Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  ‘Owen!’ he called out brightly.

  ‘I was beginning to worry. You’ve been away ten days.’

  ‘Tut tut. You’re clucking like a mother hen.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s just with all that’s been going on.’

  Thomas laid the saddle against the cottage wall. ‘Why? What’s been happening?’

  He watched Thomas’s face closely. ‘Surely you heard? Lord Mountmorres was murdered the day you left here.’

  Thomas nodded, as though distressed at the memory. ‘Of course. I’m sorry, I thought ye meant something had happened with Boycott.’

  ‘You know about Mountmorres then?’ Owen pressed.

  ‘Jesus, who doesn’t? I hear the papers in Dublin and England and every godforsaken place are full of it.’ He shook his head. ‘You know, I was stopped three times in the last few days by the RIC, asking me who I was, where I lived, what was my business. The last thing you need right now is the place crawling with the police.’

  Owen couldn’t fault his reasoning or his apparent truthfulness. Still though, something nagged at him.

  ‘I’ve no love for the RIC, as you know,’ Thomas continued, ‘but it’s as well they’ve arrested someone for the murder. Might calm things down a bit.’

  This was news to Owen. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah, some fella named Sweeney. I heard Mountmorres had evicted him.’

  Owen was secretly relieved at hearing they’d caught the man responsible and it was with a lighter heart that he opened the cottage door.

  Síomha stood by the hearth readying a stew of potatoes, turnips and carrots while Tadhg sat combing his hair repeatedly, clearly intent on some courting. Niamh sat on the floor doing her school homework. They greeted Thomas’s return warmly and he then announced that he had something he wished to say.

  ‘The good news is that the job down Cong way looks like it will work out well.’

  ‘Great. What’s your friend’s name, by the way?’ Owen asked casually.

  ‘Feeney. Cal Feeney. Owns a good stretch of land. His father came into some money years back and he managed te buy about fifty acres. And he has a nice little business trading in oats and the like. Earns a decent income. Pays well too. So I won’t be cluttering up your home much longer, just until I can sort out a place te live near Cong.’

  ‘Thomas, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like,’ Síomha said.

  ‘Thanks, but I know when there’s too many sheep in a field. And now that I’m getting on my feet, I want te repay you properly for your hospitality.’

  They began to protest but he held up his hand. He lifted his paper bundle on to the table, untied the string and pulled out a flowing pale blue dress. He held it up in front of Síomha. It was relatively simple in design with a pleated skirt and a darker blue bodice that buttoned to the neck, but it would certainly be the most striking item in Síomha’s wardrobe. Niamh reached out to feel the softness of the material between her fingers.

  ‘Oh no, Thomas, I can’t.’

  ‘I insist. And besides, I don’t think it’d look very good on me. I had to guess the size, but it looks about right. So, please take it.’

  Síomha exchanged a glance with Owen, who smiled softly in agreement. In one sense he was delighted at her joy at receiving a gift that reflected her femininity, yet he couldn’t shift the feeling of wounded pride that his brother was the one to treat his wife.

  She hugged Thomas and thanked him profusely. A pretty pink dress for Niamh elicited whoops of glee, and he’d also bought a jacket for Tadhg, which surely would be worn to his romantic rendezvous.

  ‘And, Owen, I do want ye te have this,’ he said when the others had disappeared to try on their new gifts.

  Owen was astounded to see his brother proffering a five-pound note. He raised both hands, palms out, in refusal.

  ‘No, Thomas. Jesus, that’s as much as I’d get for my carrot crop. And besides, you’ve more than earned your keep. But thanks, anyway. I appreciate the offer.’

  ‘Owen, I want you to take it. For me.’ Thomas turned away and stared reflectively out the window at the darkening sky. ‘When I left you in Westport, I had all our money. I didn’t trust you not te lose it, te be honest.’ He chuckled at the memory. ‘But when I was on the ship I kept thinking that if only I’d given ye a few shillings…I was certain ye’d die because of that. Clearly I was wrong, but I’m sure some money would have kept ye out of that workhouse.’ He turned back to Owen, holding the money out again. ‘I need ye te take this and put my conscience at ease. Please.’

