The Hunger

by David Rees

  She stared into the flames, and said “A scalp. If we didn’t have one another for warmth we would have frozen to death!”

  “A scalp,” Michael repeated. Anthony appeared in the doorway.

  She nodded. “A hole in the ground, four feet deep. During the day it is not so bad; Dan is out with the fish, and I am by his mother’s fire. It is the nights: we lie against each other and shiver. It is impossible to sleep.”

  But possible, no doubt, to make love, Michael thought, the old jealousy returning. “Where is Dan now?” he asked.

  “Here. In the garden. He would not come to the door.”

  “Bring him in at once!” Anthony said. “You may both stay here in your own bed, for as long as you like. A scalp! That Michael’s sister should …” He glared at Michael, almost as if it was his fault. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I did not know,” Michael answered.

  “Fish would be welcome. Perhaps tomorrow he will catch enough for the four of us. Bring him inside!”

  Madge did so. “God bless all in this house,” Dan said. Though still a strong, well-hewn figure, he did not look at this moment the hurling champion, the expert dancer. His self-confidence had been totally sapped. “I am not used to begging,” he muttered. “I am so ashamed!”

  Michael, for the first time in years in his own room, could not sleep. Madge and Dan were talking on the other side of the wall. He could not distinguish many of their words, but he heard Madge laugh, then Dan say “Why not?” Silence, for a long while. Then the obvious sounds. I cannot put up with this, he said to himself. He got out of bed, tiptoed into Anthony’s room, and slipped in beside his lover so noiselessly Anthony was not aware of his presence until he woke in the morning.

  This charade went on, night after night.

  Dan did not bring fish home every day, but he netted the occasional herring or mackerel. Often he could not go out because of the wind and the snow squalls, or the sea was too rough. “It is a horrible life,” he said. “I would much rather build roads for eightpence a day! It is so wet and cold my teeth chatter for hours. But I am lucky, thank God; I have a friend who does loan me his curragh.”

  Why did the Irish, starving in their millions, not eat fish, particularly as there were immense shoals nearby in the Atlantic? They had virtually no tools for the job. The west of Ireland is peculiarly treeless; there was insufficient wood to build the kind of vessel that could travel the distances. The Irish went to sea in curraghs, little light boats made of wickerwork and animal hides that were only appropriate for inshore fishing. In heavy seas, gales and storms, the curragh was useless.

  The rocky coast with its tremendous cliffs meant few harbours, and the rough terrain inland was not always accessible by road; so, selling the catch in any quantity was unprofitable. The fisherman, like everyone else, depended on potatoes. His job was not a way of life: his catch was only a variation in the staple diet. During the Famine most fishermen sold their curraghs and nets to buy Indian corn.

  Aware that the number of fish he took home did not make up for the food they were eating from Anthony’s supplies, Dan persuaded Madge to go to the soup kitchen that had opened in Clasheen. It was not located in Flanagan’s Bar but in the Tangneys’ forge, so Madge was obviously reluctant. Mr Peacock had gone purple in the face when he heard Father Quinlan’s suggestion. “It is the most unsuitable, most objectionable idea I have ever listened to!” he said.

  “Why?” Father Quinlan was puzzled.

  “Temperance, sir, temperance! Or rather, intemperance! A soup kitchen in a public house! What is to stop a man exchanging his soup for a peg of whiskey? We shall have an orgy of drunkenness on our hands!” Mr Peacock did not care for whiskey himself, or any strong waters; a good bottle of wine was his preference.

  “Oh, I do not think that will happen at all,” Father Quinlan said.

  Mr Peacock was adamant, and there was no way of getting round his embargo as the money for the soup kitchen ― and the soup ― was to come, until the Government loan arrived, almost entirely out of his own pocket. Dr Lenehan, Father Quinlan and Anthony had little to spare now and the Committee had nothing. Mrs Peacock fancied the idea of running a soup kitchen, that favourite activity of philanthropic women; she could be seen to be doing something for the deserving poor.

