The Killing Snows

by Charles Egan

  Michael glared at him in fury, but said nothing. Luke went on.

  ‘Now I gave you my promise. If you don’t believe me, you have no respect for me, and there’s no point in us working together.’

  ‘Murtybeg gave his promise, and look what happened.’

  ‘Let Murteen please himself. I’ll keep my word, and that’s an end to it.’

  ‘An end to what?’

  ‘An end to the argument,’ Luke said. ‘If you respect me, we can work together. If you think I’m nothing but a poor amadán, then I’ll go to Leeds and work with men who do respect me, and if I do that, I’ll not be coming back. I prefer to go with your blessing, and if I do, then you have my word I’ll be back. Now do you take it or not?’

  ‘A father shouldn’t be put in a position like this.’

  ‘Do you take my word?’

  No answer.

  ‘Do you respect me as your son?’

  ‘Damn it to hell,’ Michael said, ‘we shouldn’t be having this quarrel.’

  ‘I know.’

  Michael picked up his hammer again and went back to smashing rock. Luke knew better than to press the matter, and waited.

  Michael stopped. ‘Are you working or not?’

  ‘I’m waiting for an answer.’

  Michael took his hammer and sat down on a ledge of rock beside him. Luke stayed standing.

  ‘So what would you promise?’ his father asked.

  ‘I’d promise to come home if the early harvest is any good next year. One way or another, I’ll come back for the late harvest. Pat can go then.’

  ‘On your word?’

  ‘On my word as a man,’ Luke said. ‘And as your son.’

  Michael nodded ‘So be it,’ he said, ‘and by God I’m warning you, if you break your word…’

  ‘I’ll not break my word.’

  The next evening the land agent came. Eleanor brought him in to the table. Luke sat alongside his father. White’s visit was unexpected, and Luke was nervous about what was coming. Whatever it was, he suspected it would not be pleasant.

  White was direct. ‘I’m afraid I must inform you that you are in breach of your lease,’ he said.

  Michael looked up sharply. ‘In breach? Haven’t we paid everything?’

  ‘Oh, you have indeed,’ White said, ‘but that’s not the problem. I don’t know if you noticed on your new lease that there is a clause that expressly forbids subletting.’

  Michael looked across to Luke.

  ‘He’s right, Father,’ Luke said. ‘But we’re not subletting, Mr. White.’

  ‘Oh, but you are. You have a cabin on your lower field, and it is most definitely occupied. I saw it myself.’

  ‘But that’s not sublet,’ Luke said. ‘They’re only there for one crop. And there’s nothing in writing, so how can it be a lease.’

  ‘Yes,’ Michael said. ‘One crop only. Conacre maybe. A lease? No.’

  ‘And how many years has this arrangement been running?’

  No-one replied.

  ‘You see, Mr. Ryan, long term conacre may establish certain rights in law. Some people may claim it as a sublease. We had legal advice from Mr. Dawson before we drafted the new contracts. If you have a subtenant, it puts you in the position of being a head tenant, and that puts you in a different situation legally. It’s not something we can countenance.’

  Michael looked out the window. ‘It wasn’t on the old lease,’ he said at length. ‘It never even mentioned conacre, let alone subletting.’

  ‘It didn’t,’ White replied, ‘but I’m afraid it’s on all our new leases.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Michael said. ‘I hadn’t known.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ White said. ‘I would have thought you’d have known about it. Bensons were subletting too. They finished with it before they even signed their new lease.’

  Luke thought back. He had noticed the flattened remains of a mud cabin in one of his neighbour’s fields, but the significance of it had not struck him.

  ‘There was a whole family there,’ Michael said.

  ‘Not so many. A man and his wife with two children.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Knockanure, I think. Bensons took them over to the Workhouse. That’s what I heard.’

  Luke thought he saw his father flinch.

  ‘Well, we surely wouldn’t want to be in breach,’ Michael said.

