Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  He slammed the tip of his cane against the floor. ‘What’s got into you? Why are you behaving like this?’

  ‘Why? Are you insane? Our lives here are over! You’ve lost, Charles. Do you think the British Cabinet is going to send the army back every time you try to evict someone?’ She was standing by the bed now, yelling, fists clenched by her sides. ‘Do you honestly think we’ll ever be able to go to Ballinrobe to attend church? Or to buy a dress? Or sell a cow? You have a harvest, to be sure, a harvest of bitterness and hate that you’ve been nurturing for years and all you’ve done is give it one final spurt of growth!’

  ‘You know nothing about the matter! You’re speaking from a woman’s ignorance of such things. I’ve lost, have I? Not while I’ve air in my lungs!’

  ‘And how long will that be? And how long before William or Madeleine or your wife takes a Fenian bullet meant for you? Or Asheton? And speaking from a woman’s ignorance, I happen to understand a great deal more than you ever will. In fact, it was precisely because of that I made Asheton speak to Owen Joyce about the possibility of some kind of compromise.’

  There was an abrupt silence as her words settled, drifting down upon him like a winter mist, slowly darkening his features.

  ‘You what?’

  She sat on the bed for support. ‘I asked Asheton – no, I insisted he speak to Owen Joyce about settling this thing.’

  ‘How dare you! How dare Weekes! I’ll kill him, I swear it!’

  ‘Don’t blame Asheton! It was all my doing. I wanted to stop this before it went too far! The landlords and the British Army on one side, the Land League and terrorists on the other, and us squashed in the middle. It has to stop!’

  He emitted a primordial roar and swung his cane wildly, shattering a large vase on her dressing table and sending a wave of fractured porcelain and water exploding across the floor. Annie instinctively covered her face with her forearms.

  ‘You’ve betrayed me! You’ve betrayed your country! So has that scoundrel Weekes. I never thought I’d– And tell me, my dear Annie, what did your Fenian comrade say to your request?’ His voice was mocking now and he inclined his head, stepping towards her.

  Annie saw him approach and, chilled to the bone, she vacillated, wondering if she had gone too far. Then she recalled her earlier thoughts and how she had failed Mary, and from within that memory she found renewed courage to see this though to the end, whatever that might be.

  She raised her head to look directly at him with defiant eyes. ‘Joyce said they would have negotiated but that it had become too big now. And he’s right. This has gone beyond you or me or them. And we have to make sure we have a life at the end of it all.’

  ‘You stupid, stupid woman,’ he hissed venomously and suddenly grasped the bun of hair at the top of her head. ‘You think I’m going to run from a dog like Joyce, or the priest, or Parnell? You think I’ll be beaten by a bunch of illiterate Irish peasants?’

  The pain wasn’t excessive, but he forced her head back so that her eyes were fixed on the canopy above their four-poster bed. She gritted her teeth as she replied with as much calm as she could muster: ‘This is nothing to do with the Land League or the peasants. All of this, everything you’ve done these last months, everything you’ve brought upon us is about revenge. Don’t spit your lies in my face about your lofty ideals because this has all been about taking vengeance on the Irish for stealing your daughter away from you!’

  He released her abruptly and took a step back. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said this is all about revenge for Mary.’

  ‘I told you never to speak that name again!’ he screamed, then slapped her across the face, a fierce, malevolent blow that snapped her head back and threw her against the mattress. Annie fought to stay in her senses, forcing herself up and facing him again.

  ‘Mary! Mary! Mary! Mar–’ The screams of her daughter’s name were violently interrupted by another blow, and this time she saw stars, tears involuntarily springing to her eyes, yet she swore she would not yield to them. She somehow managed to muster her strength and snarled through gritted teeth. ‘MARY! MARY! MARY!’

  Boycott threw his cane aside and leapt upon her with clawed hands, reaching for her throat. ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!’

  With her last breath before he squeezed her windpipe, Annie gasped into his face. ‘Like you killed your daughter?’

