Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  A body of men, whose overlapping voices bustled with ebullience and rebelliousness, jostled Owen back to his car. What precisely was he witnessing, he wondered, as he watched the crowd drift away? Half the speakers today had been constitutionalists, Home Rulers, MPs: men like O’Connor-Power, who had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Queen and were accordingly loathed by the militant Fenians, with whom they had today shared a public platform. Had today been about a call to arms, a readying of the troops ahead of an insurrection? If so, why had there been parliamentarians present?

  The narrow road at that moment resembled an overfed gullet and he didn’t believe he’d be going anywhere for a while. Anu danced nervously to the commotion and Owen had to calm the animal as he stood watching the departing throng. He reflected that he felt a common bond with all those around him, yet was unsure, when it came to action, where precisely he stood. Ireland’s MPs in the House of Commons promised much but hadn’t delivered. He was aware that these things could take an eternity. On the other hand, armed revolution brought much quicker results – if you won, that was. The temptation was always there to take that path because, frankly, his family couldn’t wait forever for Captain Boycott to lower the rent so he could put food on the table. And Boycott would undoubtedly be much more complicit with a shotgun barrel pressed to his temple. He shook his head, driving away the notion. He often felt like Ireland herself, who through the centuries seemed to swing like a pendulum, using violence one generation and peaceful negotiation the next, with each successive failure to secure autonomy ensuring the pendulum would simply swing back the other way. His wife, Síomha, called him a ‘foosterer’, mulling over everything so much that he could never make a decision. Sometimes it drove her to distraction; at other times she would laugh, saying that he was like a cart with a horse at either end, both pulling against each other and getting nowhere.

  He was surprised to hear his name called over the heads of the crowd. A moment later he saw Donal Doherty dodge his way towards him through the thinning numbers.

  ‘Joyce! Fancy a drink?’

  Owen shrugged. ‘Love one, but the pub here will be packed.’

  ‘Not in the pub,’ Doherty said without explanation. ‘C’mon.’

  Avoiding the eyes of two RIC constables stationed outside the graveyard wall, Doherty led him behind a row of cottages that lined the village street. Owen suddenly felt a little nervous. This man was an avowed Fenian and in the eyes of the establishment a violent subversive. Still, you could probably brand half of Ireland thus and he didn’t want to back out, having already agreed. They arrived at a two-storey building and a glance along the side-entrance towards the street revealed a hexagonal red post box. As they slipped in the rear entrance Owen touched Doherty’s arm.

  ‘Isn’t it risky for Fenians to meet in Her Majesty’s post office?’

  He smiled. ‘Man called O’Donnell runs it. Paid by Her Majesty, employed by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the IRB. Anyway, if you want to send the bastards a message, what better place than from a post office?’ He laughed and took to a flight of stairs.

  Owen’s eyes struggled to adjust to the murky light of the upstairs room. After a few seconds he realised that there were three others present, sitting on stools or standing against the walls. His unease was immediate and he rebuked himself for stepping into a situation replete with unknowns.

  ‘Relax, Joyce. You’re among friends,’ Doherty said, offering him a stool.

  ‘No, I’ll stand.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  Owen realised that he recognised one of the men, Mick Kelly. Like himself, Kelly was a tenant of Boycott. Besides the Lough Mask Estate where Owen farmed and where Boycott acted as land agent for the owner, Lord Erne, Boycott personally kept a smaller estate at nearby Kildarra. Kelly was a tenant there and a couple of years previously Owen had organised some men to bring in Kelly’s harvest after he’d broken his arm and his pleas for a rent deferment had been brushed away by Boycott.

  Doherty handed Owen a drink, the robust aroma of whiskey streaming into his nostrils. Its hit was instant and fiery.

  ‘Mick there recognised you, Joyce, says you’re a good man to have around.’

  Owen acknowledged Kelly with a nod.

  ‘So, what did ye think of today’s big event?’

  Owen looked at Doherty, scrutinising the man for some stratagem.

