by Charles Egan
One came up to where Luke was standing. ‘Irish?’ she asked, uncertainly.
‘Yes,’ Luke said, more intrigued than ever.
‘Vous ecrivez?’
‘I don’t understand.’
She repeated the words. Then, with a look of frustration she put her hand into her robes, and drew out a blank piece of paper. Using her index finger, she imitated writing.
‘Yes…?’ Luke said. ‘I don’t know…’
‘She wants to know if you can write,’ Conaire said, ‘and you can’t deny that you can. One way or the other, there’s no way I can.’
‘And what about the rest of ye?’ Luke said.
‘Well, I wouldn’t say I could,’ Jack said. ‘I’ve written right enough but I can’t spell a thing. So it’s over to you.’
He pointed at Luke. The nun beckoned him.
‘Damn it to hell,’ Luke said, ‘why should I go?’
‘Because you won’t know what she wants unless you do,’ Jack said.
‘Well come on then,’ Luke said, ‘let’s go.’
Jack made as if to get up, but the second nun pointed to Luke.
‘You write?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I write.’
‘You write?’ she asked Jack.
‘No.’
Jack sat again.
‘Well damn the whole bloody lot of ye,’ Luke said.
He followed the two women, who spoke French among themselves, ignoring him.
‘Where are we going?’ Luke asked at length. No response.
He pointed ahead of him saying ‘where’ again.
‘Hôpital. Pointe St. Charles.’
When they arrived. Luke was overwhelmed by what he saw. Laid out in front of him were dozens of sheds. He had no need to ask what was inside.
He followed the two sisters, until they stopped at one of the sheds and brought him in. The stench was murderous. From County Mayo, he could well recognise the sickly smell of gangrene from typhus. The stink of diarrhoea too. Something else?
‘Typhus?’ he asked.
‘Oui. La fièvre typhoïde, la dysenterie et la diarrhée.’
Luke was surprised he could understand everything. The smell of dysentery – that was the one he had not recognised.
‘Scorbut,’ she added. This he did not understand.
He looked down the hut. The endless rows of beds, the gaunt appearance of the patients, these were all too familiar to him. The fever sheds in Knockanure Workhouse were much the same.
In the centre, another nun sat at a desk, writing. She looked up as the two sisters brought him over. A discussion in French followed, but Luke could not follow any of it, and waited. Then one of the sisters, picked up a square wooden board, and placed a pen and an inkwell on top. She beckoned to Luke. The second sister followed, carrying a chair.
Some room was made between two of the beds, and the chair placed between them. Luke sat, with the board on his knees. A gaunt face looked up at him. Toothless gums.
Of course. Scorbut. Scurvy. And typhus.
‘You speak English?’ Luke asked.
The man shook his head.
At first, Luke thought that he had been taken to a French speaker, until the truth dawned on him.
‘You speak Irish?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ the man said weakly.
‘Fine so,’ Luke said.
He began to write the letter as the man spoke.
‘Dear Father and Mother, Dear Katie and Dick,
This is to tell you that I have arrived well in America and am now living in the city of Montreal.’
Luke stared at him, incredulous. Would the man survive typhus? He was already desperately thin. Luke had seen enough of that on the Ox Mountains and in Knockanure Workhouse. He knew it was close to a certainty that the man would die, but he was whispering again.
Once more Luke wrote –
‘I have not any money with me now, but hope over the next few months to send you some as soon as I get work. I hear the potatoes are good, so I have no fear for ye, right now. By early next year it should be possible to send the money to ye, to bring Katie and Dick out to America.’
Luke wrote for some time yet – more details of travel, of friends and many other things.
At last it was finished.
‘You can now finish it off whichever way is best,’ the man said.
Luke wrote ‘I remain, your loving son and brother,’
‘Your name?’
‘Éamonn McSuibhne.’
The nun took the letter, and waved it gently to dry the ink. She gave Luke an envelope. Again, he bent over the man, and wrote as the man told him.
