by Colin Murphy
Weekes, who was aware that his friend had never actually faced either of these menaces, stepped forward to try to calm the situation. ‘Charles. I don’t think it’s merited to brand the man a coward. He is merely a public official who would not usually be subject to this form of intimidation.’
Boycott locked his hands behind his back and strode across the room towards Annie.
‘Charles, why not sit down and agree–’ she began.
He swung away from her as though she were an inanimate object he’d encountered and she was cut sharply to silence.
‘Murtagh, how many men can you muster?’ he barked.
‘Maybe ten more if I telegraph some of the other towns round about. Maybe twenty. Plus the men from today. That would be almost forty men. But the other sergeants and inspectors aren’t going to be happy. They have districts to police. We have to ensure the rule of law everywhere in Mayo, not just here.’
‘Frankly, I don’t give a fig about the rest of Mayo. We’re not talking about catching a couple of illicit stills or poachers here. This is a coordinated and planned attempt to interfere with Her Majesty’s laws and I expect – no – I demand that you show these peasants that they are not above the law.’
‘Sir, you’re not in a posit–’ the sergeant began.
Boycott ignored him. ‘Sears, you hear that? Forty armed constables. Now, I will thank you all to get out of my house and take that stink with you.’
‘Two replacement constables will remain overnight in the hut outside for the security of your good self, Mrs Boycott,’ snarled the sergeant, pointedly indicating that he cared not a whit about anything that might befall Captain Boycott himself.
With that the five men stomped from the room and Annie and Weekes flinched at the reverberation as the front door was slammed in fury.
‘What’s wrong with these people?’ Boycott mused.
‘Frankly, Charles, your attitude swells the ranks of your enemies with each passing day. It’s a wonder anyone is still standing by your side.’ Annie Boycott’s outburst was as unexpected as her departure, which was also accompanied by the rattling of a door in its frame.
‘What in God’s name is wrong with that woman? She would serve herself better to have those maids clean this mess. I honestly don’t know why we pay these girls. It’s an Irish thing, Weekes. They make entire careers from the avoidance of work, you know? Well, we’ll show them tomorrow, by God. Tomorrow.’
When the church of St John the Baptised and Calvary in Neale had been built by the men of the parish, Owen included, they had envisaged a church that might accommodate a hundred or so. There were surely at least twice that number present this night, the women crammed uncomfortably into the pews, the men and youths lining the aisles and squeezed into doorways and recesses. Almost everyone from Neale was present and, thanks to the efforts of travellers on the road to Ballinrobe and the broader area, word had quickly spread that Fr O’Malley wished to address the tenants and traders about the issue of landlordism and the Land League. Within the crowd Owen could identify shopkeepers and tavern owners and even Ballinrobe’s barber, men and women who recognised that the issue of landlordism had resonances far beyond the just treatment of those who actually worked the Mayo earth.
Owen stood by the wall near the altar now, Tadhg at his shoulder. Niamh had been left in a neighbour’s care and Síomha was seated in the front pew. The priest had set three wooden chairs facing the central aisle.
Fr O’Malley and James Redpath appeared through the rectory doorway and walked towards the chairs. The priest genuflected before the altar, an act that discombobulated the American. The priest then beckoned to Owen. Head bent low, Owen walked across before the countless watching eyes.
‘What is it, Father?’
‘What are you doing, standing to the side? I need you here to explain the plan.’
The blood drained from Owen’s face at the prospect of addressing such a multitude. ‘Father, I assumed you’d do that. I don’t know anything about speeches. And they’ve more respect for their priest than the likes of me.’
‘Nonsense. Now, will you take your seat like a good man before they get bored and decide to go across to Conway’s pub?’
Before Owen could protest further, the priest had turned away to Redpath. Owen glanced at the field of glinting, expectant eyes, then sat and stared at the floor. Fr O’Malley took a step forward, the sight of his rotund bulk and flowing black vestments before the altar promoting a descending hush. He had decided not to speak from the lectern: while he hoped this meeting had God’s blessing, it was not intended as a sermon. He clasped his hands together and closed his eyes in prayer for the briefest moment, then looked at the assemblage.