  “Intoxicating liquors are the bane of Ireland,” Mr Peacock said to Anthony. “Did you know that the first sermon I ever preached was to a congregation of members of the Irish Association for the Prevention of Drunkenness in the Lower Orders? It was very well received.” Anthony found it difficult not to smile or laugh at these absurdities of Mr Peacock’s. The existence of such a society was, he thought, as grotesque and improbable as a book on Irish gourmet cuisine.

  Father Quinlan gave way. “In that case,” he said, “I suggest we approach the Tangneys. Their house is convenient to everyone, and because of the forge is well-known. Mr Tangney has no work; the forge is idle. We could start up a soup kitchen in there.”

  Mr Peacock had no candidate of his own to put forward, but he was tired of Father Quinlan always dominating the proceedings. “What will the Tangneys say?” he asked. “It is not their usual line of business.”

  “I think they will like the idea … There are many reasons.”

  “What reasons?”

  “Well… that is private,” Father Quinlan said. Mr Peacock did not care for such an answer. He often suspected that the Romish abomination of the confessional gave Father Quinlan all sorts of holds over his parishioners that a Church of Ireland minister could not have over his. “I am sure Mrs Tangney would be more than grateful,” Father Quinlan went on. “And she would do it well.”

  “I do not know that she could work with my wife.”

  “It will doubtless be welcomed by both of them,” said Dr Lenehan, who was anxious to finish the discussion. Anthony agreed, so Mr Peacock found himself once again in a minority, though one he could not veto.

  The two women, as it turned out, worked very well together. Both were conscious of status; making soup and serving it to the hungry emphasized that they were far from the foot of the ladder. It also made them feel satisfied: they had given up their time to help those less fortunate than themselves; calls of duty had been answered; good deeds had been done. If Adelaide Peacock was aware that Margaret Tangney was closer to being at the foot of the ladder than she was herself, she did not mention it.

  Eugene was also happy with the soup kitchen. To lend his forge alleviated his depression and guilt somewhat; it was a small atonement. And if, at the end of the day, there was any soup left, and sometimes there was when the weather was so bad that the sick and the old could not make the journey from their cabins, he could eat it up. But it wasn’t particularly appetising, he thought. Mrs Peacock was not exactly prodigal with her ingredients: the recipe consisted of a few scraps of oxtail, some turnips, carrots and leeks, Indian corn, salt, and a vast quantity of water. It cost her about a ha’penny a pint. Nourishment for the distressed she might think it was, but he found it distressing nourishment.

  Mrs Tangney was no nearer to passing through the eye of the needle despite her efforts in the soup kitchen. “Learn to love your new son,” Father Quinlan had said, but when Madge and Dan first appeared at the forge, she gave a little cry of “Oh!” and hurried into the house. She did not come out until they had gone. On subsequent occasions she managed a cold “Good morning” to Madge, and ignored Dan.

  “It is utterly humiliating,” Madge said. “I will not go there again!”

  “It is more humiliating to eat the Altarnun’s food,” Dan replied, “and we do give him nothing in return.”

  “You bring him fish.”

  “One tiny herring is all I have caught this week.”

  Michael enjoyed having Madge at Eagle Lodge; it relieved what was becoming an almost suffocating boredom. He had not had anything worthwhile to do for months. There was no money to start repairs on the house, and the snow made digging the garde
n impossible. Anthony had more to occupy himself with, visiting the tenants, attending Committee meetings, and, when the weather allowed, walking for miles in the countryside. Michael joined him on these walks, but that, and going to Mass on Sundays, was almost his only activity out of doors.

  Since the wedding he had been less often to his parents’ house, and when he did go to see them he did not stay long. He admitted, under cross-examination from his mother, that he had been aware of Madge’s plans and kept silent. “You are a grave disappointment to me,” Mrs Tangney said. Whenever she spoke to him now she seemed to be constantly reminding him of that disappointment. He had always known he had failed to live up to Eugene’s expectations, but he’d learned to live with that. Because both his parents now thought him less of a son than he should be, he felt he did not want to spend much time with them. Why should I always leave that house, he said to himself, feeling guilty? I have done nothing wrong. If they cannot accept me, then it is too bad.

