The potatoes were all gone. There was not a single one left. Kitty climbed down from the storage area set into the rafters of her tiny cottage and sighed. She’d crawled right into the corners, hoping against hope that there might be a few stray potatoes that had rolled right to the back. Anything to allow her to cook a meal of some sort for the children and herself tonight. Anything to hold off starvation for one more day.
She dropped to her knees on the cold stone floor. ‘Please God let there be something today for the children. I’ll be all right going without, sure I will, but young Michael needs to eat if he’s to work, and little Gracie is fading away, Lord bless her soul.’ The prayer was said in a whisper, for fear of waking her daughter who was curled up in a corner of the room. She was thankful Gracie slept, for all the time the child was sleeping she was not feeling the clawing pangs of hunger.
Kitty hauled herself upright again and crossed herself, feeling slightly dizzy. She had not eaten anything that day. The little family was reduced to a single meal each day now. She shook her head sadly, wondering what, if anything, she’d be able to give them this evening. Perhaps if Michael was paid what he was owed today, she could walk to Ballymor with his wages and buy some cornmeal. Or could she knock on doors and see if anyone could spare a potato or two? It was rumoured that Martin O’Shaughnessy still had a good stock. Probably blighted, like those she and the children had been living off these last months, but nevertheless they were just about edible and better than nothing. Could she bring herself to ask him for help? Old Martin wasn’t the friendliest of neighbours. His children had grown and left – two sons to America, a daughter wed in Limerick and another in Dublin. His wife had died of the consumption a couple of years ago, and he’d become a bit of a hermit since then. Kitty had helped nurse Niamh O’Shaughnessy at the end of her life, despite Martin telling her he could cope and she wasn’t needed. Now Martin was fast becoming Kitty’s only neighbour. The village was almost deserted. As the famine entered its third year, people had moved away in search of work and food. Or gone to be with God, like Kitty’s other children. She felt a wave of sadness wash over her as she remembered Little Pat and the three babies she’d lost. For a moment she could barely move or breathe, paralysed by grief, but she pulled herself together. She still had two children living, and they needed her to be strong.
She crossed the floor of her single-room cottage, to the rough straw mattress and pile of blankets that served as a bed for herself and Grace. She sat down and laid a hand on her daughter’s forehead.
‘Well now, Gracie. Have you slept well? Will I get you a sip of water?’
Grace’s huge dark eyes stared up at her, and a sweet smile came to her lips.
‘Bless you, child. Your smile lights up the cottage, so it does.’ Kitty scooped some water from a bucket into a pottery mug, and held it to Grace’s lips. The girl managed a few sips before lying back down on the blankets.
‘Mammy, will Michael catch a rabbit today?’ she asked.
Kitty closed her eyes as she remembered that glorious day, three weeks ago now, when Michael had come home with a rabbit he’d caught in a trap. They’d still had some potatoes then, from the meagre summer crop, and the stew she’d made that night with the rabbit meat had been a feast. There’d been some for the day after as well. But Michael wasn’t the only one in the community setting traps for rabbits, and he’d had no luck since that day. ‘Ah, sure rabbit stew would be lovely, wouldn’t it?’ she said to Grace, who nodded and feebly licked her lips.
It was another hour or more before Michael would be home. He was working in the fields for Mr Waterman today. Digging, hoeing, planting, weeding, tending, reaping and harvesting – all food that they’d see none of. Mr Waterman’s fields were planted with wheat and barley, all destined for export to England. Thomas Waterman, an Englishman, owned most of the land around here, and the villagers rented their cottages and small, private patches for growing potatoes from him, as well as working for him.
At the thought of Waterman, Kitty stopped stroking Grace’s hair and sat still, staring at nothing. There was another avenue, if she could bring herself to ask for charity. Thomas Waterman did not have a reputation for kindness. On the contrary, he was like his father before him – aloof and arrogant, seemingly immune to the poverty and suffering of those who worked for him. As with so many other English landowners in Ireland, he was often absent, and if he was on his Irish estates he’d keep to his big house and close his eyes to the effects of the famine. But he might make an exception for Kitty, if she asked him in the right way. They had history, a shared past. But could she do it? She silently shook her head. No. Not Thomas Waterman. She despised him with every breath of her body. She hadn’t run to him last winter when the famine carried off her three youngest. Neither had she when her boy Pat had succumbed of a fever, made worse she was sure by the hunger, the previous autumn. And she wouldn’t go to him now.
