Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  ‘Not from the likes of him. Fuck him and his kind.’

  Owen grabbed his arm as he went to turn away and Thomas met his eyes sharply.

  ‘Let me go, little brother,’ he said with grim conviction and after a moment’s hesitation, Owen complied. Thomas picked his bundle from the ground and set off along the road, the noise of the wheels of Tuke’s car fading into memory. ‘Hurry up. Rain’s getting heavier. We’ll have te bed down before it gets too dark.’

  Owen heaved a burdened sigh and followed.

  The village of Derryheagh loomed from the thickening mist not half a mile further along. The rain was heavier now and their clothes were soaked through, the fresh ruts from Tuke’s car already filling with water. From the dim light they could guess that darkness would descend about them within the hour. They were chilled to the bone and the only warmth came from their exertions; even their toughened feet were near to numb. Only their youth held them upright.

  There were perhaps twelve homes in Derryheagh, clustered together just off to the right of the track, surrounding a small clearing with a trough of stone at its centre. They approached with caution, terrified they might be set upon and their food stolen, but nothing stirred at their approach. The place seemed abandoned, as though its inhabitants had as one departed in the night. A few cottages had been burnt out, but seven or eight remained intact yet utterly silent. None had fires lit against the October chill and no candlelight flickered. But for the spattering rain against the mud, the silence was total.

  ‘Maybe it’s deserted,’ Owen whispered.

  ‘Be careful.’

  They walked into the clearing, eyes darting to every side. Owen went to the first house to his right and peered through a crack in a shuttered window, but he could see nothing but blackness. He shook his head at Thomas, who was investigating the cottage opposite.

  Owen turned from the window and stepped to the door beside him. He gently pushed, the door creaking as it swung inwards with little resistance. He took a hesitant step and at once his nostrils were assailed by a smell so vile and overwhelming that he was forced to clasp a hand over his mouth and nose. As his eyes adjusted he could see more, but dearly wished he couldn’t, for six famished and ghastly figures were huddled in a corner on straw that was blotched with human waste. There was a woman, dead and open-eyed, her gaze locked for eternity on the thatch, a claw-like hand clutching at her breast, her legs bent at unnatural angles as though her final death throes had caused her to kick out. Beside her lay four children, all with the same grim countenance of death, their limbs and faces black, lips drawn back from yellowed teeth, and purple blotches on their skin, which was wrinkled like an old man’s. The man, if that’s what it was, lay against the wall, as though slumped there drunk, his chin resting on his chest, a vast stain of dried blood all about him where the flow from his throat had gushed forth. A knife lay beside his open hand.

  A squawk escaped Owen’s mouth and the rats that had been feeding on the bodies scurried into darkened corners. The man must have witnessed his family’s agonised death and hastened to join them by slitting his own throat. Owen stepped back in horror and bumped against the doorframe, which caused him to yell and hurl himself out into the rain.

  Thomas ran to him, his own face drained of blood, and grasped Owen’s arm.

  ‘Are ye all right?’ Thomas’s voice was shaking.

  Owen bent to retch, but nothing came.

  ‘I checked two others. They’re all dead, far as I can see.’ Thomas paused. ‘Jesus Christ…But we have te check the rest, there might be an empty house.’

  ‘I’m not staying here! It’s a place of the dead!’ Owen said through trembling lips.

  ‘We have to! We’ll freeze te death if we don’t. They’re just bodies. Come on.’ Thomas started to pull Owen beside him.

  ‘Just bodies? They’re people, they’re all dead.’

  Thomas stopped and looked into his brother’s face. He spoke tenderly, his voice quivering. ‘Owen, I know. I’m scared as well. But we’ll do this together. We’ll be fine.’

  Owen nodded after a time and they continued past the next two cottages, which had been burnt out. At the last one in the row they found a lone emaciated man, the carcass of a dog that had provided his final meal at his feet.

  ‘Look,’ Thomas whispered, pointing to a pile of clothing and shoes. ‘He must have taken the clothes from his family as they died. Maybe te sell them.’ He stepped into the hovel and gathered some clothes and two pairs of leather brogues, securing them in a blanket. They turned to go and were halted by a pitiful wail.

