Creagh
MARY EXAMINED JOHN’S FEET GENTLY AND BATHED THEM IN WARM water and salt. They were blistered and sore, and his big and second toe on one foot were blackened and swollen from where a heavy stone had fallen on them yesterday. She suspected they may even be broken.
‘Stay home,’ Mary pleaded with her stubborn husband, who had also had a fierce bad cough these past few days and looked ill. ‘You are not able for such work tomorrow.’
‘I’ll be grand,’ John insisted, though he could barely walk.
Watching him join Denis Leary and Tom Flynn the next morning, she felt increasingly fearful for him, for he was walking like an old man, limping along beside them.
‘Oh, dear God,’ she cried on his return home that evening.
Her husband’s face was grey, and he could barely talk without provoking a fit of coughing. His body was hot then cold, and although she had piled the turf high on the fire he was unable to get warm. She watched helplessly as he shivered and sweated. Mary worried that he had caught road fever like so many of the men had.
In the morning he made an attempt to rise for work.
‘You are going nowhere, John Sullivan. You are too sick to work!’ she screamed at him like a harridan.
For the next few days he barely stirred, and she dared not leave his side.
‘Con, take Nora and Tim and search for anything we can eat!’
She could see the fear in her eldest son’s eyes as they set off for the woods and fields.
Despite their best efforts, the children returned empty-handed, so Mary added more water to the remnants of the thin gruel in the pot. She ignored the gnawing hunger pains in her own stomach as she fed her children.
For three days John was lost in a heavy sleep. As he lay wrapped in a blanket, barely waking or drinking, her mind filled with the awful possibility that her already-weak husband might not recover.
If they still had the horse and cart she would be able to take him to the dispensary or ask for a ticket for the doctor to visit him. But she did not dare to leave him, for he was gravely ill. His body and the blanket were soaked in sweat, and as the fever progressed he tossed and turned and wandered in his sleep as if in some kind of nightmare. She feared for him, as the sickness had overtaken him and he had not the strength left to fight it.
The children were scared and watched their father furtively. Nora wept openly at the sight of him in such a state.
‘Hush, Nora. We just have to wait and see what will happen,’ Mary said, hugging her close.
‘I don’t want Da to die,’ her daughter begged.
‘Your father is fighting as hard as he can to get better,’ she tried to reassure her, ‘but he is in God’s hands now.’
All the night long, Mary sat with her husband. She did not know whether to be alarmed or pleased when at last he fell into a deep, heavy sleep. He neither stirred nor made a sound until the early hours of the morning when he opened his eyes slightly and winced at the candlelight before returning to sleep.
Hope flickered inside her. She allowed him to slumber but a few hours later, when she called his name softly, she was rewarded by him opening his eyes again and staring at her.
‘Oh, John!’ she burst out. ‘You are awake again.’
She managed to get him to take a little water, and then a spoon or two of watery gruel. By the end of the week his breathing was easier and his colour had improved, though he was still too weak even to sit up.
Exhausted, Mary curled up like a small girl and slept on the ground near him …