She would try Martin O’Shaughnessy. In her experience, the poor were more generous than the rich.
With a burst of resolve, she stood up from the bed, took her shawl down from its hook and knotted it around her shoulders. ‘Gracie, I’ll be going out for a little while, now. Have yourself another little sleep,’ she said softly, and Grace murmured something in reply.
She pushed open the wooden door of the cottage and went out, remembering the long-gone days when the lean-to pigpen beside the cottage had always housed a pig nursing her piglets, and with a goat tied up beside it providing them with milk each day. When the potato crops first failed in the autumn of 1845, she’d had to sell the goat. She’d had to sell the pig the year before, after her husband Patrick had died in the terrible mining accident. In Thomas Waterman’s copper mine, she thought, pressing her lips together hard.
It was a fine day. Cold, but with no rain or drizzle. If you had the time to stand and stare, there was a grand view from the village across the heather moorlands towards the coast. On a good day you could see a ribbon of silver that was the sea. Kitty had been there once, when she was courting Patrick and old Mother Heaney had looked after Michael, then aged just three, for the day. She had gazed in awe at the vastness of the ocean. ‘Somewhere over there’s America,’ Patrick had said. ‘We’ll go, when I’ve made enough money working in the mines. You, me and Michael. We’ll make our fortune there.’
She’d kissed him deeply then, loving his optimism for the future, loving that he was taking on her child that was not his own and not judging her for it, loving his strong arms and broad shoulders which she’d thought would protect her and her children for ever.
But that was not how things had turned out. She cast aside the memory. There were more important things to think about today – such as how she was going to feed her remaining children.
Martin O’Shaughnessy’s house was at the top end of the village, past a dozen empty cottages, some of which were already falling into ruin. She remembered when the village had been vibrant, buzzing with life, children running up and down in front of the cottages, goats and pigs tied up outside most homes, women hanging washing out to dry, men repairing thatch or hauling sacks of healthy potatoes inside to store in their roof-spaces. Strange to think that was only a couple of years ago, before the blight came, before the repeated failures of the potato crop.
She passed the Brennans’ cottage. When Seamus Brennan had died Mary Brennan and her five young children had gone into the workhouse, there being no one left in the family able to work. Kitty had been luckier, having Michael old enough to earn while she looked after the children. But it was a hard life for a young lad to have to provide for his mother and siblings. Sibling, she corrected herself. Only Gracie left now, of all of them. Her beautiful babies, all gone, buried in a single plot in the Ballymor churchyard. Beyond the Brennans’ cottage was the Delaneys’ old place. Two dead, one gone to Dublin in search of employment, and one seeking his fortune in America. And so it continued up the row of cottages. Everyone gone; either died or emigrated or in the workhouse. No one left. Finally, she reached the end cottage. Smoke curled from its chimney, and a scrawny tethered goat scrambled to its feet as she approached. She smiled and scratched its head. It was a little reminder of how things used to be.
She rapped on Martin’s door. ‘Mr O’Shaughnessy? It’s me, Kitty McCarthy. Are you at home?’
The door opened, and Martin, a grizzled-looking man with the beginnings of a hunchback, came out. ‘Welcome, neighbour. Is it your little girl?’
Kitty was momentarily taken aback, then realised he was assuming someone had died. To be sure, that had been the usual reason for knocking on doors these last two years. ‘No, no. She’s sickly, but still with us, God be praised,’ she replied.
‘Well, that’s something. Such a bonny little thing, she is, with her copper hair and her sunny smile,’ Martin said. He looked at her expectantly.
Kitty suddenly felt uneasy, now that she was here on Martin’s doorstep. How could she ask him for charity? It wasn’t in her nature – she was too proud. But if she didn’t, they’d go hungry tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day. An image of Grace’s big, trusting eyes came to her. She couldn’t fail her little girl, her only remaining daughter. ‘Mr O’Shaughnessy, it pains me so to ask, but I have no choice. Could you see your way to sparing a few potatoes for us? We’re completely running out. It’s not for myself I’m asking, you understand. It’s for the children. For Gracie.’
