1843

It began quietly, in America. A farmer in the New York region, looking out over a field of growing potatoes one day, noticed that something was amiss.

Some of the potato leaves had spots on them. He waited a few days. More of the leaves were spotted now, and the ones he had first noticed had withered. The stems on which they grew seemed to be affected, too. That night, he discussed with his wife whether he should dig them up or lift the entire crop early.

The following morning, when he went out to the field, there was a stench of putrefying matter rising from the ground.

He set to work at once. He dug up everything that looked infected. Many of the potatoes were already rotting; in others, rot had clearly begun. When he had completed this work, he made a large bonfire and burned them all. About half of the crop was still in the ground.

Being a decent man, he went to all his neighbours and then into the local town, to warn of the blight and discover whether others were experiencing similar problems. A number of farmers were reporting the same thing.

Some days later, he saw spotting once again and said to his wife: “Better lift the whole crop. Save what we can.” A good many of the potatoes were obviously infected, and these he destroyed, as he had the others. About half the remaining crop, fortunately, appeared to be sound, and these he stored in a pit.

Ten days later, he checked the crop he had saved. He picked out a potato and cut it open with a knife. It was rotten. He tried another. The same. Half the potatoes he had thought were sound were now useless.

Phytophthora infestans: it was a fungal infestation. But where had it come from?

Nobody knew, but the likelihood was that it had come into the United States as an importation. For, desirous of avoiding any degeneracy in the potato stock, the American agriculturalists were in the habit of importing fresh seed potatoes from Peru. Some of the ships also brought guano, the seabird manure used as fertilizer. It seems likely that the fungus spread from the guano to the seed potato on the ship.

Having established itself in New York, the fungus was already starting to spread with astonishing rapidity. It would cross New Jersey and Pennsylvania. By 1845, it would reach the American Midwest.

The trade in seed potato was triangular. From America’s eastern seaboard, the seed was exported east to Europe. By the time it was established in the Midwest, the blight would also appear in the Low Countries of Holland and Belgium, and on the south coast of England.

“You have never read The Wild Irish Girl?” Lady Mountwalsh looked at Dudley Doyle with astonishment. She thought everybody had.

Everyone liked Henrietta. She must be fifty, Doyle thought; yet there was still something girlish about the Englishwoman William had chosen as his bride. And the complexion, the peaches-and-cream complexion that had turned heads in every drawing room in London and Dublin—it was still the same. That, and the china-blue eyes that were turned upon him now, and the delectable, plump little breasts. He envied Mountwalsh his marriage bed. The couple had been happy and had raised a healthy family. She might be a little silly, but there was certainly no malice in her. And she was, as he supposed, an enthusiast for all things Irish.

“And you,” she said, “with those dark, Celtic good looks.” He smiled. One had to like her.

“You know, Henrietta, in Irish, my name actually means ‘dark foreigner.’ So I must suppose that my ancestors were Viking pirates,” he explained to her, “rather than Irish heroes.” Vikings who would certainly have married local Irish women, themselves a mixture of tribes from northern France and, so the legends said, people from the Spanish peninsula. Since those ancient days, what other strains would have entered the blood? Norman, Flemish, Welsh, English, to be sure. Some more Spanish, probably. His clever, somewhat ruthless mind enjoyed such analysis. “It’s hard to know what Celtic means, really,” he remarked.

But Henrietta knew. It meant the romantic heroine of Lady Morgan’s famous novel, the wild daughter of the “Prince of Con-naught,” who wins the heart of the prejudiced Englishman and teaches him to love the glories of Irish wit and learning, bravery and generosity. It meant the purity of soul that came from the timeless Celtic wellsprings. It meant Hibernia—a land of heroes and mystics, a magical counterpart to the sterner beauties of Scotland in the novels of Walter Scott. It had made Ireland quite fashionable. In fact, Doyle had read the book, though he preferred to tease Henrietta gently by pretending that he hadn’t. And if, to him, it was all nonsense, the fictional romantic Celt was at least an improvement upon the traditional view of the Irishman as a bog-dwelling murderer and devious papist—a slander that was still to be found in the cartoons of Punch magazine or the pages of any English newspaper.

Every time Henrietta went back to London with her husband, she told people about the Ireland she knew. True, he thought wryly, it was an Ireland that consisted of the big house on St. Stephen’s Green and this great estate in Wexford, with its rolling pastures and its ornamental gardens. It was a land where you called upon similar-minded neighbours, enjoyed their dinner parties, where you were waited upon by their loyal Irish servants, played cards, went to the club. Since her husband was a decent man and one of the best landlords in Ireland, she had encountered a friendliness from the local Irish tenants and labourers that was entirely genuine. And all this was glossed with a magical Celtic romanticism that coloured the landscape like a charming evening sunset amongst the hills. However, if she induced some members of the English governing class to take a more kindly view of the western island, then so much the better, he supposed.

“This is a most excellent meal,” he added with a smile. Gaston, the Mountwalshes’ chef, always performed miracles with the produce from the estate whenever he accompanied them into Wexford. Outside, the dusk was gathering. The magical season of Halloween, the old Celtic festival of Samhain, was only days away.

Much as he liked Henrietta, however, it was not her that he had really come to see. He glanced across the table at Stephen Smith. They hadn’t spoken much yet, as the fellow had only arrived that afternoon, looking tired. But when William Mountwalsh had invited Doyle to stay, he had told him: “Stephen Smith is a man I think you should know better.” And William, he always reckoned, was a fair judge of men. “Though, of course,” the peer had added, “I know how hard you are to please.”

If his ancestors had always chosen to remain in the merchant class, Dudley Doyle had chosen a slightly different style. To all outward appearances, he looked, dressed, talked, and, to a large extent, thought like a country gentleman. He belonged to the Kildare Street Club, whose members were mostly landowners. But although he owned two farms in Meath, he had always lived in town except in the summer months, when he resided in a seaside villa he had built at Sandymount, in the southern part of Dublin Bay. He had ample funds. The collection of Dublin properties that old Barbara Doyle had passed on to his grandfather was still in his hands. He owned a half share in a thriving wine merchants, and received ground rent from three large pubs. And though he met the country gentry at his club, at the races, or as a guest in their houses, he often preferred the company of the university men. At Trinity College, he had been a precise, classical scholar. But for many years now, he had chosen to occupy his spare time in the private study of political economy. Since being widowed two years ago, he had devoted himself to these studies even more. From time to time, if asked politely, he would even give a lecture upon the subject.

As his eyes took in Stephen Smith, he saw much that he did not like. A trace of carelessness in his dressing. He himself was always fastidious. An intelligent face, certainly, but not a university man. A pity. The earl had said that he was poor, and poverty, Dudley Doyle considered, was always a mistake. Also that he was amusing. But what were his verbal weapons? Were we speaking of a mere gift of utterance, the broad blade of humour, the vagaries of vulgar whimsy, thrown over a company like a gladiator’s net? Or were we speaking of something with more politesse, the rapier of repartee, with which he himself was adept, quick, and deadly? It remained to be seen.

“You are an associate of Mr. O’Connell, I understand?” he said to Smith. “Do I take it, therefore, that you are a Whig?”

Since his astonishing election for Clare, fifteen years before, it was hard to imagine how Daniel O’Connell could have played his cards better. The English government had been so shocked by the result that it had promptly removed the right to vote from the forty-shilling freeholders, Catholic and Protestant alike, and raised the qualification so high that only the better sort of farmers—the more responsible element—could vote in future. But they had been forced to give way and let Catholics sit in Parliament. O’Connell, hailed as the Liberator, had gained his main objective. And soon after that, when the liberal Whig party had come to power, O’Connell had seen his chance. Building up a large following of sixty Irish members, he had skilfully managed an alliance with the Whigs that had been fruitful. He charmed the Whig grandees in person; and leading his sixty followers to their aid in close votes, he made them very grateful to him. The Irish Catholics gained. “We’ll do all for you that we can,” the government promised. A year after young Queen Victoria came to the throne, even the vexed question of tithes was finally resolved. Above all, the long decade of Whig government saw enlightened men sent out to govern Ireland: fine men like the Under Secretary, Thomas Drummond, who came to love the country and who never ceased to remind the Ascendancy landowners: “Property has rights, gentlemen, but it also has responsibilities.” A dozen years after his election, O’Connell could say that his compromise with the Whigs had produced real benefits.

Could he have done better? The cause of Repeal—the breaking away from Union with England—had been indefinitely postponed. It couldn’t be denied. And some of his younger followers felt that the great Liberator had degenerated into a political deal-maker. “But since the government wasn’t going to give us Repeal anyway,” he’d remarked to Stephen, “I think I did the right thing.”

“I am that noblest of beasts, Sir,” Stephen replied to Dudley Doyle with a wry smile. “I am a Catholic Whig.”

“For reform, but through Parliament? You are prepared to be patient?”

“I am a political animal. I abhor violence, just as O’Connell does. That is why,” he said with a sigh, “I have been his man for twenty years.”

“Then what, might I ask, do you intend to do now?” asked Doyle. “After Clontarf?”

Stephen shook his head.

“My life,” he answered sadly, “has reached a point of crisis.”

It was three years ago that the strategy had started to break down. First Drummond had died, and the Irish had buried him with sorrow. Then the Whig government had fallen and the Tories had come in. What should O’Connell do now? Some of his young followers were certain—Young Ireland, they called themselves, and even had their own journal, The Nation . “It’s time to fight for Repeal,” they declared, “by any and all means, if necessary.” The great Liberator wasn’t ready to lose the movement he’d built up. He placed himself at their head, and this very year he had launched a campaign of huge rallies across Ireland. O’Connell’s monster meetings were beyond anything seen before. Tens of thousands would come to hear the great Liberator speak. All over Leinster, Munster, and Connacht he went: Dublin and Wicklow, Waterford and Wexford, Cork, Sligo, and Mayo; to Ennis, where he had triumphed; even to the ancient royal site of Tara. “We will force the British government,” he cried, “to give us justice or our freedom.” But Britain’s Tory government would not be moved. The monster meetings were to climax with the biggest rally of them all. It was to be held just outside Dublin, on the northern bank of the Liffey estuary, at Clontarf, where, eight centuries before, Ireland’s heroic king, Brian Boru, had fought his final battle. The massed ranks of priests, the Repeal men with their banners were all prepared—most of the population of the capital would probably turn up. But the Tory government had had enough.

“Call off your meeting or face jail,” it told O’Connell.

It had been the terrible decision. Stephen had been at a meeting with O’Connell and a number of others when the matter was discussed. “We must operate within the law,” the Liberator had declared, “or we give up everything we stand for.” Stephen himself had agreed. “In politics,” he’d reminded everyone, “you can live to fight another day.” But not all the great man’s followers had agreed, especially the Young Ireland men.

Two weeks ago, O’Connell had called the meeting off. Nobody knew what to do next. Some of the younger men spoke of revolution, which Stephen knew to be useless and mistaken. The movement was in shock. He himself had experienced a huge sense of frustration. And he had been grateful indeed when, shortly afterwards, he had received an invitation from Mountwalsh to come and spend a few days down in Wexford. “It might,” his lordship had kindly suggested, “cheer you up.”

“A crossroads rather than a crisis, perhaps,” Dudley Doyle offered, not unkindly.

“The crossroads, I believe,” Stephen said, “is for Ireland rather than myself. For whatever good we have been able to do in these last dozen years is still so little, when you consider the problems that beset our country. The poverty is terrible.”

“Take some comfort, Stephen,” said William Mountwalsh. “Things here in Leinster are not so bad. And remember,” he added, “the war with Napoleon was very good for Ireland, because we sold the English so many provisions. When it ended, we were worried. The beef industry took a terrible knock. Yet look what happened,” he went on cheerfully. “Thanks to the new railways in England, we can send live cattle to every part of the market there, which we never could before. There are more people, so the price of grain has held. Our farmers do well. Speaking for myself, I’ve never done better.”

“I accept what you say for Wexford,” replied Stephen. “Though I can tell you that up in the mountains of Wicklow, my family and their neighbours live near subsistence. Last time I was up at Rathconan, I found twice the number of folk that I remember as a child, with miserable little potato patches dug right up onto the bare hillside, where nothing but sheep have ever been raised before. Some of the people are quite wretchedly poor.”

“That may be,” Dudley Doyle countered, “but consider the case of Ulster. The people there have small farms, but they are prosperous. They have the linen industry, and much else besides.”

“Ulster I scarcely know,” Stephen confessed. “O’Connell never goes there. The Presbyterians have become so strident of late that he’d hardly be welcome.” He paused. “But I was thinking of the west above all. Of Clare, Galway, Mayo. The situation there is terrible and getting worse.”

“Ah, the west. That is another matter,” Mountwalsh acknowledged.

“Isn’t it a case of bad landlords?” asked Henrietta. “I mean, if the landlords were like William . . .”

“It would be better,” Stephen said politely, “but the problems are too big even for the best landlords to solve. I really don’t know what’s to be done.”

William glanced around the table. There was a fifth person there, who had not yet spoken during the present conversation. He turned to her now.

“And what does Miss Doyle think?”

It was strange that Dudley Doyle’s eldest daughter was not married. Both her younger sisters were. She was handsome, and it was known that her father had settled three thousand pounds on her. She was twenty-five, with a calm and pleasant manner; her colouring was good, her brown eyes fine and intelligent. She smiled now.

“I leave those things to the men,” she said.

“Oh, so do I,” said Henrietta.

Doyle looked at his daughter curiously. Now why, he wondered, would she say that? Stephen also gave her a glance—polite, but just a little weary.

“I fear I disappoint you, Mr. Smith,” she said.

“Oh no, not at all,” he answered, though of course it was not true.

“The problem really,” said William Mountwalsh, “is that there are too many people for this island to support. The government estimates that we are well past eight million now. Farming methods, especially in the west, need much improvement. But it seems that Ireland is living proof of the theories of Malthus: that humans will always breed faster than the food supply increases. That is why we have always had wars down the ages.” Having brought the conversation back to life, as a good host should, he turned to Doyle. “You make a study of these things, Dudley. Tell us what is the answer.”

Doyle surveyed them all. He did not mind having an audience. He paused for a moment.

“The answer,” he said, with a faint smile of satisfaction, “is there is nothing wrong with Ireland at all.”

“Nothing wrong?’ Stephen looked at him incredulously.

“Nothing,” said the economist. “And I am surprised, Mr. Smith, that you, as a Whig—which you say that you are—should think that there is.”

“Explain, Dudley,” said William with a broad smile, as he settled back in his chair.

“As a Whig,” Dudley Doyle addressed Stephen, rather as a lawyer in court addresses a witness before a jury, “you believe in free trade, do you not?”

“I do.”

“You do not think that governments should intervene, as the British government was once so fond of doing, to protect inefficient farmers and manufacturers with tariffs or restrictions on trade? You believe in the operation of the free market—that, over time, it is always best?”

“Certainly.”

“Then that is what we have. There is now an excess of people in Ireland. Very well. The result is that their labour is cheap. There is therefore an incentive for enterprising manufacturers to employ them.”

