Beecham offered his congratulations with a simpering smile.
‘And tell me, O’Malley, does she take after you, or is she pretty like her mother?’
Michael ignored the landlord’s remark.
Then Pakenham got down to the real purpose of this meeting: ‘Now that Mrs O’Malley has returned to her … normal condition, by coincidence, Mrs Bottomley tells me that things have become a mite slovenly downstairs. We could do with some help here at the Lodge. What say you, O’Malley?’
Michael, who had contained himself up to now, saw red. ‘My wife is no man’s tallywoman! I would rather die at the side of the road like dogs than allow any wife of mine be a landlord’s whore!’
Pakenham’s face was white with rage. ‘And so you shall, O’Malley – so you shall! Beecham, give him the Notice!’
At the landlord’s signal, Beecham thrust the Notice of Distraint into Michael’s hand and began pushing him towards the door.
‘You’re just like the rest, O’Malley: always whingeing, turning on the hand that feeds you. Now, see how you and your high and mighty wife likes this for a Christmas present!’
They had made such a fool of him, baiting him for their sport, intending all along to issue him with the Notice.
He couldn’t bring it home to Ellen. Not now, not two weeks before Christmas. He slipped into the walled rose gardens, bereft of colour now, except for one bush which defied the hardships of the season and stood lonely but majestic in its winter beauty: Rosa chinensis – the last rose of summer.
Michael took in the terrazzo, the bower, the pergola, the pathways, the walls. The stone in them would have built twenty cabins such as his, and now they were going to be left with no cabin at all! The roses grew on land which, if planted with lumpers, could have fed a family for a year.
Outraged at the injustice of it all, Michael approached the flowering rose bush. He bent to its base, intending to tear it out of the ground with his bare hands and then trample it – let Pakenham know he wasn’t beaten yet. But the last rose of summer, having wintered out the seasons of many a harsh year would not now give itself up easily to man. Its thorns lacerated the side of Michael’s neck and dug into the palms of his hands, darting sharp pains up through his arms.
Bloodied and defeated by the rose bush, Michael was forced to stop. In his frustration he began to pull off the heads of the flowers, flinging them as far away from him as he could. Then he stopped, and began to gather them up again … This was not the way.
‘Tiocfaidh ár lá! he said in a whisper to the crumpled petals in his hand. ‘Our day will come!’
Before he left, he impaled Pakenham’s Notice of Distraint on the highest point of the bush of the Rosa chinensis, the white paper fluttering above the red flowers, the black print of its death-dealing message reefed and ripped by the thorny beauty on every side.
Michael tried to make a brave face of it for Ellen.
She ran to him the moment she spotted him from the door, glad to see him back – to see him alive. Katie and Mary ran at him too, almost pulling his arms out of their sockets. Even little Annie did the best she could to welcome him home, flashing her dark eyes and making happy gurgling sounds when he entered the cabin.
Though he had washed his face and hands in the Owenbrin River on the way back, Ellen saw the telltale marks on his neck where the skin had been pierced by Pakenham’s roses.
He caught her looking at them and plunged his hand into his pocket, pulling forth the rose-heads.
‘I brought you these, Ellen,’ he said, handing the broken flowers to her. ‘For the Christmas.’
‘Oh Michael, they’re so beautiful. Mo bhuíochas dhuit,’ she said, slipping back into the Irish to thank him, ignoring the scars on his upturned palms.
‘And one for Katie,’ he said, hurrying on, wanting to distract her, not wanting space so she could look at him, see it all in his face, ‘And one for Mary.’
‘What sort of a flower is it?’ Katie broke in, never having seen a rose before.
‘And Patrick – I brought you one, too. It’s little I have to give you all this Christmas,’ he said, wondering when Pakenham’s men would come.
The boy took the flower awkwardly, shyly, and thanked his father, knowing somehow the gift was more than it was.
