Patricia Falvey

by The Yellow House (v5)

  It was coming up on Halloween of 1908. Lizzie had not been herself for days. Her bright smile and chatter dimmed, and she turned fussy and tearful. Even Frankie couldn’t coax a laugh out of her. One October afternoon, Frankie and I came home from school to find Dr. Haggerty from the village just climbing down from his pony and trap. His shoulders hunched over with the cold, and he clutched a small leather bag in one hand. I grabbed Frankie’s arm, but he shook me off. We followed the doctor through the front door. Ma sat by the fire holding Lizzie while Da held a rag to the child’s forehead. Something was very wrong. Ma’s face was strained as she rocked Lizzie and sang to her—the old lullaby called “The Spinning Wheel.” The song had a gentle, soothing melody that always calmed us as we drifted off to sleep.

  Da didn’t even offer the doctor the usual cup of tea to ward off the cold. The doctor took off his coat and hat and knelt beside Lizzie to examine her, feeling her head and throat with his fingers, taking out his stethoscope and listening with an intent but unreadable expression. He asked Ma a few questions about how long Lizzie had been sick and what her symptoms were. Sighing, he opened his bag and took out a brown bottle and handed it to Ma.

  “Give her a tablespoon of this twice a day. There’s not much else I can do,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve been out all over the countryside the last few days. So many children sick. I can come back to look at her in a few days. But I would advise she go to hospital now.”

  Ma flinched. “But we’ve no money for a private hospital,” she said. “We’ve hardly enough to pay you.”

  Dr. Haggerty reached for his coat and hat. “There’s always the Fever Hospital, Mrs. O’Neill,” he said. “They do not charge.”

  “But that’s part of the workhouse,” cried Ma, “where they treat the paupers. God knows what they do to people in there.”

  The doctor shrugged and tipped his hat. “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he said, “but there’s so many…”

  He let the words trail off as he went out the door. I followed him and watched him drive down to the gate, the cart wheels grating on the gravel. The sun had already set, and the short October day had vanished. I turned and went back into the house.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Lizzie’s fever was no better, and Ma handed her to Da. She went upstairs and came down wearing her coat and best hat and gloves. She nodded at Frankie and me. “Get your coats. We’re going out.”

  I looked from her to Da, but Da said nothing. “Hurry now,” said Ma.

  We were out the gate and on the road to Newry before I dared to ask Ma where we were going.

  “On a visit,” was all she said.

  I wondered if we were going to the bank again to borrow money from Mr. Craig. But the day was Saturday, and I wasn’t sure if it was even open. I shrugged and sat back. I supposed I’d know the answer when we got there. It was a fine crisp morning. The countryside was painted in browns and golds, and the leaves fell from trees as we passed, drifting like feathers down to earth. I turned around and looked back at Slieve Gullion. My lovely mountain was shedding her bracken cloak, and here and there patches of scarred granite, like gray wrinkled skin, were exposed amid the mossy grass.

  We turned off onto a road that ran around Newry, so I knew we were not going to the bank. The road narrowed to a winding, country road overgrown on both sides by trees and bushes.

  At length we turned in through an open iron gate and up an avenue with trees lining either side of it. As we came out into a clearing, I saw a huge stone manor house. The main house was three stories high with a low wing on either end. It looked like a great stone bird sitting there with its wings outstretched. But the arched windows made me shiver. I felt eyes watching me. Ghosts, maybe.

  Ma stopped the cart and stepped down, straightening her coat and hat. Without a word she marched toward the house, sighing and clucking her tongue as she looked at the weed-filled flower beds spanning the front of the house. She went up the three stone steps, Frankie and me following at a distance, and raised and lowered the heavy iron knocker on the front door. Ma waited and then knocked again, with more force.

  All was quiet except for the rustling of leaves against the grimy windows and the sound of our own breathing. At last the door creaked open and we heard grunting and coughing from behind it. Staring at us was an old man in a hunting jacket that had seen better days. He was stout, with a florid face, grizzly gray whiskers, and small brown eyes. He looked at us with disgust, as if we were some kind of vermin that had arrived at his doorstep.

  “Hello, Father,” Ma said, her voice quiet but firm.

