The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  ‘The workhouses is all filled to overflowing. For every corpse they slide out the window at the back, there’s another ten banging on the front door to get in. ’Pon my oath, it’s harder for the poor to get into the poorhouse, than it is for the rich to get into heaven. Asides, those that’s supposed to pay money to keep them open won’t pay it. Whether they have it or not is another thing. So the Guardians close the workhouses and put everybody inside out on the street. It’s a terrible thing, ma’am – a terrible thing.’

  Ellen sat back, stunned into silence by what she had already witnessed and heard in her first hour here.

  Dear God, it was worse than when she left – a thousand times worse! And had nothing been done for the people? No relief, no food, no work, no shelter? She couldn’t believe things had been let go so far. This was the fourth year of Famine. Surely there had been enough time for the Government to do something?

  ‘They say, ma’am, a million is in the ground, and another million is beyond in America – if it’s a thing it’s true,’ Faherty said, as if reading her thoughts.

  A million of her people dead – could it be? Maybe Roberteen wasn’t wandering in his head, after all, about how bad things were. She could well believe that a million had gone out of Ireland. Weren’t the seas themselves black with the coffin ships and the tens and tens of thousands pouring into Grosse Île and Boston alone!

  ‘Well, ma’am, they got what they wanted, ’pon my soul, they did.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Russell and Trevelyan and them all beyond in Westminster,’ he replied. ‘Kill us all off, clear the land, and make Ireland like England. Make all big farms of land instead of the little stripes we have back here in the West. That’s what it is, ma’am, ’pon my oath it is!’

  ‘What about the soup kitchens?’ She had heard great talk of the soup kitchens in Grosse Île.

  ‘Soup kitchens, is it!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll tell you what about the soup kitchens, ma’am. They brought over a famous chef from some big hotel in London – Soyer he was – a Frenchman to make the soup! And ’tis said at one stage they were giving that old pea-water to three million people a day. It could be done, all right, my oath it could be done. But what did Trevelyan do then?’ He gave her a moment, and then told her: ‘They tumbled all the soup kitchens down because they was keeping the people alive – that’s what! Anyway, it was the Quakers that mostly kept them going – not the Government.’

  He kept talking, half turning his head to her now and again, making a little nervous wink with his eye when he said, ‘I’ll tell you what’ or, ‘my oath it is!’ or ‘’pon my soul’. He took her silence for agreement with this analysis of the situation, and continued: ‘But they don’t hate us all the same, the English. ’Tis afraid of us they are, my oath it is. Sure, don’t I see it with my own two eyes?’

  Ellen listened as the coach-driver continued his dissertation on the English.

  ‘The way it was heading in Ireland, there was going to be more of us than them – until the blight came. We was heading for the nine million, they had only the fifteen or sixteen. They was dead afraid we’d go beyond to London and places, and take the work off of them. But that’s not even the most thing they was frightened of. No, I’ll tell you what – and I have the proof of it too,’ he went on. ‘They was afraid with all of us going beyond that England would turn Catholic – that’s what!’ And he turned his head to see her reaction.

  She was fascinated by him, how he kept firing out his opinions, and with such certainty too. She nodded at him. She was sure he was right – that somewhere at the bottom of it all was religion.

  ‘Is olc an iomarca creidimh,’ she said to him, and he looked at her oddly. ‘Too much religion is a bad thing!’

  ‘You’re right, ma’am,’ he replied, and he was off again: ‘Sure, didn’t they pull down Peel when he gave the money to Maynooth – and he their Prime Minister. ’Tisn’t too long since they gave the vote to us Catholics – only for Daniel O’Connell, God rest him, we’d never have got it. And now the latest. The whole West of Ireland is crawling with these proslatators. Plenty of food with them and they proslatating the people out of being Catholics into Protestants. Then blaming the poor people for the Famine on account of them being papists and not being true believers. You’re right, ma’am, religion is at the bottom of the whole thing – my oath it is, like it always was!’

  Faherty rested his case – for a while.

