Galway Bay (21 page)

“They know, Michael. They do—about the pipes and Patrick. Everything!” The words spilled out on Michael and Owen Mulloy, finally back from Galway City that night, the three of us outside the cottage.

“Only ter-ror-iz-ing,” Owen said. “If they knew Patrick Kelly was related to you, they would have taken you away, Honora.”

“Me?”

“To get information. Patrick’s a wanted man with a price on him, but they don’t have his name, only a description of him and of the crozier.”

“A dozen pipers in the parish, Honora. No one will give my name,” Michael said.

“You’re very trusting, Michael,” I said.

“Only those who took part in the demonstration could identify the piper. Who will admit that?” Owen said.

“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “The harvest is gone. The Sassenach beat us. What do they care that we marched and sang? Still, I’m glad you buried your pipes in Champion’s shed. Better keep them there.”

Michael nodded. “Here, Honora. Look.” He dragged a sack forward. “A hundred pounds of oatmeal. Owen bought the same. The traders had a great laugh, telling us the meal we were getting was Irish oats bought by an English firm, taken to Manchester for milling, and then sold back to the Irish market—with a commission taken at each step!”

“When we could have milled our own oats!” I said. “What madness. The two of you must be knackered carrying those heavy sacks, and me keeping you with all my worries. Good night, Owen.”

“Better if Owen comes in, Honora. We’ve some things to explain to you.”

The children didn’t wake as they usually would have when Michael returned. They were learning to sleep the hunger away.

“Nettle tea, Owen?” I asked as he sat on the rush stool.

“Holy Mother, have we come to that already?” he said.

“There’s a sip of poitín left,” Michael said.

He got the jug and we sat together near the fire. Plenty of turf. At least we’re warm. Thank God.

Owen took a long drink from the jug. “Ah, that’s better. Have to resist them some way.”

Michael offered the jug to me. I shook my head. “Best have a drop,” he said, and I did tip the jug back for a quick swallow. “We had to spend all three gold coins for the meal,” he said.

“What!”

“The price was rising as we stood there,” Owen said.

“This way, with the pratties in the pit, we’ll have food through February if we eat one meal a day,” Michael said.

“So we have no money at all.”

“The roadworks will surely open in the spring. We’ve Oisín to sell, Honora. The winter’s never killed us yet,” Michael said.

“But if prices are going up already—”

“There’s an invisible hand going to lower the cost of food,” Owen interrupted me.

“What are you talking about?”

Then Owen tried to explain what they’d learned talking to the traders in the market and to the fellows Owen knew in the
Vindicator
office. Because the potato crop was half what it should be, we had to buy other food. A demand, Owen said, that let merchants charge higher prices. Other merchants, seeing the profit to be made, would bring in more food—a bigger supply—and the price would go down. The invisible hand setting things right.

But Irish people don’t have cash money, I told Owen. A coin or two hidden, maybe, but no wages. Do they think there are factories lined up along the strand road offering jobs? And who are these “merchants” who will bring in cheap food—the gombeen men? the crooked traders?

“You’ve got it in one, Honora,” Owen said. “The invisible hand doesn’t work for Ireland.”

“We tried to tell the trader fellows that,” Michael said. “Our crops pay the rent. Our food is the potatoes we grow ourselves. No money comes into it.”

Public employment had saved us at other bad times, Owen said, but now the government was wary. The invisible hand wouldn’t work if the government interfered. Couldn’t build a road that benefited one landlord, because that would place another at a disadvantage. Laying tracks for a railroad would help one company over another. Same problem with draining land. Public projects must not aid private enterprise. So nothing really useful could be done.

Insane. I asked Owen Mulloy was all this invisible hand blather only an excuse for the government to abandon us, let us starve?

Then Michael said a newspaper fellow had showed him an article from a London paper that said disasters like war or plagues or fire were sent by God to thin out the populations, get rid of the excess. The blight was a law of nature working as it should.

“Ireland without the Irish,” I said, “just as Patrick Kelly told us.”

December. We were in the heel of the winter now—storms raging, surf pounding. No fishing. Da tried again and again to launch his boat, but the waves pushed it back to shore before he could get into the channel. Many fishermen had already pawned their nets and tackle to buy whatever food was in the market—prices still going up. Da had been able to keep his nets because of the meal we had given him. He shared this food with the Leahys and Baileys. We’d given some of our meal to the Ryans, McGuires, and Dwyers. We couldn’t eat while others starved.

