The next day, there was an argument between two of the relief officers about her status. “She isn’t a widow,” one pointed out. “And she’s able-bodied.” The other took a more generous view. “She and the little boy are clearly orphans. They can be fed.” But there seemed to be little food available, and there were hundreds more at the gates. They gave her a little meal, but there was no promise as to whether this would be repeated.
“There is a plan to take over the old soup kitchens if we can ever get organised,” the more kindly of the two said. “As you see, everything’s at sixes and sevens just now.”
During the next week, they hardly seemed to get any better.
The day before the next rent was due, she noticed the cabin. It was only thirty yards from her own door. There had been a family in there, but they had gone. It was a hut, really, with a roof made of branches and stalks, caked with mud. But it kept out the rain. Someone had built it there, and if the patch of ground had a landlord, nobody had ever seen him. It was free accommodation.
“We really don’t need so much space now, you and I,” she told Daniel. “We’d be just as well in here.” So the next day, when the agent came by for the rent and declined the opportunity to let them stay where they were without paying for a while, they moved across, easily enough, into their new accommodations.
Then she waited, along with everyone else in Ennis, to see what would happen next. “After all,” she remarked to one of her neighbours, “they can’t just let everybody starve to death.”
It was curious how you could survive, she thought, as the days of September went by. Partly it was a question of listening for news, partly of being lucky. The workhouse system was in a state of shambles. One day there was food at the old soup kitchen in Mill Street, another there wasn’t. Some days they were helping people at the workhouse gates, and the next, when hundreds arrived there, they were all turned away. She heard of a shipment of food and clothing from the Quakers arriving at a nearby parish. She went up there and the priest, though he really wanted to feed his own parishioners only, took pity on her and gave her some rice and peas. On another day, early in October, she heard that some men had commandeered a cartload of grain and were passing it out near the new bridge. She left Daniel at the house and ran up there as fast as she could. She came back with five pounds of grain. That kept them alive for more than a week.
The refusal of the workhouse to feed any of the able-bodied men had two results. It encouraged them to go out and rob the grain shipments. That, she thought, was a good thing. But gradually, you could also see many of them, even some of the best, subsiding into a kind of apathy. As October continued and it became colder, it seemed to her that all around her, each day, her neighbours were starting to look a little thinner and weaker. And looking at her own arms one day, and realising how thin they were, she understood that she must look the same to them.
It was halfway through October that Daniel became sick. It wasn’t anything serious, fortunately. Something that he had eaten must have disagreed with his stomach, though, and for two days he was prostrated with diarrhoea. She tried to give him liquids and put something in his stomach. It passed, and she thanked God that his constitution was so strong. But it left him pale, and much weaker than before. She wondered what she could do to put a little more colour back into his cheeks.
A kindly neighbour told her what to do. The first time she did it was the hardest. She selected the place with care—you had to, with the farmers watching their fields like hawks. She went out at dusk, so that she had just enough light to see what she was doing. There were three cows by a stone wall. She crept along the ground like a snake, taking her time. When she reached the cows, they glanced at her, but she let them get used to her before she made her move, and she took things very slowly. She had her sharp little knife and a wooden bowl.
All you had to do was to find a good place on the leg and make a tiny cut. If you did it successfully, the cow would hardly feel it. But the blood would come trickling out all right, and you could cup it into a bowl, just like a doctor bleeding a patient.
She held her breath, felt the leg, praying the cow would not suddenly move, and, with a tiny push, made a cut. The cow stirred, but only very slightly. She held the small wooden bowl against the leg. She didn’t want more than a trickle, because she didn’t want the cow to bleed too much; with luck, the farmer need not notice what had been done. When she had enough, she tied a cloth tightly over the top of the bowl, wiped the cow’s leg clean, and crept away.
Back in the cabin, she diluted the blood with water, mixed it with gruel, and, with some difficulty, persuaded Daniel to get it down. “It’s good for you, whether you like it or not,” she said.
A few days later, she did the same thing again. But this time, she fumbled the cut and the animal bled far too much. On the last day of October, on the eerie and magical eve of Samhain, she went to the field a third time. But as she walked along the path beside the wall, she saw the farmer waiting at the edge of the field. He had a blunderbuss. He was watching her suspiciously, so she gave him a polite good evening and went upon her way. She’d done Daniel some good, she was sure of it. But was it enough?
The month of November was bleak. A cold, raw dampness set in. And now, try though she might, she couldn’t get enough food. She had conserved a few shillings of the money Nuala had given her, and she did her best to buy food in the market. At the workhouse, not only were there growing crowds outside the door, but she plainly heard one of the relief officers say to another: “What are we supposed to do, when we have no money?”
By the end of the third week, it was clear to her: Ennis was collapsing. The process was strangely quiet. Nothing was said. Nothing was done. There were no sudden alarms, no shrieks, no cries. Just a cold, dank silence, while the world slowly sank into lethargy, as though life itself had shrunk, along the muddy streets, into a frozen stiffness. She stopped taking Daniel with her into the town now, because she didn’t want him to see what she saw. There were families sick and dying all along the way. More than once, she had been obliged to step over corpses in the street. She could not hide it when the family next door became sick. She could only try to keep him away from them.
