The Killing Snows

by Charles Egan

  She was crying now. ‘Oh God, I’m so lonely.’

  ‘Lonely? You have Fergus, haven’t you?’

  ‘Have I? Have I really?’

  Abruptly, she threw her arms around him, hugging him close.

  ‘No,’ he gasped. But the rest of him would not obey. He was holding her close at the waist. He looked down at her, tears streaming down her cheeks. Then he was kissing her, holding her head up to him, grasping her even tighter.

  A full minute later, she pushed him back. ‘No. We mustn’t. Not now.’ She stood back from him, shaking her hair loose, before gathering it under the shawl again. ‘Go and see Nessy.’ She walked towards the bramble gate.

  He stood still, watching her go. How did she learn to move like that? All the walk of a queen, God damn her. It was in the way she moved, cool and erect; the suggestion of more; the promise of what?

  Not now?

  He returned to the quarry and was surprised to see his father was not there. He walked into the house. Michael was at the table, eating. Luke stayed standing.

  ‘She’s getting worse,’ his father said.

  ‘I’ll just go up to the house so.’

  ‘Would you not eat first?’

  ‘I’ll eat after.’

  He walked up to Murty’s cabin. He heard a scream. He stopped. Then he went on and knocked at the cabin’s door. Murty was there. There was another scream from behind the hanging blanket.

  ‘Luke’s here,’ Murty shouted.

  Eleanor came out from behind the blanket.

  ‘How is she?’ Luke asked.

  ‘She’s very weak.’

  Another scream echoed through the cabin. He looked to his mother, questioning. ‘I don’t know,’ she said ‘I just don’t know.’ She went back inside.

  He sat at the table. Murty took down a small cup and poured poitín into it. His hands were trembling, and some of the poitín spilt. He handed it to Luke. As Luke tried to lift the cup, he found his own hands were trembling too. He put the cup back on the rough-cut table and steadied it with both hands, before lifting it to his lips again. For the next hour he sat with Murty. The screams grew weaker and became mingled with a wailing sound. Then the screaming stopped. Eleanor came from behind the blanket, as the wailing grew louder. ‘It’s a girl,’ she said.

  Murty looked up. ‘And Nessa…?’

  She shook her head.

  *

  Luke stayed at the table. Murty was silent, taking sips of poitín. The midwife had cleaned and dressed Nessa’s body. Eleanor had wrapped the tiny infant in a shawl and was rocking it from side to side. Aileen sat at the edge of the bed, staring at the floor. Luke felt he was more in the way than useful. After a while, he left the house. He could hear the sound of heavy pounding from the quarry. His father was working, swinging the sledgehammer with ease. He did not even look up, as Luke arrived.

  ‘Well, is it a boy or a girl?’ he asked without pausing.

  ‘A girl.’

  ‘No trouble?’

  ‘Nessa’s dead.’

  The pounding stopped. Michael stared at him, still holding the hammer. ‘What’s that you say?’

  ‘She couldn’t take it. She died as it was being born.’

  Michael dropped the hammer and strode across to the path out of the quarry. Luke ran after him and grasped his arm.

  ‘No, Father. We’d only be in the way.’

  ‘But Murty…’

  ‘We’ll see him later.’

  ‘But what…? Surely there’s something…’

  ‘Let’s keep working. It’ll keep our minds off things.’

  They worked on, Michael smashing rock as Luke shovelled it away. From time to time, Michael asked a question or made a comment, but Luke said little. They went back into the house.

  ‘It might be time now.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  They both stripped off and washed the sweat and dirt from their bodies. Michael dressed in his best clothes which he only used for Sundays. Luke did the same and followed his father up to Murty’s house.

  Nessa’s body was lying on the bed. Eleanor was sitting on the other bed, Aileen shivering beside her. A wet-nurse was feeding the baby. ‘Siobhán,’ Murty said, as he handed mugs of poitín to Luke and Michael.

  ‘Has the priest been?’ Michael whispered.

  ‘Father Reilly’s coming. We had to send a lad up to Gort na Móna to find him. Flynn wouldn’t come, the bastard.’

  ‘God damn him to hell.’

