The famine orphans, p.3
The Famine Orphans, page 3
Mary Timmins caught up with me as I made my way back to the dormitory. She looked up at me, her blue eyes wide. “Would they really let me go?” she asked. “I’m only fourteen. I know they said I’d qualify. Will you be going?”
I thought of my conversation with Ma. I’d told her I wasn’t going, and I meant it. But I didn’t want to hold Mary back. “I don’t know yet,” was all I said.
“Oh, Kate, I want to go but I’m afeard. Patsy said we might all drown. But I don’t want to stay here without you!”
I looked at her. Yes, Mary was fourteen, but with her small frame and innocent ways, she was more like a ten-year-old. She’d been an only child—born to her mother late in life. From what she’d told me, I gathered she’d had a very sheltered upbringing. Her parents almost never let her out of their sight. I thought to myself that she’d been more smothered than sheltered. Her parents had died early on when the famine came, and Mary had been left alone for days in the cottage with their bodies until a neighbor found her and brought her to the workhouse. She was a sweet, innocent girl who I often thought belonged in a convent. I could understand her fears. Didn’t we all feel the same way?
I patted Mary’s arm. “Try not to worry yourself, Mary,” I said.
* * *
Over the next few nights, I sat awake beside Ma as she sweated with a fever. For weeks now dysentery had been spreading through the workhouse population. To his credit, Master Dunne had ordered new privies to be built to accommodate the increased demands of the growing inmate count, which now totaled thirteen hundred. But it made little difference. Cholera, typhoid and chest ailments were also cutting through the population at an alarming rate, sending more poor souls to the infirmary, some of them never to return.
I was fortunate that I had not yet caught any sickness, but Ma had already been poorly when we arrived and she had little strength and, I think, less will to fight back. No amount of coaxing could get her to swallow the watery soup I offered her.
“You have to keep up your strength, Ma,” I pleaded. “I need you to get well. How else am I going to get you and Christy out of here and back with Da and Paddy?”
Ma shook her head. “You know your da is never coming back, Kate. If he was alive, he’d have been here to fetch us by now. It’s been almost a year.”
“Don’t talk like that, Ma,” I said.
Deep down I knew she was right. I’d had nightmares where I saw Da lying dead in a ditch. But I had to stay strong for Ma. I had to stop her from giving up hope.
“Maybe he followed Paddy over to England and the two of them are earning money hand over fist. And when they have enough saved sure they’ll be back for us in no time.”
Ma’s dull eyes lit up for just a moment and she smiled. “Ah, you were always a girl with a great imagination, so you were. My wee dreamer.”
I began to cry. Ma reached out and stroked my long hair.
“Such lovely hair,” she murmured, “the same as mine was at your age. ‘Titian,’ they used to call it.”
I’d been told often that I was the spitting image of Ma and it pleased me to no end. I was tall, like her, with the same reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes. I looked into Ma’s eyes now and shuddered. They were unusually bright, but it was not the light that made them shine—it was the raging fever.
“Go to Australia, love,” she whispered. “It’s what I want, and what your da would want. Don’t let this famine curse our entire family. I want you to smile again, you always had the sunniest of smiles. God is giving you this chance. Take it.”
She lay back down on the straw bed and as I mopped her forehead with a damp cloth she drifted off into sleep.
The next day Father Burns, the Catholic workhouse chaplain, sat next to me in a corner of the dining hall.
“Your ma’s in a bad way, Kate,” he said.
I nodded, unable to find words. I studied his solemn face. How many hundreds of times, I wondered, had he had this conversation with the relatives of sick inmates?
“She can’t die,” I said, holding back tears. “She and Christy are all I have left in this world.”
Father Burns put his hand on my arm. “God has a plan for each of us, Kate, and you must trust Him to know what’s best for you.”
“Best? How can losing half my family to famine and ending up in this workhouse with my ma dying be best for me?”
“It’s not for us to question—”
My anger exploded. “Question, Father? You know what I question? I question whether such a creature as God even exists, but if He does, I’ve no notion of trusting Him or His plan!”