  White nodded. ‘I am well aware of that, and so is Mr. Burke. It is not something we would like to come between us, but I am afraid you will have to terminate the arrangement.’

  After White had left, Luke looked to his father, shocked at the way things had turned out.

  ‘There’s no other way,’ Michael said. ‘If Sorcha doesn’t leave, we’ll all leave.’

  ‘You mean we’re going to have to evict her?’ Luke asked.

  ‘It’s not an eviction,’ Michael replied. ‘They’re forcing us to do it, we’ve no choice.’

  ‘That might be true,’ Luke said, ‘but at the end of the day, it’s the same thing. We go on and on about Clanowen, and we’re no better ourselves.’

  Michael stood, leaning on the table and glaring across at Luke.

  ‘Now, we’ll have no more of that. We have to have her out because we are being forced to it, and that’s all about it.’

  Luke shook his head. ‘So what should we do now?’

  ‘We should tell her at once.’

  ‘And who will do that?’

  A few minutes later, he was standing outside the rough-built door of Sorcha’s mud-cabin.

  ‘Are you there?’ he shouted. ‘Is there anyone in?’

  The door opened. Sorcha squinted out.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, alanna,’ she said. ‘Come on in out of that.’

  Her frame was skeletal now; her long white hair uncombed and unwashed. Her eyes had sunk into their sockets, and her cheeks were hollow. He stepped inside the cabin. It stank of smoke. It was impossible to stand upright. At the back of the single room, the old man lay on straw. He stared open-eyed at Luke. He was gibbering and dribbling with fright.

  ‘Sit down, sit down,’ Sorcha said.

  Luke sat on a rough stool that was far too low for him.

  ‘I’ve come to tell you something,’ he said.

  There was a look of alarm in her eyes.

  ‘We’re going to have to finish things,’ he said. ‘The landlord is insisting.’

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Who…? What…?’

  ‘It’s Mr. Burke. They’re not allowing conacre anymore.’

  ‘They’re not?’

  ‘No. It’s on our lease. No more conacre.’

  ‘But what can I do then?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ve family up by Baile a’ Cnoic.’

  ‘I did. But that was many years ago.’

  The next day, Luke took Sorcha and her husband to the Workhouse. It was not that he wanted to. He had thought of riding up to Baile a’ Cnoic, but he doubted if he would find any of Sorcha’s family there. Also, the rumours of blight from the Mountain were even worse than Kilduff.

  He hitched the horse to the cart, and piled it with the few possessions from her mud cabin. Then they both lifted the old man into the cart. His eyes were rolling in terror. Three carts passed by. He swung out on the road, following behind the last one. On the back a mattress lay across the cart, an old woman lying on it in a huddle. A man sat on the side of the cart, driving the donkey. On the other side, there was a woman holding a baby to her breast. Between them, on the floor of the cart, there were six more children. None could have been more than eight, Luke reckoned. The youngest lay still between the other children, and did not move for the entire journey.

  When they arrived at the Workhouse, there were hundreds of people t
here before them. He alighted, and pushed his way to the top of the crowd. The gates were locked.

  ‘They’re not letting anyone in,’ an old woman told him. ‘Only if you live in Knockanure or a mile of it.’

  He pushed his way out again, turned the cart around, and drove back towards Carrigard. He met people walking towards Knockanure, most walking, many on carts. He tried to turn them back, explaining what was happening at the Workhouse, but few believed him. He stopped trying. For the rest of the journey, neither he nor Sorcha exchanged a word.

  The family were at their midday meal when he returned.

  ‘What the devil do we do now?’ his father asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Luke said.

  ‘We have to have her out.’

  ‘I know, but we’ve got a few days yet.’

  ‘That’s little enough. We’re supposed to tumble the cabin. And White will be along to see that it’s done.’

  Luke sat down and started to eat. Corn only with cabbage. He looked across at his father.