  Over the next hour, people arrived. Many of the women paid their respects to Aileen, some hugged and kissed her, but she barely acknowledged them. Her eyes were unfocussed.

  Kitty came to the door. ‘How is she?’ she asked Luke. He said nothing. Then she saw all the other women. The wet-nurse was rocking the baby. She grasped him by the elbows. ‘How is she?’ she shouted.

  ‘She’s dead,’ he said.

  Father Reilly arrived. ‘God bless you all,’ he said.

  ‘And you, Father,’ Luke replied.

  The men stood. The priest came to Murty, taking both his hands.

  ‘I was so sorry to hear of it. This is a terrible day for you.’

  ‘It’s good of you to say so, Father,’ Murty replied. ‘I’m thankful you came.’

  ‘Aye,’ Michael said sharply. ‘And there’s another that should have and didn’t.’

  The priest shook his head. ‘I know,’ he whispered. There was a wailing from behind the blanket. The priest spun around, looking to where the cry had come from. ‘It’s alive?’

  ‘It is,’ Luke said.

  The four men went behind the blanket. The baby was lying on the end of the bed, but the wailing had stopped.

  ‘She isn’t sucking well,’ the wet nurse said.

  ‘She’ll not live,’ Aileen said, without looking up.

  ‘We might have little time so,’ the priest said. ‘Bring me water.’

  Luke went out to the kitchen, found a cup and a pitcher of water, and brought the full cup back. The priest blessed it.

  ‘So what’s the child’s name to be?’

  No one spoke.

  ‘Whatever you think yourself,’ Murty said at length.

  ‘Then let it be Brigid. A saint, and one of our own.’

  ‘Aye,’ Murty responded, ‘Brigid it is so.’

  Aileen said nothing, still staring at the ground.

  ‘And the godfather?’

  ‘Luke,’ Murty said, without hesitation. ‘Who else would it be?’

  Eleanor spoke before Father Reilly could ask the next question.

  ‘Kitty. You’ll be godmother, won’t you?’

  Kitty stared at Eleanor; in surprise or shock, Luke could not tell. She glanced back at the baby lying on the bed. Then she stood as if in a trance and walked slowly around the bed without taking her eyes off the child. Very gently she lifted her and brought her over to where the priest was standing, a look in her eyes which Luke had never expected.

  The priest held the cup over the baby’s forehead.

  ‘Ego te baptizo Brigid, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti.’

  *

  Many people attended the wake the next night. Unlike most, it was a morose affair. Murty had bought whiskey, tobacco and a hundred clay pipes, and there was little left by evening. The kitchen was still crowded, but Aileen stayed behind the blanket, greeting no-one.

  Eleanor had put the baby on the bed in the outshot. Danny’s bed. Luke wondered how Aileen would react. Would she accept that Danny was not coming home, and that the baby, her grandchild, would take his bed. Perhaps.

  Kitty arrived. ‘God with ye all,’ she said.

  ‘God and Mary,’ Eleanor answered. She stood. Kitty sat on the bed beside the child. She had the same expression in her eyes that
Luke had noticed before. What was it? Love? Yes, surely that, and stronger than would be expected; the love and desire for a child in a young woman who had never had one. He wondered about that and thought of Fergus. But there was more than that in her eyes. Fear? Maybe. He had never expected that. He thought again of what she had said in the bog. Yes, she was lonely, frightened too. Even Kitty, who laughed at everyone and everything, she had her own fears.

  The baby was breathing with no sign of distress. Kitty touched the baby’s cheeks. Then she lifted her gently, holding her close.

  ‘She’ll live,’ she murmured.

  ‘She will,’ Eleanor said. ‘God is good. The child will live.’

  As they buried Nessa the next day, it rained without stopping. Many more attended than had been at the wake, hundreds standing between the graves, more spilling out onto the road. Aileen knelt in the mud beside the grave, Eleanor holding her by the shoulders. Luke was surprised to see Kitty standing behind them, sheltering the baby under her shawl, swaying from side to side.

