Chapter 1: Faith & Famine
A crackling peat fire’s flames created a mesmerising red and gold scene within the vast fireplace of the isolated cottage’s kitchen. The fire warmed the family on dark winter nights when the cracked window frames and deteriorating mossy thatch let in the blood-freezing wind. Smoke from the fire deposited a rim of grime over every surface, including the ceiling and a scrubbed wooden table surrounded by six rickety chairs. Brigid Power, the tenant farmer’s seven-year-old daughter, had the responsibility of maintaining the cleanliness of the table and chairs. She had to dust and polish them with beeswax every day.
A large, green, gold rag rug provided comfort on the flagstone floor for the two young girls who sat each evening by their mother’s rocking chair. Their father’s horsehair-filled, high-backed armchair stood on the opposite side of the fireplace. Throughout winter, moisture cloaked the atmosphere, leaving a damp odour to permeate the cottage. The mould that grew around the edges of walls provided an unfortunate breeding ground for chest infections.
The green field and trees on the land surrounding the property provided welcome respite in summer for winter-weary souls. A river teeming with salmon and trout flowed through the village. While its upper reaches belonged to the Manor House’s estate, the lower reaches supplied plentiful fish to fill the bellies of a tenant farmer’s family.
The Manor House stood on a promontory overlooking the village. It boasted extensive grounds, with ducks quacking and geese honking around a pond visible through a breach in the wall. Deer stalked the far parkland, and chickens clucked in their pen beneath an apple tree. The gravelled drive, framed by oak and beech trees, where squirrels scampered, swept along a weed-free gravelled path from ornate iron gates to a majestic oak front door.
In fine weather, the distant hills veiled in a blue haze rose west of the village. Below the mountains lay a grey forbidding lough surrounded by hazel trees, blackberry bushes, and a boggy moor. Like many Irish villages, Ballyconstór’s’ main street was lined by a grey stone Catholic church, the village pub with its illegal shebeen, a grocery store, a bakery, and a butcher’s shop.
In stormy weather, the river rushed through the village with excessive speed, its grey waters spilling onto its green grassy banks. The distant hills then resembled tombs rising above the desolate moor and hidden behind a long grey veil of stair-rod-like rain. The village’s mossy boreens flooded with brownish peat bog water while storm-driven winds bent the branches of exposed trees, cracking the weakest ones. Annaidh villagers understood the dangers of venturing outside in such conditions.
In the north end of the village, in the Power’s cottage one stormy night in October 1836, the two girls sat as usual at their mother’s long, slim, and elegant feet. Their innocent faces filled with the anticipation of a happy fairy tale, not one of the evil eye or dreaded wolves. Ma put baby Michael to her breast and gazed into the gleaming embers. The child’s chubby hand tugged at the hair escaping his mother’s mob cap. The storm-driven wind howled, and Angela shrank back, her mouth quivering. Brigid, conscious of her status as the older girl, hugged her sister close.
Ma regarded her younger daughter with gentle eyes. “Angela, seven years ago, when your sister came into the world, her loud cries vied with another fierce gale, so we named her Brigid, meaning strength. She displayed that strength today, and I am certain you can be just as brave.” She reached out a slender, work-roughened hand to pat the girl on her head. Unaccustomed to praise, Brigid preened like a peacock. Brigid released her hold when her sister’s shoulders relaxed as the howling faded.
The evening’s story was about a fairy who changed a girl’s dull dark hair to gleaming golden locks. “Kissed by a handsome Prince, she became the most beautiful girl imaginable.” Ma smiled and handed baby Michael to Brigid, enabling her to pile peat on the fire in a shower of sparks. Brigid, holding, squirming Michael, could not believe the story. She handed him back to her mother.
“In Sunday School, Sister Philomena said fairies and goblins do not exist,” Brigid said, gazing up at Ma, waiting for her to answer.
Ma smiled and said, Mo stór, God created our imagination. Hence, people invent things like fairies to entertain and share stories.”
Brigid scrunched her face. “I want God to give me golden hair like you and Angela. Did the devil make my hair red? I dislike it so much.” She thrust her hand through the springy mop and pulled up her bony knees, lowering her face to hide the sadness that sparkled on her lashes. Brigid lifted her head to gaze at her mother and voiced a thought. “Ma, why isn’t Da with his family on such a stormy night?”
