The Hunger Page 17

  “I should go,” Ty said, but he seemed reluctant to. move. “Stay here tonight if you wish,” Anthony said.

  Ty looked pleased. “I will be slaughtered already for not being at home. But I can tell them I have been at my aunt’s, out in the bogs. Now … where would I sleep?”

  “In Michael’s room. There is a bed.”

  “I have never slept in a bed! Oh, I have always wanted that! But… how do I do it?”

  Anthony laughed. “We’ll let you work that out for yourself.” He carried Michael to a chair, and sat him down. “Michael. Michael! In the morning we leave. For ever. Leave all this… Think of the ship. America.”

  Michael nodded. He could hardly speak, but he managed, with great difficulty to whisper: “A dress … one swift cut..

  “Clear it out of your mind. Forget it all. It didn’t happen.”

  “I shall… never forget.”

  “No,” Anthony said. “I imagine not.”

  After an hour, the air passages in Michael’s throat and lungs became less constricted, but Anthony had been nearly as frightened as Michael; he had not seen an asthma attack before. He sent Ty for Dr Lenehan, who, late though it was, came out at once. Michael was just beginning to breathe more normally when the doctor arrived; only a sedative was necessary.

  “What caused it?” Dr Lenehan asked. “He has not been like this in years.”

  Anthony waved an arm. “Look about you,” he said.

  “I am sorry.” He had noticed the smashed glass. “Very sorry. Father Quinlan has this on his conscience I would like to think. The … denunciation … was a gross indecency, in my opinion. At Mass! I… wish you both well. And every happiness in America. I hope you will not conclude, sir, that all men in this district are barbarians.”

  “I do not. Thank you.”

  When he had gone, Michael said “They would never have broken me. They never will break me!”

  TY had slipped out before Anthony and Michael were up. “I wanted to say goodbye,” Anthony said. “And give him the keys of the house. I don’t feel like talking to the other tenants.” Apart from the embarrassment it entailed, he wasn’t well. “Only yesterday night’s antics. Nothing more. A cold, perhaps.”

  “I’m exhausted,” Michael answered. “I’m still a bit… shocked.” It had been a great effort to drag himself out of bed, but otherwise he was more or less his usual self, physically.

  Slowly and wearily they collected up their possessions, and packed them. More than most emigrants at that time were taking; books, Anthony’s souvenirs of India, bedding, crockery, cooking utensils, all their clothes, Michael’s music, a stockpile of food, and a bag filled with earth from the garden: Irish earth. They loaded everything onto a cart which they would pull as far as Galway. In the city the cart would be sold. They had some money too; not an enormous amount, but sufficient.

  “Will they let all this on the boat?” Michael asked, as he surveyed the trunks and cases. “There is enough of it!”

  “If they object, I shall be at my most English,” Anthony said. “Upper class superiority. That will do the trick.”

  Michael shrugged. “I shall turn the other way and pretend I do not know you.” He looked at the debris that was the consequence of last night. “Should we sweep this up?”

  “No. It will give my dear sibling a little work to occupy himself with. Or perhaps he’ll employ one of the tenants; somebody could earn a shilling or two.”

  “Ty, I would hope.”

  It was another grey, damp morning; a thin drizzle, though not much of it, in the wind. Cloud shrouded the summits: I shall never see them again, Michael said to himself; I had wanted a final look. But he was happier than he had ever imagined that Ireland was soon to be lost in the past. There was more than one good reason for emigration: the prospect of starving was not the prime motive for him and Anthony. Hunger and fever had avoided them; their experience of the Famine years wasn’t that of most of the nation: but they were not as other men, and Ireland did not tolerate men who were different.

  If we ever did throw out the British, he wondered, would the people really be free? He doubted it. You would have to be a peasant, a Catholic, and marry a nice girl if you wanted to enjoy that almost illusory society, an independent Ireland. We are a race too stubborn and intransigent. Our kings died; our bards died; we are fed on legends: chew the remains of a deceased culture. We know nothing of the real world, which is more than a broken harp string.

