Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  For the second time in as many days, Owen roused from unconsciousness and was aware of a throbbing pain in his nose and lip. He groaned and went to touch his injury, only to realise that his arm wouldn’t respond. As the grogginess cleared he saw that his hands had been tied to the arms of an old wooden chair, and as he raised his head he realised he was inside a large tent. Directly opposite him sat a man on a stool, dressed in a red army jacket that had been completely unbuttoned, revealing a collarless white shirt beneath. Standing over him to his left was a huge, broad-shouldered soldier, his hat held stiffly under his arm.

  ‘Water,’ the officer on the stool said curtly and his subordinate promptly produced a tin cup of water and hurled it into Owen’s face. He recoiled at its icy sharpness.

  ‘You idiot, Blake!’ the officer snapped. ‘Give him a drink of water!’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ Blake refilled the cup and held it to Owen’s lips. He swallowed a few sips then coughed, his senses returning.

  He looked at the officer and recognised the same man who had passed him on the road that very day, the one who had told him to ‘be off’.

  Blake spoke. ‘You were right, sir, about it being a distraction. Thievin’ vermin.’

  ‘That’s enough, Blake. Go and fetch him some porridge.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Is there something wrong with your hearing, private?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Blake whirled about on one foot and disappeared through the tent flap.

  The man sighed. ‘I’m Captain Ackroyd and you, my lad, are in a great deal of trouble. What’s your name?’

  Owen simply looked at him, too weak and disheartened to reply.

  ‘Sooner or later you will be compelled to tell us who you are; if not here, then in some decidedly worse environment, such as a prison cell.’

  The officer, who was in his thirties, spoke in a clipped English accent that reminded him of the land agent Harris, as did his moustache and greased hair.

  ‘Listen. If you continue to refuse–’

  ‘Joyce. Owen Joyce.’

  The officer stared at him intently for several seconds. Blake re-entered the tent carrying a bowl of steaming porridge and looked at his superior for direction.

  ‘Untie him, Blake, unless you intend to feed him like an infant. I believe I’m capable of defending myself against a bag of skin and bones.’

  ‘Yessir. Of course, sir.’

  Blake undid the bonds and handed the bowl to Owen, who, after a slight hesitation, began to eat the warm mush greedily.

  ‘You may stand guard outside,’ the officer ordered Blake, who departed post-haste.

  Owen scraped every last morsel from the bowl, then instinctively began to mouth a ‘thank you’, but stopped himself, a reaction not lost on the captain.

  ‘What were you planning to do with the grain?’

  Owen looked at him incredulously. ‘Eat it.’

  ‘Raw oats?’

  Owen shook his head in a show of pointed disbelief at the captain’s ignorance.

  The man nodded. ‘Yes, I imagine in your predicament you would be capable of eating almost anything. I apologise for the naivety of my inquiry.’

  His self-deprecating remark took Owen by surprise and he observed the captain with a slightly more open frame of mind.

  ‘Of course, you realise you are guilty of a number of serious crimes. The theft of the grain alone would merit a sentence of transportation. Interfering with Her Majesty’s property, to wit the horses, thankfully recovered, would be sufficient to merit a long sentence of hard labour.’

  ‘What sentence does allowing Her Majesty’s subjects to starve to death while you steal their food merit?’

  The man was contemplative for a time. ‘We’re simply carrying out our orders. Which are, to conduct the consignment of grain safely to Ballinrobe. Beyond that, as soldiers, we have no latitude.’

  ‘Have you no compassion either?’

  The man looked away and sighed, then muttered absently to himself, ‘Homines libenter quod volunt credunt.’

  Owen smiled cynically. ‘I don’t believe what I want to, Captain, just what I see with my own eyes.’

  Captain Ackroyd lifted his head in surprise at Owen’s grasp of Latin. He smiled faintly as he spoke. ‘You’re a bright one, aren’t you, for one so young? How old are you? Eighteen?’

  ‘Old enough to see you for what you really are.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  Owen met the man’s eyes with a look of hatred and disgust. ‘You passed me on the road today. I begged you for a morsel of food…begged an English soldier…’ he shook his head. ‘Anyway, I got my answer.’