Padraig, seated nearby playing checkers with Dermot, turned his head to catch his sister’s gaze. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head in disapproval. So, Brigid did not press her question. She lowered her head to her knees and reflected on the events prompting Ma’s remarks to Angela.
Da had sent the boys and Brigid to cut peat from the boggy moor after their noon-time dinner. As they worked, the sky darkened, and a lightning bolt streaked across it, accompanied by a loud boom. Bloated ochre-coloured clouds spattered the children with fat raindrops, heralding a deluge. With his youthful voice disappearing like a plover’s feather on the rising wind, Padraig said, “Dermot, take Brigid’s hand. We must outrun the storm.” The two boys ran across the boggy ground like racehorses, with their sister between them.
Arriving home, the children’s feet, shod in unmended boots, squelched on the flagstone kitchen floor, with Brigid’s hair plastered to her head and her clothes drenched. Ma clicked her tongue. “The storm caught you, but I am pleased you reached the cottage without mishap in a bog.” She tugged off Brigid’s wet clothing, wrapped the girl in a towel, and dried her hair. Her sons stood shivering with faces downcast by the lintel as water puddled on the surrounding flagstones. They ran their grimy, wet caps through their fingers in nervous anticipation.
Their Da, seated by the fire with a jar of Guinness in his hand, regarded them with contempt. “You shameful weaklings. A bit of rain hurt nobody. Where is the peat I ordered you to cut? You must bring it home tomorrow, along with the shovels. Do you hear?” Da took off his leather belt, flexed it, and, to Brigid’s dismay at the injustice, gave each boy a resounding thwack.
Later, after supper, as the rain eased, Da pulled on his threadbare coat and stomped out of the cottage into the teeth of the wind, his boots scrunching down the path. When Da had not returned by eight, Ma sent her daughter to their shared bed without his goodnight kiss. In bed, Brigid reflected on what had happened before that morning, before the storm, a time filled with promise. The girls picked luscious blackberries on bushes near the lough purple juice staining their fingers and played with the family’s dog, Scamp. Brigid threw a stick into the water and brought it back, shaking his wet fur over her and making Ma and Angela laugh. They had fun, and Brigid helped Ma cook the blackberries with fallen apples from their gnarled tree in a pie for dinner, a task she loved.
Then Brigid thought about the thwacking given to her brothers. Padraig once explained Da did not thwack when he and Dermot were younger. “It began after Da lost his job as a gardener at the Manor House. It is the drink that turns his temper evil. With a clear head, Da is a grand man for playing games. He taught Dermot and me to swim, fish and steer a curragh.”
But while he also thwacked her, Brigid noticed Da spared Angela and asked Padraig why.
“Angela is Da’s favourite child. She reminds him of Ma when they first met,” he said.
“A father should not have a favourite.” God loves everyone, so an earthly father should as well.”
Padraig shook his head. “Do not speak about Da like that. If he were here, he would get angry and might thwack you.”
Brigid scowled at him. “It is not fair. He thwacks for no good reason.” She did not like Padraig’s words because they suggested Da did not love her as much as Angela. That stormy night, she thought, “Da will send me with Padraig and Dermot to collect the peat unless Ma can stop him. I am certain he would not send Angela if she was my age. Yawning, she observed the man on the moon, pondering her father’s moods and whereabouts. “He’s in the shebeen with his cronies, I expect.” The moon’s benign presence comforted the naive girl who could not understand her father’s need for poteen. She snuggled up to her sleeping sister for warmth and closed her eyes.
Brigid’s dislike for her Da was rooted deep in her mind that night when he should have been with his family. It overtook the dislike for her hair and grew thorny like a thistle, fertilised by his continued absence from the cottage while imbibing alcohol in the shebeen.
Catholic children prepared for their First Holy Communion when they were eight, and Brigid decided not to attend the catechism preparation classes.
Padraig, the eldest child, defended his sister, whom he had strong affection for, and located a hiding place in the cowshed. But he cautioned she would receive a thwack if Da found her. “You will be made to attend the classes. It would be easier to be meek than get thwacked.” He hugged her thin body to him.
Brigid was unsympathetic. “It is not just to send me without asking if I want to attend the classes. Da has not stopped his drinking, despite my prayers.”
