The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  The others, the hundreds she now saw, had remained, sitting among the trees at Delphi, hoping against hope that, if they remained long enough, something would happen to improve their lot.

  They pressed on, leaving behind them the starving hundreds. Ellen was consumed with guilt and grief. How much worse could it get?

  ‘There’s not a thing you, nor I, nor anybody can do, ma’am,’ Faherty said. ‘It’s the identical same all over the country.’

  Ellen said nothing, growing more silent, like the girl. Understanding that no words could convey the horrors, heaped one on top of the other, that she was witnessing. Understanding how the weight of it all could silence you – strike you dumb.

  The Bundorragha River bounced and bubbled beside them as once more they left the low ground. She and the girl had sat on one of the many large rocks whitened by the sun while Faherty watered Nell and let the horse graze a while on the river’s banks. She took some food herself and tried the girl again, but to no avail. Then up and on they went, over the brow of the land, while below them the Killary spread out. And as they followed the sinuous road, trapped between mountainside and sea, far beneath them she could see the low-water mud flats and sand bars, and far above, towering over them and the harbour, the peak of the Devilsmother.

  Before the town they stopped by the Erriff River, she wanting to look a while at the low waterfall of Aasleagh. Here the Máistir had taken her as a child to ‘see the water dance over the rocks’. Beautiful then, it was still beautiful now. Even in this wasteland. Even in the midst of so much desolation.

  Now she was home, in familiar territory. Just ahead was Leenane, where once she had come for the Pattern Days.

  Where she had first set eyes on Michael – and, she thought darkly, Pakenham.

  Soon she would have to face him, stand up to him, and take her children away from him. She consoled herself with the thought that, until that moment, the children would at least be safe at Tourmakeady, sheltered from all that she had seen on this terrible, terrible journey. She looked for a moment at the girl, still vacant, beside her. At least at Tourmakeady her children would be spared the fate of this poor child, and thousands like her.

  After Leenane, Faherty drove on through the valley, then before Maam turned left bringing them high into the mountains of Joyce’s country. Soon they reached the gap that led to the next valley and Currarevagh. Then they would swing down by the Trá Bán, the silver strand near Shanafaraghaun, and on past Lough Nafooey until they forked off before Finny on to the rough track that would take them to Crucán na bPáiste.

  There would be her valley: Maamtrasna.

  Then she would be home.

  52

  She was by then excited, nervous, fearful, and excited again, as they breasted the hill below the Crucán that would allow her her first view of home in almost two years.

  Then she saw it!

  She made Faherty stop the carriage. Below was her valley. To the left, under the Partry Mountains, the ribbon of road that would take her past Derrypark then on to Tourmakeady and her children. Ahead was Lough Mask, sparkling in the sun as it had that August morning three years ago when she had looked into its waters and known she was carrying Annie. She thought of her child for a moment – far away in Australia, laid down beside different waters. Now, here, all the little green islands that she remembered were still there, catching the glint of sun and water.

  Her eye drew back along the road from Glenbeg, then up along the side of ‘the mountain’, as they always called it, giving it no other name. Up there, hidden away somewhere, lay the Hare’s Garden, where Michael and Martin Tom Bawn, and Roberteen, had left their sweat in the rocky ground to take from it the life-saving lumpers.

  Life-saving? With Michael gone, Roberteen gone, Annie gone?

  And what of Martin Tom Bawn and Biddy?

  She would see them later.

  Now she must go to the Crucán.

  She walked up the hill of the burial place of the children, to look for the leac with which she had marked his grave. First, she removed her shoes and stockings. Never before had she walked this place anything other than barefooted. Now she wanted to feel its grass welcome her, to clench its earth with her feet. Be part of it again.

  She entered the burial area. Everywhere there were leacs and mounds of earth. This wasn’t how she’d remembered it. She stumbled, reached out a hand to save herself, then recoiled when it touched something that was neither rock nor grass. Something that lay partly uncovered by the thinnest layer of earth. The remains of a human hand.