“That may happen in Ulster, but it does not happen in Clare. And the people go hungry.”

“I believe that eventually it will, but no matter. The hunger of the people is not a bad thing. It will drive them to seek work further afield. Do we not see that occurring?”

“Labourers from Clare take their spades and migrate for seasonal work as far as Leinster, or often England,” Stephen agreed.

“Excellent. Britain benefits thereby, for the cost of its labour is reduced and the Irishman is fed.”

“Many have to leave entirely, though,” Stephen said sadly, “forced to emigrate, to England or America.”

“Do you know,” interposed Mountwalsh, “that over a million people have left this island during my own lifetime? About four hundred thousand in the last decade.”

“Splendid,” said Doyle, smiling at them both. “The whole world benefits thereby. There are too many people in Ireland? Well and good. America has need of them. A vast, rich continent in need of willing hands. They can do very well there. Indeed, without Ireland, what would America be? We must take a larger view, gentlemen. The temporary misery of the Irish peasant is a blessing in disguise. Do not interfere with the market, therefore. Thanks to the market, the whole world turns.”

“But the process is so cruel,” Stephen said.

“So is nature.”

There was a thoughtful pause.

“Isn’t it fascinating to listen to them?” said Henrietta to Caroline Doyle. “I think it’s time for the dessert.”

William was delighted when Caroline Doyle asked him to show her the library after dinner. It was he, after all, who’d suggested to Doyle that he should bring her. She admired the collection and found a few of her favourite books. Then she turned to him and smiled.

“Well, Lord Mountwalsh, I know you’ve asked me here to meet him. So what sort of man is Stephen Smith?”

“I suppose,” he answered truthfully, “that I wouldn’t have asked you if it were easy to say.”

Her father had only agreed to the business because, as he freely confessed to the earl, he didn’t know what to do with her. He might have an incisive mind himself, but though he admired his daughter’s intelligence, he couldn’t really see the point of it in a woman. It was certainly no help in getting married. “I must warn you,” he counselled her, “that men don’t like too much intelligence in a woman. A man likes a woman with just enough intelligence to appreciate his own. If you wish to be more than that, you would be wise to hide it.” But though she agreed to do this—usually—she made a further demand that was just as awkward. “She wants to find a man,” he told William, “who she thinks interesting. I told her, ‘Interesting men usually give their wives a lot of trouble.’ But I’m not sure she believes me.”

“Stephen Smith is certainly interesting,” the earl continued now.

It was also time he married. He was already thirty-five. A few years more, William considered, and the fellow would become so set in his ways that he’d never tolerate anybody. And it was time that Stephen had a home. He’d been living in lodgings for years.

William Mountwalsh had known other men like Stephen Smith. Men who were so fascinated by the daily business of politics, with its excitement, uncertainties, and nighttime confabulations, not to mention the thrill of feeling you were close to influence and power, that they could spend decades in busy backrooms and corridors, and never realize that life had passed them by. Politics, he knew, was a drug, and Stephen was an addict. He needed to be saved.

William had also observed that these cynical political men were often secret idealists. Stephen Smith did not worship O’Connell; he was too intelligent. But he truly believed that O’Connell was guiding the Irish to a better destiny. Like a prophet of old, the Liberator might not lead his people out of the desert, but he had already taken them part of the way. Sometimes men like Stephen also dreamed of becoming leaders themselves. That was hard for a poor man, though not impossible. Did Stephen have such dreams? Perhaps. William had heard him give a speech once or twice, and he was talented. There was an aura about him. But if the young man had dreams of standing for Parliament, those dreams were probably idealistic. He’d like to be a great figure in a great cause, the earl shrewdly guessed, rather than win just for the sake of winning, as a true politician would. The fellow had one other weakness also, the usual weakness of the poor man: he was proud. “Stephen Smith would rather do anything than have it seem he had been bought or sold,” he remarked to the young woman, wondering if she’d understand.

“Does he like women?”

“Yes. When he has time.” He paused. “Women like him.”

“I expect they do. He has wonderful green eyes.”

“Does he? Yes, I suppose he does.”

A number of women had been very taken with Stephen. To William’s knowledge, he had had affairs with at least two married society ladies, one of which had lasted some years. Whether Stephen’s heart had really been engaged, William doubted. Perhaps Smith was a little selfish. Yet if a man with no money likes to move in those circles, what else can he do but have affairs with other men’s wives?

Was it his eyes that attracted them? Partly, no doubt. But there was something magical surrounding those dark good looks of his; a fascinating intensity in his manner when he became enthusiastic, and eloquent upon a subject. That, and his occasional depressions, and their knowledge of his vulnerability, were surely the things that had made those aristocratic ladies want to possess him, and to be possessed.

“I feel sure you’ll reach your own conclusions,” he said. “You should talk to him.”

“Have no fear.” She smiled. “I shall.”

Maureen was in a sunny mood when Mr. Callan came by. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he probably liked her. Certainly, in the last two years, he’d always been civil to her and asked after the children. Once, riding by, he had noticed two of the children eyeing a large, shiny apple he was about to eat and had handed it to her, with a half-smile, to give to them.

Today, he had just asked if her father was about, and when she said he was out, Callan had just said, “No matter,” and told her he’d pass by later.

The sky was clear that day, and the autumn sun was bright. After so much damp weather all through the summer, the sunny sky made her feel cheerful.

When she considered her life, Maureen felt rather pleased with herself. She knew how much her family needed her. It was two years since her mother had died after giving birth to little Daniel. “Look after him for me,” her mother had said to her. As the eldest daughter, she would have expected to help her mother with the children anyway; and, thank God, she had not been married.

Since then, she had taken over the role of mother. There were four children to take care of. The two eldest had left soon after their mother’s death. Norah had married and moved with her husband to England. Then William had taken the chance to go with his uncle when Eamonn’s remaining brother had left for America. But that had still left the younger ones: Nuala, who was fifteen now; Mary and Caitlin, eight and ten; and little Daniel, who, because of the circumstances of his birth, she thought of almost as her own. And she supposed that, if her father did not marry again, she’d be looking after him for another dozen years or more, until he was old enough to fend for himself in the world. Unless, of course, she married herself, but that was unlikely. She was twenty-four now. And as her mother had warned her years ago: “I’m afraid, Maureen, you’re very plain. Though perhaps,” she had added, “someone will marry you for your goodness.”

She didn’t think she was good, but she did try to keep cheerful. No matter how she felt, she tried to be calm at all times and show the little ones a smiling face. It seemed the right thing to do.

And thank God her father was always so strong. She knew it could not have been easy for him without a wife. But he was always even-tempered, and affectionate with the children, and it was clear even to the younger ones that he lived his life according to strong beliefs and principles. He always took the family to Mass. He drank a little ale, but seldom any liquour, and never poteen. She could not imagine him drunk. Both old Father Casey and his successor always told her: “Your father is everything a good Catholic should be.”

After his brother and William went, he was the only one of the Maddens left on his father’s land. Callan had not taken any action against the tenants who had voted for O’Connell back in ’28, and his relationship with her father had been one of guarded politeness ever since. Was Callan even a little afraid of them? There had been some trouble below Ennis last year, some small rioting and looting after a local food shortage, though it hadn’t come up here. The Protestant gentry and their agents had all been a bit jumpy, though, while O’Connell’s campaign of monster meetings was going on. But he must surely know, she thought, that whatever he might have done in his youth, her father was the most peaceable man in the area. Callan had not been entirely inactive, anyway. As the opportunity arose, he had quietly rationalized the tenancies. A few years ago, the rest of the former Madden holdings had been united again, converted back to cereal crops, and leased to a farmer in the next parish.

But Eamonn Madden always remembered who he was. He’d managed to find money for Norah when she married, so that her husband should be satisfied. He’d had to borrow from a draper in Ennis to pay for William’s passage to America, but he’d paid more than half of that back already. As soon as that debt was taken care of, he’d be saving for Nuala’s wedding; you could be sure of that. He wouldn’t have the family disgraced.

He continued to reverence Daniel O’Connell—little Daniel was named after the great man. He also became an admirer of the Under Secretary Drummond. “That’s a good man,” he would declare. And he would often quote that statesman’s dictum: “Property has rights, but also responsibilities.” If he ever heard of a bad action by a landlord, he would sigh and repeat it.

Her father returned early that afternoon. Callan came by about an hour later.

The news he brought was very simple.

“I’ve had an offer for this land. A higher rent. I came to see if you cared to match it.”

“Higher? How much higher?”

“Nearly double what you’re paying now. Mind you, I should have raised your rent before, but . . .”

“Double?” Eamonn was dumbfounded. “Impossible. How could anyone afford it?”

“It’s the farmer who has the rest of the land here. He won’t be living on it, you see. He’ll pull down the cottage and turn all the land over to cereals. He’ll make a small profit, or he wouldn’t have made the offer.”

“But this is our land. The Maddens have always lived here.”

“Make me an offer.” Callan seemed very calm. “But you’ll have to come close.” Was this a long-delayed revenge for the Clare election? Possibly. But more likely it was just business.

“Property has rights, Mr. Callan,” said Eamonn. He indicated his family. “But it also has responsibilities.”

“Drummond’s dead.”

“I’ll be needing a little time to think.”

“You can have a week,” said Callan calmly, and rode away.

For three days, they went over it from every angle, she and her father. Could they find another tenancy? There were none, for they soon discovered the rent Callan was being offered was being asked by other landlords elsewhere. What if she went out to work, if work could be found? Or what if she ran the holding, and he went to England and sent money home? This she was much against. “The children need their father,” she told him. Nothing seemed to make sense. But Eamonn could not bring himself to accept it. The thought of losing his land was more than he could bear. On the fourth day, she took matters into her own hands and took their little cart down into Ennis.

They were going to be very happy there. That was what she told the children. And indeed, she had done well.

The long, three-room cottage was one of the better of some six hundred such dwellings in and around Ennis, and by the time the children came there, she had it spotlessly clean. The mud walls were thick and dry, the thatch was good. And she had persuaded the landlord to accept a rent for the cottage of only forty shillings a year. With the livestock all sold for good prices, Eamonn’s debt was paid off and there was even some cash on hand. The cash came in handy, also, because when they wanted to rent some conacre ground— mock ground, they called it locally—to raise a potato crop to feed themselves, they found they had to pay cash in advance.

“I never heard of paying in advance before,” Eamonn had grumbled; but that was what the agent could get that year.

And now all he had to do was to find work.

In the months that followed, they all came to know the town of Ennis well. The children quite enjoyed being there. The town might be dirty and unkempt, but it was always busy. The little square by the central courthouse was usually full of stalls or hucksters selling all kinds of things. And although nobody ever seemed to want to tidy the place up, improvements were nonetheless visible. A number of public buildings had been added in the last decade. Some of these were rather cheerless, like the new fever hospital. More forbidding, just north of the town, was the dour workhouse for the indigent, which you might have mistaken for a military barracks or a jail. But a rather smart new stone bridge, to celebrate the accession of young Queen Victoria, had improved the route out of the town on one side; and the year they arrived in the town, the whole community, Catholic and Protestant alike, had come to watch the dedication of what, one day, would be a handsome Catholic cathedral to serve the whole area, on a broad site near the newspaper offices.

Other parts of the town were to be avoided. Just across the street began the warren of alleys that led down to the River Fergus. She had to be very firm with Mary and Caitlin that they must not go down there, for although she had never heard of children coming to any harm, the town’s motley collection of prostitutes hung about in the doorways, and there were beggars who, if drunk or angry, had been known to threaten people with shillelaghs. And, of course, there were the meanest of the cabins along the road where they lived themselves, and where the children were in rags. “You must leave them alone,” she told the children. What else could she say? There were plenty of streets, dingy but respectable, where they could wander. Or there were the open fields outside the town where they could play.

And it was important that they were known to be respectable. There were about forty families with houses in the surrounding countryside who might be considered local gentry. Most were Protestant, of course, though a few were Catholic. Close to them were the more important merchants with solid houses in the town, the handful of professional men and some others, like Mr. Knox, the owner of the Clare Journal, who were entitled to consideration. When she and her father accompanied Nuala to some of these houses when she went to find work as a servant, she was glad to overhear one of the gentlemen tell his wife: “The Maddens? Respectable farming family. Take her on by all means.” Nuala found work with a merchant in a very decent house near the offices of the Clare Journal, so that she was not even a mile away from her family.

The same reputation helped her father. Some days he would go out to labour on one of the farms of the local gentry. Or he would walk the few miles south, to the little river port where grain was shipped down to the Shannon estuary. They still had some savings, which she guarded carefully. Sometimes, if a week or two went by without Eamonn working, they had to dip into this little hoard. At other times, they were able to replenish it.

And so the new pattern of their lives became established. She kept house, took little Daniel for walks and played with him. She made Mary and Caitlin do lessons with her so that they could at least read and write. Once a week, Nuala came home and shared her wages with them. She was turning into a pretty young woman, with a slim body and fine blue eyes. It was obvious that her father was proud of her. She had a lively sense of humour, too, and made them laugh with stories she had heard about the goings-on in the town. Once, when she had secretly saved up her wages for a few weeks, she took the whole family to see a magician who came and performed at the courthouse, which also did service as the town theatre and concert hall. Mary and Caitlin were thrilled. Maureen would have liked to hear from Norah in England and William in America. She wrote to Norah at the only address she had, but received no reply. No letter had ever come from William. “He’ll write when he has good news to tell,” her father assured her. If the younger children ever asked, she assured them: “They’re both doing well.”

The next spring and summer brought more damp weather. People who had not stored their potatoes carefully enough found that some of them had rotted in the damp. There was also a rash of evictions in the county, as agents like Callan looked for more profitable tenants. Many people complained they couldn’t get any mock ground to grow potatoes. One landowner, an absentee named Wyndham, donated a hundred and fifty acres to the community for free plots. “Mind you,” her father remarked, “he owns thirty-seven thousand acres in Clare, while he lives comfortably in England, so he can afford it. On the other hand,” he added, “it must be said that he has helped. Not one of our local gentry has done anything at all.”

That autumn, one unpleasant incident occurred. Mr. Callan came by. He didn’t trouble to get down from his horse, but spoke to Eamonn in front of the cottage. Maureen was at his side.

“Would you have been visiting your old place?” the agent enquired. And when Eamonn said that he hadn’t: “Can you prove it?” The farmer who had pulled down their old house and taken over all the Madden fields had received a visitation. Hands unknown had set fire to a clamp of turf and laid out a grave in the middle of his land, as a warning. Such gestures were not unusual in cases of dispossession, though they seldom resulted in anything. “So I thought of you,” Callan said.

“You can think again,” replied Eamonn evenly. “But tell me this: are there other people whose land he has now taken over?”

“Yes. Several. He’s a good farmer,” the agent added cruelly.

“You had better think of them, too. I have not been near the place.” He did not add that he preferred not to go up that way because the memory was too painful to him.

“I shall. But you’re on my list,” Callan replied.

