November 1845
WHEN THE DAYS GREW SHORT, JOHN SULLIVAN DISCOVERED THAT THE few potatoes he had stored in the potato pit had all rotted.
‘Bad cess, every single one of them has turned black,’ he told his wife, disgusted. ‘Even the smell of them would make you sick.’
Mary could not understand how such a thing could happen to saved healthy potatoes lifted from the ground, but the same thing had happened to all their neighbours’. Everyone was at their wits’ end, for they still had the winter to endure and the long months of spring and summer ahead of them before the next potato harvest.
Mary sat darning and patching, and repairing hems and tears late into the night until her fingers grew tired and her eyes became heavy with sleep. The money she earned from Honora Barry was scarcely enough to buy a bag of meal each week and the odd jug of buttermilk or piece of smoked fish, but if she was frugal, she and her family would survive these hard times.
A few weeks later, with not a bag of oats or grain in the place, Mary decided without a second thought to take her wedding dress and a lace blouse to sell at Hegarty’s. A sack of flour was now more valuable to her than any item of clothing.
She still had her hens but she suspected someone was stealing their eggs, for whenever she or John went to check on them, a few would be missing. She told the children to keep an eye on the birds and watch for anyone who was lurking around their field and hen-house.
To her dismay, it wasn’t long before one of her good-laying hens disappeared too.
‘Maybe a fox or dog or cat got her,’ consoled John.
‘It was no hungry animal,’ she retorted. ‘There is no sign of a feather even, so I know well ’tis a thief who took her and stole the food from under our noses.’
‘Hush,’ he said, trying to calm her. ‘If it were a hungry person who was desperate, we cannot begrudge them.’
‘Well, you may say that when all the hens I have kept are gone and we don’t have even an egg for the children to eat or a hen for the pot, while others feast on them!’ she said, angered by her husband’s reaction.
She warned Con and Nora to be on the lookout for the culprit.
‘Mark my words, they will come back again.’
‘Mammy, I saw Paddy Flynn searching one of the nests under the bush,’ Con confided in her. ‘You know, the hen with the white speckles, and I think he took her egg. I tried to talk to him but he just ran away home.’
‘Never fear, pet. I’ll keep my eye on him and his brothers.’
Annoyance burned inside her that Nell Flynn, to whom they had always been good, would use them in such a fashion.
‘They have little enough, God help them,’ soothed John, ‘and my mother was always fond of her.’
‘Well, ’tis not your mother she’ll be dealing with if they steal any more of my eggs!’
At night Mary listened, and during the day she watched. Then, one evening when she was about to lie down, Mary heard the hens squawking. She rushed outside in the darkness to find a figure just about to lift another protesting bird away from her roost.
‘Who is that?’ she called. ‘Is that you, Nell, or one of your thieving family trying to rob us?’
Mary lunged at the figure and caught them by the shoulder. As she made them drop the hen and pushed them towards the cottage, they let out a sob.
In the gloom of the fire, Nell stood there, defiant.
‘You have nine fat hens and my family have nothing,’ she declared.
‘At the rate you are going, soon I will have no hens,’ Mary retorted angrily. ‘They will all have found their way into your pot. What am I to feed my family with then?’
‘It’s just a hen,’ Nell wheedled. ‘A stupid old hen.’
‘It’s my hen and she’s a fine layer.’
‘There is not a pick of food in the place or even a few leaves for the tea!’ Nell sobbed. ‘And we have Hogan threatening to put us out for we have no rent. Poor Tom is addled with it.’
Mary felt guilty immediately, but she had her own family to think of.
‘Nellie, don’t let me catch you near our hens!’ she warned.
‘It won’t happen again,’ her neighbour promised.
‘I am sorry for your troubles,’ she offered as she watched the forlorn figure of Nell in her black shawl walk slowly back across the fields.
Overcome with pity for her neighbour, the next morning Mary sent Con over to Nell’s with two turnips and a screw of tea leaves.