Then came the rain, followed by a day of icy wind. And then, on the twenty-second, Daniel caught a fever.
She didn’t know what it was. It could have been any of a dozen conditions, a random infection. It did not matter. The boy was burning up. She tried to cool his brow and feed him liquid. She stayed by his side. She could feel him burning, hotter and hotter, though she swathed his whole body in a damp blanket now to try to draw the fever. She knew he was strong. That was the most important thing. On the twenty-third, she thought perhaps the fever might break. He was pale now, his eyes staring in a way that she had never seen before.
“You must fight now, Daniel,” she said. “You must be a brave boy, and you must fight.”
“I am sorry, Maureen,” he whispered. “I will try.”
Then, the next morning, the rain returned. A miserable, grey rain, falling incessantly, like a dirty shroud, wetting equally the living and the dead. And as the rain fell, she looked into Daniel’s eyes and saw what she dreaded, that look she had seen in the eyes of children before, when they have given up.
What could she do? There was nothing she could do. But she could not rest there, she could not just hold his hand while he went—he, the last thing she had to call her own in all the world. So she wrapped him in a shawl she had, and carried him out into the rain, and she ran, as best she could, all the way to the fever hospital, where she showed them the boy at the door and begged them: let us in. But they were full, and besides, they had too much else to do, and they told her: “Go to the workhouse. They may help you there.” So once again she set out in the falling rain and stumbled, almost staggered with the weight of him, through the mud until she at last came in sight of that grim, grey bastion. But there were hundreds of people there also, for the doors had
been firmly closed, and she could not even get through them.
Though indeed, she discovered, as she pulled back the shawl, she needn’t have bothered, since somewhere upon that journey, Daniel had departed.
On the twenty-fifth of November, Stephen Smith looked out upon the cold, wet streets of Ennis and decided that he would not stay there. He had arrived the evening before and stayed the night at the house of Charles O’Connell. His host had profoundly depressed him.
“At the workhouse now, the guardians are in the ludicrous position of begging the government to give them more relief money, for they are completely without funds. At the same time, they have just had a demand from the government for the repayment of the loan contracted earlier in the year for your working parties and soup kitchens. They won’t pay it, of course. But all the same, at such a time, even to be asked . . .”
No, Stephen thought, he would not linger here. His work in Limerick had been worthwhile, but what he could do had been completed. It would be continued, very effectively, by other hands. He was going back to Dublin. In fact, he couldn’t wait to be gone. But before he could leave, there were some hours to kill. He might as well go round the place, however depressing. As he started to walk, he found himself wondering what had become of the Maddens.
As she stood outside the door of the cabin, staring out at the grey nothingness of the sky, and aware only now of the nothingness of her heart, she did not even notice him coming. Only when he stood before her did she realise that he was addressing her. He was asking after her sister, and after Daniel.
“She has left, Sir, but I can’t tell where she is. I do not know at all,” she answered stupidly.
“And little Daniel.”
“He is dead, Sir. Yesterday.”
“I am sorry. I am sorry for your trouble.” The formula. She bowed her head in nerveless acknowledgement, glanced at his face, which she had seen in her mind’s eye so many times before, and stared out at the sky again. Meaningless. “What will you do?” he asked.
“I? Do?” It had not occurred to her. What was there to do? Was there any point? There was no point.
“Will you stay here? Have you a place to go?”
“I have nothing,” she said, as though in a daze. “All that I had is gone. I have nothing left at all. But it does not matter.”
She was only vaguely aware that he was silent, that he was considering, hesitating.
“You cannot stay here like this,” he said at last. “You had better come with me.”
“I?” She frowned, not comprehending. “Where?” Would he take her to the workhouse?
“To Dublin,” he said.
VICTORIA
1848
FEW PEOPLE would have disagreed that, in listing the many pleasant features of Dublin, the canals must be included. Begun late in the previous century, they enclosed the Georgian centre city like two embracing arms. To the north, the Royal Canal swept from the docks beyond the Custom House, up round the Mountjoy estate, and out to the west above Phoenix Park; from there it proceeded across the country, mile after mile, away into the Midlands until at last, over eighty miles away, it joined the huge Shannon river system. By this means, you could nowadays ship goods on barges from one side of Ireland to the other. On the south side of the Liffey, taking its origin from the docks by Ringsend, the Grand Canal, despite its name, was an intimate affair, passing between grassy banks where willow trees grew, in a slow and almost imperceptible curve until, two miles west of St. Stephen’s Green, like a man who has enjoyed a delightful rest cure, it decided it must now strike out, boldly, in a straight line, westwards across the fertile Liffey Plain. Along its banks, from wooden lock to wooden lock, a charming suburban towpath ran.