Séamus & Máire McSuibhne.
Boireanach Bán.
Luke looked up in astonishment. Boireanach Bán – The White Lady. Burrenabawn.
He wrote Burrenabawn in English, and continued –
Above Knocklenagh
County Mayo
Ireland
Burrenabawn. The name of a mountain, no more. Two, or was it three, mud villages across the side of it. No names, all just known by the mountain’s name. And what had happened in Burrenabawn?
He thought back to the savage winter. How many had survived the hunger and cold? Damned few. And even if they had, what of the fever that had followed?
Were the McSuibhnes still alive or dead? Even if they were, they might have left Burrenabawn. He knew the chances of the letter being delivered were slight, but then, he reflected, the chances of the sender living were slight too.
He folded the letter. When he was finished, the nun tapped his shoulder. He picked up his board, pen and inkwell and followed her to another bed. And then another.
There were six more men and two women from Burrenabawn and the mountains around it.
Lisnadee. Teenashilla, Benstreeva.
And Croghancoe.
All the memories of the horrors of the Famine Relief Works in the mountains came flooding back as he wrote. He had come to Canada to escape all that, but even here it followed him. So many in fever, so many dying. What was different?
As he moved towards the far end of the shed, the accents and addresses were from the south west of Ireland – Clare, Kerry, but especially West Cork. He no longer knew the names of the small villages.
By the end, he had written over twenty letters, he no longer bothered to count.
Some of the men and women described their sickness, but even they seemed to believe they would recover. In a few cases, the patients were too far gone to speak. Sometimes Luke guessed what they were saying, sometimes not. He wrote something anyhow.
Many times he noticed patients who had lost most of their teeth. He saw too the rotten gums. Scurvy? Yes, no doubt about it. Though with all the other fevers, it hardly mattered.
At last, he followed the two nuns out. It was almost totally dark. They walked along between a number of the sheds until one of the nuns stopped. She said something in French, and went into the shed beside her.
‘Oh God, no,’ Luke said. ‘Not more.’
The first nun shook her head, and indicated for him to wait. The door opened again, the nun came out, accompanied by another in a grey robe. They were talking in French, but as they came up to Luke, the grey nun put out her hand.
‘Well, what have we here?’ she said in Irish. ‘You’re a long way from home.’
He stared at her, astounded.
‘You could say that again,’ he said. ‘Luke Ryan, they call me. From the County Mayo.’
‘As if you needed to tell me where you’re from.’
More discussions followed in French with the other two sisters, then they both shook Luke’s hand gravely, and left.
‘Are you lost now, Luke?’
‘I am. I just followed the good sisters here, and now I’ve no idea where the devil I am, nor where I started from.’
‘You’re in the Emigrant Hospital at Pointe St. Charles.’
‘I should have guessed.’
�
�Well, come on,’ she said, ‘Just follow me. They told me where they got you.’
As they walked, he discovered many things about Sister Benedict. She was from Skibbereen, in the west of County Cork. She was a member of the Grey Nuns, who had been the first group of sisters to go into Pointe St. Charles the previous June.
‘And a dreadful summer it was too,’ she told him. ‘Calcutta heat, they called it. Mother McMullen and Sister Sainte-Croix, they were the first of ours to see the sheds, and when they came back, Mother McMullen told us that in asking us to minister for the sick she was sending us to our deaths.’
‘But you lived,’ Luke said.
‘I did,’ she said, ‘and probably shouldn’t have. I got the fever right enough – typhus – but I’d had it before as a child, and, with God’s blessing, I was strong enough to live this time too. But so many of our sisters died in Pointe St. Charles.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Yes, I don’t know what we would have done without the other Orders too. The Sisters of Providence. The sisters from the Hotel Dieu. The Anglican ministers too, their people died. So many, so, so many. They spent their time like the rest of us, trying to feed the people, cleaning up after them, you know what’s it’s like.’
‘I do. I saw enough of it back in Mayo.’
