In the Time of Famine

by Michael Grant

  Nora tapped the door and stuck her head in. “Sir, they’re here.”

  “Show them in.”

  Somerville poured sherry for Wicker, Attwood, and Rowe and sat down at his desk. “I’ve just received instructions from England,” he said. “As members of the Board of Guardians, we have been charged by the Crown to raise taxes to subsidize the Board of Works’ projects.”

  “More taxes?” Attwood growled. “What am I to pay them with? I can’t collect the rents due me now.”

  “I absolutely agree with you, Lord Attwood,” Rowe said.

  Attwood, ignoring the obsequious Rowe, addressed his question to Somerville. “If we pay our tenants to work on road improvements, when will they have time to tend our fields?”

  Major Wicker drained his glass. “I say evict the lot of them. Tumble their damn hovels and good riddance to them.”

  Rowe nodded his head vigorously. “I quite agree. Perhaps Divine Providence is offering us an opportunity to clear the land of these troublesome cottiers.”

  Somerville rose to poke at a log that had fallen off the grate. “It’s premature to talk of eviction, gentlemen. We must provide the men with public works, pay them, and encourage them to plant their crop.” He put the poker down and turned to face the three men with a solemn expression. “Otherwise, there will be no revenues next year for any of us.”

  That got their attention. The room grew quiet as each man silently tallied up his potential lost profits.

  “Very well,” Attwood said, breaking the silence. “If we must provide work for them, so be it. But I, for one, will not coddle these shiftless bog trotters.”

  Rowe downed the rest of his sherry and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “You are absolutely right, Lord Attwood. If we must offer them employment, let us make sure it’s irksome enough so they don’t get too comfortable. They can begin by repairing the drainage to my fields below the river.”

  “That will not be permitted,” Somerville said. It was not lost on him that Rowe was quick to volunteer those “troublesome cottiers” to work on his properties first. He picked up the letter of instructions from London and read from it. ‘The work is to be of such nature as will not benefit individuals in a greater degree than the rest of the community and therefore not likely to be called for from any motive but the professed one of giving employment.’”

  “That’s preposterous,” Attwood bellowed. “They want us to pay these men for work that will not benefit us?”

  Somerville tossed the letter on the desk. “So it would appear.”

  April 1846

  Ballyross, Ireland

  The morning the Board of Works was to open was gray and foggy. A chilling rain had been falling steadily since dawn. Inside the gloomy, stone-walled building that was the headquarters of the Board of Works, Alfred Browning, a supervising clerk in the Ministry of Public Works and John Thomas, his assistant, prepared for the opening by having their tea.

  The pair had been sent from Dublin Castle to administer the operations of the newly created Board of Works. Both men, country born, but now residents of Dublin city, thought themselves urban sophisticates and believed it beneath their dignity to be posted to this godforsaken village in the wilds of western Ireland. Still, as good civil servants, they had accepted their assignment to Ballyross. And they came prepared to do whatever it took to see to it that every I was dotted and every T crossed. By God, the government’s funds would not be misappropriated or squandered by thieving and shiftless bog trotters as long as they were on the job.

  Thomas, rail-thin and lanky, poured tea into two mugs. Alfred Browning, a short, fat man with a bulbous nose, spooned two generous helpings of sugar into his cup. “How many men will we need for this first project?” he asked.

  Thomas consulted his ledger. “Ten for a drainage ditch and another ten for a bridge repair on the river road, Mr. Browning.”

  Browning dipped a biscuit in his tea. “Do you think we’ll find enough men to fill all twenty positions?”

  Thomas sniffed. “With this lot of slackers, I doubt it.”

  They finished their tea and Browning consulted his pocket watch. It was exactly nine o’clock. “Very well, Thomas. Unlock the door.”

  Thomas opened the door and staggered backward at the sight before him. His pretentious veneer of sophistication deserted him and he momentarily reverted to his coarse country origins. “Jasus Christ,” he blurted out. “Will you look a’ that?”

  Outside, standing in the rain, more than two hundred men stood waiting to sign up for work.

  It took three weeks to resolve the Board of Works’ first crisis. They had expected no more than twenty men to apply for work. Instead, ten times that number appeared, clamoring for work. After a flurry of letters and dispatches between Dublin Castle and Whitehall, it was decided, however reluctantly, that all applicants should be given work. After all, everyone agreed, it would only be until the next harvest.

  The next crisis had to do with where the men would work. Rules forbidding work projects that would benefit any one landlord made things difficult because the landlords owned most of the land in the county. In order to find work projects that would not benefit any one of them, the work gangs were consigned to remote corners of the county to build roads to nowhere. These roads became known as—boithre na mine— or “meal roads.”

  To the men, it didn’t matter that they were doing useless work. It was still hard work and the rocks were just as heavy, the clay just as tough to spade, and the icy rain just as cold. What did matter was that the work was miles away from the village and the men, weakened from lack of food and freezing in their tattered clothing, exhausted themselves from the sheer effort of just getting to the worksite.