Isabella Moore set down her newspaper with a heavy sigh. The reports of poverty, starvation and death in every corner of the land made for sorry reading. ‘How can the Government allow this state of affairs to continue? Whole families wiped away in the most inhuman conditions: typhus, cholera and famine fever racking their bodies alongside starvation. It is too appalling.’
Her husband, who had only that afternoon been told that the ill-conceived electro-culture experiments had depleted Glasnevin’s coffers to such an extent that there was no money for further experiments, could only agree. ‘The Government seems incapable of grasping the scale of the crisis, and their handling of it verges on incompetence. I am told that there is little hope of my plea for funds to continue our investigations into the cause of the blight being granted.’
‘Does this mean the experiments to find a cure for the disease are ended?’ Isabella asked in disbelief.
‘I regret to tell you, my dearest, that without more finances, it means just that.’
‘It makes not a whit of sense!’ Isabella said angrily. ‘At a time when millions are starving to death, there is no money for research to save them. That these’ – she pointed towards the Curvilinear glasshouses – ‘should be built in such times of hunger and destitution, while paltry amounts cannot be given you to continue your experiments. Ohh, it makes me not myself to think of it!’
The curator had never seen his wife, usually the gentlest of souls, aroused to such strong feelings. He could only hope that the members of the Royal Dublin Society would be similarly moved by their countrymen’s plight, and that his request for an increase in financial support would not fall on deaf ears.
20
On Christmas Eve they came: Beecham, the crowbar brigade, the militia.
Ellen was readying herself and the children for Midnight Mass. A year to the day since she had stormed out of Finny church over Father O’Brien’s failure to speak out against Pakenham and the landlords. Almost a year since the priest had come to her cabin and she’d flung bitter words at him. In the interim, an uneasy truce had developed between her and the young clergyman, aided, in part by Annie’s arrival and the necessity for the child to be baptized. But events had proven her right – the situation with the landlords had deteriorated steadily. Lord Lucan was already evicting in Mayo, while hundreds had marched on Lord Sligo’s house in Westport as early as August. Word had it since that the landlord, hitherto lenient, was to commence evictions, saying he was under the necessity of ‘ejecting or being himself ejected’.
Pakenham himself had already started evictions around Partry, and had tumbled a few cabins in Derrypark as well – targeting the outlying districts, not wanting, at this stage, to take the risk of stirring up the tenants in the vicinity of Tourmakeady Lodge. At least he had let those evicted take the thatch with them. That way they could lean it over a ditch somewhere for shelter, make a scailpeen over their heads.
It was said that he owed money in London and that he had unpaid dues to the Westport Union as well. But Ellen could feel no pity for him. Ever since Michael had told her about Pakenham’s intention to evict them, she’d been beside herself with worry. There was nowhere for them to go except the roadside, and the children wouldn’t last long out in the extremes of winter – even if Pakenham did let them keep the bit of thatch for shelter – and as for Annie …
Michael had taken the few potatoes they had left and hidden them in the ground in the driest place he could find, bedding them well with straw. Each day they would go to the pit and take only the handful that made up their daily ration. That way Pakenham’s men, when they came, wouldn’t seize the last of their food. Then, after their turn came to be evicted, Michael
could creep back under cover of darkness from whatever scailpeen they were in and get the remainder of the buried potatoes.
Ellen had made up her mind that straight after the Christmas – the day after St Stephen’s Day – she herself would go to Pakenham. Whatever had to be done to save them, she would do it. But for now they would go to Finny and pray that God would somehow deliver them.
In the event, the O’Malleys were not to get the opportunity to see one last Christmas out in their home.
Ellen was just finishing with Katie’s hair. The child, as usual, was full of questions.
‘A Mhamaí, can we sit near the back this year?’
‘No, Katie … why?’
‘In case we have to leave early like last year and walk all the way down the church and everybody looking at us!’
‘Oh, Katie, shush for once!’ Ellen said to her, turning over in her mind her idea of going to Pakenham.
The first she knew anything was amiss was a raised voice outside the door.
