Bridgetown had become a place of sickness and reeked with the smell of human ordure. Brazen rats scurried along the filthy muddy lanes, under the eaves of the thatched roofs and across the filthy floors as there was not a dog nor cat left to hunt them.
‘The Murphys and Molloys should have kept their cats,’ complained Kathleen, ‘for now we are plagued night and day by those stinking, filthy vermin. I heard that one or two have trapped and boiled them, but they can make you fierce sick. That is one thing I would never do.’
Mary’s stomach heaved at the thought of it.
The cottage was even dirtier than on her previous visit. The straw had not been replaced and the children were unwashed. Her once pretty sister’s face was haggard and grey, her body run to bones, just like her own. Four-year-old Lizzie was weak and listless, her small stomach swollen like a ball. She lay on her sister’s lap as pale as a ghost.
‘She will not take even a spoon of water and gruel for me,’ fretted Kathleen.
Mary gave her sister two of her precious pennies to buy cow’s milk for Lizzie in the hope that that would help.
‘I shouldn’t take it off you, but the milk might give her new strength,’ thanked Kathleen. ‘We have nothing since the works closed. Every day Joe disappears down to the river for hours, sitting on the bank fishing.’
‘Maybe he’ll have luck,’ Mary encouraged.
‘Joe’s no fisherman and the river has been near fished out,’ her sister said bitterly.
‘Are you all right, Kathleen?’ Mary asked, suddenly concerned for her.
‘I’m tired, Mary. More tired than I have ever been in my life,’ she admitted quietly. ‘I don’t know what will become of us.’
Mary had never seen her sister like this. Kathleen had always been the headstrong, carefree older sister who had gone against her parents’ wishes to marry handsome Joseph Casey. She usually shrugged and laughed off all her cares and woes, but now she seemed defeated, done in by her circumstances.
‘I’m glad that Mother and Father did not live to see these terrible times,’ Kathleen continued despairingly, ‘and what has befallen us and our children. And poor James and Denis, and their families at home in Goleen. ’Tis meant to be fierce bad there. I thank God that I have you, my sister.’
‘We have each other,’ Mary reassured her as she hugged Kathleen goodbye, promising to see her again the following week.
Mary felt like crying as she handed over the meagre pennies she earned to buy some oats, flour and tea in Healy’s. The prices had all gone up. As she turned for home, she called in to Honora’s shop to collect the material.
‘I have already sold two of the shrouds so I have added more material for you to make an extra two for me if you can,’ Honora declared.
Mary accepted, but was torn between delight at the fact she would earn more pennies and guilt that so many shrouds were needed.
Her load of material was extra heavy as Mary walked the road to Creagh, and every time she heard a cart, or a pony and trap near her, she looked up hopefully. But no luck. People passed her by and then it began to rain. She wrapped her shawl around her precious bundle of linen and provisions, trying to ignore the pain in her back, shoulders and arms, and kept going.
She was about two miles from home when she spotted Con sheltering under a tree, waiting for her.
‘Da sent me to help you.’ He grinned and took the wrapped oats and flour from her arms.
With her load lightened, she was glad of her eldest boy’s company.
‘I worry for your aunt and her family living in Bridgetown,’ she confided in him as they walked home, telling him how terrible things were for the people in the town.
She cooked a large pot of meal that evening. When they had finished eating, she sent John over the fields to Flor and Molly’s with a bowl of it along with a screw of tea. The old couple barely stirred from their cottage these days. The Sullivans had little enough to share, but she and John did their best to visit the pair, for they were family.
CHAPTER 63
Creagh
SILENCE … EVERYTHING WAS STILL AND HUSHED, FOR THERE WAS NOT a bird in the sky or even a field mouse to be seen. Nests, burrows and lairs had all been pulled apart and searched, robbed in desperation. No spring bird song, mating calls or flurries disturbed this strange empty peace.
