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Authors: Malcolm Macdonald

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BOOK: The Rich Are with You Always

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As soon as they had a family got out, they rushed indoors with poles and burst
out the slates near the ridge tree of the roof. Then a man would go up on a ladder
outside and put a hook on a chain around the ridge tree. The other end was already
harnessed to a team of horses, so it was easy work pulling off the entire roof in one
smack. Forty-nine houses they wasted in this way. On some, the roofs were so flimsy
they could pull them off with rakes alone.

You may imagine the anguish of the people as this was going on. The men and
women were on their knees, begging the agents and constables not to persist with the
evictions. And then the wailing that went up and the curses that fell as the roof came
off. I confess without shame I was unmanned—choked with dust and tears both. I
spoke to many of the soldiers, they were of the 72nd Highland, and they answered
to a man that they detested the business. I saw several give money to the people. I
gave them all I had too, which amounted to 5l. 2s. 4d.

Shortly after two, when all the roofs were off, they stopped for a bite and a drink. Then
the people were allowed back in to salvage what they could of their possessions. Which was
precious little (yet precious to them, for all that). I saw one woman standing at the door of
her ruined home, crying and bewildered, with dried blood on her forehead. She had in her
hand a broken china plate, and I asked her what it was. "It's my life away," she said.

Yet such is the fortitude of these people (remember they were not destitute paupers
but were, by Irish standards, in a fair prosperous way) that before evening, they had
built shelters of furze and stone out along the wayside. And such is the ruthlessness
of authority here, that they were hunted out even from these rude shelters and
scattered far and wide over the country. Three constables went along with torches,
firing the furze. There was one crippled young girl did not get out in time and had
her hair and neck and face badly burned. There is no poor law infirmary nearer than
Waterford, so I took her there, and that was the last I saw of that dreadful day.
When MacMinimum and I rode through the next day, they were pulling the walls
down and even uprooting the foundations.

A little way on we came to another village, where some of the evicted had been taken
in and given shelter. The constabulary was hard at work driving them out again and
giving out cautions that whoever took in any of the evicted would himself be turned out.

So Mrs. Pedelty (who collects 11,000l. in rent and has not subscribed one farthing
in relief) has regained several hundred valuable acres, while the British Treasury has
acquired two hundred and fifty more mouths that can be fed only through relief. And
Ireland has another cause to detest us—and rightly, I say. The tolerance and friendly
hospitality that greets me everywhere baffles my comprehension.

When I told Flynn of this, he said, "Oh, that's been going on for centuries, did
you not know?" And when I showed him a list of names I had collected (why, I do
not know, I had some notion of an appeal or inquiry), he read: "Lynch, Connally,
Egan, Kelly…etc." and then he looked at me and added, "I was looking at the
lists of those who died in the recent great victories of General Gough at Aliwal and
Sobraon in India. I'd swear half of it was Lynches, Connallys, Egans, Kellys…etc.
'Roll of honour,' it said, 'of those who died for their country'."

My dearest, I tell myself—what you will certainly say—that it is a landowner's
inalienable right to do what he wishes with his own land. I know all this—yet it
does not stifle the cries of terrified children and the weeping of their parents. It does
not efface the picture I have of that young cripple I carried ten miles before me on my
horse, she mad with pain, blistered from her shoulder to her temple; and the cloying
smell of her burns is there now in my nostrils. I am too wounded still to say what is
right. I know that all I saw was wrong.

Three days later this letter was followed by another, scribbled in great haste:

After sending my last I felt compelled to turn about and go back to Waterford for
news of the little burned girl, whose name is Mary Coen. Since I had taken her from
her people, I felt in some degree responsible for seeing them together again. I have
searched high and low and cannot find them. I have sent others out, two dozen, also
seeking, and they cannot find them either. The constabulary have also (they claim)
made inquiry, to no avail.

What shall I do? What must I do? I am minded to bring the child, Mary, back to
England with me. We may surely find her a place, even though she is crippled. She
could no doubt be taught to sew or clean things. She hardly needs the use of a leg for
that. Her family were decent folk. I cannot leave her in this bastille. I wish you were
here. Could you come and see to the arrangements? I will await you here.

If rage had been a fuel, Nora would have been in Waterford within the hour. As it was, she steamed from Liverpool that night and was with John the following evening. Her way to Liverpool ran through the Pennines via Summit Tunnel on the Manchester & Leeds—Stevenson's first contract. As the train drew near she looked out for Rough Stones, the house up on the hillside where they had made their first home; but it was night, and all she saw was a glimmer that could as well have been a shepherd's lantern. And then the train swept into the tunnel.

She was glad not to have seen the place. It had held too many of her hopes, too much optimism, to suit her present anger and despair.

She was furious at John's neglect of the rest of the business—she told herself. He was behaving in a secretive, high-handed way—the way that had led to their disastrous partnership with Beador. This had all the signs of that same flawed judgement. That was another good reason to be angry. And he was going soft. He was losing his grip on reality. He was even assuming that she was a willing accomplice in all of this…this madness. He did not even consider that she might hold the contrary viewpoint. Yet hadn't she been the one who pulled them out of the mess, his mess, last time? And she still hadn't got much in the way of new property to recompense her loss—yet here he was behaving in this lofty, inconsiderate way, as if she didn't count at all.