  As they lowered the rough-built coffin into the ground, the men bowed their heads, and all the women knelt. Father Reilly led a decade of the Rosary. Luke stood at the back, staring at the bare wet feet of the women. Then he stood at the gate, shaking hands with people as they filed past him. He recognised many thin, pinched faces under battered caps or wrapped beneath ragged shawls. More he did not know.

  Afterwards he worked a few hours in the quarry. When he came in, he saw Aileen, bent over the table, shaking. Eleanor’s arms were around her shoulders. Michael was pacing up and down.

  ‘That priest,’ he shouted at Luke. ‘That bloody priest. Will we never be rid of him?’

  ‘What happened? What priest?’

  ‘Flynn, the bastard, who did you think? Came up to her in the street in front of all the other women and told her it was the judgement of God. I swear I’ll kill him.’

  *

  Murty came to the door the next morning. Eleanor was at the table, sorting the good potatoes from the rotten.

  ‘Michael’s not here,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not Michael I’m looking for.’

  She waved him to one of the stools beside the fire. He took out two clay pipes, filled both with tobacco and handed one to her.

  ‘It’s Aileen,’ he said. ‘It’s not natural.’

  ‘It was a terrible shock.’

  ‘But damn it, Elly, she’s lost children before. Both of you have. She was never like this before.’

  ‘But Nessy wasn’t a child. Over twenty years you’ve had her. She becomes part of you.’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know,’ he said. He took a twig from beside the fire and put one end in the flames. ‘But Aileen…I thought I’d keep her steady. She was in a bad way, but I thought I could handle her. It was only when she met with that bloody priest…’

  ‘I know. Michael was fit to kill him.’

  He held the burning twig across for Eleanor to light the tobacco. ‘Can you help us?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘I don’t think Aileen can be left alone. I don’t know what she might do to herself.’

  Eleanor stared at him. ‘You don’t think…’

  ‘She might, Elly. She just might.’

  Eleanor sucked at the pipe. ‘I’ll go up every day you’re at the school, so,’ she said. ‘Or you bring her down here. We’ll get along somehow.’

  ‘Yes, Elly. I knew you would.’ He lit his own pipe. ‘But there’s another thing too. The baby.’

  ‘The baby?’ she cried. ‘Isn’t Siobhán feeding her?’

  ‘She is. But it’s when Siobhán isn’t there, that’s when we’ll have the problem. Aileen won’t take any interest in her.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. She thinks Brigid is going to die. She reckons that if she learned to love her, then she’d only have her heart broken again, and she couldn’t take that a second time so soon.’

  Eleanor thought about that. ‘I’m sure you’re right. She’s shook enough as it is. So what about the baby?’

  ‘I just don’t know. And it’s not that I’m complaining, but I’ll not be able for this. I’m not a young man, I’m not supposed to be changing and cleaning babies, and Siobhán isn’t going to feed her for ever. The child needs a mother.’

  ‘Should we not just wait a few weeks?’

  ‘I can’t. Easter’s over. I’ve got to re-open the school, and that’s bad enough. What with Nessy dead and Murtybeg gone to England, it’s almost impossible as it is. There’s no way on earth I can take care of the baby.’

  Eleanor drew on her pipe again. ‘Maybe we could persuade Aileen. Have a word with her, the two of us. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to make any difference,’ he said.

  Next day, Eleanor took Brigid home. Aileen had told her that she would take the baby back when she felt better, but already Eleanor knew she would not. The irony of it struck her strongly. For years she herself had tried for another child, but had failed. Now she had the daughter she had wanted, but in a way she had never expected.

  When the men returned for their midday meal, Michael looked at the baby in astonishment.

  ‘It’s that Aileen isn’t able for it,’ Eleanor whispered. ‘We’ll just hold on to the little one for a while.’

  Some days later, she and Michael took Brigid down to the church. They knocked on the door of the priest’s house. The old housekeeper answered it. They asked for Father Reilly. He came to the door.

  ‘I wanted to ask you,’ Michael said. ‘Have you written Brigid into the church book yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the priest said. ‘I wasn’t too sure what to write, so I thought I’d wait. I meant to ask ye about that.’

  ‘Perhaps we’d better do it now.’