  ‘It’s all any of us are getting,’ Michael said. ‘At least until we see what’s happening next.’

  They finished their meal in silence.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ his father said at last. ‘There’s only one answer. You’ll have to have a word with Ian.’

  ‘What good would that do?’

  ‘He knows the people in the Union. He’d be able to get her in.’

  Later, Luke rode with McKinnon to Knockanure. They pushed their way to the gate. When McKinnon identified himself, they were both let in with their horses.

  ‘They’d be stolen outside,’ the gate-man told them. ‘And eaten.’

  Luke had never been inside a Workhouse before, but they saw little of it as they went straight to the administration block in the front.

  The Workhouse Master was at his desk, dictating a letter to a young woman sitting beside him. She glanced at Luke in a matter-of-fact way. Then she stood up and offered him her seat.

  ‘Oh no.’ Luke said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’ll work over here for a while.’ She sat at an open ledger on a table in the corner and began transcribing figures from worksheets.

  The Master knew McKinnon well, and within a few minutes the matter was arranged. Luke and McKinnon left, carrying an admission ticket.

  Next day, Luke brought Sorcha and her husband to the Workhouse again. This time, they were admitted with no difficulty, and he drove the horse and cart back towards Carrigard. He wondered if he would ever see Sorcha again.

  When he arrived back, he saw that Michael had already started to knock down the mud cabin. They worked on through the afternoon. When the walls had been levelled, they piled the straw from the roof onto the cart, and brought it back to the cowshed for bedding.

  What was left, they burned.

  The Central Committee of the Office of Public Works in Dublin was in session. They had been sitting without break for nine hours. They had passed over a hundred applications for Famine Relief Works, sent twenty back for clarification, and rejected two. The committee secretary read out the next three applications:

  ‘For the Barony of Clanowen –

  Improving the road from Kilduff to Knockanure by making a new line of road at Carrigard to avoid the hill at the river. £600.’

  ‘Making a road through the townland of Ardnagrena towards Brockagh. £350.’

  ‘Making a road from Lisnadee to the road from Brockagh towards Knockanure. £250.’

  ‘Clanowen?’ a commissioner asked. ‘Mayo again?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ a clerk answered.

  ‘Do we know which Union?’

  ‘Knockanure, sir. The eastern part of the county, right up to the Ox Mountains.’

  ‘I know Knockanure,’ the chairman said. ‘Voisey, he’s the Poor Law Commissioner in the area.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. Mr. Voisey’s signature is on the application.’

  ‘A reliable man, James Voisey. Most reliable. I doubt he would put forward any scheme, if he didn’t have the fullest confidence in it.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Haven’t we received reports from this area of Mayo,’ another commissioner asked.

  ‘We have, sir,’ the secretary said. ‘Terrible conditions, they say.’

  ‘And worst in the mountains?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  No one else spoke.

  ‘If there are no objections, I will consider this application passed,’ the chairman said.

  ‘So noted,’ the secretary said.

  A week before Luke’s intended departure, the land agent arrived at the cottage again. Eleanor called Michael in from the yard.

  White was accompanied by a police constable from Knockanure. He came inside, while the constable stood at the door.

  ‘If you’re asking about our tenant, Mr. White, I can tell you she’s gone,’ Michael said. ‘We’ve levelled the cabin.’

  ‘Indeed,’ White replied, ‘I have seen that already, but that is not the reason for my being here this evening. I must tell you we are intending to expand the working of the quarry many times beyond its present capacity. We’ll need your assistance. We will of course pay for it, since your duty labour is complete. A shilling and thruppence a day for direct labour; two shillings for labour with horse and cart.’

  Michael thought about it. ‘I accept of course, though I can’t understand your reasons. The road is already in a good state of repair.’

