by Colin Murphy
But the choice was not hers to make. In truth, whatever her feelings, there would be no debate on the subject for there existed an autocracy in her home: the rule of Charles Boycott. Yet she resolved to speak to him of the matter in the hope that time had smoothed the jagged spikes of his memory. That evening after dinner, she softened his mood with over-filled glasses of brandy and tentatively broached the subject of their daughter. He sat in grim silence and listened, then turned an icy gaze upon her and pronounced in a voice of chilling calm that he was glad the Irish peasant dog had died, proof of the existence of a just God. He didn’t care a whit for ‘the harlot’s’ plight; she had made her choices and she could live with them, and in his vilest pronouncement yet, said that if he ever set eyes on her bastard child he would wring its neck with his own bare hands. And he reminded Annie that he had acted with her complicity on Achill. And then he departed the room and left her alone to wallow in her guilt and her dread of Mary’s fate.
It took her a week to summon the courage to write a reply, in which she offered her forgiveness and expressed her own sorrow for what had happened. She told her daughter of her regret that she could not come to visit as this would leave her in an invidious position, almost certainly ending her marriage and leaving her cut off from all means of survival, disgraced in the eyes of the world, and incapable of assisting Mary anyway. She expressed her heartfelt love and signed the letter. As an afterthought she included ten pounds.
An envelope arrived a fortnight later containing a slip of paper with the words: ‘Thank you dearly, Mother, love Mary’, along with the two five-pound notes. That was the last contact she ever had with her daughter.
On the morning of 28 December of that year, Annie was embroidering a rose pattern into a white kerchief when a sharp knocking on the front door disturbed her. Maggie informed her that an RIC sergeant and constable were outside. The sergeant, a man in late middle age, seemed uncomfortable and hesitant in his greeting. He looked at her feet and asked for Mr Boycott. Annie informed him that her husband had left for Westport and would not return until evening, which discomfited the sergeant even more. At Annie’s insistence, he finally delivered his tidings.
Did she have a daughter, Mary, resident of Dooagh on Achill Island?
Yes, she did.
Then it was his sad duty to inform her that her daughter had passed away two nights previously, on St Stephen’s Day, 26 December, the cause of her death a medical condition of which he had no knowledge.
Annie had thanked the sergeant graciously, closed the door and fainted. Maggie roused her some minutes later, after which she sobbed at length in the girl’s arms. Gathering her wits, she quickly wrote a note to Charles informing him in unadorned, matter-of-fact language that his daughter had died and that she would attend the funeral, never once using Mary’s name. She would return as soon as travel arrangements permitted and he could rest assured that she would engage in no discussion on the matter upon her return. A promise she kept.
Then she departed for Achill.
At the funeral a peasant woman, Mrs Margaret Gaughan, expressed her sorrow at Annie’s loss and explained that she had been in Mary’s presence when she died. Her daughter, Mrs Gaughan explained, had spent Christmas Day in her company, as she resided in a room of her house, and it might be a comfort to her to know that Mary seemed cheerful and bright as they celebrated the day of the Lord’s birth. Then during the night she had inexplicably begun to bleed heavily. No doctor could be called in time and Mrs Gaughan had done what she could, but the source of the blood was internal and beyond her skills as the local midwife.
Annie asked her if Mary had said anything in her final hours and Mrs Gaughan told her that she had repeatedly called out for Francis. She could recall no other words of significance. When a doctor did arrive early the following morning, some hours after Mary’s final passing, he recorded her cause of her death as menorrhagia, or blood loss due to prolonged menstrual discharge. Mrs Gaughan had placed a hand on Annie’s arm and told her in confidence that no other condition was recorded as a factor in Mary’s death, in effect that no shame would attach to Mary’s memory as a result of her secret, illicit pregnancy. The reality was that the miscarriage of her unborn child had killed her. She thanked Mrs Gaughan, who seemed a kindly woman, and Annie was glad at least that her daughter had died in the company of one such.
