothing in my defence, but looked at me with sad eyes as she wiped her hot forehead with the back of her wrist, I knew that she was defeated too.

  When I asked about the smaller dinners Mama was serving up to us, Grandpa looked annoyed.

  ‘You are fortunate, Esty,’ he said. ‘Those tenants out there have nothing to eat but the seedling potatoes for next year’s crop.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘If they do that, Grandpa, then they’ll have no crop next year.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Papa put in. ‘The poorer tenants – the cotters with the smallest bits of land – have nothing left. Why else do you think your Mama is over at the Big House every day distributing soup?’

  ‘Well, why don’t they eat their pigs and sheep, just like we do?’ I went on.

  Grandpa shook his head and frowned. ‘They’ve lost their animals,’ he said, looking at his plate, as if deciding whether to eat or not. ‘Nothing left.’ Then he speared a small bit of smoked bacon.

  ‘Lost, Grandpa? How can they lose…?’

  ‘Esty,’ Papa said, ‘they’ve had to sell their livestock for rent money – and now that’s gone. On some other estates the tenants have even had to hand over their animals in lieu of rent to the landlords. Their livestock has been rounded up and exported. They say it’s happening all over the country.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ I
said, cutting the fat from my smoked bacon and giving it to the cat.

  But, I thought, everything would be all right. Bad things get better, like head colds and the blisters from new shoes.

  I took to sitting on the Big House steps, watching the ragged, hungry people walk barefoot up the avenue to be fed.

  ‘They wouldn’t dare walk up the avenue if His Lordship was at home,’ Grandpa said. I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased that they were bold enough to do this, or whether he disapproved. Sometimes it was hard to know what he was thinking. Grandpa went to town every market day in the pony and trap. I wished he’d take me with him, but he never did. When he came home, he’d bring news of what was happening beyond the estate, but he seemed to save most of it for when I was in bed, because I could hear the murmurings downstairs.

  Often they’d glance in my direction, those pale people, and I’d look away, cross because they were the ones who took up Papa’s time, and cross with myself for thinking like that. I wished they’d go away. And then I’d feel confused and angry with myself again.

  One day, a woman led a girl of about my own age to the lowest step.

  ‘Wait for me here, child,’ she said, and looked at me with an expression of tired defiance, before shuffling around to the kitchen. I looked at the girl for a few moments as she gathered her ragged skirt around her grubby legs. Part of me felt superior, and part of me felt the need to know something about these people from whom I was always kept apart.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked, bouncing down to the bottom step. She looked at me with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity.

  ‘Brigid,’ she said hoarsely. ‘My name is Brigid.’

  ‘I’m Esty,’ I said, when she didn’t ask for mine. ‘That’s short for Esther. I live here.’ I wanted her to think that I lived in the Big House.

  She just nodded and continued to wrap her clothes around her purple-tinged legs. ‘I could play with you, if you like,’ I went on.

  ‘I don’t feel like it,’ Brigid said. ‘I’m waiting for me mam.’

  She didn’t ask me any questions. That disappointed me because I wanted her to think how fortunate she was that I was speaking to her and telling her all about my life. But then her mother came out with a jug of soup and led her away.

  That night, I sought out my oldest hairbrush and put it by for Brigid. Tomorrow I would give it to her, and that would be good. She would be happy and she’d play with me.

  I waited eagerly until the ragged people shuffled up the avenue again. How pleased they would be that I had a present for Brigid! Yes, there she was, clinging to her mother. I waited until her mother sat her down on the Big House steps again and then I ran across the avenue with the hairbrush.

  ‘Take it,’ I said. ‘It’s for you. It’s a present.’ I wanted her to be grateful. I wanted her to look at me and make me feel good. But she merely looked at the hairbrush and didn’t respond when I put it down beside her.

  ‘We could play,’ I said.

  Brigid pulled those rags around her mottled legs.

  ‘When someone gives you a nice present, the least you could do is look happy,’ I said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

  ‘Thanks, Miss,’ she said. But she didn’t clutch the hairbrush. She doesn’t care, I thought. I’ve given her something and she doesn’t care.

  When her mother came to fetch her, she left the hairbrush on the step. I felt like running after her, but her mother might say something unpleasant, so I just watched them straggle away, the mother with her arm around the daughter.

  Coaxing friendship from this ragged girl had become an obsession. Early the next morning, Mama said that the soup had gone off and that the ladies were adding more water to it.

  ‘They’ve already watered it down,’ she said. ‘For the past two days they’ve been watering it down. It’s useless stuff. It’s gone beyond nourishment for those poor wretches, and still they keep coming.’

  ‘What choice do they have?’ Grandpa said. ‘Where can they turn, Kate?’

  Mama sighed. ‘I’ll take a few turnips and some bacon and slip them into the soup. Some of those ladies could well afford to bring a couple of bones to add nourishment,’ she added bitterly. ‘But they probably keep them for their dogs.’

  Her words prompted me to sneak a slice of the smoked bacon into my pocket.

