The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  Now, as they ran back towards the road, Ellen could see that Faherty had the carriage ready, facing the shorter route back to Westport. This time the girl had waited with him.

  She shouted at Faherty: ‘Turn it around, Mr Faherty, turn it around – we must go back to Delphi!’

  Faherty was worried.

  The woman from America with the red hair was trouble. When she told him what had happened, he knew no good would come of it. He was all for shooting landlords – taking the ‘landlord doctor’ out to them – if you could get away with it. But soon the constabulary would be out looking for them. He stole a look back at her, the marks on her face, the boy in one arm, the girl in another. She had spark all right, the redhead. She’d been right to do what she’d done – he’d back her on that. The landlord had no right to mark her like he did.

  Worried as he was, Faherty was more worried about Nell. He had grazed the horse, wiped her down with a cloth while she was up at the house shooting them. Now they had to go back the long way to Westport. Mind, there’d be light for a good few hours yet, but it was warm – hard on Nell. He’d have to stop more often, give her plenty to drink. What with two extra on board as well … They might have to stop the night at Louisburgh if she got too tired, but by then it’d hardly be worth it. He’d see after Delphi.

  Ellen knew Faherty was thinking. He had had little to say since she had asked him to turn the carriage round, and he had protested: ‘Delphi? It’s backways we’re going, ma’am … it’s a pity you didn’t know it earlier …’ He had stopped then, when he saw the look on her face. How could she have known it earlier – if only she had?

  She wondered if the horse would make it – if they’d have to put up somewhere for the night, at Maam or at Leenane. But they couldn’t – word would get back to Delphi ahead of them and she’d be stopped from getting the children. She looked at Patrick. He hadn’t said much at all to her, had seemed taken aback by the presence of the silent girl. Ellen thought he was glad to see herself, but she wasn’t sure. Didn’t know what he was thinking.

  Patrick sneaked a look up at the woman whose arm was round him. She looked like he remembered her, but different. All the hair that used to fall down around her face when she tucked him in was tied up now; cut short, he thought. And her voice sounded different, the way she wasn’t afraid of Pakenham. She smelled different too, not like she used to when she’d shown him how to stack the fire of a morning. Now she smelled all fancy, like Miss Pakenham.

  At first they used to look out for her every night once the summer was over, thinking it was a long time since she had gone. Although Mary kept saying it was too soon. Then the Christmas, then the next summer was in. And there was no sign of her. Before they were taken away, Mary still got them all to pray for her. But he began to think she was never coming back, that it was all a trick of some kind. Now she was here all dressed up like a fancy woman, and he wondered did she have a fancy man beyond in wherever she was? And the girl in the fancy dress that said nothing – was she going to be one of them now? And Annie – little Annie – had she left Annie behind with the fancy man?

  He had started to like it at Tourmakeady Lodge after a while. He liked working with the men, out in the yards, or the fields, carrying things for them, listening to their talk. He didn’t like Beecham – he remembered the agent from the night their house was thrown down. He’d been glad when Beecham was put into Lough Nafooey. Heard some of the men whisper that it was young Roberteen and the Shanafaraghaun man that did it. He remembered the two of them coming to the house to his father. And when he was older he had decided he’d run away and join up with the Shanafaraghaun man and the Young Irelanders. But what would happen now, if she took him back with her to America? They’d have to get Katie and Mary first – he’d help her with that. He felt her arm squeeze him and it gave him a funny feeling, like it was long ago again, back in the valley, before she went.

  Ellen turned to her son and took him by the shoulders.

  ‘Let me look at you, Patrick,’ she said, filled with happiness at having him back. ‘What a man you’ve grown into. Your father would be proud of you – as I am.’

  She threw her arms round him, but he stiffened, not wanting her embrace.

  She let go of him, hurting at his rejection. It would take time. Who could tell what stories he had been filled with about her, what tricks his mind had been playing on him all those long nights.

  ‘You look different,’ he said accusingly. And then, looking at the girl in the bright dress, he asked, ‘Where’s Annie?’

