Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  ‘Matron, may I ask, why are the windows open?’

  ‘To disperse the miasma.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She sighed impatiently. ‘I suppose it’s as well you learn. Miasma or bad air encourages the disease. It builds overnight so we must flush it out. Now get to your work.’

  He’d experienced the fever at close quarters before. Here in this place, half the men seemed in its frenzied grip, screaming or mouthing profanities as they battled demons of their own making, their clothes and beds soiled. It took him over two hours to dose everyone. Some fought him off so violently in their madness, he was forced to simply ignore them. By the time he returned to the Matron he sported a bruised face and torn apron.

  ‘Still wish to thank me?’ she asked.

  And that was how most of the days ahead passed. He assisted the application of poultices of oats to draw the noxious blood from festering sores. He applied cloths of icy water to the chests of the feverish. His hands became discoloured from the application of iodine to bleeding sores and rashes. He bathed and washed those most foully soiled. He even helped to splint the fingers of a man struck by a sledgehammer while breaking rocks in the yard. Owen had been required to sit on his legs to quell their wild thrashing.

  The end of each day saw him fall exhausted to his bunk. He would barely exchange ten words with Caffrey before sleep took him, then the bell sounded and the foul ritual commenced again. His vocabulary expanded with words like scarlet fever, smallpox, syphilis and, worst of all, dysentery, which rendered its victim utterly incontinent, requiring Owen to swab away the hourly expulsions of chokingly fetid excrement. The only solace he took from those weeks was that he somehow remained free from fever and that with his increased rations he began to regain some shallow layers of flesh. He’d learned that Dr Gill, a Yorkshire man, had only joined the institution in August when the previous doctor had himself succumbed to typhus. The previous year an epidemic introduced by a new entrant had claimed the lives of two hundred inmates and staff. This had led to the introduction of the rigorous medical inspection upon entry, the humiliation of that experience now lost to him amid the memories of suffering on numberless faces.

  He developed a respect, if not a liking, for the Matron, who seemed indefatigable and was not averse to fouling her own hands as she did battle with the egregious, squalid indignities of defective body function. She projected an outward coldness and only once ever did she display any overt kindness to him. He’d been called late to assist in the amputation of a man’s gangrenous lower leg. The man had been given copious amounts of opium, under the influence of which he’d confided that he’d once impregnated a neighbour’s daughter. Despite the opium, he’d screamed as though being roasted over hell’s inferno and it had required five men to hold him still enough for Dr Gill to cut through the bone, the sound of which had caused Owen to shut his eyes as his legs turned soft. Afterwards, standing in the corridor, staring out at the moonlit burial ground, the Matron had appeared and handed him a small bottle of whiskey. Unsmiling, she’d said it might help him sleep, and then hurried away.

  As November turned into December and Christmas approached, the workhouse was struck by a widespread outbreak of typhus. In a single week ninety-seven souls departed this earth. The following week eighty-two died and the men had been set to building coffins in the yard. The wails of mothers informed of their loss carried through the walls and the old women took to keening to ease the passage of departing souls. A terrible gloom, deeper and more foreboding than normal, descended over the institution. It was no longer a place of refuge, but of potential death.

  Owen was assigned to a burial detail and due to a shortage of materials it was decided to bury three children to a coffin. Each day four of them brought the dead to a large field to the south-west of the workhouse. A shallow pit was dug and the coffins were laid and covered with the freezing Mayo soil. Every few days a priest would hurriedly murmur funeral rites over the fresh plot. No headstone was laid or even a wooden cross erected. The dead were forgotten, countless souls left to the fancies of the decaying earth.

  Three weeks before Christmas the epidemic began to diminish. Unfortunately the funds to purchase wood for coffins also diminished and they were forced to bury the dead wrapped only in filthy sheets. Those were the hardest moments for Owen to bear, as the sounds of the soil covering the bodies of the men, women and children of the Ballinrobe Union brought vividly to mind his own father’s burial and set him in a deep depression. Until that point, his work had served as a distraction; it left little time for contemplation. Now he found himself brooding constantly on his separation from Thomas, his family’s deaths and the loss of his home on Tawnyard Hill.