  Owen hesitated still. The very sight of five pounds was rare. For it to fall into his hands like a snowflake was unfathomable.

  ‘Look, your poor oul’ horse is on her last legs, I’m sad te say. What are ye going te do when she dies? And if ye still aren’t convinced, take it for the fund the priest has for them that’s left Boycott. I’m sure they could use it.’

  Owen smiled and reluctantly took the money, studying it as though he’d found some lost, fabled manuscript. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

  ‘Don’t. Being home here with you is reward enough.’ Thomas said and clapped his brother on the shoulder, confident he was safely back in the family fold.

  Fr O’Malley strained to read the article from The Times of September 28th in the dim, yellow light cast by the oil lamp.

  The murder of Mountmorres has excited feelings of alarm little short of actual panic among all respectable classes. It is said on all sides with equal despondency and bitterness that there is no longer any security for life or property in Ireland, that no man can feel safe who ventures to discharge his duties in connexion with the possession, occupation, or management of land. The country is fast drifting into anarchy, and the arm of authority seems paralyzed and the Executive utterly helpless…It is in vain that the land agitators now repudiate all responsibility for the crime and speak of it in terms of horror. Let them unteach if they can the lessons of the last 18 months they have been impressing upon an ignorant and excitable people. Let them endeavour to retrieve the principles of honesty and the instincts of humanity, which they have helped to stifle by appeals to the base passions of cupidity and revenge. They may then hope to get some credit for at least sincere repentance and an earnest desire to lead the misguided people back into the paths of reason and justice. A land meeting was held at Clonbur yesterday at which the Rev. Mr. Harty, PP, presided. Among the speakers were the Rev. Messrs J. O’Malley, PP, and Messrs. Redpath, Daly, J.D. Walsh and J Sheridan. It is needless to observe that the non-clerical speakers have been among the most violent in their platform speeches on other occasions. They now thought fit on the part of the Land League to disclaim all connexion with the crime. The country will now hold the agitators accountable for the atrocities, which have been the natural result of the inflammatory language which they have delivered and the pernicious doctrines they have taught.

  He lowered The Times and looked at Redpath. It was Thursday, 7 October. A full two weeks had elapsed since the boycott had begun and while he’d heard reports that Boycott and his family looked like a collection of beggars, the stubborn brute had refused to concede a thing. On top of that, they’d had a curt reply from Lord Erne stating bluntly that the rents were fair and he would decline even to look into the matter. The priest was frustrated too at the increasingly insulting depiction of the Land League and the tenantry in the British press, and the unfounded insinuation that the terrible recent violence was as a result of their peaceful efforts to find justice.

  ‘What do you think, Father?’

  ‘This is almost ten days old. By now they’ve probably tried and sentenced us.’

  ‘Pernicious doctrines.’ Redpath brandished the newspaper in the air. ‘This propaganda is the true pernicious doctrine. And the worst of it is that many British people will believe it.’

  Fr O’Malley laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘They say we’re an ignorant people. At least we’re n
ot so ignorant that we don’t know how to spell “connection”.’

  They sat around the table in grim silence, waiting for Annie Boycott to enter. In normal times their dinners were much anticipated and enjoyed, when the day’s experiences could be shared over fine meals of roast beef or lamb chops, roasted potatoes and gravy, and then sweet puddings of apple and pears. But as so much time had passed since they’d been abandoned by the world, those days seemed like they belonged to another life.

  From the condition of Madeleine’s dress it looked as if she had been rolling around in the mud and straw. Attempts by Annie to wash their clothes had proven disastrous. Her soap supplies were exhausted and she had taken to boiling all the clothes together in a kitchen vat. Unfortunately the colour had run from several items, turning the white shirts a greenish yellow, while the dresses emerged with ugly white patches between the pleats and their colours faded. And many of the stains had proven as stubborn as her husband.

