by Charles Egan
*
On Gilligan’s last day, Murty paid him his remaining wages, bitter at having to do it. For some time, he stayed in the boarding house, trying to think it all through. Then he walked out along the railway tracks to where Higgins and Doyle were working. He nodded to them, then took a shovel and began to work. By the time of the first break, he was sweating heavily.
‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’ Doyle said.
‘I know, Jim, and what you’re going to say is that I’m too old for it. And maybe you’d be right. Even so, I’d better get used to it. There won’t be any paperwork for me in Bradford. Isn’t that it?’
Doyle leaned on his shovel.
‘So is it Bradford then? Is that what you’re thinking?’
‘I don’t see any way around it,’ Murty replied. ‘It’s where the work is. Perhaps I’ll only get half pay, with the age of me. If that’s the way it has to be, so be it. But one other thing about Bradford. It’ll give us a chance to gauge Murtybeg’s methods of working. Is he going to be the same kind of savage gang boss that Danny was, before he killed himself?’
Higgins had been listening to the conversation. ‘You’re reckoning Danny killed himself? He really did?’
‘No doubting it,’ Murty responded. ‘And it goes to show that even great wealth can’t protect you from yourself. And now we’ve Murtybeg taking over. Will he be able for it? That’s the first thing I’m thinking. And if he is, would he be the kind of man we’d wish to work for? Already, I’m sure I won’t work with him. Still, being in Bradford would tell us a lot more.’
Murty worked the rest of that day, shovelling dirt and clay. He tried working faster, but after some time he heard the sound of his pulse in his ears, and the speed of it frightened him. He stopped and leaned on his shovel, gasping. There was no point in killing himself. He would be lucky to even get half wages in Bradford.
That evening, they discussed it all again.
‘The talk is the work here is finishing on Saturday week,’ Doyle told them.
‘So that’s it?’ Higgins said.’ Bradford, it is.’
When Murty told Aileen that night, he saw the fear in her eyes. He could hardly blame her; he was nearly as fearful himself. But already he was forming a plan.
First, he discussed it with their landlady. It was arranged that he would leave Aileen with her, while he accompanied Doyle and Higgins to Bradford to see what was possible. He still had sufficient cash to pay her for two weeks, and perhaps even to live for a few weeks in Bradford.
Mrs. Price was a Welsh woman, but despite the regular rancour between the Irish and Welsh, she was a practical woman and understood the situation at once. That evening, Murty explained it all to Aileen, and while he could see that she did not like it, he felt better that he was leaving her in capable hands. The promise of returning within two weeks served to calm any further concerns she might have had.
*
On the Sunday, after they had been paid off, Murty travelled together with Doyle and Higgins to Bradford. Walking down the track from Bramhope to Leeds, they saw the speed at which the Leeds & Thirsk was being completed. The stink of Leeds was just as Murty had remembered it when he left Danny to work on Gilligan’s gang.
Then they took the Leeds & Bradford Railway for the short journey to Bradford. He wondered where Murtybeg’s contract was. More to the point, where were McCormack’s contracts in Bradford.
The town was nauseating, as always. Still, it came as a shock. Manchester’s mills had been filthy, their chimneys pouring dirty black smoke into the sky day and night. Leeds was not much different, but Bradford had to be the worst. The unending stink of raw sewage disgusted Murty even more. Gilligan had often described the Broomfields ghettoes of Bradford to Murty and the others. Inwardly, he prayed that the railway works would not be in Broomfields.
Then there were the dragoons.
‘Hardly surprising when you think about it,’ Doyle commented. ‘How else would they keep people in this hellhole of a city?’
‘It’s not a matter of keeping them here,’ Higgins said, ‘it’s a matter of keeping them working, and keeping them from rioting when they are here. The riots they had here were something dreadful, and I’ll tell you this, the city is terrified of what would happen if they had an English rebellion. I’m damned sure an Irish rebellion is quite enough for them.’
‘Yes,’ Murty said, ‘and an Irish Famine too.’
‘We’re well away from that,’ Doyle said.