  At his lowest ebb he found himself sitting in the men’s workyard, staring vacantly across the crowded space when the Protestant chaplain, Reverend Anderson, approached him. In previous encounters he’d struck Owen as an amiable sort. The vicar had written to The Ballinrobe Chronicle decrying the state of the workhouses and even to Parliament imploring funds. All save one plea had gone unanswered, which had expressed ‘the British Government’s reluctance to interfere with the natural economic order of Irish society.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr Joyce, I’m not here to proselytise.’

  ‘Reverend.’

  ‘May I ask what troubles you these past days?’

  Owen looked up at him. ‘You mean besides throwing dead children into a hole? Or seeing scavenging dogs dig them up again? Or watching men rot from…’ He realised he had raised his voice sufficiently to turn the heads of nearby inmates. ‘I’m sorry, Reverend, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I apologi–’

  ‘Fine, fine, one apology will suffice. As a young man I had a tendency to run off at the mouth myself. But I understand your anger. Yet for all the miseries of this place, at least you can survive here.’

  ‘Survive? It feels like a living death, Reverend.’

  ‘A living death you say,’ the vicar mused as he looked across the yard. ‘Francis Flynn. Now that’s a living death. A man living for death.’

  Owen looked across the yard, where a hundred men were engaged in pointlessly chiselling away at rocks. The vacant-eyed Flynn stood watching them, ignored by all as though he was a wooden post.

  Owen felt shamed. ‘Forgive me, Reverend, I just miss my own family. They’re all dead. Or gone to America.’

  ‘One day you’ll be free of this place, Mr Joyce, and God willing you’ll have a family of your own.’

  Owen laughed cynically.

  ‘You are still healthy and young! Do not give in to despair. Hope, young Joyce, is our greatest ally. But listen to me sermonising again. And I almost completely forgot. The Matron asked me to convey some good news to you. The medical attendant that we’ve been promised for so long has finally arrived. Though I believe the Matron will truly miss your services. She would never admit that, of course, it’s not her nature.’

  ‘Does that mean I’m to become an ordinary inmate now?’

  He chuckled. ‘Oh no, not at all. Young Mooney in the kitchen has taken ill. And Mr Rice complains daily that he can’t cope. So you’re to be transferred to him. The work is, let’s say, less stressful. Well, I must be about the Lord’s work. Good luck, Mr Joyce.’

  ‘Goodbye, Reverend. And thank you.’

  The cleric smiled and wandered off. As Owen watched him depart, he wondered if his life had just turned for the better or the worse.

  ‘They’ve fattened ye up nicely since we first met,’ grinned Rice when Owen reported to the kitchen.

  Owen said nothing; he simply stared back, awaiting direction to his chores. He’d had the opportunity for a brief perusal of the kitchen. There were four people working at the giant ranges, two female, one of these a woman in her forties, the other perhaps twenty. He glanced at her but neither she, nor any of the others, so much as raised an eye from the pots and pans and vegetables.

  ‘Hmmh,’ Rice frowned at the lack of resp
onse. ‘The bakery, I think. Hot in there, unbearably so at times. Follow me.’

  He turned on his heels towards an adjoining door that opened into an expansive space and Owen was immediately washed over with a wave of stiflingly hot air. Two middle-aged men worked at a table kneading dough and he was surprised to see Francis Flynn mechanically throwing logs into an inferno beneath one of the huge ovens.

  ‘Unfortunately I have to make do with peasant farmers for bakers and lunatics fit for the idiot ward.’ He openly directed this at Francis Flynn, then stopped and looked at Owen. ‘Ye can’t wear that thing,’ he said, gesturing in disgust at Owen’s blood and faeces-stained apron.

  He aimed a kick at Flynn’s behind as he bent over the pile of logs. ‘Looney! Fetch him a white kitchen apron.’

  Flynn walked from the room without even a flicker of his eyes.

  ‘Now, pay attention, Joyce darling.’