On Saturday, Da, his fury causing him to overturn furniture and break the mirror on Ma’s press, found Brigid hiding under straw in the cowshed.
“You wicked child, how dare you turn your back on God’s holy words like a protestant.” Da took off his belt, his face red with fury, and gave Brigid two thwacks. He grabbed her arm and frogmarched his daughter to the church, where he dumped her with a noisy thump in the nearest vacant pew. Brigid’s rear stung like she had fallen in a bed of nettles, but she folded her arms and gave the priest a sullen glare from her almond-shaped green eyes. The stare, which had the potential to freeze boiling water, caused the other children to gaze at her with bewildered awe.
The priest lifted his head from his bible, raised his upper body, puffed out his chest and fixed a fierce gaze on Brigid, who did not flinch. He pushed his wrinkled face towards her with teeth bared like an angry cur. “Ye devilish girl. The evil eye must be on ye. How dare you to defy your father and be late for God’s word? God demands obedience, and so do I.”
The priest, oblivious to their lack of understanding, burned the catechism into the children’s immature minds each week. Brigid’s sullen stare became legendary when he glared at her with malice. “Are you listening, Brigid? God expects you to listen to me as I am here in His place.” His thick brows moved like two caterpillars crawling across his head. Brigid glared at him with a smouldering look, thinking brows resembling caterpillars turned into ugly moths to be killed with a fly swat. She grew to hate Father Byrne more than Da.
Brigid’s questions about the Catholic faith grew with each week of catechism instruction. One question stuck in her mind, pricking like a thorn in a finger. While helping Ma peel potatoes for dinner, she plucked up the courage to ask. “Ma, is your Protestant God different from our Catholic one?”
Ma smiled as she removed the skin from a potato with deft movements. “He is the same God, but people’s faiths have different rituals and rules. You follow your father’s Catholic faith.”
“But I want to follow you, not Da.” Brigid peeled her last potato, appraising it like a priest’s head, thinking, “I will boil this potato as though it were Father Byrne’s head.”
“I promised to obey your father when we married. Da wants his children baptised as
Catholics.”
Brigid’s brow creased. “I loathe Father Byrne. He has yellow teeth and red veins on his cheeks. He brays at us, using words we do not understand. He did not baptise me, did he, Ma? Dermot said it was a priest called Father O’Malley.”
Ma put her peeled potatoes in the heating broth and nodded but did not speak. Brigid dropped in her potatoes and watched the water bubble over them. She wondered why God allowed horrible men like Father Byrne to instruct children. Brigid thought, “He must stick to preaching to adults because his catechism lessons and Sunday sermons bore me. Sister Philomena is unpleasant because she drones on about sin and hellfire. She never answers questions.”
Dermot, the most religious of the children, served Mass for Father Byrne. Brigid loved her brother but not his religious fervour, which she did not share. “Father Byrne is mean,” she said after one class. “Niamh was late because her mother was sick, and he got angry with her. He should show her compassion, not get angry.”
Besides catechism classes, Ma instructed her children to read, write, and calculate. Unlike their friends, Da made them read the bible in Gaelic to him. But one day, for no reason Brigid could fathom, Da’s face turned red with anger. “Why waste time instructing the girls with gentlefolk skills? Teach them to cook, sew and milk a cow.” He shook his fist at his wife.
Ma spoke calmly in English, “They are not gentle born, but knowledge is a powerful tool. They will find the skills helpful, so I will continue instructing them. Manners and deportment are as important as being literate, and I will teach those skills, too.”
Her use of English infuriated Da, who spat and swore in Gaelic and said, “You fecking bint. Your gentlefolk skills never helped us any.” He swivelled to look at Ma’s treasured brass clock. “Girls do not need no fecking clock either. The moon and stars do for me and will do for them.” Donning his jacket, he stormed off to the shebeen, slamming the door and rattling the crockery on the press.
Disgusted by his swearing, her stomach churning, Brigid wondered what Da had against learning and clocks. She stared at her mother’s slender back, hunched against his insults. “I will find the answer to Da’s objection one day.”