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ Murty said. ‘I think a lot of what we’re seeing here is the Irish Famine following us all the way to Bradford, just like it did in Liverpool and Manchester. And that’s the other reason they have the army here. The famine people, they must be kept quiet too.’
They passed a group of men on a street corner. Murty recognised the accent and went back.
‘Mayo, are ye?’
‘We are,’ one of them replied. ‘You too, I’d say. More towards Castlebar, I’d guess though.’
‘Close enough,’ Murty said. ‘Kilduff, a little east. And ye?’
‘The very top end of Erris. Dún Chiortáin. You might have heard of it.’
‘I have,’ Murty said. ‘But tell me this, are ye working?’
The man stayed silent. One of the others stepped forward.
‘I’m working. Myself, the wife and daughters in the mills up on Caledonia Road.’
‘Not like us,’ one of the others said. ‘They won’t take us into the mills. We’re more used to harder labour than that anyhow.’
‘Railway building, is it?’ Doyle asked.
‘That’s what we’re trying to do. It’s a matter of getting work when and where you can.’
‘Up the Colne Extension?’ Higgins asked.
‘There’s some work going there, right enough. A disgusting place though. A Ryan contract; what would you expect?’
Taking directions from the men, Murty went with Higgins and Doyle towards the new line of rail, snaking out in the direction of Colne. Very quickly, they reached the earthworks. Murty saw the rough shacks; water and sewage running behind them to a stream. As he walked towards one of them, there was an angry shout.
‘Who in hell are you?’
Murty turned around to answer. It was Roughneen.
He stared at Murty in surprise.
‘Sorry, Master,’ he said, ‘If I’d known it was you…’
‘Don’t worry yourself, Johnny,’ Murty replied, ‘I was just here with Jim and Ed looking for work.’
‘Yes,’ Roughneen said, ‘I’d known you’d been looking for work.’
‘Gilligan told you, did he?’ Doyle asked.
‘He did. He said the three of you would be into Bradford. I didn’t think you’d want to be coming here though.’
‘And so we wouldn’t,’ Murty said, ‘excepting we were walking out this way, and your shacks were the first we came to. But don’t let that worry you. We wouldn’t be looking for work with the likes of Edwardes & Ryan anyhow.’
Roughneen looked as if he had been hit in the face. Murty was not concerned, and said nothing more. They left the Colne works.
‘Where now?’ Higgins asked.
‘There’s other works in Bradford,’ Murty said. ‘Let’s see if we can find them.’
Higgins asked a woman for directions.
‘That’s the McCormack Cutting you’re looking for,’ she said. ‘That’s where the work is. It’s over in Broomfields.’
She gave them directions.
‘Broomfields!’ Doyle exclaimed as they left. ‘Just where we didn’t want to go.’
They soon found the cutting in Broomfields. There was certainly more activity here than on the Leeds & Thirsk. There were lines of men hacking at the side, and clay being shovelled into the waiting carts. Murty could see that the work had only started. The cutting was not deep, and only ran for fifty yards.
At the front of the cutting, where the digging had not yet commenced, houses were b
eing demolished. A crowd of ragged people watched in silence. Beyond them, were five or six police, accompanied by a few dragoons, their horses tethered to a doorframe propped up with bricks.
There were shacks to the sides. Just the same kind as Danny had been using around Manchester. And the same as Murtybeg was now using on the Colne Extension.
They found a foreman, who directed them to a site office.
‘Two shillings a day,’ the clerk told them, ‘and you can start right away. Do you have picks or shovels?’
‘Not with us,’ Higgins replied.
‘You’d better buy some so. You can talk to the foreman about that.’
‘Two shillings a day!’ Doyle exclaimed as they left the office. ‘God, we’d be earning four shillings on the Leeds & Thirsk any day.’
‘Yes,’ Higgins answered, ‘but that was for piecework. Here we don’t have to work so fast.’
‘Which might be no bad thing,’ Murty said.
They returned to the foreman, and bought their implements.
‘Pricy enough too,’ Doyle said.