No roadworks or employment of any kind. Michael went from forge to forge. “Pay me later,” he said, but nothing.

A sad, sore Christmas. Patrick Kelly stayed away. In the chapel, Father Roche preached patience and handed out two-pound sacks of meal to each family. He’d bought them himself. No sign of the Lynches. In Dublin, Molly Counihan said.

After Mass, I walked back to the cottage with Mam and Granny.

“How many months are you, Honora,” Mam said to me.

“Three, I think. Michael doesn’t know.”

“Tell him,” Granny said.

I did that night, telling him I’d waited because at first I wasn’t sure and then didn’t want to worry him.

Michael put his finger on my lips, so gentle. “Whist, Honora, a stór. We’ll manage.”

By January, the hunger was telling on the children. When I hugged Paddy and Jamesy, I felt every rib. Katie Mulloy was very worried about her baby, James. “My milk is too thin, Honora, and he’s so little flesh on his bones.”

We ate once a day—in the evening, so the children could sleep through the night—oatmeal, mostly, with two potatoes from the pit shared among us. The boys looked with longing at the seed potatoes stored in the loft, but they understood that those could not be touched. “Only three months, and we’ll plant them,” Michael promised.

Michael had tried to sell the saddle, but Billy Dubh refused to pay one penny for it. He’d showed Michael the pawned clothes, nets, pots, and bedding that filled his cottage. He’d not take our blanket.

At least the soldiers had not returned. Perhaps the rain and muddy roads were keeping them in the barracks. Or they knew they had nothing to fear from us.

No chance of defiance now. It was hard enough to get through each day. I prayed for the government to forget the invisible hand and help us.

February. Michael was first up every morning. He’d go down to the stream, fill the pot with clear, cold water, pour some in the trough for Champion and Oisín, and give them a bit of the hay left from the summer.

Michael and Owen had tried to sell the horses, but no one would pay for them, only take them for nothing.

“Keep them,” I’d said. “The grass will be ready soon—Champion and Oisín will have more to eat than we will.”

When Michael came in with the water, I’d have the fire going. We were grateful for bog lands and the great racks of turf Michael had lifted last summer. The boys would wake up and then we’d make a game of watching bubbles form on the bottom of the pot, then leap to the surface of the water.

“Boiling,” Jamesy would say.

Paddy would drop a handful of nettles into the pot, careful to hold them by the stems so as not to get stung. We’d inhale the steam as it rose up.

“You did well,” I’d say to the boys. “Thank God for good smells.”

This morning, we sipped nettle tea from the one cup Michael hadn’t sold.

A bright day, dry, not cold.

“I think I’ll take the children down through Barna Woods to see if there’s snowdrops still there from Saint Bridget’s Day. Then we’ll go to Mam and Granny. . . . Might find some cockles or mussels on the strand.”

“Are you able for that much walking?” Michael asked.

“This little fellow inside me is determined. Moving around now.”

“I was thinking I’d take out the window,” Michael said. “Fill in the space with mud bricks and sell the glass. Might do it today.”

He’d proposed this before, but I’d argued to keep the window. “Selling the window is like losing faith, Michael. When I watch the sun go down in Galway Bay, all those wonderful colors remind me that a God who created such beauty couldn’t abandon us forever. Don’t let’s block out that light.”

“But if this Jackson sees it . . .”

“He won’t. Eight months until the rent’s due. Then the harvest will be in, and this nightmare over. If we lose the window . . .”

“We can’t lose it,” Paddy said, listening to every word. “Nobody else has one. Only us.”

“Paddy brags, Da,” James said. “He tells the other boys only the Kellys have a window and Champion and uncles who pull fish from the sea. He says that soon the forge will be open and he’ll learn to be a blacksmith and strike a mighty blow and—”

“It’s not bragging,” said Paddy, “it’s only saying. And it keeps me from thinking about how hungry I am.”

Now Bridget was crying. Neither praying nor bragging nor sunsets could help her little belly. I rocked her. No milk in my breasts.