  He was looking out of the window one morning: a ship was sailing for the open sea. It was the end of March, and still the winter had not softened. February had been worse than December or January, with blizzards so severe nobody could recall their like. Abandoned carts littered the roads; the bodies of men and horses lay freezing in snowdrifts, and the deaths from hunger mounted ― what starvation began the unprecedented cold finished off. A week before April the landscape was still white.

  Madge came into the room. “Brother, I must talk to you. There are several things.”

  He turned, and said “You are going to have a baby.”

  “How could you guess that?”

  “By your solemn, I-have-serious-matters-to-discuss voice. Madge, I am glad! And me ― an uncle. I should feel solemn.” He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  “I am not so sure that I am glad. What kind of a world is this to bring babies into? Another mouth to feed, may God forgive me that I say it.”

  “We will cope,” Michael said.

  “No. It has made up our minds for us. It’s a terrible thing surely to cross the water to a foreign land … but next week we shall be on a ship like that one out there.”

  “Madge! You can’t!”

  “We shall only die in Ireland. Look at Dan, the shape of him, the strength of him! Going to ruin when he could be earning us a fortune, and I in his house keeping it clean and making him good meals, happy to have his children.”

  “What will I do without you?”

  “You have Anthony.”

  He tensed: the words were odd. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She frowned. “Michael… this is difficult…”

  “I thought we hid no secrets, you and me.”

  “Oh, but we do, brother! We do! It is plain as a pikestaff to anybody who is at Eagle Lodge one minute that you and Anthony are not the ordinary servant and master. They may not guess why; it never entered my head, though nights I hear you leave your room and go into his, then you creeping back in the morning imagining we’re not awake. I still thought nothing. Then Dan … hinted … and I… well, it is the only thing that makes sense.” She was nervously pulling at her shawl. When she looked up and saw the shock and fear in his eyes she said “We shall not tell a living soul, I swear to God! Your secret is safe as a house!”

  He did not answer for some time, but clenched his fist and banged it on the top of his skull. “I am sorry … to have upset you,” he said at last. “I have upset you.”

  “I… I would like to see you married, that’s so. A sister-in-law … children …”

  “Like my mother and father, you are disappointed in me.”

  “It is not my business. Entirely yours.”

  “But what do you think?”

  “Of what?”

  “You think it wrong. Wicked and vile.”

  “Our religion teaches us that… what we do with our … is for continuing the human race. All activities outside wedlock must be sinful.”

  “Oh, Madge, are you thinking of babies when Dan is inside you at night? Don’t tell me you do not love his body!” He paused. “It is a beautiful body.”

  “I was wondering… I was guessing you thought that. Michael, you must know it is sinful! It is why you will not take Holy Communion.”

  “I love Anthony. It is a marriage.”

  “I don’t understand. Why, how… I think it right we are leaving soon. I do not want a rift with you! We could fall out over this. I… am sorry for you.”

  “I am not sorry for myself.”

  “To have to lead such a hidden life. To pretend every day. It is a burden, surely.”

  He analysed this conversation at great length with Anthony. Their secret would not be whispered to the world; that wasn’t the question. But were Madge and Dan going because of what they had found out, or because of the baby? Because Dan did not like it that Michael fancied him? What did Madge think of them now? Sinners who knew they were in danger of hell, and yet continued to sin and enjoy it: that was her opinion. She had made it clear. She said, too, there would be a rift if she stayed, but there was already a rift.

  Michael felt a great need to talk to her again, to clarify matters, but it was impossible. It would be too humiliating to reveal whole aspects of himself he had kept buried from everyone except Anthony so he avoided the leads she gave him, changed the subject, let the problem hang in the air, a real burden.