  He clasped his hands around her throat, but his grip loosened almost as quickly as it had closed and slowly he pulled away and staggered back, staring at his outstretched hands as if they had been afflicted with leprosy.

  ‘What am I doing? What am I doing? God forgive me…’

  Annie massaged her throat as she rose to sit again, needing her free arm to support her against the mattress.

  ‘You couldn’t bear that she would leave you for an Irish Catholic peasant and neither could I, may God forgive me. And she loved that boy more deeply than anything on this earth. That was what stuck in your craw. You’d been raised to despise Catholics and you viewed the Irish as illiterate good-for-nothings, but that was precisely what your daughter – our daughter, Mary – chose over you.’

  He was breathing hard, his back against the window, his hands seeking the support of the sill through the curtains.

  Annie pressed ahead; she knew it must all be faced now or it would forever haunt whatever was left of their life. ‘We left her there with nothing but your hatred. And then when we heard she was pregnant and alone, you abandoned her for the final time and I was too weak to stand up to you and help her. But I was a coward, afraid of what I’d lose, afraid for my safety, if truth be told. My God, if only I’d known that there were much greater things to be feared in this world, like the inability to live with oneself. When she died, Charles, I felt as though I myself might just as well have plunged a knife into her heart. What kind of mother refuses the hand of her child when the child is clinging to life?’

  He stood, but with his shoulders slumped, gazing absently across the room at some unearthly place. When he spoke, his voice was weak, mumbling.

  ‘My behaviour towards you was inexcusable, not that of a gentleman. I beg your forgiveness.’

  ‘What? My forgiveness? Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said about the way we abandoned our daughter?’

  ‘A man should never strike a woman as I did. I am ashamed.’

  ‘I don’t care that you struck me! Do you hear? It’s a small penance for the way I treated Mary. But what about striking her? Do you feel shame about that? Or are you going to continue to boycott her memory?’

  He looked at her now, but his rage had been exhausted and his expression was that of a man confronted by vistas previously denied.

  ‘What did you say?’

  She smiled mirthlessly. ‘That’s what they’re calling it, is it not? All of this? They’ve turned your name into a word that means to shun someone. And that’s precisely what you’ve been doing to your daughter all of these years, to her memory, her name even. You’ve boycotted them and forced me to do the same.’

  He turned his back on her and walked to the dressing table where he idly began to pick at the shattered fragments of the vase.

  ‘I didn’t want her to die,’ he said in a voice barely audible.

  ‘But you did nothing to prevent it.’

  ‘There was nothing I could do. I wasn’t even aware she was ill.’

  ‘No, but you knew she was alone and with child, and desperate. Even if God had determined to take her and returning her to health was beyond our powers, we could have been there in her last days, a comfort to her. We could have told her we loved her. And you did love her, didn’t you, Charles?’

  He didn’t reply for some time, merely continued to gather some minute fragments of porcelain into a pile on the top of the dresser.

  ‘I never revealed it to you,’ he said finally, ‘but I was…my heart was broken when she died.’

  ‘You mean when Mary died. Say her name, Char
les.’

  ‘When Mary died.’

  ‘No, Charles, but then you don’t reveal anything to me, do you? Except your rage. Despite all that happened, despite you beating her and shunning her and the cruel way you evicted that boy’s innocent parents in revenge, despite all of that, she still loved you.’

  Annie fished the letter from her pocket. She stretched her arm out towards him now, the folded sheets between her fingers.

  ‘Here, Charles, don’t take my word for it. Take Mary’s.’

  He looked around and for a moment appeared confused. He took the letter and sat on the end of the bed, his back to his wife, and began to read.

  Annie rose and lit an oil lamp as the sun had almost set and gloom had stolen upon the space without their noticing. As he read the letter in silence, Annie gathered the shards of porcelain from the floor and laid a sheet on the wood to soak up the water.

  Presently she heard a sound behind her as she knelt mopping the last of the dampness. It was a sob, brief and stifled, but within that tiny sound she heard an expression of his grief, of the terrible pain of human loss. It was gone in an instant and she would never hear another, but Charles being the man he was, she knew that that miniscule expression of true emotion was a monumental leap.

