Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  None of them had ever heard Annie speak to her husband in that manner. In truth, they had never heard anyone speak to him so. Weekes stared at the ceiling. The younger folk sat with their eyes fixed firmly on their laps. In her anger, Annie resumed eating her porridge sloppily.

  Boycott appeared traumatised. His face displayed the shock of one startled by tragic news. The colour had faded from his cheeks and his mouth was set in a circle, a dark hollow amid the fuzz of his facial hair. Some time drifted by in the taut silence. Finally he rose and took a few steps away, his back to them, both hands still gripping his spoon tightly. A thousand venomous retorts stalled behind his lips. His gut prickled with nervous indignation. Yet his next words would determine the course of this thing, not just his relationship with his wife, but the entire conflict. In his heart he knew there was some truth in her diatribe. In the army, it had been common practice among his fellow officers to occasionally praise their men, thus encouraging them to excel in the future, although he had usually been parsimonious in even that. He forced himself to about-face and dropped the spoon on the table, realising as he did, that he had bent it almost at a right angle. Everyone looked up. Annie sat back, head held high and turned slightly away from him.

  ‘This is difficult for me to say.’

  A lingering silence ensued, so prolonged as to suggest it was so difficult, in fact, that he could not actually bring himself to say it.

  He sighed slowly and lowered his head. ‘I…I…wish to apologise. Especially…especially to my wife. To you, my dear. In my rage, I have been sightless. Instead of directing my anger at our enemies, I have trained my guns upon my allies. I hope you can forgive me. That is all.’

  He sat. Annie rose calmly and set another bowl before him. She filled the ladle with porridge, which was by now cold and congealed.

  ‘Would you like some, dear?’

  He nodded and she dropped a solid lump of the porridge in his bowl with an unpleasant plop.

  And so passed breakfast in Lough Mask House on the first day of what, although they were unaware of it at that time, would be known ever after by the name of the man at the head of the table. The first boycott had begun in earnest.

  Tadhg passed his morning digging a pit three feet deep, twenty long and four wide near the cottage. The weather had turned damp, with fine droplets specking his face, soaking the heavy material of his jacket and hampering his progress

  ‘Storage pit?’

  He looked up to see his uncle standing on the rim of the pit.

  ‘For the turnips and potatoes.’

  Thomas picked up another shovel and jumped down beside him.

  ‘I’ll finish this end.’

  ‘Thanks, Uncle Thomas.’

  Tadhg was impressed at the rate at which Thomas shifted the sticky earth. For a man of fifty he was an impressive workhorse.

  ‘You’ve dug pits before, Uncle?’

  ‘I have. Earth. Coal. Gold. I’m well used to digging. Sure, when me and your father were your age we had to do the same. Three feet deep, ferns along the bottom. Pile the spuds to a peak,’ he made a mountain shape with his hands, ‘then cover them with more ferns, pile the earth on top and beat the soil so tight it would smother a worm.’

  Tadhg nodded, impressed. ‘How do you remember so well?’

  ‘I remember everything about those times. Everything.’

  They fell to silence for a time before resuming their toil.

  ‘Of course, our farm was only the size of me arse and not half as productive.’

  Tadhg laughed, then paused in reflection. ‘My dad doesn’t talk about the famine much but sometimes I think he’s remembering things, y’know? I see him stopped, looking away at nothing when we’re working in the fields.’

  ‘Your father’s always been a deep thinker, Tadhg.’

  Thomas heaved the remaining few shovelfuls from his end and stepped out, taking a deep, relieving breath. Tadhg paused, resting on his shovel, his eyes wandering aimlessly over the field. At length he looked up.

  ‘D’ye think what we’re doing to Boycott will work, Uncle?’

  Thomas considered the question a time.

  ‘I’ve found that people like Boycott only respect you when you show them how strong you are. And how far you’re prepared to go. These bastards only und–’

  ‘Tadhg,’ Owen’s voice called out sharply from just ten yards away.