  They went through the church to the sacristy. Father Reilly took out the registry. He dipped the pen in ink and wrote down ‘Brigid Ryan.’

  ‘Godparents, Michael? Luke wasn’t it? And Kitty Brennan.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Michael said.

  ‘And what should I put down for the father?’

  ‘That would be difficult,’ Eleanor said. ‘We don’t know his name.’ She was lying, and both men knew it.

  ‘Yes, I can see that’s going to be a problem,’ the priest said.

  ‘It will,’ Eleanor said. ‘A dead mother and a father who’s run off. We owe the girl more than that.’

  ‘So what can we do then?’

  ‘You could give our names as the parents,’ Eleanor said. ‘Myself and Michael.’

  Michael looked around in surprise. ‘He could what?’

  ‘Us, Michael. Me and you.’

  ‘Are you mad? What would people think?’

  ‘Does that worry you?’ Eleanor said softly. ‘It never did before.’

  Michael drew back with a startled look. Silence.

  ‘Well?’ Eleanor said.

  ‘But…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Father Flynn. What would he do?’

  ‘God only knows,’ the priest answered. ‘But I think I can deal with that.’

  ‘Well then?’ Eleanor said.

  Brigid’s parents were given as Eleanor and Michael Ryan.

  Sometimes Luke would cut home by the rath above the bog. The rath itself was nothing more than a low, circular ridge on top of a knoll. Inside the circle there were small mounds, showing where mud cabins had stood many centuries before. They were overgrown with grass, blackthorn and whins, The ridge carried a crown of taller trees – alder, ash, birch and one single oak. The rath had been refuge for him from the age of five, a place he could always run to and hide. Because of its height, it was also a place from which he could observe the fields and houses near and far; a place where he could see, but not be seen
. He began to remember places that he had forgotten in the years on the railways.

  Close in, he could see the farms of Carrigard – people working in the fields or walking along the road that ran from Kilduff towards Knockanure. Further out, he could see other farms and clusters of houses with names he had learnt long before the Ordnance Survey came to Mayo. Gort mór, Abhann an Rí, Lios Cregain, Cnoc rua, Currach an Dúin, Áth na mBó, Craobhaín, Gort na Móna, Árd na gCaiseal, Sliabh Meán and Baile a’ Cnoic.

  Big Field, King’s River, Cregan’s Homestead, Red Hill, Fort of the Plain, Ford of the Cows, Little Branch, Field of Turf, Castle Rise, Middle Hill and Hill Village.

  At the edge of it all was the Mountain, with the potato fields of Baile a’ Cnoic pushing higher year by year.

  Two Saturday’s passed. The first he stayed working the farm with his father. The second it rained without cease. The next Saturday morning, he was down the low bog on his own. It was a warm, cloudless day.

  He started to work on the turf, building it up into small ricks, seven sods on each. He worked fast. Even with the early mugginess, it would be a dry day, and there might not be too many more of them. When his shirt became soaked with sweat, he took it off, hung it on a blackthorn branch, and worked on. Even without it, he continued to sweat.

  He thought of Nessa. Her death had hit him hard, more so than he had expected. But at the funeral and wake, he could see that it had touched Kitty more. He wondered too about Aileen. She no longer cried, but did not speak either.

  As noon approached, he watched all the carts and walking women passing along the road. Long after all the others had passed, he saw a lone cart coming towards him. She waved to him from a distance, before tying the donkey to a blackthorn bush down a boreen on the other side. She came walking down the road towards him, into the field and across to the bog. He took his jacket and waved to her to follow him to the rath.

  As before, he grasped her tightly. This time there was no need for words, as they made love with a desperate urgency.

  Chapter Five

  The Leeds Mercury, April 1846:

  The foundation stone of that stupendous work, the Wharfdale Viaduct on the Leeds and Thirsk Railway, was laid on Monday last. The day, though not wearing a very inviting aspect, was nevertheless favourable for such a ceremony, and drew together a very numerous concourse of spectators of both sexes from Leeds and the surrounding districts. The display and rejoicing on the occasion were quite commensurate with the magnitude and importance of the work, for the commencement of which the day was specially set apart by the company, and made a general holiday for the workmen.