Black Harvest (8 page)

“W
ELL
,
YOU WERE
wrong about the weather,” Colin said, climbing out of the hole. “It’s hotter than ever, I think. Oh, get off, Jessie!”

“Mmm,” Kevin mumbled, looking up at the sky. “But there’s a lot of rain up there. It’s got to come down sooner or later. Anyway, I’m going now. I’ve got to help my dad.”

Colin felt disappointed. He really liked Kevin O’Malley, and he was a much better companion than his cousin. Oliver was so slow, so pernickety, always stopping to inspect what he’d dug up and shouting bossily, “Hey! Don’t touch that! We’re not up to there yet.” He could be so babyish. Kevin had just grinned to himself and humoured him. After all, it was his hole.

“Do you want to come with us? We’ve got some land on the high ground, the other side of Ballimagliesh. We’re cutting peat for the winter. You can give us a hand if you like.”

Colin didn’t need to think twice. “OK. I’ll just check with my mother. Should I bring this?”

“No. We’ve got special spades for that job. Do you want to come, Oliver?” Kevin called down the hole.

“Oh,
no
,” Colin was thinking. But Oliver didn’t even look up.

“No, thank you,” he said politely. “I’ve got some more work to do on this.”

“It’s surely deep enough now?” Kevin said. “When I bring you the sacking, and that piece of corrugated iron, it’ll be a grand little den.”

“Oh, let him get on with it,” Colin whispered, impatient to get away. “The rate he digs there’s not much danger of him shaking anybody’s foundations. We did most of the work this morning. Are you ready? I can come. My mother’s waiting in for the doctor.”

Kevin shrugged. “All right. Goodbye now, Oliver.” He was thinking that the Blakeman boy hadn’t got much patience with his small cousin. He’d liked dens himself when he was little, especially when his father let him play in the bales and make one there after harvest. But he’d never actually dug himself a hole. It was a great idea that was, it took brains.

Oliver may well be fussing over his hole like an old woman, but if you approached everything at top speed, like Colin, like a bull at a gate, you could miss a lot. You had to stop now and then, to work out what you’d done so far. That’s what his father always said.

Take a den for example. Colin obviously hadn’t noticed something that Oliver thought was very important, something he’d only spotted in the last half hour. You could only see it properly if you looked into the hole from above, at a certain angle.

Right in the middle, where he’d just been digging, someone must have dug once before. The soil was different, crumblier and lighter in colour, and there was a definite shape to it. It was a rough oval, about a metre across.

It was a hole within a hole and it was directly above this that Oliver had unearthed the dog. Now he was uncovering handfuls of moist, peaty stuff, like black matting, with the shapes of twigs and leaves still visible in it.

He’d put everything of importance in a black plastic rubbish sack under some bushes. The bones were in it, and the bits of pottery and the clay pipe. Only the treasures for Donal Morrissey were ready in their box, transferred to the pocket of his trousers.

Auntie Jeannie was sitting at the kitchen table reading, with her back to the window. The baby was asleep presumably. He didn’t intend to disturb her, in case there were awkward questions. He scribbled, “Gone for a short walk,” on a scrap of paper and weighted it down with a stone. Jessie opened one eye as Oliver crept about. She was tied up again. It was the first time she’d not barked at him and she looked strangely listless. It must be the heat, he decided. Then he smiled at himself. He was saying it now. It was the Blakeman explanation for everything.

But it was hot. He peeled off his sweater, left it neatly folded by the note, then started to walk rapidly along the track.

The door of the caravan was propped open with an old broom and he saw an upturned yellow bucket next to it, crowned with a scrubbing brush. A pile of neatly cut new timbers lay close by, together with a collection of tools. The O’Malleys must think a lot of Donal Morrissey. They’d already started repairing the van and someone had been inside, washing the floor. The old man wouldn’t like that much; old people got agitated if you moved their things.

There was nobody about but Oliver still looked round carefully before climbing up into the van. The vegetable patch was now a pathetic black square. The scorched remains of stalks and leaves lay twisted together on the ashy ground, and last night’s rain had turned everything tarry. His rubber soles made black, striped marks on the clean floor.

The van was lighter inside and smelt much fresher. The tiny windows had been rubbed clean and the smelly dog blanket had disappeared. It was probably tumbling round in Mrs O’Malley’s washing machine by now. Donal wouldn’t like that either.

