The Rebels of Ireland (114 page)

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?”