‘What did you expect? They’re out to make money, these fellows.’
‘Don’t I know it?’ Murty said, ‘and I having two of the most grasping sons on the face of the earth.’
‘Still,’ Doyle said, ‘two shillings a day.’
‘Consider yourself lucky you’re not with Murtybeg,’ Murty said. ‘A shilling a day would give you cause to be moaning.’
They were put to work on the cutting, Doyle with a pick, Higgins and Murty, shovelling the dirt away. Murty was grateful to be working at all. He thought of the evictions they had all seen back in Mayo, and those being carried out by Danny’s men in Ancoats, in the centre of Manchester. Little Ireland as they had called it. And now, here in Bradford, he could have been working on an eviction himself, flattening houses in the centre of an English city. He wondered who the people were. Were they Irish? And the men destroying the houses, Irish too?
He noticed the accent of the men beside him. Mayo perhaps?
‘These fellows by the house,’ he asked, ‘where are they from do you think.’
‘Mayo, where else?’
‘Like yourselves, I’d say.’
‘Like all of us, my friend. The most of them were from out near Castlebar. The Lucan evictions – Ballure, Knockthomas, Ballymacragh and the rest of them. There’s some talk of evictions down by Ballinrobe too. More of Lucan’s, the bastard.’
‘There must have been many of them,’ Murty said.
‘Thousands, I’d say. The way they live here is terrible. Those houses, forty or fifty in each of them.’
‘No,’ Murty said, ‘that’s not possible. Sure they’re hardly more than tigíns.’
‘Sure look at the crowd there. That’s just from that single house. How many do you think are there?’
Murty shook his head.
They worked on.
‘What do you think of what he was saying?’ Murty asked.
‘I’d reckon it’s true right enough,’ Doyle answered.
‘But I wonder where that crowd are going to go?’
‘God only knows,’ Higgins said. ‘Somewhere else in Bradford, most like. Otherwise Leeds, Manchester, who knows. Sure you know what it was like in Liverpool yourself.’
Murty was deeply shocked. Even worse was the thought of what he might have done if he were given a sledgehammer, and told to work on the demolition. A Mayo eviction! He went back to shovelling clay.
He found it to be brutally hard work, though as he observed, Higgins was not working as fast as he normally would, keeping only to the rate of work of the men beside them.
‘Don’t worry, Master,’ he said to Murty, ‘they’re nothing like as fast here. You’ll strengthen up to it soon enough.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Murty said, ‘I just hope to God you are.’
*
That evening, they were directed to one of the shacks at the end of the cutting. They knocked on the door and entered.
It was already occupied by one woman, and eight men, most sitting around the table, but two were lying asleep on the floor at the back of the shack. There was a stink of piss and tobacco, but not of fever.
‘We were told ye had lodgings,’ Higgins said.
‘Lodgings we have,’ the woman answered in Irish. ‘Mayo men, are ye?’
‘We are,’ Doyle said.
You’re most welcome.’ She was cutting a large slab of cheese. ‘Ye have been working, have ye?’
‘We have,’ Murty replied. ‘On the digging, not on the house-breaking.’
She did not respond to the comment on house-breaking. Perhaps she was used to it, Murty thought. Perhaps she no longer thought about it.
‘Ye’ll be hungry after your working,’ she said.
‘We will,’ Murty said. ‘Hungrier than I ever thought possible.’
‘Well, we’re glad to see ye. We’d more here up to last week, but three of the lads went on the tramp. They’re reckoning there’s better chances down south.’
‘I don’t know that there are,’ one of the other men said. ‘Still, it’s their decision. I doubt we’ll ever hear from them again, though.’
The table was rough. It had been crafted from timber off-cuts; cutaway sleepers acting as legs. A single candle stood on it. The men were sitting on beer kegs, all damaged in some way or another.
‘Cheap seats,’ one of the men explained. ‘The brewery don’t want them.’ He pulled more out from under the table. They sat while the woman served bread and cheese.