  She hunkered on the floor, the sheet gathered upon her lap, her back to him, waiting for him to speak. She heard the sound of paper being folded and a further silence ensued, not even their breathing audible.

  ‘I’ve left the letter there on the bed, Annie. You should keep it, Mary sent it to you,’ he said at last, his voice surprisingly even.

  She didn’t reply. She wasn’t sure what more there was to be said.

  ‘I’ll not give in to them, the Land League and the others. I’ll show them that they can take away my home and my livelihood, but they’ll never break my spirit.’

  Annie’s heart sank at these words, although they were calmly spoken and lacked his usual venom. She stood erect and listened.

  ‘I’ll continue to be as forthright in my comments. But tomorrow…’ He rose and walked to the door where he stood with his back to her. He heaved a sigh before he continued. ‘But tomorrow, we’ll leave for Dublin for a few days and while there I’ll make enquiries about the possibility of a position in England. The break from this place will do you good anyhow. I will also make public our intention to leave with the expeditionary force for an extended holiday, although I intend to leave open the possibility of returning. At least in that way it will be a statement that I have not been vanquished.’

  He opened the door, closed it softly behind him and she heard his footsteps recede.

  Annie closed her eyes and arched her neck so that her face looked towards the unseen heavens. Then she smiled and whispered a single word.

  ‘Mary.’

  CHAPTER 34

  Ballinrobe – Captain Boycott has expressed his intention of taking a holiday with Mrs Boycott after his crops have been reaped; but, having a lease of 31 years, he has at present no intention of throwing up his farm.

  –The Times, 18 November 1880

  Eene zonderlinge geschiedenis doet sedert eene week een eigenaardig licht op Iersche toestanden vallen. Een rentmeester van lord Erne, Kapitein Boycott, die zelf ook eene hoeve bebouwt, heeft zich vergrepen tegen de wetten der Land League door namens zijn principaal aan een pachter de huur op te zeggen en door een gerechtsdienaar tegen de woede der menigte eene schuilplaats te verzekeren.

  –Zierikzeesche Nieuwsbode, Holland, 17 November 1880

  CAPTAIN BOYCOTT DEFEATED

  In today’s paper is a letter from Captain Boycott to a Dublin gentleman warmly expressing his acknowledgement of the services rendered to him and stating that he intends with his family to leave Lough Mask with the expedition. The prospect before him, he says, is simply ruin.

  –The Daily Express, 20 November 1880.

  17-26 NOVEMBER 1880

  ‘We’ve won.’ Owen Joyce’s expression was more of disbelief than joy.

  ‘It looks like it.’ Redpath smiled and then looked at the others gathered around the table in the Valkenburg Hotel, which was littered with a mess of newspapers and teacups. Besides Fr O’Malley and Owen, the rest were press correspondents, including Michael McCabe of The Connaught Telegraph, Seamus Duggan of The Ballinrobe Chronicle and Declan McQuaid, an intense, bespectacled young patriot from The Freeman’s Journal.

  McQuaid was more sceptical. ‘But he says he won’t give up the farm.’

  ‘You don’t know how stubborn Boycott is. He has to say something like that or he’s admitting defeat,’ Owen offered.

  ‘I agree,’ Redpath said, ‘and if Boycott admits he’s beaten, it’s like admitting the entire British establishment’s plan was a costly failure.’

  McCabe piped up. ‘The loyalist papers are still calling the expedition a “great success”. And they’re still getting money. The London Telegraph has just made a contribution of one hundred pounds.’

  ‘Let them give as much as they want,’ Owen said. ‘No amount of money can finance this kind of operation all over the country. And it’s spreading. Landlords are being boycotted from Cork to Donegal.’

  ‘They’ve already admitted as much. Sure, two troops of Hussars are being withdrawn te Dublin tomorrow,’ Seamus Duggan chipped in.

  ‘Frankly, it doesn’t surprise me,’ Redpath said. ‘They’ve begun to realise what a waste of resources it all was.’

