by Charles Egan
‘So what happened?’
‘He reckoned that the fellows in Yorkshire might need someone to do their clerical work for them. Roughneen’s idea, it was. Quite right he was too. So the two of us went across to Leeds, met up with Gilligan and the other fellows, and they agreed to take him on, not so much as the ganger, as a paid clerk. It might involve some other labour too, but I don’t think they’d ask much of him.’
‘Sounds like he did right.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Murtybeg said. ‘There’s one other thing he’s playing down, I think. Mother is in a bad way, though I don’t have to tell you that. The question in my mind is – how long will the lads stay on any single site? They might have a good lodging house now, but what happens when they have to move on?’
‘It’ll be hard on them, one way or another. I’m not sure your mother would be up to all that moving about.’
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
‘So where are they right now?’
‘The gang are still working on the Leeds & Thirsk.’
‘They’ve been there a while so. Wasn’t that where they were going when Luke came home?’
‘That’s right. It’s coming to an end soon though. September or so, that’s what they’re saying.’
‘Do you have an address?’
‘They’re lodging at Barretts, three or four miles out of Leeds on the railway. If you’re writing, just address it to him at care of Joe Gilligan at Barrett’s Boarding-house, care of the Leeds & Thirsk.’
Murtybeg licked his fingers and quickly doused the candlewick.
Pat stared into the darkness, finding it all difficult to understand.
‘What makes you think I’ll be able to work for Danny?’ he asked.
‘I think you’re better able to keep control of yourself,’ Murtybeg said, ‘and anyway you don’t have to deal direct with the workers. Roughneen, Lavan and Kearney – they come into head office to make their reports, settle up all their accounts and take their orders. They’re the fellows who’ll have it hardest, not you.’
Next morning, Danny took Pat out to see one of the sites. Murtybeg had already left.
‘We’re going out to see Bernie Lavan,’ Danny explained. Fifty thousand cubic yards to be removed for the railway.
‘Fifty thousand cubic yards?’
‘Yes, it’s a good contract. We’ve a hundred and twenty men working on it at the moment.’
Yes, he thought, and less later. But now was not the time to tell Pat about the sackings, and his own future role in them.
They walked out along the newly laid rails. Half an hour later they were passing a group of mud huts. Pat could see they were all roughly built, for the most part using rough cuts and discards of timber for the roof, with sods on top. Behind the huts a group of women were washing clothes in the stream. Even from twenty yards, there was a marked smell of cabbage and sewage intermingled. Pat stopped.
‘Come on, Pat,’ Danny said.
‘What’s this?’ Pat asked.
‘Workers lodgings.’
‘But they’re hardly better than sceilps back home. Have they been evicted or what?’
‘Evicted is right. That or the hunger forcing them out. They’re from out west Mayo – Erris, Achill, Partry, down around Killary – all those parts.’
‘Yes. I’d heard that. But are these your workers then? The fellows we sent across. Surely not?’
‘Some are,’ Danny replied, ‘though some of those lads are working on other contracts.’
He saw the shock in Pat’s eyes.
‘Are you paying them at all?’ Pat asked. ‘How much are you paying?’
‘Plenty enough,’ Danny replied. ‘Ten pence, eleven pence, a shilling a day.’
‘But that’s hardly more than what they’d be getting on Famine Relief.’
‘Don’t forget two things though,’ Danny replied. ‘First, we have to feed them, and by God, they need it when they arrive here. We have to strengthen them up. And the other thing is there’s damned little Relief out in west Mayo. Even during the worst of it, there was none. And I’ll tell you another thing, if we weren’t employing them here, most of them would be dead, their families too. Just think about it, Pat. The men came over here, they arrived at Liverpool, and what happened? They tried to get into the Workhouses in Liverpool, but most of them wouldn’t be let in. And for the rest of them, either they emigrated to the Canadas, or the Workhouses in Liverpool sent them back. Some of them weren’t even being sent back to their own parts, just dumped in Kerry or Clare or anywhere that the ship’s captain decided. And for the ones going to Quebec or Montreal, you’ve heard of the ships there. Hell holes is all they are. We’re always hearing stories of the lumber traders going back to Quebec with their cargoes of the starving.’
