The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  ‘Before I leave you, Ellen Rua, there is one thing I would ask … The child – what name will you put upon her?’ Ellen had already decided this. ‘I cannot name her in honour of the Mother of God, for my Mary is already named so. Instead, I will call her for the mother of Mary, St Anne.’ She paused. ‘I will name her Annie O’Malley!’ ‘Annie,’ Sheela whispered quietly to herself as she slipped out of the cabin before Ellen had a chance to say another word.

  ‘Annie,’ Ellen murmured to her sleeping baby.

  ‘Annie,’ Sheela-na-Sheeoga said to the May-morn, as she hurried for the mountain.

  Ellen, as she lay with Annie, nobody in the cabin but themselves, heard another voice. A small, excited, voice. ‘Is it sleeping, a Mhamaí?. Can I come in now?’

  Ellen turned her head, a big smile breaking out on her face. There, at the window was Katie, the sun on her hair creating an unkempt halo of red-gold brilliance. Her eyes were wide with delight, and aflame with curiosity.

  ‘Katie, a stóirín, of course you can come in!’

  Katie didn’t need a second bidding; in no time she was beside them, throwing her arms round her mother’s neck.

  ‘Oh, a Mhamaí! I was worried about you when it took so long. I prayed so hard for you and the baby, I really did!’ Ellen’s beautiful, impetuous child poured out her earnest heart, nuzzling into her mother’s cheek.

  ‘I know you did,’ Ellen said, kissing Katie on the temple. ‘I know you did. Thank you.’

  ‘I heard the old women talking,’ said Katie, ‘and they said it was a bad thing that there was no word after so long. So me and Mary stayed awake all night, and we heard you cry, a Mhamaí, and we were worried. So we made a plan.’ ‘And what was the plan, Katie?’ Ellen asked, feeling the excited pant of Katie’s breath in her ear, wondering when she would take notice of Annie.

  ‘Well, you know how me and Mary is twins …?’ ‘Yes?’ her mother answered, intrigued.

  ‘That’s how we did it. When it was early, before anybody was up, first I stole out for a while and I waited here with you. Then I swapped with Mary, and she came … and then she sneaked back into Biddy’s house – and then I came again. They never missed one of us at all. They thought the two of us was always there!’

  Ellen wasn’t quite sure how the twins’ plan had worked, but it obviously did. She hugged Katie and said, ‘I’m delighted you and Mary did that, Katie – that you were near me. But now, after all that, aren’t you going to say “hello” to your new baby sister, Annie?’

  ‘Sister?’ echoed Katie, jumping back. ‘Oh, I forgot, I forgot, a Mhamaí. Let me see her – let me see Annie!’ Now, all of Katie’s attention was on the new arrival, the night’s adventures forgotten. Her eyes grew even wider than they had been as Ellen turned the baby to face her.

  ‘Oh, she’s lovely’ – Katie’s smile was the width of the valley – ‘isn’t she, a Mhamaí? Will her hair be like mine and Mary’s, or like Patrick’s? I’m glad Annie’s a sister and not a brother. Look at the way she sleeps – are you glad she’s a sister, a Mhamaí?

  Ellen, faced with such enthusiasm, could only nod her agreement. There was never enough time with Katie to get a word in edgeways.

  ‘If I touch her, will she wake? I washed my hands – I did! Look, they’re clean!’ Katie proclaimed, as she stuck out a tentative finger towards the baby’s cheek.

  Ellen couldn’t have stopped her, even if she had wanted to. Instead, she just went, ‘Sshhh!’

  Katie nodded, then drew back her finger momentarily, putting it to her own lips, a serious expression on her little face as she copied her mother: ‘Sshhh!’

  Slowly, excitedly, Katie inched her finger towards the baby’s cheek – not exactly the lily-white finger she had professed a moment ago, her mother noticed. Her lips were pursed tightly together, delight heightening her freckled cheekbones. All the while her unruly mop of hair tumbled about her face.

  My hair, my face, thought Ellen. My little wonder. She watched as Katie’s finger gave a final lurch forward and indented the soft skin of her new-born sister’s cheek. Annie gave a slight stir of recognition, but remained sleeping. Katie, her mouth still tightly closed, made a little exhalation through her nostrils, and arched her eyes to Ellen, scrunching up her face with joy as she did so.

