Galway Bay (19 page)

“Mam! Mam!” Paddy ran in, screaming. “Mam! Come quick! The pit’s full of—shit!”

I ran out with Paddy. That same foul stench—our solid potatoes! I knelt at the edge of the pit.

“Mam!” I heard Jamesy crying for me in the cottage and Bridget wailing. Paddy looked at me. No tears from him, not from my sturdy lad.

“Run for your da. He’s with Champion and Oisín in the pasture.”

I plunged my hands deep into the pit, clawing through the clabber, desperate to save whole potatoes.

Michael came running. “Honora, what? What?”

“The blight! It’s attacked the pit!”

He knelt down next to me, fishing through the muck.

Only half the potatoes were still sound.

It was the same in Rusheen, Shanballyduff, and all the townlands—sound potatoes dissolved into slime.

Thank God we’d stored the potatoes from the high ridge in the loft to use as seed potatoes. They were still sound. But what now?

“Billy Dubh won’t take the hammer and anvil in pawn,” Michael said, his voice low, the two of us holding on to each other, the children asleep. He’d gone into Galway City that day, three weeks since the failure now. “Won’t buy them, either. No market for them, he says.”

“Billy’s the worst kind of gombeen man—greedy for money and land.”

“He’d give me a few shillings for the saddle, but Owen said to wait. Billy’s cheating me and I’ll never be able to afford another like it. If Oisín is to race, we’ll need the saddle.”

“At least we still have the three gold coins from the Galway Races,” I said. “The potatoes in the pit won’t feed us through the winter no matter how careful we are.”

“We need some employment,” Michael said. “Public roadworks. If the government would only hire us to drain the land or lay railroad tracks . . .”

It was hours before we fell asleep.

Just before dawn, Paddy woke me. “Mam. Mam, he’s here.”

Patrick Kelly stood at the foot of our bed. He’d come in without a sound or a footfall.

“Patrick, we—” I started, but he held up his hand.

“Quiet, Honora,” he said. “Show me the pit, Michael.”

Michael and I and the children followed Patrick outside.

“Uncle Patrick will help us, won’t he, Da?” Paddy said.

“He will,” Michael told him.

Patrick looked first at the solid potatoes in the pit, only a quarter of what there should be. Then he asked did Michael have any of the rotten pratties.

“I buried them,” Michael said, “near the marsh.”

“Dig them up,” Patrick said.

At the foot of the hill, Michael uncovered the pile of rotten potatoes, releasing that putrid smell.

The children and I stood together while Patrick Kelly sniffed the diseased bits, rubbed them between his fingers, touched them with his tongue.

“Ugh,” said Paddy.

“Ugh, ugh,” Jamesy echoed him.

“Now to the ridges,” Patrick said. He turned to me. “Honora, take the children in.”

“Michael, I can’t!” I said.

“Let us come, Da,” Paddy said.

“Please, please,” said Jamesy.

“Come along, then,” Michael said.

“I need silence,” Patrick said.

“Whist,” I said to the boys as we followed the two men.

Decaying stalks covered most of the ridges Patrick and Michael had laid out so carefully on that moonlit night six years before. Only the highest ones had survived.

“Clear these away,” said Patrick. “Burn all the stalks.” He held up a plant. “Look,” he said to Michael. I moved closer to them. “You can just see the fuzz along the side of the leaf, here, and down the stalk. That’s the fungus killed the plant.”

“But the ridge above this was sound,” Michael said.

“Show me.”

Up we went.

Patrick lay flat on the ground, stretching his body into the soil, tasting a bit of dirt.

“The blight’s not here,” he said. “But why?”

“And this is the worst of the ridges,” Michael said. “No sun, the freeze hits here first.”

“But sheltered,” I said. “Away from the rain.”

“Maybe the cold kills the blight,” Patrick said. “Maybe that fungus on the plant needs warmth to grow, a soft rain to root it into the soil. The blight’s a living thing.”

“It came in that fog,” I said. “That evil fog.”

Patrick started down the hill. Michael took Bridget from me, and I held the boys’ hands.

Back at our cottage, Patrick climbed into the loft to inspect the potatoes dug from the good ridges, our seed potatoes. He rolled each one in his hand, smelling it. Michael sat cross-legged in the loft with him. The children and I were below, looking up at them. I kept silent.

It was six months since we’d seen him—before Bridget was born. He hadn’t even mentioned the new baby. He doesn’t change—lean and quick and not a wrinkle on that knife-edged face of his.

“Sound,” Patrick said. “You’re right to set them aside for seed potatoes.”