“What worries me,” her father confessed to Maureen after the agent had gone, “is that he’ll ruin my reputation.”

It did not appear that Callan had done so, but such was the steady trickle of similar men into Ennis over the following months, good, able-bodied farmers who could not afford the ever-increasing rents, that it was harder and harder to find work. Most of the time Eamonn managed, but during the following spring and the early summer of 1845, Maureen noticed with some concern that the little stock of money she conserved was gradually dwindling, and seldom, if ever, being replenished.

But she carried on with a cheerful face. Mary and Caitlin seemed to have formed themselves into a team. They were always up to some mischief. She would pretend to be angry, but secretly rejoice in their high spirits. “You’re two skinny little urchins, and I’m ashamed of you,” she would tell them as they ran off, laughing, to catch a fish in the river or play a prank upon some luckless neighbour. As for little Daniel, he was a sweet-natured fellow, with his father’s blue eyes and a mop of light brown hair. She had carefully found him three or four playmates nearby, and she delighted in taking him with her wherever she went. Most people thought she was his mother.

The summer passed uneventfully. In August, they lifted the potatoes on their ground and were able to lay in a good store that would see them through until December. The main crop would be harvested in October, and by the start of September, people were talking of a bumper crop. In the middle of the month, the Clare Journal reported a few cases of potato decay. But this might have been camp storage. It was not until the last day of the month that her father returned home, looking concerned. “Some of the farmers coming into Ennis are talking about a blight,” he told Maureen, and he went straight out to their ground to check. “They seem to be all right,” he said when he came back.

It was mid-October when Caroline Doyle told Stephen that she was going to marry someone else. At first, he couldn’t believe it.

“Who is he?”

“A professor. A man of science.”

“A scientist? This is a great mistake. Scientists are terribly dull.”

“I don’t find him so.”

“You’d have done better to marry me.”

“I don’t think so, Stephen. I’m sorry.”

He and Caroline had been getting along famously. He had not proposed—it had been too soon for that—but there was an understanding between them. He was sure of it. The trouble, he thought, had been O’Connell.

Although the Liberator had called off the monster meeting at Clontarf, the Tory government had still not been satisfied. “He’s gone too far,” they said. “This will lead to an insurrection.” And they put him in jail. He had stayed there six months, until the British Law Lords had overturned the conviction. During that time, O’Connell had wanted Stephen to attend to all kinds of affairs in London, and Stephen had seen little of Caroline, therefore. He had continued to court her after his return. But he had not been able to see her as often as he would have liked, for there was always political business of one kind or another to take care of.

“I might have loved him,” she explained to William Mountwalsh, “and he’d have loved me, I dare say, but only when he had the time.”

“You think him lacking in affection?” he asked.

“No,” she answered, “but he thinks chiefly of himself.” She smiled. “It is childlike, sometimes, which is lovable. But . . . not enough.”

The scientist had been a friend of William’s brother; he was a gentleman of thirty-five, with a particular interest in astronomy. She had met him on a visit to Parsonstown, the estate of a talented family, which had been ennobled with the title of Rosse. Lord Rosse was a notable astronomer himself.

It was only when he lost her that Stephen realised how much he wanted Caroline. A week after their parting, he wrote a series of poems about her, with more passion than talent. After that, he became rather depressed. It was at the start of December, believing that Stephen needed a change of scene, that the Liberator sent him— upon the pretext that he wanted Stephen to help his cousin edit some political essays—to stay with Charles O’Connell in Ennis.

Stephen had heard there was some trouble with the potato crop. Charles O’Connell, a smaller, darker version of the great man, and always full of information, explained the situation when he arrived.

“The west of Ireland is more affected than other parts. Nearly half the crop has been lost in Clare, and Ennis has been hit the worst. But the trouble strikes unevenly. Even here in County Clare, some places have escaped entirely.”

“Is it a blight?”

“Probably. Or too much dampness. Some of the potatoes seemed all right when they came out of the ground, and then went rotten afterwards. Here in Ennis, we think we may need some help from Dublin in the spring.” He shrugged. “These things happen in Clare from time to time.”

A couple of days later, Stephen heard a somewhat different view when the owner of the Clare Journal came to dinner. Mr. Knox was a Protestant Tory and looked like a dour Presbyterian minister. But his family had owned the newspaper for several generations and was well liked in the area.

“The local gentry are useless, and the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin is a complacent ass,” Knox announced firmly. “Yesterday, I saw six cartloads of grain on their way to the docks. For export. It shouldn’t be allowed. By March at latest, we’ll be needing all the food we can lay hands on.”

“But what about the farmers?” asked Charles. “They have to sell their grain.”

“Of course they do. So give them the price they’d get from the merchants at the dock. And do it now. Otherwise, in the spring, you’ll be paying for imported grain, and by then the shortages will be driving all grain prices up even further.”

“Some people say there won’t be any shortages.”

“They are fools.”

“What is the nature of this blight?” asked Stephen.

“There is a man called Doctor Evens who has written that it is a fungus,” replied Knox. “But truthfully, Mr. Smith, no one knows.”

However, as Stephen came from Dublin and had political contacts, the newspaper owner seemed anxious to get his views across to him. The day after the dinner, Stephen and his host worked on the essays together. But the day after that, Knox called for Stephen in his pony and trap, and gave him a tour of the area.

“This shortage is also an opportunity, you know,” he told Stephen, as they drove out of Ennis. “Look at these people.” He gestured to the cottages and cabins by the roadside. “Able-bodied men looking for work. What are they going to do when their small stocks of potato are gone? They’ll have no money to buy food.”

“What’s to be done?”

“Employ them. Pay them wages. It’s what they want. Make them productive.”

“Is there anything for them to do?”

“My dear Sir. You have been here several days and you ask that? There is everything to do. I shall show you.” You had to admire Mr. Knox’s vigorous mind. “Some of the roadway here, as you can see, has been improved. The new stone bridge we have just crossed is excellent. But we badly need a new road from Ennis to Quin. Let it be built. And there is the River Fergus. At present, all the grain, butter, and livestock sold at Ennis market is taken by barge, at needless extra expense, down to the docks a few miles to the south. The river could perfectly well be made navigable up to Ennis, and new docks be built there, to the great benefit of the town.”

“You are full of ideas.”

“Not at all, Mr. Smith. These are all existing proposals of years’ standing. But they are not acted upon. Did you know that plans are already drawn up for a new courthouse to be built? The old one needs so much repair it would be better to start over again. That’s another useful project waiting only to be done. The new Catholic cathedral—the land was given by a Protestant, you know—needs to be completed. That is not a public work, I grant you, but private subscriptions might be raised. My favourite project, however, lies up this way.” And after they had driven northwards some distance, he stopped the trap at a bend in the road and gestured to the landscape before them. “There, Sir,” he said triumphantly, “what do you think of that?”

As Stephen gazed northwards, he saw nothing but a desolate marshland and swamp. It seemed to stretch for miles. In the December light, it looked bleak and infinitely sad.

“That?”

“The slough of despond, you might think,” said Knox. “Yet under it lies Paradise.”

“You mean you want to drain it?”

“Precisely. The land under that marsh, Mr. Smith, is very rich. Almost corcass. A huge resource. You could grow enough grain there to feed the whole of Ennis.” He sighed. “What I see there, Mr. Smith, is an emblem for Ireland itself: a country of wasted resources.”

“Our land is rich,” agreed Stephen.

“And our people. The Irishman, Sir, is quick, intelligent, and hardworking. English prejudice has him as slow and lazy, but that is a base calumny. The truth is the opposite. Yet what have we here in Clare? Human resources, as unused as this swamp, and as needlessly miserable.”

“I assume you’ll use your newspaper, Mr. Knox, to press for these things,” remarked Stephen, as they drove back into Ennis later.

“I have written to the Dublin authorities in person, as well as promulgating these views in print, Mr. Smith,” Knox replied, “and I shall never give up.”

In the days that followed, there was not the least sign of the Dublin authorities taking any action. But despite Knox’s concern over the crop as Christmas approached, the winter season in Ennis was not without its amusements. In the middle of the month, the better sort in the town were intrigued by a visit from Mr. Wilson, the famous phrenologist. Setting up in Church Street, he offered, by a careful examination of a person’s cranium, to give them an exact and scientific portraiture of their character and abilities, including, perhaps, talents of which they were not even aware. “Since he charges five shillings, which is five or six days’ wages for a common labourer,” Charles O’Connell remarked, “we shall never know the characters of the poor. But I think you and I should try it, Stephen.”

Rather against his will, Stephen was persuaded to sit in Mr. Wilson’s contraption while that gentleman, by means of measuring tapes, callipers, screws, and finger-proddings, examined him and finally pronounced: “Did you know, Sir, that you have a remarkable bump of benevolence?”

“It must have grown,” Stephen said drily, “since I was younger.” It was about an hour later, walking alone through the town, that he encountered the young woman. She was waiting outside the courthouse. Inside, another visitor to Ennis, the child star Miss Heron, was giving a performance. He hadn’t wanted to go himself, but he knew the house was packed, including a section in the gallery with cheap seats for the poor.

She was a pale, rather plain young woman; she was holding the hand of a little boy. Idly, as he had nothing better to do, he paused to ask her what she was doing.

“My sister bought tickets for the performance, Sir,” she answered. “My father and sisters are inside with her. It is a Christmas treat.”

“You did not wish to go in?”

“She had four tickets, Sir. I was happy to wait with my little brother.”

He asked her where she came from, and she briefly told him their story.

“I am sorry you lost your land,” he said.

“There are many like us,” she replied. “And we do well enough, do we not, Daniel?” she said with a sweet smile to the little boy.

Though she was plain, Stephen thought he liked her. There was a simpleness and goodness about her.

“I wish you better fortune in the New Year,” he said, and moved on.

Some time later, from the window of Charles O’Connell’s house, he saw the girl and her family walking along the street. Did the big man, who must be her father, look vaguely familiar? Perhaps. It was hard to be sure, but he had an excellent memory for faces. He had an idea that he remembered him, marching to the poll, on that famous day years ago when Father Murphy had harangued the crowd. Her sisters looked lively enough. But one he noticed especially. A strikingly pretty young thing. He stared. It was really quite remarkable that such a pretty girl could be the sister of one who was so plain.

On Christmas Day, in the afternoon, Charles O’Connell announced: “Before we eat our own dinner, Stephen, I must put in an appearance at the workhouse. Why don’t you accompany me and see the place?”

The workhouse. Even the name was enough to frighten you. It was an English institution, the place where, if you were destitute and without work, you went as a haven of last resort. It was run by a Board of Guardians, consisting mostly of local gentlemen. It was a brutal-looking place, just north of the old town, but O’Connell seemed almost proud of it. “It’s new,” he explained, “and unlike many such places, it’s clean.”

They passed through a big brick gateway into a large yard. It might have been either a barracks or a prison. On each side were the various wings of the institution.

Perhaps it was just the greyness of the day, but to Stephen, the whole place seemed dreary: dreary doors and dreary windows; dreary brick, dreary mortar; and above, a roof of dark slate, slanting drearily under the blank sky.

“It’s run on the strictest English model,” Charles told him. “Total segregation. Men, women, and children all kept apart. They separate husbands from wives and mothers from children as soon as they arrive, and send them to different blocks. Give them just enough sustenance to keep them alive, nothing more.”

“That is cruel. I wonder why any would stay here.”

“That’s the idea. The Guardians have ordered it must be kept as unpleasant as possible. Otherwise, since it provides free food and lodging, they’d have half the population of Ennis trying to live here, and never get them out. Or so they believe.”

He sighed. “They may not be entirely wrong.”

But once a year, on Christmas Day, the rules of the workhouse were relaxed and all the inmates were brought together for a Christmas dinner.

The hall was large. Most of the inmates were men, with rather less women and a sprinkling of children, but they numbered several hundred. They appeared to be somewhat ragged, but clean. They were sitting at long, bare trestle tables. As Stephen watched several members of the Board of Guardians, a clergyman and a priest appeared. The director said a few words of Christmas comfort and ordered a cheer for the queen, which was dutifully supplied. Then a meal of meat, potato, and cabbage was served, comforting proof, perhaps, that here in Ennis food was still in plentiful supply, upon occasion, for even the poorest of the poor.

At the start of the new year, his literary work well completed, Stephen returned to Dublin. His stay in Ennis had been instructive—a change, at least, that had helped distract him from the loss of Caroline. But it had not brought him peace of mind. If anything, the reverse. His life no longer seemed to have the meaning he had supposed it had, and he did not know what to do.

Stephen was rather surprised, in March, to receive a letter from Mr. Knox. It seemed that once that indefatigable gentleman had you on his list, he did not let you go. And truth to tell, although Stephen’s affairs in Dublin kept him very busy, the memory of what he had seen in Ennis had been often in his mind. Having read the letter carefully, he understood exactly why the newspaper owner had written to him. And as he was due to see Lord Mountwalsh that day, he took the letter with him.

The big house on St. Stephen’s Green was always a friendly haven, and there was just a small company there, including himself and Dudley Doyle, who had made rather a point of being friendly to him now that his daughter was safely married to someone else.

William Mountwalsh looked amused when he said he had a letter from Mr. Knox. “You know of him, then?” Stephen asked.

“We all know of Mr. Knox,” replied the earl with a smile. “But tell us what he has to say.”

So Stephen read.

The situation in Ennis is as I predicted, and if anything, worse. The shortages began by February, and with scarcity came a rise in prices. The usual price for a fourteen-pound sack of potatoes in Ennis market is two pence; but now it is five. That is a terrible burden for the poor. Sometimes it has not been possible to obtain potatoes at any price. At the workhouse, they have run out, and are trying to buy in cheap grain, imported from India. Others have tried to eat bad potatoes. In the fever hospital, the patients were fed with bad potatoes, and as a result there has been much sickness of the bowels.

The government has ordered the lords lieutenant of each county to establish relief committees, but progress is far too slow.

Having lost patience, our local magistrates have taken matters into their own hands. Under existing laws, they have the power to provide employment, the cost of which will be half paid for by the government and half financed by a government loan—which, as a community, we shall eventually have to repay. The employment so far consists of some road works and other trivial schemes; though I hope we may later make a start upon some of the projects about which I spoke to you when you were here. But at present I estimate that only one in four of those needing work have employment.

Further to this, we in Ennis have formed a relief committee. Most of the townsmen on it are your own associates—by which I mean that they are O’Connell’s men; so most of the local gentry have not cared to join us. I am surely the only Protestant Tory on the committee. Outside Ennis, however, our gentry are trying to provide work and sustenance, and contributions for relief are being solicited. But these efforts form a patchwork and lack proper direction. Those on the estates of absentees usually fare worse. In one parish, two thousand souls are without any supply of food.

It is remarkable that there have been so few disturbances. This may be partly due to the numbing effect of the weather, for it has been cold and damp; just recently, we have had snow.

It is hard to understand how our government can be so careless of the suffering of its people.

When he had stopped reading, Stephen looked to William Mountwalsh.

