Galway Bay (28 page)

For our fare, I thought, but didn’t say. The baby inside me held on to life somehow, a strong fellow. He’d be born in mid-April—old enough to travel by July. We could sail then, if Patrick Kelly responds. I’d convinced Michael to go somehow and . . .

“Honora,” Michael said, “your mother.”

Mam was running across the strand toward us. Granny. She’d been feeding her soup to Dennis and Josie’s little ones. When the official caught her at it, she told him, “It’s my soup. I can do what I wish.”

He’d said to her, “This is the queen’s soup. If you don’t need it, I’ll take you off the rolls.”

Granny had begun reciting an Irish phrase at him in a low, singsong tone. “Spells,” an old man standing nearby told the official, who said, “Pagan nonsense,” but didn’t bother her again. Now Granny was too weak to leave the cottage.

But Mam was shouting, “They’re going out! The boats!”

Fishing for the first time since last fall. A whole season had been lost to the most severe winter storms in a generation, but now, here was the Claddagh fleet following the Admiral’s white sail.

I saw that Da and my brothers were pushing our boat out through the surf. “But they have no nets,” I said to Mam—standing next to me now. “Nor food.”

“The Quakers gave money to redeem the nets and buy supplies,” Mam said as our boat took its place in the procession. “The schools of herring have arrived. God is with us, Honora.”

And Michael smiled at me. I could hear his thoughts: We won’t have to leave. We will survive.

Inside the cottage, Granny lay on a straw bed near the fire.

“Oh, Granny,” Mam said, “the boats are out, thank God.”

“Mac Dara,” Granny said, “answering our prayers.”

Prayer and fasting—our only weapons. My brave granny, did you offer yourself for us?

Michael and I knelt down next to her.

Mam came over, holding a tin can. “Some spring greens boiled up, Granny. Please try to eat them.”

Granny closed her eyes.

Mam looked at me and shook her head.

Granny couldn’t eat . . . the final days. I’d watched a man force soup down his father. The food so shocked the starving old man’s system, he’d died.

“Granny, sip the broth,” I said, shaking her gently. “There’s herring coming. Please, Granny, please.”

She opened her eyes, filmed over now, their green color dulled—that hunger stare. I’d seen that same blankness in the eyes of the women waiting for the soup, crouched against the seawall holding skeletal children, all resistance gone, their unseeing gazes fixed on the Bay.

Please God, not Granny. She took a small sip from the cup in my hand.

“Honora,” she said.

“I’m here, Granny,” I said.

“Michael?”

“Here.”

“And John’s with us,” she said. “Good.”

“Granny, Da and the boys are out fishing, remember?”

“Didn’t you tell me that five minutes ago? It’s my John, my own husband, John Keeley, who’s standing at the door.”

Her husband dead how long, fifty years?

“The best of men,” she said. She sat up and spoke into the empty space. “Hold there a moment, John. Honora . . .” Her eyes cleared—bright now, holding mine. “Your husband,” she started, and stopped.

“Michael,” I said.

“Who else? Come closer, Michael. You’re a good, kind man, and strong, but I understand what you don’t say. I know the loneliness of a lifetime spent away from your people and place.”

“I’ve made a new . . . ,” Michael began.

Granny waved her hand at him. “You have done well with Honora.”

“Granny,” he said, “I love her.”

“As my John loved me, but I could be a torment to him. I was glad when my son found Mary Walsh, a gentle, soft woman. But it’s hardness that’s needed now. Honora’s good in a fight. She’ll stand with you, Michael.”

Michael smiled at her. “She’s my thigh companion.”

Granny nodded. “Fadó,” she began, but faltered and looked over at the door. “Jesus Christ, John Keeley, could you not wait a bit? I’m telling a story!” She gathered her breath. “Fadó.” But her body sagged. “You finish, Honora. You tell the stories,” she said.

“I will, Granny. I promise.”

Granny closed her eyes and let her spirit leave the body that could no longer contain it.

There’d been no wakes held in Bearna for more than a year. Hardly time to do more than dig a grave and say a quick prayer with so many dying. Whole families lay in pits or in ditches under cairns, like the Ryans.

But they came for Granny. All the fishing families from Bearna, even the Claddagh Admiral, crowded in the cottage where Mam had laid out Granny’s body.

“Why?” Paddy asked me as I sat against the wall in the corner with Jamesy and Bridget near me.

