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  For my mother, Sylvia

  1

  Doohoma Head, Mayo, the last day in February, 1947

  ‘Con, I have them, I can see the girl. She’s on the back of the cart.’

  Con O’Malley lifted his head and faced his assistant, Thomas; the ferocity of the almost horizontal west-coast sleet from the Atlantic slapped him straight in the face. It was so cold and hard, the sting almost made him shout out loud. He took a deep breath, shaded his eyes with his hands and squinted up towards one of the most desolate and tragic sights he had ever seen.

  ‘I can see her, but not the lad. She doesn’t look good now.’

  Thomas was almost twenty feet above Con, who bent his head against the force of the driving sleet and slowly made his way up the steeply sloping hill. Even this close to the sea and in such ferocious wind, the snow stood deep and both men found the going treacherous and bitterly cold in their inadequate rubber boots. Even though his wife had made him wear two pairs of her own knitted socks before he set out, Con’s feet were so frozen, he could not tell where they ended and the snow began.

  Thomas had begun to sink into the snowy bog and was nearly up to his knees as he waited for Con to cover the ground.

  ‘Good Lord, give me breath,’ said Con, resting just a couple of feet below Thomas while he waited for God to deliver. He lifted his face once again into the sleet to try to catch another sight of the girl and was whipped across the face by tines of ice carried on the wind.

  ‘Who knows how old she is, what with being fed so little. Jesus, she has only a shawl and rags on her, she must be soaked and frozen through. There’s nothing on her feet, Thomas.’

  It was an hour since Con and Thomas had entered the cottage below them. Con’s yellow vomit was still clearly visible at the front door, not yet totally covered in snowfall. The mother was indeed dead, as they had feared, but Con had not expected that the father, who they knew had died days earlier, would still be indoors. The mud floor of the cottage was soft in parts, from urine and vomit, and the smell had been acrid and overpowering. There was no food, no fuel, nothing in the cottage that would sustain body or soul, just the overpowering stench of death seeping from the two bodies lying side by side on a straw mattress.

  ‘How long have those kids been living like this?’ said Thomas as they stood outside the cottage door, recovering from what they had just seen.

  ‘God alone knows, looks to me like maybe they had the idea to go out and cut the turf for heat. But it would be no use to them, not having been dried out.’

  Being the town clerk in one of the wildest and most rural parts of Ireland, Con O’Malley thought he was beyond being shocked by how people in these parts scratched a living. As the government administrator for the area, his job consisted of everything from making sure local taxes were paid to lending a hand at harvests, and anything in between. And that was before the winter of ’47 bore down upon them with the worst conditions anyone alive had witnessed, or any storyteller could recall.

  Down on the bottom road, the drifts stood fifteen feet high. He had sent a search party out only yesterday to check on some of the more remote farm dwellings, but they had been unsuccessful, forced back by the weather.

  Those locals and farmers who could travel met by the fire in the Doohoma Inn each night, to exchange information about the worsening conditions.

  ‘Two brothers have been found frozen to death in Geesala. Indoors they were with their cow, but that never saved them. They were dead by the time they were found and the cow nearly was too,’ said the publican. ‘’Tis the cold that does it, not the hunger. For those who store it with no good cover, the turf is frozen wet and won’t burn.’

  The men blessed themselves as silence fell for a while.

  ‘They say ’tis hundreds, so it is, four hundred or more that have been killed, ’tis as bad as the famine.’

  *

  Now, in the harsh light of the day, Con turned and looked back down the cliff to the low white, single-roomed cottage, which was, or rather had been, the home of the children they were searching for. It stood alone. Isolated. The gable end proudly faced down towards the sea, protecting those who had lived inside from the force of the gales. Con had driven along the coast road and noticed the home in the far distance during better days. Take me on if you dare, the cottage had seemed to shout to the Atlantic squalls as a thin plume of smoke struggled from a lone central chimney, take me on if you dare.

  No fireside smoke defied the elements today. The cottage, or at least its inhabitants had been well and truly taken on and they had lost. If the men had only walked in this direction when they first arrived at the house, up the cliff, rather than back down towards the sea, they would have found the children much earlier. There was a boy too, a little older, they understood.

  ‘The lad must surely be near the girl, Thomas? I doubt they would have separated now in this weather.’

  Con swore under his breath as the snow soaked through his socks.

  He had been woken by the village priest’s housekeeper, Mrs O’Toole, not two hours since, although it felt like a lifetime already. She had imparted her news and a direct request for help, from the priest.

  ‘Mrs Flynn has the consumption. The daddy died on Sunday and Father has given the last rites to the mammy. He thinks she may have gone by now but he is in Castlebar today. They have a big mass up there for those who have lost their livestock. The nuns at the convent school outside Belmullet are expecting to take the children in when the mammy is gone, but someone needs to go up there and fetch them down. The journey is terrible. I’ve never seen snow like it in me life, so deep it is and the bog is as bad up on the top just now as it is at the bottom.’

