Galway Bay (16 page)

The day after Patrick left, Owen Mulloy came to the door and Katie with him, acting as if nothing whatsoever had happened.

“Michael, let’s hitch a plow to Champion and see if she can plow as well as she can run.”

“Champion’s not a plow horse,” Michael said.

“None of us are, but she can do her bit,” Owen said. “Get her ready for motherhood. Barrier, Sir William Gregory’s stallion, likes strong mares, I’ve heard.” And he winked at me.

“Rascal,” I said.

“Barrier or me?” said Owen Mulloy. And that was the shunning, over.

A few weeks later, Katie had us in to their house, and I saw a jug of poitín at the side of Owen Mulloy’s hearth—very like the one Patrick had left for us. A meeting of the minds. I’d give a lot to have heard that conversation—Owen all words and ges-tic-u-la-tions, and Patrick—still.

That Sunday, we went to the chapel together.

And in all these years, the only reference Owen Mulloy has made to Patrick Kelly’s first visit was a long ru-min-a-tion on the Ribbonmen and the Molly Maguires and Captain Midnight and all the other men “who take it in their own hands to enforce the old justice”—keep a bailiff from pushing a poor man out, make a drover think twice before he herds a man’s cattle off as payment for the rent. Perhaps some of their meth-od-ol-o-gy might be a bit harsh, and all too many of the fellows ended up hanged or transported, but someone had to take a stand against a government that even outlawed the making of whiskey. “So if not for the hard men, we’d be denied uisce beatha—the water of life. Bad cess on a man who’d betray any one of them. Ná habair tada.”

And Michael had said, “I hear the boys in the mountains can ease off a little now that we have Daniel O’Connell.”

“Well, surely,” Mulloy had said. “No one better than the Lib-er-a-tor!”

Six springs ago. Summer now, and I’ll be twenty-three in September. Three children, two foals, fine crops, a wide glass window as promised, always a good fire to warm the long winter nights when I tell Michael and the children the stories Granny taught me—Fadó. Six years of trials, true enough, but so many blessings. At twenty-four, Michael, the young hero of the Galway Races, had grown into a man respected for his skill and persistence, a fellow who could be counted on to help a neighbor, pipe a tune, share a laugh. Husband, father, my love. And he loves
me
. Amazing.

Chapter 10

W
E’LL START DIGGING
the pratties tomorrow,” Michael said in the first week of October. A cloudy, close sort of day after a summer of decent enough weather. “Owen Mulloy heard rumors in Galway City of poor potato crops in Cork and Kerry, but he says rain’s been lashing the fields down there. We’ll be fine.”

“I’ll tell my family to be ready to come up to help us,” I said.

“I think I’ll take the boys for a ride on Champion. Won’t be much time once we start with the harvest.”

“Enjoy yourselves,” I said.

“Be careful up there,” Michael said. “That place . . .”

I dreaded these trips to the Scoundrel Pykes, but it was the only way to see Máire. With the old Major’s heavy drinking telling on him, Máire had convinced him that Granny had the cure to restore his health. The mix of milk thistle and herbs had eased his gout and gave us the excuse to go to the Big House. Máire never came down to us.

“Come to Nana,” Mam said, opening her arms to Bridget, finding such joy in her grandchildren—and a second baby due for Josie and my brother Dennis any day. Mam rocked Bridget, saying what a wide-awake baby she was and big for five months. “
Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún
,” she sang. She’d soothed us with that song.

“We should be on our way,” Granny said to me.

After an hour’s hard walking along the Botha—the coast road—Granny and I came to the road that led up the cliff to the Pykes’ house. The old Major got the government to build this road right up to his door. No sign of a road for us, I told Granny, so no forge, and the anvil and hammer Michael managed to buy lying idle.

“Tessie Ryan’s saying that Máire’s having Captain Robert’s children to get him to marry her! As if Máire has a choice, or—”

“I’ll tell you why Tessie’s so quick to point the finger.”

“I know why, Granny. She’s jealous and unhappy and a begrudger.”

“She’s not married.”

I stopped. “What?”

“They never had the fee for the priest. Her mother told me. So Tessie pretends they were married out Moycullen way, where her granny lives. Don’t say anything. It’s known but never mentioned,” she said, striding along, swinging her stick.

“I’ll only tell Michael. It will help him have patience with Tessie.” I never keep anything from Michael—tell him my every thought. So accustomed to speaking freely, sometimes words popped from my mouth.

Now I said, “Why don’t you poison the old Major, Granny?”