‘Tonight I speak to you not as your priest, but as your friend and neighbour. Indeed, it heartens me that I see here not only the faces of Catholics but several also of the Protestant faith.’
This prompted a number of glances over shoulders. The priest continued in his baritone voice, his companionable Mayo accent reverberating from the stone walls, the effect lending gravitas to the words.
‘And that is precisely as it should be, for our troubles are not the preserve of Catholics but the concern of all on this island. It is not a question of Catholic Irish against Protestant English, as some would seek to argue and use to raise rebellion and cast us into violence. Some of the worst landlords are not only Catholic but Irish. And many tenants exploited by landlords are of the Protestant faith. Remember that. Our true enemy is landlordism and the political system that supports it. Our true enemy is injustice.’
He paused and allowed his eyes to wander across the sea of faces. A pocket of silence had been trapped within the cavern of the church, undisturbed by the shifting air and whispering trees that lay beyond the walls. The audience were rapt, expectant, eyes and ears wide.
‘I ask you now to interrupt your thoughts about Captain Boycott and his ilk and to turn them to the tragedy that has befallen our community. As many of you know, Teresa McGurk, the young wife of Martin, lost her child this morning. Teresa still lies gravely ill and Martin is distraught with grief. I want to ask everyone here to make a small, personal prayer to God that Teresa will recover and perhaps in the years ahead come to the joy of bearing another child.’
He bowed his head and as one the audience followed his lead. A minute elapsed. Fr O’Malley raised his eyes again and inhaled deeply.
‘Sadly, that tragedy came about, indirectly, through violence. And when we employ violence, it inevitably propagates more violence.’
He unexpectedly clapped his hands together sharply, causing a number of the crowd to visibly jump and Owen to raise his head.
‘You hear that?’ he whispered, his head inclined, hand cupped around his ear. ‘Listen.’ He repeated the action and the audience listened as the handclap echoed back and forth around the walls until it was finally soaked into the fabric of the building.
‘Just as that sound echoes from these walls, every act of violence echoes back tenfold. And each of those echoes begets another bloody act, but unlike the echo here, they do not fade away but become so many and so deafening we must clasp our hands upon our ears in desperation for peace.
‘There are some here tonight who believe that the gun is the way to freedom, that the violent actions of the British Government in the past and the landlords’ callousness give us the right to reply in kind. Yet here we are, seven hundred years since the English began their oppression of Ireland and countless bloody battles later. Here we are. Where has all the blood that was spilled by those courageous men brought us?
‘But other Irish men of even greater courage recognised the futility of violence. Why is their courage greater, you may ask? Because they cast aside the gun and the sword yet stood before an enemy of overwhelming numbers with just their belief in the unquenchable spirit of our race. It is only through the Liberator himself, Daniel O’Connell’s peaceful, yet powerful enterprise, that Catholics are today free to p
ractise their faith and to seek high office and political representation. Yet not a single shot was fired on O’Connell’s behalf, nor a single mother left to mourn the loss of a son.’
A pew creaked on the stone floor. A single, muted cough sounded.
‘In Mr Parnell and Mr Davitt we can perhaps achieve even more. They do not advocate violence. They advocate another approach on which Owen here will elaborate later. But I tell you this. That our only weapons will be the strength in our own hearts to endure, and the force of our community acting as one.’
The priest’s voice had lifted now, buoyed up with emotion, impassioned and swollen with pride.
‘And if we stand firm, I promise you we can bring about the beginning of the end of landlordism, not just here, but in all of Ireland!’
Fr O’Malley raised his arms in appeal. ‘People of Mayo, I ask you, I implore you, to stand together as one and let us show the world how the voices of a few in this small place can raise such a tumult, such a cry for justice, that it will echo to the very ends of the earth!’