‘I, Richard Albright Pakenham, do hereby give notice to Michael O’Malley, Maamtrasna, in the County of Galway, and all thereof unto him, to forthwith quit the tenure which he holds from me. Furthermore all goods—’
‘Beecham!’ Michael had rushed past her to confront them. ‘It’s Christmas Eve, man. For God’s sake!’ he shouted at the agent.
Ellen ran to the door behind him. What she saw facing their cabin was the end of her world as she had known it.
Beecham was accompanied by four men, each armed with a long black crowbar. She thought she recognized one of them. But the crowbar men kept their eyes to the ground, awaiting the order to go to work, levering out the stones which would tumble the cabin to the ground. Behind the crowbar brigade, on horseback, were six militia men, muskets with bayonets attached at the ready.
‘It matters not what day it be, O’Malley,’ said Beecham, glancing back at the militia men. ‘What matters is your failure to pay due rent to His Lordship, and your subsequent refusal of his suggestion as to how you might overcome the default.’
‘Damn His Lordship’s suggestions and damn you, Beecham!’ Michael cried, rushing at the agent.
The six horsemen moved forward as one, their bayonets levelled at Michael’s throat.
‘Resist at your peril, O’Malley!’ Beecham shouted, visibly shaken by Michael’s attempted attack on him.
‘Michael,’ Ellen said calmly, ‘leave it be.’
He looked at her, ready to argue. But she was right. He would not lose his dignity in front of that slieveen, Beecham, or let hers be undermined by arguing with her.
By now the other villagers had gathered, with Roberteen Bawn to the fore.
‘Cowards – are ye Christians at all to be putting them out this night?’ Roberteen yelled, his face wild. ‘She has a child to care for, bastards!’
Ellen heard the commotion outside as she gathered up Annie, wrapping her in as many layers of clothing as she could. Then she said to the children, ‘Now, we are going to leave our home together, and together we will go over the mountain and down to Finny to Mass. We will not fight nor beg. Neither will we take the few things we have, to have them taken from us again.’
They listened, each of them knowing that for Ellen Rua O’Malley there could be no other way.
‘We have each other, we have what they can’t take from us, or pull down, and we have our faith,’ she reassured them, confirming that what they were about to do was the correct thing.
‘Your mother is right,’ said Michael. ‘We are Máilleachs and neither landlord nor Crown will break us.’
Outside, Beecham was getting agitated – he could see that the crowd was becoming more and more angry. He had been right in convincing Pakenham to enlist the militia’s help for this particular ejectment. He wanted to get on with it, to get out of there. ‘Come on out, O’Malley, or we’ll torch the roof over your heads,’ he shouted. And when there was no sign of them, he gave the order: ‘All right, men, move in! Tumble it and torch the thatch – they’ll not have it!’
The crowbar brigade moved forward. The militia men edged their horses towards the crowd, forcing the people back, threatening them with the sharp steel knives on the ends of their muskets.
Then, Ellen emerged with Annie in her arms. Tall, straight, she was. From between the hands that carried the child hung a rosary. From between her lips fell the sound of the third Joyful Mystery – the Nativity.
Behind her followed Katie, she, too in prayer, afraid but reverent for once. Then Mary. Then Patrick. And, lastly, Michael.
Ellen led her family into the circle of the men who had come to evict them and knelt down in their midst, followed by the others. The men with the crowbars stopped advancing. The militia men reined in their horses, and the people of the village fell to their knees solid in prayer with those being evicted.
For a moment, Beecham was rendered speechless – stunned by the dignity of this woman kneeling not an arm’s length away, oblivious to him and the destruction he was about to visit on her and her family. They had no home, no food, these people, and they weren’t fighting back. They weren’t beseeching him not to do it – begging him to let them take away the miserable thatch on their backs. He had always thought the red-haired woman dangerous. Now here she was, getting them all to kneel and follow her. This was her way, her message to Pakenham, and to him, that she couldn’t be broken. She was trouble all right, the redheaded bitch.
