by Hannah Kent
It was a ten-mile walk to Killarney through coarse, moory land, brindled in autumn, past small mud cabins huddled by the roadside, the sound of cocks and hens from within, waiting to be let out. Open, flat-boarded carts pulled by donkeys clattered past Nóra on the lane, and she shrank back against the briars and holly of the ditches to let them pass. The men nodded to her, reins in hand, while their sleepy-eyed, shawled wives, stared out across the morass to the mountains in the distance: Mangerton, Crohane, Torc, their familiar mass towering purple against the sky.
Nóra was glad to leave her own house, glad for the hours of walking to clear her head and breathe in the air. Since Martin had died, she had kept to her cabin, refusing to join the night-visiting for stories and song as she once had. Nóra didn’t like to admit it, but she felt bitter towards the other women of the valley, found their sympathy cloying and insincere. Some had come to her door with food and offers of condolence and distraction, but Nóra, ashamed of Micheál, had refused to invite them inside to sit at the fire. Since then, in that cruelly imperceptible manner of grown women, the valley wives had slowly closed their company to her. There was nothing overt about their exclusion. They still greeted her when she met them at the well most mornings, but there was a way they had of turning in amongst themselves that made her feel unwanted. They did not trust her, Nóra knew. Those who stayed inside their cabins had something shameful to hide: bruises, poverty, sickness.
They must know about Micheál, Nóra thought. They must suspect something is not right with him.
She felt suffocated by the constant neediness of her grandchild. He made her uneasy. The night before she had tried to encourage him to walk, holding him up so that his feet brushed the ground. But he had thrown his red head back, exposing the pale length of his throat and the sharp ridges of his collarbone, and screamed as though she was pressing pins into his heels. Perhaps she ought to fetch the doctor again. There were plenty of doctors in Killarney, she knew, but accustomed as they were to the deep purses of tourists who came for the lakes, she doubted they would consider looking at Micheál for what she could afford. It was not as though the first doctor had been able to do anything for him. She would be taking food out of their mouths and for no good.
No. In the valley the sick were faced with the usual crossroads of priest, blacksmith or graveyard.
Or Nance, said a small voice in her head.
Killarney was alive with noise and smoke. New Street and High Street bristled with paupers and children begging halfpennies, and the buildings along the many filthy lanes were close and oppressive. Those who had come to sell their produce jostled for space beside the arbutus shops and cooperages and tanneries, carts wheeling close to jaunting cars, barrels and sacks. While most farmers had come to hire help for the winter term, there were people selling their autumn pigs and small, horned cows that lumbered slowly through the street, stirring it into mud. The unpaved roads were pocked, puddle-shined, and the air was clear. Men hauled creels of turf on their backs, cut from the black bogs beside the mountains in summer, and women sold potatoes, butter and salmon from the rivers. There was a crisp promise of winter in the air and a gravity to the fair’s atmosphere. All must be sold, must be bought, must be piled and stacked and stored and buried, before the earth ground its teeth in frost and wind. Better-off farmers swung their sticks of blackthorn and bought themselves shoes, and young men, drink-taken, trailed their coats behind them, eyes and ashplants eager for fight. Women counted eggs from straw baskets, fingers loose around the creamy shells, and all along the lanes and in the dark corners, those advertising themselves as labourers waited silently.
They stood apart from the carts and produce, casting their eyes quickly at every man and woman walking past. There were more boys than girls, some as young as seven, shivering next to one another in attitudes of hope or reluctance. Each carried a small item to show that they were seeking work: a parcel of clothes or food, or a bundle of sticks. Nóra knew some of those parcels were empty. Mothers and fathers stood behind the smaller children, their eyes jumping from one farmer to another. They spoke with the hirers on behalf of their sons and daughters, and, although Nóra could not hear what they were saying, she could tell from the fixed smiles that they spoke of honest workers, hardy constitutions. The mothers folded their lips into narrow lines, their fingers tightly gripping their sons’ shoulders. It would be a long time until they saw each other again.