  With a shock she realized that all these mounds were graves, all these stones were markings. Some of the newer graves were barely covered. Time and the elements would soon expose them. Those who had made them must have been too weak to dig. Too weak to cover in properly the bodies of their loved ones. The memory of Grosse Île flashed across her mind, the mass unmarked graves. At least there they had coffins, and a priest, or a minister.

  At last finding the large rock which stood over Michael’s grave, she fell to her knees and began to pray.

  Her prayer was a remembrance. A remembrance of their life and their love; of days in the fields working together; of days on the mountain when the blue and the brightness were almost blinding. She remembered Sundays going with him over the high road of Bóithrín a tSléibhe to the small church at Finny, Katie running to the edge to bring her a fist of wildflowers. All those miles they’d walked – she happy just to be by his side. Evenings by the hearth, watching the flames rise, thinking of nothing, but thinking of everything too, stealing a glance at him – her dark ‘Fair-haired Boy’. And the nights when all these other joys seemed to come together, to be expressed in the deep joining of themselves as man and woman. When even the act of love itself was transcended, left far behind them, as their beings sang to each other.

  She told him then of all that had befallen her since she left him, asked his forgiveness for the times she had let him slip her mind.

  Told him about Annie. Felt his stillness, his sadness, as he listened to how his last-born had died in the strange far-off land.

  She had so much to tell him. There was no knowing when or if she would come back again. Maybe it would be years until they were all settled in America and she could return to kneel here, talk with him again.

  She told him about Lavelle. No angry words crossed his lips. She wanted him to reproach her, to say it wasn’t a right thing what she felt, to say it wasn’t yet time – that he wasn’t yet cold in the grave. But he said nothing, nothing at all to her.

  As he did in life, so in death, she thought. He was leaving it to her, trusting her to work it out for herself. But she didn’t want to.

  Finally, she asked him for the strength to do what she must do for their children. To rescue them. To bring them all safely out of this blighted land. She crossed herself in concluding rite and stood up, startled by the presence of the girl behind her.

  She had left her in Faherty’s care at the carriage, wanting to be alone with her thoughts on the Crucan. She wondered when the girl had joined her. And what was going on behind that vacant stare of hers, as she stood in some kind of mute testament, halfway between the living and the dead all around them?

  Below, Faherty looked up at them.

  ‘What a strange sight they are, the two of them,’ he whispered to Nell. ‘Standing on top of that hill: the red-haired fancy woman from America, in her finery and bare feet, with that waif of a girl – not saying a word to a soul, all dressed up out in this wild place, and she herself barely in it at all.’

  The girl shadowed Ellen as she walked to the large leac, down a bit from the Crucán, on the Finny side. It was here, sitting on the cradle of rock, that Ellen had waited for Michael the day he went to Clonbur to see Father O’Brien. Here, she had felt the chill of the blight-cloud as it had rained down its death on her valley.

  What a place of unnatural beauty it was. She looked at the girl. Did she see any of it? The gran
deur of the place was in stark contrast to the girl’s own emaciated condition. If she couldn’t get her to eat soon, the girl would die. The bright Boston dress would be her shroud.

  Ellen looked across the mountain path. Was old Sheela still stuck away up there in her hidden corner of the mountain? Was she even alive? And what of the riddle – was it answered now? Needing to know, Ellen decided that she would cross the threshold of the old woman’s hut. She’d bring the girl with her – not that she’d have any choice, for the girl was sticking to her like a second skin.

  The door of Sheela-na-Sheeoga’s hut was ajar. Nevertheless Ellen knocked on it.

  Receiving no reply she entered, the girl in her wake. ‘God bless all here!’ she called out in English into the darkness.

  Silence.

  ‘Sheela, an bhfuil tú ann?’ she asked, enquiring if the old woman was there. Movement in the far corner caught her attention.

  ‘Ellen, Ellen Rua,’ a weak voice said. ‘I knew you’d come …’

  ‘Sheela!’ Ellen said, beginning to move towards the sound.

  ‘Keep back! Keep back!’ the voice struggled to raise itself. ‘The fiabhras dubh is on me!’