  Mrs O’Toole furtively scanned the O’Malleys’ kitchen. A home she had not stepped into before and one she knew she might never be invited into again. Her eyes darted from the range to the press, from the fire to the curtains. She took in the newspapers laid on the floor and the books piled high on the bookcase. She wrinkled her nose at the pipe laid on the hearth and almost had to stop herself from wondering, out loud, what it was that remained in the glass on the floor by the chair.

  Con’s English wife, Susan, not long arrived from Liverpool, was in the kitchen, still in her nightdress.

  A look of satisfaction crossed Mrs O’Toole’s face. ‘The cut of her,’ she would say to her husband later, ‘as she swanked around, with no notion of shame. Come from Liverpool, so she has and brought the fast ways with her, I would be saying.’

  That would do nicely. A glass on the floor that had obviously once contained strong alcohol, a woman verging on the brink of nakedness and the threshold of eternal shame, wearing a pink nylon nightdress in the kitchen without so much as a pinny to cover her modesty, or the babby in her belly, was plenty to be going on with. No woman of religion carried on like that.

  ‘Father said someone needs to check the cottage. If the mother’s dead an’ all, and I would be saying that she must be by now, then the children need taking to the nuns. You know the Flynns, they have no family or friends, living up on that cliff alone. They were always too proud and full of themselves. Neither mountain nor country people. She was supposed to be from a fine heritage altogether, she was, but Flynn, he was just a fisherman like the rest. How they have managed since he lost the boat, with no catch to feed them God alone knows. There is only turf and bog up there.’

  Con nodded and edged Mrs O’Toole gently towards the door. ‘I’ll away to Thomas and we will mak
e our way up there now, Mrs O’Toole. Tell the priest that if he’s given Mrs Flynn the sacrament and informed the nuns, he has done his job. You can leave it to Thomas and myself now.’

  As the kitchen door closed, Con sighed and turned to Susan. Until December, she had taught at the only school for miles around.

  ‘Those children have never been to the school, Con, ever,’ she said. ‘They would have needed to leave home when it was still dark to walk to the school and they would no sooner have got to us than it would have been time for them to walk back again.’

  Con placed his boots in front of the range to warm. ‘Aye, it was always the way. There are plenty of families like the Flynns and God knows, if this government doesn’t act after this winter and do something to help the country people, there will be blood on the streets so there will.’

  Susan carefully laid out two pairs of socks on top of the boots. ‘I went up there once in the car and Mrs Flynn, she was grateful to me, she was, but I could see there was no sense in trying. She was well spoken and very well educated though, she made sure I knew that, showed me the books on her bookshelf. One of which was The Iliad no less, which really surprised me. She told me she could provide her children with as good an education as any school and I believed her. She made me feel, oh I don’t know, less well-bred than she was. She was very striking to look at, I remember that, and she had lovely green eyes, but, apart from the books, she was as poor a woman as the next around here. They had less than nothing and the books, well they couldn’t eat them.’

  Susan paused and watched Con, who had sat down in the fireside chair and was now pulling on his socks and extra layers. She nodded towards the whiskey glass and held out her hand. Her pregnant belly made bending down impossible. As she walked to the tap and began rinsing the glass, she continued.

  ‘This didn’t go unnoticed by the nosy beak.’ Susan held the glass up to the light to check that it was spotless, before she dried it to squeaky clean with the Irish linen tea towel.

  Con appeared deep in thought and lifted his coat down from the peg on the back of the kitchen door.

  ‘There are still too many kids around just like the Flynns,’ he replied. ‘I see them, teeming over the fields, some in their bare feet each morning heading for school. Something has to be done, Susan. This storm, it has to be a wake-up call.’

  Susan wrapped her arms around her caring husband. ‘Be careful up on that cliff,’ she said. ‘You will have your own child to look after very shortly: we both want you back, safe and sound.’

  With a heavy heart and a deep and tender farewell kiss for Susan, Con headed out into the foulest weather he had ever stepped into.

  *

  Now, as Con and Thomas edged their way up the steep and slippery slope, taking small but sure steps towards the cart, through the white blizzard, they spotted the desolate form of the dark grey donkey, standing with his muzzle almost on the ground. He was covered by snow, inches deep. The wind sliced away the top flakes from the ridge on his back, and as they drew near Con saw that the girl remained motionless.

  They both spotted the boy at the same time. Sitting in the snow, sheltering under the cart, clutching at two scragged lumps of wet turf in his blue hands. He was frozen dead. The donkey gave the impression of providing shelter, as though trying to protect the boy from the ferocious wind and swirling icy snow. Con looked into the eyes of the forlorn animal and met despair.

  ‘I’ll carry the girl, Thomas,’ said Con. He had to shout to be heard, but still, his voice was heavy and almost lost into the air. ‘You put the boy on the wagon and lead the donkey down, if you can, we will follow on behind. It will be easier going down than it was coming up.’ Con prayed that he was right.

  As he walked across to the girl, he noted that at least she was obviously still alive. She had raised her head as they approached but she appeared incapable of little else. Her long, wet and matted hair had frozen almost solid to her face and Con thought that no matter how terrified she might be of two strange men, she would be too cold to run. She wore a black knitted shawl that covered her head, and she had wrapped it around her body. Now she clung to it as though it were life itself. It was possibly the only thing that had saved her.