It being late December, no flowers could be found to adorn the grave, but the local children had gathered some pretty, coloured leaves and they brightened the dark soil somewhat. To these Annie added her tears and then left for home.
She was given to bouts of melancholy every now and again, when some chance remark, a slant of light or a turn of phrase would stir her memory and for the briefest of moments she would be back in the time when her daughter was a living, breathing, beautiful soul. But she found she could shed no more tears for Mary, as though the well had run dry. She had done as her husband had commanded and never spoken of Mary again, except in her prayers. She kept the letter with its solitary thumbprint secreted in a jewellery box, on occasion taking it out and gently stroking the final evidence of her daughter’s existence.
She knew he thought of her too. His bitterness and stubbornness would not permit him to admit to it or ever to display any emotion on the subject, for his only emotion now seemed to be anger. Yet she saw him on occasion staring out at nothing and knew an image of Mary had flitted across his mind. Sometimes, too, he would look at Madeleine when he spied some tiny similarity to his daughter in her face or manner, and his lips would part in silence and he would pretend to cough, then his mask would return. These moments were among the scant few that allowed her to remain at his side all these years. For somewhere inside, she knew, he reproached himself, though his entire being worked in denial of this. She had no idea if there was any force on earth capable of exposing his inner truths.
It was 1880. Five years had passed since her daughter had shed her earthly frame. Annie rose from the bed after a tortuous night, unable to sleep for the greater part of it. Charles had long since risen and was about the estate already.
She removed her jewellery box from a drawer in her dresser and lifted the top section, revealing the only item of real value in the box. There sat Mary’s letter, stained with her daughter’s own tears. Many more of Annie’s had dried into the parchment over the years. She lifted it and removed a yellowed kerchief that she had been embroidering on the day when the sergeant had come to the door with the terrible news.
She parted the curtains to admit the grey autumn light and sat by the window. They were in the autumn of their own lives, but she feared that a bleak winter lay ahead.
Annie looked at the half-finished embroidery on the kerchief in her lap and regarded the pattern of a rose, its outer petals complete, its red heart absent, eternally awaiting the threads of her industry.
Some roses could survive the cold and wind, enduring the harshest slights of nature, she thought, and still produce a blossom. Others were simply never meant to bloom.
CHAPTER 30
THE IRISH PEOPLE EXCITED – The escort for the Orangemen going to the relief of Mr Boycott will consist of two squadrons of Hussars and one squadron of Dragoons, 150 infantry, with two cannon, and 150 Constabulary. The troops have been strictly ordered on no account to fire on the people unless the people resort to arms, in which case the troops are to act as in actual warfare. Great apprehensions are felt here of the disturbance…numbers of peasantry are en route to Claremorris. Some of them are armed.
–The New York Times, 12 November 1880
The Orange Relief Party. London, November 12 – A relief party of fifty Orangemen has arrived at Boycott’s farm, near Ballinrobe, from Monaghan today, unmolested. 7000 soldiers and police, with artillery, were sent for yesterday, for the purpose of maintaining order during the present excitement and are now between Ballinrobe and Claremorris.
–The Brisbane Courier, Saturday, 13 November 1880
‘Bedad,
sur, it’s the queerest menagerie that ever came into Connaught.’
–Quotation from a London Times report, Monday, 15 November 1880
11 NOVEMBER 1880
Owen Joyce walked along Market Street in the company of Fr O’Malley, James Redpath and Joe Gaughan, brushing shoulders with English army privates every few steps. Many of the townsfolk still viewed the arrival of the soldiers as a great imposition and, worse, an insult to their good character. What did the British Government think? That they were all murderers or vandals?
‘Did you hear the latest?’ Owen asked of the others. ‘The loyalists have sent an iron-clad ship bound for Galway and from there, a thousand armed Orange insurgents plan to seize boats and invade from the south up through Lough Corrib.’