  Fr O’Malley had all the while been sitting pensively, sipping a cup of tea.

  ‘You’ve been very quiet, Father,’ Owen remarked. ‘Aren’t you pleased? You yourself said that when Boycott was gone, victory would be complete.’

  He nodded. ‘I did, I did, Owen. But he’s not gone yet and we must remain vigilant until he’s on the boat to England. This may be just the time that some hothead Fenian will decide to strike, when the shield the army have put around Boycott is lowered. It’s wonderful news about boycotts beginning all over the country and to think we started it all here, but if any harm were to come to him, even now, it would be a catastrophe. It would be the final excuse the extremists in the British Government would need to force through coercion, and ironically that would suit the terrorists perfectly. They’d find their ranks swollen to bursting overnight. It’s been seen a thousand times in a thousand places through history. Small rebellious groups can become armies overnight when an unpopular government uses extreme measures to suppress the masses.’

  ‘But there’s hardly even been a curse thrown in a week, Father,’ McCabe said.

  ‘And it troubles me that it’s gone so very, very quiet.’

  ‘But in the final shuffle, the Fenians want the same as the Land League. Why try to destroy that when we’ve come so far?’ asked Duggan.

  Caught up in his joy at the news of Boycott’s departure, Owen had forgotten his brother’s warning, that they would get Boycott sooner or later. He realised also that Fr O’Malley had been thinking precisely the same thing. Owen answered Duggan’s question.

  ‘Because the militants aren’t prepared to wait. Even with all the boycotts, it might take two years before the British Government agrees to our demands and passes a bill. And besides, the Fenians’ first priority is independence. Landlordism is just one issue to them. They want a war because war brings fast results. If they did drive the British out of Ireland they could pass any law they wanted overnight. The people in extremist groups are generally impulsive, impatient and violent. They march to a different drum. Believe me, I know,’ he said and met the priest’s eyes.

  Maggie, Boycott’s former housemaid, approached the table, bearing an empty tray and an acerbic expression. She began to gather the crockery noisily.

  ‘How are you keeping, Maggie?’ the priest asked softly.

  She paused and looked directly down at him. ‘What concern is it of yours?’ she snapped and strode away towards the kitchen door. The priest shook his head, reminded that the boycott hadn’t been without its innocent victims.
>
  Their conversation continued in Gallagher’s bar, the cups of tea replaced by more spirited beverages. There was general delight that even the weather was working in their favour. The ground in which the Ulstermen were digging was so icy that picks were needed to break the surface and the army tents had frozen so solidly that the canvas flaps could be swung open like a wooden door. Boycott’s capitulation, as they chose to view it, was toasted repeatedly during the evening, Parnell’s forthcoming trial was debated at length, and a final drink was raised to the citizens of Chicago with Redpath’s news that they had named Parnell a Freeman of that great American metropolis. And then Owen and Fr O’Malley and Redpath, all slightly the worse for wear, began the journey home.

  ‘Notice all those glum foreign correspondents in the pub?’ Redpath asked as the car made its way along Market Street.

  ‘Can’t hold their drink,’ Owen laughed.

  ‘They expected a war and have spent a month writing about turnips. They’re praying for a grand finale when the expedition leaves to get the world’s attention again.’

  Fr O’Malley pulled his collar up against the chilling night breeze. ‘Then we’ll have to make sure they have nothing to write about.’

  Fifteen minutes after they had departed the Valkenburg Hotel, Maggie returned to gather the discarded newspapers. The room was quiet now but for a solitary man who had just arrived and ordered a meal. As she collected the papers, her eye fell upon a circled article in The Times. She picked it up and began to read, her heart sinking when she saw the line about Boycott’s intention to leave Ireland. Somehow she had hoped that everything would work out in the end and she’d be able to return to Lough Mask House.

  ‘Oh Lord!’ she whispered and pressed her fingers against her lips to stifle a sob.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  The voice so startled her that she yelped aloud. She swung about to see the lone diner gazing down across her shoulder.