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know what I made of it. Parliamentarians and Fenians sharing a platform? What’s going on there? More to the point, why have you brought me into this…whatever this is?’

  ‘This is just a few friends sharing a drink,’ Doherty laughed, then quickly grew serious. ‘From what I hear you’ve no liking for landlords. I also hear you’re an intelligent man, Joyce. But I can see that for myself. And we need intelligent men.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  Kelly answered. ‘Anyone who wants the British out of Ireland.’

  ‘What about my question?’ Doherty interjected. ‘Were ye impressed with today’s event?’

  ‘Very. It was the most disciplined, well-organised protest against landlordism I’ve seen. But as I said, why are parliamentarians and Fenian militants sharing a platform?’

  ‘Well, we may have had a few decent Fenians up on that podium, but the reason there were parliamentarians there was that some of our leaders have gone soft.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Mick Kelly slammed his glass down on a table. ‘He’s taking about Davitt and Devoy getting too cosy with the likes of Parnell. The fuckin’ New Departure.’

  Owen’s interest was enlivened by the mention of the legendary Fenians John Devoy and Michael Davitt; the former one of the leaders of the American arm of the IRB, the latter a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB and one of the principle organisers of the mass meeting he’d just witnessed, or so he’d heard. Charles Stewart Parnell, on the other hand, was something of an enigma to Owen. A Protestant aristocrat from Wicklow by birth and a landlord himself, albeit a very humane one, Parnell had grown to be a fervent nationalist, become MP for County Meath and was spoken of as the next leader of the Home Rule Party.

  Doherty resumed. ‘As I was saying, Davitt and Devoy and others are talking about their New Departure, they call it. Y’know, I just came back with Devoy from America. I was there three years – raisin’ funds we were – to support the rebellion back home. To buy weapons. Or so I thought. Now Devoy and Davitt cook up this New Departure bollocks. This means they’re happy te do deals with parliamentarians like Parnell. We’re supposed to give our backing to MPs, men who’ve sworn allegiance to the fuckin’ Crown. That’s why we had militants and politicians sharing a stage today.’

  Owen nodded in understanding. He realised there would be huge advantages to moderate Fenians and constitutional nationalists, so long adversaries, uniting in a common goal. And any observer that afternoon would have come away with the feeling that a fuse had been lit. ‘Still, it sounded to me like the Fenians had top billing today.’

  Doherty dismissed this with a wave. ‘This is just the beginning. Next we know it, Parnell and Davitt will be releasing white fuckin’ doves and hoping the English give them a few scraps from their table. But the English only understand one thing. Blood. They’ve spilled ours long enough and some of us think now’s the time to start spillin’ theirs again. We could be waitin’ a lifetime for this so-called New Departure to get us anywhere.’

  Owen knocked back his drink and looked at the group of men. Outwardly they were playing along with their leaders like Devoy and Davitt, but in reality intended to pursue a much more sinister, private war. These men were killers, executioners. But hadn’t he known that from the moment he’d accepted Doherty’s invitation for a drink? Hadn’t he really known all along that, as his circumstances had deteriorated, his own darker demons had begun to win the battle? He’d watched them all come and go – The Ballinrobe Tenants’ Rights Association, The Tenants’ Rights Brotherhood, The Mayo
Tenants’ Defence League. Christ alone knew how many more groups he’d heard spouting bombastic rhetoric, getting precisely nowhere. How many more years of inertia were they going to have to endure? When he’d entered this room he’d wondered what he’d stepped into. Now he began to believe that he knew exactly where he stood. He’d mused and vacillated for decades. Today he’d seen the fire in his compatriots’ bellies lit and heard them stride away ready to do battle. Doherty walked to the window, reached up behind the pelmet and pulled down a revolver.

  ‘The thing is,’ Doherty said, eyes on the weapon as he reflectively turned it over in his hands, ‘some of us aren’t prepared to wait and see where all the talking leads. Some of us believe in more direct action.’

  Owen felt his gut tighten at the sight of the gun and was suddenly aware that if it was offered and he took it, he would be crossing a line he’d always been careful to avoid.