The fields about the Sullivans’ cottage were quiet too, lying fallow and unplanted. The children said and did little, for the hunger had weakened them so much. They did not have the energy for playing and chasing about the place. It grieved Mary to see them so.
The neighbours kept to themselves, all fearful of sickness and disease. Even Nell Flynn had stopped begging from her, for she knew that Mary had nothing to give her.
Brigid and her family struggled and whenever the women met, they hugged, for there were no words to describe the great sympathy they had for one another, nervously asking, ‘Are the children well?’
Truth to tell, all Mary cared for was John and Con, Nora, Tim and Annie. Her husband and family were the world to her. She called in to see Flor and Molly regularly, and it saddened her greatly to watch as her two elderly relatives grew weaker by the day. Their flesh had already melted from their bones and Molly’s skin hung loosely from her poor skeletal frame.
‘I am too tired for it all,’ admitted Flor. ‘Molly and I are not able for going to the soup kitchen or to hunt for food any more. We are content to rest easy here.’
Every few days, she and John brought them a little gruel, some oatcakes or a cup of nettle broth. What little they had, they tried to share.
‘I don’t know how much longer they can manage,’ John said, worried. ‘We cannot starve ourselves for them.’
‘We may be family but they don’t expect it of us,’ she reassured him.
When she brought them a few spoonfuls of warm, watered-down meal the following morning, she broached the subject of the workhouse.
‘Mary, girl, the workhouse is not for us,’ Flor said, shaking his head.
‘Flor and I would be in different parts,’ Molly protested. ‘We have never been parted since the day we married and will stay together for the rest of our days.’
Mary understood. They were proud people, only expressing the same love that she and John shared.
Less than a week later, John called up to them with some turnip, but Flor told him not to cross the door or come inside.
‘Molly’s sick,’ he reported to Mary when he arrived home, ‘so I left the bowl of food at the door and fetched them some water.’
Over the next few days, Mary and John continued to call up to the cottage, bringing any food they could manage to spare and re-filling the large water jug that was left at the door. Flor had also fallen sick and they could hear him coughing as he begged them to stay away for fear of spreading the fever.
Mary placed the small pot of meal at the door, knocking to let them know that she was outside.
Flor called out from inside to thank her, but his voice had grown weak.
‘Mary, promise me that you will bury us together.’
Alarmed, she gave him her word but asked him to let her in to assist them.
‘Molly is asleep,’ he said quietly.
Mary sobbed as she walked home, deeply upset by the suffering and hardship the old people endured, locked away in their cottage with not a child nor grandchild to help or comfort them.
The following day, on her return, the food and water jug lay untouched, and there was not even a whisper of smoke from the chimney. She called their names again and again, and knocked and rapped on their door, but Flor and Molly were silent.
She rushed home to John.
The couple had died as they lived, asleep together in their pallet bed. Peaceful, eyes closed, tucked in together.
Mary blessed herself.
‘What will we do?’
‘I’ll bury them in the same graveyard as my father,’ John said resolutely, ‘where the Sullivans are buried. It’s
the least they deserve.’
There was not a penny for a coffin but John knew his duty. He harnessed their old donkey to the turf cart and, having wrapped his uncle and aunt gently in their blankets, placed them in it.
‘I will ride to Creagh with them and find the gravedigger there,’ he sighed. ‘You stay here with the children.’
The neighbours came out and stood at their doors, blessing themselves as the cart passed. The children were all upset at the loss of their old grand-uncle Flor and kind grand-aunt Molly, who used to make them scones and cook up the best pot of rabbit stew they had ever eaten. Molly, with her endless patience, sitting with a glint in her eye by the fireside, telling them stories of the sidhe, and their old uncle Flor, who could not only play the tin whistle but was also blessed with a fine singing voice, often singing as he worked or walked in the fields.
It was late when John got home.
‘It’s done and they are buried together,’ he told her.
‘In a pit?’ she asked, worried.
‘No, thank heaven. The gravedigger laid them together in a shallow grave. The poor donkey was barely up to it, but he got them to Creagh at least.’
