The Woman from Kerry (21 page)

A few days later a groom from Sir Capel’s estate came to the forge and told them the old man was
failing. The doctor had been sent for. By the end of the same week, they were getting out their Sunday clothes to go and pay their respects as he was laid to rest in the family vault, a few yards from the Scott grave and a short walk from the Hamilton one.

Rose was overcome with anxiety lest they’d be turned out again and this time they really did have nowhere to go. For days she told herself not to be so silly. Was it likely that Sir Capel’s successor would want their poor cottage for a relative? Would he want to get rid of the Scotts and the Hamiltons to make more room for sheep, like Adair of Glenveagh? She tried to laugh at herself, but all to no avail. She shared her fears with John, who did his best to comfort her, but the sense of menace would not leave her. Only when a greater storm broke did she realise it was coming from somewhere quite different.

Riots started in Belfast even before the Home Rule Bill came before Parliament. According to Kevin Donaghy, Mary’s new brother-in-law, the whole outbreak had begun with jeers and taunting in the shipyards. A Catholic had said something to a Protestant during their lunch break about the days of the Ascendancy being over.

The story got around and was added to in the telling. Kevin said he’d heard later that the Catholic was supposed to have said that a Protestant wouldn’t be able to earn so much as a loaf of bread when
Dublin was in charge. The following day, a gang of Protestants attacked the Catholic workman and his friends in the dinner hour, beating them up and chasing them for their lives. Some tried to escape by jumping into the docks. The first death was a lad who couldn’t swim and was drowned.

But that was only the beginning. Day after day, there was news of more riots and more deaths. Even when the Home Rule Bill was defeated, it did nothing to cool tempers. Protestants lit celebratory bonfires and Catholics set their chimneys on fire as a protest. Smoke hung like a pall over the city as pent up energy erupted into a violence that grew by what it fed on.

Rose almost came to dread John’s coming home. There was little that happened in Belfast during the night that didn’t reach the forge by late morning. What was in the morning papers, or reached Armagh with the railway workers would come by way of the carters and the postmen. The latest news always reached the forge by the end of the working day. And the news was always bad. John was weighed down by it in the telling as much as she was in the hearing.

Nor was it an easy time for the forge. It had always been a meeting place and a clearing house for the news of the locality, but the old easy feeling had gone. No longer did people talk about the weather, the state of the crops, the health or otherwise of
their neighbours. Now it was only the latest riot and which side had done what.

Both John and Thomas knew that men of the lodge were coming to the forge to hear what was being said, so they said as little as possible themselves. But it put a strain on their relationship with each other and with their neighbours.

But worse was to come. One August morning Mary Wylie appeared tear-stained and distraught.

‘Rose dear, I’m on my way to Belfast,’ she gasped, out of breath on a morning already hot and windless. ‘I can only stop a minit. I can hardly bear to tell you what’s happened.’

‘Mary dear, sit down. Let me get you a glass of spring water. Now, tell me. Please.’

‘Last night,’ she said, drinking gratefully in large gulps, ‘there was trouble in the Donegall Road. Some Catholics went for an Orange Band that was leading a Sunday School excursion back home. Some wee lad got hit with a stone, and Kevin went out to help,’ she went on, tears streaming down her face. ‘Someone hit Kevin on the back of the head as he was bendin’ over him. We don’t know whether it was a Catholic or a Protestant,’ she said, sobbing. ‘It doesn’t make any difference now. Kevin’s dead, Rose, an’ Peggy’s wee baby due any time.’

Though Rose dreaded the cold of winter and longed for the warmth of summer, the long, warm and very dry spells of that summer brought her little pleasure. It seemed as if the heat itself had encouraged the nightly rioting in Belfast. The tiny, overcrowded houses spilt their human contents into the streets to continue ongoing battles and keep up the avenging of insults the other side was supposed to have perpetrated with a succession of stonings, burnings and looting.

The riots went on through July and August, coming to an end finally after three days of heavy rain that flooded some of the poorest areas of the city and left crops damaged throughout the countryside. The newspapers put the official number of deaths at thirty, but the personal stories that reached Armagh to be passed on to the forge made it clear the actual number had to be much higher. In addition to the deaths, hundreds had been injured, many of them seriously.