“Why is the government so careless? Is Knox exaggerating?”

“Oh no. I’m sure he’s telling the truth,” replied the earl. “But our friend Knox mistakes for carelessness what is, in fact, a deliberate policy. I spoke to someone at the Castle yesterday. The government is putting off help as long as possible, for a simple reason. It’s the only way to get these local people to take any responsibility for their own affairs. Look at Ennis. Knox himself is a great exception, but time and again, the rest of the townsmen and the local gentry there have proved that they never do a damn thing for the place until they’re absolutely forced to.” He smiled. “I dare say it’s human nature. I’m sure I don’t do nearly as much as I should, because I don’t have to.”

“He works very hard,” protested Lady Mountwalsh.

“All over Ireland, the landowners want the government to bail them out. And the government isn’t going to do it.”

“But they can’t just let the people starve.”

“No. And, in fact, Knox is about to get his wish. The government is going to step in. But the local men will still have to shoulder the burden and take responsibility.”

“What form will that take?”

“More or less what Knox wants. A large program of public works. The argument is that it’s wrong to give money to those who are able-bodied. It corrupts them and takes away their self-respect. They must be given work for what they get. But he’s right about the price of food being too high. There will probably have to be subsidies to keep the prices down.”

There was a hissing sound from Dudley Doyle. The economist was shaking his head.

“Take care, gentlemen,” he cried. “Take care. You may bring in cheap food, like Indian meal; or you may increase supply sufficiently to bring down prices. But do not subsidise food. It is tempting, but you must not do it. You are subverting the market. That is wrong.” He turned to Stephen. “You are a Whig. I count upon you for support.”

“I don’t know,” said Stephen.

The worst moment, Maureen thought, had been on St. Patrick’s Day. They had heard about the man killed at noon.

It had happened just outside the town. Nobody seemed to know who had done it, but no one was much surprised. The man was an agent, and he had a reputation for evicting.

It was amazing to Maureen that people could be so cruel. At a time when everyone was suffering, people were still being thrown off the land; but her father seemed to accept it. “With the shortages, the agents can get even higher rents for the land; and the men who rely on potatoes may not be able to pay any rent at all.” He sighed. “That’s the way of it. If the landlord insists on getting the best return, you can’t even blame the agent really, I suppose.”

“I can,” said Maureen.

So, in all likelihood, had some of the evicted tenants, for the fellow had been left dead by the roadside.

Maureen and her father had been standing in the market by the courthouse when she noticed Callan. He was on his horse, and it looked as if he had just arrived. She noticed that he was very pale. He was staring down at the cobblestones, and his face was working. She wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be talking to himself. Then he looked up, and his gaze travelled round the marketplace; he caught sight of them and he stared. She stared back at him and saw, with surprise, that his eyes were full of fear.

He couldn’t disguise it. He was afraid. She realised what he must be thinking. Would her father, or someone like him, be leaving him for dead on the road that spring? She knew very well that her father would never do such a thing, but if little Callan was frightened now, so much the better. Let him suffer, too. She did not drop her eyes, but kept on staring boldly. And slowly, seeing her defiance, the fear in his eyes changed to a look of loathing.

Some time later, as they were walking home, the agent came riding up behind them and went past. As he did so, he turned and gave her father a terrible look, which seemed to say: “You want me dead. I’ll kill you first.”

But the moment she remembered most was back at the house, just before dusk. There was a sharp wind getting up outside, and the children were huddled by the turf fire, but her father had gone into the store at the other end of the cottage. He had a lamp in his hand, and he was surveying the remaining potatoes they had, piled against the wall. As the light caught his broad face, she realised how deep were the lines of stress upon it. Normally, like her, he kept a cheerful countenance in front of the children; but caught for a moment in that pale light, he looked infinitely sad. She put her hand on his arm. He nodded but did not speak. Then he glanced down at her.

“I had hoped to use these,” he said quietly. “I didn’t tell you, but there’s a man I know who has a field. I’m not speaking of mock ground where you’ve to pay for harvesting a field that’s already planted. He’d have let me plant it and harvest it like my own.” He gestured to the potatoes in front of them. “These were to be the seed potatoes. But I daren’t do it, Maureen, for I can never be sure of keeping the work, and the prices in the market . . . to tell you the truth, it frightens me. So we’ll have to eat these and not plant them. You must make them last as long as you can.” He shook his head, and then, in a voice in which sadness and bitterness were equally mixed: “And this is Ireland, on Saint Patrick’s Day.”

The next day, a company of the 66th Regiment hastily arrived in Ennis to reassure the nervous local gentry after the murder.

A few days after that, the snow started.

Compared to many of their neighbours, Eamonn Madden was one of the lucky ones. He had been picked as one of three hundred men to work on the local roads. From England, Colonel Wyndham had sent six hundred pounds for repairing the Ennis streets. “That pays for three hundred men for two months,” her father pointed out. Meanwhile, as the snow ended and the weather began to get a little milder, the authorities in Dublin had started to provide some help. Nearly five hundred more labourers were employed on public works, but the progress on Mr. Knox’s ambitious projects was continually delayed. And another class of men was also starting to suffer now. “With all this trouble,” her father told Maureen, “and people having to dip into their pockets for relief, there’s no money spent in Ennis, and the local craftsmen will soon be in as bad a state as ourselves.”

In the market, the price of grain was still rising. News came that down on the Shannon estuary, a grain ship had been robbed by hungry local men.

One day, her father went in to work in the morning and returned before noon, looking shaken.

“The wages were lowered. The boys are refusing to work.”

“But the wages were ten pence a day. That’s only a pittance.”

“I know it. And it’s to be eight pence now. But the boys will have to give in. I met Mr. Knox himself, and he told me: ‘We haven’t the money to pay them.’”

Her father proved to be right. The men went back, at eight pence a day. On the first day back, she asked him if there’d been any trouble.

“Not really,” he answered, “except for a fine lady passing, who told us she couldn’t see why we were making a mess of the street.”

The wages were not enough to feed the family, especially with the higher prices of everything; but a few days later, Maureen found some Indian meal that the relief committee had been able to buy in to be sold at cut price. It was poor stuff, she thought, but it kept body and soul together.

And so the town of Ennis staggered from the spring into the summer. The merchants in town did what they could to help; the local gentry, for the most part, did not. Everyone was at a low ebb. But for many in Ennis, hope seemed in sight, for two reasons.

The early potato harvest was in sight. Many people had consumed their seed potatoes during the shortage, but enough had been put in the ground to ensure a decent early harvest. Eamonn had been able to secure a piece of mock ground again that he could harvest. “Just a few more weeks to go,” he would encourage his family, “and the worst will be over.”

The second cause for hope was political. Since his retreat from Clontarf and his brief time in prison, less had been heard from Daniel O’Connell. There was a rumour that he was unwell. But the Young Ireland men were keeping the cause of Repeal alive, and even if there was no chance of it happening at present, the dream of a free Ireland was still enough to stir the heart. Now, however, a more immediate hope had arisen, of a change of government in England; and late in June it came to pass. The Tories were out; the Whigs were back in. Weren’t the Whigs the Liberator’s allies? Hadn’t they always been sympathetic to Catholic Ireland? The Repealers were delighted. All Catholic Ireland looked for better things. During early July, though the relief funds were almost gone and everyone was hungry, the summer sun seemed to bring promise of hope.

It was on a warm day in the third week of July that Maureen and her father went out to the field where their potatoes were growing. They had been out to inspect them the day before, after the news had begun to spread. Now they gazed in silence.

For the field was an open expanse of blackened leaves. And from it arose a terrible stench that made you want to turn your head away. And all around, the other fields were just the same.

He arrived in Ennis on a clear November day. It was entirely thanks to Mountwalsh that he was there.

“Not at all,” the kindly earl had assured him when he had proffered his thanks. “They were only too glad to get you, Stephen. Your reputation precedes you, and I reminded them that you were one of the true Catholic Whigs, which I’d say you are. The new government liked that, very much. A sound man, I told them, who dislikes the dangerous tendencies of some of these Young Ireland boys. And an excellent organiser. I’ve no doubt you’ll do very well.”

At least it would be a change. For, by the end of that summer, Stephen Smith had had enough. He wanted no more of the world of politics. Not for a while, anyway. Even the return of the Whigs to power had failed to reignite his interest. Had he done anything useful in all these years? he’d asked himself. He hoped so. Was he doing anything useful now? No, he was not. His old master O’Connell was unwell. There was nothing he could really do for him. He disliked the Young Ireland men—William Mountwalsh was perfectly right about that. They meant well, some of them, but they lacked discipline. Some of them even wanted to start an insurrection like Emmet. Futile. And dangerous. They’d go down and take others with them, just as Emmet had done before.

But it had been another letter from Mr. Knox of the Clare Journal that had given him the idea. He had been shocked by its contents, and when Knox had described the organisation that was being put in place down there, it had suddenly occurred to him that this might be a chance for him to do something really useful.

So now here he was, as an overseer of the new program of public works that was to save Ennis from starvation. He would be working for Mr. Hennessy, the head overseer for the region, and both would report to a brisk naval officer, known as the Captain, who had charge of the county. He had not wanted to impose upon Charles O’Connell, who had kindly offered him a room in his own house; but Charles had found him lodgings close by.

Hennessy, who saw him his first morning, proved to be a tall, mild, and pleasant man, who quickly outlined the scale of operations. “My own guess,” he said, “is that by the end of the year we shall employ fifty thousand men in this county.” The new government wanted to control matters strictly. There was a new committee to take over the running of the entire county. It was appointed by the Lord Lieutenant, and although some Catholics served on it, the chairman and most of the members were Protestant gentlemen. Hennessy told Stephen he would be given several projects to manage in Ennis, and also made clear what the rules of operation were to be. “There must be no deviation,” he warned. “The new government means to be thorough but firm.” Were there any particular problems he should know about? he asked. “Well,” Hennessy hesitated, “I think it’s fair to say that there’s still a bit of catching up to do. Until we got started, there was . . .” he searched for a good word, “a hiatus.”

It was that afternoon, when he called upon Mr. Knox at the Journal, that Stephen discovered what this meant. Knox, following his usual practice, called for his pony and trap and gave him a quick tour. The difference from his previous visit was astonishing. Where, before, he had seen ragged children and worried faces, he now saw little creatures like skeletons and women with staring eyes.

“These people aren’t poor; they’re starving.”

“Some are, some not. Some died already.”

“But how?”

“Very simple. This July and August, the potato harvest failed. When I say failed, I mean that every potato in the market was rotten. I mean that not a single field, not a single garden patch in all of Ennis, produced a single potato that could be eaten. The stink of the rotted fields wafted over the town as if it were an open plague pit. I mean, Smith, that after months of hardship, the people of Ennis failed to produce any food whatsoever of their own. Unfortunately, it was also the time of a change of government. And you know how it is when a government changes. Nothing that was done before can be right.”

“And so?”

“Why, they closed down the relief committees, of course. Nothing was done. It remained that way until October. People helped each other not to starve, but especially in the remoter places the old and the sick died off. We reported what we could, but you don’t always know at the time. There were many deaths, certainly.”

“It will be changed now.”

“Will it? How? You will provide public works?”

“On a great scale.”

“And will you subsidise food?”

“I understand not.”

“Indeed, you will not. For that would distort the market, which, in the eyes of a Whig, is a heinous crime.”

Stephen thought of Dudley Doyle.

“I don’t deny it,” he confessed.

“Then, since the price of food, being so scarce, has now risen to new heights, the wages you pay to these thousands of men will not be sufficient for them to buy food for their families. They will not be idle and starve, Mr. Smith; they will work and starve.” He looked at Stephen severely. “I am only a Tory, Sir. You are a Whig, the Irish Catholic’s friend. This is your government. Why is your government so foolish?”

“I cannot answer.”

“But I can. The Whigs, Sir, have married their devotion to doctrine, to their total ignorance of local conditions. The resulting child will be famine, on a scale we have not yet seen.”

“That is not their object. The Whigs are entirely well-meaning.”

“Of course they are well-meaning,” the newspaper owner cried. “That is the trouble. The present Whig leaders are reformers, they have extended the franchise, they have sought to help the Catholics. They are more than well-meaning: they believe they are righteous. And therefore they will not listen. Therein lies the tragedy.” He paused only to draw breath. “What is the greatest crime against humanity, Smith?”

“Deliberate cruelty, I should think.”

“And you would be wrong. It is not cruelty, nor evil intent. It is stupidity.”

“And why do you tell me this?” asked Stephen.

“In order that you may learn,” said Knox. Then he drove him back.

In the days that followed, Stephen was immersed in his work. There seemed to be a new scheme to employ people every few days. Some, like giving Ennis a decent sewer system, were worthwhile. But most were just unnecessary roadwork, whose main effect was to block the road leading into the town. On one occasion, he suggested to Hennessy that a patch of waste ground could be cleared and dug. It belonged to an elderly farmer who had lacked the energy to do it himself. “At least he could grow grain there and increase the food stock,” Stephen suggested. But Hennessy had shaken his head and reminded him: “You should know better, Stephen. That’s private land. Improving it would be reproductive work, since the grain grown there belongs to the farmer and goes to market. We’d be creating personal profit and interfering with trade. Can’t do it. Only public works, my boy, however useless.” So the land remained waste.

He’d been there ten days when he witnessed a small incident. He was observing a gang of about fifty men who were cleaning the verges along the road that led down to the docks. The work was proceeding at a snail’s pace, but some of the men looked so weak from lack of nourishment that it would have been cruel to push them harder; and since the work was quite pointless, there was no reason to do so anyway.

A cart laden with grain came lumbering down the road in the direction of the docks. The men watched it dully. But then three of them, without a word, detached themselves and went across to it. One of the three was the big fellow Stephen had seen with the plain girl and her sisters the December before. The man, he had since learned, was called Madden. When they reached the cart, Madden spoke to the driver. Stephen couldn’t hear what was said, but the big fellow seemed to be quietly reasoning rather than threatening. After a few moments, the driver nodded, the men led the horses round, and the cart began to return from where it had come. The three men, meanwhile, went silently back to their work.

Stephen hesitated. It was obvious that what he had just witnessed was illegal. Should he intervene? He decided to wait and ask Hennessy about it later.

“It happens quite a bit,” Hennessy told him. “They won’t let grain leave the area. There hasn’t been any violence to speak of, but one or two horses have been maimed as a warning. And you can’t find anyone in the county that dares to give the farmers a valuation for the horses, so they can’t collect any insurance. Technically, it’s intimidation, of course. But usually, we just ignore it. You can hardly blame them. That grain leaving for the port might be the last bit of nourishment their children ever see.”

Certainly, the men gave him no other trouble. Madden was a dignified figure: a splendid physique, greying now and made gaunt by lack of sustenance. But though it was clear that, amongst the men who worked with him, he had a certain moral ascendancy, he always moved with gentleness. But it seemed that fate had decided that they should come into conflict.

Another week passed before Stephen came face-to-face with the Captain.