  Ellen was inclined to believe that Faherty, in his own simple way, had arrived close to her own truth. History told her it was so – and she had seen it with the Aborigines: ‘Christianize and colonize them,’ was the cry. In Boston she had experienced naked sectarian hatred, so vicious in its expression it was scarcely believable. But it was there – and not hidden either.

  Yet how could a Government behave like that towards its own people? Stand by and see whole sections of them wiped out like vermin – Saint Patrick’s Vermin. It was too awful to consider.

  They were on higher ground now, back a few miles past the Reek, heading towards Kilsallagh. To the right, she could see the beauty of the bay she had first sailed into with all its islands. How different the landscape here was to anywhere else she’d seen. There was no place like it – if it didn’t have the Famine. No place in the whole wide world.

  ‘Look at her, now, ma’am!’ Faherty interrupted her thoughts.

  Ellen looked to the other side of the carriage. There, running barefoot alongside them, ragged, unkempt, was a waif of a girl. Probably only twelve or thirteen.

  The girl, not looking at Ellen, seeing nothing only some space far beyond where they were, just ran, silently keeping time with Nell. She did not stretch out her palm to them, as many whom they had passed had done. It seemed as if the girl sought nothing – only wanted to be with them. To step for a moment, out of her poverty and misery and hopelessness, and run beside a carriage with a fine lady.

  Ellen was transfixed. The girl’s legs and arms sliced the air in rhythm with Nell’s canter. The silent up and down of her arms was only interrupted when the few threads, which barely held the front and back of her garment together, slipped down over her shoulder. Without breaking stride, her hand would shoot across and hoist up the fallen fabric, covering again bones from which hung the merest filament of skin.

  Still she made no sound.

  ‘Go on, get up there, Nell!’ Faherty flicked his whip at Nell’s broad rump, wanting to leave the girl behind in case his passenger might be offended. The carriage drew away from the girl. Ellen was about to tell Faherty to stop, when the girl reappeared, having increased the tempo of her running so as not to be outpaced. Still she neither looked at them nor made any sound. It was as if she were some expressionless puppet attached to the side of the carriage. Ellen knew that no matter how fast they went, she would be there. Like the wandering hordes of the poor, she had nothing else to be doing.

  ‘Stop the carriage at once, Mr Faherty!’ Ellen ordered, ashamed that she had been so mesmerized by the girl as to allow this macabre race to continue.

  The carriage stopped.

  The girl stopped.

  She did not seem to be out of breath, or in any distress. As if her spirit had been the runner, and not her body. She stood at the side of the carriage, still looking ahead, looking into some future which only she could see.

  She was only a child, Ellen thought, as she opened the door and got out. An underdeveloped, emaciated child. Lank brown hair brushed the top of her shoulders. Her pert little nose was pinched back with the hunger, her dark eyes, expressionless, locked on her vision.

  Ellen touched her on the shoulder. It was cold, despite the girl’s exertions.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Ellen asked her softly, but there was no flicker of a response. ‘Cad is ainm duit?’ She tried the same question in Irish. Still the girl did not speak.

  ‘We have to get her some food, Mr Faherty. I’m bringing her with me to Louisburgh!’ she said.

>   The coachman started to say something but thought the better of it.

  Ellen gently shepherded the girl into the carriage, talking to her soothingly. The girl moved with her. Apart from that, Ellen may as well have not been there for all the response she got from her.

  ‘She’s probably an orphan,’ Faherty ventured at last. ‘Family all taken with the hunger – there’s hundreds of them everywhere.’

  And so they travelled the further few miles on to Louisburgh. It was from there that Kitty had hailed. Louisburgh. The name had stuck in Ellen’s mind: it was near Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island they had been rescued by the Dove. When she asked Faherty about it, he knew – as she had known he would. ‘Pon my oath, you are right, ma’am – it’s named for some place out foreign – some battle Lord Sligo’s people was at way back.’

  Ellen was tempted to ask about Kitty’s family, but she decided against it. There wasn’t enough time, and she couldn’t afford to have word get back to Pakenham. Besides, Kitty was beyond any human help now.

