by Colin Murphy
When she realised what she’d inadvertently done, she was profuse in her apologies.
‘Thomas, the last thing you’ve done is bored me. It’s fascinating. It’s just I’m not used to sitting up so late. In fact, if you’ll forgive me, I think I’ll go to bed. And there’s a lot to do tomorrow. But I really do want to hear the rest of your story, everything.’
She rose and embraced Thomas, then kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’m so glad you you’re here. Now, I’ll leave you two boys alone. Not too late though, remember about tomorrow, Owen. Goodnight.’
She disappeared through the bedroom door.
Thomas appeared curious. ‘What’s tomorrow?’
‘Rent’s due,’ he explained.
‘The battle never ends, does it?’
‘Anyway, what happened in Port…?’
‘Port Clinton…yeah. God. I got a job in the anthracite mines, thought I’d landed on my feet. How wrong could I be? The pay seemed good until I discovered ye had te pay the company for somewhere te sleep, for “security”, for doctor care, even if ye weren’t sick. You’d end up with next to nothing. And the mines. Hell on earth. Ye spent your day crawling down shafts, barely able te breathe. You’d dig from dawn te dusk. Most days you never saw daylight. And there was a quota: fill seven trolleys a day or ye didn’t get paid.’
Owen was silently watching his brother, who appeared to be in a dark spell of his own conjuring, relaying his tale with a bitterness not mellowed by years.
‘And the deaths. The bastards were too miserly te dig emergency shafts. So when there was a collapse or a fire, anyone trapped was left te suffocate. Once, over a hundred men died in a single fire in Luzerne County. But did it change anything? No. Ye know why? We were Irish and Catholic, the two things that made ye lower than a dog, in their eyes at least. The owners were mostly of English Protestant stock. Sound familiar? They murdered two million of us in the famine and forced the same number te flee and the world didn’t even blink. So what were the lives of a few miserable Irish miners worth?’
Owen briefly considered debating the historical perspective, but decided now was not the time; his brother’s blood had risen.
‘Thousands were dying in the mines or being murdered by the Coal and Iron Police, a bunch of thugs in the pay of the mining and railroad companies. Not so different from the RIC. They murdered innocent men and their wives, often raped the women. The Irish even formed a secret society called the Mollie Maguires so they could fight back.’
‘Mollie Maguires?’
‘Yeah. Like the Mollie Maguires here. Or the Ribbonmen. I suddenly found myself in the middle of another war. Murders, revenge killings, sabotage, beatings. A guy even tried to recruit me into the Mollies. Never forget his name. McKenna. James McKenna. Northerner, from Donegal or Derry. But after the killing in the Civil War, Eleonora dying, hitting rock bottom in San Francisco…I wouldn’t have any truck with it. I’d gone east te escape all that, not te end up in the middle of another war. So I got out while I could. Took what I had and went back te New York. A few months after I got there, I read that the police had arrested half the Mollie Maguires. Five men went on trial for the murder of a police thug called Benjamin Yost.’ He paused, shook his head in anger. ‘And who’s the main state witness? James McKenna. The very bastard who tried te recruit me into the Mollie Maguires. Turns out his real name was James McParlan, a fucking detective with the Pinkerton Agency. You heard of them?’
Owen’s shake of the head was barely perceptible.
‘They’re a private detective agency. Famous, they are. The railroad and mine owners hired them to infiltrate the Mollies. Jesus, I was so lucky I didn’t take up McKenna’s offer. All five men were found guilty. Within a year they’d hanged twenty. But for the grace of God, I would have ended up with a noose for a necktie as well.’
‘Jesus.’
The fire had dimmed to a faint orange glow beneath a layer of pale grey ash and the room had grown cold in the autumnal night.
