by Charles Egan
‘If they pay the rent.’
‘Isn't that what we're going to America for? The both of us, our families need the rent. Our agent – he knows that too. He knows where the rent money will be coming from.’
He was thinking of Carrigard. Eight miserable acres, wet land where you couldn't use a horse for ploughing. Backbreaking labour on the farm and the quarry, year in, year out. Still, they had only eight pounds and ten shillings a year to pay in rent, and it was hard enough to pay even that. But they had taken on another lease on a neighbouring farm, where the other family had emigrated. So how much was the rent now? How many acres? And what would other people think of his father renting another man’s land? No need to talk about that either.
‘Yes,’ Conaire said. ‘They tell me I’ve got to send the rent back to Erris. I don’t know how to do that, and even if I did, I’m not sure who might be left alive to take it. But you were telling me about Kilduff. Working as a ganger, you were.’
For a while, Luke did not reply. He screwed his eyes tight, trying to think, trying to remember. Watching people starve. Watching them die of fever, screaming in pain. What of it? Was it just that he was getting used to it? Worse than that. Guilt. Guilt at Sorcha’s eviction, closing the Relief Works, closing the Kitchens. But that had all been under orders – there was nothing else he could have done. He had killed a starving man too, but that was in defence of his father. Did he want his father dead? But it was more than guilt. The hate in people's eyes, always, always hating him.
‘Why would you want to know about that?’ he asked at length. ‘Is it to tell everyone else? Is it to have them kill me?’
‘You don’t believe that,’ Conaire replied. ‘If I hadn’t told them already I won’t tell them now. And now you know the kind of man you’re dealing with. Go on, tell me about Kilduff. Tell me about being a ganger man.’
‘Fine,’ Luke said, ‘I’ll tell you, and don’t say you didn’t ask. How would you know the kind of man I am, otherwise? But the first thing I’ll tell you is this – my own family lived through it all. Father got fever, but he was always a strong man so he pulled through.’
‘And the starvation…?’
‘It wasn’t for us. Father had the quarry like I told you, so he had good work in his own quarry, overseeing fellows breaking the stones.’
‘Overseeing?’
‘Yes. Me too. It was easy enough to start. They began Relief Works just beside our own farm in Carrigard. At first they just asked me to be a clerk, writing things out and adding things up. But after a few days, came the Selection. Then they asked me to make a line, and decide the men and women on it who would be given tickets for the Works, and those who would not. They had strict rules as to who could be chosen. I had no say in it. And so I began selecting those who would work, and those who would not. And, by the rules, I had to refuse many who could not, and I knew I was condemning them to starvation. Many enough were my own friends, and I was dooming them. It’s like that the hatred starts. Your own people, they hate you for it. And, before you say it, I felt in my heart that I could not blame them. But after a few days of this, they told me that the Workhouse in Knockanure was short of clerical workers and sent me there. It was a comfort not to be doing Selection any more. But then they told me they wanted me to work in another part of the Union. Up in a place called Brockagh, where they were expecting me to start the Works in two places. So I did it for them and became a ganger. Then the snows came. Many times I tried to have the Works stopped, but the people themselves, they would not have it. They needed the money for food. So they worked on and died of cold instead, and what could I do about it?’
He stopped. No need to talk about Winnie. Nor Croghancoe. The mountain still terrified him, and still he did not know why.
‘Go on,’ Conaire said, impatiently.
‘Yes,’ Luke said, ‘I had two gangs to start and four by the time it was over. One hundred in each – four hundred men, women and children. Four hundred when they weren’t dying on me. Then they told us the Works had to stop. No mention of Soup Kitchens then, just ‘stop the Works’. What choice did I have? They gave me no money so how could I pay anyone. So the Works were stopped, and the hunger worsened, and then the fever came. The Quakers, English Quakers, they came to Brockagh and started opening fever sheds. Soup Kitchens too. They asked me to set up the Soup Kitchens which was hard enough in its own way. When they were running right, I was sent back to Kilduff to set up the Government Kitchens there. So I did that, and when the corn started coming into Westport from America, they asked me to help with that too, bringing the corn on wagons from Westport to Kilduff. The people would attack us for the corn as we brought it across, but we had to defend ourselves and get the corn to Kilduff, to our own people. But then, the Kitchens around Kilduff, they stopped. They said the famine was over. It was then I decided for sure to go to America. So that’s my story. You still hate me?’