  Ellen strained her eyes to see the old woman. So she had contracted the dreaded typhus. ‘Sheela, can I help you? Get you anything?’

  ‘Not a thing, craythur … not a thing. ’Tisn’t long more Sheela-na-Sheeoga will be in it at all.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Sheela.’

  ‘Ellen Rua, don’t talk ráiméis!’ Remember who it is you’re speaking to. What of the child?’

  Ellen knew the old midwife would want to know. ‘Annie is dead, Sheela. Beyond in Australia …’ Ellen said, her heart heavy with the saying of it.

  The old woman fell silent.

  ‘Last year?’ she asked presently.

  ‘Yes, last year,’ Ellen replied, in a low voice.

  ‘I should have known it. A strange thing came over me a while last year,’ the old woman began to tell her. ‘First it was a cry in the night like the Banshee, but not the Banshee. Then I was floating, and there was strange music drumming all around me, and voices speaking to me in a foreign tongue …’

  ‘Yes, Sheela, that’s how it was,’ Ellen said gently, remembering the cry of the Mingka Bird and Wiwirremalde, and Annie’s spirit rising with Ngurunderi to the white wasteland of the Milky Way.

  ‘Oh, Annie, mo stóirín,’ Sheela-na-Sheeoga said, and Ellen could hear the sadness in the old woman’s voice. ‘She’s at rest now in the stars with the Máistir and your dear mother Cáit,’ she added, her voice fading.

  ‘Sheela, I have something to ask you …’ Ellen began, wanting to ask about the girl.

  But the old woman stopped her. ‘I know, Ellen Rua,’ she said weakly. ‘I know … She who is with you will speak at the moment of silence. Her voice will be great in the far-off land, and she will be silenced no more!’

  Ellen was startled by this and looked at the girl beside her. The girl, as ever, showed no reaction, no movement, only stared into the dark corner where the old woman was.

  How could Sheela have known what she, Ellen, was going to ask her? How could she have known about Annie and the Mingka Bird and the Ngarrindjeri? And what was she saying now about this girl beside her? Ellen hadn’t yet fully understood the first riddle about the whitest flower; now she had given her another one.

  ‘Speak at the moment of silence.’ What did that mean?

  The girl was already silent. ‘The far-off land’ … was that Australia, Canada, America – or somewhere else? ‘She will be silenced no more.’ Was the old woman predicting conflict or greatness for this waif of a girl who had no family, no speech, not even a name?

  ‘You have another question, Ellen Rua?’ came the almost inaudible voice from the corner. ‘Ask before it is too late.’

  ‘Sheela …’ Ellen took a step forward into the gloom ‘… the riddle you made me – the whitest flower becoming the blackest flower, and me to crush it. Is it finished now when I get my children back? Will that be the end of it all, Sheela?’

  Ellen waited, bent forward, listening intently. She heard the starting of a sound as if the old woman was ready to answer her.

  She waited, but there was nothing.

  ‘Is it finished, Sheela?’

  Ellen moved forward again, as if to physically will the answer from her.

  The old woman never answered her before she died.

  53

  Ellen came back down the mountain, back past the Crucán. She had been afraid to touch the old woman for fear of getting the typhus again, so instead she blocked up the doorway with stones, making the cabin her burial place. Her grim task complete, she turned right on to the path that would take her down the valley to the village. So intent was she on trying to make sense of what had passed between Sheela and herself that, at first, she didn’t notice it.

  The valley was silent. Nothing stirred except the puff of a breeze over the Mask. No bird sang. No sound of the dogs of Derrypark yelping carried across the lake to her. No sound of men calling in the fields, or the high, bright sound of children. Nothing. It chilled her blood.

  In silence she and the girl picked their way down into the village. First one cabin, then the next, and the next, and the one after that again. All of them silent.

  ‘Where there’s fire there’s life.’ She looked above the village seeking the tell-tale sign of life. Now, she saw nothing – not even a wisp of smoke from any of the cabins. All of the fires of the valley had gone out. There were no fires because there were no people. They, like the fires, had been extinguished by An Gorta Mór.