The short, peppery naval man whose duty it was to organise some fifty thousand men into work parties across the county was not likely to be popular.

“My job, Mr. Smith,” he said, “is to see that those most in need are given work. I won’t tolerate troublemakers, and I won’t tolerate abuses. Yesterday, I discovered that two of the men on a work detail were farmers with land of their own. One man had fifty acres. But he was a friend of a gentleman on the local committee who thought he’d like to pick up some extra cash in his spare time. Monstrous. I threw him out, and I told the committee man what I thought of him, too. There’ll be no fear or favour while I’m over here, is that clear?”

“Yes,” said Stephen.

“Good.” The Captain was riffling through a sheaf of papers. “You have a man named Madden in one of your details?”

“I do.”

“Another fraud. He has a small landholding. Enough to support him. I want him off.”

“I believe he lost his holding some time ago.”

“Could be. The fools who compiled these sheets aren’t much use. Some of the information’s out of date. There’s a recent report on him anyway from a man named Callan. An agent. Says he’s a troublemaker. Possibly violent. Have you seen anything like that?”

“Not exactly.”

“Hmm. You hesitated. Throw him out. There are plenty of others who need the work. Now then.” He passed to other matters. But when he had finished and Stephen was leaving, he called him back. “Don’t forget about Madden, because I shan’t.” He eyed Stephen sharply. “In that connection, before you go, there’s one other thing I’d better explain.”

He dismissed Madden the following morning. “You’ll be paid for this day, and I’ll add two more days’ pay,” he informed him, “but you’re to leave now. I’m sorry.”

“I have my family to feed,” the big man said. “I ask you to reconsider.”

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

“You are sentencing my children to death.”

This was, it seemed to Stephen, a slight exaggeration, but he said nothing. The truth was that he disliked the business very much. Madden turned slowly to leave. It had to be said, he was dignified in his grief.

As Stephen had guessed he would, the Captain himself passed by, in the early afternoon. “Madden gone?” he enquired. Stephen nodded. “Good,” the Captain said with a brief nod, and went on his way.

At the end of the day, Stephen took his time going back into Ennis. He walked slowly and thoughtfully. The sequence of events, though inevitable, had disturbed him. The dusk had fallen as he passed some miserable little cabins, then a short stretch of empty roadway, before coming to a wall. As he reached the wall, a figure stepped out.

He started. It was certainly a remarkable apparition. The figure was large, far bigger than he. It was wearing a white dress. Its face was blackened. It stood before him, barring his path.

“You know what this means?” asked the figure.

Of course he knew. Every Irishman knew the traditional warning of the Whiteboys: a man in woman’s clothing, with a blackened face, appeared before you; if you ignored the warning, you must expect the consequences.

“Take heed,” said the figure. Then it turned away and strode up the road, turning off beside a cottage and vanishing into the dusk.

Stephen continued on his way home.

The next day passed without incident. He briefly considered reporting the matter, but after what the Captain had told him, he decided against it. If the men on the work detail knew he’d been threatened, they gave no sign. The next day was equally uneventful. The day after that, he was not working. And by now, he had decided what to do. It seemed to him that he had two important tasks.

First thing in the morning, he set out on foot, walking briskly northwards to the outskirts of the town. He discovered without difficulty where the cottage he sought was. On reaching it, he found the door and looked in.

“God save all here.” He gave the traditional greeting as he entered.

Eamonn Madden looked greatly surprised to see him. He was sitting on a stool, his head bowed, before the small glow of the turf fire. Standing beside him was the plain young woman, his daughter.

“May I sit down?” There was a bench by the fire also. He rested himself upon it.

“We have nothing to offer you, Sir,” said the woman.

“I know.”

The doorway was open. Further light, of a sort, came from the single window. It had no glass, but across it, in the traditional manner, was stretched a thin sheepskin, which let in some light and kept out the wind. By this dim light, however, he could see that the room, with its earthen floor, was spotlessly clean. On one wall was a cheap print of the Blessed Virgin; on another, a print of Daniel O’Connell. He gazed at the woman. How old was she? In her midtwenties, he supposed, but stress and hunger had made her face haggard. Like her father, however, she had a quiet dignity. “You know who I am?” he asked, and she nodded. “Might I ask your name?”

“I am Maureen Madden,” she replied.

“May I know how many others there are in the family? You had a little brother, I remember, when I met you once in the marketplace.”

“That is little Daniel, Sir. Then there are my sisters Mary and Caitlin. My other sister, Nuala, works for a family in the town.”

“May I see the other children?”

She looked at her father, who said nothing.

“They are resting, Sir, in the other room. They sleep all together, to keep warm.”

“They are asleep at this time of the day?”

“It is cold outside. And they have not so much energy.” She went into the next room. Madden glanced at him but said nothing, nor did Stephen say anything to the big man.

When Maureen returned, it was with the three children. They were pale and thin, but what struck him at once was that they moved with a strange slowness. Their eyes seemed slightly unfocussed. Perhaps it was that they had been asleep, but he did not think so. The girls looked at him dully, the little boy with eyes that were large and reproachful.

“How many meals a day have they received?”

“One, Sir. Up until now, while father was working.”

“What do you feed them?”

“Whatever I can find. There are no more potatoes. Sometimes there is Indian meal or other grain. Sometimes there are turnips and a little watercress.

“And how do you pass the time with them?”

“I read to them. I teach them also.”

“You read and write, then.”

“I do, Sir. Little Daniel has all his letters now, do you not, Daniel?” The boy nodded. “He makes them upon the table with his finger. I watch, and I can see if the letters are correct.”

“Thank you. If the children wish to rest, I would speak with your father now.”

When they were alone, he addressed Eamonn.

“That is all the food you could get with the wages you were paid?”

“It was.”

“I see. Your children are wasting.”

“A gentleman such as yourself would have no knowledge of people in our condition, I suppose.”

“Not so. My family is more like yours than you imagine.” And Stephen told him briefly about his family and relations up in Rathconan.

“An labhraionn tu gaeilge?” Madden asked. Do you speak Irish?

“I did as a child. A little. But I have forgotten it now. We speak it less in Leinster.”

“And your family. Do they starve also?”

“No.” There was considerable hardship up in the Wicklow Mountains, but it was more localised. Little as he liked the Budge family, they had seen to it that the people at Rathconan kept body and soul together. Down in Wexford, where agriculture was mixed, there was little hardship. By the huge Mount Walsh estate, you could be sure, none of the earl’s tenants would need to worry. Other parts of the country varied, with the worst conditions in the west. “Now I must ask you a question. Does anyone know that you put on a dress the other night?” Eamonn looked at him evenly from under his heavy eyebrows but said nothing. “I knew it was you,” Stephen went on. “Does Maureen know?” Eamonn indicated that she did not. “The other men?”

“They do not.”

“I didn’t report you. Not out of fear. But I will tell you something you should know. I was half expecting something of the kind. My orders are that if any threat is received, I’m to tell the Captain, and he will close down the entire work detail from which the threat comes. That would have been fifty men out of work. And I’ve no doubt that he’ll do it.”

“The man is a devil.”

“No, you are wrong. He is quite determined to be fair. He’ll fight the local gentry just as fiercely.”

“He threw another man out of work because he possessed a cow. Said if he had a cow, he had means of feeding his family. Were the man’s seven children to choose between milk and starvation?”

“That is my point. He means well, in fact. But he has not the least understanding of the conditions under which Irish people live. By the way, he says that Callan the agent believes you to be dangerous.”

“It’s Callan that threw me off my land. I’ve done nothing to him, but he probably fears that I will. There were threats made against others up there, though not by me.”

Maureen came back now. She glanced at Stephen, obviously wondering what his intentions might be. Madden was fortunate in his daughter, Stephen thought. You could not but admire the gentle calmness in her manner as she held that family together. There was a beauty in it.

“I cannot be seen to be threatened, Mr. Madden,” he said firmly. “You understand what I mean. But you may report back to work with me tomorrow.”

“And the Captain?”

“We shall have to take things day by day.”

He bowed his head politely to Maureen and left them.

That afternoon, he set about his second task. This was to compose a letter. It was quite a long letter. It set out clearly what he had seen, including the conduct of the Captain, whom he commended for doing his best within his lights. The conclusion of his letter was forceful.

I have always believed in the free working of the market, and I still do. But it is also clear to me now that the market does not operate satisfactorily under extreme conditions. And the conditions in Clare now are extreme, and are becoming graver. Because of the high price of food, when it may be had, and our refusal to subsidise it, even those employed are suffering from malnutrition and those out of work will shortly starve.

Unless we feed these people, they will die.

When he had done, he sent it not to the Lord Lieutenant, nor to Dublin Castle. He sent it to the one man who he thought might be able to make something happen. He sent it to kindly William Mountwalsh.

As Christmas approached, the Madden family had good reason to be grateful to Stephen. All over the west, the system of relief was breaking down. In the remoter parts of Clare and Galway, whole parishes were without food. Reports came in of villages starving. Along the street near their cottage, Maureen knew of three old women and an old man who had died of hunger and cold. One day, walking into the town, she saw a body lying frozen outside one of the cottages. By mid-December, there were a dozen poor souls begging in the market. The week before Christmas, it was twice that. If it weren’t for the little wage that her father was able to bring, she supposed she might have been begging there herself. She thought with gratitude of Mr. Smith on most days, therefore. She also learned something new about him.

One day, her father came home looking thoughtful.

“I met Mr. Charles O’Connell today. Did you know that Mr. Smith, before he came here, was a close companion of Daniel O’Connell himself for over twenty years? I had no idea of it. He never said a word.” He gave a sheepish smile. “When I think of what I . . .” He broke off.

“What, Father?”

“No matter. It gave me a different view of the man, that’s all.” Maureen was silent for a moment, looking thoughtful.

“He is very fine,” she said with some emotion.

She did not see the curious glance her father gave her.

But even with her father’s wages, it was not easy to put food on the table. There was next to nothing in the market now. She was able to buy some Indian meal at a wicked price, some turnips and salt. “They’re no better off in the workhouse,” her father told her. “There’s to be no Christmas dinner there. Even the Board of Guardians can’t get the food.”

On Christmas Eve, Nuala arrived. She, at least, was still being fed, though she told Maureen that the merchant’s family were making do with stew on most days now. Maureen noticed that Nuala had a little smile on her face.

“I brought something,” she said. And from the folds of her clothes she produced a little hip flask. “I borrowed the flask,” she said. “They won’t notice.”

“What’s in it?”

“Brandy.” Nuala grinned. “For the man of the house.” She gave a sly smile. “I’ve more.” Reaching inside her clothes again, she fumbled for a moment and then drew out, slowly, one, then another, then, with a flourish, a third potato.

“Oh God, Nuala, how did you . . . ?”

“They’re only lumpers. Funny, isn’t it? The lowest form of potato, Maureen, you wouldn’t have looked at once; and now, couldn’t I be the Queen of Sheba herself, bringing gifts to Solomon?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“I stole them, of course. Found them down in the cellar. I’m sure nobody knew they were there. They must have been missed, I suppose. They’re old, but they aren’t spoiled. Well, not entirely.”

“But Nuala, if they find out . . .”

“They won’t.”

“You’d lose your position.”

“And what of it?” She laughed. “Then I’ll sell my body down by the courthouse.”

“Don’t even say such a thing.”

“So are you going to cook them?”

“Oh God, Nuala. I am.” She kissed her sister. “Don’t tell Father how you got them. Say you bought them.”

Though dusk was falling, their father didn’t come home for some reason. And several hours passed without any sign of him. Maureen and Nuala were becoming quite concerned.

“Could he have gone out drinking, do you suppose?” said Nuala. “I see the men coming back from work and spending their wages on drink in the town every day.”

“Father? Never.” Maureen shook her head. “Please God nothing’s happened to him,” she whispered, so that the younger ones shouldn’t hear.

At last, he came. He was carrying something under his coat. Once safely inside, he pulled it out and put it on the table. It was a hunk of meat.

They looked at it in astonishment.

“Father, however did you . . . ?” Maureen was pale with fear.

“Will you cook that for our Christmas, Maureen?” he said with a tone of satisfaction.

“But where did it come from?”

“It was on a cow when I first saw it. That would be about two hours ago.”

“You killed a cow?”

“More than a dozen of us. There’s nothing left of the beast now. What couldn’t be eaten is buried.”

There had been numerous incidents of this kind. Gangs of men would go out into the fields after dark, slaughter a cow, and cut it and strip it on the spot, dividing the meat up and vanishing into the night. But it took Maureen a moment to realise that her father had committed a criminal act.

“You could be transported,” she said reproachfully.

“If caught.” He took his coat off. “I think I’ll rest a while. I’m a little tired.” He sighed. “I wish,” he confessed, “that I could take a drink.”

Nuala smiled.

“You can,” she said.

But if the family ate well that Christmas, the experience was not to be repeated. Local farmers were guarding their livestock with vigilance; there was less food than ever in the market. Halfway through January, Maureen noticed that tufts of Caitlin’s hair were falling out. Then, even more strangely, that as if to compensate, a thick down was growing on her upper face so that she began to look like a sad little monkey. Maureen discovered that several other children in the street looked the same way; it was clearly something to do with their lack of nutrition. Once, after she had been discussing the problem quietly with her father—and out of earshot, as she thought, of the other children—she came in to find little Daniel trying to give his morsel of food to his sister. “So that the hair on her face will go back to her head,” he said. And overcome with emotion, she put her arm round him and cried, “You dear little boy.”

She had to make sure that he ate his food himself after that.

Relief, of a kind, was at hand. But once again, the government was to display its genius for adding insult and injury to every good deed.

“They are going to set up soup kitchens,” her father announced one day.

“Then we shall have food?”

“Perhaps.” The prospect did not seem to please him. “They will be set up under the Poor Laws. The paupers will be fed.” He breathed heavily. “No Madden has ever been called a pauper.”

“You are not a pauper, Father. You have work.”

“But they’re going to close down the public works. Mr. Smith has promised me he’ll keep us going as long as he can. They will open two kitchens in Ennis almost at once; the official kitchens will open sometime in February.”

“We must feed the children, whatever we are called, Father,” she said.

“I know.”

But the opening of the kitchens would have one further consequence. For since the Poor Laws placed the cost of providing relief on the local community, the citizens of Ennis were going to have to pay for them. And since it would have been a distortion of the market to subsidise the food, the local people would have to buy in the supplies for the soup kitchens at the present high prices.

Early in February, Nuala appeared at the cottage one morning.

“I’ve lost my job,” she said simply.

“Oh, Nuala, did they find out about what you took at Christmas?”

“Not at all. It wasn’t that. But they’ve to pay so much extra in rates for the new soup kitchens that they told me: ‘We can afford you, or the soup kitchens, but not both.’”

“Well, this is your home, and we’re glad to have you back,” said her father firmly. But after he had gone, Maureen turned to her sister.

“What are we going to do, Nuala?”

“I’ll find something,” Nuala promised.

Two days later, Eamonn returned after seeing the man from whom he rented the mock ground.