‘A hard question,’ Conaire replied. ‘You say you did what you had to do?’
‘I did,’ Luke said. ‘I did what I had to do, and believe me, you would have done the same.’
‘Perhaps. But I had no letters or numbers. Isn’t that the difference?’
‘It is. And isn’t it damned well time you learned?’ He observed Conaire closely. Thin, but at least they were both eating something.
‘It’s a bit late for the learning,’ Conaire said, after a long hesitation.
‘Maybe it is,’ Luke replied. ‘But what of you? Will you stay in Quebec?’
‘Quebec!’ Conaire said. ‘The devil I will. There's fever in Quebec. I'm going to get out of it as fast as I can. New York, that's where I'm headed.’
‘Isn't there fever there too?’
‘Might be, but it's not as bad as Quebec, that's for sure. And anyhow, I have family there.’
‘You have?’
‘My brother. His wife and four little ones. At least there were four the last time we heard. Maybe it's more now.’
He pulled a scrap of dirty paper from his pocket ‘This is where he’s living. Five Points…’
He thrust the scrap into Luke’s hand. ‘Can you read it?’
Luke peered at it in the light of the ovens’ fires, and read out the address.
‘Mr. John Costello, Costello’s Bar, Orange Street, Five Points, Manhattan, New York City.’
‘You read the English well,’ Conaire said.
‘I was long enough in the learning,’ Luke said. ‘But forget that, it’s New York that concerns me. From all I can work out, if I want to get to Pennsylvania I have to get to New York first.’
‘So we should go together? Is that what you’re thinking?’
‘Perhaps,’ Luke said. ‘Why not?’
‘Why not, indeed? And who better than Luke Ryan as a partner for the road. I’ll say this for you, Luke. You’re one hell of a tough man.’
When they were finished cooking, they carried their pots and spoons back to Conaire’s bunk. He sat, pointing to the space beside him.
‘Here, rest yourself.’ He held the pot on the blanket and spooned the food into his mouth. Luke sat beside him and ate.
‘When do you think we'll see land?’ Conaire asked.
‘God only knows,’ said Luke. ‘We should have seen it by now, that's what Mr. Tyler is saying. But after that storm, even when we see land, it won't be the land we're searching for. They're reckoning we might be too late for Quebec, and might head for St. John’s.’
Luke returned to the bilge pump. One of the men had collapsed. He was dreadfully thin.
‘This man can’t work,’ one of the other men said.
‘No, he can’t,’ Luke replied. He had the man carried up to the lower deck, and for the rest of the shift, he worked the pump himself.
Over time, the sloshers died faster than the rest, and soon there were few left. When Luke said this to Tyler, he found himself appointed to a new task – organising the other passengers to clean out the buckets themselves. As ganger o
f the bilge pump, this seemed natural, though many resisted it because they were well aware of the death rate among the sloshers. He wondered about Conaire’s chances.
The number of dead was over eighty.
Chapter 8
The Times, London, September 1847:
The fact of more than a hundred thousand souls flying from the very midst of the calamity into insufficient vessels, scrambling for a footing on a deck and a berth in a hold, committing themselves to these worse than prisons, while their frames were wasted with ill-fare and their blood infected with disease, fighting for months of unutterable wretchedness against the elements without and pestilence within, giving almost hourly victims to the deep, landing at length on shores already terrified and diseased, consigned to encampments of the dying and of the dead, spreading death wherever they roam, and having no other prospect before them than a long continuance of these horrors in a still farther flight across forests and lakes under a Canadian sun and a Canadian frost – all these are circumstances beyond the experience of the Greek historian or the Latin poet, and such as an Irish pestilence alone could produce.