Well, she would show him!

She did not pause to marvel that she had so many reasons for anger—as if the anger grew first, and grew tall, before any reason came along to prop it up.

The ready smile of welcome left John's face the moment he saw her. "Eay, ye look badly," he said.

"I'm fit," she answered curtly. "Fit for what has to be done here."

It had never once crossed his mind that she would take exception to what he had done. Even now, when her anger was plain, he could not at once adjust to the notion. "You're not…vexed, are you?" he asked incredulously. "Surely not."

She let him see what effort it cost to stay calm. "I am vexed, John. And so would ten thousand others be if they knew of this…what can we call it? Escapade? Escape, anyway. Escape from your duty."

"Duty?" The word stung him.

"Plain duty. Duty to a dozen railway companies. Duty to every man who works for us. To every man as trusts you and has tied his fortune to yours. I don't know what sort of weighing scale you've found to make one child heavier than all that."

He smiled at her when she said the word "child" and held out his hand. "Come and see her," he said.

"I'll do no such thing." She saw the hotel porter preparing to carry her bags from the post chaise. "Leave it all there," she said sharply.

Her meaning was not lost on John, but still he held forth his hand. "Come on, love. At least see the child."

She was adamant. "I've come here to restore your judgement," she said. "Not to be swayed out of mine. I'll not see her."

"You must," he said and began walking away down the street. He did not look behind him until he reached the corner. When he saw she still held her ground, he had to turn and come back. "Afraid you might, after all, see my side of it?" he taunted.

She had to go with him then. On the way he explained that he'd paid to have the girl moved out of the workhouse into the direct care of a nurse in the parish. "But they'll not let her beyond the parish-union boundary except by way of proper apprenticeship," he added.

Daylight was quickly fading as they walked up the street to the nurse's house. The nurse, a sprightly, middle-aged woman, full of nervous good humour, was set for half an hour's good jawing before she would think of showing them the girl, but John cut her short.

The girl lay stiffly, half sitting on top of her bed, a gaunt little scarecrow in patched and threadbare workhouse reach-me-downs. The room was low, and precious little of the falling day crept in at the one small, grimy window.

"Hello then, Mary," John said. "Here is Mrs. Stevenson come to help us."

The girl's head was swaddled in dressing made from torn sheeting. She kept as still as possible; every slight movement made her whimper. Nora thought she might be dying. The nurse left them alone with her, one on each side of the little bed.

Nora had not needed to see the child in order to understand what had moved John to behave as he did. But to her mind it still did not excuse his neglect of everything else. She looked around the room. "Well," she said. "It's clean. It's dry. It's not cold. Where is the difficulty?"

He stiffened angrily and was about to speak when she cut him short. "See thou—I came through Summit Tunnel last night. It put me in mind of the man I met there, and I'll tell you for free, you're nothing like him. There was a man who'd just lived through an explosion underground, who turned round and sawed off Pengilly's injured leg smack smooth, who passed the night forging a banker's letter of credit, and who spent next day drawing wool over the eyes of the Manchester & Leeds directors. That was a man who knew where the main chance was—and how to take it. He'd never have spent a week milksopping around this godforsaken backwater on account of—one little bag of bones." She smiled at Mary, who smiled wanly back.

John pressed his knuckles into his eyesockets, trying to contain his anger in front of the child. "You cannot have read my letters," he began.

"What?" she asked. "About the evictions? They weren't the first. Nor will they be the last, I daresay. Why you had to go and involve yourself…"

"But I
was
involved. I was involved because I was
there.
I was involved because they were people, not animals, that were treated so." He gestured at Mary.

"Well, where do we stop, John? Why don't we shoulder all the burdens of this wretched country? Eh? And what about England? Things every bit as bad happen there too. Any day of the week."

"At least you agree it's bad."

"Of course I do. I find Mrs. Pedelty despicable. I hope all doors are barred against her. I hope she's denounced from the pulpit."

"And? That's all?"

"Is it not enough?"

"Certainly not. At the very least the law on evictions must be changed."

Nora could not believe it. She began to shiver and she felt her heart hammering in anger. "You must be mad!" she said.

"You did not see what I saw."

"I could see a hundred evictions and still keep a level head on that subject. It's a hard fact of life, but a landlord must be free to do as he likes with his own land. If the law were to curtail that right in any way, the value of land would fall. If that happened, then people of enterprise would stop putting their money into land. And agricultural progress would halt. Or even decline. Think of the destitution and misery that would cause. Not in one village but in thousands. You can't cure one evil by bringing in another a thousand times more pernicious." What an absurd discussion, she thought, to be having in fron
t
of this child!

He laughed mirthlessly, despairing of her understanding. "You can't expect those who are evicted to see it like that."

"I do," she said stoutly. "I've been evicted too, you know. When our dad died, we were turned out by the Bridgewater agent. I screamed murder at him but I never questioned his right, though I had the rent in my hand."

"It's different here in Ireland. You can have no idea…"

"I believe they must have different water or different air or something. It seems to rot the backbone out of good men."

BOOK: The Rich Are with You Always

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