  Just as Anthony was about to look for Patrick O’Callaghan to give him the keys, Ty reappeared. He was out of breath with running, as he had been yesterday evening. “Oh, I am so glad you are not gone yet!” he panted. “I have something for you.” He was holding a gold sovereign.

  “Where did that come from?” Anthony asked.

  “A coin my father is keeping in the thatch for … oh, all my life.”

  “Does he know you’ve taken it?”

  “He does not!” Ty was indignant at the suggestion.

  “I cannot accept it, Ty. It’s stealing.”

  “It’s not worth much. We do not think of such coins to buy things with. It’s there because it is a … lucky charm. To deliver us from evil.”

  “But the food this would bring you all!” Anthony exclaimed. “It’s ridiculous! Do … most of my tenants have coins like this?”

  “Oh, yes! I thought my father the only one, but I have seen them now at the Cronins, the O’Learys and the Sullivans. The Widow O’Gorman has two! But she is always greedy, people say.” Anthony looked at Michael in amazement, then he laughed. “I have never heard such a story,” he said.

  “I have,” said Michael. “But I did not credit it.”

  “Take the coin,” Ty urged. “I had such trouble finding a moment when everyone was out of the cabin, and I am thinking you surely need it now much more than we do.”

  “Then I will take it,” Anthony said. “Thank you.” He was moved by the kindness, wanted to hold the boy in his arms and kiss him: a natural, spontaneous gesture of affection. But, he thought, it might produce fear or disgust. “Tell me one thing, Ty. You’re the only person who has helped us. Why is that? Are you … as we are?”

  “As you are?” Ty was puzzled.

  “I mean … would you … prefer a boy to a girl?”

  “Oh, no! No, I would not!” He looked indignant again. “Though I haven’t yet found a girl who is preferring me.”

  “Then why?”

  He scratched his head vigorously, something he always did, Anthony realized, when he was trying to concentrate. “What I saw through the window everyone says is wrong, the priest at Mass … so it is so. But it isn’t the shameful, horrible thing they think it is; my father, he … It excited me. It was … I have not the words … beautiful, I want to say.” This speech had cost much effort: Ty was blushing and stammering.

  Anthony found he did not have words, either; he could think of nothing to answer that. Perhaps Ty was able to see through a glass less darkly than he could, or the Peacocks, Father Quinlan, the Tangneys, even Dr Lenehan, all cluttered with complex acres of learned responses that were used as measures to judge people and events.

  “We must go now,” he said. He gave Ty the keys. “Hand them over to my brother when he arrives tomorrow. I’d be grateful. And if you want to earn some money, ask him could you sweep up this mess, tidy the house, dig the garden for him. He should pay you at least a shilling.”

  Ty nodded, then stood by the front door as if, he said to himself, he was the new owner, and watched what he would always think of as his prize catches pull their cart through the gates and along the road to Clasheen. They did not look back. He watched until they disappeared from view, then let himself into the house. I will sleep in their bed tonight, he decided, as he walked up the stairs and peered at the forlorn, damp, empty rooms. And imagine a girl. The thought aroused him: it. He was no longer worried its growth would be so huge everybody would see; that was a nonsense, a childish thing.

 
THE drizzle, the warm day, the colours: it is perfect for a stroll in the countryside, Michael thought. Not rainy enough to soak you, not so hot you would sweat. For the first time in weeks he sang aloud. It was a reaction to last night, a wild lurch to optimism from despair. But the wet was not good for Anthony, who sneezed more than once and blew his nose. He was listless, and when it was his turn to pull the cart their pace was a crawl.

  As the outskirts of Clasheen appeared, Michael’s good spirits sank. He did not want even a glimpse of his parents, but the road led past the forge: if they were standing outside … Other people did not matter. They were, with very few exceptions, no longer people to him; the nameless, mindless thugs of yesterday were what Clasheen now meant. He would walk through, head high, not looking in any direction other than the town’s end. If stones were cast, he would not flinch. But he doubted stones would be in evidence; even if ill-feeling remained, the desire for violence had probably burned to ash. Some of those men might have been drinking to crank themselves up, might now be ashamed of what they had done. It wasn’t certain: some human beings were irredeemably evil.