They walked on.
‘You know that Luke was going to Quebec?’ Pat asked.
‘Yes, father told me. Johnny Roughneen told me too. He had a letter from home. But I’ll tell you this, Luke was a fool to go, and it wasn’t just because of the condition of the ships. He had other chances.’
‘Other chances?’
‘Yes. I offered him a position, but he wouldn’t take it. Damned fool, he was. If he had taken it, he and the wife could be here now, living in comfort.’
Pat stopped to observe the rock-cutting.
‘It’s deep,’ he commented. ‘I wonder what father would think of this if he saw it.’
‘Yes,’ Danny replied. ‘It makes the quarry look small. But your father never had a hundred men working it.’
‘Not usually,’ Pat replied, ‘though he had many enough when they were running the Relief Works. They were building the new road out from the quarry towards Knockanure, and there was a heavy call for rock on that.’
‘So I’d heard.’
Pat shook his head.
‘But tell me this. What were you saying about Johnny Roughneen? I thought he’d been with Martin Farrelly.’
‘He was,’ Danny replied, ‘but the time Farrelly went to the United States, I saw a good chance for getting men who were able to be gangers. Lavan and Kearney, like I said, they’re here too. You’ll meet them. Good men they are too. And if Luke had had sense, I’d have him working as a ganger. He’d be well able for it. I even offered him a share of profits, but do you think he’d take it? No way.’
‘Do you have many Kilduff men around here so?’ Pat asked.
‘Only the top fellows. The ones I know. The ones I can trust. And they’re the only Kilduff men working here. The rest are west Mayo, like I told you. Those fellows, they’re able for nothing else.’
They had arrived at the new cutting. Pat saw dozens of gaunt men swinging picks at loose shale. Further on, more men were shovelling broken rock onto a rail wagon. The larger rocks were being carried across in wheelbarrows, and lifted into the wagons.
‘I’m surprised that men like that can work at all,’ Pat said.
‘Oh, they can work fine,’ said Danny. ‘Like I say, we feed them well, and that strengthens them. You’ll see the fellows loading the wagons are strong enough.’
There was a man by the wagons, shouting orders at the working men. Danny waved to him and he ran over.
‘You know who this is, Bernie,’
Lavan stared at Pat, slowly realising. ‘By God, Pat Ryan!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’d heard you were coming, but I didn’t believe it.’
‘Well, you may believe it now,’ Pat replied. ‘But to hell with that. Tell me how you’re doing yourself?’
Lavan looked at Danny with a smile. ‘Well enough. Six shillings a day. It’s good money.’
‘It is,’ Pat replied.
‘Exciting too. We’re just preparing a blast. Would you like to see it?’
He followed Lavan over to the side of the cutting.
‘They’re just getting the blasting powder into place.’
There was a screech from a siren. Work stopped, and all the men walked back behind the safety of t
he wagons.
‘Come on,’ Lavan said. ‘Let’s get back a bit.’
They walked back to Danny, and scrambled up the cutting on the other side. Lavan raised his arm. The man with the gunpowder lit the paper quill, and ran back. Half a minute later there was a violent explosion, and a thousand tons of rock shattered and collapsed.
They walked back along the line to Stockport.
‘Irene’s a hard worker,’ Pat commented.
‘She’s all of that,’ Danny replied. ‘Keeps the office well in control, she does. No slacking when she’s around, I can tell you.’
Yes, thought Pat. And I wonder who else she might keep in control.
‘Ye’re to marry, so?’
‘We are,’ Danny replied.
‘I’d understood that was to be some time ago.’
‘So it was. But with all the new contracts we got, we didn’t have a chance. It’s brutal work this, you have no idea. And you can’t turn down breaks that might never come again. So we decided it would be wiser to put it back for a while.’
‘To when?’
‘July, we’re intending.’
They arrived at Stockport. Roughneen was there, poring over the accounts book with Irene. Two police constables were sitting in the corner.
