The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  The sinews of Ellen’s neck stood out as she flailed her fists after the words, punching them heavenwards, assailing her God, demanding His defence, His reply. Anything but His silence.

  She waited. But her God did not answer.

  Over the days and weeks which followed his address to the Royal Dublin Society, David Moore continued the earlier experiments of steeping the diseased tubers in various copper sulphate solutions.

  He had also continued to correspond with the Reverend Miles Berkeley in England as to the cause of the blight. The more he corresponded with Berkeley, the more it led him to question his own evaluation of the blight as being caused by atmospheric conditions.

  One afternoon, while Isabella was letter-writing, her husband burst into the house.

  ‘You’ve found it?’ she asked expectantly.

  ‘No, not the cure – the cause! It is now clear to me that, all along, I have been greatly mistaken.’

  She listened while he explained.

  ‘Blight which attacked potatoes grown inside, in the glasshouses, must have been caused by forces other than the atmosphere. We have all of us – the atmospherists – been greatly, greatly, mistaken,’ he said, shaking his head vigorously. ‘The fungus is not the result of the blight – it is the cause!’

  On 29 July, Moore wrote to Reverend Berkeley – or ‘God’s Gardener’, as he had heard the botanist referred to by young McCallum:

  Royal Botanic Gardens

  Dublin

  29 July 1846

  Dear Berkeley,

  I cannot longer deny myself the pleasure of congratulating you on the justness of your views … Trusting the importance of this matter furnishes me with sufficient apology for thus troubling you.

  Moore

  17

  Overnight, the entire potato crop of the valley was destroyed. Lughnasa, first day of August, feast of Lugh – pagan God of the harvest – saw the harvest devastated. Fields which yesterday were full of hope and promise had withered and decayed, the white-flowered potato plants now black.

  For the second year running, the blight had returned to smite the people.

  They had laboured on their hands and knees through nightfall into the deep dark. Clawing back the earth in a frenzied search for any lumpers that had escaped the blight. Time after time, hope was dashed from their hands to be replaced by the stinking pulp which waited for them beneath the lazy beds.

  ‘Any that’s even part firm – save them!’ Michael, in desperation, had shouted. ‘We can cut out the bad parts later.’

  Everywhere around them the scene was the same. Whole families were sprawled across the landscape, foraging like beasts for whatever morsel of nourishment the unyielding fields might provide. Yet the sound that emitted from them was not the sound of beasts. Nor was it a human sound. It was eerie. Inhuman. Like the keening of banshees it rose up from the fields in a continuous wave, its volume defined only by the level of dismay of those who searched.

  At first, the foragers had carried the hope that each next plant might be sound, but as time wore on the dips in the wave of wailing grew less frequent, less distinguishable, signalling that all hope had evaporated. Even the harsh dark moon denied them light in their hour of most need, complicit in their destruction. The unremitting wail of grief echoed and rebounded off the mountains, coming back at them over the lake waters, so that their own sound encircled them, the weight of their grief forcing them lower and lower into the ground, until they sank into the cesspit their fields had become.

  Ellen and Michael straggled home after midnight, stinking of disease and decay, with the children – even stout-hearted Patrick – crying.

  Back at the cabin, they cleaned and wiped dry the few potatoes they had saved. It wasn’t more than a tenth of the crop. Not enough to see them out for even a couple of months.

  Michael looked at the exhausted faces of his children, stained with earth and tears. He looked at Ellen, subdued and fearful. Maybe he should have gone from them during the meal months, gone to the picking fields of Scotland, or down into the ground, digging the canals of England, like some of the men did. But it was hard to be away from her. Hard to be away from her laughter in the summer days, her padding over the fields to him with a drink of water. Hard to be away from the smoky smell of her, and the turf fire lighting up demons that danced in her red hair, or in the hollow place of her neck. His need for her had intensified over the past few months, as if they were never going to have enough time together.