  Tadhg jumped out of the pit. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You’ve done a fine job. Now can you help your mother gather the ferns?’

  ‘He’s a grand worker, Owen. You should be proud of him.’ Thomas clapped Tadhg on the shoulder.

  Owen nodded. ‘I am. And, Tadhg, when you come to stack the potatoes, make sure there’s no bad ones among them before you cover–’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘It’s no harm reminding you. Just one rotten one could spoil the crop,’ Owen said, glancing at his brother before turning away.

  ‘Charles, you know, even if we start today, and with the best will in the world, I don’t believe we’re going to be able to harvest forty acres of crops. I don’t even know much about the work and the others are certainly unskilled in that regard.’

  Boycott and Weekes were in the stables forking hay into the bays.

  ‘What would you have me do? Submit? Not a peasant for twenty miles will work here. We must bring in the harvest ourselves!’

  Although still delivered brusquely, Boycott’s pronouncements had their sharper edges dulled since his wife’s indictment at breakfast.

  The task complete, Boycott threw his fork aside and turned to leave. ‘I’m going to fetch William and Madeleine. We’ll start with the potatoes and then I’ll teach the girl how to milk a cow. You might learn yourself, for that matter.’

  Weekes groaned inwardly, yet had to admire the man’s seemingly tireless industry. They trooped from the yard towards the house, where they saw Annie descending the steps, her sleeves pulled to her elbows, her dress soiled from breast to feet by kitchen work. With growing alarm Boycott realised her hands were also soiled with blood.

  ‘Annie, what’s happened? Were you attacked?’

  She shook her head dismissively. ‘Of course not. Madeleine cut her finger slicing potatoes. It bled profusely and I’ve had to bandage it. Would Doctor Maguire look at it? Surely he is not part of this preposterous business?’

  ‘I suspect all of these Irish ruffians are against us. She’ll have to live with it, dear.’

  ‘No, Charles. She can’t!’

  Sensing the rising pitch of her voice, he backed off.

  ‘You’re right. Weekes can fetch him.’

  ‘There’s something else. Mrs Loughlin used to go to Ballinrobe every Friday to stock up. All we have left are some porridge and tea. There’s no beef or salted pork, not even bread. I must go to Ballinrobe and purchase supplies.’

  ‘No, it’s too dangerous,’ Boycott said, shaking his head vigorously.

  ‘I’ll take a constable.’

  ‘I could go also, Charles. We could be back in two hours,’ Weekes offered, grateful for the opportunity to avoid clasping a cow’s tit between his palms.

  Boycott relented. ‘Very well, but take two constables. That will leave six here. And be careful.’

  ‘And, Charles, regarding the constables, they’ve decided to dig a latrine behind a hedge very close to the rear windows. The stench is appalling and they’ve only been here two days. They’ll have to move it to a respectable distance.’

  He responded only with an exasperated grunt, then walked away.

  ‘At this rate the harvest could be in by mid-October, thanks to your help, Thomas.’

  ‘Just earning my keep, Owen, but I’ll need te earn a shilling or two meself as well. So I need te leave tomorrow for that job.’

  Owen nodded as Thomas hefted an armful of potatoes onto the handcart.

  ‘Eh, by the way, by chance I heard you talking about Boycott with Tadhg this morning. Mind if I ask what
you said?’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘Nothing really. Just that I have me doubts about the plan.’

  ‘And what would you do?’

  ‘Haven’t given it much thought. It’s just that I’ve seen the power men like Boycott have. In the mines in America. And during the famine here. Ostracising them is like…well, it’s like trying to knock down a house with a broom handle.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share your views with Tadhg. He’s at an impressionable age and it’s up to us – me and Síomha – to guide him.’

  Thomas nodded. ‘I’m sorry if I was out of line. I just thought that, well, as we both know from experience, it’s better to learn the truth about the world.’