  The old man stared at her, and recognition dawned slowly on his face. But even so, the contempt remained.

  “I suppose you want to come in,” he said at last, standing back and opening the door wider. He turned on his heel and was swallowed up in the cavernous darkness of the hallway.

  Ma followed him, and Frankie and I crept along behind her. I jumped as the old grandfather clock in the hall chimed. The place smelled of the damp and of boiled dinner and brandy. We followed him into a big study with heavy furnishings and thick velvet curtains that let in hardly any light. He sat down in an armchair, picked up a glass from a side table, and began to drink. Two old dogs lay motionless at his feet. He waved his hand at Ma to find a seat. Frankie and I may as well have been invisible. We sat on an old sofa.

  “What do you want?” he growled. “If you’re looking for dinner, it’s the cook’s day off. Would you like a drink?”

  Ma shook her head. “I have not come for hospitality, Father,” she said.

  “And what have you come for?” he said. Then he turned to Frankie and me and studied us for a long time. “The girl is an O’Neill brat by the look of her,” he grunted, “and the other one, well, who knows who he takes after? Not the Fitzwilliams, at any rate. I hear you have one more at home, and another in the oven, I see!”

  “I’m a proud O’Neill,” I declared, “and so is my brother!” I don’t know where I got the courage to speak up, but I was determined to protect Frankie’s pride at that minute. The truth of the matter was that the old man was half-right. Frankie did not look much like the O’Neills, but God help him, he was the spit of the old man in front of us.

  “This is Frank and Eileen,” Ma said, her voice unusually high, “and I also have another daughter at home.”

  “Catholics!” he snarled.

  He reached for the decanter and poured himself another drink. Frankie glared at him, his fists thrust in his pockets. I put my hand gently on his arm, but he shrugged me off. I shifted on the coarse horsehair sofa and looked around. There were hunting prints everywhere, but on a table in the corner sat a black-and-white photograph of a handsome woman with two young girls kneeling beside her. They were all wearing white lace dresses. I wondered which girl was Ma.

  “It is about my other daughter, Lizzie, that I have come to see you,” Ma said. “She is sick with the fever and needs medical attention.”

  “Have you no doctors over in that godforsaken place?” snapped her da.

  “We do,” Ma said quietly, “but she needs a hospital.”

  “What’s wrong with the Fever Hospital?” he said. “Not good enough for you and your brats?”

  Tears welled in Ma’s eyes. I could see she was losing her hold on things.

  “She’ll get no care in that place,” she cried. “She needs a private hospital and, well, we have no money for it. That’s why I’ve come to you. Please, Father, will you not help us?”

  Ma sobbed full tilt now, but the oul’ feller’s face did not soften one bit. He was the image of the devil, I thought.

  “Please?” Ma said again.

  Her da looked at her. “You’ve some neck on you, girl, coming here for charity after the disgrace you brought on this house. It was your carryings-on that killed your mother, God rest her soul. “

  Ma bowed her head. “Mama would have found kindness toward me. She knows what it’s like to lose a child.”

 
; The old man rose from his chair. He coughed and spat into the fireplace.

  “Is it not enough for you that I saved you from being thrown out of your house!” he growled.

  “I know you helped Tom get the mortgage, and I am grateful for that, Father,” said Ma. “That’s why I thought you might…”

  The old man sighed. “Bring the sick child here and I will see she is taken care of,” he said.

  Ma’s face lit up. But he was not finished.

  “On one condition. You leave that fool of a man you married and come back to live here.” He glared at Frankie and me. “And bring them with you if you must.”

  The light went out of Ma’s face. She stood up and smoothed out her skirt.

  “We’ll be going now,” she said.

  Her da sank back in his chair and grunted. “I suppose you know your own way out,” he said. As we went down the hall, we heard him mutter. “You always were an ungrateful girl.”

  We drove home in silence. Darkness gathered around us long before we reached Glenlea. The strength I felt in Ma when we drove home from the bank that day had ebbed away. Now I sensed she was fragile as a blade of grass, trying desperately to hold herself straight against the wind. I was glad to see the welcoming lights of my beloved Yellow House flickering in the dark. I could not wait to hug my da.

