The Hunger

by David Rees

  Only at the harbour was there activity with purpose other than the useless scavenging for something edible. It was crowded with ships, one nearly ready to sail, its anchors up, its ropes loosened from bollards; the gangplanks of others were down, and passengers carrying baskets or bundles containing a few essential possessions were handing over tickets, walking on board. These people, though as starved, many of them, as the silent, hopeless throngs in the squares and on the church steps, were alive: they talked, swore, even joked ― and wept, often hysterically, as last goodbyes were said to parents, cousins, neighbours.

  Some had been paid to go: landlords, and not the worst kind of landlord, had begged them to emigrate, bought their tickets for them, given five pounds to each family. A few even looked happy. The rest, who had scraped the price of a ticket together somehow, still had a gleam of hope, a determination to live, however gaunt, frail and hollow-eyed they were.

  “That is our ship,” said Dan. “The Lord Kingston.” The crew was on board, but there were no passengers as yet, and none at seven o’clock.

  “Now that we know where it is,” Madge said, “we can go to my sister’s house.”

  They found Noreen, her husband John, and their young son, William, living in a state of siege. The grocery store was locked and barricaded as firmly as if an army was about to attack; Madge, Dan and Michael had to go in by the side door. On the counter John had erected wooden panels that reached to the ceiling with only one small opening through which he could talk to the customers. “To protect ourselves,” Noreen explained. “So many came in who had the fever on them. Black fever. Yellow fever. We had them put their coins in a pot of vinegar.”

  She was speaking in the past tense, Michael noticed. “It looks, sister,” he said, “as if you are shut till Tib’s Eve.”

  “We are,” she replied.

  “Why is that? The people are starving, and there is food in here! A great deal of food.” On the shelves there was tea, coffee, biscuit, raisins, dried fish, sugar, flour, Indian corn, salted meat, even vegetables and fruit.

  “The price of it all is so dear,” she said. “We had to buy dear, so we must sell dear or we starve. No one has the money to pay for it, to pay for anything! Particularly now the Government has stopped the public works. Two days back, a mob burst in screaming for food. A man pointed a gun through the opening at John, God save us! Little William was behind the counter playing with the cat; he was terrified’. As luck would have it, the peelers were close; they arrested the ringleaders and clapped them in jail, and the others shuffled out. So we have locked ourselves up. We shall eat our own stores. We can last a while, even months I think. After that” ― she made a gesture of despair ― “only the good Lord decides. We may opt for a ticket on the boats, but I do not want to. None of us wants to.”

  Michael thought of what Anthony would have done if he had faced a starving mob screaming for food. “You should have given them something,” he said.

  “And ourselves go short? Michael, you were ever the unpractical one of the family! I can see if you owned a shop you’d be bankrupt in a day!” She laughed. “Let us go into the kitchen and eat. I daresay you are all hungry.”

  Michael ate as little as possible: The food, he considered, was tainted. But he drank several cups of tea: he and Anthony loved tea; Eagle Lodge had run out of it a fortnight ago.

  Next morning, he went with Madge and Dan to the harbour. It was just gone six o’clock; a dull, sullen dawn, rain in the wind, and chilly. The homeless and the starving were still trying to,sleep ― on garbage tips, under bushes ― hunched, wet, shivering bundles of cold. The passengers of the Lord Kingston were going on board, and there were pathetic scenes like those of yesterday ― the farewells and tears of close-knit families breaking up. “There is a power of people already,” Michael said. “Is there room for more?”

  “I think we shall be a huge gathering,” said Dan.

  “The ship looks old. Are her timbers good? You do not fear the weight of so many passengers will sink her?”

  Dan laughed. “It is a lot more stout than the curragh I did use for the fishing!”

  “Michael… I shall write as soon as we are there,” said Madge. “Oh, Michael!” She had checked her feelings till now; but the moment had come. She threw herself into his arms and sobbed.

  “Madge. Madge!” Dan said, gently.