  The memory of that first touch between her two children, the sheer magic of that moment of welcome would remain with Ellen all the days of her life. The moment proved too much. Once again the water flowed from her, this time in tears of joy. Katie was looking at her, bewildered. Then, the child saw the light of happiness on her mother’s face, and heard the laughter bubbling out through the tears. Great, uncontrollable sobs of laughter.

  ‘A Mhamaí, why are you crying when you’re laughing?’ Katie demanded to know.

  ‘Oh, Katie, you are so beautiful, so precious to me, and I’m just a silly mother!’ Ellen said, pulling the child to her.

  Katie nestled into her mother’s free shoulder, and Ellen leaned her head down so that her mouth was near Katie’s ear.

  ‘Katie, a mháinlín, do you know what wonder is?’ she whispered.

  Katie shook her head.

  ‘Well, this is wonder, this special moment with just you and I, and little Annie asleep beside us.’

  Katie listened, quiet now.

  ‘When you touched her cheek with your finger for the first time, you felt something strange, didn’t you?’ Ellen asked.

  Katie snuggled into her. ‘I was afraid … but I was really happy too.’

  ‘Well, that was wonder, what you felt. It was what I felt, too, watching you do it. It can’t really be explained, but that’s what wonder is. It’s a mystery, but it’s real,’ Ellen whispered to her daughter, passing on to the next generation what her father had made run around the inside of her own head all those years ago.

  Katie nodded, trying to sort it all out in her busy mind.

  ‘I think I know it,’ she whispered into Ellen’s neck. ‘Can we make it last, a Mhamaí?’

  ‘Yes, Katie, we can.’

  And so they lay together, mother, daughter, and new baby. Lay into the gathering dawn – touching, whispering, drifting off – rapt in wonder until the others came.

  16

  June was warm. Much warmer and drier than usual. This allowed Michael the chance to be at the turf earlier, cutting it, laying it out in rows of sods which he then formed into little stacks. The drying mountain breeze could then waft in and around these stookeens until the cut sods were bone-hard and dry as tinder.

  After St Patrick’s Day, much planting of the potato crop had been undertaken. The people took the view that the blight would, as in previous times, be confined to one bad year alone. The fine days of June saw signs of the first appearances of the green potato stalks above the ground. These were much examined, the lack of blemish or spot lending support to the optimism of the planters that this would be a good crop.

  However, after Midsummer’s Eve, the weather undertook a dramatic change for the worse. Thunderstorms and deluge after deluge kept the villagers indoors as the rain battered down on their homes, and on the drying turf.

  It worried Ellen. ‘The seasons are all back to front,’ she said to Michael. ‘The spring was as severe as winter, with hail, sleet and snow. Now we have this great heat, followed by great clagars of rain, and it gone as cold as January!’

  Michael knew that with each downpour the turf atop the mountain would be turned back into the sodden peat it was when he had first cut it. Except, now, it didn’t have a living, breathing, bog to sustain it, to keep it alive. It would, when it dried again, end up as nothing more than a crumble of turf-mould – useless for burning.

  ‘All ruined – all the work for nothing! There won’t be a sod of it left that’s fit for burning,’ he said.

  There would be nothing for it except to go back up the mountain and cut some more. Go through the whole process again, and pray that the weather might be kinder to his labour the next time arou
nd.

  ‘It’s a hard thing, Ellen,’ he said. ‘I was hoping I might save some extra of the turf to start the money for America. But all is not lost. We have the harvest ahead of us. God is good, and the summer long.’

  Still, all seemed well in the fields. Michael and Martin Tom Bawn, whenever they went to the mountain, would check the Hare’s Garden to see if everything was all right in their secret place. And look all right it did. If anything, better than in the low fields.

  ‘Faith, Martin,’ he said to his neighbour, ‘it was a good day’s work you and I did in this spot. I’d swear these lumpers will be twice the size of the ones below.’

  ‘You could be right, Michael,’ the older man said cautiously. More summers and winters in the world than Michael had taught him to be cautious. Never to utter a wished-for want, nor foster it too much inside the head either. That way you didn’t get disappointed.