Ma taught the girls housewifery. Angela milked the family’s cow, her sensitive fingers the right size to pull teats. She had deft fingers and soon became an expert at sewing and knitting. Brigid’s powerful arms churned milk into butter, and she cared for the family’s five hens, reared from chicks. Both girls learned to cook, and when Brigid made her first apple pie without Ma’s help in the autumn of 1839, Da smacked his lips. “Who made this pie, Susannah?”
“I did, Da.” Brigid glanced at Ma for confirmation but saw her eyes glisten, and Brigid’s heart missed a beat.
“Well, you must cook pies now. Your pastry tastes better than yer Ma’s. You will make someone a fine wife one day.” He smirked at his wife.
Brigid blushed and curtsied. But although Da’s words praised her, they crushed her mother and Brigid’s sense of achievement was tempered by Ma’s distress. She hated how Da had humiliated her gentle mother, whom Brigid adored.
Ma owned the village’s only admired copper boiler with immense pride. It helped Ma make extra income. She charged three pennies for a basket full of washing, which she washed when Da was absent. Brigid knew Ma put the money she made in a box she hid under a tablecloth in her press.
On a bright spring day when Brigid had turned eleven, Da brought home one solitary shilling from his wages of seven shillings. He left the shilling on the kitchen table. “I am off to Paddy’s wake and will not return until tomorrow.” He spun around and went to the shebeen.
Brigid woke when he rolled into the cottage as the church clock struck three. She heard him burp twice, then drop to the kitchen sofa and snore. When she got up two hours later to light the fire, she found him sprawled out with vomit staining his waistcoat and had to clean up his disgusting mess. “I hate you, Da. You are an appalling drunk, and I wish you had choked on your vomit.” But Da snored on, oblivious to her hate-filled thoughts as she cleaned up the flagstones.
The next day, a new rent collector stood at the cottage’s door under Ma’s bower of red roses, grinning and exposing rotten tobacco-stained teeth. Ma’s cheeks flushed, and her eyes moistened as she opened her purse and rifled through it for the two-shilling coins Brigid knew she lacked. She gave her hell-freezing glare to the rent collector.
“I must evict you if you cannot pay, Missus. You know the landlord will not accept any excuses from you.” He smirked at Ma, making Brigid’s blood run cold. His tone suggested Ma was a difficult tenant, which set Brigid’s teeth on edge.
Ma retrieved two coins from her small box and paid the obsequious eejit. He walked on whistling. Ma closed the door behind him and leaned against it. “Keep what you saw today from your father. It is our secret.” She showed her daughters where she had hidden a spare key to her press and another for the box behind a loose brick above the fireplace. “If I’m not here when the rent collector comes, you may need them.” After locking the press, she put her key in an apron pocket, and a teardrop trickled down her hollow-cheeked and pale face.
Brigid’s heart clenched as she witnessed her mother’s distress. “What other secrets does Ma’s press hold, I wonder?” But even with a spare key, Brigid dared not open it without her mother’s permission.
For the rest of the summer, Da, who worked part-time as a groundsman and grave digger, drowned his wages in poteen. Washing hung daily on the line behind the kitchen using pegs bought from travellers in their red and yellow-painted caravans. Brigid noted how often Ma used her earnings to cover the rent. Her dislike of Da grew when autumn arrived, and he spent more time at the shebeen, not less.
During the warm months of 1840, Ma made it evident she must save income for the coming winter. Her downcast look melted Brigid’s heart, and she embraced her mother. Despite the challenge, the strong girls coped with extra washing. However, Ma grew weaker, diminishing before her daughters’ eyes. With hearts filled with dread at her frailty, the girls became indispensable to running the household.
Da became belligerent. “I cannot abide pestering women,” he said when Ma wanted him to wear a clean shirt to church one Sunday. “Leave me be.” He pulled on his soiled shirt and called to the children. “Hurry, you idle eejits. Father Byre expects us to be seated when Mass begins.” His drink-depleted income caused the family serious financial worries, but he was unsympathetic. His sons grumbled and cursed while Ma struggled to keep their expenditure on an even keel. For Brigid, cleaning up after Da’s drinking was sheer mortification.
Padraig and Dermot cut peat to pile in the garden shed in that rain-lashed autumn. Helped by Michael, Brigid filled buckets of peat for the cottage and brought them to the kitchen each day. Despite his tender years, Michael had a firm body, and a determined mindset. Brigid found in him a kindred spirit, and they worked as a team. Padraig and Dermot did the heavy outside work while Angela helped their mother with less arduous tasks.