After two more days sailing the open Atlantic, they saw land. They had been in the hold for those two days. A man and a young orphan had died. Luke had gotten little sleep since then, roused again and again by the screeching of the fever patients, when he was not supervising or working the bilge pump.
That morning he was woken by the screams of a woman in labour. She died, but the baby survived. Luke thought of his cousin, Nessa. She too had given birth, even as she lost her own life. Little Brigid had been born an orphan, a dead mother and a father who had disappeared, but ever since she had been well fed, and cared for by Luke’s own mother, together with the other women. Winnie too, since he had brought her to Carrigard.
He was startled when Tyler appeared beside his bunk. ‘There’s land ahead,’ he said, ‘would you like to see it?’
‘Land?’ the man from the next bunk said. ‘There’s land ahead,’ he shouted.
Tyler returned to the ladder. Seconds later, there was a rush for the ladder, but most stayed lying in their bunks. Luke found Conaire at foot of the ladder. The rush had become a fight for a place on the ladder.
‘We can take our time,’ Conaire said to him. ‘You’d near get killed on that ladder now. Let’s sit down a while.’
They went back and sat down on an empty bunk. There were lice on the blankets.
‘I wonder how near Quebec we are.’ Conaire asked.
‘God knows,’ Luke replied. ‘We’ll find out soon enough now, as soon as they know what land it is.’
People were clambering back down the ladder now. ‘Must be cold up top,’ Conaire said.
‘Damned sure, it is,’ Luke replied. ‘Come on. They’re all coming back down. There’ll be room above.’
‘There’s nothing there at all,’ a woman said as she came down the ladder.
When there was a break in the people coming down, Luke climbed up and ran to the rail. There were only a few people left standing alongside him. The wind was brisk and bitingly cold, but he hardly noticed it. He scanned the horizon, but could see nothing. He ran towards the front, rushing from side to side. Still nothing. A sailor on a spar above them was pointing ahead and to the right. Luke positioned himself on the right hand rail, but still nothing.
Conaire came alongside.
‘Where is it?’
‘Damned if I know,’ said Luke. ‘I can't see a thing but it's meant to be over there.’
Conaire gazed at the horizon, searching. ‘There's nothing there yet.’
Three more sailors had climbed up the rigging, pointing excitedly.
‘Do you think they're kidding us?’ Luke asked.
‘I'm surprised at you saying something like that. Surely even an amadán like you can work it out. They’re up there…’
‘Ah yes,’ said Luke, ‘and we're down here.’
‘We'll see it in time.’
More people went down, disappointed. Luke and Conaire stayed above.
‘There it is,’ said Conaire at length.
‘Damn it, you've good eyesight.’
Within minutes there was a crush of people behind them.
‘Buíochas le Dia,’ an old woman said. Thanks be to God.
She was dressed in rags, a bony pinched face under a tightly wrapped black shawl.
‘Thanks be to God' is right,’ Luke said. ‘We're past the worst of it. We'll make it now.’ The old woman made her way back towards the hatch, staggering with a rolling gait as the ship pitched and rolled.
‘Did you think we wouldn't make it?’ asked Conaire.
‘I wasn't certain,’ Luke answered, looking back to the low white hills on the horizon.
‘But the question is when?’
‘Yes,’ Luke said. ‘We're a long way north.’
‘I know we are.’
There was a spout of water from the ocean. Out further, a black tail rose, slapped the water, and disappeared.
‘What the devil was that?’ Luke asked, surprised.
‘Whales,’ Conaire replied, ‘and many of them too.’
‘Whales?’
A whale breached the surface, jumping high. ‘See that one,’ said Conaire. ‘He’s come from deep down to make a jump like that.’
‘And the water rising? What’s the cause of that?
‘That’s them breathing out.’
‘You know a lot about them.’