“He can rent me nothing, even if I can pay for it,” he told them, “because he can’t get any seed potatoes for planting. He’s rented all his plots to a farmer, for grain.” He made a helpless gesture. “I’ve asked all round the town, and it’s the same everywhere. Blight or no blight, it’ll be a miserable potato harvest this year, because so few potatoes will be planted.”

All through that month, news came trickling in from other places. If people in Ennis were living in the borderland of starvation, it seemed that more isolated areas had fared even worse. The soup kitchens, if they reached such places, would come too late. Up in the wilder parts of Galway, Sligo, and Mayo, hundreds, thousands of people had died from starvation. Infants and the old were the first to go, but it had gone beyond that. Those who had given up and walked to the towns had stood a chance; people cut off in the wastes, or who had decided to stay in their homes, had gradually weakened until they could do no more. The priests and clergy were doing what they could, but they had no food to give. Nobody had any idea how many had succumbed.

As well as news, there was also a trickle of people coming into Ennis. Maureen found it hard to believe, but people were still regularly being turned off the land.

“You can’t even blame the men turning them off, sometimes,” her father said. “Some of the tenant farmers have rented out parts of their land, and if they don’t get paid, they can’t meet their own rent. It’s only the landowners who can give relief, and you don’t know how much debt some of them may be in themselves.” He sighed. “It’s like a great wheel, Maureen, rolling over the land and crushing the lives out of all of us.”

Two things made their lives a little easier. Nuala was able to find some work. “It’s just helping a woman who takes in laundry, but she can let me have a few pence most days,” she said. “It’s better than nothing.” And the soup kitchens began to function in Ennis. When the first one started, seven hundred people turned up that morning. Soon there were several; half the town seemed to be standing in line, and the people running the kitchens couldn’t keep track of whom they were feeding. This favoured Maureen. She wasn’t supposed to go to the soup kitchen because her father still had employment, but she took the children with her and stood in the line, and the harassed people doling out the grain and meal just put the little measure into her hands without bothering to ask questions. “I feel bad,” she told Nuala, “because I’m not supposed to have it, and I’m sure I’m taking food from the mouths of those who have nothing at all. But then I look at Caitlin, with her hair still in patches, and I know I must do it.”

“Just feed the children, Maureen,” said Nuala. “You have to.”

Her father was aware of what she was doing, but they did not discuss it.

It was at the end of the month that the men came to see her father. There were half a dozen of them. She didn’t know any of them well, but she recognised them—small tenant farmers from near her old home. They clustered round her father eagerly.

“We need you, Eamonn.”

“For what?”

“It’s Callan.”

It wasn’t a surprise. All their farms came under the agent’s management, and they were to be dispossessed. Obviously, Callan had either decided or been instructed to have a general clear-out. And the men weren’t going to stand for it.

“Something has to be done, Eamonn. A warning has been prepared. And if it is not heeded . . .” They seemed in general agreement. “Justice will have to be done.”

“Why come to me? I’m already gone.”

“We thought you might want to strike a blow. You’re not the only one here in Ennis that Callan has thrown off his land. There are others who’ll join us. But they look up to you, Eamonn. You were always the one.”

She could see that her father was somewhat pleased by these compliments and this attention. But as she looked at their faces, she saw something else. It was a trap. She could see it clear as day. They wanted to use her father, because he was bolder and braver than they were, and had an old reputation in the area. They’ll put you in front of them to do the deed, she wanted to cry out, and when you turn round they’ll be gone. She knew she mustn’t say it out loud. Not now. It would anger the men and humiliate her father and make him all the more likely to accept. She held her breath.

“Show me the warning,” he said quietly.

It was a wretched thing. Callan’s name was across the top, and below it was drawn a coffin. Then, not very literate, a warning to leave off his evil ways or consider the fate of other agents. “Remember them,” it warned. And it was signed “Captain Starlight,” a popular way of ending such missives in the countryside.

Her father considered the document quietly for a minute or two. “Captain Starlight has a fine style,” he remarked drily. “But I will improve his message, if you have pen and ink.” The man who had composed the message produced these articles from his coat pocket. “Very well,” said Eamonn when the man was ready. “There is room for it under the signature. You will write these words of the good Mr. Drummond.” And he carefully dictated:

PROPERTY HAS RIGHTS
PROPERTY ALSO HAS RESPONSIBILITIES

When this was duly written, he glanced up at Maureen and gave her a smile. “I’m sorry not to be coming with you, boys. I’ve no love for Callan, you may be sure, but I’ve matters that concern me here. I wish you good luck.” And, to her huge relief, he sent them away.

“Do you think they will kill him?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“They haven’t the courage.” He sighed. “Perhaps I haven’t, either. But at least I gave the message a little of the dignity it lacked.”

It was one evening in the middle of March that Stephen Smith came to their cottage. He looked tired. Maureen thought it remarkable that he should have gone to such trouble, but for whatever reason, he seemed to feel a personal responsibility for her father.

“I’m sorry,” he told Eamonn, “but the work is ending. They wanted to stop us two weeks ago, and I was able to persuade them to continue a little longer. But the Captain told me an hour ago that they can’t make an exception for us anymore. There are a few other groups continuing until they finish what they’re doing, but it’s all over. At least, please God, the soup kitchens should keep people from starving.”

“We know you did your best,” her father told him, for it was obvious that Smith was distressed.

“What will you do yourself, Mr. Smith?” she dared to ask. “I suppose you’ll be leaving Ennis now?” He turned to her. His green eyes, she thought, were quite remarkable.

“I hardly know. I wish to stay—if there is something useful I can do. I’ve no wish to leave when matters are still so uncertain.” After a few more words, and wishing them better days ahead, he left.

The days that followed were difficult for her father. The first few days, he went out trying to find work, but it was a futile quest. There was nothing for anyone. The fourth day, he went to visit the fever hospital, where one of the men he had been working with had been taken after falling sick. He went to see the man again the next day, and the next. But Maureen realised why he had gone. It was not really to see his sick friend.

The following day, he did not go to the hospital. As she was about to go into Ennis, she told him: “They were asking to see you at the soup kitchen yesterday. They’re getting stricter. They want to see the whole family, because they’re not supposed to give out food to families that have someone working.”

“Tomorrow, Maureen,” he said vaguely. “Tell them I’m out looking for work.”

But she knew very well that he wouldn’t come. It was the shame of it: he, a Madden, to be seen in a line begging for food—officially a pauper, the lowest of the low. She knew he’d never go there if he could avoid it. A hospital visit, a useless quest for a job—anything rather than suffer that last humiliation. And the fact—which any woman could see—that everyone else was in the same case, so that it hardly mattered anymore, would not satisfy him at all. So she said nothing and went into the town.

It proved to be a particularly trying day. The soup kitchen was in Mill Street, beside the maze of poor lanes and alleys that led down to the town’s riverbank. To call it a soup kitchen was really a misnomer, since the Ennis soup kitchen did not serve soup at all. At present, the only food it had was cheap Indian meal, shipped in from Limerick. Behind a large trestle table, protected by barriers, were two huge vats in which the meal was steeped. How much you got depended on what they had each day. Usually, you might expect a pound of meal; but some days it had been as little as three ounces a head. It could not, therefore, be said that the people were fed, but rather that they were kept just above the point of starvation.

Today, however, tempers were frayed. In the first place, the overseer sent down from Dublin had firm views about preparing the food. All Maureen wanted was some meal that she could cook for the children. But she was told that she could not have it.

“No raw meal,” the man cried out. Then he added, so that all might hear: “If you give these people raw meal, half of them’ll just sell it, take the money, and go and get drunk on the proceeds.” Maureen couldn’t think of anyone she knew who would do such a foolish thing, but the man was adamant. This meant that everyone had to wait while batches of meal were cooked. “And once it’s cooked,” a woman in front of her remarked, “it crumbles so, that you can never get it home without bits of it falling on the road. It’s the birds we’ll be feeding before our own children.”

There were all kinds of people waiting. If they were paupers under the law, Maureen saw several of the town’s smaller tradesmen who, with the falling-off in trade, were now almost as destitute as she. The officious fellow from Dublin was equally anxious to make sure that none of this largesse was wasted upon the undeserving.

“Only those whose name is on my list,” he called. “All those on my list may come up and take a ticket. When you have a ticket, you must wait in line for your turn. We’ll have fairness here,” he remarked to someone. “You have to watch these people like a hawk.” He started a roll call. When he came to Maureen, he demanded: “Where is your father? It says you have a father. Is he at work?”

“No, Sir,” she said.

“Tomorrow, I want to see you all. Father, three sisters, brother. All of you, mind, or you’ll get nothing.”

Thanks to this cumbersome procedure, she stood there for five hours before finally getting a small portion of cooked meal, which would hardly feed them as it was. She was starting to walk away when she caught sight of Nuala.

She was down one of the alleys, leaning in a doorway. Maureen supposed that this must be where the laundress lived and that Nuala must be taking a rest. She thought she’d ask her when she was coming home and began to walk towards her. As she did so, she saw a man come up the alley from the other direction. Just a poor-looking tradesman. He stopped by Nuala. They spoke together. The two of them disappeared into the doorway. And then she understood, and, like a fool, was so shocked that she dropped the cooked meal, which scattered on the ground, so that she had to gather it together as best she could, and took it back home all spoiled. And when her father saw it he gave a look of vexation and remarked: “Your brother and sisters will be eating dirt and grit with their meal tonight, Maureen. I can’t think what made you do such a thing.” And she said she was sorry, and she couldn’t think either.

Later that night, when she was with Nuala alone, she told her what she’d seen. But Nuala only shrugged.

“I didn’t want you to know, Maureen, but there was no work to be had, and my being so young, at least I can get something.”

“My God, you’re so young, it would be better me than you, Nuala.”

“I don’t think so, Maureen. I’m quite in demand. Do you realise I’ve already saved five shillings.” She gave a wry smile. “If times were better and I could find a rich man . . .”

“Don’t even say such a thing. You must stop, Nuala.”

“Stop?” She looked at her elder sister almost angrily. “Don’t be a fool, Maureen. With Father earning nothing, how do you think we’re going to pay the next rent?” She relented and gave Maureen a kiss. “We all do what we can, Sis. You keep house and I’ll sell my body. What does it matter?”

“Don’t ever tell Father. It would kill him.”

The next morning the whole family, including both her father and Nuala, went to the soup kitchen. Her father was very quiet. He held his body erect, as he always did, but she saw that, instead of looking out with their usual, bold dignity at the world, his eyes were looking down, avoiding the gaze of others. She knew he was inwardly wincing with every pace he took. When they arrived, their names were checked, but, cruelly, the man who took the roll call insisted that they all wait the four hours until they get their ration. With each minute that passed, she knew that her father secretly took another invisible step down the stairway of humiliation in his soul. And with each passing minute, she was silently praying that nobody should come up to her sister, nor say any word that might give away the trade she now followed.

Whatever her fears about her sister, Maureen couldn’t help being glad when, shortly after this, Nuala started bringing home items of food: a loaf of bread, a little ham, a cabbage. They pretended to her father that they had managed to buy these things in the town, but Nuala confessed to her: “I have a merchant who likes me. He knows what I need, so he pays me with food for my family.” Maureen concluded that there was nothing she could say, since the food was such a boon. The children needed it. Even Caitlin looked a little better.

But the one who seemed to pick up the fastest was little Daniel. Children of six could often be fragile, but thank God, she thought, that her father’s only remaining son was such a sturdy little fellow. He seemed to have a remarkable resilience. A short time ago, his blue eyes had looked so large and staring in his sunken face that she had secretly trembled for him; yet now, after some days of better diet, he had already put on a little flesh and gained in energy. When they walked into town together, instead of holding her hand and dragging his feet, he slipped his hand free and even walked ahead.

Further encouragement came one morning when she and Daniel arrived at the soup kitchen to find that there had been a change. Instead of waiting for a daily ticket, they were told to take a ticket for a month. She observed that the line was moving more easily and was told that the meal was being issued fresh now, so that they did not have to wait for it to be cooked. “There’s a new supervisor,” one of the women told her, but who this might be she did not know until little Daniel suddenly ran across to where Stephen Smith was inspecting a shipment of meal.

“It’s Mr. Smith,” he cried. “Mr. Smith,” he told the bystanders, “is our friend.”

Maureen hastened across and apologised for the interruption, but Stephen Smith did not seem to mind at all. He had been asked to supervise the Ennis soup kitchens for the moment, he confirmed. The other man had been removed. He turned his eyes on Daniel.

“Remind me of your name,” he said pleasantly.

“Daniel, Sir.”

“Ah yes. An excellent name.”

“I am named after Daniel O’Connell.”

“I know Mr. O’Connell well.”

“Does he know that I am named after him?”

Stephen hesitated hardly the fraction of a second, but giving Maureen a smile, he answered.

“Why, to be sure he does. And he is very pleased.”

Little Daniel swelled with pride. Maureen silently blessed, and wondered at, the goodness of the man; and when it came to their turn, the people handing out the meal, having observed that this family appeared to be in the favour of the new supervisor, made sure to give her a little more than they would otherwise have done.

On the second day of April, Eamonn Madden started to feel unwell.

“I’ve no strength in me today,” he said in the morning. He seemed slightly puzzled. It wasn’t like him. Normally, he ignored any ailments, as a king might ignore a complaining subject.

Maureen went into Ennis as usual, taking little Daniel with her.

At the end of the day, she noticed that her father was shivering, and he admitted to her that he had a headache. Feeling his brow, she could tell he had a fever. She’d been able to make a little broth, and she gave it to him. The next morning, he was the same; by evening, his brow was burning.

“You’d best keep the children away from me,” he told her, and insisted on going into the far room, where they had stored the potatoes once. She made him up a bed with straw and a blanket. “I’ll be right enough here,” he said.

She talked to Nuala. The doctors in Ennis were all fully occupied with the hospitals, but Nuala found a priest to consult, and he gave her wise advice.

“Whatever you do, don’t take him to the fever hospital. That’s probably where he got it,” he told her. “Keep him away from the children, and pray. I see the fever every day now, and it’s getting worse. The people are so weakened through lack of food that they haven’t the strength to fight it. There are two forms: the yellow and the black, as they call it. The black is typhus, which is a terrible thing. But most survive it, you know. Is your father a strong man? That is good. Pray for him, then. With luck, after a week, the fever will break.”

But it did not. On the fifth day, as she was feeding him, Maureen noticed by the light of the candle that the skin on her father’s chest seemed to be mottled. One side of his shirt was open, and when he turned, she saw that there were deep red blotches on his side. She wasn’t sure whether he realised, so she said nothing. The next day, the blotches were darker. When the children wanted to go in to see him, she wouldn’t let them. She continued to feed him broth.

The next evening, Nuala brought home some milk. “It’s good for the fever,” she said. “I told my merchant it was for my sisters, to build them up.”

“Does he know about Father?”

“Are you mad? He wouldn’t touch me if he knew. And then . . .” She made a face. “No more food.”