  ‘In my experience, truth looks different from one man’s eye to another.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  As they continued their work Thomas turned the talk to tales of wondrous sights he’d seen in America – canyons wide and deep enough to hold an Irish mountain, birds the colour of a rainbow, trees the width of their cottage, and Owen became comfortable again in their banter. Despite his continued doubts, he could feel a growing affection for his brother. It was as though the bond between them, while stretched and strained over thousands of miles and decades of disparate experience, had remained unbroken.

  ‘But listen to me, I’d talk a man to the grave. What I want to know is what happened to you after Westport. How did you survive?’

  Owen wiped the rain and sweat from his brow. ‘Do you really want to hear? It’s nowhere near as dramatic as your story.’

  ‘Jesus, I’m fascinated. I never thought you’d survive wi–’ He checked himself.

  Owen laughed. ‘I know. You never thought I’d survive without you. To be honest, neither did I. And I almost didn’t. I came this close,’ he held his finger and thumb a hair’s breadth apart, ‘to dying at the side of the road.’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘You’re a glutton for punishment. All right, then. After I jumped off the ship…’

  The moment their landau passed through the main gates, Annie, Weekes and nineteen-year-old Madeleine saw a large group of schoolchildren gathered along the roadside ditch, who took up a chorus of catcalling for almost fifty yards. The mounted constables did their best to frighten them away, but with little effect. Annie, who sat in the rear of the landau with Madeleine, put an arm around her frightened niece.

  Weekes, driving the vehicle, glanced over his shoulder. ‘We’ll be beyond them very soon.’

  ‘Hey, Mrs Boycott!’ a boy of about twelve called out.

  When she glanced in his direction he promptly turned his back, bent over and pushed his pants to his ankles, much to the amusement of the others.

  ‘Dear God,’ Annie whispered. It occurred to her that surely at just two o’clock their school lessons were not finished. She felt a deep perturbation that Fr O’Malley might have inveigled children into his unchristian scheme to force her husband to submit.

  The remainder of their journey was not without incident. Farmers working in fields turned their backs upon them. As they passed through a cluster of cottages and a group of mostly women and youths, it seemed they were about to be trapped in another gauntlet of abuse, but most of them just turned away in silent rejection. There were a few catcalls of: ‘Go home, English bastards!’ and one youth threw a clod of earth, striking Weekes on the shoulder. Annie observed that the boy’s mother quickly struck him on the back of the head.

  She was shocked that their station in life had been brought so low in the locals’ eyes. Just a few short weeks ago, and despite the general disapprobation with which her husband was held, she would have been granted the courtesy and deference that their position of relative wealth and influence merited. And she had always repaid that behaviour with an equal measure of modesty and charity. Now, it seemed, they were to be treated with the contempt commonly doled out to society’s lowest elements – criminals, debauchers of women or traitors. It all weighed heavily on her shoulders and she dreaded the thought of setting foot in Ballinrobe, where the abuse might be multiplied tenfold.

  They turned into the town’s main street, which was busy with the sounds of enterprise, horses and carts moving to and fro, piles of horse dung lying along the thoroughfare. Barrels stacked higher than two men sat outside a public house and a towering arrangement of pots and pans indicated the location of the hardware shop. Men and women loitered or strolled along the narrow paths on either side – workmen in soiled clothing, tradesmen offering their services as cobblers, farriers and the like, a few men in the more refined clothing of a clerk or bank teller. Only a few women were visible and almost without exception they were dressed shabbily in skirts that appeared moth-eaten, and wrapped in dark, coarse, woollen cardigans and shawls. She saw a single lady of quality and looked admiringly at her pale yellow dress, with a hooped, satin skirt, ruffled breast and clinging sleeves, topped with a lacy, feathered hat and white parasol. When Annie tried to make eye contact, the woman looked sharply away. Annie glanced down at her own dress, stained from her trials in the kitchen. Her hair also hung bedraggled from beneath her poorly chosen hat. She’d not had a minute to pay her own appearance any attention and was convinced she must look a fright.