‘Yeah. Anyway, I thanked God for my good fortune and settled into a life in New York. Got a lot of help from the Ancient Order of Hibernians. They’re a fraternal organisation who help Irish Catholics in America. One of them helped me a lot, got me a job in the storeroom of an Irish bar, found me a place to live. I hadn’t been in New York for twenty years. But there were so many Irish there it was like coming home. We had respect; nobody walked all over us, not like Pennsylvania. And I think it was because I was surrounded by Irish again, I got te thinking about Ireland, about home. About you. I was sure you’d died in the famine, but I had te know. It’s been like a splinter in my head for decades. After a couple of years I’d put enough money by te make the decision. Four months ago I got on a ship and returned to Ireland. Made my way from Galway te Mayo. Went home first. Tawnyard. The hill. The valley. Thought you would have ended up there somehow.’
‘Tawnyard Hill? You went home? Our cottage? Jesus, I haven’t been there since the day we left.’
‘The cottage is a ruin. A few stones left. Found our father’s grave. Overgrown, it was. But when I couldn’t find you in the area, I moved on. Just drifted from town te town in Mayo. Doing odd jobs again. Searching. Asking everyone I met if they’d ever heard of an Owen Joyce. But the name Joyce is so common. I had a few dead ends. Westport, Newport, Claremorris, you name it, I’ve been there. Finally two days ago I reached Ballinrobe. Man in a shop tells me he knows of an Owen Joyce on Lough Mask Estate near Neale. I watched you in the field today. From a way off. Wasn’t certain, but I began te hope. I went into Conway’s bar in Neale. Overheard men talking about a meeting at the church tonight. Your name was mentioned. I watched you arrive. Saw ye close up. No doubts. Then I just waited,’ he paused and smiled. ‘And here we are.’
They were silent a while as Owen absorbed it all.
‘So what now?’
‘Now? I don’t know for sure. It’s just good te be back. I have some money. And there’s a man down Cong way might be able te help with a job. I knew his brother in New York. We’ll see.’ He chuckled a little. ‘You’ve had te listen to me all night. I never even asked what became of you. All these years in Ireland. How you ended up here.’
‘There’ll be time enough for that. Besides, compared to your story, it’s a yawn. Speaking of which, I have to get some sleep.’ Owen stood up. ‘Listen, Síomha’s left some blankets there. No mattress. Sorry.’
Thomas laughed. ‘I’ve slept in worse places.’
Owen walked to his brother and embraced him, his mind a flurry of emotion and trepidation. So much in one day was overwhelming. And tomorrow was still to come.
‘It’s a miracle you’re here, Thomas. Really it is. Anyway, I better get away. I’ve a lot to do tomorrow.’
‘Boycott?’
Owen stopped at the door to the bedroom and looked back.
‘How do you know about Boycott?’
Thomas shrugged. ‘You’d want te be as deaf as a sod of turf not te know about Boycott in this place. Half the pub was talking about him.’
Owen nodded. ‘Right. Anyway, goodnight Thomas.’
Owen closed the bedroom door behind him and stood in the gloom looking at Síomha’s sleeping figure, one thought rebounding in his head, one for which he could find no real justification.
Something didn’t quite gel.
Had it been a phrase, a look, an intonation? He couldn’t be sure of himself, but the thought persisted nonetheless that something in his brother’s story didn’t quite ring true.
Thomas waited until there was no sound from Owen’s bedroom, then filled his glass and took a deep swallow. It was good to see Owen again, good to know the Joyce family blood still coursed through his children’s veins. For a long time he’d believed the bloodline would die with him and that the English who had wreaked such devastation on his family would have won, at least in that personal respect. But finding Owen alive was just a bonus really.
Almost everything he’d told Owen had been true
. Almost. He’d learned it was a good idea when telling a lie to embellish it in as much detail as possible with the truth. Everything up to the point where James McKenna had tried to recruit him into the Mollie Maguires had been absolute fact. The only difference was that he had accepted McKenna’s offer and become an active member. One of his first missions had been to kill Benjamin Yost, a police thug who’d beaten and killed miners. He’d put two bullets into Yost without the slightest twinge of remorse.