  He looked at Anthony. English, an army officer, wealthy by any Irish standards: now reduced to pulling a cart. Why had he let himself? Some people had irresistible grace.

  “What is going on here?” he said.

  At almost every doorway in the long straggle of the main street, men, women and children stood, unsmiling and silent. Their black rags of poverty suited the grim expressions on their faces. Is it for us, Michael wondered, and he felt an echo of last night’s fear. But they surely could not know we would be leaving today; or, even if they did, that we would be passing through now, at this minute.

  The people, however, only spared Anthony and Michael a momentary glance, the occasional whisper: he imagined the words ― “They fornicated with each other!” “Their sin is so wicked you cannot name it!” Which one had wanted to use a broken bottle? Which of them would have cut… ? Panic began to seize him: being here was like imprisonment in an airless room; he had to get out, breathe …

  “Be calm,” Anthony said. “They are not here for us. It’s a funeral.”

  Ahead of them a group of people was following another cart, on which, Michael thought, was a body. It was difficult to tell because so many heads were in the way. But if it was a body, why wasn’t it in a coffin? So poor was the family they could not afford a coffin? Or with so many dead now there was no wood to make one? The gap between him and the crowd behind the funeral cart narrowed; the body was a girl’s. He did not know who she was.

  In a doorway near Flanagan’s two women wept into their shawls. Outside the bar stood Maurice: “And paint your face.” Michael hoped the loathing he felt, and also the pride he had in being who and what he was, were painted on his face for the leader of the assault to come to terms with. Maurice seemed to recognize: and acknowledged the detestation ― and the dignity ― by looking down at his shoes.

  “Don’t go so fast,” Anthony said. “We shall find ourselves mixed up with the mourners.”

  Michael slowed; he hadn’t realized he was almost cantering through the town, so eager was he to leave it. He remembered his ordeal in the winter, staggering in the snow-drifts; the man of grey shadows. How different was his stride now! They reached the forge; his parents, thank God, had not come out to watch the funeral. But Mrs Peacock was there, taking a moment from her duties in the soup kitchen. She saw them, made an agitated gesture, then hurried inside.

  “Evil-minded bitch,” Michael said.

  The procession turned up the street to the church, which was near enough for him to catch a sight, the last he would ever have, of Father Quinlan, on the steps in a black cassock, holding his missal.

  And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

  And binding with briars my joys and desires.

  Nevermore, he said to himself. Nevermore! The road ahead was clear. Only a few cabins, then the town’s end; beyond it the open road: sky, sea, moorland. This was his last picture of Clasheen, a

  huddle of grey, graceless streets; the smoke of turf fires: tight-lipped staring men and women in black. He was filled with exhilaration, a sense of joy like flickering, fluttering larks’ wings. He was free.

  ON their journey to Galway they stopped to help a woman bury her husband. He was naked and missing an arm. The woman, too ill to do much, had dragged him into a field and covered him with stones; a pack of famished dogs had found him, torn off the arm and eaten it. Anthony and Michael dug a proper grave.

  “He is decent now, may God reward you,” she said. “But the Church rites will have to be foregone.” She sat down against a stone wall. “It is terrible how we are hit. So many bodies, and no one to bury them. No coffins. The priest is seven miles away. Whole families are dead, and their neighbours not having the strength to move them. Some tinkers came by last week and tumbled the empty cabins over the corpses. At least that prevents the dogs. I am not well myself.” She keeled over sideways: then fell flat on the grass. She, too, was dead. Anthony and Michael dug a second grave.

  That was their worst experience, but everywhere they saw appalling distress. In most towns and villages the devastation was much greater than at Clasheen: ghost streets with no one left alive, others inhabited only by the dying; and in every one where people still lived they were accosted by ragged beggars who saw their good clothes, the quantity of their luggage. These places had not had a Dr Lenehan ministering tirelessly to the sick, an Anthony to hang rents, a Mrs Peacock to open a soup kitchen, a Mr Peacock or a Father Quinlan to form a committee that raised money and employed men on public works. In Clasheen there was always hope, however small.