  It was as if they had never been.

  Where had they gone to? The extra stones she saw on the Crucán – some of her people were there, she knew. Some would be amongst the long thin line of road people they had passed along by Doo Lough. Or those at Delphi, hoping for food from the big house, then, in desperation trying to make the workhouse at Westport. She felt ashamed that she had not recognized them – her own neighbours.

  Some, like Roberteen, would have gone to Canada or America. The New World or the next world, their only choice.

  She stood by their own cabin. All that was left in place were a few corner-stones, and a scattering of other stones, the grass licking up around the sides of them.

  This was all that remained of their lives. All the days and nights of them. This place where prayers were said. Where she had sat and held the Lessons with the children. Where the children were born. This was the place where laughter and love – and tears – had been. Now it was only a few stones, a few blades of grass. Pakenham would move sheep in here when the time was right.

  She looked at where the door had been. Her eye then followed the line from it up to the spring-well, where she would stand calling Katie and Mary down from drawing the water, they spilling the half of it on the way. The same door she had looked out of, watching for Michael and Martin Tom Bawn and Roberteen to come back down the mountain with the turf, or the hidden lumpers.

  And what of Martin Tom Bawn, and Biddy? Slowly, she went to the cabin of their nearest neighbours. It was still standing. But the roof was pulled in and the doors and windows blocked up.

  What had happened to Biddy and Martin? Was there any possibility that they, too, like Sheela-na-Sheeoga had been, were still alive?

  She pulled at the stones blocking the door.

  ‘Here, help me!’ she called to the girl.

  But the girl just stood there as before.

  Ellen tore back the stones to make a big enough hole for herself to clamber through. The stench which met her nostrils was nauseating, forcing her to retreat and gasp for air.

  Covering her nose, she called into the hole, ‘Martin! Biddy! Are ye in there? It’s me, Ellen!’

  She got no answer.

  She put her head further in through the opening, hauling herself up on the stones.

  ‘Martin! Biddy!’ She broke off, sensing some movement, hearing a
sound.

  She pulled herself over the stones until she was more in than out of the cabin. Inside, it was dark, like Sheela’s, and she couldn’t see that well. Gingerly she set her feet down on the cabin floor.

  ‘Biddy!’ she called out again, the awful putrid stench going down her throat, almost having a taste to it. She swallowed hard, trying not to retch.

  There was a movement – they were alive!

  She moved forward, stumbling over a large stone. She fell, her hands outstretched. As she did she heard the sound of a low growl. She looked up alarmed. There, a few feet from her face, eyes shining, lips pulled back over its teeth, stood the Tom Bawns’ dog.

  The dog snarled, forcing her to retreat. But not before she had seen what was behind it. What it was guarding. What she had disturbed it from. There, huddled together in the corner, lay the lifeless bodies of her neighbours, Martin’s arms around Biddy in a final embrace. But that was not all.

  She had seen, too, the shirt reefed from the man’s arm and shoulder where he had sought to protect his wife from the starving animal. She had seen the flesh torn from his bones.

  Outside, Ellen threw herself against the wall of the house, sobbing, gasping for breath, praying that death had claimed Martin and Biddy before their dog had.

  Oh, Sweet Jesus on the Cross, it was horrible! Horrible!

  Her two dear friends had tried to entomb themselves, wanting to die together. Not out on some road where they would lie unburied. The dog must have slipped in somehow. They surely would never have kept it with them, she thought, although they loved the mangy thing.

  What was happening in the world when this could happen? Her people, her friends, all gone. Every single last cabin empty, levelled or pulled in on top of themselves while people still had the strength. The whole village deserted. In the name of all that was holy or even unholy, how could anybody who had witnessed any of this – seen even one hundredth of the suffering and agony she had witnessed, stand by and do nothing?

  Had any of those in power ever set foot in the place? And, if they had, how in God’s name could they not do something? How could they close the soup kitchens, the workhouses, the Relief Works – speeding up starvation and death? Unless that was the result they had wanted all along.