Owen had been hearing wild rumours from the moment the army arrived in Ballinrobe, an event which presaged the imminent influx of what the papers were calling ‘The Boycott Brigade’. The fifty labourers were due to reach Claremorris that evening. Owen and his friends had made a brief stop in Ballinrobe to assess the situation, after which they intended to continue to Claremorris to witness the much-reported ‘invasion’ and to try to keep a lid on the situation.
Joe Gaughan laughed. ‘Didn’t hear that one. There’s another: that Gladstone has ordered an invasion of Ireland.’
‘And the newsmen were in a right brouhaha earlier with a rumour that Boycott had cut his own throat. Heaven save us, but the rumour mill’s more productive than the flourmill,’ Fr O’Malley said wearily.
The others couldn’t help but laugh.
Owen’s laughter was suddenly stolen from his throat as he found himself not two yards from his brother, who had just emerged from the butcher’s shop.
‘Hello, Owen.’
Fr O’Malley looked anxiously at Owen, unsure how he would react when confronted so abruptly. Owen stood stock-still, fighting the instinct he felt to launch himself at Thomas and beat his face to a pulp. He made no reply.
‘Come on, Owen, we’ve got to get going.’ Fr O’Malley took charge of the situation.
‘I’m sorry it worked out how it did, Owen, really,’ Thomas said.
The priest began to tug at Owen’s arm but there was a considerable resistance until he finally allowed himself to be led away.
‘I told ye Owen. Didn’t I tell ye? Look around ye. Our country is infected with the English,’ Thomas called after him.
‘Just keep walking, Owen.’
‘What’s going on, Father?’ Joe asked.
‘They had a falling out. Leave it, Joe.’
Thomas called out loudly, causing locals, RIC and soldiers to turn their heads. ‘Owen!’
Owen looked over his shoulder at his brother, whose expression bore no triumphalism but was fixed with grim seriousness. As Thomas shouted his name the tone rang out with deep familiarity, but Owen could not recall exactly why. They were well on their way to Claremorris before it struck him. Despite the hatred he now felt, he could not deny the fact that Thomas’s call had evoked a long-buried memory. His brother’s voice had carried the same sense of loss as when he’d cried out his name from the departing ship in Westport harbour thirty years before.
One of the four constables guarding Lough Mask Estate’s gates recognised Bernard H Becker and ushered him inside, informing him that Mr Boycott had been expecting him. As the journalist emerged off a deeply rutted track through some trees, he was somewhat taken aback at the sight of perhaps one hundred soldiers at work erecting tents and digging latrines. Horses and wagons crisscrossed the grassy field, churning up the damp sod. He recognised Boycott and his wife in the company of two officers. As he tied up the horse, Mrs Boycott strode off towards the house, head down, with a grim expression.
‘Captain, officer,’ Becker said as he approached the men.
Boycott glanced at him, then turned back to the military men who Becker later learned were Colonel Bedingfield and Captain Tomkinson of the 19th Hussars.
‘So this is just an advance squadron, you say, sir?’ Boycott asked rather testily.
Colonel Bedingfield swept his arm around in a wide arc. ‘Captain Boycott, this is a large area with many potential access points. The labourers will be spread out over a number of fields and to ensure their safety it will prove necessary, I assure you, to bring in at least four hundred more men and establish a permanent encampment.’
Boycott nodded. ‘Sir, please ensure your men don’t help themselves to my crops.’
The land agent swung away sharply towards Becker, who noticed the two officers exchange a slightly vexed look behind Boycott’s back. As he accompanied the agent to the house, he was conscious of the hugely increased numbers of constables and imagined that the thieves and other scoundrels elsewhere in Mayo must be enjoying a rare time of it.
Inside the house, he was immediately aware of a muskiness, as though food had gone off. There was also a tattiness about the place – pictures on the walls awry, ornaments coated in dust, and coats slung over chairs.
‘Your piece in the papers certainly did the trick, Becker. Perhaps even over-did the trick.’
Was he being admonished? He was unsure. Boycott’s tone was sharp, but he was forming the impression that it was permanently so.
‘It was no burden to come to the assistance of a fellow Englishman.’