  Their supply of meat had long since been exhausted and a few days ago Boycott had grown so weary of the bland servings of unseasoned vegetables that he had decided to slaughter a sheep so they might enjoy a mutton stew. He’d shot the creature and brought the ungutted carcass to the yard behind the kitchen, so revolting Annie and Madeleine with the sight of all the blood and brain matter that their niece had retched and Annie had immediately ordered him to remove it from her sight. Only young William had the stomach to assist his uncle to carry the beast to the stable yard and to watch while he attempted to skin, gut and cut it. Boycott had returned with a ragged, hacked-off leg of mutton dripping with blood, which had been cooked and eaten, but such had been the trauma, waste and effort that no further livestock had been slaughtered.

  As well as the dreadful food, there was an appalling smell in the house, though it was evident only to visitors such as Sergeant Murtagh, as they had all become accustomed to one another’s body odours and the stench from the accumulating grime about the building. But when the sergeant had cause to enter, his face would be seen to contort instinctively as though he was trying to clench his nose shut. Once, as he’d stood in the hallway talking to Boycott, a piercing scream had issued from the dining room, and they’d discovered Madeleine taking refuge behind a chair while a rat happily nibbled on a morsel of potato beneath the table.

  The area around the house offered little immediate relief in terms of the stink. There were by now eighteen constables permanently resident, living in two huts that had been supplied by Dublin Castle. A large latrine had been excavated to facilitate this group. Mingled with the noxious odours from this, the proximity of so many extra horses made for a positively nauseating stench around the immediate environs of the house. The presence of so many mostly young men patrolling the grounds had furthermore been a huge invasion into the family’s privacy. On one occasion Madeleine had absent-mindedly wandered to the rear first-floor bedroom window garbed only in her underwear and met the shocked eyes of a group of four uniformed constables. She had run and hidden beneath her blanket, red-eyed and red-faced for an hour.

  One of Sergeant Murtagh’s visits had been precipitated by Boycott’s request that the RIC secretly purchase the supplies for the family in Ballinrobe and deliver them to Lough Mask House. The sergeant had pointed out that were such a subterfuge to be discovered, it had been intimated that the boycott would be extended to the constabulary and that they could ill-afford to further antagonise the public in such dangerous times. Several sympathetic constables had made small gifts to Annie and her niece, such as bars of soap or chocolate, but their contributions, while gratefully received, were but a drop in the ocean of their needs.

  Due to their inability to communicate with the outside world, the sergeant had agreed to secretly post any urgent correspondence of Boycott’s. But he was, as he’d stated openly to the land agent, a decorated officer in the RIC, not a postman.

  These last days Weekes had worn the face of a man weary of life itself. Bags had formed beneath his eyes from exhaustion. His hope that this troubling business might all end soon had vanished and he often found himself thinking the unthinkable: of leaving Lough Mask House forever. His plan to sell the cattle had proven impossible, as sufficient constabulary could not be supplied to escort the herd to Claremorris and the cattle train bound for the Dublin market. But his hopelessness stemmed principally from Captain Boycott’s apparent inability to see any course of action other than the one upon which he was bent, expressly continuing to resist the war of attrition in the belief that when the peasants realised his pertinaciousness, they would eventually relent to his will. This, Weekes believed, was a truly short-sighted and ill-conceived strategy. All further attempts to serve notices of eviction had been abandoned due to the incendiary nature of the situation, which meant that the tenants could continue to go about their business without any immediate threat looming. They had no reason to desist in their action and could probably carry on through the winter.

  Charles Boycott, though verbally as defiant as ever, looked drained in the face, his flesh pale and his eyes heavy. His beard had not been trimmed for two weeks and was thick and tangled. The few hairs that he normally combed across the top of his head were frequently allowed to dangle to one side, giving him a particularly dishevelled appearance. His hands were rough and his skin split in several places around the knuckles, exposing angry-looking red slits framed by ingrained dirt.