  ‘Most of the lads there today are in the same boat as you. Harvests getting worse, prices falling, and yet the bastards keep putting up the rents. The whole rotten system propped up by the British establishment. From what I hear of Boycott, he’s a right fucker. Treats the Irish like we’re some lower form of life. There’s lots like him. So, Joyce, are ye willing te do something about it?’

  Doherty offered the butt of the pistol up before Owen’s face. Owen met Doherty’s eyes and recognised there an icy remoteness that detached him from human compassion. He’d seen that look before, long ago and in another place, and it chilled him.

  ‘It’s the only way, Joyce.’

  Why was he hesitating? Was he a coward at heart? He’d always secretly wondered. He took an involuntary step back and half-chuckled.

  ‘You want me to become a revolutionary? I’m a fucking farmer. I’ve a wife and children to feed and a farm to run.’

  ‘You’re not a farmer, Joyce. You’re a lackey of some English lord. You exist accordin’ to English laws and English rules. You own nothin’. Not the land you work or the house your family live in. It’s no way for a man to live. Especially for an Irishman.’

  Owen glanced around at the grim faces watching from the room’s shadows, then turned back to Doherty. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘You don’t hav–’ Doherty cut himself off mid-sentence and seemed to search Owen’s face. ‘Could have sworn–’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where did you say you were from, Joyce?’

  ‘I told you, Lough Mask Estate, near Neale.’

  ‘No, I mean before that?’

  ‘I lived near Clonbur for a good few years. Before that, in the Sheeffry Hills, west of Lough Mask. Tawnyard Hill. But that was a long time ago.’

  Doherty uttered a barely audible chuckle and shook his head as though he’d been suddenly privy to some revelation.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and laughed aloud.

  CHAPTER 5

  They know the people have been dying by their thousands and I dare them to inquire what has been the number of those who have died through their mismanagement, by their principles of free trade. Yes, free trade in the lives of the Irish people.

  –Lord George Bentinck, leader of the Tory opposition, March 1847

  …the produce of our own soil is being exported every day, exported from the very spots in which the people are allowed to famish. All this is done in an empire which calls itself the most civilised, the most powerful, the most Christian and the most charitable in the world.

  –The Nationalist, April 1847

  OCTOBER 1848

  Never in his life had he felt such lassitude.

  It was as though a mountain boulder sat upon his chest, pinning him to the bed of straw. A series of pangs brought him to his full senses, if only briefly. Pain sliced across the shrivelled muscle in his back, like someone was drawing a blade across his flesh, and he gripped at the cottage wall until it passed. Then the cramp, deep in his bowel, came again and he moaned aloud with the agony of it. He slid his palm down across the ridges of his ribs to his distended belly. In trying to soothe the taut skin he broke wind again, which gave pitiful relief. He pushed his hand down further into his britches, conscious of a nagging ache in his balls. He sobbed when he cupped them, for they had shrivelled like dried berries and somehow that was worse than everything else.

  He shivered and looked to the door, praying that Thomas would step through and deliver him from his agonies. It sat slightly ajar and the gap had created a thin curtain of diaphanous light that divided the room. Within it dwelled a universe of dust specks and tiny winged creatures. In that light and through the partially open door he could also see something else: a hope, a belief even, that Thomas would return. In a subconscious movement he stretched out his open palm towards the light as though he might grasp it, and in that pose he drifted into sleep.

  His mind was playing tricks on him as he awoke, casting him back to the time his mother was alive before the blight, when the cottage had been filled with the smell of cooking food. He cursed the cruel illusion of the aroma that filled his nostrils now. The light told him it was morning, just after sunrise, and Thomas was bent over their hanging pot by the hearth, steam sweating his face. Had the hunger conjured a dream to tease his senses? Thomas turned and saw he was awake, dipped a cup into the pot and drew up a steaming broth. He came and knelt on the floor beside Owen, lifting his head.

  ‘Here, drink this, Owen. Be careful, it’s hot.’