  ‘Is that you, Father McHale?’

  Owen and Thomas exchanged horrified glances as they realised the man by the hearth was still alive. They stood frozen to the spot.

  ‘Who is that? Who comes into my house? Máire? Have you food? Is that you?’ He was making pathetic attempts to push himself up on his elbow, which repeatedly collapsed beneath him.

  ‘He’s blind. Come on, we can’t help him.’

  Owen didn’t argue and they both turned to flee. Another man stood in their path, silhouetted against the grey light.

  ‘Who are you? Are ye Quakers? Have ye food?’

  Thomas gasped. ‘We’ve no food. We only sought shelter.’

  Behind them the blind man continued to yell in semi-delirium. The wretched phantom in the doorway pointed at the blanket that Thomas had just bundled together.

  ‘What’s that? Is it food? Let me see. Open it.’ He moved closer. Owen and Thomas glanced at each other and instinctively rushed at the man as one, their joint strength sending his paltry frame crashing to one side. As he fell to the ground they burst into the open air, only to be confronted by as many as ten haggard wretches. Some looked like old men, but most were women with children. One woman was naked from the waist up, her decency lost in the ravages of her starvation, ribs protruding through her skin. Imploring hands outstretched, they moved towards Owen and Thomas with the speed of desperation. The brothers looked about but they were at the wrong end of the clearing and beyond the cottages was a hill thick with brambles.

  ‘We have no food!’ Thomas screamed from the depths of his lungs, to no avail.

  Thomas felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see that the man they’d knocked aside was upon them. He swung about and planted his bony fist into the man’s face; blood spurted from his nose as he collapsed.

  ‘Run!’ Thomas yelled.

  They hurled themselves into the baying, wailing tangle of emaciated arms and struck out at the hands that tried to claw free their precious bundles. Crying children fell in the mud, women screamed murder at them and tore at their clothes. They’d almost broken through when Owen stumbled and fell. A woman was on top of him in an instant, tearing at his bundle with a ferocity that belied her corpse-like body. He rolled on his back and struck her in the mouth with his fist.

  ‘Owen!’ Thomas screamed.

  He scrambled backwards on his arse and finally forced himself up to standing, then turned and fled with Thomas, piteous wails and curses trailing in their wake. They ran for a hundred yards before they collapsed by the roadside, chests heaving, hearts pounding, their bodies wracked with countless agonies. When finally their hearts began to slow, they both fell to sobbing.

  They spent the night in the collapsed ruins of a solitary cottage on a hillside just south of another village known as An Cregan Bán, which meant ‘The White Rock’. They sat huddled in the partial shelter of what had been the hearth.

  In the depths of the seemingly unending black night, a wind arose and howled down the valley, spattering them with painfully cold rain. They’d eaten of their meagre rations, a piece of meat each and a handful of the soft red fruits of the dog rose. Their venture into the village had yielded only some rags of clothing, a blanket, and, most profitably, the shoes. Owen’s fitted almost snugly, but Thomas’s were too large and he had to stuff the toecaps with grass. Beyond that, Derryheagh had brought them only a collection of im
ages that would dance in and out of their consciousness forever, their minds unwilling or unable to bury memories of such vividly morbid power.

  Owen sat awake and shivering. Thomas had somehow found the resource to sleep but his rest was tainted by pitiful sobs. They sat with their bodies pressed together, arms clinging tightly to one another against the cold and in search of some vague, elusive comfort. Owen realised that these past years they’d ventured little beyond the townland around Tawnyard Hill, and for all the horrors they’d witnessed there, they’d lived in a relative cocoon, ignorant of the magnitude of the abomination all around them.

  He was torn by conflicting feelings towards the people who had attacked them. As he listened to the wind groaning in the hillside hollows, one moment he would hate them for the murder he had seen in their eyes, and the next he would cry for their circumstance, abandoned by hope and waiting to die an agonising death, diminished as one of God’s superior creatures and reduced to the level of a scavenging animal. He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to his mother that somewhere along the path of his life he would find a place where he could be free of this world’s harshest cruelties.