Nóra noticed one grey-skinned woman standing beside a girl of twelve or thirteen. The girl was hunched over, coughing the sticky wheeze of the ill. Nóra watched as the mother, seeing a man approach, gently covered her daughter’s mouth with her hand to muffle the sound and ease her upright. The sick did not get hired. No one wanted to bring badness into the home. No one wanted to pay for a stranger’s coffin.
Nóra’s eye was suddenly drawn to a tall, thin-faced girl standing apart from the other children, holding a parcel under one arm. She was leaning against a cart, frowning, watching a farmer inspect the teeth of a young redheaded man for hire. There was something appealing about the girl, in the thickness of the freckles on her face and the slight stoop of her back, as though she was reluctant to grow any taller. She was no beauty. Nóra felt a strange pull towards her.
‘Good morning to you.’
The girl looked up and immediately pulled away from the cart, standing straight.
‘What’s your name?’ Nóra asked.
‘Mary Clifford.’ The girl’s voice was low, husked.
‘Tell me, Mary Clifford, are you looking for work?’
‘I am.’
‘And where are you from? Where are your people?’
‘Not far from Annamore. By the bog.’
‘And how old are you?’
‘I don’t know, missus.’
‘Fourteen by the looks of you.’
‘Yes, missus. Fourteen, I’m sure. And fifteen next year, please God.’
Nóra nodded. She had thought that the girl might have been older, given her height, but fourteen was a better age. She would not be thinking of marriage yet.
‘Have you brothers and sisters?’
‘I have, missus. Eight of them.’
‘You’re the eldest, are you?’
‘Eldest girl. That’s my brother there.’ She pointed across the lane to the redheaded boy. The farmer with him was now lifting his cap and inspecting his hair. They watched as the farmer ran rough hands across the boy’s scalp, pushing his head this way and that, looking for lice. Her brother’s cheeks were flushed with humiliation.
‘And is your mother or father here?’
‘My brother and I walked the road ourselves.’ She paused. ‘Mam and Da are at home with the young ones and the work.’
‘Are you well? Has there been any sickness in your house?’
The girl blushed. ‘I’m well, missus.’ She opened her mouth to show Nóra her teeth, but Nóra shook her head, embarrassed.
‘Can you milk and churn then, Mary?’
‘I can. I’ve a good hand for it.’ She held out her palms as though Nóra might be able to see evidence of ability in her swollen knuckles, the hard skin on the pads of her fingers.
‘And you are used to minding children?’
‘I’ve always helped Mam with the babies. There being eight of us, so.’ The girl took a little step forward, as if afraid she was losing Nóra’s interest. ‘And I’m a fair spinner. And an early riser, too. I wake before the birds, my mam says, and I do her washing and card and I’ve a strong back. I can be beetling clothes all day.’
Nóra couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s solemn eagerness. ‘Have you been hired before?’
‘I have, missus. I was hired at a place north of here for a term this summer gone.’
‘And did you like it?’
Mary paused, running her tongue over dry lips. ‘’Twas a hard place, missus.
’
‘You didn’t care to stay on, then.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m after a different farm.’
Nóra nodded, fighting a sudden headache. Martin had always hired what help they needed, and she was unused to so baldly interrogating a stranger. The men Martin had brought home had been quiet, hard workers who were uncomfortable indoors, holding their arms close to their sides as if afraid they would break something. They ate quickly, skinning a potato with their eyes already on the next. They mumbled the rosary, slept on the floor and woke before dawn; rough-nailed, yoke-backed men who smelt of hay and mayweed and rarely showed their teeth. Some came back every year, others did not. There had never been any need to hire a girl.
Nóra allowed herself a moment to study Mary’s face and the girl looked back at her, clear-eyed, jaw clenched against the cold. Her clothes were thin and too small for her – her wrists extended well beyond the cuff of her blouse and the seams were tight around her arms and shoulders – but she seemed clean. Her hair was cut to her chin and combed, with no sign of lice. She seemed anxious to please, and Nóra thought of the eight other children at home in whatever damp bothán her parents had raised her in. She thought of Johanna, the whispers that rippled back to her about her daughter begging food off neighbours. This girl had the same hair as her. The same as Micheál. A light copper – like a hare, or pine needles drying out on the ground.