  DA ALWAYS SAID crows were a sign of bad luck. They appeared in advance of the banshee, he said, the spirit that comes to carry the dead away. I was afraid of crows. I watched them now as they circled above our cart, swooping and squawking in the spitting rain. I moved closer to Da. All along the road that led to Newry, smoke rose from cottage chimneys and candles flickered on the windowsills. It was Halloween night, and the souls would soon be up and wandering about the land. I felt a strange kinship with them.

  Lizzie had grown worse during the previous night. By morning, she lay in Ma’s arms limp as a rag doll. By noon, P.J. was sent for. Da was so distracted with grief that Ma thought we needed P.J.’s steady hand. By late afternoon, we were all bundled into P.J.’s cart. Ma sat beside P.J., with Lizzie wrapped in a blanket in her arms. Frankie and I huddled next to Da in the back of the cart, mute as nesting birds. We had all insisted on going, even though Ma shouted at us to stay home. Ma had never before shouted at us. The pain of it hurt more than if she had slapped us.

  The Newry Workhouse and Fever Hospital sat high up on a hill just outside the town. I found out later that most workhouses were built high up so they could be seen from all directions by the poor creatures searching for shelter within them. An immense gray stone wall surrounded the building, like a moat around an evil castle. P.J.’s cart was bigger than ours and his horse much stouter than our Rosie, but even he strained in his reins as he climbed the last quarter mile up the hill. He slowed down almost to a crawl, as if he did not want to arrive at this awful place any sooner than we did.

  P.J. steered the cart through a tall iron gate and into a courtyard in front of the main workhouse building. He jumped out and came around to help Ma and Lizzie down, the rest of us stumbling out behind them. As we stood in a row looking up at the gray limestone building with its narrow, barred windows, I imagined accusing eyes staring back at me. I moved closer to Ma. Lizzie whimpered softly. Ma swayed backward, and P.J. caught her and steadied her.

  “Come on now, love,” he whispered.

  A heavyset matron met us inside the door. She looked down at Lizzie and heaved a sigh that came out like a pig’s snort. She turned and called out to a tall nurse in a white, starched cap, “Another one. Take them into the waiting room.”

  She walked away from us. I wanted to run after her and pound on her fat back and tell her we were the O’Neills, descendants of the great O’Neill, and we were not to be treated like that. P.J. must have sensed my anger. He put a firm hand on my shoulder and steered me down the corridor. The place smelled of vomit and disinfectant. We shuffled along the worn linoleum, our shadows casting strange shapes on the gaslit walls. The waiting room was filled with people. There was nowhere left to sit down, so we stood at the back of the room. Curious faces turned to look at us. I fought back the bile that rose in my throat at the sight of the thin, whimpering, yellow-faced children with the mark of death clearly on them. I could not imagine what was going through Ma’s mind. Her worst fears of the stories of the Fever Hospital were expressed in the sight of the ragged, desperate people staring at us with hollow eyes.

  Suddenly Ma straightened herself up and marched up to the desk at the front of the room the way she had done in the bank. My spirits lifted. Surely they would recognize Ma for the important woman she was. But the pinch-faced duty nurse glared at her and pointed to the back of the room.

  “You’ll wait your turn like everybody else,” she snapped.

  P.J. went up and put his arm around Ma’s shoulder. He led her back to where we stood. He looked so comical, I thought, reaching up to Ma’s shoulder like a wee leprechaun. But there was no mirth in the thought. I looked into Ma’s eyes, expecting to see her crying, but what I saw was fury. Her eyes blazed as she stared at Da. Poor Da put his head down and twisted his cap in his gnarled hands. Frankie followed Ma’s gaze, her fury echoed in his own eyes. I leaned against the wall and stared down at my boots.

  At last it was our turn. The tall nurse came in and looked from Lizzie to Frankie and me.

  “Is it the three of them?” she said. Her voice was quiet. I sensed a bit of pity in it, and also exhaustion. Instinctively I shrank away from her.

  “No,” I said, “just her,” nodding toward Lizzie.

  The nurse put out her arms to take Lizzie, but Ma would not let her go.