“But can the blight get to the good pratties even now?” I asked when later, with the children asleep, we three sat at the fire. Michael and I shared one rush stool, and Patrick took the other. “Will a fog come up from the rotten fields and slip in through the cracks in the walls?” I asked.

Michael touched my hand.

“You’re too full of imagination,” Patrick said to me. “I think the blight’s dead for now. We’ve had a freeze, and nothing lives in frozen soil.” He took a piece of turf and put it on the fire in the hearth. “Invite your neighbors over for Samhain.”

“What?” I said. “But, Patrick . . .”

“A way of meeting that gives no information to informers,” Patrick said. “The countryside is being watched, make no mistake—the landlords and the government are afraid the people will rise. They’ll be looking for ringleaders, troublemakers. A Samhain gathering where the old traditions are observed only means the people are standing firm in the face of adversity.”

“Or are too feckless to understand what’s facing us,” I said. “That’s what the landlords will think.”

“Better yet,” said Patrick.

I looked at Michael, but he only shrugged.

Michael and Patrick raided the apple orchard at Dangan House and gathered nuts in Barna Woods. Stealing was no bother to Patrick the highwayman. I hope there’s no reward out for him. The Ryans were bound to come, and I would put nothing past Tessie, including informing.

“She won’t,” Michael said to me the night before Samhain. “Their whole potato garden was destroyed. I gave her some of our pratties to see her through the next few weeks. So they need us.”

Six Ryans now with the new baby. It was Mary, twelve now, who minded the twins, Henry and Albert, and cuddled the infant, Thaddy.

“Enough dodging and ducking,” Patrick said to me when I told him my fears about Tessie. “Time to make ourselves known.”

Ourselves?

“My brother,” was how Michael introduced Patrick to the others. Even my family had never seen him on any of his secret visits. All were here—Ryans, Mulloys, Keeleys, Kellys. Only Dennis and Josie had stayed in Bearna, their second daughter born last week.

“We’ll play the usual games,” Patrick said, taking charge.

Granny and Mam and I tied the stems of the apples to pieces of hemp frayed from the nets. Michael looped the lines over the rafters of the loft so the apples hung down.

“Line up, children,” I said.

“Can we have teams?” asked Joe, at twelve the oldest Mulloy.

“Boys against girls,” said his brother, John Michael, ten.

“Fine,” said Annie Mulloy, the little one Mary Ryan had looked after. She was eight now, and clever. “Mary and I can beat all of you, and we’ll have the most bites of the apples!”

“All right,” I said. “Boys.”

Paddy and Jamesy and the five-year-old Ryan twins, Albert and Henry, stood next to the older fellows. Paddy called for Hughie to join them.

The children knew calamity had descended, but if the adults could have a party, maybe all was not lost.

For the first time since we’d dug the ruined potatoes, Jamesy smiled.

Then the knock came. Patrick Kelly swung himself up into the loft. Michael opened the door.

“God bless all here!” Billy Dubh, the gombeen man himself, a known informer, watching. “I heard you as I was passing. Didn’t expect a Samhain party at such a difficult time,” he said, strutting in.

“For the children, Billy,” Michael said to him.

“Go on with the games, then, don’t let me stop you,” Billy said.

I’d woven straw together for a blindfold, and now I tied it over Paddy’s eyes and turned him. He walked right into the hanging apple, which hit him a clout on the forehead.

“Ow, ow!” he said, which Jamesy and the Ryan twins found a great joke.

Billy Dubh laughed with them. Everyone else kept silent. Billy looked hard at me, so I started laughing, too. Finally the other adults joined in, Dubh staring at each face.

Just then, Paddy managed a first bite before the apple slipped away. We all cheered.

“My turn,” Dubh said. He didn’t bother with the blindfold but put his hand on the apple and started chomping until only a core was left.

“He’s eaten it all,” Jamesy said.

“Now, Billy Dubh—” Michael started.

“It’s the girls’ go,” I said quickly, and blindfolded Annie Mulloy. “Make a show of it,” I whispered to her.

Annie nudged the apple away from her and then let it swing back to touch her mouth. She pretended to try to catch it, knocking it away two, three times, until she got a good bite.

“Smart girl you are!” Granny said.

“The old mo-men-tum,” said Owen.

“It’s far from momentum you were reared, Mulloy,” Billy Dubh said. “Have you no poitín at this party? I suppose you’ve got it hid in the loft. I’ll climb up.”

“Stop!” said Granny. “No drink in this house, and I’m beginning my story. Sit down, Billy Dubh.”