  ‘We have orders not to give our rations to peasants. We cannot feed every man, woman and child we encounter on the road. By God, we barely carry enough rations for ourselves.’ His voice rose an octave in irritation at what he perceived to be Owen’s obtuseness.

  ‘Then you camp in a village with a ton of oats parked before starving people’s eyes. What sort of cruel bastards are you?’

  The captain’s eyes blazed wide and for a moment Owen thought he might strike him, but he relaxed again and exhaled in exasperation. ‘For the kind shelter of their village, we rewarded each household with a payment of four pounds of oats.’

  Owen was stumped. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  The captain shrugged. ‘Believe what you will.’

  They were silent again for a short while before Owen spoke.

  ‘Why are we talking like this? Why amn’t I tied to a wheel or bound up in chains somewhere? Why am I here in your tent?’

  He shook his head. ‘I suppose that…that I simply wished to talk to you.’

  ‘Why?’

  He hesitated. ‘I’ve never spoken to any of the peasants, face to face. I’ve only been in Ireland a month. And when I saw you on the road today, I felt…’ He didn’t finish.

  ‘I don’t want your pity,’ Owen said.

  ‘It wasn’t pity. I felt a sense of injustice.’

  ‘Injustice?’ Owen almost laughed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forgive me, I’m just a thick Irish peasant. But don’t you really mean guilt?’

  ‘I mean injustice at what providence has sent your people, not at any actions I have personally taken.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to hell?’

  The captain rose in anger, fists clenched at his sides. He began to button his tunic.

  ‘As I have indicated, you have broken several laws and it is my duty to deliver you to the authorities at an appropriate location. However, I must also make a judgement as to whether doing so might interfere with my assignment. I am required to return to Westport in two days and as I have no wish to become embroiled in the machinations of the law, I intend to present you with the choice of either the court’s punitive sentence or to become a resident of the workhouse. Despite the current excess of potential inmates, I happen to be familiar with one of the guardians of the Ballinrobe workhouse and I’m sure I can secure you entry. I am aware they are grim places, but at least you won’t starve to death. Blake!’

  Owen sat there staring up at the captain as Blake appeared and snapped to attention. The officer stood over Owen, his humanity replaced with the cold discipline of a dispassionate soldier.

  ‘Well, what’s it to be? Prison or the workhouse?’

  Owen lowered his head. This was where his journey had led. In hindsight it was almost inevitable, he thought.

  ‘The workhouse,’ he uttered in a despairing whisper.

  CHAPTER 12

  Parnell was the most remarkable person I have ever met.

  –British Prime Minister William Gladstone, speaking in 1898

  On 19th September 1880 Parnell attended a mass meeting at Ennis. There, in a speech that rang through the land, he struck the keynote of agitation; he laid down the lines on which the Land League should work. Slowly, calmly, deliberately, without a quiver of passion, a note of rhetoric, or an exclamation of anger, he
proclaimed war against all who should resist the mandates of the League.

  –The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, R Barry O’Brien, 1898

  19 SEPTEMBER 1880

  He was so used to the smell of horse shit he barely noticed it, except when it was presented at such intensity. This was his first impression of Ennis, but it was only fleeting, for the horses that supplied the fragrance had also brought a surging river of people who flowed past him, cacophonous, vibrant with the tingle of anticipation.

  Mill Street, along which they now tramped, weary from the journey, was bedecked with bunting and banners; a thousand triangles fluttering overhead, endless rainbows of colours strung across the narrow street. Above the bunting the sky was blue, washed clean of the early cloud. Banners, carefully crafted by eager hands, bore messages of adulation and hope: ‘The Two P’s! Parnell and the People!’, ‘’Tis near the Dawn’, ‘Landlordism = Tyranny’. Every street and alleyway had risen to the occasion of Parnell’s visit and Owen hoped with conviction that all their efforts had been worth it.

