And our whole family had stood together and left the chapel.
Father Gilley, furious that we’d defied him, told the congregation that we would be forbidden the sacraments until we denounced Máire. The Keeleys and Michael and Honora Kelly must be avoided as occasions of sin. Associate with us and they’d be denied the sacraments and reported to the Lynches.
On Christmas Day, the shunning, the seachaint, began. No one in Bearna spoke to the Keeleys. In Rahoon, our neighbors acted as if Knocnacuradh were still empty ground.
After a week of this, Máire said she would go back to the Scoundrel Pykes. “If I’m gone,” she’d said, “Father Gilley will leave you alone.” We’d all argued with her. But Máire said, what choice had she? She wasn’t about to stay in Bearna. Where would she ever get work? “I’ll only be five miles away,” she’d said, “not gone to Amerikay. The old Major’s up in Dublin most of the time, and I’ll manage Robert right enough. Remember, he’s off with the army a lot.” She’d find a way to get messages to us, and I could sneak up to see her.
“But, Máire,” I’d said. “He’ll, he’ll . . . How will you bear it?”
“He mostly talks,” Máire had told me, “tells me how he hates his father and how cruel the other boys were to him at boarding school. As for the other, he’s quick enough.”
We couldn’t stop her.
At first, nothing changed.
“Patience,” Granny had said. “Patience. Father Gilley will fasten on some others soon enough, and the neighbors will be at our door.”
“And we’ll slam it in their faces,” I said.
“Don’t blame them. Can’t go against the priest. But it’s a long road with no turning.”
When Da heard in mid-January that the fishing would begin, he went to the Claddagh Admiral to ask could he go with the fleet.
“Ever notice, John Keeley,” the Admiral had said, “that Our Lord picked fishermen for his disciples, and it was Judas, who never set foot in a boat, betrayed him? We’ll not turn against you, John Keeley, on a priest’s say-so.”
So Da sailed out with the fishermen, as he ever had, and not a word more was said. The Bearna fishermen followed the Admiral’s lead. When the boats returned, Mam gathered the catch with the other women and sold the fish under the Spanish Arch.
But up in Rahoon, the shunning continued. Farmers needed Father Gilley to say a good word for them to the landlord or the rate collector. Afraid, the lot of them. And yet for Michael and me, the shunning, meant to be our greatest punishment, led to our greatest joy. In that isolation we came to know each other as we never would have in life’s ordinary round. During that January and February, when the long nights of bad weather kept us home in our cottage and the hostility of our neighbors left us alone and apart, we two became one. With no fear that a shouted, “God bless all here!” would bring a visitor in through the door, we spent hours making love, amazed at the pleasure we could give each other.
Mam had told me that no harm would come to the baby if Michael and I wished to . . . We did. I’d always been glad enough to be healthy. My legs could walk and run, my arms lift and carry. I was delighted, too, that I’d conceived so quickly, but this other, this, this bliss . . . The ripple and rush I felt as Michael stroked me made me profoundly grateful that our bodies could express and receive such love, and no great study needed. We let ourselves be giddy. We were on an island away from the world, piling up the turf into great blazing fires, boiling up our feed of potatoes, the room so warm we could leave off our clothes entirely. Michael would play the pipes and I’d sit cross-legged in front of him on the bed we’d made from hay and covered with a soft blanket Michael bought in Galway City. The sound wrapped around my bare skin.
And the talking we did . . . I was used to the give-and-take of a large family, where one broke in on the other, splintering sentences, bouncing thought away from meaning. But Michael and I listened to each other, each waiting as the other found words for what we’d never said before, never even thought before, giving shape to dreams and to fears. I’d no idea I was such a worrier—the ifs and buts that flowed out of me. Michael teased them away. We’d live long, happy lives and die on the same day surrounded by our tall, strong sons and clever, beautiful daughters and a slew of lively grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Our bones would lie in one grave in Bearna churchyard, and our souls would soar over Galway Bay, together forevermore. I believed him—my hero, who’d stood with me against Father Gilley and the world. Then Michael took me to that lonely place within where he mourned all that had been taken from him and let me fill it with my love.
Spring came too soon that year, and Michael brought me a bunch of snowdrops, spring’s first sign, those white flowers that poke out of the earth on St. Bridget’s Day, February 1.