  She hesitated before answering him. ‘Annie died, Patrick, of disease … in Australia,’ she said quietly, putting her hand on his sleeve.

  She could see that this took him aback, affected him, but he said nothing, only his father’s eyes hardening at her.

  ‘This girl was abandoned’ – Ellen flinched as she said the words – ‘I brought her with me …’ Realizing how it must sound to his ears. That after leaving behind him and her other children, she had first rescued someone else’s child, and not her own.

  For the rest of the trip to Delphi, Patrick did not speak to her. He was as silent as the silent girl.

  55

  Faherty and Nell did well and they reached Delphi Lodge before the light failed them. Apart from a brief pause by the river so that Ellen could clean her wounds, they had travelled without stopping.

  Along the way, Ellen tried to tell Patrick about her life. Tried to ask him about himself, and the last two years. Tried to ask him about Mary and Katie, and whether he had heard any word of them since they were sent to Delphi.

  She got nowhere.

  It grieved her deeply, the more so because she had been living for the moment she would see him again ever since they parted.

  But when they arrived at Delphi and she told him to stay with Faherty and the girl, he wouldn’t. He insisted on coming with her. So she agreed, thinking it would help ease things between them.

  She untied her hair as she approached Delphi Lodge – worrying in case Katie and Mary wouldn’t recognize her. Patrick’s ‘you look different’ had taken her aback. She knew he had meant more than what was said.

  They kept to the perimeter of the gardens, using the shrubbery for cover. She hoped that maybe she would see Mary or Katie in the kitchen or one of the rooms and attract their attention without raising the alarm.

  They were in luck. Patrick spotted one of the twins in a room towards the back of the house. Ellen’s heart pounded madly, the instinct to call out, almost unbearable.

  For a moment she wasn’t sure which one of them it was.

  She told Patrick to wait in the trees that surrounded the Lodge. Then she crept closer to the window, trying to control her feelings, afraid that if she made a sound it could ruin everything after all this time wanting to get them back.

  It was Mary!

  Ellen felt as if her heart would burst with the feelings of relief and joy she experienced on seeing her child again.

  She tapped at the window.

  Mary, startled, looked up from sorting out the linen in the laundry-room.

  Ellen saw her daughter’s eyes open wide with disbelief. Then Mary ran to the window, her face breaking into the widest of smiles. Like Patrick, she had grown taller, but she was thin and tired-looking. Under her fine head of red hair, Mary’s face looked pasty and drawn.

  Now she pressed her face against the window, her fingers reaching up to where Ellen’s face was. Then Mary faltered, her expression changing to one of concern as she saw the marks Pakenham had made on her mother.

  Ellen, her eyes alight, her whole body trembling, beckoned Mary to come outside.

  ‘At last I have them safe, thanks be to God and His Holy Mother,’ Ellen whispered, waiting for her children, breathing up a prayer to Heaven.

  In a few moments Mary flew straight into her arms, no reticence, no holding back. Nothing had changed between them.

  ‘A Mhamaí, a Mhamaí!’ the child called t
o her, having no words that could say more.

  Ellen clasped Mary tightly to her, keeping an eye over her shoulder for Katie.

  But there was no Katie.

  In her arms Ellen felt Mary’s happiness change with a shudder into big, uncontrollable sobs of grief.

  And she felt the knot of fear rise in the pit of her own stomach again. Something was wrong, awfully wrong.

  ‘Where’s Katie?’ she said, terrified to let the words come out of her – once they were said needing an answer.

  Mary raised her tear-stained face from her mother’s embrace. ‘Katie’s gone, a Mhamaí-Katie’s gone!’

  56

  Would it never end? Every time she seemed to be on the point of at last getting out from under the curse of the old woman’s riddle, it was snatched away from her in some cruel and vicious twist. Now this!

  Mary had told her and Patrick what had happened, sobbing out her little heart as she did so.

  She and Katie had been very frightened when they had first been separated from Patrick and taken to Delphi – not knowing what would happen to them, or if they would ever see Patrick again. They were also afraid that, having been moved, Ellen would not be able to find them when she came back for them.