This division of labour continued through the long, dark winter. Life was dull, like Da’s unpolished pewter mug. Arduous work kept the girls warm in the daytime, and Brigid rose at dawn to light the fire for Ma. At night, girls cuddled in beds to keep warm as the frosts descended, and the bedroom window filled with diamond-like ice crystals. Those crystals gave Brigid shimmering delight among the dullness of the winter sky. She studied their beauty every morning, and the crystals lifted her spirits.
Winter turned to spring, and Da’s absence grew more frequent with the lighter evenings, and he sometimes did not come home for two days and nights. He seldom tended the cottage’s land. A talented gardener, Dermot tended the vegetable plot, adding horse manure before planting his seeds and tubers. One hot morning, he came in for a drink of water, wiped the sweat from his brow, and sat in Da’s chair. “If we owned our land, I would not have to work three days per week for our greedy English landlord. I hate digging for him. We have no security.”
To complain was unusual for Dermot. Brigid glanced up from her task of mending clothes at the kitchen table, and her brow furrowed. “Who is this greedy landlord? His agent makes me grind my teeth so much I will wear them away.”
“The Lord who owns the Manor House, of course. He holds most of the tenancies in Ballyconstór. Villagers say he has a colossal estate somewhere in England. But he has not visited our village much since his children grew up. I hear he has a son who will inherit the title and assets.”
Dermot’s calm tone, which had the power to soothe his volatile sister, did not this time. It invited another question. “His title? What is that?” Brigid said, jumping in with it before anyone else spoke.
“Lord is a name like sir, but grander.” The fire crackled as Dermot added some peat.
Intending to get outside the stuffy cottage, Brigid spotted raindrops on the window. She sighed at the sight of another wet morning and pricked her finger with the needle, a drop of blood dripping on the vest she mended, which caused her to swear under her breath. She looked at Dermot. “Does this Lord’s property include his livestock, like the horses, chickens, and geese?”
“Yes, it also includes the tenancies and a stretch of the river. The Lord is a wealthy man.”
“When he inherits his title, the son must be kinder than the pitiless old man who shows no mercy to Ma.” She paused as her mother left the kitchen. “Is Ma weeping? I must go to her.” Brigid’s love for her mother pushed other thoughts from her mind.
But Dermot told her to leave Ma alone. He would not elaborate, making Brigid anxious about yet another secret. She sat down, thinking how much fun she and Angela had four weeks before when Ma had taken them to visit Aunt Bessie in the seaside town of Bray. Ma, her face animated, had spoken of her with fondness, and the women conversed while the girls played on the beach. Brigid turned to Angela, who was knitting a shawl. “What a carefree day we spent at Aunt Bessie’s last month. Ma did not weep then, did she?”
Angela counted the rows of knitting she had done that morning. “Aunt Bessie is a kind old lady. She gave me this ball of soft blue wool. I wonder if she is Ma’s real Aunt?”
Brigid had not asked Ma about her relationship with Aunt Bessie, knowing Ma would disapprove of such a private question. But the day had been like magic when the sun shone, and the shoreline waves tickled her feet and legs as keening seabirds swooped to catch fish among the waves. Later, in Aunt Bessie’s parlour, Brigid had looked wide-eyed at the shelves of books with leather bindings lining an entire wall. Bessie asked Brigid if she enjoyed reading. Brigid, with a mouthful of fruit cake, nodded in reply.
“Then choose two to read, and I will send others for Christmas and your birthday,” Aunt Bessie said with a warm smile.
The memory of that day caused Brigid to muse. “What a generous lady she is.” But Ma returned from the bedroom and broke Brigid’s reverie.
“Girls, it’s stopped raining, so pick some peas to go with the fish Padraig caught this morning.”
Eager to continue reading Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Brigid rushed out to pick the peas. When she had finished popping the pods, she collected her precious book. But dark clouds had rolled back and threatened more rain. Gone was the opportunity to read in her beloved spot beneath the apple tree with Scamp at her side. Brigid expressed her disappointment with a sigh.