He sat down on an old stool, took the little box from his pocket and put it in front of him on the table. Then he looked round. Mrs O’Malley certainly hadn’t cleaned the shelves, the piles of tins and boxes were so thickly furred with dust nobody could have touched them in years. But one of them
was quite shiny; it was on its own in a corner, next to a cracked mug and some old pipes. It looked as if someone had polished it.

Oliver went over and lifted it up. It was quite heavy and rattled. Very carefully he put it on the table and sat down again.

His fingers itched. This would be the old man’s treasure box, where he kept all his precious, most private things. Mr Catchpole had one too, but it wasn’t as big as this. There was a brass lock, but when Oliver lifted the lid it gave way. He pushed it right back and looked inside. Whatever the box contained was hidden by folds of thick yellow newspaper. Oliver’s little finger played with one corner of it. He couldn’t stop now.

Then a dog barked outside. Oliver pushed the box right away from him and stood up, but Donal Morrissey had swung himself up into the van before he could get through the door. The dog snarled, straining at the end of a short rope, and the old man stared at him in disbelief across the rickety table.

Oliver, trembling and white-faced, was starting to sweat in the strange heat. Donal Morrissey’s eyes were bloodshot and bulging, weariness filled his crumpled, bony face. So the boy had come a second time, and he’d just walked all the way back from Father Hagan’s place in Ballimagliesh, to be on his own again, to have some peace.

Oh, he didn’t blame him for starting the fire, not now the Father had explained it all to him. Donal thought the lad may
well be a bit weak in the head. He’d been very ill apparently, perhaps it had affected him. There was a funny look in his eyes, and he was plainly terrified, twisting his fingers about, his thin shoulders shaking. Donal Morrissey pitied him. He wasn’t such an ogre. He’d seen a lot of things in his time, lived through most things.

But even though he looked frightened, the boy sat down again and began to speak. His voice was loud and penetrating. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, he’d been rehearsing it all morning while he was digging.

“Mr Morrissey,” he burst out, “I came to say that I’m very sorry about your van. It was a mistake. I was just trying to help you, that’s all, so you wouldn’t be without something to eat in the winter.”

The old man went on staring at him. Then he noticed his box on the table. Eileen O’Malley must have polished it. She was welcome, she knew that box well. She’d sat on his knee many a time, in the old days, and played with some of the things inside.

“Go home,” he said suddenly. “I know what you did. It doesn’t matter any more, boy. Go home, I’m telling you.” After the long walk his legs were starting to buckle underneath him. He was getting much weaker. He sat down abruptly, opposite Oliver.

The boy’s mouth quivered. He put his little box into the old man’s hand. Donal’s words had been gentle enough but his voice was harsh, like rooks cawing. Oliver hated it. The man didn’t really believe he was sorry, and he was.

All Donal Morrissey wanted at that moment was to be on his own with his old dog, to make his fire up, brew a mug of tea, and sit quietly in his own caravan. Now this strange boy had arrived, wanting to give him something.

“This is for you. I often dig things up, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever found.” Wearily the old man reached out, took the box, opened it, and shook the contents into his hand. In his cracked palm lay a small, round, metal object, about the size of a walnut, stuck on to a bit of rotten wood. It rattled when he shook it.

“I tried to clean a bit of it. I think it might be silver. There’s an initial on it, look, where I’ve rubbed.”

The old man’s eyes were watering but he didn’t need to look at the initial, he’d seen something very like it many times before. On the flat side of the metal walnut someone had engraved a curly capital “M”.

“And I found this with it.” Oliver took an old envelope from his pocket and removed something from it very carefully, with a finger and thumb, a scrap of purply-red material about five centimetres square. “There was quite a lot of this, but it all crumbled away when I touched it. There were some bits of wood too. Perhaps everything had been in a box.”

The old man looked at the silver nut and the scrap of glowing silk for a long time, then he placed them on the lid of his treasure box with a shaking hand.

“Where did you find these things?”

“Where we’ve been digging. I’m making a den. It’s just
outside the back door, at the bungalow.”

“Was anyone else there?”

“No. My two cousins came to help later but I didn’t show them. They think I’m stupid. Well, Colin does.”