  And then Owen was sipping a thin broth, scalding his lips and tongue, but he didn’t care. It burned in his throat and he coughed. Thomas blew on the broth and offered him more. He reached for the cup greedily, but Thomas pulled it away.

  ‘Take your time.’

  It was a sensation he’d almost forgotten, the feel and taste of food in one’s mouth. And it was accompanied by another experience long distant from his memory, that of Thomas smiling, and he realised this wasn’t some hateful hallucination. It was quite real.

  ‘We’re going te make it, Owen. Didn’t I promise ye?’

  ‘Where did you–?’

  ‘Later. First, you’ve got te get strong again. Because we’ve te go on a journey.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Little brother, we’re going to America.’

  Owen’s eyes blinked open. The cottage door had been thrown back and warm sunlight was spilling through.

  ‘Ye were calling for our mother.’

  Owen pushed himself up on an elbow to see Thomas tying string around a bundle.

  ‘I was dreaming.’

  ‘Are ye feelin’ better?’

  Owen rose to a kneeling position and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘I don’t know, I think so.’

  Thomas nodded towards the pot suspended over a smouldering fire.

  ‘Have some more broth. Get your strength back, ye’ll need it.’

  Owen rose on unsteady feet, swayed a little and took a hesitant step forward. The weakness had abated and he found he could walk without the fear that his legs would founder. He found it amazing how quickly the body could revive with nourishment. He stopped and stared down at the pot of bubbling broth, a pale, translucent brown with what looked like bits of white meat floating on the surface.

  ‘What’s been going on?’

  ‘Ye’ve been in and out of sleep since I got back, but ye’ve eaten three times.’

  ‘But where did you get the food?’

  Thomas didn’t respond. He turned his back and walked towards the open door, standing in its frame, bathed in afternoon sunshine.

  ‘We’ve got te leave. Soon. I have te get away from this place.’

  ‘Where did you get the food?’ Owen repeated, his voice betraying growing apprehension.

  ‘It’s just wild carrots, dandelions and dog rose. Father always said that dog rose kept away the scurvy. It’ll keep us going for a while. We’ve a long walk ahead.’

  His avoidance of the question only served to heighten Owen’s anxiety. He dipped a cup into the broth, held it to his nos
e and walked over to Thomas, who still had his back turned, his eyes sweeping the valley below.

  ‘There’s meat in this,’ Owen held up the steaming cup and his brother briefly allowed his eyes to flit across to it before he stepped outside. Owen followed. ‘Where did you find meat?’ He’d involuntarily raised his voice and without warning Thomas swung about, his amber eyes ablaze.

  ‘What the fuck does it matter?’ he raged, spittle flying from his mouth. ‘If I hadn’t you’d be dead now and so would I. Do ye think ye could survive on boiled piss-in-the-beds? All that matters is that we have food enough te get us te Westport. To a ship.’

  Owen looked down at the broth. ‘If it doesn’t matter, tell me. Did you steal it from another tenant?’

  Thomas swung his arm and struck the cup from Owen’s hand, sending it twirling through the air, the broth briefly defining a spiral pattern before splashing onto the bare ground. They both stared at it in silence. Such an act just one day ago would have marked one as a lunatic fit only for the Connaught Asylum. Food was the currency of the starving, and Thomas had just thrown away a small fortune.

  ‘Yes, I fuckin’ stole it! There, are ye happy now?’

  ‘Who from? Who has meat?’

  Thomas seemed to calm a little. He breathed out slowly and met Owen’s eyes. ‘From the English army.’

  ‘What?’ Owen was incredulous.

  ‘From a caravan. Thirty, forty carts. Most of them overflowing with wheat. The rest with pigs and sheep. They were heading for Westport, I s’pose, then on to a ship and off to England so the fat bastards can stuff their faces with our food while we starve.’

  ‘But how…?’

  Thomas looked along the valley. He watched as a giant shadow crossed Tawnyard Lough and moved up the hillside towards where they stood, as though God had shifted on his empyrean seat and blotted out the light. The gloom spread rapidly as the autumnal sun vanished behind a grey, obese cloud.