  After a brief jaunt to Cong on the Galway border, they’d taken a steamer ferry from the north end of Lough Corrib to Galway town. He’d never travelled on such a boat before, with its funnel belching smoke into the sky and the throb of the engine beneath his feet. The craft had been packed with men from Westport, Clifden, Claremorris and even from as far north as Ballina, all on the same mission: to hear Parnell in Ennis. At least for the ferry owner, Parnell was good business. The last time he was on a vessel of comparable size he’d leapt from its stern. It had set him thinking about Thomas, a pastime in rare idle moments, wondering if he’d survived and what had become of him. They’d probably both go to their graves wondering what became of the other.

  In Galway, Fr O’Malley had arranged the loan from another priest of a cart and a jaunting car. Another five hours’ journey to Ennis and his arse felt like two gargantuan blisters. And Christ, he thought, we still have to endure the return.

  ‘Father! Here!’ McGurk was beckoning towards Carmody’s Flour, Meal and Bran Office, where he chatted with two men in short jackets and flat caps, one of whom had a narrow moustache. They shuffled over.

  ‘Don’t mind the sign, lads, Mr Carmody here does a side trade in porter and spirits.’

  The moustachioed man beckoned the group inside. ‘Only glad to be of service to our Mayo Land League brethren. Jaysus, lads, you’ve had a long haul–. Oh excuse me, Father, didn’t see you there.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. Sure, I’m not Jaysus.’

  The laughter followed them into a back room where a handful of other men sat drinking porter. Nods and greetings were exchanged and the group gathered around the largest of the tables. A shy girl of sixteen or seventeen served drinks, her hair tied back, a stained blue apron wrapped around her. Tadhg’s eyes followed her as a cat’s would a mouse, and she briefly glanced at him by way of reward. Martin McGurk aimed a playful dig at Tadhg’s ribs, who shrugged him away to the sound of chuckling.

  Owen watched his son, happy at least that he had food enough in his belly to indulge himself in the natural fancies of youth. He had a brief, unexpected flashback to the memory of the near-naked girl he’d seen through the window decades ago, stirring some unsettling emotion he struggled to identify, then experienced an inexplicable guilt as Síomha’s face came to him. He shook his head and lifted his porter.

  ‘Now lads, I’m not one to preach…’ The men laughed at Fr O’Malley’s unassailable good cheer, then he continued in a more serious tone. ‘But we musn’t forget why we’re here. A couple of drinks and we’ll be off.’

  There was a general murmur of agreement.

  ‘I know you know Davitt, Father. You ever met Mr Parnell?’ asked Joe Gaughan, a man with a huge frame and a voice as soft as a demure child. He was also a trusted neighbour of Owen’s.

  ‘Sadly, no, but he’s a formidable man, I believe. He must be, to have brought the political running of the British Empire to a virtual standstill,’ the priest said proudly.

  Parnell’s Home Rule Party, nauseated by the lip service paid to Irish matters in Westminster, had developed a simple but tactically brilliant stratagem that for years had disrupted and undermined British governance. Parnell and fellow MP Joseph Biggar had begun a policy of obstructionism in parliament, speaking for hours on end on points of trivia, completely disrupting parliamentary procedure. The British establishment soon began to realise that Parnell and his supporters were not to be taken lightly.

  ‘Maybe so, Father, but Parnell, the Land League, all that, it might bring about change down the road, but I’m more worried about tomorrow,’ said a tenant called Cusack. A chorus of concurring voices joined him.

  ‘That’s right. Our rents fall due tomorrow. What are we going te do?’

  ‘Well, I’m three pounds short.’

  ‘I’m the same. The price of spuds and turnips is only half what it was.’

  ‘I’ll pay if I get a decent abatement.’

  ‘From Boycott? Ye’d need a miracle.’

  ‘English bastard,’ Martin McGurk spat.

  ‘We asked for an abatement of twenty-five percent, remember?’

  ‘But Boycott convinced Lord Erne te give us just ten.’

  ‘So what can we do?’

  ‘I’m not paying. I can’t. Simple as that.’

  ‘You’ll be evicted. We all will. Then it’s starvation. Or the workhouse.’

  A glass slammed down hard and the chatter was silenced. ‘I know what I’d do.’ It was McGurk. ‘Fix the problem once and for all.’

