The Rebels of Ireland (107 page)

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.”