‘Tumble it! You heard me! Tumble it!’ he shouted at the men, shaking them out of their trance-like state.
They set to, glad to be at it, dealing with what they were sure of, the thud of their crowbars in stark contrast to the murmured prayers rising to Heaven around them. One of them, the one Ellen thought she recognized, got a purchase high up with his crowbar and levered on it. The cornerstone budged and tumbled inwards, sinking the thatch with it. Next the far corner went, and then the other two corners, until the roof caved in completely.
‘Hail Mary full of grace,
the Lord is with thee,
Blessed art thou amongst women …’
Ellen, the sound of her home being battered down behind her, continued the Rosary.
Next the lintel stones above the window openings were levered out, causing the walls over them to collapse.
‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son …’ Ellen prayed the Gloria which concluded the decade, undeflected by the clank of the crowbars, or thoughts of what their noise signified.
Now, robbed of support, the larger stones round the doorway posed no problem for the sweating men who prised them away, causing further collapse.
‘Oh, my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those who have most need of your mercy …
The people, with Michael and Ellen and family, prayed.
The battering crew ran the crowbar handles against the side of their breeches, clearing the sweat away, before attacking those parts of the walls which had not yet fallen.
Against this, Michael led them into the ‘Our Father’ of the next Joyful Mystery. Ellen, the children, and the valley people raised their voices to Heaven in response.
‘Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us …’
And then, not even bothering to execute the Distraining Order and seize the few earthly goods of the evicted, those whose trespasses were forgiven torched the roof of the cabin of those who forgave them.
The flames of their wicked doings lit the Christmas sky, giving heat and warmth to those who knelt and prayed. The last they would get that winter.
21
Father O’Brien took them in. Took them back to Clonbur with him, after the Christmas Mass.
Ellen was grateful to the young priest, who said they could stay ‘for as long as the Archbishop doesn’t find out I’m keeping lodgers’.
Michael told him they wou
ld stay only till the Women’s Christmas – the feast of the Purification of Mary on 6 January.
They were better fed than they had been for months. But even in the two weeks they were there, Ellen felt the constrictions of presbytery life. Moreover, she missed the Mask and the mountains and the valley people. After Christmas, there was a surge in the number of supplicants coming to the presbytery gate ‘looking for a bitteen of help’, and as a result the priest had to cut back on his own rations. The extra demands on his charity made Ellen and Michael feel all the more uncomfortable staying there, getting preferential treatment.
At night, when the children slept, the three adults talked.
‘I am afraid that the year ahead will be the blackest yet,’ the priest gravely predicted for 1847. ‘Many will perish. Even if the blight should not strike for a third year running, so few seedlings have been sown it will make no difference. Everywhere the people have been driven off the land, or left it, drifting to the towns in search of food.’
‘The people should rise up,’ said Michael. ‘They should take back from the landlords and the Crown what is rightfully theirs. The food is leaving the country for England while we starve!’
‘This is true, Michael,’ the priest said. ‘And many now feel that O’Connell’s “not a single drop of blood” policy plays into the hands of the oppressor. In dogma there is such a thing as “a just war”. Maybe that time is approaching, but I would be slow to advocate violence, whether against oppressor or no.’
Nevertheless, Ellen could see that the idea was taking root in Michael’s mind.
When they moved out of the priest’s house and back into the mountains, Michael became more and more obsessed with the thought of ‘striking a blow’.
They had built their scailpeen up in the Hare’s Garden, under the outcropping of rock. Martin Tom Bawn and Roberteen had brought them some straw and sticks, and what they could salvage of the singed thatch from their tumbled cabin. The few lumpers that they had buried in the pit had miraculously survived, and the villagers gave them whatever scraps and fuel they could. But as times hardened for the village, the scraps stopped, along with the few sods of turf which they had chanced only to burn on especially cold nights, for fear Pakenham would get word of their presence.
The Whitest Flower Page 20