  In the Octagon that was the town square of Louisburgh, the general store was barricaded against attacks by starving peasants. But most of the people were listless, incapable of breaking in anywhere. Waiting only for death’s door to open to them. When Faherty had raised the store-keeper and convinced him to open, Ellen purchased food and milk for the girl, who took not the slightest interest in it.

  ‘It’s no use, ma’am – she’s gone. Her mind is altered!’

  ‘Oh, God, Mr Faherty, what am I to do?’

  Ellen was torn in two. How could she leave this girl, not much older than her own two, helpless here on the roadside? On the other hand, how could she keep her, take care of her, if she wouldn’t eat or even drink a drop of anything? She’d have to leave her in Louisburgh. They could take her to the priest’s house.

  Ellen dashed back to the carriage and opened her case. She returned carrying one of the dresses she had brought with her for Katie and Mary.

  ‘I can’t leave her like this, the rags falling off her body. This’ll fit her, cover her for a while, at least.’

  Faherty shook his head. The woman from America could make up her own mind.

  Ellen, telling him to turn away, slipped the soft new dress of New England print over the girl’s head, throwing away the threadbare shift she’d had on.

  The dress fitted the girl easily, fell down over her bones, making her shine like any of the young ladies who, on Sundays, strolled Boston Common with their parents.

  The August sun picked up the bright blues and pinks, as Ellen settled the ruffled collar of the dress. Then she loosely tied back the white lace strings in a little bow behind the girl’s waist. The dress seemed to light up the girl’s face, catching something in her eyes and bringing her to life. Yet she neither moved nor spoke while Ellen tended to her.

  Ellen stood back from her now, admiring the transformation in her, and wondering what she should do. Her heart reached out to the girl: abandoned, locked in silence into some other world. As she stood there, Ellen had a sense that the girl was about to speak.

  She was almost right.

  First, a solitary tear rolled from the girl’s eye and fell, staining the bright fabric of the dress. Then, another single tear formed, and another, and another, as if the child could only cry in single tears, so great was her trauma. Until, from both her eyes, the tears began to come in a steady stream.

  Ellen threw her arms round the child and held her. Soon she could feel the wet flow from the girl’s eyes seep through her own clothes, and on to her skin, so great was the torrent of tears.

  ‘I’m taking her with me, Faherty! Whatever – I’m taking her with me!’ she said, confirmed in her decision.

  They left Louisburgh, turning inland, the silent girl within the comfort of Ellen’s arm, her stare now fixed not ahead, but on some spot on the Boston dress.

  Faherty wasn’t sure how much longer the journey would take them. ‘Delphi must be the ten miles from here, and Leenane another seven or eight … Beyond that I don’t know – that’s your country …’ He put it over on her without actually asking her.

  Finny, she knew, was about twelve miles on from Leenane, and she told him this. She had been in luck that her ship had landed so early in the morning. It gave her a good start. And the day would be bright late into evening.

  ‘Would we be back in Westport by nightfall?’

  ‘That depends as much on you, ma’am, as anybody. If your business gets done quickly … And it’s down to Nell, here. She’s a sturdy horse, strong as an ox, but she’ll need resting and watering, and time for grass.’

  Ellen thought for a moment. She wouldn’t spend long at Maamtrasna – just enough to ‘stand on the hearth’ to Biddy and Martin, wait on the Crucán a while with Michael. But she couldn’t delay for fear word would go back to Pakenham. She wanted to surprise him, give him no time for anything. Once she had the children, then she would get away, back to Westport, and take the first ship they could out of Ireland.

  ‘I’d be grateful if you’d try, Mr Faherty,’ she said. ‘Very grateful.’

  Her thoughts returned to the girl, silent as ever beside her in her bright new dress.

  Ellen supposed that the girl, aimlessly drifting towards Westport from back in the valleys somewhere, had never owned a proper dress. Had probably never even seen a dress such as this with its bright New World colours. Yet something within the girl knew the dress was special, not a thing ordinarily meant for her. Now its pretty pinks and blues had become her new fixation.