  She went to him, caught him by the shoulders. ‘Michael,’ she said, ‘you and the children go and sleep – ye had a hard day, and hard days are to come.’ She put her finger to his lips to silence his reply. ‘I didn’t do much: I can sort through the partly good ones, and cut out the rot from them, if ye clear out of my way.’

  The children filed towards her to say goodnight, and she gave each of them a longer than usual embrace. Katie waited till last, then reached her lips into Ellen’s ear and whispered, ‘I’ll pray real hard to Holy God tonight that He’ll save us all. And if He can’t – because it’s how He has to take some people from every cabin – that He’ll spare little Annie because she hasn’t lived as long as we have … and that He’ll spare you, a Mhamaí, and Daddy too, to mind her.’

  ‘Do you know what you are, Katie O’Malley?’ Ellen said, holding Katie in front of her, nose to nose. She looked deep into her child’s eyes, wondering what was going on in there. It seemed that Katie intuitively knew that this blight and the Famine which would follow would strike at every family, leaving many dead. And there she was, offering herself up – to be taken instead of Annie and themselves.

  Katie’s nose moved across her own as she shook her head slowly in response to Ellen’s question.

  ‘You are a wonder, a stóirín!’ Ellen said, her breath stroking Katie’s cheek. ‘A beautiful little wonder!’

  Katie, some of her natural animation returning, nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, a Mhamaí. I remember wonder – it’s like the day Annie was born … there was just the three of us together, her and you and me, and it was all quiet, and Annie was sleeping … and we were kind of asleep too, but not really … and you said that that was wonder … And now it’s the same except this time …’ Katie giggled, ‘it’s just you and me. Isn’t that it, a Mhamaí?’

  As always with Katie, answers and questions tumbled out of her head in a string of words.

  ‘Yes, Katie.’ Ellen gave her child a long, loving kiss on the forehead. ‘Now, off to sleep with you!’

  While her family slept Ellen started into the small pile of lumpers they had managed to salvage.

  The few good potatoes would be dried and put into the loft. Each one would be carefully inspected to ensure that no infected tubers were allowed in to contaminate the rest. Where part of the potato looked healthy, Ellen took her knife and excised the rot. Many of the potatoes were too far gone to be saved, even though from the outside it looked as if the diseased parts could easily be removed. The rot had a way of insinuating itself into the core of the potato, or coiling round it, like an evil purplish-brown serpent. Sometimes, even as she cut into the surrounding white flesh, it seemed to Ellen as if the rot-serpent moved ahead of her, still destroying, so it might live.

  Once, she put down her knife and slowly traced the path of the rot with her finger. Then, with the tip of her finger marking the end of the trail, she had waited, silently fascinated; watching for the rot-serpent to emerge from underneath her fingertip.

  Tired, weary, weighed down by it all, she knew she must keep up a brave front for the sake of Michael and the children. It was the only way. Else they might as well barricade the door, block up the window openings, and pull the cabin down over their heads. Entomb themselves, die together as a family with dignity, before starvation and disease had altered their minds.

  But no, that would not happen, she told herself. She might bend with the weight of this calamity, but she would not be broken by it. She had made a plan for surviv
al, for escape to America. It might have to be changed, put back – or brought forward, she had thought grimly – but it would not be put off.

  Some had gone to America from around the valleys. No one, yet, from Maamtrasna, but relations of some of the villagers had, and the letters from Boston or New York or Chicago were talked about. And the money, the letters from America always had the money. That was the thing. Everybody knew what ‘letters from America’ meant: dollars, or this new idea that was starting up – a bank draft. Mici Maol from over beyond Little America had received one from his son who’d gone out to Boston in Big America. It was the talk of the area.

  ‘It wasn’t dollars at all, but a bitteen of paper, and sar a bit of good it was itself. But you could take it into the bank in Castlebar, and they’d give into your hand whatever amount was written on the paper,’ was the explanation Mici Maol gave to all and sundry – without letting out the amount! But the inference was that it was a big heap of dollars that was written on the draft paper. Sure, otherwise wouldn’t they fit in with the letter itself, and not be needing the bitteen of paper?