  Michael, Dermot, and Da worked alongside one another spading soil made rock-hard by the frost. It was mechanical work. Spade, lift, toss. Spade, lift, toss. Under other circumstances Michael would have enjoyed the work, because it would have given him time to think. But, now, that was precisely the problem. He had time to think and all he could think of was America.

  A whistle blew, mercifully taking him out of his melancholy reverie.

  William Tarpy, the barrel-chested road supervisor blew the whistle again. “Time,” he called out in a raspy voice.

  Tarpy, a beefy man with a thick neck and a mouthful of broken teeth, was a hard taskmaster. It mattered nothing to him that his crew was building a road to nowhere. It mattered nothing to him that his crew was emaciated and weakened by hunger. It mattered nothing to him that the men wore tattered clothing that was pitifully ineffective against the cold and the rain. What mattered to him was that he was in charge and by God these slackers would build the finest road to nowhere that had ever been built.

  Michael and the others rinsed their spades in the muddy ditch water and lined up for their noon meal of Indian corn. As they filed by, Tarpy measured out a quantity of corn and placed it on their outstretched spades. Then the men went back to the ditch, sprinkled water on the corn to soften it up, and sat down to eat in the rain, using the spade as a plate.

  Dermot scooped up a handful of corn, put it in his mouth, and spit it out. “I can’t eat this pig slop.”

  He was about to toss it, but Michael stopped him. “Eat, Dermot. You need to keep up your strength.”

  Reluctantly, Dermot ate the corn.

  The men looked up at the sound of a horse approaching.

  Emily came cantering around a bend and brought Shannon up short, surprised to see men here. She’d heard that the Board of Works had road gangs out making repairs, but this was the first time she’d seen one. She walked her horse down the center of the road, pretending to look straight ahead. But she couldn’t help notice the pitiful condition of the men. And she couldn’t help noticing the young man, the one who’d saddled Shannon the first day of her return, staring at her intently.

  A shriveled old man rose from the side of the road. He started to cross in front of her, but he stumbled and collapsed. Shanno
n reared up, but she quickly got him under control and dismounted. She knelt down beside the unconscious man, put her hand to his chest and was stunned to feel his rib cage beneath his thread worn shirt. No one came forward to help.

  “Why are you all cowering like sheep in a ditch? This man needs help.”

  Michael was suddenly beside her. He put his hand on the man’s clammy temple, suddenly and keenly aware of her nearness. Out of the corner of his eye he studied her slender fingers, delicate, pale, against the man’s dirty rough jacket. He inhaled the scent of sweet soap. Her skin, clear, almost translucent, was nothing like Moira’s coarse skin. Suddenly, he was aware of her staring at him.

  “I said, will he be all right?” Emily asked again.

  “Oh… yes… He’s just passed out from the hunger.”

  “Then you must get him to the infirmary,” Emily said, infuriated by Michael’s matter-of-fact tone.

  Michael, flustered and still smarting from the sheep comment, jumped up. “Mr. Tarpy, this man needs to go to the infirmary.”

  Tarpy had his back to the road and was busy eating his own lunch of mutton and beans. He hadn’t seen the man fall and he didn’t know Emily was there. Without turning around, he said, “Right. I’ll carry him to the infirmary on me own back straight away.” He chuckled and when no one laughed in response, he turned and saw Lord Somerville’s daughter glaring at him.

  “Right,” he said jumping to his feet. “What’s the matter then?”

  Michael grinned at Tarpy’s discomfort. “This man needs to go to the infirmary.” He knew there were no provisions to take care of sick men and he wondered what the thickheaded supervisor would do.

  Tarpy glared at Michael and Emily, flustered, angry. No one, especially not a laborer, told him what to do. But that woman was watching him. He had to do something. But what? He glanced down at the fallen man. The man may be sick, but what has that to do with me? She was still looking at him. Why won’t she go away? He took his cap off, ran his hands over his bald pate, and put it back on. I must do something. In desperation he turned to two men sitting nearby and shouted, “The pair of you, get this man to the infirmary.”

  The two stunned men rose and went to the fallen man.

  Emily remounted her horse and rode off.

  Tarpy blew his whistle again. “Right then. Back to work the lot of you.” He pointed a thick finger at Michael. “And you, Ranahan, you’d do well to mind your own business.”

  Michael made a move toward him, but Dermot and Da pulled him away. Michael picked up his spade and watched Emily canter off into the fog.

  Emily rushed into the study and found her father reading by the fire.

  “I passed men working on the cemetery road today,” she said in a voice low-pitched with anger.

  Somerville put the book on his lap. “We’ve put them on public works.”

  “Some of those men are so sick they can barely stand. How do you expect sick men to work?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “For God’s sake, Father, I’m not a child. Stop telling me I don’t understand.”

  “Then understand this,” Somerville said sharply. “Without the public works, these men and their families will surely starve to death. With the wages they earn, as pitiful as they are, they can at least buy food and seed for next year’s planting.”

  “You’re right about one thing, Father. It is pitiful.”