  She saw this, and knew what to do. Alone with him three days later, she said “You are still the Michael I’ve always loved. And you always will be. It makes no difference at all. The time I didn’t know you, didn’t speak to you, I’d hate myself for ever.”

  There was no rift.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ____________________________

  INTROIBO ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum: I will go in unto the altar of God, unto God who giveth joy to my youth. The opening words of the Mass, and as usual Michael was in church, standing with the other men. Families did not sit together; as is still the custom in the ceremonies of public life in rural Ireland, there was a strict segregation. Women and children occupied the pews, men stood at the back. No edict forbids the mingling of the sexes; it just happens. The cynical would say the men like to be near the door so they can nip out during the sermon to have a smoke.

  Though the faithful must, on pain of mortal sin, attend Mass every Sunday and on holy days of obligation, there are neat, casuistic definitions of what exactly is the Mass. Some would argue that it is no sin to arrive as late as the end of the Gloria, and leave after the Ite, missa est; and the sermon, they would add, is not technically speaking part of the ancient words one is obliged to hear. Many men at Clasheen did go out for a breath of air during the sermon, so, it being in the mother-tongue and the Mass itself in Latin, they never listened to the one part of the proceedings they might have understood. Michael, however, being of a more inquiring mind than most, always stayed inside to hear Father Quinlan’s commentaries on the world, the flesh, and the Devil.

  The sermon was preceded by the notices, and, during the past year, these had been dominated by the announcement of the names of those who had died from hunger or the diseases that followed hunger. Patrick and Julia O’Riordan, little Eileen O’Riordan, Francis Cournane, Maggie Cournane: “O God,” Father Quinlan intoned, “with a firm confidence we trust in Thee that Thou wilt grant them, through the merits of Jesus Christ, the assistance of Thy grace, and after keeping Thy commandments, wilt bestow on them life everlasting, according to Thy promises, who art almighty and whose word is truth.”

  The congregation was then begged to remember, in its prayers, Dan and Madge Leahy, who were departing from Clasheen on the morrow to begin a new life in the United States of America. Michael, at this point, glanced at his father who was standing across the church from him, but Mr Tangney’s head remained bowed. Michael’s eyes met Dan’s: Dan was blushing; he hated attention being called to himself.

  Father Quinlan had promised a sermon on ho
pe some months before, but what optimism there was in his character seemed to go into his practical day-to-day work with the hungry. In this he was always encouraging, even if in private he nearly despaired. His Jansenist cast of mind made it difficult for him to preach on the subject of hope. Sin he found easier. “Let us conceive a great sorrow for having offended God,” he said, and went on to urge his flock to examine their consciences in relation to hard-heartedness, disobedience, selfishness, injurious words, blasphemy, backbiting, lying, scandal, incitement to sin, neglect of mortification, and sensuality in looks, conversation and deeds.

  He was not usually as gloomy as this ― nor perhaps as petty ― but during the week he had talked on several occasions with Madge about her duty to her parents, the social consequences of her hasty marriage, and the evil of not being open with one’s family. Madge had a temper and invariably spoke her mind. She was confident that she had taken the only possible course of action in the circumstances, and, emboldened by the knowledge that within a few days she would never see Father Quinlan again, she ordered the priest in no uncertain terms to mind his own business and get back to matters of real importance, the dead and the dying in the scalps and the scalpeens.

  “Good for you,” said Michael, laughing, when she told him.

  As he made notes for his sermon, Father Quinlan said to himself that it was very difficult to like any members of the Tangney family. They were too individualistic. Too proud. Then, with a flash of insight, he said: I am not a good preacher; I am better at works of charity. That morning he had been miles away in the glens, dealing with the dying Maggie Cournane and her husband, and in another cabin, Julia O’Riordan, near death also, in bed with the corpse of her husband, while a famished cat ripped at the body of their dead baby. He looked up at the crucifix on the wall of his room and said “I would love some cheese.” Creamy, soft cheese, ripe, almost running. Then he added a few sentences to his text on the sin of gluttony.