  Thomas was shaking him awake and he blinked at the early morning light, the tenebrous cloud having surrendered the sky to the rising sun. He was immediately conscious of the cold and his lips trembled as though he was afflicted by a fever.

  ‘The walking will warm us. Let’s get going.’

  The memory of the last village they’d encountered still vivid, they steered a course around An Cregan Bán, crossing a bog that opened into fields which a few years past would have been filled with men and women digging a rich harvest of potatoes. The fields were black as though a great fire had swept across them, covered with the stems of potatoes that had turned to a filthy mush beneath the soil. What remained of the leaves was dark and putrid, though some still carried the telltale flecks of white that foretold disaster. The smell almost defied description, akin to rotten vegetable matter coalesced with that of decaying flesh, yet sickly sweet also, and so pervasive and inescapable it made them want to vomit. They hastened their pace, tripping over the dead furrows in their effort to escape the stench.

  ‘There’s the track,’ Thomas said, pointing north, and they were on the road again.

  They skirted the village of Tully and several more nameless places. The track snaked through a wood, yellowed leaves showering upon them with each gust of wind, and when they passed beyond the trees they caught their first sight of the holy mountain of Croagh Patrick, where Ireland’s saint had spent so much time in communion with God. The mountain, close to their destination of Westport, rose majestically towards the blue sky, although its rocky peak had yet to don its winter mantle of snow.

  As they drew near to the town of Louisburgh they decided to abandon the road and move across country, avoiding any contact with people. An hour later and they glimpsed the sea as it washed around the countless islands that speckled Clew Bay. Its waters held the promise of their escape to a better world and the sight of it set Thomas to a quicker pace. As they ate on the slope of a hill called Kinknock, Thomas excitedly rose to his feet and pointed to a tall ship, its sails unfurled as it rode the waves out into the vastness of the Atlantic. Neither of them had ever seen such an enormous vessel and they both stood, mouths agape, watching as it navigated westwards. It was the first time in perhaps a year that Owen heard his brother laugh with joy.

  ‘That’ll be us soon, on our way to America. All this – it’ll be behind us forever.’

  ‘’Twill,’ Owen said with as much enthusiasm he could muster, for despite their hunger his stomach was beginning to fill with something else – a dread of the loss of all that was familiar to him.

  ‘Look there,’ Thomas said, pointing to a few hundred yards below, where they could see people moving along the road. ‘More people on this road. All headed for Westport.’

  Thomas’s mood shifted a few minutes later as he assessed their rations. The journey had been arduous thus far and a huge drain on their resources, but it would probably be tomorrow evening by the time they reached Westport.

  ‘We’ve barely a small bite left of the meat.’

  They continued east, Croagh Patrick looming directly ahead of them. As evening drew near, they bypassed the coastal village of Kilsallagh and on its landward side spotted a copse of pines, from within which rose a plume of smoke, thick and dark from an abundant fire, unlike the wispy trails from a peasant’s cottage.

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Let’s just look,’ Thomas barked with impatience.

  They kept low through the trees, like prowling animals, and soon emerged at a wall of shrubbery. The aroma that suddenly assaulted their nostrils was surely one of the most exquisite of their lives. They both inhaled softly, with eyes closed, the scent of freshly baked bread. They crawled into the shrubs, ignoring the prickly branches that clawed at their clothes, and emerged at the rear of a grand, two-storied house, obviously the home of a person of wealth. There seemed to be nobody about.

  ‘C’mon,’ Thomas whispered to Owen and before any reply came, he had wriggled all the way through and was running, head and shoulders bent low, across the garden. Owen followed and joined him where he crouched behind a couple of water barrels. They were near the corner of the house and had a view of the rear and side, giving them at least some seconds of warning should someone approach. Thomas pointed down into a basement to a door with a couple of windows on either side. One window was pulled halfway up and through it they could see four loaves of bread cooling on a sideboard. From within came a mellifluous woman’s voice, idly singing to herself to the accompaniment of the clatter of pots.