  Anthony hated to do it, but he now refused the beggars. If he gave to one, he would have to give to all, and that “all” would be endless; the news would travel so fast that the cousins and brothers and neighbours and friends of the recipient would be on him, beseeching: he would arrive at the ship with nothing. One man he refused said “You must live to tell the tale, your honour. If we all die, then the world will never know. When you’ve crossed the ocean, just say that in the village of Coolies in Ireland you met Thomas Maher, a dying man who told you, please God, it must not go unrecorded!”

  Whole districts of Galway seemed abandoned now; there were streets where every house was derelict and shut up, not even a cat hunting in the garbage. Leaves and bits of dirty paper eddied in the wind, the only movement. The stench of typhus drifted on the air. But the port was busy, crowded with people. Some were attempting to sell possessions they could not take―a cart, a bed, a cow ― but nobody wanted to buy. Some quarrelled with brokers about the price of tickets; others, who had never seen the city, stared at the buildings; still more foraged in gutters and rubbish dumps for a scrap to eat. The happiest were those already boarding a ship. Soon everyone who had an ounce of strength would have unpeopled Ireland, Michael said to himself; it was becoming a desert to be inhabited only by forgotten sagas and bones.

  Anthony secured a cabin on a ship called The Cedar of Lebanon, from a man and his wife who had changed their minds because they could not bear to leave. It was bound for New York, and there were two days to wait before it sailed. Their original tickets Anthony sold to a broker. They then went to the grocery store: Noreen and John were still living as if they expected an attacking army; it was some time before they would even answer the knock.

  Noreen was surprised to see who it was; Michael had not sent to warn her they were coming. But he and Anthony were very welcome to stay two nights: evidently she had no suspicion that Anthony was other than the friend and employer Michael said he was. Michael was relieved. He had feared she would have heard the news, but there had been no contact: she had not had a message from her parents for some time, and was puzzled by this. “And no word from Madge yet.” Noreen, too, had not seen yesterday’s newspaper. “Poor Madge! And she so gaily walking out of this house and down to the ships. It is terrible and I do not think I sh
all ever get over it.”

  She shed a few tears as she embraced Michael. “Everybody has lost somebody, I know, and whole families dying of the hunger. But it hurts when your own flesh and blood has to cross the water.” She wiped her eyes, then sat, staring at nothing. “It is not good to brood,” she said. ”I tell myself that each day. The rest of us here live on and do what we can. You are to sail now, and you will have all the luck, please God, she is now having.”

  “I will,” Michael said. ‘‘I will.”

  “And how are my parents? Madge and yourself leaving… they have taken it badly?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Badly.”

  “It is as I thought, then. I will go next week to ask do they want for anything.”

  “They … would like that.”

  “It is a bitter blow for them.”

  “It is. It is.”

  “And Dan, one of the handsomest men I ever set eyes on.”

  “He is indeed. He is indeed.”

  “But you will be a joy to the American girls, brother. You may take your pick of the best, and give me nephews and nieces and gladden our dear mother’s heart. And our dear father’s heart too.”

  “Well… we will…”

  If he were talking to Madge, Michael thought, how much more comfortable the conversation would be! No necessity to tell lies. And codding, or sharing sorrow, would have genuine affection. Noreen, somehow, never sounded sincere. Perhaps she was sincere; perhaps she did feel deeply. But her words and the tone of her voice were always artificial. He should not judge: maybe she was merely awkward. But Anthony noticed too. “She is not the woman Madge is,” he said, when they were alone.

  Anthony’s cold was worse. “I think I have a touch of fever,” he said, then, seeing the horror on Michael’s face, he laughed. “I don’t mean that fever. If I’m black or yellow the looking-glass is lying. I’m hot… my temperature isn’t what it should be; that is all.” He slept fitfully, tossing and turning. Noreen, of course, had put them in separate bedrooms, and not having his lover wrapped round him meant Michael didn’t sleep well, either. He heard Anthony go downstairs twice, for a cup of water. On the morning of their departure Anthony was very pale and completely without energy. “I’m not sure I’m well enough to travel,” he said.