“They put me in mind of old women in frilled caps telling each other, ‘Thank God the winter is going,’” I’d said to Michael.
“The worms are waking up, too,” Michael had said, “happy as Larry, burrowing through the dirt, not knowing a dirty big blade of a spade will come slashing down into them.”
Planting time. Shunning or no shunning, the ground had to be turned and boulders hauled away—hard to do on your own. Michael left the cottage at first light now, up to the fields, probing and pushing the drowned earth. He made channels with pebbles to drain the water. But the ground stayed wet and mucky.
“I can do this,” he’d said after he’d used one gold coin to buy seed potatoes. “I watched Patrick often enough.”
“When you were nine years old, Michael. And what about setting the potato ridges? One man can’t do it—it takes two—one to open the ridge up and the other to lay the seed potatoes in and cover them,” I’d said. “Why not ask Owen’s help, Michael? He might want an excuse to end the shunning.”
Father Roche had gone to Mam and told her if the Keeleys came to the chapel, he’d not refuse them communion. Father Gilley would turn a blind eye.
“We could return to Mass, too,” I told Michael. “Then maybe Owen might—”
But Michael said that asking Mulloy would be like turning against Máire. “Think of what she must be suffering for us,” he’d said.
Not as much as you might think, I’d wanted to say. I’d gone up a few weeks after Christmas to find Máire settled in and Johnny Og the pet of Mrs. Cooney, the cook. Máire had joked about Father Gilley. “He’s gentry himself, Honora. It’s his job to keep us monkeys in line. We Keeleys stood up to him rightly, though,” she’d said, laughing.
It’s Michael, not Máire, whose spirit could break. Such an uneven battle he’s fighting with this bad land. If he doesn’t plant now, Knocnacuradh will die before it lives.
“Let’s ride away on Champion,” I’d said to him. “I’ll take to the roads with you in a snap of my fingers.” But Michael said I didn’t understand how much I’d miss Mam and Da and Granny and my brothers and Galway Bay itself, and he wasn’t giving up. When Michael made up his mind, he couldn’t be budged. A stubborn fellow, for all he seemed easygoing.
During that spring, I’d hear the sound of his pipes from the far field. Sometimes he’d take long rides on Champion, going nowhere in particular.
Then one night in March, we’d heard a step outside the door.
“Michael,” I whispered. “Wake up.”
He’d heard it, too. He eased himself out of bed, grabbed the spade to use as a weapon, and moved to the door.
“It’s me,” came the low voice from outside. “It’s me, your brother. It’s Patrick.”
Michael dropped the spade and opened the door, leaving me only seconds to pull the woven blanket over me and cover my full breasts and swollen belly.
The man who stepped through the door put the heart across me—a blade of a face with a narrow nose, a wide mouth, two hazel-colored staring eyes, and close-cropped brown hair. He was almost as tall as Michael, but spare and lean. He carried two jugs of poitín, which he set on the floor.
“Patrick”—Michael stepped forward and stretched out his arms. “Patrick.”
But Patrick didn’t speak, didn’t move. He looked from Michael to me. I wanted to slide down—cover my face as well as my bosom—but I knew I had to hold his cold gaze. If it’s a staring contest you want, Mr. Patrick Kelly, I’m well able for you.
But Michael put his two hands on Patrick’s shoulders. “Are you trying to scare the wits out of my wife and freeze your little brother’s heart, you great bollocks?”
Patrick laughed. The ice covering those eyes cracked, and the two were in each other’s arms.
“And here is Honora, Patrick. She’s—”
“A Keeley,” Patrick said. “John James Keeley’s daughter, and her mother is Mary Danny Walsh. A family of fishermen, and it’s her sister that got you into the bother you’re in.”
“Not my sister’s fault,” I said. “A devil of a landlord—”
“Major George Scoundrel Pyke,” Patrick finished, “and his soldier son, Robert. We know them well.”
“We—and who is we?” I asked.
Michael laughed. “Better answer, Patrick. She’s a woman who won’t be put off. Now come in and tell us where you’ve been and where you’re living and—”
“Your granny would know the men I’m with,” he said to me.
“The Martin O’Malleys,” I whispered.
“I’m naming no names,” said Patrick.
A rough bunch, and some wanted. I asked no more questions.