  ‘If you’re right,’ Martin Tom Bawn continued, ‘then we have a lot to thank swift Mister Hare for!’

  Michael had noticed how the older man always took themselves out of any luck they might have, played down his own and Michael’s part.

  ‘So, Martin, whichever way it goes, good or bad, it’s not down to us at all – it’s a long-legged mountain hare that’s responsible?’

  ‘Don’t mock me, Michael O’Malley! Things are just so – more than you think! You’ll learn yet.’

  The weather continued bad into July, and on the fifteenth – St Swithin’s Day – Ellen thought that the very heavens themselves had opened, such was the downpour which fell on their valley. If it rained on St Swithin’s Day, so the legend went, the rain would continue unabated for forty days thereafter. As it had when the monks of old had tried to exhume the body of their Abbot, Swithin, to bury him in a more exalted place. To punish them for their pride, God had rained down His wrath on them for forty days. Now, thought Ellen, God is again angry with His people.

  One evening, at the turn of the month, the sun broke through the clouds in a brief, vain, effort to dry the land. It was the first decent break in the deluge since St Swithin’s Day. Ellen, having just bedded Annie down for the night, decided to seize this opportunity to leave the cabin and go out under the valley sky.

  How much easier it was for her to walk now. Full for most of the past year with Annie, she had forgotten what it was like not to be carrying the weight of an additional person. Now, she felt light and energetic, with a spring to her step. It was good to be out, too, after the darkness of the cabin.

  The sun was warm on her, and on the fields about her. Its heat lifted the moisture from the grass and the potato stalks like a steaming blanket. The lake, too, had a haze of mist just above the waterline. Hither and thither this mist ebbed and flowed as the summer breeze, pushing up the valley, caught it from behind, seeking to bear it up and away.

  Soon she had passed the Crucán, the high mound where the valley people buried their children. No mark, no tombstone, only a rock of the mountain to mark their passage from this earth. And, sure, wasn’t that as good as any monument? The people who mattered – the grieving mothers – would forever know the rock whereunder their children lay.

  The thought crossed Ellen’s mind that perhaps she, too, would have had to make the journey here, if it wasn’t for Sheela-na-Sheeoga. She crossed herself at the thought, and prayed for the souls of the dead children, and all the souls of the faithful departed.

  At last, she breasted the top of Bóithrín a tSléibhe. There she left the well-trodden path to reach her final destination, the leac – the large rock where she had sat star-gazing with the Máistir as a child, the place where she had waited for Michael to return from visiting the priest in Clonbur.

  The ground was soft indeed. She felt the long blades of wet grass lick at her mud-spattered feet, cooling them, cleansing them. The flat-topped rock with its slightly curved edges resembled a giant grey cradle. She clambered on to it and drew her legs after her, hitching up her skirts so that the sun could dry her feet.

  Hot after the walk, she loosened her garment to allow the breeze be at her neck and shoulders. She freed the red plaits of hair which clung to her face, spreading them out, catching the tail of the soft wind. Then she lifted her face to the sun, closed her eyes, and rested.

  The sun and the mountain breeze played on her lips and cheeks, warming her, cooling her, cooling her, warming her – in constant rivalry for her attentions. Ellen responded by arching her body to these twin forces of fire and air which vied for her with their teasing dance of touch and whisper.

  The breeze ruffled the folds of her skirts, vainly seeking the white skin beneath. Defeated there, it moved down to the exposed flesh of her feet and ankles, busily flicking round them, wanting the inside of her hem.

  The sun merely waited, knowing that, in the end, its steady heat would eventually reach through the dark protective folds and find her.

  Ellen, suffused by the warmth of the sun, her body bathed as in the afterglow of love-making with Michael, let her spirit soar to where the blue of the sky touched the edge of the earth. That was the place she wanted to be forever, with Michael and the children: beyond the horizon. There they would dance, dance, dance away from the misery of this poverty-ridden life, this uncertain existence where the only certainty was death.