And it was in a neat but capacious brick house, overlooking its grassy banks, that the Tidy family lived. Samuel Tidy and his wife had been married for fifteen years now. They had five children, the youngest of whom was a baby. They were industrious, modestly prosperous, and contented. In their house, as you might expect in a Quaker home, there was an atmosphere of easy quiet that was restful, and healing.
At least, so Maureen Madden found it.
By good fortune, when Stephen Smith had come to them in December of 1847 and said that he was looking for a position for a woman from Clare, they had still one extra bedroom in the house. “I was thinking of asking Lord Mountwalsh,” he’d explained, “since between his Dublin and Wexford houses he has such a large establishment. For she certainly can’t stay in my lodgings with me. But then I thought I’d mention it to you, too. I have rented a room for her in a house nearby for the present.” After a long discussion between themselves, Samuel Tidy and his wife had decided that, for a couple of weeks, they wanted Maureen to remain in her lodging. There had been numerous cases of people coming into Dublin from afflicted areas and bringing disease with them. “We must protect our children first,” the Quaker reasonably explained. But after that, they had agreed to take her in. “She can help me with the children,” Mrs. Tidy had said. “I’m sure there will be plenty for her to do.” Apart from her board, she would also receive a modest salary.
For Maureen, this change in her circumstances had been so unexpected that for several weeks she had gone through her life as if in a dream. The Quaker family lived in a simple manner. They ate with their children, and they decided to treat her as a sort of governess. Indeed, she soon gave evidence that she was able to teach the younger children their letters, and a good deal more besides. “She has excellent self-control,” Mrs. Tidy told her husband approvingly. “She’s quiet and clean. I’m really very pleased we took her in.” And though the winter gave her no chance to lose the paleness that had afflicted her, by the spring Maureen had put on enough weight to fill out her face and body to their normal condition; she no longer looked gaunt, even if she was still a little subdued.
Early in June, Tidy took a house by the sea for ten days. She returned from this family holiday with some colour in her cheeks and an altogether more healthy air. “I’m so glad she looks better,” said Mrs. Tidy. “I’m growing fond of her.”
During these months, the family had not seen Stephen Smith. Shortly after his return in December, he had consulted with the Earl of Mountwalsh about what to do with himself, and the earl had responded by employing him on a series of commissions. These had taken him to Wexford, the west, and once to London. Not until late June did he send a note to Tidy to let him know that he was in Dublin and asking if he might call.
Maureen was occupied with the children when he arrived. There was much to talk about meanwhile.
The Famine was having some remarkable effects upon Dublin. The countryside around the capital was one of the least afflicted upon the island. But from farther afield, a stream of people from other parts had been making their way to Dublin in the hope of emigrating, or at least finding shelter. And to a large extent, Dublin had risen to the challenge. Churches and charities, not least the Quakers, of course, had ensured that the arrivals were fed. There was even a large soup kitchen feeding huge numbers in fashionable Merrion Square. Nor had there been any lessening in the numbers arriving. Tidy was glad that Maureen was not in the room—since it might have been painful for her to hear—but he told Stephen now that the wave of evictions in Clare and Mayo had, if anything, increased from the year before.
“The situation you saw in Clare when you left has continued unchanged except that the government has been forced to feed the able-bodied, too. Our best figures are that in Ireland as a whole, at this moment, there are eight hundred thousand on outdoor relief, and nearly half of those are able-bodied. I cannot tell you how many people are at the point of starvation, because nobody knows and nobody wants to know. But it is normal in any western workhouse that there will be fifty, eighty, even a hundred deaths, children mostly, every week.”
“And the potato crop?”
“Twice as much is planted this year as last—though that is still less than half the acreage in the days before the b
light. We shall have to hope for a good harvest.”
“What is remarkable to me is that there are not more people sleeping in the streets here. Where do we put them all?”
“That I can tell you easily. In the big houses that were the glory of Dublin in the old days, before the Act of Union. I walked over to the north side the other day, Stephen,” he went on. “Up Sackville Street and round by Mountjoy Square. In street after street, I saw those big terraced houses—which once housed a single family and were afterwards turned into apartments—now turned into tenements. Often, you will now find an entire family occupying a single room. I dare say, at that rate, that we have enough brick and mortar here to shelter most of the population of Ireland. In squalor, of course.”
They had just finished this discussion when the younger children, accompanied by Maureen, came into the room.
She was dressed in a simple cotton gown lightly trimmed with lace. Her hair was parted and drawn back, but there was some curl in it, and a slight sheen, from regular brushing, that he had not seen before. He advanced to meet her and smiled.
“Why, Miss Madden, you are looking uncommonly well.”
And though she did not mean to, she blushed.
He realised his error at once. A woman such as herself would be entirely unused to compliments. He must be careful not to pay them, except in the most general way, in future.
After some polite enquiries after her health and that of the children, he told them all that he had a piece of news.
“I must ask you to rejoice with me. After entrusting me with some commissions—no doubt to see how I did—Lord Mountwalsh has offered me a position as his business agent. His former agent is old and was anxious to hand the burden on. I must say, it’s uncommonly good of him, and it would be hard to imagine a better employer.”