‘But when we’ve all these things to do, there’s no time for writing letters. If I even gave them the idea of writing letters, there’d be no time to clean up. And of course in the sheds where the Quebec nuns are working, none of them can speak English, let alone Irish. That’s why they went for you.’
‘Yes,’ Luke said, ‘they had it very well organised. All the letters I had to write – Mayo, Clare, Kerry. Cork too. It’ll cost you a fortune to post though.’
‘You didn’t think we’d send them all separately, did you?’
‘What then?’
‘They all go in one package to the Archbishop of Tuam. He has them re-posted at local rates – a penny a letter. Much cheaper, and paid for by the Archdiocese. So don’t worry. The letters will arrive, and you’ll have done a great service.’
‘Perhaps,’ Luke said. ‘But even so, I felt bad about the lying.’
‘Lying?’
‘Telling their families they were alive and well. Many of them will never live to see the rest of Canada, let alone Ireland.’
‘I know, Luke. I know.’
They had arrived at the docks. Jack and a few of the men still stood around the embers of the fire.
‘God bless you, Luke,’ Sister Benedict said, making the sign of the cross. To Luke’s surprise all the other men knelt.
She made the sign of the cross again.
‘Ye and your families, wherever ye go.’
Luke stood apart, smoking his pipe. What a fool he had been. The sheds put him in mind of Knockanure Workhouse, but that was to be expected. He had taken a great risk. He could have contracted typhus. And how would he know? He knew typhus took many days to show itself. How long would it be before he might be confident he had not gotten the disease? And what about dysentery? That had been a big killer in the Workhouses too.
He thought of Winnie back home in Mayo, with the baby coming. No, it was not just his own health. He had been careless with his own family. So why him? There must have been other men who could write. He did not have to follow the sisters. Why should he have been the one to go?
Jack stood beside him. ‘What’s biting you?’
‘Just thinking what a fool I’ve been.’
‘I could have told you that,’ Jack said. ‘You could have got fever.’
‘And could yet.’
‘Sure let’s wait and see. ‘Tis all we can do, the any of us.’
‘You know what it is,’ Luke said, ‘I’m sick and tired of famine and fever. I’m sick of Ireland and the Irish. Will it ever change? All I want to do now is get away from it all. Bring my wife and baby over, get work on the railways, and forget Ireland.’
At dawn, they walked to the docks and embarked for the Gatineau.
‘And thank God for that,’ Jack said.
The magnificent buildings in the centre of Montreal put Luke in mind of London, and even parts of Liverpool or Dublin. But the fever formed an awful contrast in his mind.
Soon after Montreal they left the St. Lawrence, turning into the Outaouais River. It snowed lightly, then stopped. The sun came out, but now it was bitterly cold. And so to Bytown.
‘A busy place,’ Luke commented.
‘Sure why wouldn’t it,’ Jack said. ‘That’s the Rideau River there. They’re building some kind of dam up there, run the saw-mills off water, they will.’
The ship stopped to take on provisions. ‘A small class of a place,’ Conaire said.
‘It’s growing though,’ Jack said in English.
Luke spotted more Grey Nuns on the dock.
‘Better hide out of the way,’ Conaire said.
‘That’s not funny.’
The ship pulled away and crossed the Outaouais, heading north into another river.
‘The Gatineau,’ Jack said.
On the banks, they saw tiny groups of houses, but they could hardly be described as villages.
Chelsea, Wakefield, Low, Kazabazua, Gracefield.
Luke thought of the villages he had seen coming up the St. Lawrence, but they were nothing like that. The ship stopped at Gracefield, and close up Luke could see it was little more than some kind of depot, with constant movement of horses, wagons and sleighs. Luke and Jack were ordered down to assist in offloading wagons, and reloading some on the ship.
‘Hard work,’ Conaire said.
‘And it’ll be a lot harder in the forest,’ Jack commented.
Early one morning, the ship berthed at a rough-cut timber pier. The snow was deeper now. It was very cold.