‘Why wouldn’t I? We’d see them off Torán regular enough, though these fellows are different. There were times they’d come round the land side into Blacksod Bay, and get themselves caught by the tide on the beach. Some of the people would eat them. But only in the years the potato failed. I only tasted it the once myself.’
The whales were closer now.
‘God, there’s enough of them,’ Luke exclaimed.
‘Dozens,’ Conaire said.
Another whale breached, and came crashing down.
‘Tell me about Torán,’ Luke said. ‘Like the rest of Erris, was it?’
‘The same. A miserable place. And isn’t that a terrible thing for a man to say about his home. It’s down by the Inner Mullet.’
‘The Inner Mullet?’
‘Out the furthest end of Erris. It’s a sea lake, with a long neck of land stretching well down from Belmullet to the west of it. And Torán is half way down that neck – the Mullet they call it, the land I mean. Ocean on three sides of it.’
‘So who evicted ye?’ Luke asked.
‘We weren’t evicted at all. The landlord – Mr. Walshe – he’s a Catholic. He won’t evict us. Not for the likes of him to evict. Only Lord Palmerston and scum like that evict. Not that Walshe done much else though. Damned little in the way of soup kitchens or building roads for Relief and, like I said, the nearest Workhouse is in Ballina. I’m praying they build the one in Belmullet. It might give father and mother a chance of living, and the children too – six more of them still at home.’
‘Will they keep their land though?’ asked Luke.
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t they?’
‘There’s some question they mightn’t let people into the Workhouse if they’re renting land.’
Conaire shuddered. ‘Are you certain?’
‘I’m certain of nothing, to be honest,’ Luke replied. ‘Just some story I heard from some fellows at the Workhouse at Knockanure. Maybe it’s just a story.’
‘I hope to God it is.’
The thin line of white had grown larger on the horizon.
Tyler came over.
‘At least it's not Baffin Island. More like the top end of Labrador, Sharkey reckons from our latitude. Close enough to Baffin though.’
‘Is that why it's so white?’ Luke asked.
‘That's the reason right enough. We're a long way north.’
‘Are we off course then?’
‘Hundreds of miles off course. It could have been worse – we could have been halfw
ay up the Davis Strait by now. But we’re not, and we’re in the Labrador Current now, heading south. Still it'll be some time before we get to Quebec. There's many of these poor devils will never get to Quebec at all.’
‘What’s he saying?’ Conaire asked.
‘He’s telling we’re not so far north. That’s Labrador over there, but it’s still some way to Quebec.’
‘Can he not talk English?’ Tyler asked.
‘No,’ Luke answered. ‘Not all of us can.’
‘It’ll be tough on him when he gets to Quebec. You’ll find people to speak English, and people to speak French, but there’s none as would speak like that. Excepting a few of your own, of course.’
‘What’s he saying?’ Conaire asked again.
‘Just that you’d better learn English,’ Luke replied.
‘I’ll do that in time. But what about Quebec? Is there no faster way of getting there?’
‘A good question he’s asking,’ Luke said to Tyler. ‘Is there no faster way of getting to Quebec?’
Tyler was silent for a moment. ‘Aye,’ he said then. ‘There’s a faster way right enough. Mr. Starkey could take the shortcut through the Labrador Strait by Belle Isle. But if he does that, there’s a chance none of us might make Quebec.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘The tidal currents in the Labrador Strait are like you’d never believe. Many a good ship’s gone down there. No, I reckon he’ll have sense, and go for the Cabot Strait. That means going all the way around Newfoundland Island, but it takes another week. Far safer though. Just pray the captain doesn’t have a say in it, or we’ll all die.’
‘What’s he saying now?’ Conaire asked again.
‘Just that there’s a fast way and a slow way. The fast way means the ship sinks. The slow way takes an extra week.’
Two more naked bodies were taken up, blessed and thrown over. No one said a word.
The ship tacked down the coast of Labrador. As they did the snow cover disappeared. The weather had improved too, and the hatches were only brought down twice as rain came over. For the rest of the time, the passengers were allowed up for a few hours every day.