  The work was hard at Delphi Lodge, but the twins were together, and they were fed regularly. Daily they watched from inside the Big House as the poor came looking for any scraps, any leavings at all – even from the animals.

  Mary described how one day, a girl came begging for food round the back of the house and appeared at the laundry window as Ellen had done.

  ‘A Mhamaí, she was so hungry, and her clothes all torn … I ran into the pantry and took a bulóg of bread and ran out to her with it. She bit into it there and then, she was that starved.’

  But when Mary had come back into the house, the housekeeper, Mrs Joyce – a harsh mistress from back the Killary way – was waiting for her.

  ‘Well if it isn’t her ladyship of the house, giving out bread to beggars,’ the Killary woman had greeted Mary with. ‘We’ll see about this when the Master returns.’

  Katie had leapt to her twin’s defence: ‘Mary was right to do it.’

  The Killary woman had then turned on Katie. ‘Oh, was she, you impudent little dalteen? Well, we’ll see about you too!’

  It was left at that until a few days later. Then the woman had come to them and said, ‘The Master has decided that as your punishment, Lady Mary, for stealing bread, your sister will be sent to the Westport workhouse. There she will remain for four weeks. If, during that time, your behaviour is beyond reproach in every respect, then Katie will be returned here to you.’

  ‘I told her, a Mhamaí, that it wasn’t Katie’s fault – to take me, that it was me who stole the bread, not her!’ Mary said to her mother, the cruel memory of it causing her to break out in great wrenching sobs again.

  Ellen took the child up in her arms.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Mary – it was a bad thing for those people to do – you couldn’t have stopped it, a stóirín!’ she said, her heart bleeding for the suffering her child had been caused. ‘Go on, tell me the rest, Mary. It’s all right – we’ll get Katie back.’

  Mary went on to describe how the twins had clung to each other, frightened but defiant. Despite Mary’s pleas to take the two of them, the woman had separated them and dragged Katie away, saying, ‘Maybe the workhouse will teach this other cailín a mouthful of manners as well!’

  The last thing Mary could tell her was that, before she was taken away, Katie had shouted to her, ‘Tell Mamaí where I am if she comes!’

  That was over two weeks ago now.

  Mary had worked and worked, worrying in case anything she might or might not do would be further used to punish her – to keep Katie away from her. Never before separated from her twin sister, each night she cried herself to sleep, praying that Ellen would return and rescue them. No wonder the child looked so thin, so haunted – bearing the guilt of Katie being punished for her wrongdoing. Working herself to the bone to get Katie back.

  What a cruel, cruel punishment to visit on the children, Ellen thought. The crueller the fact that they were twins. Then her thoughts raced on to Westport Workhouse. Pray God they weren’t too late!

  A shiver ran through her as she remembered the time she had gone there for Michael. The misery in the place – the hopelessness, the overcrowded conditions, people sleeping on top of each other. The diseases.

  The black, black wall, where the lime would burn and corrode away the typhus, or the dysentery, or the cholera. Corrode everything that went into it.

  Her insides churning, she shouted at Faherty: ‘Westport – the workhouse! Quick, Mr Faherty, quick, before we’re too late!’

  As they headed the last twenty-five miles for Westport, back along the road they had come in the early morning, Ellen knew that they would not make the town before nightfall. She explained to Faherty what she had learned from Mary, but Nell, tired after a long day, now had to haul five of them. And even if the three children between them didn’t weigh much, it was still extra.

  Faherty was deeply concerned about Nell. They must have been a good fourteen hours on the road by now, he thought. He rested the horse every few miles, made them get out ‘to take the weight off her back’. Ellen was anxious, impatient to be on the road. Every hour mattered for Katie. She thought of Michael. She had been too late with him. She couldn’t fail Katie.

  Faherty encouraged Nell: ‘Come on, Nell! Come on, girl, don’t let us down now!’ hoping that it was not all going to be a wasted journey.