  “To think I shall never see you again!”

  “You will write. And write often,” Michael said. “I shall look for your hand. Every day. And I shall write what has happened here, to Anthony and me, to Noreen, to the Leahys, to our parents … It will be just as if I am in New York with you. As if you were by the fire at Eagle Lodge still.”

  Madge stiffened. The mention of Noreen stopped her tears; she had felt the same as Michael had about the food. “I read once in a city that was besieged and the inhabitants starving, the hoarders of food were taken out and shot! But shewill get away with it; mark my words!”

  “Come now,” Dan said. “It is time.”

  “I will not wait,” Michael said. “It would drag out the pain. I love you both dearly.”

  He turned away, and walked through the town, to the shop, not looking behind him once. He drank tea with Noreen, who, when he said there was no tea at home, insisted he should take some back with him. His will was not strong: he tried to refuse, but couldn’t. He left there in the afternoon, feeling more depressed than he had felt in his whole life. As he walked the miles to Clasheen he hardly noticed the soft rain that was soaking him. Not to see her again, he said to himself. Not to see her again. Never, never, never. Never.

  When he arrived at Eagle Lodge he found it almost devoid of furnishings; only the bare necessities remained. Carpets, curtains, and most of the chairs and tables had gone. The leak in the roof was now serious; the snow had hidden the problem, but as it was melting water dripped into their bedroom, splashing the floor, staining the ceiling beneath. It is a ruin, this house, he said to himself; soon it will collapse in a heap of stones, and then what is to become of us? “I thought it would all have to go in time,” he said to Anthony, “but why have you sold everything at once?” Anthony was in sombre mood. “We need the money,” he said. “You will be cross with me.”

  “No. It is not my furniture.”

  “Nor mine, come to that. But… I’ve done several things without consulting you. Important things.” He hesitated, then went on: “I’ve been to Galway, but I didn’t find you. The ship had sailed, so I must have passed you on the road. I don’t understand; you’ve arrived home after me.”

  “I went back to the shop. They have tea to drink; look ― I have some for you. They have food in plenty. No one can afford to buy it, so they are eating themselves bankrupt.”

  “I’ve had … a letter from Richard. He’s in London. He says ― you may read it ― he will be here at the end of May. I have no doubt at all that when he sees what has happened, he will evict us.”

  “And I was about to plant the garden for summer!”

  “Yes, I know.” He touched Michael’s face. “This is not all. I loaded the furniture onto a cart; Ty Keliher and his father helped me. Then I drove into Galway and sold it. It didn’t fetch a lot; no one wants to buy settees and tables now. I… have bought two tickets for a ship. One-way tickets.”

  Michael stared at him. “America?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “The thirty-first of May. I had to. Richard will ― ”

  “I never thought to go to America. I never wanted to.” He looked out of the window. The rain, still soft and gentle, pattered on the glass; rose bushes ― they needed pruning ― were shaking in the wind. Clouds scudded in from the west, American clouds. In the bay and moving towards the open sea was a ship. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “Anywhere on the earth, as I’ve always promised. I could never leave you. But it is hard to leave here.”

  Anthony came up behind him, put his arms round him, rubbed his cheek again
st Michael’s. “What else can we do?”

  “Did the tickets take all the money?” Michael asked.

  “No. There is enough to buy food for now and the journey, and for what we need when we get there. Until we can both find work.”

  “What work will we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You… a pauper!”

  “One of the tickets is for a cabin. So we have a bed; we shan’t be sleeping on the floor, as many will. But the ship may be packed like herrings in a barrel.”

  “We? You said a cabin.”

  “We share it. It won’t look odd; with so many on board there’ll be five or six people, whole families to one bed.”

  “It is hard to leave here,” Michael said again.

  “I… have given some of the money to Mr Peacock: without it the soup kitchen will close. His letter to Dublin is not worth the paper it’s written on.”