Brigid’s birthday coincided with the growth of the apple blossom. By her thirteenth birthday, a young woman was replacing the child. The shape of Brigid’s body changed, and her menstrual courses began. The menfolk, including Da, teased her about the village boys, saying they would want to steal a kiss from you soon. Embarrassed by her body’s changes, Brigid hated their attention, making her want to curl up like a ball and hide them.
Ma gave her a leather-covered account book as a present. I need you to take charge of our family accounts since you have excellent writing and reckoning skills. Ensure you have enough money to cover the rent of two shillings per week. She smiled, took the wooden money box from her press, and passed it to Brigid. “Remember, behind the loose brick, I hid a little golden key. Take the box and hide it somewhere safe from Da’s clutches.”
Brigid thought,” I will put the box under the mattress by the bottom of the bed.” While I do not have golden locks, I must have a decent brain for Ma to entrust the accounts to me.”
At first, Ma supervised her daughter, but Brigid, a competent bookkeeper, continued without help after a week’s tuition.
But that summer, Ma developed a spasmodic cough reverberating throughout the cottage. Brigid’s jaw dropped in disbelief as the accounts revealed their inability to afford even a penny for a doctor’s visit. Then Brigid recalled the village herbalist, mistrusted by those who thought she cast spells, lived in a cottage near the river. “Does she have a mixture to treat coughs?” Brigid ran down the stoney boreen to the river’s edge. She knocked on the herbalist’s door, and an elderly lady dressed in a bombazine frock answered. She wore round spectacles on a chain around her slender neck, and a beaky nose protruded from her wrinkled face.
“Morning, Ma’am. My Mammy is sick with a cough. If I help you pick herbs, would you give me a bottle or two of your mixture for coughs in return?”
To her delight, the woman agreed. “I could manage more easily with someone to pick the herbs because my fingers are slow now.”
Brigid wanted to dance with joy. “Oh, thank you,” she said, curtsying.
As the girl worked, a hitherto unknown side to her personality blossomed. She found the task invigorating after being tied to her family’s foetid home, and her eyes shone with joy. Her nostrils filled with delightful aromas while her fertile brain learned to distinguish those odours: mint, garlic, and fennel. The work so enthralled Brigid that she said, “Can I come and help again, please?”
“Of course, my dear. You will make an excellent herbalist.” The woman gave Brigid three bottles of her cough mixture. Brigid preened like a bird, fluffing its feathers with bliss. However, matters far more pressing than plans to become an herbalist soon took over her life.
With the help of the syrupy cough mixture, Ma’s thin body filled out, and the coughing lessened. However, the improvement was temporary, and the cough worsened as the seasons changed. To Brigid’s horror, Ma’s belly grew, and the girl knew her mother expected a child. So, as Ma struggled to cope, her daughters’ anxiety over their mother’s health increased.
Their Da, unconcerned, continued to spend his time in the shebeen.
Two months before the baby’s due date, Brigid found her mother crouched over the kitchen table. The boys cut peat on the moor, and Angela had taken a new knitted shawl to a friend. Ma groaned in pain between coughs, scaring Brigid, who got her mother to bed. In much pain and distress, Ma gave birth to a stillborn daughter. Brigid cut the cord on Ma’s instructions with the kitchen shears and wrapped the dead child in a clean washcloth. After what she had witnessed, Brigid thought, “No wonder many mothers die giving birth.” Brigid cleaned the bed and bedroom but found her mother’s anguished keening challenging to witness.
“My child, my child,” Ma wailed, holding the lifeless body to her breast while rocking back and forth, tears streaming down her face.
Drained by the experience, Brigid left the bedroom for fresh air and found Da, Padraig, and Dermot waiting, their faces grim. “One less belly to fill,” said Da, with a smirk that turned Brigid’s stomach.
“You fecking louse. I will never treat my Moira with such contempt. Ma has lost your child. Have you no compassion?” His face like a thundercloud, Padraig stormed from the cottage, and Brigid perceived his angry steps reverberating through the flagstones.
Tears brimmed in her eyes when Da followed him. “So much anger while Ma grieves,” she said as Dermot left to tend their land.
Angela came home within a few minutes, her face bearing the tear-streaked marks of her distress. “I met Padraig on the boreen. In God’s name, however, did you manage alone? I should have been here to help, not gossiping.” Angela’s voice quivered.
