Rose heard her mother call to Mary and felt the planks creak as the older girl got out of the box bed by the hearth, where once their father’s mother had watched the comings and goings of the house by day and listened to the talk of neighbours in the evenings. She rolled over sleepily into the warm hollow Mary had left in the straw mattress and dragged the thin coverlet round her more closely. But it was no good. Without her sister’s warmth, she soon began to shiver. She got up quickly and pulled on her shift and the wool smock her mother had made for her because she so often felt the cold.
There was no sign of her mother or father. All was quiet and dim. Newly-lit, the fire smoked on the hearth. Gusts of wind blew down the chimney every few minutes. They swirled the cold ash from yesterday’s fire across the well-swept floor and sent billows of thick smoke from today’s into every corner of the room. It was cold even with her clothes on. She wished she were back in bed with Mary.
She coughed, rubbed the smoke out of her eyes and peered through the open door. There’d been frost in the night and the ground was hard, the hen’s water frozen solid in the old tin bucket. Ice had formed on the shallow puddles that spread out between the houses whenever it rained. She saw her parents standing outside Andy Laverty’s house. Mary was with them and they were listening to the old man. She could see the baby wrapped in her mother’s shawl, but there was no sign of her brothers.
‘Ma,’ she called several times.
She didn’t hear, but her father did and waved her back indoors.
She moved out of the doorway, but went on watching, for she knew something was amiss. Andy was red in the face and waving his arms around in great agitation. Her father had an anxious frown on his face. He seemed to be asking questions because each time Andy spoke in reply he shook his head and stared down the track to the roadway. Andy was still talking when she saw her brothers, Patrick and Michael hurrying up the track. Danny Lawn was with them, striding out so fast they had to run to keep up with him.
‘What’s the news, Danny?’ her father asked abruptly.
‘They’re on the road the far side of Warrenstown,’ he blurted out. ‘Da said to tell you there’s no talkin’ to them. There’s Adair’s land agent and a whole lot of polis, and a gang of men with the ram and axes and the like forby. And they’re all from away. All strangers, though they’re talkin’ Irish the same as us. They just say they have their orders, there’s nothin’ they can do t’ help us.’
Suddenly, the baby started to bawl, so Rose only heard fragments of what her father said.
‘… she’ll have to go indoors if they’ll give her a place.’
As her father went on talking Mary put her hands over her face.
‘Danny, away back, good man ye are. Send me word if …’
The baby had only paused. Now he’d started again, as Danny set off at a run, struggling in her mother’s arms, his small fists beating the air, his red hair catching the first pale gleams of light from the rising sun.
Rose slipped quietly across the room and sat on her stool by the fire.
‘Good girl, you’re up and dressed,’ her mother began, her voice soft but firm. ‘Now you take Samuel while Mary and I make breakfast.’
Her mother lowered the child into her arms, his face red with the fury of his crying, tears still wet on his cheeks. She cradled him to her, delighted by his warmth. Babies were always warm. She shushed him and rocked him and sang to him, the way her mother and Mary did. To her surprise, he went to sleep immediately. Through the open door, she caught sight of her father going into the byre with Patrick and Michael, the ice cracking beneath their feet.
‘Is he puttin’ us out?’ she whispered to Mary, as the older girl leant past her and hung the pot to boil over the fire.
But Mary said nothing, her lips pressed tightly together, her face closed. She just glanced sideways at their mother, measuring oats from the sack in the corner of the room.
‘We’ll meet that if we come to it, Rose,’ she said evenly. ‘The day’s not over yet,’ she added.
From her stool by the hearth, the baby asleep in her arms, she waited, alert for any unfamiliar noise from outside.
As soon as they’d eaten their porridge, her mother despatched Michael and Patrick to take the donkey to graze by the wayside. She handed Mary a can of milk for her aunt in Warrenstown.