  “Anthony! How could you!” Michael turned and faced him, then said “I never knew such goodness.” He burst into tears, tears that wouldn’t stop, as if he were weeping, he thought later, not just for himself or for Anthony or the end of their life at Eagle Lodge, but for the whole miserable, rotten, fucking world.

  Anthony held him, letting him cry, and thought: as the Government has at last steeled itself to shut down all the public works, I have a present for Richard ― a road to drive on. It is only of use to him, just Eagle Lodge to Clasheen. The benefits of public works! They were meant to be for the whole community.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  __________________________________

  THE Scannells, the most improvident of the tenants, now had nothing left to eat. The money they had had in reserve because they were not asked for the rent was all gone. They told Anthony that unless he could pay for their fares to America they would have to go to the workhouse. “We cannot survive on the soup, your honour,” Mrs Scannell said. “It is vile. Not enough to keep body and soul together.”

  “What makes you think you would be better off in the poorhouse?” Anthony asked.

  “The Guardians are obliged to feed us, sir; they have the money. They have the food.”

  “There is only soup. In an English workhouse you would be given tea, sugar, butter, meat, bread, milk, even potatoes. But this is Ireland.” Protecting his tenants from starvation, Anthony realized, also protected them from exposure to truth. “I haven’t the money,” he said.

  “Saving your presence, you paid for Dan and Madge Leahy to go.”

  Pay for one, he should pay for them all ― is that what they thought? The Scannells, he felt, were taking him for granted. But Mr Scannell knew his wife had gone too far. “Excuse herself, your honour,” he said, flopping down on his knees. “She is always after prying into business that is not her own.”

  Mrs Scannell glared at him. Anthony said “Get up. Get up!” He returned to a standing position, and fidgeted with his rags. “We have nothing left, sir. Nothing.”

  “Do you know what is happening in the workhouses? Clifden is shut, the inmates put out to beg and survive as best they can. Some of those people now live in caves, or holes they have dug in the bogs, and there they starve to death. Other workhouses have twice, three times, even ten times as many paupers as they were built for; the Guardians have no money to foot the bills, so there is nothing to eat and no medicines. The people inside are famished or dying of typhus; some of them are crowded four to a bed, the diseased with the healthy, and often not a stitch of clothing to cover their bodies.”

  “We have heard such things, sir,” Mrs Scannell said. “But we did not believe them.”

  Anthony grew impatient. “Well, you are at liberty to go and see for yourselves. And don’t say you haven’t been warned! I will get Michael to drive you there.”

  “Will you tumble the cabin when we are gone?”

  “No. They will not take you in; there isn’t the room. And even if there were, you’ll think your cabin a palace when you see what a Poor Law institution is like now. You’ll be back in your own place before dark; I would bet on it.”

  “Palace, cabin, workhouse, what is the difference and we starving? We have to go where the food may be.”

  Michael was not particularly thrilled with the job he was asked to do. Though it would not now bring on an asthma attack, he would have to handle a horse, and he still disliked the beasts. The Scannells he regarded with lofty contempt; their ignorance, selfishness, and want of forethought irritated him extremely. They appeared to have little or no gratitude for what had been done for them. They were beggars by nature and when their begging-bowls were empty they just shouted “More!” as if they had some divine right to be fed. So Michael thought.

  “You are too harsh,” said Anthony. “Just take them to Coolcaslig, let them see how it is, then bring them back again.” “I would rather dig the garden over.”

  “There is little point in that now!”

  Coolcaslig was twelve miles away along the Clifden road ― track would be a better description; it was all ruts, pot-holes, puddles and mud. Michael had to concentrate so hard on controlling the horse that he had little time, he was glad to discover, for exchanging words with the Scannells. They were six brooding creatures of professional discontent in his opinion: four boys with snotty noses, their toothless mother with her vacant grin, their father with spittle running into his beard. I should not think like this, he said to himself: but they drive me to it.