  ‘Come here, colleen,’ whispered Con, as he lifted the girl up and slipped her straight inside the warmth of his coat.

  ‘Jesus, Holy Mother, she weighs no more than a baby,’ he said, as he fastened the buttons and pulled his scarf across the front and around the back of her head.

  As they walked down the cliff, the girl did not make a sound. Not one whimper of cold or hunger. As they passed the doorway of her family home, Con felt her body stiffen. Her eyes, suddenly alive, turned and stared up at Con, huge dark emerald green craters, deep in her hollowed-out face. They blazed at him and for a second, Con was startled by their clarity and brightness. He had never seen eyes as green. Con knew what she wanted to say. He knew what her thoughts and questions would be. My mammy and daddy, we have to get them, we cannot leave them, stop. Con avoided her gaze and pulled on the side of the cart to help Thomas move the wheels out of the ruts left by the cut turf. It was a relief that the girl did not speak. He could tell her nothing she would want to hear.

  Thomas turned to face back towards the road, holding his hand across his nose and mouth to keep out the sleet. The wind had increased in volume and Con could barely tell what he was saying.

  ‘How can we be sure that there are only the two of them? Are they the only ones? God knows, there will be others on these hills in exactly the same position.’

  Con shifted the weight of the girl up inside his coat and used his arms to support her. His heart tightened in his chest as he saw the tears running down her cheek. They were not tears caused by sleet or snow, but were hot tears of pain.

  ‘Do you have a name, colleen?’ Con said as gently as he could into the side of her face, so that she could hear him. ‘What is your name?’ But she did not reply.

  He tried to reassure her. ‘We are taking you into the village, first to my house and my wife, Susan, for some food and warmer clothes and then on to the convent.’

  Con knew the look that passed over her face had been one of relief and that she understood some of what he was saying. She knew her parents were both dead. Neither he nor Susan would have the job of breaking that news to her. She knew. She might have been in pain from the cold and from whatever she had witnessed but she was glad to be alive, that much he could tell. Her eyes might be focused on the form of her dead brother lying under her wet shawl on the back of the wagon, frozen solid into the crouching position they had found him in, still clutching the turf. She might desperately glance back towards where both parents had died while she sat by their side, wiping the vomit from their deathly pale, waxen-like faces, crying for someone to help. She might be herself frozen to within an hour of her own death, but Con knew that in the midst of her torment, a flame of hope had lit somewhere within this child. It burned behind her eyes and she was thankful to have been saved and to be in his arms.

  ‘What’s your name, colleen?’ Con whispered into her ear again and this time, her voice answered with such a force and pride, that she took him totally by surprise.

  ‘Ruby, I am. I am Ruby Flynn.’

  And they were the last words she spoke for almost a year.

  2

  Belmullet, Fenningale Convent of the Blessed Heart

  ‘Heavens above, what have we here,’ the reverend mother exclaimed, as she opened the door to Con. He stood on the doorstep, protecting the undersized bundle in his arms from the snow. Ruby must have been all of twelve, but felt more like a small eight-year-old. He could feel her heart beating against his, like a frightened bird. He had almost been convinced that they wouldn’t make it, but the road from Doohoma and on through Bangor Erris had been freshly cleared and made passable, not by the council, but by the efforts of local farmers and the residents of the small village who had an urgent need to reach each other after weeks of
isolation, in order to exchange food and help, turf and milk for porter and jam. Animals must be transported, phone calls made once the cables were repaired and letters posted to concerned relatives in places as far-flung and as exotic as Liverpool, Watford, London and New York. Cash-stuffed envelopes waited to be collected from the post office by those whose relatives abroad had been able to spare it. Many depended upon the charity of local neighbours, shop owners and friends. People could not live for long if they were alone, snowed up indoors.

  ‘It could have been much worse, Reverend Mother,’ Con said, with a knowing look. ‘She’s dry now. I took her home with myself. My wife sorted her out and put a jumper of her own over her. She’s in a bad way now, though, and no mistake. We had thought of keeping her for a while, but Mrs O’Toole said that the priest had contacted you and you were expecting her. If my wife had not been due any day, we’d have had no hesitation.’

  The reverend mother looked less than pleased.

  ‘That’s as may be Mr O’Malley, but we are struggling ourselves with this storm. We have taken in half a dozen orphans this week alone. I have no more beds or blankets. We live off what we grow and make. You would have been as well to keep her. I am honour bound to spend the money I take for fees on the school alone. On educating the young girls sent to us. Girls who have passed the entrance exam. Their parents don’t pay to educate half of Mayo, just because it snows. It is all very difficult. How are we supposed to manage? How many more can we take? It is desperate crowded in here right now, so it is.’

  Con looked the reverend mother square in the eye.

  ‘Would you like me to return home and fetch the blankets from my own bed, Mother?’

  The reverend mother was instantly shamed, her lack of charity highlighted in just a few well-chosen words. Moments later, they were standing in her study, in front of the roaring fire. Con pointedly inspected the splendour of the study.