Oliver looked up into Donal Morrissey’s face. To his astonishment he saw that the old man’s eyes had tears in them. “You are not stupid,” he said. “And I like what you’ve brought me, I like it very much. But go home now, they’ll be missing you at the house, and I want to go to sleep.”

As Oliver went through the door he clutched at him quite fiercely. “Promise me something, will you, boy? If you should find anything else like this
bring it to me.
”

“Can I tell anybody?” Oliver didn’t think he’d want to tell, not for a minute, but it was as well to know what was allowed. There should always be rules about secrets like this, in his opinion.

“Nobody at all, I’m thinking,” the old man said firmly. “Unless it’s the priest. I’ll be showing Father Hagan this. You can tell him, surely.”

Every night, when he got back from Danny’s Bar, Donal Morrissey set the contents of his box out on the filthy table. Today he didn’t wait for darkness. Before Oliver was halfway home he had lifted off the newspapers and taken out three things: a shabby black prayer book, a tattered square of dark red silk, and a baby’s rattle. The handle was apple-wood carved with tiny leaves, the top a hollow silver oval with a wavy initial carved on one side. He arranged them in front of him, next to Oliver’s present, then looked carefully from one to the other. Every time the box came out he gave that rattle a bit of a polish, and it was most nights now. Nobody came to see him these days, except the priest and John O’Malley.

He shook the rattle and the noise made the dog bark suddenly. “Husht, will you,” and he nudged it gently with his foot. Then he unfolded his piece of silk and looked at the light through it, marvelling at the way the patterns bloodied the sky into flowing purples and strange reds.

P
RILL WOKE UP
and found herself under a blanket on a hard sofa, next to a smoky fire. She’d come round once before when someone had dabbed her forehead with cold water and applied sticking plasters. Then she’d passed out again.

Father Hagan sat opposite in a fat, over-stuffed chair, sucking on a pipe and looking straight at her. It was dark in the little room. Through the window she could see a neat cabbage patch and a square of thick yellow sky.

“Is this your house?”

“It is. You fainted in the shop, then you were sick. Do you remember? Lucky I was around. This house is just two doors past Mooneys’ Stores. So how are you feeling now, dear?”

“All right.”

It wasn’t true. She was feeling bilious and unbearably hot again. Where was her shopping bag and the precious bit of
paper? She still hadn’t phoned her father.

“We went for Dr Donovan, but he’s out on his rounds. Anyway, they tell me he’s calling on your mother later this afternoon to look at the baby. So he’ll see you too. Is the little one not very well then?”

Prill found his gentle kindness quite unbearable, after all that had happened. “No,” she whispered. “No, she isn’t at all well,” and she started to cry.

Something in the man’s face told her he would listen and try to understand. It was the same thing Dad had seen and wanted to paint. It was nothing to do with his being a priest, or with the simple crucifix hanging on the wall. She couldn’t say what it was exactly, she just knew he wouldn’t say her story was stupid, or all made up.

Once the tears started she couldn’t stop them. Father Hagan heard everything from the beginning, how she’d disliked the bungalow the minute she’d set foot in it and how she hadn’t wanted Dad to leave them there. She told him about the strange smell on the beach, and about the mustiness in Colin’s room, and about her nightmares, that figure crawling across the blackened fields towards the house, and the wasted face looking in at her, the fact that Colin had seen the same face.

Father Hagan sat up when she said this. So far he thought he could give explanations for everything she’d told him, but this was different. If the girl was feverish, with a high temperature, she could have imagined all kinds of things. But she was insisting that the brother had shared her dream. That
was more difficult to explain away.

Now she was telling him about the beggars on the road to Ballimagliesh. “I did see them,” she sobbed. “They asked me for money. The boy stuck his nails into my arm and it bled. Look, if you don’t believe me.” She pulled the blanket back to show him. All he could see was a slim, sunburnt arm, slightly freckled. Without thinking, he shook his head.

This maddened Prill and she started to shout. She didn’t know whether she was crying or screaming. “It’s
true.
I don’t care what my arm looks like now. I
did see them
, and I saw the baby!”