  ‘Look, Brigid,’ I said, when her mother left her on the step the next day. ‘I’ve brought you some meat.’

  She took the slice of smoked bacon from me and looked at it, as if she didn’t know what to do with it.

  ‘Eat it up,’ I said. ‘And then we can play.’

  She took a bite, but it made her cough, and she spat it out.

  I took her hand.

  ‘Let’s play.’ I said. ‘We can be friends.’

  That’s when she fell down.

  ‘Come on, Brigid,’ I cried. ‘Get up and play with me.’

  But she didn’t get up. I tried to shake her – after all, her eyes were open and she must be able to see me. But still she didn’t get up.

  When her mother came, I told her that Brigid was awfully tired. Her mother dropped the jug of watery soup with a wail, and suddenly there were other people around, all wailing.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ I pleaded. ‘I just wanted her to eat the food I gave her and play with me. But she wouldn’t get up.’

  By now, some of the high-born ladies had appeared, along with Mama, who drew me away.

  ‘Shush, alannah,’ she said. ‘The poor girl is gone.’

  ‘I gave her some bacon, Mama,’ I cried. ‘She just spat it out. Did I do wrong?’

  Mama shook her head as she led me away.

  ‘You didn’t do wrong,’ she said. ‘The poor child was beyond saving.’

  And that was my first experience of death. It was the moment when I really understood what was going on outside my cocooned life.

  The diseased, exhausted land had nothing left to offer, and life there was hanging by an unravelling thread.

  Chapter Two

  It was shortly after the late-night whisperings became more intense that two gentlemen arrived in a carriage. I was puzzled as to why they’d come to our home rather than the Big House, but I said nothing because I was excited. Their rich clothes and air of confidence made a change from the destitute souls whose eyes I had avoided since the day Brigid fell down.

  Mama’s face was white and tense as she showed them into the parlour. And later, when raised voices came from that quarter, she clung to me so tightly, I couldn’t breathe.

  Grandpa was the first to emerge, shaking his head as he sank into his chair by the fire.

  ‘He’s sent his own men over,’ he muttered at last. ‘They won’t listen to reason. Compassion? Pah!’ he scoffed, spitting into the fire. ‘They don’t understand the word.’

  Mama covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Who?’ I asked. ‘What men? What are you talking about, Grandpa?’

  Grandpa looked up at Mama, but she had turned away, her head bowed as she leaned on the window ledge.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about, Esty,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t heed me, lass.’

  ‘I’m not a baby,’ I said. ‘Yet nobody will tell me anything. Am I part of this family, or aren’t I?’

  Mama turned. I expected her to reprimand me for the outburst, but she looked at me as if seeing me in a new light.

  ‘Yes, Esty,’ she said quietly. ‘You are part of the family, and you have seen things that no child your age should witness. And yes, you should know what’s happening.’ She held up her hand as Grandpa began to protest. ‘Esty, you’ll have to understand why these wretches have been calling at the door for Papa.’

  ‘Really, Kate,’ Grandpa interrupted. ‘Is this necessary?’

  I was scared by the way Mama’s eyes focused unblinkingly on me. I backed away, suddenly not wanting to hear whatever she had to say.

  ‘They keep calling here,’ Mama went
on, ‘to plead for mercy because they have no money to pay their rent. Esty, do you know what happens to people who do not pay their rent?’ I shook my head and wished she’d stop. ‘They are evicted, child. The bailiffs put them out of their homes and then knock their miserable cottages to the ground.’

  ‘Papa wouldn’t do that,’ I cried. ‘Papa wouldn’t allow anyone to do that.’

  ‘Nor would he,’ Grandpa put in. ‘Your papa has been holding off the rent collections to give these people a chance, a hope that the land will soon be back to normal. But Lord Craythorn has got wind of this, and has sent over two clerks to collect the rents. Their word is law – no rent means eviction.’

  ‘But Papa…’ I began.

  Mama’s lips hardened to a straight line. ‘Papa will lose his position – and this house – if he doesn’t comply with His Lordship’s orders. He must put people out of their miserable cottages or else we will have to join the band of beggars. Now, Esty, do you understand?’

  I ran from the room. I didn’t want to understand. I just wanted everything to be as it had been before the potato blight.

  Later on, Grandpa came and sat on my bed. ‘Don’t worry, Esty, lass,’ he said, smoothing my hair from my face. ‘Your papa will sort things out, you’ll see. Your papa is strong and clever, he’ll find a way.’

  I knew from the way he said it that he was trying to comfort me. But I wanted so much to believe him, that I almost convinced myself he was right. Papa would find a way.

  Two days later Mr and Mrs Reilly came to see Papa. I knew them. They used to come in the good days to pay their rent and bring me dollies and Saint Brigid’s crosses made from rushes. Sometimes Mr Reilly let me drive the donkey and cart to the end of the avenue. Now their faces were thin and strained, just like the rest.

  Mama showed them into the kitchen and gave them some goat’s milk and corn bread. She tried to make conversation, but the old couple were too troubled to respond. Their faces lit up when Papa came in.