She stopped talking and stood quietly, watching him, waiting for him to reply. She had a sudden intuition that their fortunes depended on his response. If he turned her away that would be the beginning of the end for all of them. They’d be joining Patrick and the children in the life beyond. ‘Mr O’Shaughnessy, as soon as Michael is paid I can repay you, buy you some corn perhaps.’
But he was shaking his head. ‘No, no. I won’t be taking young Michael’s wages. Wait here.’ He went inside his cottage and reappeared a moment later hauling a bulging sack. ‘Here. Take these. I have enough.’
Kitty couldn’t believe it. He was giving her a whole sack of potatoes! Enough to last, if she was careful, a month or more. She peeked in the top. They didn’t look to be blighted, either. ‘I can’t take so many, Mr O’Shaughnessy. You’ll need them. It’s a long while till the next harvest.’ She tried to push the sack back to him, but he refused.
‘You’ll take it, Kitty McCarthy. Your need is the greater – you and those bairns of yours. I haven’t forgotten your kindness when my Niamh was dying.’ He coughed, a harsh, rasping rattle that came from deep in his chest. ‘I still have enough to last the winter, though I think the good Lord will be wanting my company before next harvest. When I’m gone, you can take all that’s left. For your little colleen.’
‘Ah, thank you, thank you, Mr O’Shaughnessy. God will spare you for your kind heart. If there is anything I can do for you, you must ask me.’
He shook his head. ‘There’s nothing. Maybe I’ll need a spot of nursing at the end, but until then, I’m grand. Away with you, now, back to your little girl who needs you.’
He made a shooing action with his hands, and closed the door.
Kitty offered up a silent prayer of thanks for good neighbours, and resolved to check on him every day. If he was as sick as he thought he was then certainly she would nurse him and make his last days as comfortable as possible. It was the least she could do for him. She hauled the sack back to her own cottage, and stored most of the potatoes, unblighted, fat and white, in the loft space, while little Gracie slept on in the corner.
She kept out three large potatoes, and put them in the pot ready to cook. There’d be a meal awaiting Grace when she woke, and ready for Michael when he returned from work. The sky outside was beginning to darken; he’d be home soon.
*
But Michael did not return until an hour after dark, when Kitty was just beginning to worry about what might have happened to him. He was carrying something wrapped in a piece of sackcloth, which he put down upon the scarred table in the middle of the room.
‘What’s that?’ Kitty asked, her curiosity greater than her wish to tell him of Mr O’Shaughnessy’s kindness.
‘A duck,’ Michael said, with pride.
Kitty looked at him with equal pride. He was tall and strong, too thin of course, but handsome, with his black hair and blue eyes. So unlike her own copper hair and milky freckled skin, which Grace had inherited. ‘Where from?’
‘Waterman’s ornamental pond,’ he replied, with a sideways look at her. ‘So we will eat well tonight.’
He was aware, she knew, that she objected to poaching, even from Thomas Waterman, who had more than enough. ‘Ah, Michael,’ she said, shaking her head but unable to stop the beginnings of a smile at the corners of her mouth. ‘What if you were caught? What if the steward saw you? If you get taken away and locked up for thievery that’ll be the end of us, so it will.’
But Michael wasn’t listening. He’d crossed the room to the pile of straw and blankets, and was kneeling beside Gracie, stroking her hair and whispering. Kitty went closer to hear what he was saying.
‘You’ll eat like a princess tonight, Gracie. Duck breast, fried with a little rosemary and sage, cut into succulent thick slices. And duck broth tomorrow. Meat, Gracie! Meat such as Mr Waterman has every day. And when this duck has gone, I know where I can get more. We’ll have duck every week, so we will. Awake now. We’ll be eating in an hour or less.’
‘There’s potatoes as well. Good ones. Enough for a month,’ Kitty said.
Michael turned to her with wide eyes as she told him how she’d come by the sack of potatoes. ‘He’s a good man and a true friend,’ he said. ‘I’ll take him a leg of this duck, will I, in return?’
‘But he will ask where it came from,’ Kitty said, frowning. She wanted to repay Martin’s kindness but feared what would happen if people heard Michael was poaching from Waterman.
‘Sure, and I’ll make him up a story. He’ll guess the truth but he won’t tell, sure he won’t.’ Michael unwrapped the duck and pulled out his knife. He swiftly removed a leg, including the thigh, and wrapped that in a smaller cloth. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, Mammy. Get that duck and some potatoes in the pot!’