  Rice spent twenty minutes expounding on the operation of the ovens, which rose higher than a man and were constructed of heavy, black metal. They singed the flesh at the touch, as he discovered when he inadvertently leaned his hand against one, much to Rice’s amusement. Owen’s job involved placing ten loaves of dough on a metal tray into alternate ovens by way of a wooden pole with a hook on the end, regulating the heat with ‘damper’ doors, which increased or reduced airflow, and removing the baked loaves after twenty minutes. If Flynn was unavailable, he was also required to maintain the fire.

  ‘Where do I get the wood?’

  With a curled index finger Rice beckoned him to follow. He opened a door to an exterior yard containing two mountainous piles of wood and turf. Another door, set into the exterior wall, allowed for replenishment of the supply without having to haul it through the main building. ‘That door is locked at all times. We must keep the hungry hordes at bay,’ Rice laughed, the source of his amusement lost on Owen.

  In the first few days Rice didn’t trouble him overly; the man spent most of his time reading trashy pamphlets and indulging himself in the workhouse’s medicinal stock of whiskey. Rice maintained a closely guarded watch over its supply.

  There was little opportunity for conversation, so stifling was the atmosphere and intensive the labour. He was always grateful to see the arrival of Flynn, not for his company, but for the alleviation of his workload. The man seemed to be assigned to various simple tasks about the institution wherever a deficiency of labour occurred.

  Conversing with the women in the kitchen was strictly forbidden unless necessary in the course of one’s duties, so in the first week he exchanged not a single word with them. At one point he asked one of the dough-makers what had become of Mooney, only to be met with a shrug of the shoulders and averted eyes.

  On the Wednesday but one before Christmas, a bright and crisp winter’s day, Owen was in the yard bent over a pile of turf when he suddenly felt a hand against his backside and a voice exclaim ‘excellent!’ He jumped, sending the turf scattering, and turned to see Rice’s grinning face.

  ‘The work, I mean. You’re doing an excellent job. I think we’ll get along fine.’

  Owen stood there as Rice walked to the exterior door, a bulky satchel over his shoulder, and lifted a key from around his neck to let himself out. Trembling, Owen looked towards the bakery, but no one had witnessed the incident.

  It was a week to Christmas when Rice announced that his presence was required at the Ballinrobe Union board meeting that very day. He announced with a swagger that many esteemed gentlemen would attend. Several nobles and businessmen of the locale had apparently supplied charitable donations of meat and fruit so that the inmates might enjoy a meal befitting Our Saviour’s birth. He warned that extremely strict punishments would be inflicted should there be the slightest neglect of their work in his absence or if any food should go missing. Furthermore, there would be no discourse or other ‘carnal misdeeds’. And so off he went in his finest suit, his head held high, a supercilious smirk on his face, an unwittingly comical parody of a gentleman of importance.

  A huge sigh swept about the kitchen as he departed. A young man who was helping to chop vegetables asked what a ‘carnal misdeed’ was, which brought laughter and titters from the older men and woman. Owen sought briefly to engage the girl in conversation, but she shyly resumed her work with barely a word.

  There was little opportunity to take advantage of Rice’s absence. Producing each day’s soup demanded the preparation of ten stone of turnips, ten of parsnips and two of onions. The bakers were required to mix, knead and bake two hundred loaves of black bread. Once the food had been conveyed to the nearby halls, preparation immediately commenced on the next meal of porridge. The returning vats and trays had to be scoured out in readiness for the following day and this often required one or two of them to stay beyond the normal hours, and a rota had been agreed in this respect.

  But Rice’s meeting was too good an opportunity to miss, certainly for the dough-makers. The elder of the two, a broad-shouldered ex-farmer called Felim, abruptly slammed a huge metal spoon against the table.

  ‘Lads. I’ve had enough. That pig’s bollocks isn’t here. How about a little break?’

  Owen looked at the other man, called Rory, who shrugged as if to say ‘why not?’ Felim disappeared into a small storeroom and emerged with a bottle of Rice’s supply of whiskey.