‘How is she, Mary? Is she going to stay in Belfast?’ Rose asked, when one damp and misty September morning, her friend appeared at her door.

‘No, she says she can’t bear the sight o’ the place, though the neighbours has been kind. Catholic and Protestant alike. She says the whole place is entirely different from when she an’ Kevin were married and that not a year ago. It’s the feel in the air she can’t stand. An’ forby, she’s no money. The little bit they’d saved for things for the baby has gone in rent an’ sure there’s nothing comin’ in. Peggy’s not that strong yet to go out to work an’ she’s got no one to mind the wee boy.’

Rose sighed. Hardly a day passed when she hadn’t thought of Peggy and wondered how she was coping with the shock of Kevin’s death and the long hard labour which started the day he was buried. There were times when the enormity of Peggy’s loss came close to overwhelming her. What would she do if she lost her own beloved John? Where would she go? How would she live without his love and comfort. It was not so much providing for the children, but coping with a life that would have lost all its meaning.

‘So will she come home?’ she said, pushing away her own sad thoughts.

‘There’s nothing for it,’ said Mary matter-of-factly. ‘Me Ma’s not keen on having the child, she says she’s too old to go through all that again. She does her
bit comin’ down to help me, but she doesn’t want a baby in the house. Still, when it comes to it, I think she’d be glad to have Peggy back. Da’s getting awful crotchety with the arthritis. Ma says he only opens his mouth to complain. Isn’t old age awful, Rose. D’ye think we’ll be like that if we live long enough?’

She had to laugh. It was the directness and lack of calculation about Mary she so loved. What she thought, she said. But what she may have lacked in tact, she more than made up for in kindness.

‘I can’t imagine being old, Mary,’ she said honestly. ‘Oh, I can imagine failing. Being a bit deaf or losing my sight. Not able to walk very much, like poor Sarah. I dread the thought of it, but I can’t imagine not being the person I am now. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Aye. I can’t see you different, somehow. But there’s many that are,’ she said, a frown on her face. ‘There’s people I used to know when I was a girl. Some of these men marchin’ around in hard hats. They were only a few years older than me. Sure, I made hay with some of them an’ had a bit of fun behind the haystack,’ she said, winking mischievously. ‘What gets inta them d’ye think that they go so serious an’ get so puffed up in themselves. Behavin’ as if they knew it all an’ most of them have no idea. They don’t know the half of what goes on.’

Rose shook her head.

‘I sometimes wonder if it’s fear, Mary. Fear of
losing their farm, or their job, or of being ill, or getting old. So they build themselves up. Pretend nothing can touch them. Forever playing “I’m the King of the castle and no one can knock me down.” And to prove it they have to find someone weaker to knock down, and so it goes on,’ she ended abruptly, straightening herself up and pulling a sour face.

Mary laughed.

‘Ye might be right, Rose. It wouldn’t be the first time,’ she said, grinning. ‘But tell me this an’ tell me no more, as the saying is,’ she went on leaning forward and dropping her voice confidentially. ‘Why is it only the men?’

‘You’re forgetting Mary-Anne,’ said Rose, with a smile.

‘An’ isn’t she better forgotten?’ replied Mary, so promptly that Rose burst out laughing again.

‘But why only the men?’ Mary persisted.

Rose was silent a moment. Why indeed? She’d never thought of that, though it was true enough.

‘Perhaps it’s because men don’t bear children,’ she said seriously. ‘Because we carry life, we’re more concerned with the ordinary business of living. For us there’d always be something far more important than marching or rioting.’

‘Aye, maybe ye have it there, Rose dear. Sure what attention wou’d ye pay to anythin’ if ye’d a child sick?’

The two friends moved on then and talked of
other things. Mary confessed her anxiety about Jane, now eight years old and not as tall as her little brother William. She was never without a cold and now after the hot, dry summer she had a cough. In return, Rose confided that John was in very low spirits, because Thomas had grown so silent he could hardly get a word out of him.