Owen watched in wonder as the crowd raised a cheer to crack the eardrums. The women rose from their seats applauding. The men, their arms upraised above their heads, cheered themselves to hoarseness. Fr O’Malley sat, clasped his hands and bowed his head in prayer.
With the cacophony abating, he rose again.
‘But how will we achieve our goal? Beside me are two of my closest friends. Owen, many of you know. Please stand up, James.’
Redpath rose and smiled, the audience attentive to the mystery of the debonair gentleman. ‘This is Mr James Redpath, who is a correspondent with The New York Herald.’
The rarity of so exotic a guest prompted a whirl of excited chatter.
‘Mr Redpath has a deep understanding of our cause and through his good offices as a correspondent, the world will be watching us. We must endeavour to make sure, by every action we take in the weeks ahead, that the world sees us in a favourable light.’
Redpath then spoke about the power of the press and how it had helped sway opinions on manifold issues in his home country. But Owen heard little of it. Since the moment he realised he would have to address the crowd, his guts had been churning. He had no notion of what he might say and was convinced that the entire effort would falter on his weakness of character. He found he could not even meet Síomha’s eyes and she sitting only yards away. He would make as big a fool of himself as any man ever had in history and tales would be told in pubs for years about his oratorical inadequacy and the blundering confusion of the scheme he’d devised to outfox Boycott. He silently cursed the priest. And then he felt Fr O’Malley’s hand on his shoulder and knew the moment he’d been dreading was upon him. Even now, he felt like fleeing into the night and the comfort of his home.
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the parish and beyond. I’m a priest, as you know, and Mr Redpath a newspaperman, but I’m going to turn now to someone who understands better than either of us what it is like to live under the evils of landlordism; a tenant farmer himself. Please welcome Mr Owen Joyce.’
There was mild applause as he rose, pausing to fix Fr O’Malley with a raging stare, but the priest only smiled and gestured towards the audience. His innards quivered as though he’d swallowed a nest of ants and, unsure what to do with his trembling hands, he first placed them in his pockets, then removed them and hooked them into his belt. Finally he joined them together in front of his waist.
‘I’ve…eh…not em…had a chance…’ he coughed. ‘I’ve not had…eh…an opportunity–’
‘Speak up, Owen!’ a voice called from somewhere.
He tried to lift his quivering voice.
‘I said I haven’t had the chance to prepare anything.’
Pleased to have summoned a single, coherent sentence, he glanced at Síomha. She beamed with such pride he felt a lump rising in his throat, though whether in terror of shaming her or because of a renewed determination to succeed, he knew not.
‘I’m not a great man for speeches. I leave speeches to men like Fr O’Malley and Mr Parnell,’ he said to the silent, seemingly critical gaze of the throng.
‘In fact, the only speeches made in my home are by my wife when I’ve had too much poteen.’ There was a general outburst of laughter and he glanced again at Síomha, who repaid him with an encouraging smile.
‘So I’m not going to make a speech. All I’m going to do is tell you how we’ll defeat Captain Boycott.’
A cheer rose at the prospect and Owen began to find a reserve of confidence he had no idea he possessed.
‘And what we will do, in a sense, is nothing.’
He studied the puzzlement on the faces.
‘We will have nothing to do with Boycott, his family or his friends. He sees us as idle peasants that he could well do without. Well, let’s see how well he can do without us. From tomorrow we will deny him everything – labour, food, post, our skills, everything! No baker will bake him bread, no dairy will supply his butter. No blacksmith will forge his horseshoes and no farrier will fit them. No post will be carried to his house and no butcher will sell him meat.’ Owen looked again at the faces. Some smiled, others conferred secretly and with excitement. They were beginning to understand the power they held in their own hands. He spotted some faces he recognised and began to point to them in turn.
‘Mary Twomey – you will refuse him your eggs and cheese.’
He found another. ‘Mr O’Flaherty. Your hardware shop won’t sell him a pot or a hammer. Not even a nail. Mr Johnson, deny him even a crumb of your bread. Mrs Murphy, if Annie Boycott comes looking for a hat, refuse her!’