  As they moved along the street a cobbler spat into the hard-packed earth of the road and several others turned their backs on the landau. A small child pulled a wicked face and his mother scowled at Annie. An elderly man pointed first to a mound of steaming horse dung, then directly at them. Madeleine sobbed gently into her aunt’s breast, and Annie pulled her niece closer and lifted her own head high in defiance.

  Weekes pulled up outside the surgeon’s premises. As they dismounted, a female voice called out from an upstairs window: ‘Go back te England and take yer thieving husband with ye!’

  They knocked loudly on the door while the constables took up positions to protect the carriage. A spindly, middle-aged woman answered and recoiled at sight of them.

  ‘What do ye want?’

  ‘Have you not a civil tongue in you? We wish to see Doctor Maguire,’ Weekes blurted out angrily.

  ‘I’ve no civility for your kind. He’s not here!’ And with that she slammed the door in their faces.

  Annie’s heart sank. Madeleine’s finger was swollen and deeply discoloured, and she feared the girl might be inflicted with a poison of the blood.

  ‘What are we to do, Asheton?’

  They were about to leave when they heard raised voices from within and the door was pulled open again. Dr Maguire, a man of late middle age in dark pants and waistcoat, beckoned them inside.

  ‘Contrary to what my hot-tempered housekeeper may have said, I believe denying medical attention to anyone would be sinful. Please come inside.’

  ‘I wish you would express those feelings to Father O’Malley, Doctor.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no need for that. He specifically informed me that that was his wish. Not that I needed any encouragement. Now, what’s the problem?’

  Asheton Weekes left the doctor to his ministrations to begin purchasing supplies. As he walked along the pavement he had to endure continual catcalls and whistles, but to one who had dodged bullets and spears, they had little effect. He entered Corcoran’s bakery and interrupted the gossip of two women and the proprietress, who fell to immediate silence.

  ‘Excuse me. I would like six wheaten loaves please. And four of soda bread,’ he said, consulting the list supplied by Annie.

  The woman behind the flour-stained wooden counter exchanged a conspiratorial glance with the others.

  ‘We’ve no bread today, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean? This is a bakery, is it not?’

  ‘The bread’s all sold. Try Claremorris.’

  ‘Claremorris? That’s two hours’ jour… What about all those loaves behind you?’

  ‘That’s all promised.’

  ‘But surely you…’ He paused and looked around at the cold, hostile f
aces. ‘Could you please sell me a sack of flour?’

  ‘We’ve no flour. And ye won’t find flour anywhere in Ballinrobe. Not even the mill. Try elsewhere.’

  He ground his teeth and thumped the counter in frustration before turning to the door, a final comment following him.

  ‘Yes, go on. Try elsewhere, like England.’

  He slammed the door behind him.

  He had the same response at the mill, and again in the dairy and in O’Keefe’s grocery. Fuming, he hurried back to the doctor’s office where one of the constables was helping Madeleine, now sporting a heavily bandaged finger, on to the landau. Annie turned an anxious face towards him.

  ‘Asheton, Doctor Maguire told me we’re blacklisted!’

  He knew her to be a resilient woman, but he could see her resolve weakened in the first, glistening hints of tears. ‘He’s right. None of the blighters would sell me a crumb. Blast that priest! They’re calling it “boycotting”, would you believe?’

  ‘Asheton, take me to Kilkelly’s immediately,’ she said with determination.

  They left Madeleine with the constables and hastened to Kilkelly’s butchers. The store was empty of customers, but a tall, bearded man in a bloodstained apron manned the sloping counter display of meats.

  ‘I’d like to purchase these cuts, if you please,’ Annie said, proffering a list.

  The man folded his arms across his ample chest. ‘I’ve nothin’ on your list.’

  ‘What do you mean? There, salted pork. And there, that’s corned beef.’

  ‘I’ve nothin’ for you, if you want me te spell it out.’