  “No,” she cried, “I will stay with her.”

  The nurse sighed. “It’s not possible, missus,” she said gently. “There are so many sick children in the ward, we have it quarantined, you see. Just give her to me now, we’ll look after her.”

  With P.J.’s help, the nurse wrested Lizzie from Ma’s arms. The child woke up and began wailing. It tore my heart in two to hear her.

  “I’ll wait here, then,” Ma said weakly. “You’ll tell me the minute there is news?”

  “It’s best if you go home and sleep, particularly in your condition,” said the nurse, looking down at Ma’s belly. Her voice was firm, but not unkind. “It will be a while before there is any news.”

  “I will wait as long as it takes.”

  The nurse shrugged. She turned and walked out of the room carrying Lizzie. It occurred to me later that none of us even got to touch Lizzie before the nurse took her away. We were all in such shock, none of us made a move toward her. We watched helplessly while she was carried out of the room, calling for Ma. We stood there for a long time after she had gone, until P.J. led us out.

  “You can stay with us, Mary,” he whispered. “You’ll be closer than in Glenlea. And I’ll be in here every day for word.”

  Da and Frankie and I said nothing as P.J. led Ma to the cart.

  “We’ll drive to my house first and let her off, and then I’ll take youse home,” P.J. said to Da. “After that, I’ll send word as soon as we know anything.”

  We drove home that night in silence. There were no lights to welcome us at the Yellow House. Not even old Cuchulainn came out to meet us.

  3

  In the days that followed, P.J. came often, but he brought no news.

  “Ah, sure no news is good news,” he said over and over again.

  I went to school, hoping to distract myself. Frankie refused to go. He left the house early in the mornings and did not come back until late. Then he ate his tea in silence and went to bed. I guessed he spent his days climbing Slieve Gullion. In the mornings before school, I cleaned out the henhouse and collected the eggs. In the evenings, I brought hay for the cattle in their stalls. Da hardly moved at all. He sat staring into the fire. I worked in order to exhaust myself, but sleep seldom came. I hadn’t even the heart to kneel up on my window seat and talk to Mother Gullion. She knew what was wrong, I
thought. She should make Lizzie well without my asking.

  Early one Friday morning, I stood in the kitchen stirring porridge for breakfast when I heard the crunch of cart wheels on the frozen ground outside. It was too early in the day for P.J.’s regular visit. It had to be Ma and Lizzie. I dropped the spoon and ran to the door, Frankie scrambling behind me. Da stood up and reached for his jacket and smoothed his hair.

  “They’re home,” I shouted. “They’re home!”

  Frankie and I pushed each other to get out the door first, Cuchulainn at our heels, the hens scattering from our path. And then we slid to a halt. P.J. helped Ma down from the cart. They both wore black armbands. There was no sign of Lizzie.

  “Where is she?” blurted Frankie. “Where’s Lizzie?”

  I heard Da come up behind us, but I did not look round. P.J. put his finger to his lips to silence us and helped Ma toward the door. We parted to let them pass.

  “A drop of strong tea with a dose of brandy, Eileen love,” P.J. whispered over his shoulder.

  I hardly recognized my ma. She had lost a stone of weight, and her face was white as linen. P.J. eased her into Da’s armchair beside the fire and poked at the turf to stir the flames. I hurriedly poured tea and brandy into a mug and brought it to her, but she made no move to take it.

  “Here, Ma,” I whispered.

  I set the mug down beside her and took her hands. They were freezing. I tried to rub some warmth into them.

  “Let her be, now,” said P.J.

  He rose and came over to sit at the kitchen table beside Da. I poured tea and brandy for them. Frankie stood with his back against the dresser, staring from P.J. to Ma and back again.

  “They’re only after telling us the news last night,” P.J. said. His voice was a whisper. “Bastards. The child had been dead since Tuesday, so it seems. They had already buried her by the time they told us. Had to bury them quick, they said, on account of the quarantine.”

  “But… ,” I began. Thoughts clashed in my head, but I could not get the words out. Why was she buried there? She belongs here at home with us. They can’t keep her there. It made no difference that my tongue was strangled—they all knew what I wanted to say.