They watched the clouds scud across the yellow moon.
‘They always loved each other dearly,’ John said after a while.
‘I know,’ she said, reaching for him. ‘Like I love you.’
He kissed her softly and she kissed him back, for life and love were more precious than all the gold in the world, once she and John had each other.
CHAPTER 64
MARY AND JOHN WERE WOKEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT BY THE loud braying of Smokey the donkey. The poor animal sounded very distressed. Alarmed, John jumped out of bed immediately.
‘What is wrong with the creature?’ Mary fretted, also getting up as her husband pulled on his trousers and jacket.
‘He’s old and half lame but he seemed fine when I left him. Unless a pack of dogs has found him,’ he said, rushing out of the cottage in the darkness.
Con and Nora had both been disturbed by the commotion and were stirring. Mary soothed them gently and told them to stay in bed.
‘I’m running out to see if your father needs help,’ she explained.
She didn’t want him to confront a pack of hungry dogs on his own and so, pulling on her shawl, grabbed a blackthorn stick from by the door before running blindly across the field. The noise from the old donkey had stopped but, in the silence, Mary could hear shouting.
Wary, she kept a firm grip on her stick. The darkness was beginning to lift and ahead of her she could make out John with three other figures. Relief washed over her that there was no sign of any dogs.
As she neared the group, she recognized Nell and Tom Flynn, and their older boy, Paddy. What were they doing out here at this hour? John was shouting at them angrily, and there was some kind of argument going on.
Then she saw it. The donkey lay dead on the ground, blood seeping from where its neck had been sliced open by Tom, who still held the bloodied axe in his hand.
‘Why did you kill him?’ she cried, rushing over. ‘He was Flor and Molly’s animal.’
‘They are both in their grave and have no need of him now,’ Nell said boldly, ‘while others do!’
‘Flor Sullivan was my uncle and that animal was his property, Nell,’ John said through clenched teeth. ‘You and your family had no right to lay a hand on him!’
‘There’s good eating in a donkey,’ snivelled Nell.
‘How do you think we felt, watching that yoke wandering the fields and us starving with hunger pains in our stomach?’ Tom defended himself. ‘I have to think of my wife and the boys.’
‘Flor and Molly loved that animal,’ Mary countered. ‘He used it to take his cart to the bog and the cove. You know well that he let most of us borrow it when we needed to. If he had wanted to kill it for food, he would have done so.’
‘He was a fool, then,’ Nell muttered sarcastically. ‘He should have done it and saved himself and Molly!’
Mary was tempted to raise her stick and belt her neighbour with it but John, as if reading her mind, stayed her arm.
‘You have done something you had no right to do,’ he said coldly. ‘Stealing an animal is a crime.’
Mary saw a dart of fear flash between Nell and her husband.
‘They meant no harm to you, Mr Sullivan,’ Paddy piped up, shamefaced. ‘They thought that old Smokey was there for the taking.’
‘Sure, what difference does an old donkey make to anyone?’
‘The difference was that he was ours.’
‘The beast is dead,’ argued Tom. ‘There is no bringing him back. We’ll skin him and butcher him and share him with you. There is not a lot of meat on him, but enough for two families.’
Mary’s stomach turned at the mere thought of it as she remembered Uncle Flor giving the children rides on the back of the gentle animal.
John considered Tom’s proposition. He was torn between anger and fury at his neighbours for what they had done, and a grudging acceptance of the situation.
‘Mary, you go home and I will return later,’ he decided. ‘Not a word of this to the children.’
Mary nodded, relieved to escape Nell’s smug glances.
John returned as the sun rose, and explained to the children that the old donkey had died.
Mary cooked the meat slowly in the pot. It was lean but stringy, and had a sweetish taste when mixed with wild garlic and the last few wizened turnips. She would make soups and stews from it and use a little grain to eke out every bit of it. However she might regret the beast’s death, she knew that it would give them renewed strength and nourishment.