“You’d better,” said Tessie Ryan. “She’ll turn you into a crow!”

“An improvement,” I heard Michael mutter.

Dubh looked over, but Granny had begun. He sat down on the floor.

“Fadó,” she said as Mam and I and Katie Mulloy handed around the nuts from Barna Woods. Cracking and crunching accompanied the story as Granny told about the Connemara man who’d passed a graveyard on a Samhain midnight. He saluted a fellow he met at the gates, but when this fellow nodded back at him, didn’t the fellow’s head fall off? The head shouted curses at the Connemara man as it rolled across the road. Very frightening Granny made the story.

“Horrible!” said Billy Dubh.

“I believe a headless man was seen at the gates of the Rahoon graveyard only a few years ago,” Michael said.

“You’re right,” said Owen. “Isn’t that graveyard on the road you take home?” he asked Billy Dubh.

“He’s safe enough until midnight,” Granny said, “but after that . . .”

“Getting late,” I said.

“I have to be going,” Billy Dubh said. “Any of you need to borrow a shilling or two or have something to pawn, come to me. I’ve also a few hundredweight of potatoes—buy now before the price goes up!”

“Thank you, Billy,” Neddy Ryan said.

“God bless all here,” Billy Dubh said, and hurried away.

We all laughed.

“Now that was comical,” Owen Mulloy said. “That ignorant guilpín running away from the headless man, all the time telling us he was ready to cheat us.”

Patrick dropped down from the loft.

“Nothing funny about Dubh,” Patrick said. “Dubh is a dangerous man. The soldiers are on alert, expecting trouble. A fellow was arrested in Galway City for singing ‘A Nation Once Again’ in the street. Dubh could inform on any one of you, for anything.”

“What trouble could we cause?” said Neddy Ryan. “Sure, aren’t we all frightened to a standstill?”

“But you’ve nothing to lose. Men are dangerous when they’re forced against the wall,” Patrick said.

“Nothing to lose!” I said. “Why, we have everything to lose. I’ve seen the new agent, Jackson. He wants us gone—starved to death or evicted makes no difference to him.”

“Honora,” Mam said. “The children.”

The younger ones had found a place to curl up and sleep. But all the rest of us were awake and listening.

“Someone will help us,” Tessie said. “The landlords will let us work for food, or the government—they’ve helped before.”

“The government will do nothing,” said Patrick. “When O’Connell tries to push Peel and the Parliament to help us, the English dismiss him. ‘Here’s the Irish, acting the poor mouth,’ they say, and do nothing,” he said, chopping off each word. “Half the countries in Europe have the blight. They’ve lost their potatoes, too. But those governments closed their ports, kept the food in the country, bought grain in Americay—doing what a government
should
—aiding its people in a crisis. But the British do nothing for us.”

“They don’t fear O’Connell anymore. The government crippled him when they outlawed the monster meetings,” Owen Mulloy said.

“Sad but true,” Da said.

After years of gathering crowds as large as five hundred thousand people to protest the British policy, the government suddenly forbade any such assemblies. This while tens of thousands were on the roads already, headed for the biggest meeting of all to be held at Clontarf, where Brian Boru defeated the Vikings. Regiments of soldiers were sent out, ready to fire on the crowd if it gathered. Daniel O’Connell got them turned around, averted a slaughter, but he was jailed and came out of prison a different man.

“They’ve broken the Liberator,” Patrick said.

“Now wait,” Da said.

But Patrick went right on. “O’Connell still thinks Victoria, ‘the darling little queen,’ will help Ireland. He tells the Irish to be loyal to the Crown. There’s new men called Young Ireland who want a complete break with England—Ireland should be a republic, like America. I’ve met them: John Mitchel, Thomas Meagher, William Smith O’Brien.”

“Physical-force men,” said Michael.

“Call them what you will, but they know the facts. England owes Ireland. Mitchel has the figures. In the forty years since the Union, we’ve paid eight million pounds a year in taxes. What’s that, over three hundred million pounds? Add to that the ten percent tithe every one of us pays to the Church of Ireland to support churchmen for the likes of the Scoundrel Pykes. A fortune. All we ask is some of those taxes back. Parliament refuses. The British distract O’Connell with promises of relief and public works while ships leave Galway and Cork and Dublin loaded with
our
grain,
our
cattle,
our
sheep,
our
pigs, and
our
butter! We can’t afford to buy what we grow. Now we’ve lost the potato. What do they care? They’ve wanted us dead for centuries—Ireland without the Irish. The blight is the weapon they’ve been waiting for. Britain will look the other way as we starve to death.”