Danny noticed Pat’s surprise. ‘It’s normal,’ he said. ‘Johnny will be taking the wages back out the line to the men, it’d be far too dangerous to let him out on his own with all that money.
‘But all they’re carrying is night-sticks. Would that be enough?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Back home we’d have more than constables if cash was being moved around. Especially the amount you might be taking out.’
‘What then?’
‘Militia at least. Well-armed too, I can tell you.’
‘Militia,’ Irene exclaimed. ‘Now there’s an idea.’
‘It’s an idea right enough,’ a constable said. ‘I rather doubt the army would like it though, and anyhow we’ve had little trouble yet. Nothing we couldn’t handle.’
Irene unlocked the safe. Roughneen took sacks of coins out, and started to count them out. Farthings, halfpennies, pennies, sixpences and shillings. No half crowns, as Pat noticed, and sure as hell, no sovereigns.
Danny led Pat across the office to a high desk. Carefully he cleared some wage sheets to the side.
‘I was going to show you these, but a better idea perhaps might be to see what Johnny here is doing.’
He called Roughneen across.
‘Now, Pat, your main duties in this instance would be to check the wage sheets, calculate them, and make sure they are correct. I know I can depend on you for that.’
Pat rapidly checked Roughneen’s wage sheets, and found no errors of consequence.
After Roughneen left with the constables, Pat spent the rest of the day under Irene’s instruction, going through requisitions. Most concerned implements, explosives, heavy boots, working clothes and provisions. Then he came across an invoice from the butcher.
‘Twenty sheep heads caught his eye. He made no comment but read through the rest of the list – sheep and cow livers, kidneys, crubeens, and many other items. He checked for steak, bacon or lamb, but there was none.
That evening in their bedroom, Danny and Irene spoke quietly.
‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘I think he’s curious about mother and father.’
‘Well, let him be curious,’ Irene said, ‘what harm does that do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Danny said, ‘but he seemed disappointed when he heard they weren’t here to meet him.’
‘How could they have met him? We didn’t know when he was coming, did we?’
Danny lay back, thinking. Yes, Irene was certainly the woman to have as a partner in this business. Ruthless? Most certainly. Cruel? Perhaps. She certainly didn’t care about his family, and even treated Murtybeg with some contempt. And what about the workers? She knew how to handle men, how to push the gangers to get the most out of them at the least cost. He could protest, of course, but with the present state of business there was no other way. The railways had to be built, cuttings dug, and the most work forced out of every man. Yes, and push the costs down too, just as Irene wanted.
So what about marriage? He knew he needed her. But what kind of need was it? Desire, perhaps?
And for the business? A need stronger than desire.
Pat quickly settled down to the work required of him. Still, the wages and the cheap food unsettled him. The visit to Lavan’s site unsettled him too. He had to find out more.
On a Saturday afternoon, as he left the office, he told Irene that he was going out to find a beer. She did not question him.
A few hundred yards away he found a bar. He entered, ordered a whiskey straight, and sat at a table in the corner on his own, still thinking.
After half an hour he stood up, and left the bar, circled around away from their lodgings and scrambled up an embankment to the railway line. For two hours, he walked out along it until he came to the Irish huts. There was an open drain running down between them. The stink was overwhelming. A small group of women stood by the drain, smoking clay pipes. He could see the look of alarm on their faces as he approached.
‘Do ye have Irish?’ he asked. ‘Can ye speak it?’
A tall woman stood forward. ‘What if we do?’
Pat caught the accent clearly. Mayo? Could be Galway, but unlikely. No, Mayo for sure.
‘Nothing at all,’ he replied. ‘I was just trying to be friendly.’
‘Friendly, is it?’ she said, irony in her voice.
‘Friendly, yes. And why shouldn’t I be? I’d heard there were people from Mayo out this way. I’m Mayo myself, so I thought I’d drop out and see ye.’
‘Is it a whore you’re seeking?’
‘It is not.’
Three men approached from behind a hut. Two carried sticks.