I knew what I was saying was blasphemy but at that moment I didn’t care.
Father Burns silently bowed his head.
Later that night I knelt beside Ma as she drifted in and out of consciousness and watched Father Burns perform the last rites. Some of the women in the dormitory sat up to watch but most of them lay on their straw pallets without moving. I supposed, like me, they’d seen this ritual often enough over the months, that it had ceased to have meaning. One more poor soul heading for the paupers’ graveyard! The door opened and Matron came in holding Christy by the hand. I scrambled to my feet and ran to him, pulling him close. He looked up at me with wide, unblinking eyes that seemed too big for his wizened wee face. I’d caught a few glimpses of him over the months as he marched with the other boys out of the schoolroom, just as I was coming in to teach the girls. Workhouse rules were strict on keeping us all separated regardless of family connection. After a while, just a glimpse of him was enough to reassure me that he was alright.
He struggled out of my grasp and backed up to Matron.
“Do you not know me, Christy?” I said in alarm. “Surely you haven’t forgotten me?”
“Go on now, Christy, there’s a good lad,” said Matron. “I’ll be waiting for you just outside.”
I took his hand and led him to where Ma lay. Father Burns nodded towards him. “Hello, Christy, would you like to kiss your ma goodbye, son?”
But Christy didn’t move. He stood still in the dim light looking off into the distance. Part of me wanted to shove him towards Ma, to shout at him that this was his mother, and she was dying, but I did neither. How was I to know what was going on in the child’s head or what he’d suffered through already? I sighed. He had become a stranger to us, and we to him.
Father Burns finished his prayers, anointed Ma’s forehead, kissed the stole around his neck, and placed it in a box along with the holy oils and a crucifix.
“She’s at peace now, Kate. May God have mercy on her soul.”
Standing, he took Christy by the arm and led him out of the room. I was left to keep vigil over Ma. I must have dozed off for a time for when I awoke the sun had risen and I was alone.
I got up and went to find Matron.
“I want to go to Australia,” I said.
* * *
Two days before we were to leave for the journey to Australia the travel boxes we had been promised had still not arrived. We’d been on pins and needles for days waiting for them, trying to ignore Patsy Toner’s constant taunts that we’d been lied to.
“Sure they thought we were stupid as well as poor,” she said. “And they were right. You were all codded by their promises. I kept telling you it was too good to be true!”
“Stop it, Patsy,” one of the girls retorted. “Just because you weren’t picked to go doesn’t mean you should be spoiling it for the rest of us!”
I understood Patsy’s bitterness. A week earlier, Matron told her she would not be going. That night I heard her sobbing in the corner of the dormitory. She cursed at me to leave her alone when I went over and knelt beside her pallet.
“I’m sorry, Patsy,” I whispered. “I really thought you’d be coming with us. I can talk to Matron if you like. See if she’ll change her mind . . .”
Patsy sat upright. “Don’t be bothering your head, miss,” she said. “What makes you think I wanted to go with you lot, anyway?”
“Ah, now, Patsy. Of course you wanted to go. Who wouldn’t? And besides, I’ve noticed how you’ve been behaving better the last couple of weeks and you even got Father Burns to sign a reference for you, and . . .”
Patsy burst into a new round of tears, burying her head in her hands. Her shoulders slumped and all the life seemed to drain out of her. “’Tis my own fault,” she sobbed, “me and my vulgar mouth. I can’t let go of it. The anger, I mean. It’s what’s got me this far.”
I didn’t know much about Patsy’s life before she came to the workhouse, but from what some of the other girls told me it was a hard one. They said her ma died when she was twelve and her da had disappeared, leaving her to fend for herself, living in a run-down part of Newry, surviving on scraps and handouts and what she could steal. Poor Patsy, she had hardly stood a chance in life even before the famine. She, of all people, deserved to go. I decided to speak to Matron no matter what Patsy said.
Matron was sympathetic. “I tried to get her in,” she said.
“And Master Dunne said no?”