  Mici Maol had walked into Clonbur to get Fr O’Brien to read the English writing on the bank draft, the same day Michael had gone to see the priest. They had met and Mici Maol had shown Michael the little printed-up letter that came with the bank draft, with a picture of sailing ships at the top of it. He didn’t mind showing this around, seeing as the letter itself said nothing about the dollars.

  Michael had described it to her, and only a few days later a widow-woman from Derrypark had come asking her to ‘make out the writing’ on a similar letter from her daughter in Boston. Boston – that was the place, that was where the dollars were. Ellen had remembered the words, burned them into her mind, as if that would somehow bring her there – be her ticket out.

  DRAFTS ON THE NATIONAL BANK OF IRELAND W. &J. T. Tapscott beg to inform their friends and the public who wish to send money to any part of the old country that they draw drafts for large or small amounts – payable at sight without discount – direct on the National Bank of Ireland, Dublin, or any of the numerous branches throughout the country.

  W. &J. T. Tapscott State Street, Boston, or any of their agents.

  It sounded so good, so important. And it was strange, too – for it was from America that the blight first came. And now the dollars were coming – sent over by the same people who’d gone to America to escape the blight! There was no working it out, at all.

  Ellen had finished her work, glad to be through with touching the blighted tubers, as if the disease would spread to her, coiling itself up from her fingers and into her heart. The fruits of her labours were meagre indeed. The potatoes, being an early lifting, had been small to begin with. Now, the small odd-shaped pieces she had saved bobbed in water; scarcely enough to fill two large cooking pots and the kettle. It seemed hardly worth the effort. Still, they would get three, maybe four days’ food out of them. The spring water from the rock would keep them fresh; she would change it every day, just to make sure.

  She gathered the diseased potato cut-offs – eager to be rid of them, and the smell of them, and the nearness of them – and threw them into a pit some way from the cabin.

  It was just before dawn when she lay down, hoping to get a few hours’ sleep before it was time to go up the mountain with Michael to the secret potato patch he had told her about. The Hare’s Garden, he had called it. As she drifted into sleep, she pictured the hare racing over the mountain, always managing to escape from danger. Maybe the name was a good omen; maybe the Hare’s Garden would escape the worst of the blight.

  She estimated that, with the potatoes they had in the cabin loft and what she had saved last night, they had six to seven weeks’ food. If the Hare’s Garden yielded the same again, they would get through to November. But they would have to divide whatever came from the mountain with Martin Tom Bawn. She’d have to find some way to stretch the food out. One meal a day would do it. If they could keep to that – and she’d see that they did – then they could make it through to Christmas.

  In the meantime, they would have to get money to buy food. Maybe she could find some work? Michael had said he’d go to Castlebar or Westport to sign up for one of those new Board of Works schemes the Government had set up. Between them they’d find something … anything.

  Ellen’s eyes could stay open no longer. Sleep, blissful sleep, claimed her, pulling a curtain down on all the troubles of her world.

  But as Ellen slipped into sleep, two-month-old Annie was coming out of it. Unaware of anything except her hunger, Annie did as nature had intended. She cried for her mother’s milk.

  As she nursed Annie, Ellen sensed that Michael, too, was awake.

  She said nothing for a while. She had watched the resentment building up within him against the landlord. Now this calamity had befallen the family, and he was powerless to prevent it.

  ‘Michael, a stór,’ she whispered. ‘I know how you feel, but you’re not responsible for this blight, nor for what Pakenham is doing. You’re a fine husband for any woman to have, and you couldn’t have done more for me and the children.’

  ‘It’s a hard place we’re in just now, Ellen,’ he said. ‘But there’s no hard place that doesn’t have a road out of it.’

  ‘And that road leads to America …’ She faltered, wondering how to broach this with him. ‘I know we’ll never raise the fare in time to take all of us, but we could maybe get the few pounds to get you there, Michael.’