The following day she and John went to check on Flor’s cottage. To their dismay they found that there was nothing left in it. Even the old couple’s bolster and pallet bed, few pots, cups, jug and Flor’s tin whistle had disappeared. Mary noticed that Molly’s shawl, which she kept on a hook on the back of the door, had vanished too. Her heart broke as she realized how much she would miss her relative.
‘The turf pile, and Flor’s spade and few tools are all robbed,’ John declared in fury as they looked around them. ‘This is the Flynns’ business. Nell and Tom have been here. They have always been thieves, with no regard for their neighbours.’
‘How could they do such a thing when poor Flor and Molly are barely cold in the grave?’ Mary cried in despair.
‘I am going over there to tell Tom Flynn what I—’
‘Shush,’ she said, grabbing hold of him. ‘We want no more fighting with the likes of them. They are not worth it.’
‘I’ll not let them away with it,’ he said, enraged, as he pulled away from her.
‘No, John, you must promise me not to go near them,’ she begged, standing in front of him. ‘Flor is at peace now. He wouldn’t want you to get in a fight with Tom.’
‘He never trusted him.’
‘No one trusts them any more. The hunger has changed them, made them worse.’
‘They were always like that.’
Somehow, she managed to persuade him to return home with her, and he agreed reluctantly not to set foot near Tom, or his wife or children.
Nell fell sick with the fever first, then their youngest boy got it and then Paddy. There was no donkey and cart to take them to the workhouse fever shed, just Tom Flynn and his middle son to push them in a small handcart on the long road to town.
CHAPTER 65
Skibbereen
April 1847
‘THE POOR MAN,’ HENRIETTA HAD SIGHED WHEN DAN TOLD HER THAT his friend Reverend Robert Traill of Schull had contracted typhus. Mindful of the terrible effects of the illness, she had prayed for his recovery.
Two days later, as they sat in the drawing room, Dan broke the news gently.
‘I’m afraid, my dear, that Reverend Traill has unfortunately died.’
‘It’s so desperately unfair, Dan,’ she said, unable to hide her anger. ‘He was such a d
evoted minister, and he and his wife, Anne, worked tirelessly, feeding hundreds of people in Schull every day. Now, because of his good works and charity, he has been taken.’
‘Fair doesn’t come into it, my dear! Robert Traill was a dedicated church man with a fine mind, who deserved a better end.’
‘I must write to Anne to express my sympathy,’ Henrietta said, thinking of the poor widow and her children, now left to cope alone.
‘I see here that the government has finally opened a soup kitchen,’ Henrietta observed as she read aloud from the newspaper article describing the official opening of the government’s first large soup kitchen in Dublin, at the esplanade near Phoenix Park, beside Dublin’s Royal Barracks. ‘At last, they and the Lord Lieutenant are doing something to address the situation.’
‘About time too,’ Dan said caustically.
‘It was a grand affair, by all accounts, with his Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge, Lord Bessborough, the Lord Lieutenant and the Lord Mayor of Dublin all in attendance for the gala launch. It was quite a social occasion for Dublin’s fashionable young women and gentry. Apparently, Dublin society paid five shillings each to watch the paupers feed, and there is also to be a Government Fever Ball later this month.’
‘My dear, opening a soup kitchen for the poor is certainly not what I consider a social occasion, and how rude to treat the hungry as if they were animals from Dublin Zoo!’
Henrietta smiled wryly and carried on, for she could see he was curious.
‘A renowned French chef from London’s Reform Club, a Mr Alexis Soyer, has developed the nutritious soup recipe himself, and it says that he can make up to one hundred gallons of soup for less than a pound. The soup kitchen has a three-hundred-gallon soup boiler and an oven that can bake one hundredweight of bread at a time.’
‘That is bigger than our boilers!’ remarked Dan rather enviously. ‘But I know well that to make that quantity of soup for less than a pound is near impossible.’
‘And more soup kitchens are set to open throughout the country,’ Henrietta continued as she passed him the newspaper.
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