Matron shook her head. “No, he would have been delighted to see the back of her because she’s so disruptive, but it turned out one of the Board of Guardians knew her by name and reputation and refused to let them spend one penny on her. So, Master Dunne’s hands were tied.” She sighed. “We’ve got our final list of girls now and there’s no changing it.”
The travel boxes finally arrived on the eve of our departure. There was pandemonium as each of us crowded into the administrative building on the ground floor and snatched them from the men who were carrying them in. The “boxes” were wooden chests, two feet long by fourteen inches high and wide, with our names painted on the lids. When I found the chest with my name etched on it, I knelt and traced the letters with my fingers, then unlocked it with the key Matron had given me. I carefully raised the lid and inhaled the rich, earthy smell of the wood. I lifted out a white bonnet which lay on top of the pile of contents and stroked its crimson ribbons. Someone had embroidered my name on it in silk thread. I had never seen anything so fine. I imagined Ma wearing such a bonnet, its frilled edges framing her lovely face. I fought back tears as I hugged it to my chest. All around me girls knelt, unlocking their boxes, and pulling out the contents, squealing as they examined each item and then laid it on the floor. It was the dresses that caused the most excitement. One by one, the girls stood up, holding the garments against themselves, and spun around, their frail bodies as thin as candle sticks. The sadness that had begun to overtake me faded under the spell of their laughter.
“Can you imagine us parading around Australia in the likes of such finery?” cried one girl.
“Aye,” said another, “and so many boys admiring us, we’d be spoiled for choice.”
Another girl chimed in. “Was I telling you my uncle Niall was in Australia for two years? He says there’s animals and birds there the likes of which we’ve never seen in Ireland, and Christmas is the hottest time of the year, and there’s more boys there than you could shake a stick at, and all of them gorgeous looking!”
The girls all squealed with laughter as Matron fussed about, trying to check off the contents of each box to make sure everything was in order. She clapped her hands to get attention but finally gave up, sank down on the floor in the middle of us and waited for the excitement to die down.
Matron eventually announced it was time for everyone to go up to bed. Yawning, they trailed out, leaving the boxes in a neat pile near the front door as she had directed. I noticed there was a box sitting by itself in a corner. I walked over to examine it. The name “Patricia Riley” was carved clearly on the lid. Patricia was one of the girls who’d been in my reading and writing class. I realized I hadn’t seen her with the others.
“Where’s Patricia?” I asked.
“She’s gone,” Matron said. “Her relations came for her yesterday. They are bringing Patricia and her brother back with them to America.”
I looked from Matron to the travel box and back.
“So, we have one more box than we need,” I said.
She nodded. “Yes. Seems a shame to let it go to waste, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does,” I said.
* * *
Looking back, it was as well that the travel boxes arrived when they did. For a while it took my mind off the journey ahead of me the next day. But when I lay down that night on the straw pallet I had shared with Ma, I began to weep. I could still feel her presence beside me. Often in the night I would hear her voice or inhale her scent and I’d wake up expecting her to be there. That night my sense of her was even stronger. I was leaving her. Not only her, but Da and Paddy and Maeve, and of course, Christy. I was filled with guilt over leaving him behind. How could I do that? No matter what Ma had said I was still abandoning him. I eventually gathered the courage to go and see him, and Matron agreed to arrange it. He was as distant as he had been the night Ma died, pulling away from me as I tried to embrace him. It was as if the wee lad had already come to terms with the idea that he was alone in the world. He said nothing as I told him I was leaving. And still nothing when I told him I would be back for him one day.
I lay there, that last night in the workhouse, recalling as much detail as I could of my happy childhood days on the farm at the foot of Slieve Gullion mountain. There would be time enough tomorrow to worry about the future, about what awaited me beyond this place, beyond this land, beyond this only life I had ever known.
The next morning, I awoke and dressed in the darkness and tiptoed out of the dormitory. I joined the other girls in the administrative building and waited for Matron to come and tell us what to do. No one spoke. At last, she arrived and led us outside into the chilly, pre-dawn August morning and lined us up, two by two. The sharp bite of cold air shocked my senses awake. I was reminded of early country mornings on the farm when I went out to collect the eggs. But something was amiss. There was no sound. Not a bird was singing in the pre-dawn blackness. The world was silent.