‘See she drinks it all, but don’t linger. Come straight back,’ she warned. ‘Don’t pay any attention to the strangers. There’s nothing you can do.’
She scraped the last of the porridge into a bowl and handed it to her husband. ‘Take that over to Andy, like a good man. He’s no fire lit yet to cook a bite.’
Rose watched her mother clear away the dishes from their meal. There was an air of busyness about her, but she did none of the jobs she usually did, like go to the spring for water, or bake bread for the evening. Even the floor was left unswept.
She stood still and silent in the doorway for a while, then turned back into the room and moved around, touching familiar things, picking them up, patting them and holding them.
A woman just turned forty, Hannah McGinley was still handsome. Taller than her husband Patrick and once as fair as he was dark, she moved with a kind of gracefulness that seemed out of place in such a humble home. Even when she bent to sweep the hearth with a goose’s wing or add turf to the fire, she had none of the awkwardness of women worn by childbearing and the burden of hard work.
Her hands were still soft, the nails clean and trimmed though deep seamed with fine lines. Once, when Rose had asked her why her hands weren’t like other women’s hands, she said it was because of the embroidery. If you did white work you had to keep your hands soft by rubbing them with meal or buttermilk.
‘Strange you should ask, Rose dear,’ she began, a wistful smile on her face. ‘An old woman who read fortunes once told me no matter how hard I worked, I’d always have the hands of a lady.’
Rose was just thinking about the hands of a lady when the baby woke up and cried again and this time there was no stopping him.
‘Good girl,’ Hannah said, taking him from her. ‘Bring me the shawl. Do you want to go and do a pee-pee?’
When Rose came back from behind the byre, her mother was feeding him, the shawl draped over her shoulder, covering both child and bare breast. She was singing, a song about a lad that was born to be King going over the sea to Skye.
They started with the house nearest the roadway. Old Mary McBride had barred the door. She sat stubbornly by her fireside when the urgent knocking came. It took a man with a hatchet only a minute or two to smash the door into kindling. They gave her five minutes to collect her possessions and get outside while they lined up the ram on the lintel above the door. When it gave way, the central part of the roof fell in, dust from the collapse pouring out from the empty doorway like smoke from a fire.
She stood there, stunned, shaking from cold and shock as ropes were secured to the gable ends. Men hauled on the ropes till they gave way and crashed down outside the cottage walls. The last support of the sagging roof removed, the remainder of the thatch pitched inwards to extinguish the fire on the hearth and obliterate all trace of a life that had survived even the Great Famine itself. Having ensured the cottage could no longer provide shelter, the men moved on. A tall, gaunt figure in dark clothes stepped forward and approached the shivering woman.
He bent down towards her and spoke slowly and carefully.
‘As you now have no home or any visible means of support I am to tell you that you are entitled to relief in Letterkenny Workhouse. A cart has been provided for transport. It is waiting over beyond.’
Only when old Mary McBride’s cabin was a heap of rubble did Patrick McGinley finally accept he was helpless.
‘Hannah, there’s nothing for it. What’ll we do?’
Rose thought there were tears in her father’s eyes, but she couldn’t be sure. When the smoke was as bad as it was today, they all had red eyes and now there was dust drifting through the open door from Mary McBride’s. She could almost taste it on the back of her throat, a stinging dryness.
‘Get me the box, Patrick, my love, while there’s time,’ she said softly, putting a hand to his cheek. ‘We’re not the only folk to suffer like this. It’s not new. Adair is only another Sutherland. He’ll only defeat us if we give in. We’ll not let him do that.’
Her father turned away without speaking, took a pronged fork from the tools by the open door and went into the tiny bedroom where he and Hannah slept. He returned moments later with a battered old metal box, its surface still dirty with tramped earth from the floor.
She opened it quickly and sorted through the contents. The largest item was a big fat book with a black cover. There was a packet of papers, a china tea cup and saucer decorated with flowers, a brooch and two little pouches with drawstrings.