As they soon discovered, some of the men were from near Tourmakeady; the rest from the island of Achill. Murty knew Achill had suffered cruelly in the Famine. On questioning, it turned out that they were from Keel, towards the west side of the island.
‘That’s out where the Nangle Mission is?’ Murty asked.
‘No, not Nangle,’ one of them answered. ‘We’re much further out than that.’
‘Hungry times?’ Higgins asked.
‘Worse than hungry. It was the evictions threw us out. Sir Richard McDonnell and his drivers.’
‘I hadn’t heard of that,’ Doyle said.
‘Not many have. Lucan had the real name of the Exterminator, but there’s others catching up fast.’
‘And what about the Nangle Mission?’ Murty asked.
‘It’s not for us, though tempting enough I’d say,’ one of the other men answered. ‘He’s feeding his own, the ones in the Mission, but sure they converted long since. They were turncoats long before they were soupers.’
‘Enough of that kind of talk,’ the woman said. ‘It wasn’t to talk of McDonnell or Lucan you came here for. It’s lodgings ye’re after?’
‘It is,’ Higgins said, ‘but what might it cost us?’
‘It’s cheap here,’ the woman said. ‘Very cheap. ‘Six shillings a week…’
‘Six shillings!’ Doyle exclaimed. ‘That’s pricy.’
‘Hold your horses. It’s six shillings for all twelve of us. Sixpence a man for the week.’
‘Sixpence!’ Murty said. ‘But sure that’s nothing at all.’
‘Isn’t that what I’m telling you? McCormack’s aren’t charging rent, not like that bastard Ryan does, up on the Colne. He even charges for sleeping on the floor. With us, the money all goes for food, and a bottle of whiskey for Sundays. Now it’s time to eat.’
Murty was hungry enough and ate well.
That night, rough blankets were strewn on the floor. Murty slept with Doyle and Higgins under the table, lying on his back. He listened to the snoring of the men around him. It soon became clear that the woman and one of the men were living as man and wife. What of it?
*
The next few days were tough for Murty. He was building his strength. At first, other men stared at him in surprise, but this soon ceased. He no longer felt out of place. While some of the men were well fed, many of the newer workers were thin, and Murty knew that in time he would be able to wo
rk faster than them.
‘You’re well able to work,’ one of the Achill men said one night. ‘I thought at first you were slow, but you’re catching up.’
‘And I’d have caught up further, if I was more used to it,’ Murty said. ‘Back home all I’d be doing was sowing and digging the potatoes.’
‘And what of the rest of the time? I’d say a man like you wasn’t working at digging all your life.’
‘I was a master.’
‘A master! A school master! Truly?’
‘Aye. A little school of my own, teaching the children all around. But then the government brought in the new schools and I wasn’t good enough for them, so here I am, working on the rails in England.’
‘And your family?’ the woman asked. ‘Did you leave them in Mayo?’
‘I didn’t,’ Murty said. ‘It’s only my wife I have with me. She’s staying in the lodgings we had over the far side of Leeds until such time as I get well settled here.’
‘Ye’d need a room for yourselves, that’s for sure.’
‘We will,’ Murty said.
They sat at the table as the woman served food.
‘I know a place like this will be tough for any married woman. A teacher’s wife would be used to better things, and God knows it isn’t shacks she’d be used to.’
‘What other choice is there?’ Murty asked.
‘Éamonn here has a cousin down in Adelaide Street. They’re renting a house, but have room for lodgers. Now, I must warn you, it’s not much, but it’s better than this. It’ll be more than six pence a week, I’d say. Whatever she charges though, it’ll be better for ye than here; and with your wife in the mills, you’ll be well able to pay.’
Murty looked at her in surprise. Aileen working?
‘Would they have us though?’ he asked.
‘Don’t worry,’ the man called Éamonn said. ‘I was talking to her last week. Her last lodgers left. She’d be pleased to have more.’
‘And where’s Adelaide Street?’
‘Not far. I’ll show you in the morning.’
*
The next morning, they crossed to the other part of Broomfields. When they reached Adelaide Street, Murty saw the house was small, but well built. The woman of the house opened the door.