  ‘Under normal circumstances, that would be perfectly correct, Mr. Ryan, but this time we are not talking about repair and maintenance. The Barony has decided to proceed with substantial new Road Works in the townland as a Relief measure. It is intended to employ four hundred on building a new line of road so as to avoid the hill on either side of the river. I don’t have to tell you how difficult it is for teams of horses pulling up the steep incline on either side of the ford. They have decided therefore to start a new line here at this house, to cross the river four hundred yards further south of the ford, where the land is flatter. It is also intended to build a bridge on the river at that point.’

  ‘The land may be flatter, but it’s also wetter. Isn’t that why the road is where it is?’

  ‘Again, you are perfectly correct Mr. Ryan, but the surveyors have already been out surveying the route. Perhaps you have noticed them. They say that the depth of bog is not so great as we might expect, and there is good clay and rock underneath. Also, it should be possible to drain it into the river. Their only problem is that they will need a large quantity of rock and gravel to build the road back again to the height of the land around it. This will be the largest contract that we’ll ever have for stone from this quarry. Mr. Burke is most anxious that we handle the contract without any problems.’

  ‘I’m sure we can do that. The question is, will there be anything left of the farm, or will we have quarried it all out?’

  ‘I don’t think we need to worry about that, Mr. Ryan. There are thousands of tons of rock in the quarry as it is. In any case, Mr. Burke has suggested we might be able to extend your farm elsewhere and failing that, there will be a reduction in your rent. Also, the quarry will provide plentiful employment for you and your sons through this difficult time.’

  When Luke returned to the house late that evening with Pat, he found his father hunched over the table, studying the rough sketch map that White had left with him. Michael outlined what he had been told.

  Luke whistled. ‘Four hundred to be employed.’

  ‘Yes,’ Michael said, ‘and I’m not even sure of that figure. I think the four hundred only applies to the part from here to the river. They may be using another four hundred on the other side.’

  ‘But the road and the quarry will take more land from our own farm.’

  ‘That’s true,�
�� Michael said, ‘but White has promised work for the three of us and a reduction in rent. We’ll also get first choice on other land that might be free.’

  ‘But is there any other land free here?’

  ‘Tolan’s. Murtagh’s. Byrne’s. There’s any god’s amount.’

  ‘Of course…of course there is.’

  ‘Yes, and so long as it’s no more than a half a mile away, we could surely farm more land. We might be able to get a second farm in the area for Pat perhaps.’

  ‘Mr. Burke must be very anxious for this contract.’

  ‘I think he is. I think he most certainly is.’

  Michael said nothing about Leeds or railways over the next few days. But it was a subject that was always on Luke’s mind. He had won the argument, his father had backed down, but circumstances were different now. Victory to defeat in a single week. Could he allow that?

  All through his father’s silence, he knew that the pressure was on him to change his mind. Michael was too intelligent to push him though, he knew Luke would have to draw his own conclusions. He was prepared to argue with him, perhaps even enforce discipline, but he reckoned it might not be necessary.

  Luke realised that in spite of the horror of the hunger, he had almost been using it as an excuse because he wanted to get back to England. It was no longer because of the prospect of four or five shillings a day. Danny’s argument had been fermenting in his mind; his own long talks with Kitty had helped the process. Danny was still working with Farrelly, but there would come a time when he would be a gangmaster on his own account. Luke thought of what it would be like working with him. He thought of Thomas Brassey and of Danny’s comments. ‘You might never be as rich as Brassey, but by God it’s a hundred times better than starving in Carrigard.’ Danny knew how to choose his words to hit home and hurt. But did it matter either way? He would only be going to Leeds for nine months, a year at the most. That was what he had promised, that was what his father had agreed. But now things could be very different. He and his father could be working on another contract with Mr. Burke, but it could be more extensive than anything they had done before. He knew that he would never earn as much as he could do working with Danny, but in its own way, it was an alternative. The quarry contract would bring in more money than it had before. Perhaps in time they could bid on other contracts. Make money from Famine Relief? From hunger and pain? Was it right or wrong? He did not know.