The mine owners. The industrialists. The fuckers. Like the English, they only understood the language of the gun. Eye for an eye. He couldn’t actually remember how many men he’d killed in the Mollie Maguires’ name. And he had done it all with a clear conscience. He’d doled out the only justice those bastards had ever seen. It had been a war just like any other.
Then, by sheer chance, he’d been tipped off that the police were rounding up Mollie suspects. He’d headed east towards New York, living like an animal in the wilds, picking up odd jobs, moving on every couple of days. Then one day he picked up a newssheet and read about the trial of five men for Yost’s murder – about McKenna, the star witness, a fucking Pinkerton agent. And there was his name. Thomas Joyce. Still wanted for Yost’s murder. He made it to New York, just as he’d told Owen. And a man had helped him there, just as he’d told Owen.
A man called Donal Doherty.
A member of Clan na Gael, the American arm of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
Doherty had arranged the job in the bar, along with a new name and papers, but he’d also recruited him to the Fenian cause, and the possibility had opened up to him of finally bringing into being the war that had raged in his mind and heart for decades. The chance to pay the English back for their brutality, for the mass extinction he believed they had attempted. He’d nurtured the thought every day since his father had died. And as he’d crawled about trying desperately to find food all those years ago, he’d seen the English convoy carrying ton upon ton of food away and his hatred had swollen. Then the man in the cottage. Driven to cannibalism. The walk to Westport, the horrors they’d witnessed. With every step and with every breath his rage had grown until finally he could see little else but his need to make them pay with their blood. When Owen had leapt from the ship, the weeks alone on the ocean had given him the opportunity to distil his feelings to pure form, with no force working to quell his bitterness. And as the years had passed, his venom had helped to carry him through the Civil War, the battles with the natives, and in the mines of Pennsylvania.
Almost three years he’d spent working for the Fenian movement in New York. Recruiting, raising funds, buying weapons. He’d come to realise that of all the races in the city only the Irish cared about what was happening in their own country. Only the Irish still saw Ireland as their real home. The Italians? The Germans? The Scandinavians? They couldn’t have given a damn about their homeland. But the Irish? It was like everyone was biding their time, waiting for the call to take their country back. In ’68 there was an anti-English demonstration held in New York and one hundred thousand Irishmen marched. All the talk in the bars was of ridding Ireland of the English. And, Christ, they were willing to part with their money for the cause.
Then John Devoy, one of the Clan na Gael’s leaders, returns from Ireland and announces that the organisation is teaming up with Davitt and Parnell. The ‘New Departure’ they called it. New Departure? What a joke. Davitt and Parnell intended to talk the English to death. Jesus, would they ever learn? How many centuries would it take before they realised the English race were not to be trusted? To them the Irish were subhuman. But they’d think differently if they were wallowing in their own blood.
Many Fenians saw Devoy’s plan as a betrayal. Splinter groups were forming. And Donal Doherty was part of one. Thomas had been only too willing to join up. They’d go along, bide their time, make their own plans.
Doherty had been back in Ireland over a year when Thomas had the lousy luck to be spotted by a Pinkerton agent in the bar in New York. He was still wanted for murder. He’d always planned to return to Ireland when the time was right, but now his hand was forced. It was the only place he’d be safe.
He’d barely been back a week when fortune had smiled on him. He would almost have put it down to divine providence, if he believed in that horseshit. Every Mayoman or woman he’d met down the years in America, he’d asked if they’d ever encountered an Owen Joyce back in Ireland. Hundreds, he’d asked. Always the same answer. Sorry. With each shake of the head the certainty had grown that Owen had perished. Then Donal Doherty tells him about a man he’d met at a rally in Irishtown the previous April. He’d actually tried to recruit him. Name of Owen Joyce. Grew up in a place called Tawnyard Hill. Was the fucking image of him, Doherty had said.
His brother.
Better still, he’s a tenant on Lough Mask Estate.