  She remembered one of the old mystic poems the Máistir had taught her, and she whispered its words to the sky:

  Over, over I’ll take you

  On the Great White Water which swells

  Through the veil of the moon I will sail you

  To the Kingdom of magic and spells

  Where the Ages of Man is the blink of an eye

  I will winter and summer with you

  Where the tip of the sea meets the edge of the sky

  And the waves all dance in the blue

  I will dance with the Blue Wave and you

  ‘I will dance with the Blue Wave and you,’ she repeated, lost in the moment.

  Yes, she wanted to dance, wanted Michael to play for her. She wanted to swing and swirl in ever-increasing circles, feet barely touching the ground. To be in flight, dancing in the air, whirling in and out of the music as it left the fiddle, until she, the music, and the dance were one. Intertwined, abandoned together. Untouchable …

  A shiver passed over her body. She sensed a darkness snuff out the light and the warmth. Her eyes flew open.

  Above her, where the sun had hung, where sky with only the odd white swish of a horse’s tail had been, now there was cloud.

  She lay, looking upwards, studying it. Knowing, before her eyes knew, before her mind knew, that this was no ordinary cloud. It was not dark like the thunderous rain clouds she had witnessed of late. It was not white and fluffy like the clouds that brought fleeting showers. This cloud was huge in size, as if the mountains surrounding the valley had been lifted up and brought together overhead to darken the land. Dense and murky of colour, it had drifted slowly in from the north-west, maybe from Sligo or Donegal.

  Though the day was remarkably hot and oppressive, she shivered. She got to her feet, pulling her clothes down around her, filled with a feeling of dread.

  Underneath the cloud there hung a strange white vapour that trailed earthwards. Some of it fell on her, like mist, softly striking her cheeks and arms. She wiped her face, wanting to be rid of it. But it did not melt to the warm touch of her hand as mist did.

  Ellen was held in fascination by this mist which fell out of the heavens, attaching itself to her skin, nestling in her hair. She watched, as the mist settled on the ground near her, covering it like white ash.

  What was it? Where did it come from? The questions tumbled inside her head. Never before had she seen the like of it. She turned to look back down into the valley, the truth slowly dawning on her. Below, she saw the fields, green and blooming, the white flower of the new potato harvest fluttering slightly, bending to the breeze. As she watched, she imagined that spores from the vapour cloud descended in their
multitudes, like winged messengers from God. Down on to their fields. Down on to their crops.

  And then she saw the villagers run wildly out of their cabins looking heavenwards, gesticulating, pointing, following, it seemed, the descent of the little white arrows. Arrows that were poisoned. Poisoned with the blight that would turn the food in the ground into a stinking, inedible mass of corruption.

  The fields looked so peaceful, full of the little potato flowers, full of the whitest flower. Ellen needed no reminder of Sheela-na-Sheeoga’s riddle to understand what was happening. ‘But the whitest flower will become the blackest flower …’

  And still the mist dropped gently earthwards, silent in its deadliness. A soft white blanket woven by unseen hands, until every stitch, every white-spored thread, was in place, covering the fields like a giant shroud, suffocating all beneath.

  Ellen continued to watch helplessly as the fog-cloud passed on its way to the next valley, indiscriminately discharging its death messengers. The sun came out again and shone down on her. But now she felt no warmth from its rays. Despair clutched at her, twisting her within its stranglehold.

  In the fields far below she thought she could see Michael and the children rush out, but she wasn’t sure.

  Ah, Michael, Michael! This would surely be the end of him. First the turf, now the crops.

  The nightmare of Halloween came back to her. She, running with the child in her arms, the hands of the dying reaching for her, and no Michael anywhere. The prophesy would, at last, be fulfilled.

  And what of the children, and her plans for them? Now there would be no scrimping and saving to put the few shillings aside towards the fare to America. Now, all the English lessons were in vain. She felt so cheated, so helpless, so angry.

  As the death cloud darkened the sky over the Lake of Hate, Ellen raised her arms to the Heavens. ‘God!’ she shouted, ‘is this Your vengeance? What have we done except to be poor? And if we have sinned … if I have sinned, why punish my children? Why condemn the innocent with the guilty?’ She violently hurtled the words at Him. ‘Answer me – answer me, if You are up there at all!’