  ‘More comes out dead than comes out alive out of them places!’ he whispered under his breath so she wouldn’t hear him.

  He’d bring them as far as Louisburgh and decide then. Nell couldn’t take much more. And if anything happened to the horse, he’d be finished.

  Patrick was genuinely delighted to see Mary, and didn’t try to hide it. He was also very upset, Ellen could see, as Mary whispered to him about Katie.

  Ellen had decided not to tell Mary about Annie until they rescued Katie. The child already had too much to cope with. But the first thing Mary asked when she got into the carriage and saw the silent girl was, ‘Where’s Annie?’ As if, somehow, the silent girl had something to do with Annie not being present.

  So Ellen had to tell her, and hold her, and explain that Annie would want them to be strong and brave and get Katie.

  Mary didn’t say much except, ‘Yes, a Mhamaí.’ Then she cried all the more.

  On past Doo Lough they went again; as before, the wasted bodies of the dead in ditch and drain, a grim reminder of what might lie awaiting them in Westport.

  ‘I’ll get out and walk a while, Mr Faherty,’ Ellen said. ‘It’ll make it easier on Nell.’

  So she took off her fancy shoes and stockings and threw them on the floor of the carriage. The silent girl made to come with her, but Ellen pushed her back down into the seat again. But she remained close to the carriage on the side the girl sat.

  Her feet, softened by Boston’s streets, were no match for the Pass Road of Doo Lough. Soon, like her face, they were bloodied and bruised. But her not being in the carriage had made a difference to Nell, who picked up somewhat from the laggardly pace to which she had fallen – thus causing even further problems for Ellen.

  When eventually they reached Louisburgh, darkness was in on them.

  Ellen begged Faherty to take them on to Westport. ‘If not, I’ll walk it myself with the children,’ she said, meaning it. How could she sleep even the few hours to dawn, and Katie only fifteen miles down the road from them – in the workhouse?

  Faherty had to admire her. She’d do it too – she’d neither give up nor give in, this woman from America, not while there was breath left in her body. He agreed to bring them the rest of the way. Now that night had come it would be cooler – easier on Nell. And, at any rate, if he himself wasn’t back at all tonight, Herself at home would only be worrying about him
.

  The Reek pushed itself up out of the night as if searching out some higher light.

  Faherty urged Nell onward. ‘We’re nearly there, girl – the last few miles and then a long rest and a nosebag of hay for you,’ he coaxed.

  Westport was thronged with the poor. Ragged and wretched they were, wandering, wandering, ever wandering, hoping for something, they knew not what, to happen. Some miracle that would descend on them and relieve them of their woe, and the slow, slow death by starvation.

  But Westport had no miracles for them. Many lay huddled within its streets, waiting, sleeping, dying.

  ‘It’s closed, ma’am. It’s closed again!’ Faherty’s words cut into her.

  The doors of Westport Workhouse were closed, not to keep its inmates in, but to keep them out. All around the entrance, the people for whom it was a last refuge, even a place to die, clamoured and wailed. Keening their own deaths, it seemed, that must surely result from them being ejected on to the streets of Westport. Without food, without anywhere to go, they would join the other hordes wandering aimlessly until Death saved them further misery and took them.

  Ellen was frantic. How would she find Katie amidst all the masses of starving people?

  She asked Faherty to take the girl for an hour or two, till they found Katie. He agreed, if she’d come. Ellen then spoke to the girl, telling her to go with Faherty, that she’d be back for her. She went easily enough.

  ‘Patrick, Mary, come with me – and stay by me!’

  Ellen knew they didn’t have much time, but that weight she bore herself. She did not tell them her fears.

  They worked their way around the walls of the work-house, hoping that Katie might have stayed close by. The destitute in their ragged clothes eyed Ellen with suspicion, nervous of this handsome, well-dressed woman who was not one of them. Who had somehow escaped the clutches of Famine. Yet they did not insult or assail her as she moved amongst them, searching for Katie. ‘Lost a child, poor woman,’ they said. ‘Lost a child!’