Angela’s absence during the birth relieved Brigid because witnessing the event would have caused too much distress to a girl with her sister’s gentle nature. So, Brigid chose not to scare her with details but busied herself with heating broth. Angela took some potatoes and peeled them to put in the soup. Both girls’ dismay increased with their mother’s continued keening.
“When will this torment cease? It is destroying Ma’s spirit.” Brigid said, and Angela shook her head, her eyes shining with tears.
Brigid did not tell her mother she had learned from gossipers what Da had done with the baby’s remains. Da dug a grave in non-consecrated soil behind the churchyard, placed the child in it, and headed to the shebeen. Brigid suspected Ma knew because she never enquired about the body. It saddened her, for the girl child had no apparent imperfections. She was crushed, too, because nobody had thought to baptise the child in the frenzy of birth and clearing up. “Da could have done it,” thought Brigid, recalling his presence in the cottage after the birth.
Ma’s health did not improve, and her children feared some dreadful disease had taken hold. Brigid implored her father’s help, begging him for his drink funds to summon the doctor. But Da refused. “There is to be no pampering for soft women here, my girl.” He got up and left for the shebeen, coins clinking in his pocket.
Brigid reacted with disbelief as his steps died. “Your heartless eejit. Why did Ma marry you? You are of no use to anyone.”
The life of relentless drudgery continued, and the happy days when Ma played games with them took flight. Life took on a dismal hue that reminded Brigid of the hills and lough in winter. Brigid considered using rent money to send for the doctor, but Ma forbade her. “You need those funds to pay the rent collector.” Brigid’s mood darkened without the means to ease Ma’s suffering, which was plain to the whole family.
Despite her failing health, Ma became pregnant again and gave birth in February 1844 to Joseph, but Ma’s breasts did not swell. “I’m sorry, but I can’t produce enough milk for the baby.” Tears filled her sunken eyes as she gazed up at her husband.
“Is that so? Then I must find a wet nurse for you.” Da took the brass clock from its place on the kitchen mantle and, to Brigid’s wide-eyed astonishment, pawned it.
“I got eight pounds for it and can put the money to good use,” he said, smirking at his daughter.
Brigid, speechless at his smug tone, thought, “Filling the coffers at the shebeen is not helping Ma.”
Angela was out running errands. When she returned and learned what Da had done, her eyes filled, and her face reddened. “Da is so cruel. Ma treasures that clock. Why can’t he stop drinking instead?”
She ran to the bedroom, sobbing. Padraig’s harsh and accusing voice followed her. “Da is an eejit. He knows Ma is sick. He needs to keep his fecking langer in his breeches.”
Brigid did not understand what he meant, but when he repeated it to Da’s face, it was clear Da did. His lip curled; his face reddened while a hand strayed to his belt. But Padraig was taller and broader than his father, and Da’s hand fisted, resisting temptation.
“Ye girls tend to your mother and the baby,” he said, turning on his heel, the clock money clinking in his pocket. His face was thundercloud dark. Padraig left the cottage, too, for his nightly visit to his sweetheart, Moira.
The girls stared at each other with open mouths. “Da knew Padraig was ready to strike a blow,” said Angela, sniffling.
“I am glad he did not. It would have been a dreadful sight. Ma has troubles enough without her son and his father fighting.”
Later, Brigid asked Dermot what Padraig’s words meant. Dermot blushed, his neck reddening, and refused to explain. Desperate for understanding, she turned to her catechism class friend Niamh, who had three older sisters. As she walked home afterwards, Brigid’s mind filled with imagined sexual and authentic birthing images.
After Joseph’s baptism, Ma was so weakened she remained in bed for weeks. When the wet nurse was absent, the girls cared for the child and scrubbed their mother’s now bloodstained lace handkerchiefs with lye soap, which cracked the delicate skin on their fingertips. Afterwards, the clothes disappeared with Ma’s sweat-soaked bedsheets into the boiler; Angela stirred them with a poss stick.
As she wrung the wet sheets through the mangle, Brigid reflected, “Men have lives of ease, drinking in a shebeen while their wives toil and bear the babies. “I find marriage to be a trial for women, and I’m unsure if I’ll ever marry.”
“You don’t want to become an old maid, do you?” Angela shook her head.