“Why what?”

“Why are all these people here? What did Granny do?”

“She told stories,” I said, “and she was very wise.”

My brother Dennis had sobbed to me, “She saved my children.”

As the night went on, the neighbors told stories about the fierce Connemara woman who had come with her son so many years before, and Da had actually laughed, happy in remembering.

I heard other kinds of talk, too. Owen Mulloy was speaking with John Joe Clancy, Joseph with our Walsh cousins: “Amerikay . . . escape.” No need to beg the landlords for the fare. The uncles and sons who’d gone out last year to lay rails and dig canals were turning the dollars they earned into bank drafts for their family’s passage, then mailing them to the Sisters of Mercy or to Presentation Convent or any safe place where a letter would be held. The ones who’d gone ahead were saving the ones left behind. The American letter—the rescue had begun. But no letter from Patrick Kelly, no answer to our appeal.

Michael turned away from two men to come over to me.

“Go talk to Hughie, Paddy,” I said. “Take Jamesy.”

They went across the room.

“What are the men saying?” I asked Michael.

“A dangerous business,” he said. “What good is a bank draft if the bank manager calls the landlord when you try to cash it? Those two were telling me that Pat Shea was made to wait in the bank while the manager sent for the landlord’s agent, who took the money off him. Said he owed rent. Another fellow was on the ship when the sheriff came. He hadn’t paid for a sack of corn. Took his ticket. Put him off.”

Owen Mulloy came up to us. “Sorry for your trouble,” he said to me. “She was a mighty woman.” And then, not even pretending he hadn’t heard, he said, “Get a priest to take the drafts to the bank. There are ways.”

The cheapest passage was to Canada. Two pounds for adults, one for children, and then food for the journey—another twenty-five pounds. Nine adults, nine children after my baby’s born, so fifty-one pounds would see Mam and Da, Dennis and Josie, my brothers, Máire, and the children, all of us away. Michael could ride Champion to the Scoundrel Pykes, give them the horse in exchange for Máire and her children. I remembered the ship we’d seen going to Mac Dara’s Island, how sorry we’d felt for those stone-faced people. But they were the lucky ones. They had escaped, as we must.

I knelt in front of Granny’s body, so peaceful by the fire. Oh, Granny, send us a miracle. Let an American letter from Patrick Kelly arrive soon.

Da and Joseph and Dennis and Hughie carried Granny’s coffin the short distance to Bearna graveyard. Paddy’s and Jamesy’s hands were in mine while Michael carried Bridget. Jamesy stopped, pointed to the rooster carved in the post at the gate.

“Why is that there, Mam?” he said.

“I’ll tell you later,” I whispered.

“Grainne Keeley Ní O’Malley laid to rest.” A new curate said the blessing. Father Roche had died of black fever caught from giving last rites to the dying. “Eternal rest grant to her, O Lord. Eternal rest.”

The bottom of the coffin opened and Granny’s body dropped into the grave. Eternal rest, and the coffin used again and again. Slán, Granny, slán. No keening, no crying, no tears left.

“We are doing our best for you, Granny,” I said.

At least we knew where she lay. At least she was close to Galway Bay. At least we could kneel and say an Ave here for her—for you, Granny. At least we gave her that much. There’d been whispers of a mass grave up near Paddy’s Cross—ten fever victims, the families able to do no more than lay them in a pit. And stories of families very close to death, huddled together while the father barricaded the door of the cottage from the inside, making it their tomb.

“The rooster, Mam.” Jamesy stood at the gate, tracing the outline of the rooster as Michael had done with his mermaid at Clontuskert Abbey, claiming it.

While the others were still shoveling dirt onto Granny’s coffinless body, I told Jamesy about the soldiers who crucified Jesus and how the rooster jumped from the pot to say, “Slán Mhic Máire!” The Son of Mary is safe. “Jesus didn’t really die. And neither did Granny or any of the other poor people that have gone into the ground. They will all live again.”

“Really, Mam?”

“Really, Jamesy. Granny is safe.”

“With Jesus.”

“That’s right, Jamesy.”

“But those fellows would have been better if it was a hen came alive in the pot,” said Paddy. “They’d’ve had eggs.”