‘Will you come for a term with me then, Mary? I have my daughter’s child to care for. How much do you want for the six months?’
‘Two pound,’ Mary said quickly.
Nóra narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re too young for that money. One and half.’
Mary nodded and Nóra placed a shilling in her palm. The girl quickly tucked it into her parcel and cast her eyes to her brother, giving him a solemn nod. He had been abandoned by the farmer who had examined him and now stood alone amidst the crowd and the smoke. He watched them leave, and at the last moment raised a hand in farewell.
The journey back to Nóra’s house was a quiet one. The sun emerged and the bright splatter left by cartwheels and footprints was clear on the road. The district’s tramping to Killarney with hoof and flock had left the path churned. Mud glistened.
Nóra and Mary made slow work of the journey, but Nóra didn’t mind. She was relieved to have the business of hiring done with. She walked close to the lane ditches, stooping now and then to pull starry clusters of chickweed for her hens. Mary, noticing, began to look too. She stepped carefully between the mud and rocks, avoiding the toothed leaves of nettles.
‘Were you not afraid of coming such a long way in the dark?’ Nóra asked.
‘I had my brother,’ Mary answered simply.
‘You’re a brave girl.’
She shrugged. ‘There’s so many of us. I didn’t dare move for fear I’d miss a job. I would have stood there all day.’
They followed the road in silence then, through moor ground and small swathes of trees, already bare in the steady approach of winter; past the dark, lacquered shine of holly. The grass by the roadside was browned and long and beyond, in the distance, the mountains patched with heather and rock stood silent against the sky. Spirals of smoke from turf fires accompanied them as they walked.
It was late afternoon by the time the two women reached Nóra’s cabin, and the sun had started to falter. They stood for a moment in the yard, panting after the trudge up the slope, and Nóra watched the girl assess her surroundings. Her eyes passed over the two-roomed thatched dwelling, the small byre beside it and the scattered hens. Nóra wondered whether Mary had expected something more, perhaps a larger home thatched with wheat straw rather than reeds. Perhaps the stumping mass of a pig in the yard or signs of a donkey rather than a quiet home with one tiny window stuffed with straw, the whitewashed walls greening with moss and a stony scoreground of potato.
‘I have a cow. She keeps us in milk and dirt.’ Nóra led Mary to the byre and they stepped into its warm darkness and its smell of flank and piss, the dark outline of the cow on the straw at their feet.
‘You’re to water, feed and milk her in the mornings and churn the butter. Once a week, you’ll churn. I’ll do the evening’s milking.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Brownie, we . . . I call her.’
Nóra watched as Mary brought her chapped hands down to the cow’s head and stroked her ears. Brownie slowly shifted her weight, her bony haunches rolling.
‘Does she give much milk?’
‘Enough,’ replied Nóra. ‘God keep her well.’
They stepped back into the soft light and walked the wet path to the house, the chickens running towards them over the yard. ‘Decent hens,’ Nóra said. ‘Here, give them the chickweed. Sure, they’re mad for it. They’re not laying as much now, but I have my faithful few and they give their eggs right through the winter.’ She shot Mary a stern look. ‘You’re not to take any. No eggs or butter. You’d be eating the rent. Do you eat much?’
‘No more than I can help.’
‘Hmm. Follow me now.’
Nóra pushed open the half-door and greeted Peg O’Shea, who was sitting by the fire with Micheál in her lap.
‘Peg, this here is Mary.’
‘God save you and welcome.’ Peg gave Mary an appraising look. ‘You’ll be a Clancy girl, with the red hair of you.’
‘Clifford. I’m Mary Clifford,’ the girl said, eyes flicking to Micheál. Her mouth slipped open.
‘Clifford, is it? Well, God bless you, Cliffords and Clancys alike. Is it far you’ve come?’