“Why not poison all the landlords?” said Granny. “Irishwomen do their cooking.”

“True enough,” I said.

“I’ll not do murder unless it’s required. Why risk my immortal soul for the likes of them?”

“I suppose they’re not worth going to hell for.”

We had reached the top of the cliff. She stopped to take a breath, looking up at the gray stone house. “Some would say we’re walking into it right now.”

“Granny, Granny! Aunt Honey!” Johnny Og Leahy, almost six now and a little pleated man like his father, ran through the kitchen yard to meet us.

When I’d told Paddy these cousins he’d never met called me Aunt Honey, he’d asked, “What’s honey?” I’d tasted the sweet stuff once or twice as a child, but there’d been no money to spare for honey for a long time. Máire’d stolen a small jar for me to take to Paddy. The big wide smile that came over his face as he sucked the honey off his finger made Michael and me laugh. “You see why it’s a good name for your mam,” Michael had said to him. “Sweet.” Máire still tried to smuggle bits of food to us, but she had to be careful since the old Major had Winnie Lyons arrested for taking two cabbages.

We followed Johnny Og into the kitchen, where Máire stood at the stove. At her feet were Thomas, her four-year-old, and the littlest boy, two now. She’d named him Daniel O’Connell Pyke. “With his curly hair and puff of a nose, isn’t he the image of the Liberator? And it makes the old Major furious!” she’d said. Three beautiful boys—nothing stringy about Máire’s children. No hungry mouths up here.

“That’s far enough,” said the crabbed man at the kitchen table.

“I’m cooking Mr. Jackson’s breakfast,” Máire said. “He prefers not to have people near him when he eats.”

“Who are these women?” the man said.

“My sister, Mrs. Kelly, and my grandmother, Mrs. Keeley. This mannerly fellow is Abner Jackson, Major Pyke’s new agent.”

“Hm,” he said.

Máire ladled something from a pot into a bowl. “Oatmeal, porridge,” she said to us. “Mr. Jackson starts his breakfast with oatmeal, and then he has three eggs and a load of rashers. Am I right, Mr. Jackson?”

Again, no reply.

“Mr. Jackson’s from the North of Ireland,” said Máire. “He spends his words as he spends his money—sparingly. He’s always telling me to save my breath to cool my porridge, doesn’t understand that I don’t eat porridge.”

Jackson kept his head down, spooning the thick gruel into his mouth slowly and deliberately.

This one will not be drawn. Máire shouldn’t tease him. Granny and I stayed still, and Daniel started to whimper.

“Johnny Og, take your brothers into our room to play.” Máire underlined
brothers
and
our
. Johnny Og took Thomas’s hand and hoisted Daniel up on his hip. They left us. “Well behaved, aren’t they, Mr. Jackson?” Máire said.

He finished the porridge. Máire set a plate of eggs fried in bacon grease in front of him and then a portion of rashers.

“Mr. Jackson likes plenty of fat and meat with every meal. He won’t touch a potato, though I tell him he’s missing a treat. The new potatoes are sweet and firm,” she said as she leaned over, her breasts close to his face.

“Jezebel,” he said.

“Jezebel?” said Máire. “And who is she when she’s at home?”

Again Jackson said nothing. I looked at Granny. What was Máire doing? Did she want him to explode?

“You need to read the Bible,” Jackson said.

“Mr. Jackson wants to convert us. Don’t you, Mr. Jackson? He’s gotten the Major to bring in missionaries from a Bible society in London. They’re building a church and school on the estate. They’ve promised to educate our children and employ our men, and all we have to do is jump—become Protestant. Isn’t that right, Mr. Jackson? I explained to Mr. Jackson that ‘jump’ is from the Irish word for ‘turn.’”

Jackson kept his eyes on his eggs and rashers, cutting and chewing as if he were the only person in the kitchen.

“It’s our religion makes us savages,” Máire said to us. “That’s what’s been decided in London. Now this missionary, Reverend Smithson, you call him, will give a beautiful, leather-bound Bible to any person who will jump. But only one man has accepted this lovely gift. Isn’t that right, Mr. Jackson?”

Again, no response.

Máire went on. “His name is Packy Bailey—a simple fellow, but so happy and willing. Reverend Smithson told Packy to denounce the pope and all the bishops, and Packy repeated whatever the reverend said.

“‘I denounce the whore of Babylon, who sits on the throne of Rome,’ he said. Of course, Packy had no notion at all what he meant, but he was proud as can be, throwing his chest out and denouncing this one and denouncing that one, with every tenant and laborer on the estate made to come out to listen to him.” Máire shook her head at the scene.