In the drawing room Becker took a seat without being invited to do so, as he was weary after an uncomfortable night’s sleep on the Widow Barry’s under-length cot. Boycott stood near to the bureau. Becker thought the man had lost weight in the few weeks since they’d met. His defiant attitude remained, but was it less forthright? The land agent’s frame no longer stood quite so stiffly erect, but was bowed a little. His clothes were worn and downright dirty in patches. As he sat there, three constables walked by the window and looked directly into the room. A moment later he heard the crash of a falling pot followed by a blasphemous oath from a female tongue. Boycott didn’t even blink at these small events. It was as though they had become normality.
‘May I ask, sir, if you are displeased with what has resulted?’ Becker asked.
‘Well, sir, yes and no. I suppose it was beyond your control how much reaction the article would generate. My original hope was that the Government would simply send me a squadron of troops who might dig my crops and be gone. But now it seems half the army plan to encamp here and a band of men is due to arrive from the north. Truly I have no means of feeding them, except to let them eat my crops, which would seriously impair my profits, defeating the purpose of saving the harvest. Furthermore, we are still virtual prisoners, subject to daily threats from the Land League. Look at these.’
He rummaged in the bureau and as Becker waited, he saw a mouse running the length of the far wall and disappear behind the folds of a curtain.
Boycott handed him a number of notes and Becker flicked through them. There were crude drawings of coffins, hanging men, knives bearing Boycott’s name, all with ominous threats like: ‘You’ll not hear the birds in spring’, or another scrawl which read: ‘Are you any way comfortable? Don’t be uneasy in your mind: we’ll take care of you. God save Ireland.’
The same hand had scrawled many of the notes, but one struck him as peculiar:
‘An eye for an eye, a life for a life, Boycott – Rory of the Hills.’
‘Who’s Rory of the Hills?’
Boycott shrugged. ‘One of O’Malley’s thugs, I imagine.’
Becker found the note curious. While Boycott was clearly hated, as far as the correspondent was aware he’d never killed anyone.
‘Sir, how can you be certain that the Land League is behind this and not some fanatic?’
Boycott snapped his frame to attention. ‘Of course they are, Becker. And the Government believes the same. Why do you think they’ve arrested that seditionist Parnell? Why do you think they’ve sent hundreds of men here? Because of one or two lunatics? Of course not. But by God, I won’t be beaten. I’ll have my crop in and I’ll laugh in thei
r faces. Put that in your next report, sir!’
The Orangemen hailed from two counties, Cavan and Monaghan, and joined forces in Mullingar under the command of a Mr Goddard, a Mr Manning (he who had previously gone under the pseudonym ‘Combination’) and a British army officer, Captain Somerset Maxwell. In the final reckoning, all of the wild rumours had proven to be unfounded and the ‘Orange Invasion’ numbered precisely fifty-seven. They had, however, each been issued with a revolver, ‘only to be used in self-defence’.
They were accompanied on the train to Claremorris by a collection of news correspondents, who reported being subjected to a chorus of booing at every stop. Every town, village and three-house backwater in Ireland was aware of the crisis in Mayo and turned out in numbers along the line to express their support for the Lough Mask tenants. Men waved pitchforks as the train hurtled past, women and children hurled dung against the windows, and banners proclaiming ‘The Land League Forever’ and ‘Boycott All Landlords!’ were held aloft.
The proprietor of The Daily Express had furnished the labourers with vast quantities of supplies, including hundredweights of oatmeal, ham, cheese, tinned meat and biscuits, not to mention fourteen gallons of whiskey and thirty pounds of tobacco. Unfortunately it had been impossible to procure tents, so the labourers’ sleeping arrangements remained uncertain.
At three-thirty the steward on the train announced that they were approaching Claremorris. The labourers gathered their knapsacks, nervous glances flitting about the carriage as the slowing steam engine’s hiss was forced to compete with that of the Claremorris residents massing outside the station. These people were denied access by one hundred and fifty men of the 76th Regiment, who stood shoulder to shoulder, with bayonets fixed, in a semicircle around the entrance.