‘She set out to the rabble fair in the dark of this morning,’ Nóra said. ‘Annamore. Twelve mile or more.’
‘And the walk all this way too? Musha, you’ll be dead on your feet.’
‘She has two strong legs.’
‘And two strong arms from the look of things. Take him, will you? This is Micheál. I expect Nóra’s told you about him.’ Peg gathered the boy up and motioned for Mary to come closer.
Mary stared. Micheál’s nose was crusted and spittle had dried in the corner of his mouth. As Peg held him out to her, he began to groan like a man beaten.
She took a step back. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
There was silence, broken only by Micheál’s guttural moaning.
Peg sighed and placed the boy back down on her lap. Casting a knowing look at Nóra, she scraped the dried saliva from the boy’s face with a fingernail.
‘What do you mean, “What’s wrong with him?”’ Nóra’s voice was dangerous.
‘What ails him? That noise he’s making. Why is he carping like that? Can he not talk?’
‘He’s delicate, is all,’ Peg said softly.
‘Delicate,’ Mary repeated. She edged backwards until her hands were resting on the doorframe. ‘Is it catching?’
Nóra made an animal noise in the back of her throat. ‘You’re a bold girl to ask a question like that.’
‘Nóra –’
‘“Is it catching?” Do you hear her, Peg? The cheek of it.’
‘No, I don’t mean. Only, he does not seem . . .’
‘Seem what?’
‘Nóra. She has a right to ask.’ Peg spat on a corner of her apron and scrubbed at Micheál’s face.
‘Only . . .’ Mary pointed at his legs, exposed where the dress bunched up about his midriff. ‘Can he even walk?’ Her lip trembled.
‘She’s just a girl, Nóra,’ Peg said quietly. ‘Come here and see for yourself, Mary Clifford. He’s not got a catching sickness. He won’t harm you. He’s just a child. Just a harmless child.’
Mary nodded, swallowing hard.
‘Go on. Take a peep at him. He’s a dear thing, really.’
Mary peered over Peg’s shoulder at the boy. His eyes were half shut, gazing down the length of a snub nose, and his mouth was s
lack. Gurgled breathing came from his throat.
‘Is he in pain?’ Mary asked.
‘He’s not, no. He can laugh, and he can sit up a ways by himself, and he can move his arms sometimes to play with things.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Well, now,’ said Peg. ‘He’d be four years now, isn’t that so, Nóra?’
‘He likes feathers,’ Nóra breathed. She sat down unsteadily on the creepie stool opposite Peg. ‘He likes feathers.’
‘Sure, four it is. And he likes feathers. And acorns. And knuckle bones.’ Peg’s voice held a forced liveliness. ‘’Tis just the legs of him.’
‘He can’t walk,’ Nóra croaked. ‘He used to be able to, but now he can’t.’
Mary eyed the boy with apprehension, her lips pressed tightly together. ‘Micheál? My name is Mary.’ She glanced over to Nóra. ‘Is he shy?’
‘He can’t talk to tell us.’ Nóra was silent for a moment. ‘I should have told you.’
Mary shook her head. Her hair had curled in the damp air of the walk back to the cabin and she looked young and frightened. Nóra felt sudden self-loathing. She is just a girl, she thought. She is just a child herself, and here I am shouting at her. A stranger.
‘Well, now. You’ve come all this way and I’ve not even given you a drink. You must be thirsty.’ Nóra stood and replenished the pot of water on the hearth from the well pail.
Peg gave Mary a little squeeze on the shoulder. ‘Let’s set him down there. On the heather. He won’t go far.’
‘I can take him.’ Mary sat down next to Peg and lifted the boy onto her lap. ‘He’s all bones! He’s light as a bird.’
The women watched her as she pulled the cloth of Micheál’s dress down around his legs, then took off her own shawl and used it to swaddle his feet. ‘There now. Now you’re easy,’ she murmured.
‘Well. ’Tis a pleasure to have you amongst us, Mary Clifford. I wish you well and God bless. I’d best be on my way.’ She gave Nóra a meaningful glance and shuffled out the door, leaving them alone.