  Ellen hoped the girl would sleep awhile. Then maybe she might eat or drink something.

  Ahead of them, to the left, were the Sheefry Hills, and to the right the high peak of Mweelrea. Between the interlocking spurs of the two sets of mountains was Doo Lough, the Black Lake, and the Pass Road that would take them to Delphi and round the mouth of the Killary, to Leenane. They would not have much further to go then.

  But she had not reckoned on something like this. The girl was another thing for her to contend with. Yet she couldn’t have left her to die, as she surely would have – and still might, Ellen thought, if she was beyond eating.

  She wondered about the girl’s parents and family. Faherty was most likely right: if they weren’t dead, they soon would be. Stricken bodies lined the roadside. There seemed to be no hope for the people. Times had been bad, very bad, when she left Ireland, but she couldn’t believe how much things had deteriorated.

  And the silence … As they headed towards Doo Lough, she heard no living thing – no sheep, cows, pigs. Not even a dog.

  ‘Faherty …?’

  ‘I know, ma’am,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘Everything is sold for rent or eaten – even the dogs.’

  The further back into the mountains they went, the more distressed Ellen became at the sight of the people. They seemed to make an unending line of misery along the roadside. Ragged, diseased and starving, they made no sound. Some put out a hand towards them, but they were so weak that their hands could only stay outstretched for a few moments. It wasn’t that they were begging – they were beyond that. It was more a gesture of utter hopelessness; as if trying to reach out towards something that lived. For they were not alive.

  They were the dead walking. Their purgatory was now, here along the Doolough Pass Road in the corridor between the shadow of the two mountains and the black edge of the lake. The road wound downwards beside the long narrow lake, then curved away into nothing where it snaked through the pass between the two spurs of Ben Creggan and Mweelrea. It was beautiful, so coldly beautiful, this country, presiding over all the horrors along its valleys and roads. Not that those who lined the roads saw any beauty in it. Even those that were still able to lift their heads.

  The wind whipped up a bit, blowing little white edges on to the water’s ridges.

  ‘It does that back here, ma’am. It whips up when you least expect it to. Look—’ he gesticulated.

  There, ahead of th
em, as the wind in the narrow valley blew up suddenly, Ellen saw first one, then two more of the phantom-like figures who had been teetering along the road, weightless with starvation, caught by the wind and swept into the dark waters of Doo Lough as if they were wisps of straw.

  The phantoms made no sound as the black water received them. The others in the line made no sound, gave no recognition that anything out of the ordinary had happened, but just kept on walking to where they probably knew not.

  ‘The walking dead, ma’am!’ Faherty whispered out her earlier thought, making the sign of the cross as he did so.

  The whole countryside was a graveyard, peopled with these grey hollow corpses. Whether they died in the lake or on the roadside seemed not to matter to them.

  ‘Why do they keep just walking and walking?’ she said, more to herself than Faherty.

  But he answered her. ‘Well, if they reach the workhouse – and it’s open, and they can get in – then, at least, they’ll be put in a grave when they die. They know that. They just want to die decent. There’s nothing else in life for them. They just want to die decent.’

  Back deeper they went, past Delphi Lodge, home to Pakenham’s cousin. Hundreds of the poor were silently milling around the entrance. Faherty asked one of them, strong enough to speak, as to the reason. It seemed that five or six hundred starving people had descended on Louisburgh looking for any morsel of food or a ticket to the Westport Workhouse. The Relieving Officer, washing his hands of the problem, had sent them to walk the ten or eleven miles to Delphi Lodge, where two of the Guardians of the workhouse would dispense relief.

  By the time those who hadn’t died on the way reached Delphi, the two Guardians were at lunch. When they finally appeared, no relief – not a scrap of food, not even one ticket for the workhouse – was given out. Many had then left to walk back to Louisburgh, and then on to Westport. These must have been the line of people she had seen along the way, so weakened, so defeated, waiting for death to take them any way it chose.