Two days later, the patches on her father were almost black. In the evening, he became delirious, mumbling incoherently. His eyes were open, but Maureen knew he did not see her. Around noon the next day, however, he became lucid again.

“Bring Daniel to me.”

She shook her head.

“Just to the door. Only for a moment.”

Reluctantly, she complied. Eamonn propped himself up against the wall.

“Daniel, your father has a sickness. I may not see you again. Do you understand?”

The boy stared wide-eyed into the shadowy room but did not know what to say.

“You will be looked after by your sister, and always try to help her,” his father went on. “Will you do that for me?” Daniel nodded. “And one day, when you are grown, you will be strong, and never be sick, and then you will be the man of the family, and look after Maureen and your other sisters. Do you promise me that also?”

“Yes,” the little boy whispered.

“Good. You are a good boy, Daniel, and I’m very proud of you.” He looked to Maureen. “That’ll do.”

At that moment, Daniel tried to rush to his father, but Maureen managed to catch him just in time.

When they were back in the other room, Daniel turned to her.

“I will look after you, Maureen. I promise I will. Forever and ever.”

“I know you will,” she said, and kissed him. Then she went back in to help her father. He seemed suddenly very tired.

“I’ll speak to the girls together this evening, when Nuala’s back,” he said.

But by that evening, he was delirious again.

He continued that way for another day. Then he seemed to pass into a kind of stupor. His eyes were open very wide, and his breathing was shallow. Maureen wasn’t sure what to do. It was Nuala who brought the priest, who, after giving him the last rites, told them, “I don’t think it will be very long now.”

Maureen found that he had gone when she went in to him the following morning.

In the month of June in the year 1847, a wonderful thing occurred.

The Irish Famine came to an end.

True, the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped blight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated.

Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The Famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election.

And the British public had had enough of the Irish Famine. After all, everyone had done their best. When a voluntary fund to relieve Irish and Scottish distress had been set up that spring, Queen Victoria herself had contributed two thousand pounds, and the donations had soon reached nearly half a million pounds sterling—a huge sum, far surpassing even the value of relief goods sent across the Atlantic in over a hundred ships by the Irish and their sympathisers in America. The government itself had spent millions. By early summer, moreover, the soup kitchens were frequently able to provide a nourishing mixture of maize, rice, and oats, and there was more than enough to go round. The food shortage had been stemmed.

But at great cost. This expenditure of taxpayers’ money could not go on indefinitely. Surely by now, reasonable Britons supposed, the Irish should be able to start putting their own house in order. Speeches were made denouncing government waste. Newspapers carried articles about misplaced humanity: one must not, these articles pointed out, be too kind to the Irish, or it would sap their self-reliance.

Faced with such general sentiment, and with an election in prospect, the government decided to do what governments have always done: “If you can’t win a war, then you’d better declare a victory.”

After all, this year’s potatoes appeared to be free of blight, and the Irish grain harvest promised a bumper crop. The fact that the poor Irish had no money to buy any grain was a detail that could be overlooked. The market would take care of such things.

And so an excellent scheme was hit upon. In June that year, a bill was passed in the British Parliament that would reorganise the relief of distress in Ireland entirely. The Poor Law Extension Act was a brilliant instrument. From now on, all those in need of help could apply to the local workhouse, in which they could be either incarcerated or fed. The able-bodied, of course, would not be fed. There were some safeguards, so that this generosity would not be abused. Those who had a vegetable patch for self-support would be turned away. And the men, at least, would be obliged to break stones for, say, ten hours a day, in order to discourage trivial applications for food. But by these means, the costs would fall upon the local Irish authorities, where they belonged. And by this was the stroke of legislative genius, as soon as this was done—by the end of the summer, say—the present costly soup kitchens could be closed down and the suffering English taxpayer be relieved.

The Irish Famine, therefore, had been legislated away. Since it was no longer official, it did not exist. Or if it did, it was a local Irish problem. It was a tribute to the flexibility of the Union.

Thus the British government could face the electorate with a sense of confidence and of duty done.

Stephen Smith was most surprised, one day in July, to see Mr. Samuel Tidy standing thoughtfully in the street, watching the soup kitchen. He went over to him at once. And the Quaker was evidently quite as surprised to see him in turn. He listened carefully as Stephen gave him a quick account of how he came to be there, then informed him that he had come to Ennis himself to see what the Quakers might be able to do to help. Since Stephen was to be at the house of Charles O’Connell that evening, he suggested that the Quaker should come, too, since Charles O’Connell would certainly be delighted to welcome him.

He and Daniel O’Connell’s cousin had seen a good deal of each other recently. Though he had been well aware that the great man was unwell, Stephen had been shocked when, in May, the Liberator had died trying to make a pilgrimage to Rome. He had naturally called upon Charles O’Connell at once, and they had often dined together since. Charles had been trying to persuade him to resume his political life, but Stephen wasn’t sure he wanted to.

The three men dined quietly together. O’Connell apologised for the somewhat simple fare, but though it was not lavish, the meal was perfectly adequate. “It’s quite remarkable, really,” Charles O’Connell remarked, “how little life for the richer merchants and the local gentry has changed. The gentry are still entertaining in their houses—quietly, I grant you—but you can still dine and play at whist in any of the country houses around. Indeed, it’s terrible to say it, but this famine has been a blessing to many of the estates in the county, because it gives the landlords and the larger farmers an excuse to clear out numbers of unwanted tenants. I had one man tell me: ‘I’ve persuaded some of my people to emigrate to America. I’m better off paying their passage and getting the land back.’ So there you are, Mr. Tidy. English or Irish, it makes little difference: the richer sort have one set of interests in this matter, and the poor, who are suffering, another. You may say that the situation should never have developed in the first place.”

“I certainly would,” agreed the Quaker.

“But it has, and there are those who say that there is no way out of our difficulty until we have first gone through this terrible period of readjustment.”

“By which,” added Stephen with feeling, “they mean starvation. For that is what the British government is now proposing.”

“You think the British will deliberately starve the Irish poor?” asked the Quaker.

“Not exactly. But I think that every measure they have introduced has been misconceived. I was helping administer the public works scheme before this. Men were being paid a starvation wage to perform useless tasks, so that they could buy food which wasn’t there. It also cost the government a great deal—far more than it would have done to feed people. The entire system broke down, and so they introduced soup kitchens. In some of the more remote areas of Clare, by the way, the soup kitchens took so long to get started that whole villages starved in the meantime. At this moment, starvation has been averted. But in two months, the kitchens will be closed and the workhouses will try to take over.”

“This concerns me greatly,” Tidy said.

“It should. Do you know how many people we are feeding, at present, in County Clare? A hundred thousand. Do you know how many workhouse places there are in the county? Three thousand. What is to become of the remaining ninety-seven percent? No one can tell me. Here in Ennis,” he went on bitterly, “I can feed thirtyfive thousand—many of them able-bodied, by the way. The workhouse is being enlarged. Its new capacity will be just over one thousand.” He made a gesture of despair with his hands.

The Quaker looked at him with quiet amusement.

“I see you have changed since I first met you, Mr. Smith,” he remarked. “You were very much a political man, then.”

“Can the Quakers help?” Stephen asked. “It was Quakers, I believe, who first introduced the very idea of soup kitchens.”

“We can help,” Tidy said, “but we are cautious. There is always the fear, you know, that we would be perceived at trying to proselytise— which, I can assure you, we never do.”

“Ah,” said Charles O’Connell, “you mean ‘soup conversions.’”

Stephen had heard of these: Protestant clergymen or ministers offering food to the starving if they would abandon their Catholic faith.

“I can’t say that I’ve ever seen such a thing myself,” he stated. “Does it really happen?”

“It is rare,” replied the Quaker. “But I have seen it.”

“So what might you do?” Stephen wanted to know.

“We shall probably try to work with the local parishes. Send them supplies—food, clothing, and so forth—and let them make the distributions as they see best. We have facilities down in Limerick. The shipments would come from there.”

“I pray to God that you will,” Stephen told him. “By the autumn, the scale of the problem will be huge.”

They discussed further the various ways in which the Quakers might be able to send aid, and how far it would be possible to reach other parts of Clare. Whatever the Quakers could do, it was certainly not going to combat more than a part of the problem ahead.

After they had talked of this for some time, and knowing their host’s interest in the subject, Tidy asked O’Connell about the coming election.

“It’ll be a lively business, for sure,” he told them. “The borough election comes first, and that’s already sewn up. O’Gorman Mahon, that acted as proposer for my cousin back in ’28, is standing, and the local tradesmen love him. He’s mad as a hatter, actually. God knows what he’ll do in London. But his opponent is so crushed already, he’s about to withdraw. Then comes the county election. One seat is already spoken for, but the second will be interesting. For we have no less a personage than Sir Lucius O’Brien contesting it.” He grinned. “And I’m acting as his agent.”

Sir Lucius O’Brien was certainly no ordinary candidate. The most important of all that mighty clan, direct descendant of King Brian Boru himself, and the owner of the huge Dromoland Castle estate down towards Limerick, Sir Lucius was one of the greatest of the old princes of Ireland remaining in the west. There was only one problem.

He was a Tory. Unlike his younger brother, who supported the Young Ireland men, he had concluded that the Union with England was more to his advantage than otherwise. He supported England, therefore.

“His beliefs, I admit, present a problem,” said Charles O’Connell, “running, as they do, counter to everything that my cousin Daniel stood for and that the local electors want—for they want a Repealer, you may be certain, and not a Union man. But I am nonetheless confident of success.”

“How will you do it?” asked Stephen.

“He’s a very affable man,” said O’Connell. “And he has never been one to press his beliefs in public—at least not in any definite way. There is, you could say, a stately ambiguity about him. And that very ambiguity may help us. Mr. Knox, you know, despite the fact that he never ceases to campaign against the government on behalf of the people, dislikes the idea of Repeal. So the Clare Journal will support my man because Knox believes, correctly as it happens, that he’s a Tory. I have also convinced the local Temperance Society that Sir Lucius is for them. I can’t remember why. The Catholic clergy are mostly against him, and it will be difficult to fool them. But we are preparing some speeches that will give the impression that he might be more of a Repealer than you’d have thought. And because they know that his brother is an avid Repealer, I’m hoping to leave the idea in our electors’ minds that he might be closer to his brother than supposed. With luck, they will come to believe that there is no actual reason why they shouldn’t vote for him. Or better yet, they can believe he’s a bit of a Repealer if they want to—which by election day they will surely wish to do.”

“But why,” asked the Quaker, “will they want to believe this?”

“Sir Lucius O’Brien is a very rich man. There’ll be plenty of money around. He knows what’s expected of him.”

“He’ll pay them for their votes?”

“I don’t know how it is in your parish, Mr. Tidy,” said Charles O’Connell genially, “but if you want a man’s vote in Ennis, he’ll expect to be paid for it. It’s the same as in England. And America, too, for all I know,” he added.

“I am sorry to hear it,” said the Quaker.

“You must consider the effect of the Famine also,” O’Connell pointed out. “Our tradesmen have all been badly hit. You can hardly blame them for taking the chance to make a little money if they can. I’m negotiating with the trades body now.”

Tidy remained another two days in the area. He and Stephen had another conversation together, and agreed that they would correspond with each other about what might be done for the poor of Ennis after the election.

There was a monotony about most of Stephen’s days, but he didn’t mind. The faces at the soup kitchens grew familiar; without even thinking about it, he noticed who had grown sick or disappeared. During those summer months, fever, diarrhoea, dysentery—the bloody flux, as they called it—took their steady toll, especially on the children; he knew what deaths occurred in the hospitals and had some idea of the losses in the town, but who knew how many were dying out in the remoter regions? His only consolation, he supposed, was that if it were not for the soup kitchens, this mortality would be immeasurably higher.

He had been sorry to learn, in April, of the death of Eamonn Madden. Two months later, he saw Maureen looking very downcast. He had learned that it was better not to become too involved with those using the soup kitchens. It made things too difficult. But he went up to her on this occasion and asked what was wrong.

“My sisters Mary and Caitlin both died last week, Sir,” she said. “It was the bloody flux.” She sighed. “I knew they would.”

“You still have your little brother?”

“I do, thanks be to God, little Daniel. And my sister Nuala.”

“She works?”

“She has a little occasional work with a laundress, that is all.”

He would see her each day, often with the little boy holding her hand; and though they did not know it, they became for him a little symbol of hope that, in all this misery, the good were still surviving and his work was all worthwhile.

The election, when it came, was everything that Charles O’Connell had promised. It was astounding to him, but in the midst of the waiting lines for the soup kitchens and the daily dying all around, the town assumed an almost carnival atmosphere. Cartloads of rowdy men, calling out their support for their candidates, rolled through the streets, ignoring the poor folk they passed entirely. Indeed, the people in the lines seemed to enjoy the distraction of watching and listening to the curious show. The pubs were full of people, for Sir Lucius had given out free drink tokens to all and sundry.

Sir Lucius was a popular candidate. Charles O’Connell had done an excellent job, but he had good material to work with. Not only did Sir Lucius prove to be easy in every company, but to his genuine credit, he had given his own tenants every possible help through the Famine. No one on the vast Dromoland estate had gone hungry, and everyone knew it. The people of Ennis hung green boughs on their houses to welcome him.

His speech, it had to be said, was a masterpiece.

“Was I not born in Ireland?” the aristocrat cried. “Were not my ancestors? Did they not fight for Ireland to be a single kingdom and to be free?”

They did. They did. You had only to look at him to see. For wasn’t he the heir of the greatest patriot of them all, who had driven the Vikings back eight hundred years ago? Brian, Son of Kennedy, Brian Boru.

“My roots are in Irish soil. My blood is Irish blood. Where else could my interests lie, if not in Ireland? What land could I possibly love, if not Ireland? For what country could I lay down my life, if not Ireland? Send me to Parliament and I will speak for Ireland.”

Stephen noted, with professional appreciation, that he hadn’t actually said that he was a Repealer. But you could easily think it.

As for the business of the election, it was no better and no worse, he supposed, than other elections had been in the past or would be in the future. The body of tradesmen were paid two hundred and fifty pounds for their votes, though they had asked for a hundred more. Other individual electors had negotiated various payments for their vote: one cheeky fellow had demanded fifty pounds. Charles O’Connell, as agent, received one hundred and eighteen pounds. “Though I should,” he said, “have had more.”

I could only wish, thought Stephen, that my poor people in the soup lines had a vote to sell. But some of the poorer townsfolk were able to make a bit when they were employed to kidnap some of the opposition voters and lock them up until the polls closed. One or two of these voters suffered some physical injury, but that was by mistake.

And when it was all over, Sir Lucius O’Brien was triumphantly elected as one of the two members for County Clare, and went to the London Parliament—though whether the good people who elected him would ever hear a word from him on the subject of Repeal was, Stephen considered, highly doubtful.

“Doesn’t it make you want to get back into politics, Stephen?” asked Charles O’Connell. “Can’t we persuade you?”

“Not really,” said Stephen.