“Yes, well now, let’s talk about that, dear. In the shop, was it? Try to keep calm, Prill. It’s important to remember as much as you can. It will help you to talk about it.” She had certainly been very violent in Mooneys’ Stores. It wasn’t exactly a fainting fit. He had been waiting at the back of the queue and seen everything. It seemed to him that the girl had had some kind of hysterical attack. She had kept poking crazily at something a delivery man had left on the counter, a ham he thought it was. Now she was telling him it was a child, a corpse, left there by a poor woman in exchange for a loaf of bread. All he had seen was the girl herself, plunging about the floor in a wreckage of paint cans and broken glass.

She raved on and on about the woman in the dream, and in the shop, but Father Hagan wasn’t really listening now, he was studying her face. She definitely looked ill. The sooner he got her back to her mother, so Michael Donovan could take a look at her, the better for everyone. Poor child.

He rarely used his ancient car. It was a temperamental beast and he could do most of his journeys on a bicycle. But today it started first time. “Ah,” he said, with simple joy, “the grace of God.” He helped Prill to climb in. She was shivering now so he got a rug and tucked it round her. He planned to drive very slowly so they could talk.

He said nothing till they were up the hill and out of Ballimagliesh, then he said tentatively, “Prill, dear, is this your first visit to Ireland?”

She nodded.

“Do you know anything about it, I’m wondering? Sure it’s a land rich in history, every stick and stone of it.”

“Not much,” she said. “Oliver does, though. He knew all about the potato famine. His father teaches history, he made him read books about it before we came.”

“Ah, yes. What about you, though? I’m just thinking, perhaps you’ve read something for yourself, have you, or watched a television programme? Might there be something you’ve seen that’s worried you – you know, stuck in your mind? That’s where our bad dreams come from, very often.”

“No, I don’t think so. Well, not that I can remember.”

Father Hagan decided to shift his ground slightly. “Tell me about your cousin Oliver.”

“I don’t know very much. We don’t see him often. He’s only our second cousin, his mother’s Mum’s auntie. He’s adopted.”

“And does he know who his parents were?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know that anyone does.
Auntie Phyllis – that’s his mother – married Uncle Stanley when she was quite old, and after a while they fostered Oliver. They’ve adopted him now, I think.”

Prill was hesitating. She didn’t think Father Hagan would approve of her private jokes with Colin, about Oliver being found by the swings in Battersea Park, or left on some hospital steps in a Sainsbury’s carton. But there
was
a mystery about him. She knew that because it was never discussed at home.

“Why are you so interested in Oliver?” she said sharply.

“Oh, nothing really… He’s an unusual little boy though, isn’t he, digging his hole and trying to save the old man’s potatoes? An individual, I’d say.” Father Hagan knew it sounded feeble. He couldn’t tell Prill what he felt about Oliver, or how disturbed he’d been at their first meeting. He didn’t understand it himself.

It was five o’clock when the car bumped its way down the track and parked outside the bungalow, next to Oliver’s den. Mrs Blakeman was standing by the window looking out for them. Their phone was still dead but the farm was back on again, and Mrs O’Malley had been down to tell her Prill had fainted in Mooneys’ Stores and that Father Hagan was bringing her home.

They had only been in the house ten minutes when a second car drew up outside and doors slammed. Then the bell was rung three times in quick succession. Mum tripped over the dog as she ran to answer it. Whoever it was had no time to waste.

Dr Donovan didn’t wait to be asked inside. Father Hagan was in the hall, on his way out. The man just shoved past him rudely, muttering, “Now then, where
is
this child? Humph, don’t need to ask, do I? Just follow the screams. All right, all right, let’s have a look at you. Come on, it’s not the end of the world.”

“Send one of the boys along if you need me,” the priest whispered as he went through the front door. “I’ll not get in the doctor’s way. Don’t want him to think I’m interfering or anything.”

When the bell rang, Colin, Oliver and Alison had been eating tea at the kitchen table. They all looked up when the elderly doctor appeared in the doorway, and all three disliked him on sight. So did Mrs Blakeman, so did Prill, and when he touched her, Alison set up a wailing loud enough to wake the dead.

Under the table Jessie gave a sudden howl in sympathy. She seemed off colour again. Colin had persuaded her to eat her dinner but she’d been violently sick afterwards. It had upset them all. Everyone was fond of Jessie. Even Oliver had seemed concerned and offered advice. If Dr Donovan had been a bit kinder to Alison they might have asked him what was wrong. But the man was hopeless.