  It was warm; the sun made the last patches of snow on the mountains dazzle. The bog colours, brown, green and grey, were vivid, wet. Nothing, he thought, was as green as Ireland. Or so he was told: he would find out the truth of that when he saw the greenness of America. The wind was fresh and pure; a great draft of Atlantic air. He sang:

  “Many a green isle needs must be

  In the deep wide sea of Misery,

  Or the mariner, worn and wan,

  Never thus could voyage on.”

  “Now that is sad,” Mrs Scannell said.

  “It is not,” Michael answered. “You do not heed the words.”

  Words of hope vanished, however, when they arrived at the poorhouse; there was no hope here. A vast throng of people waited outside, but it was shut, securely barricaded like a fort. Not because it was empty; he could see men and women looking out of windows. It had,been locked to prevent this great sea of humans rushing in and swamping it. It was full, he supposed, beyond bursting point. The Scannells got down from the cart and pushed through to the gates.

  He had never seen such walking skeletons as the stupefied, hungry, sick people of this crowd. Their condition was worse than anything he had noticed in Galway, much worse than in Clasheen. He could have counted the knobs of their spines, the numbers of their ribs. Skin was withered, hanging, like pale parchment or the dewlaps of cows, the wattles of turkeys; eyes were so bulging it seemed impossible they did not explode. In some cases the flesh had literally disappeared, and what were once men and women were bones covered in something like a human outline made of ill-fitting paper. Heads were living skulls. Children were wrinkled nut-shells, bent, old, their faces resembling baboons.

  The inertia was astonishing: no voices shouted for a scrap to eat, and there were no screams of pain or moans of despair; just an extraordinary patience. They were all, he realized, without exception near to death. There were signs of disease: scurvy ― he noticed the bleeding mouths, the dark patches on limbs; and dropsy ― some, instead of dwindling away to skeletons, had swollen to a grotesque size, were round as tubs, a series of bowls on legs. Every person was filthy, unwashed, in rags.

  One or two people, seeing he was well-dressed, tottered over to where he sat in the cart. “I have nothing,” he said. “Nothing.” He hated himself: he did have a few coins. But if I give one man a single penny, he reasoned, I will have all of them on my back, demanding, demanding. This, he was aware, was the attitude of the Government: if they fed Ireland, they would have Ireland begging for ever, and in the process make Britai
n starve. It was not true, of course; Ireland could be fed properly and it would not make Britain starve. But if Anthony and I, he said to himself, gave all our worldly goods it would not help many; we would end up like this, and who would feed us? Anthony had been a saint, was already reduced to nothing; two tickets for a ship his sole hope left.

  He looked up, and saw a woman at one of the workhouse windows. Her grey hair straggled in all directions like a twisted tree in winter; she was screaming, her face demented, her eyes on stalks. She was screaming at him. He could not hear a word because she was on the other side of the window and her efforts to get it open were in vain. Was she mad, he wondered, or at that point of starvation before the stupor, when the excruciating agony of hunger drove you to frenzied bouts of herculean energy? He shivered: it was a terrifying sight. Perhaps she was cursing because he wore decent clothes and did not look famished. Why have I worried about hell-fire, he asked himself. This is Hell.

  He did not know it, but the section of the workhouse where the woman stood was the hospital. She was screaming for water. There was only one doctor and he had not been there for two days; he was ill himself, with the initial symptoms of typhus. The nurses had all left and no one could be found to replace them. There were not enough beds; many patients had been put on straw without blankets or any form of covering. The living lay next to the dead. There was no food, no one to remove the bodies of those who had died, no one to give water to the sick, who, because of the fever, were going mad with thirst.

  The image of that tortured face remained with Michael for the rest of his life. It was the face of Ireland.

  The Scannells returned to the cart, astonishment and fear in their eyes. “It is not a workhouse,” Mrs Scannell said. “It is a death-house. A place of living graves.”

  “They would not open the doors,” her husband said.

  “You were told,” said Michael, “but you would not listen.”

  “The Altarnun was right. We had better go home to our cabin.”