They agreed as they parted that the doctor might well do something for Jane, but there was little anyone could do for Thomas with Mary-Anne around.

On a pleasant Monday afternoon in October, Rose was startled by what sounded like a cry from the direction of the forge. Immediately, she dropped her sewing and went to look out. As she reached the door, she saw a young horse burst out of the shoeing shed and race down the lane, his leading rein trailing on the ground, a young lad in hot pursuit.

‘John,’ she cried, as she flew across the space between the house and the forge, dodging round a parked cart and a hay float waiting for repair.

But the figure who lay just inside the shoeing shed was Thomas. His grime-streaked face was deathly white and dark bubbles of blood were pushing through a long gash on his forehead. As she knelt down beside him the hammering stopped next door.

‘John, come here. Come here quickly,’ she shouted.

‘My God, Rose, what’s happened?’ he cried,
kicking aside a still glowing horse shoe and dropping to his knees beside the crumpled figure.’

‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to get him to the hospital,’ she said as the blood began to stream down his face.

‘Robinson’s trap is our only hope,’ she went on. ‘Run and ask George will he take him. Then ask Sophie has she anything for bleeding,’ she said, cradling Thomas’s head in her lap.

Rose had never before seen a head injury and she was horrified by the blood now pouring down his face. If she didn’t do something to stop it she knew he would bleed to death, where he lay, on the hard earth floor of the shoeing shed.

‘Lord, tell me what to do,’ she prayed, tears of anxiety and frustration welling up in her eyes.

‘Stop it,’ she said to herself fiercely, as a tear dripped down on Thomas’s face, making a clean mark.

Before she actually thought about what she was doing, she’d felt around the wound for the pulsing vein that was pumping out his blood. She couldn’t halt the flow, but she could reduce it. She kept her fingers pressed to the vein and used her other hand to wipe the blood and grime from his face with a loose corner of her apron.

He moaned, his eyes flickering and closing again as if the sunlight penetrating the outer area of the shed was too bright to bear. He tried to say
something, but she could see his lips were too dry. She moistened the other corner of the apron with spittle and wiped them gently.

‘Rose?’

‘Yes, it’s me Thomas. Don’t move now, like a good man, till John comes back. I think we’ll need a doctor to stitch you up,’ she said softly.

‘I think it was maybe a wasp stung the poor beast,’ he said, with an effort. ‘M’ leg’s broke. I heard it crack afore I fell,’ he said, looking up at her with a wry look on his face. ‘I’ve an awful pain in m’head.’

Rose laid her free hand across his forehead and listened for any sign of John’s return. He’d been gone a few minutes only, but already it seemed like hours. Though the bleeding had slowed it still seemed such a lot as it trickled between her fingers and down her bare arm. It would take half an hour at least to get him into Armagh and up to the Infirmary. Would there be any blood left by then?

She heard a step behind her and tried to turn her head to see who it was, but she couldn’t move her head without disturbing Thomas, who now lay still again, his eyes shut.

‘Is he dead?’

The voice was familiar but for a moment she couldn’t place it.

‘No, but his leg’s broken. John’s gone for Robinson’s trap.’

There was a rustle of skirt and a moment later, Peggy Donaghy was kneeling beside her, her once rounded face pale and drawn, her eyes lifeless, their sparkle gone.

‘Can I do something to help, Rose?’ she said coolly.

‘Yes. Go over home and bring me a bowl of spring water, a cup and a clean cloth. There ought to be one in the wash house. See if wee Sarah’s still asleep and tell her to stay where she is if she’s awake.’

Peggy left without a word. The events of July, the blood spilt so liberally in the street where she’d started her married life with such hope and joy, Kevin lying as Thomas now lay, came into her mind so sharply.

‘How is he, love?’ John said breathlessly, as he dropped to his knees beside her. ‘George is harnessing the mare. He’ll come round by the lane and back up here. Maggie’s away lookin’ for blankets to put under him and Sophie sent you this,’ he said quickly, handing her a soft pad of linen saturated in some sharp smelling liquid. ‘She said to feel for the throb and press it, but not too hard and not all the time. Put this on the wound and hope it’ll clot. Don’t for any sakes wash it, she said.’