A week had passed since Granny’s funeral, near the middle of March. Michael and I sat up late whispering by the fire while the boys and Bridget slept—a sweet breathing sleep, not the passed-out stupor of hunger. Da’s catch had fed us. Not enough fish to take to the market, so we’d all eaten herring stewed with spring greens. With that and the Sisters of Mercy soup, the children had regained some strength, and so had Michael. A few days of food couldn’t fill out the hollows in his cheeks, but the glaze of exhaustion was gone from his eyes. He’s only twenty-six, I thought, yet those days spent breaking stones in useless work have taken a toll. But now, settled against his chest with his arms around me, the fire warming us and the pains in my stomach eased, I felt supported and could let out the words I’d been holding back.

“Michael, I’m so frightened. I think of poor little Grellan. To lose another . . .”

Michael stroked my hair. “I know. I know.”

“If only we could leave,” I said. “If only Patrick would send our fare before the starvation and disease kill us.”

“Spring is coming,” Michael said. “The ground is soft. I have the turnip seeds to plant.”

A Quaker man had come to the soup line and given away a load of seeds. The government had bought them to distribute but had given up the idea when seed merchants complained about unfair competition. The Quakers had purchased the supply and given away the seeds. Good people, the Quakers. Others had good intentions toward us, too. The Americans sent ships loaded with food. Even some British people contributed money to help us. But the British government, controlling even the money raised by private charities, took those funds meant for us and squandered them on high salaries to their officials and useless schemes. Those with good intentions seemed to have no power, and the powerful had no good intentions. We had to get out some way.

“The winter didn’t kill us, a stór,” Michael said.

“But so many died. Paddy was asking me if heaven would be big enough for all the dead people. Two more of the Dwyer children last week, Michael. Little Francie Lonergan’s gone, and Bridey, too. Two families in Truskey . . .”

Michael held me closer. “There’s food pouring into the market in Galway City,” he said. “Indian corn and rice.”

“What good is that if we have no money? Only the ones with American letters can buy food. Why doesn’t Patrick write us?”

“Maybe he didn’t get your letter,” Michael said.

“But he must know we’re starving,” I said. “Didn’t Mulloy tell us every town and city in Amerikay’s collecting money for us?”

“Every politician who wants an Irish vote is speaking out against the British,” he said. “Patrick’s working for the Cause. I doubt if he’s much money.”

“He should sell Grellan’s crozier.”

“Honora!”

I’d gone too far. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“We’ve survived the worst, a stór,” Michael said.

“Sometimes”—I turned to say this right into his ear—“I wonder why people don’t run into Galway Bay . . . float away.”

“Honora!” He twisted me around to him. “Never, ever even think that!”

“Why? Because of hell? Hell’s now, Michael.”

“We will live, Honora, and our children will live. We won’t die to please them. Jesus, Honora, if your granny could hear you. It’s because you’re so close to your time, a stór. Now sleep, Honora.”

He eased me down on the straw and stroked my face until I did let go of my worries and slept.

I awoke late to find Michael feeding Bridget and the boys the last bits of herring. He smiled at me. “Good morning, Honora.”

“Good morning,” I said.

The boys were sipping nettle tea from our cup.

“Da told us a soldier story, Mam, and this is mead we’re drinking, like Finn and his men,” Jamesy said.

“Good.”

“Mam,” Jamesy went on, “Paddy said he ate eggs for breakfast in the before times. Every day, he says. He’s lying, isn’t he?”

“Every day I can remember,” said Paddy, looking at me in a straight, cold way that reminded me of his uncle Patrick.

“I don’t know anywhere they eat eggs every day, except maybe the Big House.”

“Or at the bishop’s. That rooster crows so mightily,” Michael said. “He must be keeping those hens happy enough.”

“Those hens are lucky to be alive,” I said. “It’s a tribute to the respect people have for the bishop that they haven’t been stolen and eaten long ago.”

“A tribute to that great monster of a wolfhound who guards the henhouse,” Michael said.

“The doggie likes me,” Jamesy said.

“It’s true, Michael,” I said. “Jamesy has a way with that animal.”

We’d met the dog a month ago as he trotted alongside the bishop on the strand. Angus, you called him, and he had a way of pulling his lips back from his teeth that said: I’ll bite you in half with one snap of my jaw. He frightened every child in five townlands. Mrs. Riley, the bishop’s housekeeper, doted on the brute and cared for that dog as if he were a big baby. If we had half the food she gave that monster . . .