  ‘No, listen, Felim. He’ll notice it’s gone. We’ll be flogged and expelled,’ Rory said.

  Felim ignored him, poured three measures into cups then topped up the opaque bottle with water. ‘He’ll never know. Bastard waters it before he gives it to the hospital anyway. And he’s always leaving these lying about.’ He smiled and held up three thin cigars. ‘Let’s get out of this fuckin’ heat.’

  Owen closed the oven dampers to prevent the bread from burning and followed them into the yard, where they sat on the pile of turf. Felim handed Owen a cigar, and he took it hesitantly, never having indulged. A match flared and was held to the tip, and he coughed as the smoke filled his lungs.

  ‘Don’t inhale so much. Youngsters can never control their urges.’

  The tobacco made his brain swim a little, as did the whiskey, the taste of which brought to mind the old man who had helped him in Westport.

  ‘How did you know where he kept the whiskey?’

  ‘I’ve been here a year. Ye see things. In that storeroom there’s a panel behind a shelf where the bastard has his hidey hole.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Whiskey for one. Loaves of bread. Little bags of oats. Salt. Medicine – I think one of his lackeys in the dispensary steals that. He robs the stuff and takes it outside to the poor bastards and exchanges it for money or…’

  ‘What?’ Owen asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  Felim glanced at Rory, who took up the tale. ‘Before I was admitted, I was one of the ones he offered it to.’

  ‘Man’s lower than a pig.’

  Owen drew on the cigar, beginning to sense a pleasant dizziness.

  ‘What happened to Mooney, used to work here?’

  The two men exchanged a grim look.

  ‘Don’t know to be honest. But he didn’t die of the fever.’ Felim said.

  ‘He’s dead?’ spluttered Owen.

  ‘Sorry, thought you’d heard.’

  ‘It was poison,’ Rory said grimly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Either he took it himself or that bastard Rice slipped it to him. As I said, he has a lot of medicine in his hidey-hole.’

  ‘Why would he poison himself?’

  ‘Te be free of that fucker, I s’pose.’

  The door to the bakery swung open sharply and each of them jumped up as though stung. To their enormous relief Flynn walked out directly towards them and began to gather turf. They might not have been there at all.

  ‘Come on. Fun’s over. Back te work.’

  In the spirit of the season, a local landlord had made a charitable
donation of ten of his flock of two thousand sheep, and a collection among the gentrified ladies of the Ballinrobe area, organised by the wife of Mr Ormsby Elwood, who was the land agent at Lough Mask House five miles away, meant that the inmates would enjoy half an apple and a slice of cake on Christmas Day. Unfortunately the extra food increased the kitchen staff’s workload immeasurably.

  Felim was requisitioned to cut the mutton from the bone, which meant Owen had to help knead the dough and operate the ovens. Flynn, at least, had been assigned to maintain the fuel supply, which he performed in his adopted self-isolation.

  Owen was alone late on Christmas Eve, the days’ baking almost complete, looking admiringly towards the kitchen where the young maid was sweeping the floor. She briefly met his eyes and allowed herself the faintest of smiles, which Owen returned. In the next instant she grimaced and vanished from his line of vision.

  ‘Would ye like her?’

  Rice’s voice from behind startled him.

  ‘Mr Rice…I’ll finish my work.’

  Rice’s satchel sagged limply against his leg; undoubtedly he was returning from his latest enterprise in exploiting the starving.

  ‘She’s yours, if ye like.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, let’s be honest. I know the desires that drive young bucks. I can arrange for ye te…purge those desires in a most enjoyable way.’ He snickered.

  Owen began to move away, but Rice gripped his arm.

  ‘Why deny yerself? You’ve earned it. You see, I can persuade that pretty little peasant te do whatever I ask. Because if she doesn’t she’ll be caught stealing, whipped and expelled, maybe even transported. Faced with that…’ he shrugged, ‘…even you’d consent te do anything.’

  Owen wrenched free in disgust. ‘You’re evil.’

  Rice slapped him across the cheek and was about to speak when Felim abruptly appeared. ‘I’ve finished the mutton, Mr Rice.’