‘I knew that much,’ she said briskly, ‘but I’ve sent for a bowl of water to make a cold compress. He said he had an awful head.’

‘Did he speak t’ ye?’ he asked, his voice almost breaking with emotion.

‘He did. He says his leg’s broken. He thinks a wasp stung the horse.’

‘Ach dear, dear. Such a wee thing to cause such grievance. That beast couldn’t be a quieter animal if it tried.’

He got to his feet as the wheels of the trap sounded on the cobbled lane and Peggy appeared with water and a cloth.

Maggie Robinson had padded the floor of the trap with blankets for John had made it clear that it wouldn’t be possible for Thomas to sit up.

‘Will you go with him, Rose?’

‘What about Mary-Anne?’ she said, thinking of her for the first time.

‘She’s away out.’

‘I’ll go, surely,’ she said, relief breaking over her.

‘I’ll stay till you come back, Rose, and see to the wee ones,’ said Peggy, as she arranged herself on the floor of the trap and strong arms lifted Thomas gently back into her lap, his broken leg bound firmly against the good one with a piece of rope.

While the door of the trap was wedged open to accommodate Thomas’s length, Peggy made a compress for his head and Rose put the cup of water inside the empty bowl and placed it beside her so she could moisten his lips as they went.

‘Are ye right, Rose?’ George asked, as she braced herself against the back of the driver’s seat.

‘Yes, I am. Take it easy on the lane till I get the knack of it,’ she said, looking at John, trying to reassure him with a soft look. ‘Peggy’ll make you a cup of tea,’ she added when she saw how white he’d gone. Peggy nodded calmly and Rose herself felt comforted.

She was cramped and uncomfortable, her back aching with the awkward angle she needed to sit at, so she could keep her fingers on both Sophie’s pad and on the throbbing vein. She wondered how she would ever manage to keep going the whole way to Armagh when she was in such pain herself by the end of the lane.

She concentrated on Thomas, not sure whether to be pleased or anxious he was no longer conscious. She kept the pad damp on his forehead and his lips well moistened in the hope that the slight comfort might somehow touch him, but in truth, it was she herself who was comforted. As they neared the outskirts of Armagh and the hot sun was shut off by the cool shade of the chestnuts opposite the gates of Drumsollen, she suddenly remembered being just as painfully cramped in a strawlined cart, a red-headed baby in her arms, a bag of turf poking through her thin shift.

The baby had survived and so would Thomas. If
thoughts and prayers could keep him safe, then he’d not lack for them. She made the sign of the cross on his forehead and spoke to George.

‘I think maybe we could risk going a wee bit faster.’

‘Whatever you say Rose. Anything that’ll help Thomas.’

A group of men were standing awkwardly outside the forge when George drove her back up the lane. John was the first to reach the trap, swinging her down in one easy movement, his eyes on her apron and hands, still covered in dried blood.

‘Well,’ he said, anxiously.

Rose looked at George, but George shook his head.

‘Rose’ll tell you,’ he said, nodding to the onlookers. ‘I didn’t understan’ the half of it.’

‘They said the leg is broken cleanly and should heal well enough,’ she began, looking at the sombre faces. ‘The head wound is more serious, but they’ve got the bleeding stopped and put stitches in. They can’t tell if there’s a fracture to the skull. The doctor said that would show up in a day or two.’ She paused and went on as steadily as she could. ‘He said another half inch and Thomas would have lost his eye.’

There was a sharp intake of breath and relieved comments as the men looked gravely at each
other. As they dispersed, they said they’d be back tomorrow for the latest news.

Left alone after George had turned the trap and set off down the lane, Rose leant against John, suddenly desperately weary.

‘Come on over home,’ he said encouragingly, as he slipped an arm round her. ‘Peggy’ll have ye a cup o’ tea in no time. She’s one great girl, that Peggy, after what she’s been through, playing wi’ wee Sarah an’ gettin’ Hannah to help her make the supper. She had them all peelin’ or scrapin’ or washin’ stuff to have it ready for Ma comin’ home.’