MARY AND JOHN WERE WOKEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT BY THE loud braying of Smokey the donkey. The poor animal sounded very distressed. Alarmed, John jumped out of bed immediately.
‘What is wrong with the creature?’ Mary fretted, also getting up as her husband pulled on his trousers and jacket.
‘He’s old and half lame but he seemed fine when I left him. Unless a pack of dogs has found him,’ he said, rushing out of the cottage in the darkness.
Con and Nora had both been disturbed by the commotion and were stirring. Mary soothed them gently and told them to stay in bed.
‘I’m running out to see if your father needs help,’ she explained.
She didn’t want him to confront a pack of hungry dogs on his own and so, pulling on her shawl, grabbed a blackthorn stick from by the door before running blindly across the field. The noise from the old donkey had stopped but, in the silence, Mary could hear shouting.
Wary, she kept a firm grip on her stick. The darkness was beginning to lift and ahead of her she could make out John with three other figures. Relief washed over her that there was no sign of any dogs.
As she neared the group, she recognized Nell and Tom Flynn, and their older boy, Paddy. What were they doing out here at this hour? John was shouting at them angrily, and there was some kind of argument going on.
Then she saw it. The donkey lay dead on the ground, blood seeping from where its neck had been sliced open by Tom, who still held the bloodied axe in his hand.
‘Why did you kill him?’ she cried, rushing over. ‘He was Flor and Molly’s animal.’
‘They are both in their grave and have no need of him now,’ Nell said boldly, ‘while others do!’
‘Flor Sullivan was my uncle and that animal was his property, Nell,’ John said through clenched teeth. ‘You and your family had no right to lay a hand on him!’
‘There’s good eating in a donkey,’ snivelled Nell.
‘How do you think we felt, watching that yoke wandering the fields and us starving with hunger pains in our stomach?’ Tom defended himself. ‘I have to think of my wife and the boys.’
‘Flor and Molly loved that animal,’ Mary countered. ‘He used it to take his cart to the bog and the cove. You know well that he let most of us borrow it when we needed to. If he had wanted to kill it for food, he would have done so.’
‘He was a fool, then,’ Nell muttered sarcastically. ‘He should have done it and saved himself and Molly!’
Mary was tempted to raise her stick and belt her neighbour with it but John, as if reading her mind, stayed her arm.
‘You have done something you had no right to do,’ he said coldly. ‘Stealing an animal is a crime.’
Mary saw a dart of fear flash between Nell and her husband.
‘They meant no harm to you, Mr Sullivan,’ Paddy piped up, shamefaced. ‘They thought that old Smokey was there for the taking.’
‘Sure, what difference does an old donkey make to anyone?’
‘The difference was that he was ours.’
‘The beast is dead,’ argued Tom. ‘There is no bringing him back. We’ll skin him and butcher him and share him with you. There is not a lot of meat on him, but enough for two families.’
Mary’s stomach turned at the mere thought of it as she remembered Uncle Flor giving the children rides on the back of the gentle animal.
John considered Tom’s proposition. He was torn between anger and fury at his neighbours for what they had done, and a grudging acceptance of the situation.
‘Mary, you go home and I will return later,’ he decided. ‘Not a word of this to the children.’
Mary nodded, relieved to escape Nell’s smug glances.
John returned as the sun rose, and explained to the children that the old donkey had died.
Mary cooked the meat slowly in the pot. It was lean but stringy, and had a sweetish taste when mixed with wild garlic and the last few wizened turnips. She would make soups and stews from it and use a little grain to eke out every bit of it. However she might regret the beast’s death, she knew that it would give them renewed strength and nourishment.
The following day she and John went to check on Flor’s cottage. To their dismay they found that there was nothing left in it. Even the old couple’s bolster and pallet bed, few pots, cups, jug and Flor’s tin whistle had disappeared. Mary noticed that Molly’s shawl, which she kept on a hook on the back of the door, had vanished too. Her heart broke as she realized how much she would miss her relative.
‘The turf pile, and Flor’s spade and few tools are all robbed,’ John declared in fury as they looked around them. ‘This is the Flynns’ business. Nell and Tom have been here. They have always been thieves, with no regard for their neighbours.’
‘How could they do such a thing when poor Flor and Molly are barely cold in the grave?’ Mary cried in despair.
‘I am going over there to tell Tom Flynn what I—’
‘Shush,’ she said, grabbing hold of him. ‘We want no more fighting with the likes of them. They are not worth it.’
‘I’ll not let them away with it,’ he said, enraged, as he pulled away from her.
‘No, John, you must promise me not to go near them,’ she begged, standing in front of him. ‘Flor is at peace now. He wouldn’t want you to get in a fight with Tom.’
‘He never trusted him.’
‘No one trusts them any more. The hunger has changed them, made them worse.’
‘They were always like that.’
Somehow, she managed to persuade him to return home with her, and he agreed reluctantly not to set foot near Tom, or his wife or children.
Nell fell sick with the fever first, then their youngest boy got it and then Paddy. There was no donkey and cart to take them to the workhouse fever shed, just Tom Flynn and his middle son to push them in a small handcart on the long road to town.