  Nobody spoke. It was as though some unsavoury character had entered the room and all were afraid to speak his name. Owen, who had been quietly observing the proceedings, looked at the young farmer. ‘What would you do, Martin?’

  He leaned forward with a conspiratorial mien. ‘There are men out there, around Lough Mask, patriots – they’d do the job. And by God I’d help them,’ he said in a hushed voice.

  Fr O’Malley spoke now. ‘You mean you’d kill Boycott? And these men you speak of, Martin, are they the same brave soldiers that murdered the lad in Kerry last week?’

  McGurk was indignant. ‘That was an accident, from what I hear. Anyhow, there’s more here feel the same, just won’t say it. What about you, Owen?’

  Owen hesitated. ‘To be honest, I haven’t made my mind up.’

  ‘Jaysus, do you ever? Why d’ye all think we’re here? What d’ye think Parnell’s up to? Why d’ye think he’s making friends with rebels the length of the country? I’ll tell ye why. All this time he’s been secretly organising a revolution. Even the English know it. And why’s he been traipsing around America raising money? Te buy souvenirs? Te buy guns, more like. Any day now, there’ll be a call te arms. Maybe today. And I’ll tell ye another thing: I’ll be the first te put a bullet in Boycott’s fuckin’ head.’

  McGurk had worked himself into a minor frenzy and a drip of spittle ran from the corner of his lip, which he quickly wiped away with his sleeve. There was disquiet at the vehemence of his rant and at the use of profanity in the company of a priest.

  Eventually it was Fr O’Malley who cracked the still air. ‘The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.’

  ‘No disrespect, Father, but the Bible can’t help us.’

  ‘Actually it’s the…never mind. But I dearly hope you’re wrong, Martin,’ the priest said and drank the last of his whiskey. ‘I think we should go and get a decent spot,’ he announced, wishing to escape the deepening shadows of violence.

  The men knocked back their drinks and rose almost as one. Only Owen lingered at the table, his eyes fixed on the priest.

  ‘I never had you down as a stoic, Father,’ he said as the others drifted

  out.

  ‘A stoic? Me?’

  ‘The best revenge and so on. Not the Bible.’

  The priest raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘You continue to surprise me, Owen.’

  Owen sig
hed and looked away, clearly piqued. ‘I expect the likes of Boycott to assume we’re a bunch of illiterate peasants. Not my priest.’

  ‘Forgive me, Owen, I meant no offence. I’m merely surprised that a man such as yourself has the time to study the likes of Marcus Aurelius. Or to have the means to buy books of philosophy.’

  ‘We have libraries in this country, Father. And I’m a fast reader. So, my question.’

  ‘Well, philosophically speaking,’ he smiled, ‘no, I do not believe we have no direct control over the world in which we live. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here today. But I’m simply selective of the philosophies that suit the moment, I suppose, at least those that concur with non-violence.’

  Owen rose and moved to the door with the priest. ‘And if McGurk is right, and Parnell is fomenting an uprising?’

  ‘Then philosophy won’t be able to help us, Owen. Only God can help us then.’

  As they moved north along Gaol Street, the O’Connell Monument loomed large ahead, the Liberator’s perch atop the towering Doric column affording him a panoramic view of the people’s approach along the narrow roads, a sight which sadly affirmed that the great man’s vision was yet to come to reality. The task had now fallen into the willing hands of others like Parnell and Davitt and it was surely no coincidence, Owen thought, that Parnell had chosen the foot of O’Connell’s column from which to make his address.

  The crush was almost unbearable in the square and at times Owen could hardly breathe. Glancing about he could still see crowds of bobbing heads converging along the streets, like a thousand footballs cast into a river. They’d become separated from most of the others, but he held tightly to Tadhg’s arm as though he were a small child. Fr O’Malley was just in front, but the rest had been swallowed up in the sea of bodies. A wooden platform had been erected at the base of the monument, bedecked in resplendent green flags.

  ‘Owen! It’s Parnell!’ the priest shouted, sounding for all the world like an excited child.