“But then the Reverend Smithson wanted Packy to repeat, ‘I denounce the worship of the woman who bore Jesus Christ.’ And when he had to say ‘the woman who bore Jesus,’ something flickered in Packy’s mind and he saw behind the words.

“‘Could you be talking about Mary, Our Blessed Mother?’ he asked.

“And the Revered Smithson said, ‘You have no Blessed Mother. A human woman gave birth to Jesus, and that’s that.’

“‘That’s what?’ Packy asked.”

Now Jackson stood up. “That’s enough—stop!”

“But my grandmother and my sister are very interested. They would like to hear the rest of the story, Mr. Jackson. As I was saying, Reverend Smithson said to Packy, ‘We all have mothers.’

“‘Ah, but Your Honor,’ Packy said, ‘my mother loved me. She didn’t care that I was slower than the others, or, as you tell me, too stupid to know truth from lies. She loved me and told me I had another mother who loved me, too—Mary, the mother of Jesus—and that Mary would speak to her son Jesus for me, and that Mary knew when Jesus was in a good mood and she could get around him and speak up for me. She’d say, “Packy Bailey’s a good boy,” and to please her, Jesus would let me into heaven.’

“Then with all the workers and tenants listening—and yourself, too, Mr. Jackson—Packy said, ‘I like living in that little shed you gave me, and I will gladly clean and sweep for you and say that the pope is from Babylon and the bishop is a sliveen, but I could never speak against Mary, sir. She’s our Blessed Mother.’

“And that was the end of Packy’s conversion.”

“Bailey’s a simpleton,” Jackson said.

“Simple he is,” Máire said, “but not an idiot. And he knows about a mother’s love. And so do I, Mr. Jackson, don’t forget that. So do I, and so do my sons, the Major’s grandsons.”

Jackson stood up from the table. “I know your game. You want to provoke me so I’ll send you out of here.”

“If that would suit you, Mr. Jackson, I could leave now with my mother and sister.”

“You go right ahead,” a voice croaked. The old Major stood in the doorway—fatter and redder in the face than ever, limping with the gout as he walked toward us.

“But I thought, sir—” Jackson started.

“Don’t think so much, Jackson. The Pearl may depart whenever she wants.”

Granny and I looked at Máire. She hadn’t moved.

“Of course, the two boys will stay here. Keep them handy until Robert makes a proper marriage. Even a bastard’s better than no heir at all.”

He turned to us. “See, despite what they say about me, I’m a fair man. A very fair man. Of course, you’ll never see the children again, Pearl.”

“I couldn’t,” Máire mumbled.

“Speak up, Pearl.”

“I couldn’t leave them.”

“Did you hear that, Jackson? You’ll find these papists have an inordinate devotion to their children. Quite inexplicable when they have so many. I don’t know how they tell one from the other. Now where are the fruit of my dear son’s loins?”

“Boys,” Máire called, then moved to the open door at the back of the kitchen. “Johnny Og, bring the boys.”

The Major turned to Granny. “You have my powder, old woman?”

“I do.”

“Bring it.”

Granny packed the powder in a seashell, to add the power of the sea, she’d told him. “The same as before, sir—milk thistle ground fine, with herbs to restore your liver and heal the gout.”

“Hear that, Jackson? And who would know better the cure for too much liquor than this dipsomaniac people? Here, you, the sister.”

“Me, sir?” I said.

“Me, sir? Don’t mock me, girl. Here, taste this.”

He held out the shell of powder to me, and I wet my finger and touched the grains and put them on my tongue.

“Milk thistle, sir.”

“Always take care with them, Jackson. Don’t be fooled by their ‘sirs’ and ‘Your Honors.’ They’d kill you soon as look at you. Don’t turn your back on them.”

Johnny Og led the two younger boys into the kitchen. Thomas ran to Máire. Daniel lurched after Thomas. Máire put her arms around them.

“The older one has the Pyke nose,” the Major said.

He did—a big beak sticking out of his face.

“I’m not sure if this youngest one is a Pyke at all,” the old Major said. “Have a fling with the pig man, Pearl?”

“Your son well knows that—”

“Stop. Stop,” said the Major. “Too much talking around here. Jackson, did you do as I told you?”

“I did, sir. I sent away the other two maids. Stopped this one chattering the day away. She can do the cooking, too, serve Her Ladyship. You’re here so rarely.”