They could all smell the drink on his breath. Colin watched him fumble with the catches on his case, wondering whether the way he lurched and staggered across the kitchen floor was the result of too many whiskies or just extreme old age. He looked nearer eighty than seventy and was almost as
decrepit as Donal Morrissey.

The baby screamed at the thermometer and screamed at the stethoscope. She went on screaming as the strange-smelling, whiskery old man inflicted his various cold instruments of torture upon her one by one.

Mrs Blakeman had been waiting for this visit all day. She’d had plenty of time to prepare what she wanted to say, but one look at Dr Donovan and the words died on her lips. She doubted that he would listen to her, even when sober. He’d hardly looked at Alison and he was already putting his instruments away. There was no point in asking him to examine Prill. All he wanted was to get home.

The truth was that the old man was well past making house calls on a sticky August day. He’d been dragged out of retirement because Dr O’Keefe was on holiday and the usual locum was ill. He’d had a long afternoon of difficult old women with imaginary aches and pains, neurotic mothers and snotty-nosed children.

This baby’s temperature was normal, so was its pulse. It wasn’t refusing its food and its bowels were in order. Nothing wrong with this child that a bit of firm handling wouldn’t put right. The mother clearly spoiled it and was determined to worry. It was certainly on the thin side but that was all to the good. Fat babies were unhealthy.

He dumped two bottles of medicine on the kitchen table. “The pink – give her a couple of spoonfuls at bedtime if she’s playing up. The white – that’s for stomach upsets…warm weather…you never know, may just be hatching a little bug.
Come up to the surgery in a couple of days, if you’re still not happy about her.” Dr Donovan’s pinched, lopsided face had a glassy look. It plainly said, “Don’t you dare”. Then he added, “She’ll be as right as rain tomorrow.”

In less than two minutes he was weaving his way up the track. Helplessly, Mrs Blakeman watched him go. “That’s that then,” she said blankly, going back into the kitchen and flopping down at the table. “He wasn’t much help, was he? Mrs O’Malley did warn me.”

“Wonder how many drinks he’d had?” Colin said darkly. Alison was still grizzling but more quietly now, more as a matter of routine. She was as pleased to see the back of Dr Donovan as everybody else.

Prill looked at the pink bottle, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed. “I know what this is. It’s only baby aspirin in a kind of syrup. This is no good.”

“I know, I know,” her mother said wearily. “It’s just happy juice. You both had it as babies. All it did was knock you out for a bit, so Dad and I could get some sleep. It doesn’t really cure anything.”

“What are we going to do, Mum?” Colin asked. “And what about Jessie? You said you’d ask him about her.”

“I know,” Mrs Blakeman said wearily. “But how
could
I? Oh, I just don’t know. Perhaps Mr O’Malley’s got something we could dose her with, but I don’t like to keep running up there. I must speak to your father tomorrow. Somebody’s got to have a phone that works. Surely the whole of Ireland can’t be cut off? Anyway, I think I’ll have a bath. Can you cope
with Alison, between you? I don’t think I can stand much more of her today.”

She would have a good long soak, and a think. Then she’d make another pot of tea. When in doubt, have a bath and a cup of tea. She knew the baby would start yelling the minute she went through the door, but she still shut it firmly. Then she locked herself in the bathroom. There were now two closed doors and the running taps between her and the baby.

Prill had been watching Oliver closely. He obviously couldn’t stand it when Alison cried. For a while he stared at her intently, his face white and tense, his strange, large eyes goggling, then he stood up suddenly, unstrapped her from the high chair and took her in his arms.

“I hate it when she cries, Prill, I just can’t stand it,” he whispered, walking round and round the kitchen table, making soothing noises. His shoulders were shaking. Prill looked at Colin but he just shrugged in embarrassment.

She went up to them. His face was hidden against Alison’s sticky babygro, but she knew he was crying. “Oliver,
don’t.
It’s all right, honestly. She cries a lot sometimes. Don’t get upset.”

“I can’t bear it somehow.”

“Look,” Colin said, trying to be practical. “We’ve got these now, this stuff may do the trick.” But nobody believed him. He didn’t believe it himself.