The cards could not have fallen more sweetly.
All he had to do was play the role of long-lost brother. And that wouldn’t be such a problem as he did love Owen, even if he was still a naive, dithering idealist.
His only problem was that he often had to struggle to conceal his hatred and bitterness. His dark heart. And it was going to be particularly difficult here, in his brother’s home, in these times, watching Owen’s family suffer the iniquities inflicted by English landlords. But he must. He had to control his mouth and his temper until his work here was done.
Doherty, his immediate superior in their rebel splinter group, had gone south to scout out a landlord marked for execution. His job meantime was to blend in and get to know the area.
And, when the time was right, send Boycott back to England in a wooden box.
PART THREE
BOYCOTT
boycott [verb] withdraw from commercial or social relations with (a country, organization, or person) as a punishment or protest. -refuse to buy or handle (goods) as a punishment or protest. - refuse to cooperate with or participate in (a policy or event). [noun] a punitive ban on relations with other bodies, cooperation with a policy, or the handling of goods.
–Oxford English Dictionary
We will never gain anything from England unless we tread upon her toes; we will never gain a single 6d worth from her by conciliation.
–Charles Stewart Parnell, speech in Manchester, 1877
CHAPTER 17
On Wednesday last, Mr David Sears, a process officer, was pelted with ‘gutter’ as he served eviction notices near Lough Mask.
–The Ballinrobe Chronicle, 25 September 1880
Reporter: The men didn’t fight?
Redpath: No. They looked on. The women gave cheers for the Earl of Erne (he had been a decent landlord before Boycott was his agent) and they gave groans for Boycott and the process-server. Suddenly they threw manure and mud at him and he ran off with the crowd of women after him, the constables vainly trying to protect him from the infuriated women.
–Talks About Ireland, James Redpath, 1881
22 SEPTEMBER 1880
‘Considering the threats made against you, Captain Boycott, I strongly advise against being present today. We don’t need any inflammatory influences,’ Sergeant Murtagh said in his most strident tone, hands clasped behind his back.
‘Are you daring to suggest that my presence might provoke violence? It’s a fine day when a man as upholding of the law as myself is regarded in such a fashion!’
‘I’m simply–’
‘As it happens, Sergeant, Weekes and I have business to attend to on my Kildarra estate. We are already late and I do not appreciate your insistence on detailing the remit of your duties. This is a simple matter of serving eviction notices on defaulters. Even a country clod should be able to carry out that elementary task.’
‘Charles!’ It was Annie who sought to soften the effect of her husband’s caustic tongue. ‘Please forgive him, Sergeant, he’s been under a lot of strain.’
‘Strain, my foot. The only strain I’m under is because of the incompet
ence that surrounds me daily.’
The sergeant exhaled slowly and looked around. Besides Boycott and his wife, David Sears, the process-server, sat by the drawing room window chewing his thumbnail and watching the assembled constables, sixteen in all, who loitered outside, chatting and smoking cigarettes in the milky light.
‘I merely wish to point out, sir, that the RIC are not here to issue eviction notices, only to uphold law and order and make sure that no harm befalls the server.’
‘Fine! Now, get on with your job, Sergeant, and allow me to get on with mine. Good day,’ Boycott snapped and left them with the sound of the door rattling in its frame.
Sergeant Murtagh turned to Sears. ‘Right, then, will we proceed to the first cottage?’
Sears stood up and ran his palms down his suit, as he was in the habit of doing. He was a slight man, thin and not particularly tall, in his early thirties, with neat brown hair and of a nervous disposition.
‘Sergeant, do you really think there’s a risk of violence? I mean, they won’t mistake me for Mr Boycott, will they?’
‘I assure you, Mr Sears, nobody on God’s earth could be mistaken for my husband,’ Annie said wearily.
‘How did you get on last night? Were you very late?’ Síomha asked.
Owen was naked, his back to her, fumbling about for his pants in the semi-darkness.
‘Owen?’