  As I wandered through the townlands,

  And the luscious grassy plains,

  Who should I meet but a beautiful maid,

  At the dawning of the day.

  Thomas nodded for Owen to wait as he proceeded down the steps into the basement. He crept with the craft of a fox, maintaining a watchful eye on the upstairs windows. As his brother began to descend the steps Owen looked along the side of the house, and, whether it was a fleeting dance of the light or the sound of a gentle trickle of water, his curiosity was aroused enough to find himself drawn to a window a few yards away.

  Thomas peered into the basement where he saw a matronly housekeeper of around sixty, well-fed by the looks of her, with a white bonnet tied about her head and a long, black housemaid’s dress which touched the floor and created the illusion of gliding as she moved about. Her age and red face belied the sweet voice that he’d supposed belonged to some angelic young beauty. The kitchen was vast, to his mind, with a huge open hearth in which a man could stand and a large stove of black metal. In the centre was a table on which was laid a spread of food beyond even his dreams: a side of beef, another of ham, plucked birds, vegetables of all types, flour, salt and a block of butter the size of a Bible. There were devices whose purpose he couldn’t even begin to understand: a box on top of which was a metal cup and a handle for turning; a U-shaped wooden gadget with two hand grips; a flat copper pan with a yard-long handle. The dressers were filled with plates, all with deep blue images of trees and flowers that captivated his eye, as he had never seen painted crockery. Thomas, in awe of the scene, had to snap himself to attention to renew his task, that of stealing the bread, of which the owners clearly had plenty. But if he was caught, it would likely merit transportation to the dreaded English penal colonies.

  He waited until the housekeeper was bent over the stove, then simply reached in and plucked a loaf from the sideboard. He was tempted to take a second, so easy had been the theft, but decided not to tempt providence, and quietly slipped back up the steps.

  Owen had crept to the window at the side of the house feeling as though his heart would rise through his throat and burst from his mouth. He could hear his own shallow breaths in the still evening air as he peered into the room.

&
nbsp; Thomas might have been able to describe the kitchen with some accuracy. Owen, by contrast, saw nothing of the room, for all his attention was devoted to the girl who stood within, and his eyes swelled wide at her beauty. She stood half-turned from him, tinkering with bottles on a dressing table, on which also rested a large bowl and a jug of steaming water. She was about twenty, dressed only in a white garment that billowed out on each leg from her ankles to her waist, above which she was naked. She pulled a pin from her golden hair, allowing the long, shining strands to fall to her shoulders. Her face was slender with a small nose, her cheeks a gentle curve of skin with a hint of red, her eyes dark, her mouth small. But it was the perfect curve of her breasts, bare and white, that most transfixed him, and he felt himself aroused like never before. She hummed a tune as she leaned over the bowl and lifted the jug to pour the warm water over her hair. Her breasts sat forward and Owen almost gasped aloud. He watched as she applied something from a dainty bottle to her hair and began to massage it in, suds gathering about her head like those he’d seen at a river’s edge.

  His reverie was broken by the sound of Thomas’s voice and he looked over his shoulder. His brother seemed fit to strike him as he whispered through gritted teeth, ‘We have te get out of here! Now!’

  Owen forced himself to turn away at the precise moment that the scream came.

  ‘My beautiful soda bread! Thief! There’s a thief!’ The dulcet voice of the housemaid seemed to have been replaced by that of a witch, so shrill were her yells.

  ‘Go!’ Thomas shouted.

  Owen threw one last look through the window where he was granted a final glimpse of the girl, startled by the yelling, standing with a towel clutched at her bosom, her hair a wet tangle about her face. Their eyes met for a fleeting instant, then he fled.

  Thomas ran and dived into the hedge as though into a lake, his momentum propelling him through the gap. Owen followed, but his pants snagged on a branch, his legs protruding back out onto the damp grass. Thomas grabbed his brother’s shoulders and heaved him through just as the housekeeper arrived at the spot.