Mrs Murphy, a thin woman around sixty, briefly rose and retorted, ‘I’ll eat me own hats before I serve her!’
There was a mixture of laughter and supportive applause.
‘As Fr O’Malley has said much better than I can, we must stand together. There must be no weak link, for if even one of us deals with Boycott the other links will weaken and the chain will snap.’
A general outburst of eager chatter ensued as the people of Neale and Ballinrobe exchanged notions of the parts they might play in the unfolding drama. Owen turned towards the priest and Redpath, the latter furiously scribbling, the former nodding approval. He raised his arms for quiet. His inner terror had long been forgotten, miraculously reborn as a passion to elucidate upon their scheme.
‘But we must do more than all this. Most important of all we must deny Boycott the ability to run his estate. He employs almost twenty people – maids, stable hands, gamekeepers and most especially the men who labour in his fields. We’re fortunate that this situation has befallen us at harvest. Most of Boycott’s income comes from his crops. If he cannot get his crops in he will be facing bankruptcy, like we are. I say we give him a flavour of how that prospect feels!’
There was a cheer at the notion of retribution.
‘So we must convince his cook to abandon his kitchen, his maids to abandon his rooms, his ostlers to abandon his horses and his labourers to abandon his fields. We must convince all of them to abandon Boycott!’
The applause resumed but he tried to calm them with his palms held high.
‘But we must not use threats of harm, which would be tantamount to violence itself. Nobody will raise a hand to Boycott’s workers. Remember, these are our brothers and sisters. We will talk to them, persuade them by our numbers and our unity that it will be to their longterm benefit to leave their posts. We are asking them to surrender their earnings, and to relieve this situation, Fr O’Malley will take a collection on Sunday to support those at a loss. We can’t pay their wages, but we can help put food on their tables. We all live in impoverished times but we hope you will donate anything you can. Every donation will be a small payment towards Ireland’s freedom.’
Nods of approval and goodwill ensued.
‘Tomorrow, the process-server will return and Fr O’Malley has learnt that maybe thirty or forty constables will accompany him. So we must ask
you once again to gather here tomorrow morning at nine. From here we will walk to Lough Mask House and begin.’
A lone voice rose from the rear. Owen recognised Francis O’Monaghan, who farmed the island opposite Boycott’s home. ‘Owen! Can ye hear me back here?’
‘I can, Francis. What’s your question?’
O’Monaghan, a short, wiry man of middle age, stood in a side aisle nervously twisting his cap. ‘We all know what happened today. They served three eviction notices. How do we stop them tomorrow if we’re all at Boycott’s house?’
‘Good question. As you all know, Boycott uses the letter of the law to keep us down. Well, we’re going to do precisely the same. We’re going to stop him from serving the notices not with manure, but with the letter of the law.’
‘How, in the name of God?’
‘Everyone listen. Here’s what I want you to do.’
At that precise moment, in a cottage six miles to the south-west, in the townland of Kilbeg, just half a mile from the spot where many years before Tim Connor had saved Owen from the lough, Thomas raised a glass of whiskey and drank it in a single gulp. He then pulled out a packet of Allen & Ginter American cigarettes and lit one from the candle flame.
Two other men shared the table. One was Cal Feeney, a sympathiser to the cause of armed Fenian rebellion. The other was Donal Doherty.
‘Maybe they hope te drive the entire English army out by throwing shit at them,’ Thomas said.
Doherty sat grim-faced.
‘The gobshites. Throwin’ shit won’t sort Boycott,’ Feeney snickered.
Thomas didn’t like Feeney. He seemed dim-witted, and Thomas didn’t like working with dim-witted men when his life might depend on it.
‘We’ll get to Boycott soon enough,’ Doherty said. ‘Did you reconnoitre the area?’
Thomas nodded. ‘I did. Had a good look around. And I’d already had a word with a tenant who’s a sympathiser. Martin McGurk. I told him te stand his ground if they tried that eviction shite. He did, by all accounts. And now he’s rightly primed te help us.’