“Here, boys—Da will let you sip the magic drink from his cup. Nice and slow, now. Feel how warm it is in your tummies.”

I dipped my finger in the tea and let Bridget suck on it, then fished out the nettles. I put a pinch of the meal into the pot and stirred it with a stick as it cooked in the nettle water—better than plain water, Granny said.

“Mam heard from Mrs. Anderson, the coast guard captain’s wife, that they’ve a load of American corn stored,” I said to Michael. “The woman said it’s being held in reserve.”

“In reserve for
what
?” Michael said.

“That’s what I want to find out,” I said. “Michael, wouldn’t you eat
one
prattie before you go? It’s a long walk into Galway City. What if the roadworks open, and you’re too weak to pick up a shovel?”

“Believe me, if there’s work going, I’ll do it. But I’m afraid we’ll only be lining up for nothing again. I can wait until this evening to eat.”

“The government had ever so much trouble bringing over this Indian corn,” Mrs. Anderson was saying.

Mam and I and the children stood listening to her.

“Or maize. It’s also called maize,” she said.

We were in the shed off the pier where the coast guard men kept their gear. Mrs. Anderson’s husband, the captain, had his office here. As she showed us the sacks and sacks of the stored Indian corn, she pointed and smiled as if to say, Sir Robert Peel and the British people will not let you starve. But you won’t get this food until we’re sure you really are dying.

“The Corn Laws make importing American grain impossibly expensive,” Mrs. Anderson said. “High tariffs on foreign grain. Necessary, I suppose, but the laws don’t apply to Indian corn. Isn’t that lucky?”

Mrs. Anderson went on about how Prime Minister Peel took taxpayers’ money to secretly bring this Indian corn from America. It would be sold at low prices to the Irish peasants. We’d learn to eat corn instead of potatoes. Which would be a good thing, didn’t we agree?

We said nothing.

Captain Anderson joined us, eager to let us know how much trouble the British government had gone to on our account. “Problem with this stuff,” he said, putting his hand on a sack, “it rots if it’s not ground at once. In America they have steel mills to grind it up. Stronger than ours. Now, this corn had to be unloaded, dried out in kilns for eight hours, cooled for a few days to prepare it for our mills. Here, look.” He opened the top of the sack and took out a handful of the coarse meal, picking out a few pieces. “This is what the corn looks like in its raw form,” he said, holding up a puckered kernel.

He handed it to me—hard as the hobs of hell.

“‘Peel’s brimstone,’ I’ve heard it called,” I said.

He laughed. “You Irish have such humor! The meal would be finer and easier to cook if the corn were ground twice, but the government decided that wasn’t necessary,” he said. “Mr. Trevelyan—the man in the Treasury who’s in charge—says that it wouldn’t do to make charity too agreeable.” Captain Anderson laughed again, but Mrs. Anderson and Mam and I looked down at the floor.

Captain Anderson wants us to be grateful for the efforts they’d made when our own grain could’ve been milled right here in Galway.

“And have you tried it, Captain?” I asked.

“Honora,” Mam said.

But I wanted to know. “Have you?”

“I haven’t had the chance,” he said, “but I am sure it’s quite nice if it’s boiled for the prescribed time—two hours, I believe. Why don’t I give you and your daughter a bit, Mrs. Keeley? Sort of an experiment—but don’t tell anyone. We’re not allowed to release this corn until there’s real distress.”

“But if you did release some now, people won’t be tempted to eat their seed potatoes,” I said.

“Ah, but it’s other temptations we’re concerned about,” said Captain Anderson. “Wouldn’t want to see the cornmeal sold for whiskey, would we? Can’t give the press in London the chance to attack the government for helping the Irish people. The coast guard has to walk a careful line. In the past we were accused of being too softhearted.”

Later, inside the cottage, Da stopped me from raging against Captain Anderson. At least the man respected Da’s knowledge of Galway Bay, asked his advice about currents and tides. Surely that food would be sold soon.

“Indian corn is like crushed-up stone. People won’t know what to do with it,” I said.

“It was tried years ago—made people sick,” Granny said.

“Captain Anderson’s a decent man,” Da said. But Da was thinking of one thing only.

“We’re going out tomorrow, Honora,” he said. “The winter storms have passed and there will be fish.”