Brigid thought, “Being an old maid may be preferable to marriage, which brings nothing but sickness, babies, and relentless struggle.”
Snow fell in thick flakes a week before Christmas 1844, and Da came from the bedroom following a long, heart-rending coughing spell that had everyone stop up their ears. “Brigid, for the love of Mary, will ye fetch the doctor, please? Ma coughed up lots of blood. Here is some money to pay him.” He handed her a half-crown coin from his drink jar.
Fifteen-year-old Brigid’s eyes opened wide with amazement. “He gives me his drink money?” The seriousness of Ma’s condition sank into Brigid’s marrow, and she ran the entire way to find the doctor leaving his house. “Please, sir,” she huffed, out of breath. “My Mammy coughs blood. Da gave me his drink money to pay you.”
“She must be sick then.” The doctor’s mocking tone betrayed his contempt for Da as he took the coin, climbed into his trap, and asked Brigid to join him. They found Da and Angela waiting at the cottage by the door, their bodies shivering and teeth chattering. Angela’s red-rimmed eyes begged her sister’s, and Brigid sensed a shiver run down her spine. The doctor examined his patient and, exiting the bedroom, said, “Mr Power, your wife has advanced tuberculosis or consumption. You ought to have asked for help months ago.”
“Consumption?” Brigid had heard how people who had caught the disease suffered. She quailed and had to sit on a nearby chair before her legs gave way.
The doctor rummaged in his bag and brought out a purple-coloured bottle of medicine. “Give your wife two or three spoonsful per day of this physic, laudanum. Send Brigid to get the bottle refilled at my dispensary.” He glared at Da with menacing eyes. “For heaven’s sake, man, give up the drink. Your wife and children need your help. Keep the baby away; otherwise, he will catch the disease.”
Brigid ran to his dispensary in any weather, fearing her mother’s demise. Ma’s strength had dwindled to the point where consumption confined her to bed, and running the household became Brigid and Angela’s full responsibility.
“I do not mind; work keeps me from going mad,” said Angela, chopping vegetables.
“Angela, my gut tells me Ma will die soon. How will we get Da to give us money to live on after she passes away? I fear he will drink more, not less.” Brigid’s voice broke.
Angela’s forget-me-not blue eyes glistened. “You are right. He refused to give us money for a doctor but continued to drink. Will he give us money for the rent? I doubt it.”
Brigid did not think so either, or her heart felt as heavy as a stone within her chest as she continued the day’s work.
One spring morning, after Ma’s coughing had prevented the family from sleeping, Da said, “Ma has asked to speak to yous children with Brigid last.”
Brigid trembled. “Has the end come? Oh, God, please, no.”
The siblings left their mother’s bedside with tear-streaked faces. Brigid gulped on entering the stale, airless bedroom. Ma’s face had deep hollows, and her smile was a bony grimace. Brigid, unable to move until a rush of love filled her heart, clasped her mother’s frail body to her breast.
Ma’s faint voice said, “I love you, my brave daughter. Please care for our family. Your Da’s not a wicked man. He is weak, but I have loved him since I was a girl. Oh, he was so handsome then.” Ma coughed and gasped for air. “You are stubborn, like your grandfather. Be strong for me and….” She coughed again, her voice fading.
“Yes, Mammy, I promise.” Brigid’s voice strangled as tears trickled down her cheeks.
Ma touched them with her fingertips and smiled.
Ma passed as the sun slipped behind the hills, with the family gathered at her bedside, reciting prayers. Brigid looked on dry-eyed and choked with despair. “Quick, Brigid, open a window to let Ma’s soul leave her body,” said Dermot, his anxiety palpable.
Then Da said, “I’m off to the village.” Brigid’s heart tore at such evil behaviour because she guessed the word ‘village’ was a code word for ‘shebeen.’ The physical pain of loss gnawed at her guts. a Joseph cried, wanting his food, and she left the sick room a heartbroken girl to tend to him. She hugged the child, whispering, “I am your mother now,” before breaking into heart-rending sobs. That night, Brigid could not rest. Tormented by visions of Ma’s last moments, she feared she might not fulfil the deathbed promise. It lay on her sixteen-year-old shoulders like a sack of potatoes, and she cried into her pillow, praying to God for the strength to do Ma’s bidding.