‘He says he’s from Mayo,’ the woman said.
‘He is for sure,’ said one of the men. ‘Ryan’s cousin, that’s who he is.’
Some of the women backed away. Pat decided to appeal to their sympathy.
‘Yes, it’s true,’ he said. ‘Daniel Ryan is my cousin. I’m over here working with him, the same as ye.’
‘But with better lodgings,’ the man said.
‘Perhaps,’ Pat said, ‘but the reason is the same. I’ve no work back in Mayo now, nor any way to make a living or to eat. Isn’t that why ye’re here too?’
‘So state your business.’ Pat was surprised by the question. What was his business?
‘So as to see how you’re living.’
‘And report back, is it?’
‘Perhaps I should,’ Pat said. ‘What do ye think?’
‘Yes, perhaps you should so. Let Mr. Daniel know the way we’re living here.’
‘As if he doesn’t already,’ the woman said angrily. She grasped Pat by the hand. ‘Come on so,’ she said, ‘Come on, and I’ll show you.’
Pat shook his hand free, but he followed her.
She led across to one of the huts, and flung the door open. Pat stepped inside. At first he could see nothing. It was dark, and smoke stung his eyes.
Mingled with the smoke was the smell of cabbage. Turnips too. He was surprised that he could distinguish them all so clearly. There was also the strong smell of shit. Trying to trace it, he saw a rough box built into the back of the hut. He could see daylight through it. He drew back.
‘Is that what you wanted to see? Is it?’
‘Yes it is,’ Pat replied. ‘Everything. I want to understand it all.’
He noticed the fire had been built up on some rough blocks, more of them behind to keep it away from the timber. A rough shelf had been built alongside. There were two pots on top, a sheep’s head between them.
On the other side of the hut there was a bed. It was only then that he heard a moan coming from under a blanket.
‘Fever,’ the woman said. ‘She’s onl
y eight years old. What chance does she have?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Pat said.
‘It’s for this we left Torán.’
‘Left…?’
‘Evicted, more like. Evicted at Christmas.’
‘That’s terrible,’ said Pat. ‘And it’s no better for ye here, is it?’
‘Oh yes, it’s better,’ she said. ‘Much better. Here we eat. There we didn’t.’
There was a shout from the door.
‘Are you alright there, Síle? Is he attacking you?’
‘He is not,’ the woman replied. ‘Now ye may go away and leave us in peace.’
She pulled out a wooden box and put it by a rough cut table made from a single crate. She placed a gin bottle on the table, alongside two chipped cups.
‘Here, sit yourself down. What else do you want to know?’
She poured out the clear spirit, offering one to Pat.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m only just come over myself. Like you, only because I had to. I’d starve in Mayo. But I’m trying to understand – just what is happening here?’
He sipped at the spirit. Poitín! What else would be kept in a gin bottle? It was raw, but the rawness had quality.
‘I’ll tell you about Edwardes & Ryan so,’ she said. ‘It’s a grand business – for the owners. Very able they are too, Mr. Daniel, Miss Irene and Mr. Daniel’s brother. The way they work it is this. First Mr. Daniel sends his brother up to Liverpool. You’ve seen Liverpool, I’m sure. When he gets there, he works out which ships have come in from Mayo – Westport, Killala, wherever. That’s his favourite stalking ground. Finding men who are desperate and starving. He offers them wages which seem high to them, and brings them back here. He has a preference for married men, travelling without their families, though there’s many families on this site. Mr. Daniel knows how desperate they are, especially with family back in Mayo. If he can’t get enough men at the docks, he goes to the Workhouse. He has good contacts there, young Murteen has. He finds out soon enough which of the married men are to be sent back to Ireland. He does the same trick with them, offering them ten pence a day. He knows they have no choice. If they’re sent back, they’ll die. And they can’t speak English either, so they’re trapped. He promises food,’ she pointed at the sheep’s head, ‘but as you can see, it’s only the cheap cuts we ever get. But I’ll say one thing, there’s always plenty of it. He wants to build up his workers, Mr. Daniel does. He can work them harder that way.’