Nor, in the weeks that followed, did he think of anything much beyond the immediate task in hand—which was to keep the soup kitchen open for as long as possible.

During the harvest season, there was some casual work in the fields on the larger farms; but many of the smaller tenants, who might have employed a few men for the harvest in normal years, were too pressed for money themselves and were trying to do all the work with family members. The harvest was a good one. But what use was that to the poor, who could not buy food at all? For them, he was sure, to see carts of grain go by must be like standing beside a riverbank when you are dying of thirst and being told you must not drink. It would be small wonder, then, if before long some of those carts would be robbed.

He managed to keep the soup kitchen going until early September. Then it was closed. He had been asked by Charles O’Connell whether he was interested in becoming one of the new relief officers who would be employed by the workhouse under the new arrangements. “It carries quite a good little salary,” O’Connell told him. But he had also received a letter from Tidy asking if he would care to go to Limerick to help organise the distribution of food from there. “I think,” he told O’Connell, “that I can do more good in Limerick now than I can in Clare.” Besides, he had been too long in Ennis. He was getting run-down himself. He needed to get out.

Before he left, he did go to say goodbye to the Madden children. Nuala was not there when he came by their house, but he found Maureen and the little boy.

“It is wonderful how you look after your brother,” he said to her. But she only smiled.

“Oh no, Sir, it’s Daniel that looks after me.” And the little fellow swelled with pride, obviously believing that this was really so.

Stephen hoped, more than he cared to let them see, that they would survive what he feared would be a bitter season ahead.

And yet, Maureen reflected, there was truth in it. For more than once now, little Daniel had stolen a cabbage. The farms were well guarded. “But I am small, and they do not see me,” he told her proudly. That a Madden should be proud to steal: what had things come to that her little boy should learn such things? But what else could he do to help his sister?

And who knew what other things might be in the child’s mind in this new and terrible world they were living in?

When Mary and Caitlin had fallen sick within a day of each other, she had known that they would not live. She couldn’t say why. Perhaps it was just that she had seen so many other children die the same way, for the dysentery was so widespread now, and the children’s bodies were so weakened that few of them could put up much of a fight against it. She had done her best for them, prayed for Daniel, and hardened her heart. And indeed, she had not suffered so much anguish at their deaths as she should, because something inside her had closed, refusing to accept any more pain. As for Daniel, he had been rather quiet, asking her, wide-eyed, one day: “Are Mary and Caitlin going to die?” In answer to which, she could only tell him: “It’s in God’s hands.” After they had gone, he had said nothing for a day or two; but then, looking thoughtful, he had asked her: “Are they gone to be with God?”

“Yes. Yes they are. And to our father and mother. They are all together with God now.”

“Where is God?”

“He is in heaven, Daniel.”

He had nodded slowly, as if this explained something.

“I did not think He could be here.”

And she knew she should have told him that He was, but she had not the strength just then.

When Mr. Smith came by to say that he was going, she had been very calm and polite. And after he had gone, she had looked after him for a long time, wondering what was to become of them now that the soup kitchens were closing. And as his figure receded along the road, she had felt a terrible sense of loss, and a longing for him to return, or even look back, as if, in him, their hopes themselves were departing.

So she had been startled by Daniel’s voice at her side.

“I wish you could marry Mr. Smith, Maureen.”

“Oh.” She had given a little laugh. “Don’t be foolish, Daniel,” she said.

She had not foreseen what Nuala would do.

In the days after the soup kitchens closed, they had waited anxiously to see what would happen. They were able to buy a little food in the market, because Nuala had some small savings. Nobody was sure how the new regime would work. But one day she had noticed that her sister was looking thoughtful.

Since her sister had started her present occupation, Maureen had always had one fear. It was only natural. What if she caught something from one of her men? She knew that girls in the town had suffered this fate, and the hospital would usually refuse to help them. Some girls had committed petty crimes and got themselves caught deliberately, just so they could get sent to jail. Once you were in jail, if they found you had any sort of venereal infection, they put you in the prison sanitarium until you were cured. It was the best way, if you were poor, of getting treatment. Had this happened to Nuala now? Was she thinking of getting herself put in jail? And if so, apart from the shame of it, where would they be then? A day passed, and she was summoning the courage to ask her right out, when Nuala opened the conversation that evening. It wasn’t what she’d expected at all.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Maureen.”

“I don’t see how.”

“If we don’t get out, we’re all going to die. I know it.”

“What are you saying?”

“I can get us all out.”

“How?”

“I’ve a man who’ll take me. He says he doesn’t mind if you and Daniel come, too.”

“But your merchant lives here.”

“It’s not him. Another fellow. He’s going back to Wexford. He says it’s not so bad there. At least you could get fed.”

“He’s going to marry you?”

“I didn’t say that. It doesn’t matter, Maureen. If he’ll just look after me for a while . . .”

“How long have you known him?”

“A few days.”

“Oh, Nuala. What would we be getting ourselves into? I can’t take little Daniel away on such a promise as that. We’d be better off here.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You won’t be fed. You won’t even have a roof over your head. It’s the chance we have, Maureen. We have to take it.”

“Let me think, Nuala. I’m sure I can’t. But let me think at least until the morning.”

“I’m leaving in the morning, Maureen. I’m sorry, but I have to. I’m not going to die here.”

In the morning, they spoke again, alone.

“I can’t, Nuala. Perhaps I haven’t the courage, but it doesn’t feel right.”

“That’s what he said you’d say.”

“I wish you wouldn’t go.”

But a hard look had come into Nuala’s face.

“Here’s ten shillings, Maureen. It’ll see you through for a little while. It’s all I can spare.”

“Shall I get Daniel, for you to say goodbye?”

“No. You can tell him what you want. Goodbye, Maureen.” And she was gone.

Later in the morning, Maureen told Daniel with a smile, “Nuala has a job. They will keep her away for a while.”

“But we’ll see her again?”

“Of course we will.”

“Is she in jail?”

“She is not,” she cried indignantly.

“That’s good,” said little Daniel.

In the days that followed, she wondered if she had done the right thing. Without Nuala, there would be no money coming in. That meant that unless she tried to follow the same path as her sister, she wouldn’t be able to pay the rent on the cottage for much longer. And in any case, she’d rather conserve what tiny money they had. The place filled her with dread, but she went to the workhouse to find out what help she might get there. Despite the three hundred new places added, there was not space for a single person more inside. She could come again tomorrow, and there might be a little food, they told her; but there was no guarantee.

The next day, there was an argument between two of the relief officers about her status. “She isn’t a widow,” one pointed out. “And she’s able-bodied.” The other took a more generous view. “She and the little boy are clearly orphans. They can be fed.” But there seemed to be little food available, and there were hundreds more at the gates. They gave her a little meal, but there was no promise as to whether this would be repeated.

“There is a plan to take over the old soup kitchens if we can ever get organised,” the more kindly of the two said. “As you see, everything’s at sixes and sevens just now.”

During the next week, they hardly seemed to get any better.

The day before the next rent was due, she noticed the cabin. It was only thirty yards from her own door. There had been a family in there, but they had gone. It was a hut, really, with a roof made of branches and stalks, caked with mud. But it kept out the rain. Someone had built it there, and if the patch of ground had a landlord, nobody had ever seen him. It was free accommodation.

“We really don’t need so much space now, you and I,” she told Daniel. “We’d be just as well in here.” So the next day, when the agent came by for the rent and declined the opportunity to let them stay where they were without paying for a while, they moved across, easily enough, into their new accommodations.

Then she waited, along with everyone else in Ennis, to see what would happen next. “After all,” she remarked to one of her neighbours, “they can’t just let everybody starve to death.”

It was curious how you could survive, she thought, as the days of September went by. Partly it was a question of listening for news, partly of being lucky. The workhouse system was in a state of shambles. One day there was food at the old soup kitchen in Mill Street, another there wasn’t. Some days they were helping people at the workhouse gates, and the next, when hundreds arrived there, they were all turned away. She heard of a shipment of food and clothing from the Quakers arriving at a nearby parish. She went up there and the priest, though he really wanted to feed his own parishioners only, took pity on her and gave her some rice and peas. On another day, early in October, she heard that some men had commandeered a cartload of grain and were passing it out near the new bridge. She left Daniel at the house and ran up there as fast as she could. She came back with five pounds of grain. That kept them alive for more than a week.

The refusal of the workhouse to feed any of the able-bodied men had two results. It encouraged them to go out and rob the grain shipments. That, she thought, was a good thing. But gradually, you could also see many of them, even some of the best, subsiding into a kind of apathy. As October continued and it became colder, it seemed to her that all around her, each day, her neighbours were starting to look a little thinner and weaker. And looking at her own arms one day, and realising how thin they were, she understood that she must look the same to them.

It was halfway through October that Daniel became sick. It wasn’t anything serious, fortunately. Something that he had eaten must have disagreed with his stomach, though, and for two days he was prostrated with diarrhoea. She tried to give him liquids and put something in his stomach. It passed, and she thanked God that his constitution was so strong. But it left him pale, and much weaker than before. She wondered what she could do to put a little more colour back into his cheeks.

A kindly neighbour told her what to do. The first time she did it was the hardest. She selected the place with care—you had to, with the farmers watching their fields like hawks. She went out at dusk, so that she had just enough light to see what she was doing. There were three cows by a stone wall. She crept along the ground like a snake, taking her time. When she reached the cows, they glanced at her, but she let them get used to her before she made her move, and she took things very slowly. She had her sharp little knife and a wooden bowl.

All you had to do was to find a good place on the leg and make a tiny cut. If you did it successfully, the cow would hardly feel it. But the blood would come trickling out all right, and you could cup it into a bowl, just like a doctor bleeding a patient.

She held her breath, felt the leg, praying the cow would not suddenly move, and, with a tiny push, made a cut. The cow stirred, but only very slightly. She held the small wooden bowl against the leg. She didn’t want more than a trickle, because she didn’t want the cow to bleed too much; with luck, the farmer need not notice what had been done. When she had enough, she tied a cloth tightly over the top of the bowl, wiped the cow’s leg clean, and crept away.

Back in the cabin, she diluted the blood with water, mixed it with gruel, and, with some difficulty, persuaded Daniel to get it down. “It’s good for you, whether you like it or not,” she said.

A few days later, she did the same thing again. But this time, she fumbled the cut and the animal bled far too much. On the last day of October, on the eerie and magical eve of Samhain, she went to the field a third time. But as she walked along the path beside the wall, she saw the farmer waiting at the edge of the field. He had a blunderbuss. He was watching her suspiciously, so she gave him a polite good evening and went upon her way. She’d done Daniel some good, she was sure of it. But was it enough?

The month of November was bleak. A cold, raw dampness set in. And now, try though she might, she couldn’t get enough food. She had conserved a few shillings of the money Nuala had given her, and she did her best to buy food in the market. At the workhouse, not only were there growing crowds outside the door, but she plainly heard one of the relief officers say to another: “What are we supposed to do, when we have no money?”

By the end of the third week, it was clear to her: Ennis was collapsing. The process was strangely quiet. Nothing was said. Nothing was done. There were no sudden alarms, no shrieks, no cries. Just a cold, dank silence, while the world slowly sank into lethargy, as though life itself had shrunk, along the muddy streets, into a frozen stiffness. She stopped taking Daniel with her into the town now, because she didn’t want him to see what she saw. There were families sick and dying all along the way. More than once, she had been obliged to step over corpses in the street. She could not hide it when the family next door became sick. She could only try to keep him away from them.

Then came the rain, followed by a day of icy wind. And then, on the twenty-second, Daniel caught a fever.

She didn’t know what it was. It could have been any of a dozen conditions, a random infection. It did not matter. The boy was burning up. She tried to cool his brow and feed him liquid. She stayed by his side. She could feel him burning, hotter and hotter, though she swathed his whole body in a damp blanket now to try to draw the fever. She knew he was strong. That was the most important thing. On the twenty-third, she thought perhaps the fever might break. He was pale now, his eyes staring in a way that she had never seen before.

“You must fight now, Daniel,” she said. “You must be a brave boy, and you must fight.”

“I am sorry, Maureen,” he whispered. “I will try.”

Then, the next morning, the rain returned. A miserable, grey rain, falling incessantly, like a dirty shroud, wetting equally the living and the dead. And as the rain fell, she looked into Daniel’s eyes and saw what she dreaded, that look she had seen in the eyes of children before, when they have given up.

What could she do? There was nothing she could do. But she could not rest there, she could not just hold his hand while he went—he, the last thing she had to call her own in all the world. So she wrapped him in a shawl she had, and carried him out into the rain, and she ran, as best she could, all the way to the fever hospital, where she showed them the boy at the door and begged them: let us in. But they were full, and besides, they had too much else to do, and they told her: “Go to the workhouse. They may help you there.” So once again she set out in the falling rain and stumbled, almost staggered with the weight of him, through the mud until she at last came in sight of that grim, grey bastion. But there were hundreds of people there also, for the doors had been firmly closed, and she could not even get through them.

Though indeed, she discovered, as she pulled back the shawl, she needn’t have bothered, since somewhere upon that journey, Daniel had departed.

On the twenty-fifth of November, Stephen Smith looked out upon the cold, wet streets of Ennis and decided that he would not stay there. He had arrived the evening before and stayed the night at the house of Charles O’Connell. His host had profoundly depressed him.

“At the workhouse now, the guardians are in the ludicrous position of begging the government to give them more relief money, for they are completely without funds. At the same time, they have just had a demand from the government for the repayment of the loan contracted earlier in the year for your working parties and soup kitchens. They won’t pay it, of course. But all the same, at such a time, even to be asked . . .”

No, Stephen thought, he would not linger here. His work in Limerick had been worthwhile, but what he could do had been completed. It would be continued, very effectively, by other hands. He was going back to Dublin. In fact, he couldn’t wait to be gone. But before he could leave, there were some hours to kill. He might as well go round the place, however depressing. As he started to walk, he found himself wondering what had become of the Maddens.

As she stood outside the door of the cabin, staring out at the grey nothingness of the sky, and aware only now of the nothingness of her heart, she did not even notice him coming. Only when he stood before her did she realise that he was addressing her. He was asking after her sister, and after Daniel.

“She has left, Sir, but I can’t tell where she is. I do not know at all,” she answered stupidly.

“And little Daniel.”

“He is dead, Sir. Yesterday.”

“I am sorry. I am sorry for your trouble.” The formula. She bowed her head in nerveless acknowledgement, glanced at his face, which she had seen in her mind’s eye so many times before, and stared out at the sky again. Meaningless. “What will you do?” he asked.

“I? Do?” It had not occurred to her. What was there to do? Was there any point? There was no point.

“Will you stay here? Have you a place to go?”

“I have nothing,” she said, as though in a daze. “All that I had is gone. I have nothing left at all. But it does not matter.”

She was only vaguely aware that he was silent, that he was considering, hesitating.

“You cannot stay here like this,” he said at last. “You had better come with me.”

“I?” She frowned, not comprehending. “Where?” Would he take her to the workhouse?

“To Dublin,” he said.