  He started to protest. ‘I won’t go without …’

  She put her finger to his lips. ‘If you stay we’ll all starve. If you go we have some chance. It will spread the food out further here, and you’ll get work there. Then you can send back the passage money – in one of those new bank drafts from Boston.’

  She laughed, and he laughed a little with her. There was some sense in what she said.

  ‘What about you and the children? How will ye manage?’

  ‘We’ll manage fine. The baby is getting hardy. After today we’ll have in all the potatoes we’re going to get. There won’t be much to do, and Patrick and the girls will be a great help.’

  She was right, he knew. Many’s the time on the mountain he had thought it over to himself. Yet the knowing gnawed at the pit of his stomach. He would be separated from her – from the children. Beyond in America, alone.

  She was still talking about the passage money: ‘If we could scrimp anything together at all … I could go to Castlebar and sell my mother’s brush and—’

  ‘Ellen, I’d never let you do that! How would you stroke your hair with no brush? I’ll sell the fiddle instead. It has a sweet tune and it should fetch well.’

  ‘There’s many a dos of fine hair beyond in the graveyard,’ she said. ‘You’ll need your fiddle in America.’

  It would gain him acceptance more quickly in his new country. She had even heard tell that, in America, people would give you money for making music. What did it matter if her hair went a bit wild for want of the stroking with her mother’s brush? Maybe the tradition – the hundred strokes of the silver-handled brush – was all a vanity. A simple comb would do the job just as rightly.

  ‘We’ll not say a word to the children yet,’ she said to him as she settled Annie down again. ‘They can sleep awhile.’

  As her parents arose, Mary, who had been awake all through the whispered talk, and followed most of it, closed her eyes and pondered what she had heard.

  Armed with slanes and sciathógs, Michael and Ellen joined Martin Tom Bawn and Roberteen for the climb up the mountain. They went early, and quickly, to avoid notice. When they reached the top, Martin gestured to Roberteen and Ellen to wait.

  ‘Let ye stand here a minute now, and watch!’ he commanded.

  So they stood, still and silent. Sure enough, within moments, a big grey hare stuck its head up above the scutchy mountain grass and then took off, darting between rocks and bog-holes until it disappeared over the side of t
he mountain.

  ‘Where did he go to, the divil?’ cried Roberteen.

  ‘Follow him now, and ye’ll see,’ his father replied, giving nothing away.

  They quickly followed in the hare’s wake, and came to the large slab of rock which blocked the Hare’s Garden from casual view. Each of them in turn slipped round the narrow footing of the rock and, in the process, frightened off three or four grey hares, nibbling on the green stalks of the potato plants.

  Ellen couldn’t get over the rows of lazy beds, sheltered from above and below by the lie of the mountain. She saw the piles of stones that had been cleared to the perimeter of the Hare’s Garden, and the big boulders that would have taken so much effort to move. She looked at Michael, pride in her eyes.

  ‘Roberteen,’ she said, ‘we must be with the two best men to work in all of the West.’

  Roberteen, she noticed, was a mite embarrassed that she should address a remark to him in front of his father and her husband. She’d be more careful.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you, Michael O’Malley, the day we saw that long-legged grey buachaill bounce in here, that it was all for luck, that we’d have a blast of spuds out of this garden?’ said Martin Tom Bawn, giving Michael a hard slap on the back.

  The four of them then walked up and down between the lazy beds, examining the green stalks and leaves, and the white flowers, searching for the fuzzy white mist that was the first indication of a diseased plant. But they saw no sign of the white mildew that had descended on the valley below, nor any of the sticky brown spots which mottled the leaves, signifying that rot had set in.

  ‘You know,’ Michael said, ‘I’m thinking they’re all free of it. I’ll dig one out.’

  The others waited while he took his slane to the first plant. Carefully he picked his spot and then drove the slane into the ground, the weight of his body shifting on to his digging foot. Soon he had levered the first clump of potatoes out of the clay. He picked it up, shook it, and held it for them, while three other anxious pairs of hands cleaned the clay from the tubers. And there they were – the lumpers! Small, but sound: not a sign of the rot anywhere on them.