  All in all, the group that sat down to their meal on the evening of Thursday, 14 October, was dispirited and strained to the point of snapping.

  Annie Boycott entered with a steaming pot and placed it in the centre of the table, having long since dispensed with the niceties of using a serving dish. She began to ladle soup into the diners’ bowls.

  Boycott looked down at the thin, off-white liquid, which had small solid lumps floating on the surface.

  ‘What is this, Annie?’ he asked, his voice non-confrontational, by now cognisant of her limited resources.

  ‘Potato and oat soup.’

  His lack of response spoke volumes.

  ‘The turnips you brought were rotten,’ she explained. ‘Perhaps they were in the ground too long. The carrots and mangolds were all used yesterday and nobody brought me a new batch. All I had left were potatoes, some oats and milk. So this is the best I could do today.’

  Nobody responded. They simply ate their food, which, despite its blandness, was welcome nourishment that might restore some of their energy, if not their spirits. For the next ten minutes the only sounds were the click-clack of spoons on crockery and the heavy rain beating against the windowpane. No words were spoken.

  When he had finished, Boycott sat back and looked around at the fatigue etched into their faces. He drummed the table with his fingers while the others finished eating.

  ‘Thank you, Aunt Annie. That was most tasty,’ William said dutifully. Following the boy’s lead, a few more muttered thanks were offered.

  Boycott rose sharply and startled everyone, his chair almost toppling behind him. He turned and walked towards the door with purpose.

  ‘Where are you going, Charles?’ Annie inquired.

  ‘I’m going to write a letter.’

  CHAPTER 22

  To the Editor of The Times

  Sir, - The following may be interesting to your readers as exemplifying the power of the Land League. On September 22nd a process-server, escorted by a police force of 17 men, retreated on my house for protection followed by a howling mob. On the ensuing day the people collected upon my farm and some hundred or so came to my house and ordered off, under threats of ulterior consequences, all my farm labourers, workmen and stablemen. My blacksmith has received a letter threatening him with murder if he works for me and my laundress has also been ordered to give up my washing. A boy who carried my post bag to and from the town of Ballinrobe was struck and ordered to desist from his work, since which time my little nephew, on 2d of Oct was stopped on the road, struck and threatened. The shopkeepers have been warn
ed to stop all supplies to my house and the telegraph messenger was also threatened. My farm is public property; people wander over it with impunity. My crops are trampled, carried away in quantities and destroyed wholesale. My gates are thrown open, the walls thrown down and the stock driven out on the roads. My ruin is openly avowed as the object of the Land League unless I throw up everything and leave the country. I say nothing about the danger to my own life, which is apparent to anybody that knows the country.

  Charles C. Boycott, Lough Mask House, Ballinrobe, Mayo, October 14. –The Times, 18 October 1880

  18 OCTOBER 1800

  Bernard H Becker reposed in the small nook in a corner of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub in Fleet Street and sipped his Fuller’s porter, the cloudy, dark ale beloved of workingmen and newspapermen. He wasn’t by habit a daytime drinker, but he’d badly needed a tipple to soothe the residue of nausea with which he’d awoken that morning, his previous night having been spent in the company of several hard-drinking correspondents from The Illustrated News and The Telegraph.

  He resolved just to have the one, as he would need to be at his sharpest later that afternoon when he put his proposal to his employer, Frank Harrison Hill, editor of The Daily News. Hill wasn’t a bad sort, he thought, but he had been known to lose his temper or change his mind between diametric opposites in a blink and you could never be certain what might set him off.

  Becker looked around the pub. It had been here a couple of hundred years and was said to have been a regular haunt of Dickens, Twain, Tennyson and the Irish writer and poet Oliver Goldsmith, or so he’d heard, although he himself had no grand literary illusions of following in their footsteps or finding inspiration by sitting in the seat once occupied by the great Dickens buttocks. Yet the thought of Goldsmith returned his mind to things Irish, a land of great possibility, he considered, for a man of his talents.