As soon as they had disembarked, they were put to work, offloading barrels and sacks under the supervision of an Irish ganger.
‘Pork and flour,’ Jack said. ‘You’ll get plenty of pork and bread on the Gatineau, I can tell you.’
After offloading, they spent more hours lifting barrels into wagons. Last of all, their own packs.
They sat down, gasping. ‘Tough gangers here too,’ Conaire said.
‘Aye,’ said Luke, ‘Another Donegal fellow, by the accent.
‘I don’t think we’re going to get away from the bastards,’ said Conaire. ‘Mayo or Donegal. Irish or Quebecer. They’re all the same.’
They did not rest for long. Soon they were ordered up.
‘What now?’ Conaire asked.
‘We walk,’ Luke said. They started to follow a line of horse-drawn wagons.
‘Here you,’ the ganger said, grasping Luke by the arm. ‘You’re a horse man aren’t you?’
‘I can…’
‘You’re a teamster now. Get in there with the other fellows.’
‘What? Where…’
Luke spent the rest of the day with the horse teams, almost dragging the horses along, across streams and rivers and up through rough tracks scarcely hacked out of the bush and forest. Conaire and the other Mayo men followed behind. At last one team of horses stopped on a slope.
‘Come on, offload the sacks,’ the ganger shouted. Conaire and the rest were shoved forward and each loaded with a sack of flour.
‘Nice to see you fellows do a bit of work for a change,’ Luke said, as the others struggled up the slope with the heavy sacks. He went back to the horses, prodding, driving and goading the animals up the slope with the half empty wagon. He waited on the top as it was being reloaded.
‘Maybe we should have stayed in Quebec,’ Conaire said.
‘Arra what,’ Jack said, ‘it’s well time we strengthened you up anyhow. Wait until we get to the shanties, then you’ll have cause to be complaining of hard work.’
But after that, the others went on, while Luke stayed behind with the horses.
That night, Luke slept with the animals, wrapped in his coat and a blanket, and nestle
d up to a horse for warmth. It was another two days before he arrived in the shanty camp. It was already getting dark.
He asked his way to where the other Mayo men were staying. As he entered the shanty there was a strong warm fug, smelling of smoke, pork, grease and sweat. It took some time for his eyes to get used to the half-darkness, and he tripped on the rubbish on the wooden floor. There was a fire at the far end of the shanty. Beside it he could see sparks flying from a grindstone where axes were being sharpened. On one side of the shanty, men were washing. The other side was mostly taken up by bunk beds, three high.
‘By God, it’s great to see you,’ a voice said from a table in the corner.
‘Conaire!’
‘I thought we’d lost you forever.’
‘There were times I thought that myself’ Luke said. ‘Now show me my bunk.’
‘Would you not play a hand of cards?’
‘I wouldn’t be able to see the cards with the sleep.’
Conaire led him to a bunk. Luke pulled a blanket over himself, without undressing. Within seconds he was asleep.
They were roused early by an Irish voice.
‘Roarty,’ the man beside them muttered. ‘Another Donegal caveman, wouldn’t you know it.’
Roarty led them up alongside a trail, more stumps showing through in places. Much of the trail was covered with frozen manure. Twice they stood to the side to let men pass, each guiding two horses, pulling a single log to a team.
‘Did you see the size of those logs,’ Luke said. ‘The horses back home would never be able for that kind of thing.’
‘If there were horses,’ Conaire said.
As they reached the standing forest, they could hear the sound of axes far inside. They were shown how to link the chains to the logs.
There was an enormous stack of logs on one side. Slowly they were prised out and rolled across to the three men. They linked the chains onto the logs as they had been shown, under Roarty’s direction.
Then they guided the horses down the trails to the assembly station just below the shanties.
Each morning now, they rose well before dawn and worked until they could no longer see the trail. Even then, they worked with the horses when they came back to the camp before returning to the shanty – unhitching them, rubbing them down, feeding them and leading them to their stables.