Rose watched in fascination. She had never seen the box before.
‘Ma, what’s that?’ she gasped.
‘It’s your great-grandfather’s watch. You can hold it for a moment.’
But no sooner had Rose clutched the cold silver case of the fob watch that her eye caught the glint of coins.
‘Not a word,’ said her mother sharply, as she counted them and put them back in their pouch. ‘None of you will say a word about the watch or the sovereigns.’
She turned to her husband and handed the pouch to him.
‘When the Mackays were driven from Sutherland, they hadn’t a ha’penny. Put it on a string round your waist and cover it well.’
The sounds of falling thatch were coming closer by the minute. Quickly, Hannah McGinley dispersed the precious objects amongst her children, showing them how to hide them in their scanty clothing. Young Patrick was entrusted with the silver fob watch, Mary with the cup and saucer wrapped in an unfinished piece of white embroidery. Michael put the papers under his shirt and Hannah pinned the brooch on Rose’s shift below the woollen smock.
‘Gather up the potatoes from the barn, boys, and bring them here.’
She turned to her husband. ‘D’ye think they’ll leave us the cart, or will they say it belongs to Adair? And what about the cow?’
Her husband shook his head.
‘There was carts on the road earlier from Warrenstown going towards Glendowan. They must have let them go. But there isn’t much room in it. Will I put straw in the bottom for Rose and the baby? What else can we take forby?’
‘The sack of oats and the bit of flour left in the crock. A bit of turf and kindling for a fire.’
He turned to go and found the doorway blocked by a man about his own height.
‘I must ask you to remove yourself from Mr Adair’s property.’
For one moment, Patrick McGinley was overcome by blind fury. Sweat broke on his forehead and he felt every muscle in his body long to lash out at this man, this lackey, this miserable apology for an Irishman.
And then he heard his wife’s voice, cool and polite.
‘Patrick dear, ask the gentleman to step inside to deliver his message.’
He had never mastered the Scotch, but the way she said ‘Patrick dear,’ he could understand in any language she would ever speak.
‘No, astore, this man will never set foot over this threshold,’ he said in his own speech. ‘Come out with the children and we’ll be gone.’
He pushed past the man, brought out the donkey and cart from the barn and lifted Rose up into it. The boys added the bundles of oats and potatoes and turf.
‘Are you all right Rose?’ her mother asked.
‘Aye,’ she said, bravely.
She was cold and the bag of turf was poking into her, so closely packed was the small cart.
‘Can you hold the baby?’
The sun was setting and a thin rain was beginning to fall. The baby was warm in her arms as the cart moved out between the wrecked houses. The men had lit a fire and were feeding the flames with pieces of Andy Laverty’s door. Andy was nowhere to be seen.
The flickering light reflected on sweaty faces and strong, dirty forearms, on the uniforms and helmets of the police who stood watching. All around, people were coming and going, some trying to get back into the wreckage of their houses, some sitting crying on the doorsteps.
‘Don’t look back, Patrick,’ said Hannah, touching her husband’s arm as he pulled on the donkey’s bridle. ‘Nor any of you,’ she added, looking round at Mary and her brothers, who were following behind with the cow.
They made their way slowly down to the roadway in the fading light.
‘Which way?’
In the twenty years since Patrick McGinley had brought his Hannah back to the mountain, he had come to understand that when times were really bad and all he could do was despair, it was Hannah who could see a way. While he had her, he knew he’d never give in.
‘To the right. We’ll find shelter tonight in Casheltown.’
The rain slackened momentarily, then turned to sleet. The sudden squall blew in their faces, bouncing icy fragments on their clothes, drifting on the rough surface of the road. Rose closed her eyes as the hail stung her face. She drew her mother’s shawl closer over herself and the sleeping baby.
Above the creaking of the cart and the rush of wind, they heard behind them a shuddering crash. Though they all knew what it was not one of them looked back.