  Somerville turned away from her accusing glare, weary of being caught between opposing sides. To his daughter—and most of the members of Parliament, if he was to believe the newspapers—he was an incompetent, merciless landlord bent on squeezing the very lifeblood from of his tenants. To his fellow landlords he was regarded with increasing mistrust. Nothing had been said, but he knew Attwood and the others suspected him of being a reformer; someone whose misguided compassion threatened to destroy their way of life.

  “It’s only until next year’s harvest,” he said softly.

  “You might want to tell that to the man who fainted from hunger today.” Emily turned and walked out of the room.

  Somerville rose and stood by the window. The lashing rain was beating on the windowpane and he could hardly see his fields. Since he’d called his daughter home, he’d been waiting for an opportune time to talk to her, to find a way to heal the past. There was so much that he wanted to say; so much he wanted to apologize for. But every time he thought the time right, something like this happened and the gulf between them grew even wider.

  Chapter Seven

  May 1846

  Ballyross, Ireland

  Throughout the winter and spring, Board of Works’ supervisor Alfred Browning and his assistant, John Thomas, diligently assigned men to work on a succession of useless projects. The rigid rules were carefully enforced by the two men, who were sticklers for protocol. A minimum of a half a day’s wages would be paid when the work was called off because it was too cold or there was too much snow. But—there was a caveat. Mr. Browning pointed out that the rules stipulated that every worker had to be present at the morning roll call, which meant that the men had to walk miles in freezing rain or snow just to get to the worksite so they could be told to go home.

  During the bitter cold months of January and February, the men built a bridge that spanned nothing. The rains of April found them slogging back and forth across the county, paving roads that led to nowhere. Without questioning the lunacy of it, they did what was asked of them and doggedly kept building the “meal roads.” They held their anger when their wages were slow in coming and they went without payment for days, sometimes weeks. And they held their anger when the wages they were paid were scarcely enough to support a family.

  As the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months, they found it increasingly more difficult to survive. Wages remained the same, but the cost of food was increasing weekly. Desperate men began selling off their belongings. Some thought it foolhardy to sell spades and cooking pots, but what good was a cooking pot if there was no food to put in it? And what good was a spade if there was no crop to dig?

  “Just till the harvest…” became the daily prayer of the men who, day after day, bartered away clothing, bedding, tools—whatever would bring a price—just to feed their families for one more day. Desperate men take comfort where they find it and they told themselves it would soon be time for the harvest. If they could just hang on a little while longer, the potatoes would save them and then the terrible hunger would be behind them and life would go on as it always had.

  And so it would—except for the farmers who had eaten their seed or traded it away. For those who had bartered their future to feed their families, this coming spring would be a time of bitterness and recrimination. Every day they would be forced to face their barren fields, a stark reproach reminding them that there would be no potatoes to harvest this year. With no potatoes they would have to continue laboring for the Board of Works—but even that bleak prospect was uncertain. There were rumors that the Works were going to close as soon as the crops came in—a terrifying prospect for men with no potatoes in their fields.

  For those farmers like Da, who did plant, it was a benediction from God to see the fields turn pale green as the small potato plants pushed up through the black soil, promising a harvest and an end to the hunger.

  Da slowly crawled along the furrows, carefully examining the plants with their tiny purple flowers and large flat green leaves, while Michael and Dermot followed, looking over his shoulder.

  “Well?” Michael asked.

  “There’s no sign of blight.”

  “What if it comes back?” Dermot asked.

  “Not two years in a row,” Da said, as sure as he was of anything. “God would not permit it.”

  July 1846

  London, England

  In the summer of 1846, Lord John Russell, Prime Minister Peel’s successor, made a fateful decision that would irrevocably alter the course of Irish history. He placed Charles Edward Tre
velyan in charge of the “Irish Problem.”

  Charles Edward Trevelyan came from one of the best and oldest families in England. He was educated at Harrow and went into the Indian Civil Service when he was just twenty. In 1834 he married Hannah More Macaulay, the sister of the poet Macaulay, and together they had three children.

  He was tall and strikingly handsome, but beneath that Patrician exterior was a man of rigid beliefs that bordered on the fanatical. He had few hobbies, but he did enjoy reading aloud from the Bible, much to the consternation of those who were forced to listen to his impromptu—and interminable—readings and sermons.

  The consummate bureaucrat, he had made himself indispensable and so survived the defeat of the Peel government. His remarkable abilities and tireless effort soon came to the attention of Lord Russell. Under the Peel government, Trevelyan had been the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and he remained in that title. But now, Lord Russell, trusting in Trevelyan’s judgment and stewardship, relinquished full control of the Irish famine relief efforts to him. It was Trevelyan who would have the final say in granting expenses for public works and other requests for relief monies. At the stroke of a pen, he became, in effect, the de facto head of the Treasury and the one man who would most control the destiny of Ireland.

  He was thirty-eight-years-old.

  In addition to the Bible, which Trevelyan read daily, he believed in two things without question. The first was a fanatical belief in the economic principles of laissez-faire—an economic doctrine that opposed governmental regulation of commerce beyond the minimum necessary for a free-enterprise system to operate according to its own economic laws. The second belief, and one that would absolve him of the need for compassion and mercy, was that the famine raging in Ireland was nothing more than Divine Retribution.