Michael was pouring out nine years of news, though Patrick knew the bones of it. He’d heard about the deaths of Michael’s mother and grandfather, the eviction, the loss of the forge. Well-informed. And now?
“Get up and get dressed, Michael,” Patrick Kelly said. “I came to lay out the potato ridges with you, and plant your fields.”
“It’s night,” I said.
“There’s a full moon,” said Patrick.
They began that very night, two long moon shadows moving across our land, with me following.
“We’ll plant the wheat and barley later. Best to start with the potatoes so you’ll be sure to have food. We can set the beds up on that high hill,” Patrick said.
“I hadn’t intended to go up that far,” Michael said. “Hard going to climb up there.”
“Which is why that land hasn’t been used—that’s good. New soil for the pratties works best, I’ve noticed. So.”
Patrick marched Michael and me up the steep slope. At the top, Patrick took a pinch of earth, crumbled it, and sniffed.
“Such a generous plant, the potato. You couldn’t get anything else to grow in land like this.” They started working; Patrick took the lead. “You,” Patrick said to me. “Get a load of pebbles.”
I didn’t move right away.
“Pebbles, girl.”
You might be thirty, I thought, and me seventeen, but I’m a married woman with a baby growing inside me, and I won’t have orders barked at me.
Michael winked at me. “Would ever you gather a handful of stones, Honora, a stór, and bring them up to the General and me?”
If Patrick heard, he said nothing.
Plenty of pebbles between larger boulders. I gathered them in my skirt and brought them up to Patrick and Michael.
Patrick had stamped out the shape of the ridges. “Now, the pebbles, if you please.” He dropped one at the head of a ridge and started to line the other stones behind the first one. He gestured for Michael and me to do the same.
After an hour, rows of pebbles stuck out in the tufts of grass and weeds, white in the moonlight—a straight line down in the center of each ridge-to-be.
“The potatoes,” Patrick said. He stood still and tall above us.
“The pebbles mark the place where we’ll plant the seed potatoes,” Michael whispered to me.
Patrick started to slice into the earth, cutting a triangle of sod, the scraw, then flipping it over so the point touched the pebble. Michael came behind him, the two brothers working backward along the ridge, Michael becoming almost as deft as his brother. They paused only to carefully tap down the earth.
“Can’t break the scraw,” said Patrick, “or the rain will wash away the goodness of the soil.”
And soil it became, where before only rocks and weeds had covered the ground. Dawn came. The larks sang the sun up, while from the bishop’s house below us, a rooster crowed. Michael and Patrick had dug twenty ridges straight and parallel.
We slept the day away. Patrick had insisted on sharing Champion’s shed. Michael had tried to explain Champion’s birth and the Galway Races, but Patrick had said, “Stop. That’s a story for the fire, after we finish.”
Patrick didn’t appear until nightfall. They began to cut out the eyes from the seed potatoes.
“Lumpers,” Patrick said. “The worst.”
“Plant a better variety and the landlord will raise the rent for sure,” Michael said. “The agent would say if the likes of us can buy pinks, then we can afford to pay more rent.”
Patrick began to warn Michael about the work and watching he’d have to do. “Keep the ridges clean of scratch grass, Michael. Yank every bit out. Leave the tiniest bit and it will choke the potato plants before they can grow. Watch out for shepherd’s purse. It can drop its seeds in the center of the ridge, and then you’re f— Well, it’s bad, but of course docks are the worst of all. They put their dirty big roots down and wrap around the pratties.”
“Though dock leaves ease the sting of nettles,” I said.
Patrick raised an eyebrow at Michael and went right on. He talked about the problems of weather—too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry—Michael listening and nodding. “Keep the blackbirds away. They’ll peck the potatoes to pieces looking for worms. And watch for rats.” Patrick went on and on.
That night, Patrick and Michael replaced the pebbles with the eyes, slipping each into the earth. When they finished, Michael’s back was so stiff and painful, he couldn’t raise his arms. No bother to Patrick, though.
“And he’s twelve years older,” Michael said.
Patrick left after five days. The potatoes were set. He and Michael had laid the drains. Patrick taught Michael how to judge the way the land fell, to determine which field should be left for grass for Champion and which planted for wheat.
“You’ll need your neighbors’ help in plowing, but I say it will be forthcoming.”
I started to tell him the ins and outs of the shunning, but Patrick waved me to silence, shook hands with Michael, and was gone.