Creagh
SILENCE … EVERYTHING WAS STILL AND HUSHED, FOR THERE WAS NOT a bird in the sky or even a field mouse to be seen. Nests, burrows and lairs had all been pulled apart and searched, robbed in desperation. No spring bird song, mating calls or flurries disturbed this strange empty peace.
The fields about the Sullivans’ cottage were quiet too, lying fallow and unplanted. The children said and did little, for the hunger had weakened them so much. They did not have the energy for playing and chasing about the place. It grieved Mary to see them so.
The neighbours kept to themselves, all fearful of sickness and disease. Even Nell Flynn had stopped begging from her, for she knew that Mary had nothing to give her.
Brigid and her family struggled and whenever the women met, they hugged, for there were no words to describe the great sympathy they had for one another, nervously asking, ‘Are the children well?’
Truth to tell, all Mary cared for was John and Con, Nora, Tim and Annie. Her husband and family were the world to her. She called in to see Flor and Molly regularly, and it saddened her greatly to watch as her two elderly relatives grew weaker by the day. Their flesh had already melted from their bones and Molly’s skin hung loosely from her poor skeletal frame.
‘I am too tired for it all,’ admitted Flor. ‘Molly and I are not able for going to the soup kitchen or to hunt for food any more. We are content to rest easy here.’
Every few days, she and John brought them a little gruel, some oatcakes or a cup of nettle broth. What little they had, they tried to share.
‘I don’t know how much longer they can manage,’ John said, worried. ‘We cannot starve ourselves for them.’
‘We may be family but they don’t expect it of us,’ she reassured him.
When she brought them a few spoonfuls of warm, watered-down meal the following morning, she broached the subject of the workhouse.
‘Mary, girl, the workhouse is not for us,’ Flor said, shaking his head.
‘Flor and I would be in different parts,’ Molly protested. ‘We have never been parted since the day we married and will stay together for the rest of our days.’
Mary understood. They were proud people, only expressing the same love that she and John shared.
Less than a week later, John called up to them with some turnip, but Flor told him not to cross the door or come inside.
‘Molly’s sick,’ he reported to Mary when he arrived home, ‘so I left the bowl of food at the door and fetched them some water.’
Over the next few days, Mary and John continued to call up to the cottage, bringing any food they could manage to spare and re-filling the large water jug that was left at the door. Flor had also fallen sick and they could hear him coughing as he begged them to stay away for fear of spreading the fever.
Mary placed the small pot of meal at the door, knocking to let them know that she was outside.
Flor called out from inside to thank her, but his voice had grown weak.
‘Mary, promise me that you will bury us together.’
Alarmed, she gave him her word but asked him to let her in to assist them.
‘Molly is asleep,’ he said quietly.
Mary sobbed as she walked home, deeply upset by the suffering and hardship the old people endured, locked away in their cottage with not a child nor grandchild to help or comfort them.
The following day, on her return, the food and water jug lay untouched, and there was not even a whisper of smoke from the chimney. She called their names again and again, and knocked and rapped on their door, but Flor and Molly were silent.
She rushed home to John.
The couple had died as they lived, asleep together in their pallet bed. Peaceful, eyes closed, tucked in together.
Mary blessed herself.
‘What will we do?’
‘I’ll bury them in the same graveyard as my father,’ John said resolutely, ‘where the Sullivans are buried. It’s the least they deserve.’
There was not a penny for a coffin but John knew his duty. He harnessed their old donkey to the turf cart and, having wrapped his uncle and aunt gently in their blankets, placed them in it.
‘I will ride to Creagh with them and find the gravedigger there,’ he sighed. ‘You stay here with the children.’
The neighbours came out and stood at their doors, blessing themselves as the cart passed. The children were all upset at the loss of their old grand-uncle Flor and kind grand-aunt Molly, who used to make them scones and cook up the best pot of rabbit stew they had ever eaten. Molly, with her endless patience, sitting with a glint in her eye by the fireside, telling them stories of the sidhe, and their old uncle Flor, who could not only play the tin whistle but was also blessed with a fine singing voice, often singing as he worked or walked in the fields.
It was late when John got home.
‘It’s done and they are buried together,’ he told her.
‘In a pit?’ she asked, worried.
‘No, thank heaven. The gravedigger laid them together in a shallow grave. The poor donkey was barely up to it, but he got them to Creagh at least.’
They watched the clouds scud across the yellow moon.
‘They always loved each other dearly,’ John said after a while.
‘I know,’ she said, reaching for him. ‘Like I love you.’
He kissed her softly and she kissed him back, for life and love were more precious than all the gold in the world, once she and John had each other.