Creagh
MARY WAS GROWING WORRIED FOR JOHN’S HEALTH. WORKING ON THE roads was taking a toll on him, sapping his strength, energy and spirit.
‘They work us like slaves,’ he admitted as he hunched over the fire, bone weary and exhausted.
‘Well, I am no slave,’ declared Pat angrily as he sipped a warming mug of tea she’d made with leftover tea leaves. ‘They want to break us all – every man, woman and child – but I’ll not let them break me. I’ll leave this poisoned place and make a life somewhere else. I’ll not die laying stones at the side of a road.’
‘Ah, brother, how could you go? Where would you find the money?’
‘I’ll find it somehow,’ he declared testily, refusing to be drawn any further.
Mary studied her brother-in-law and could see he was intent on it. He did not have the same ties to the land as she and John; his was only a smallholding, barely enough to support a family. He had no sweetheart or wife, or child to bind him here. Why would he stay amid such calamity when a better life beckoned him across the sea?
As Mary and John readied for bed that evening, John sighed.
‘Patrick and his old talk of leaving! He’ll never leave this place.’
‘Don’t be so sure. I think he means it,’ she said, tracing the curve of her husband’s bony shoulder. ‘For there is nothing to keep him here any more.’
Every second or third day Pat called to the cottage, joining them to share whatever little they had. Shamefaced, he would sometimes bring something at least to add to the pot. Mary was caught by surprise one evening when, with a flourish, he produced a big bag of meal and a large hare that he had somehow managed to catch.
‘How this wily old fellow has managed to escape all this time.’ He grinned and passed the skinned and cleaned hare to Mary. ‘But today was not his lucky day. I got him fair and square lying in the ferns.’
‘You are good to share him with us,’ she thanked him appreciatively as she transferred the hare to cook slowly in the pot.
Of late, her brother-in-law had surprised them on several occasions with bags of meal, a small round of cheese, a box of salted herrings, a sack of oats, and now this!
‘Don’t ask where he gets it from,’ warned John. ‘It’s better that we know nothing of where he and his wild boys get these goods.’
After they finished their feast, the children cleaned their bowls and licked their fingers. In the corner, Patch chewed hungrily at a bone and everyone sat around the warmth of the turf, talking. Pat then brought out a small bottle of poitín, which he insisted on sharing with his brother.
‘It’s grand stuff …’
‘That will warm your heart and spirit,’ Pat joked as the two brothers reminisced about their childhood.
Later, he confided in Mary and John about the cart of grain, bound for shipping to Liverpool, that he and two friends had managed to intercept.
‘I promise you, those three bags that we took while the cartman went for a piss won’t be missed until the sacks are unloaded in Liverpool!’
‘What if they catch you?’ Mary asked, worried.
‘They won’t.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, grain grown here should stay here.’
As the hour grew late, John fell asleep in his chair. Mary walked Pat to the door and thanked him again for the hare and sack of meal.
‘John is a lucky man to have found a woman like you. Truth to tell, I envy him.’ Pat’s hand reached up to touch her face. ‘From the day we met, Mary, I wished that I was the one who had saw you first.’
‘Hush,’ she laughed. ‘It’s just the drink talking. Sure, you have been in love so many times, and have half the women of the parish mad about you.’
‘But they are not you,’ he said, emotion showing in his eyes.
‘Pat, I am your sister-in-law,’ she reminded him firmly. ‘I love your brother with all my heart, and have always done so and always will.’
He stepped back, crestfallen and a little ashamed.
‘Away home with you to your own bed,’ she urged gently, watching him take the path for home.
There was no sign of Pat Sullivan for two days. Concerned, John went to his cottage, fearful his brother had fallen ill or, worse still, had been caught and arrested. Pat’s horse and cart were gone from the smallholding and John carried home the note he had found there.
‘I told you he would go away,’ Mary said as John read Pat’s words aloud.
The brief letter informed John that Pat would be taking the horse and cart, which were rightfully his to sell. He would be using the money to purchase a ticket to sail to Liverpool and then on to New York. He wanted a new life far from the hunger, and crossing the ocean to North America was his chance of a better future.
‘I cannot believe that he has just left with not a word to us!’ said John.
Mary was not surprised. She knew their last meal together had been a farewell of sorts as Pat had, in his own fashion, said goodbye to all of them. He had said nothing of his plans for he likely did not want them to stop him. She was angry, however, that the cart and the old horse were gone.
‘Pat has little enough with the cottage and only a small patch of land,’ her husband said in defence of his brother, ‘but my father gave him the horse and cart when he died. Although I used them at times, they were always his to sell.’
‘Then he was within his rights,’ Mary sighed. ‘Let’s hope that he got a good price for them.’
‘I’ll miss Pat. It’s likely we will never see him again, but I wish my brother good fortune wherever he travels.’
As she passed Pat’s empty cottage to hunt for haws, sloes, rosehips and rowan berries, Mary thought of him. She knew in her heart that he had made a wise decision to escape the hunger while he still could. It was a decision she sometimes envied, as she watched John grow weaker and her children turn pale, the flesh beginning to melt from their bones.