We, too, were silent as we walked, shivering, down the hill from the workhouse to where horse-drawn carts waited to take us to Dublin. As we walked, I recalled another silent, ghostly procession back on that November morning when my family and neighbors walked down from Slieve Gullion mountain, leaving everything we knew behind us. We remained silent now as we climbed onto the carts and turned our faces to stare out over the shadowed land that had been our home.
Our small procession of carts began its journey south in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, August 20th, 1848. There was no sound from any of the girls, or from Matron, who sat beside me. In time, a weak sun rose on the eastern horizon, its shadowed light painting the trees and bushes along the roadside in dark, ghostly shapes. I shivered and pulled my cloak tighter around me. The silence was pierced by a pack of crows that suddenly appeared and hovered above us, cawing and squawking, as if in scorn. My granny used to say crows were a bad sign—a sign of trouble on its way. I almost laughed—weren’t they a bit late showing up now? Our troubles had started years ago. After the famine and the workhouse, what worse troubles could there be in store? No matter, I was glad when they flew away to annoy some other poor craturs.
The rising sun brought warmth, but still my teeth chattered as if it were the middle of winter. I shoved my fists deep into the pockets of my cloak. Matron, who was traveling with us as far as Kingstown Port in Dublin, had said the journey would take about eight hours, “although you never know what trouble we might meet on the way.” I shrugged. She was only echoing the Irish habit of not waiting for trouble but going out to meet it. So far, we were making good progress as we trundled along paved roads. We passed Dundalk, a town about ten miles from our farm, which I visited often with my da on Fair days, to buy or sell a cow or sell our small harvest of vegetables. The memory warmed me briefly. We continued south to Drogheda, where English troops, led by Oliver Cromwell, laid siege in the 1600s. I let my imagination take me back to evenings in our cottage where our neighbors recalled tales of that time passed down through generations. Every Irish Catholic child knew the stories of Cromwell’s brutal deeds, including the worst one of all when he locked the doors of St. Peter’s Church in Drogheda, as hundreds of townspeople and clergy sheltered inside, and ordered it burned to the ground. After Drogheda we turned southeast towards the village of Swords and onward to Dublin. Paved roads gave way to rutted, twisting lanes, some so narrow I was sure the carts would get stuck. At least it isn’t raining, I thought.
I’d tempted fate. Suddenly, a huge dark cloud appeared and rain poured down mercilessly, soaking our cloaks, and trickling down our necks as we bent our heads against the torrent.
“Jesus, I’m drenched!” cried one of the girls.
“Will you whish’t,” cried another, “sure you’ll hardly melt.”
More voices joined the chorus, some protesting, others complaining, while somebody in the cart behind ours began singing a silly song. “Rain, rain go away. Come again another day!”
It stopped as suddenly as it started, and an hour later I had begun to dry out. But I could do nothing to ease the stiffness in my hands and feet and I prayed for the journey to be over. From the position of the sun, I guessed it was nearly noontime. Others must have been thinking the same thing because a chorus of voices chanting the Angelus prayer suddenly filled the air around me. “Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord be with thee . . .” The chorus grew in sound and strength until I had the sensation of being swallowed up in something bigger than myself. I beat my chest furiously. Never in all the years of saying the Angelus prayer when the church bells rang at noon each day had I felt like this. I forgot about my damp clothes and my aching body, and an unexpected joy filled me.
Once the girls had found their voices, they began to sing. At first it was just one or two of them, but as others joined in it swelled to a chorus that filled the air with anthems celebrating Ireland’s revolutionary history—“The Minstrel Boy,” “A Nation Once Again,” “The Wearing of the Green”—all songs I’d known since childhood. I sang out as loudly as the others, sending words of defiance slicing through the air. Exhausted and cleansed, we fell silent. Then a lone, halting, childlike voice from the cart behind us pierced the silence:
