Oisín McGann - Ancient Appetites

'So this is what it's like to wear trousers,' Tatiana observed. 'It's the oddest feeling, not like bloomers at all-'

'I really don't need to hear my sister talk about her undergarments,' Nate interrupted her. 'Hold on tight, we're going to go very fast.'

He tapped his heels and she squealed with delight as they took off down the drive. Actually, they rolled along at quite a leisurely pace, but to Tatty it seemed as if they were riding the wind itself.

Nathaniel got off the main road as soon as he could, following the farm roads and country tracks that would keep them out of the way of curious onlookers. In the fading light they rode along the grassy trails beside the dry-stone walls that threaded through the countryside. It was almost nine o'clock and anyone who worked the land would be settling down to sleep – if they weren't in bed already. Work would start not long after dawn; there would be cows to be milked and brought to pasture, ground to be weeded, walls repaired.

As he thought about it, Nate realized that he knew very little about farming. And yet all the farmland around them belonged to their family. When he had been in Africa, he had spent time with the Boers, the Dutch settlers. In those few months he had seen more of their farming than he had ever seen on his own land. Such menial work had never meant enough to him to spark his interest.

It was growing steadily darker and Flash's eyes grew brighter to compensate, lighting the way ahead of them. They passed a clachan – a group of peasants' cabins – with their turf walls and thatched roofs. They were miserable hovels for the most part, and Nate saw no reason to spare them more than a passing glance. If the steady growl of Flash's engine roused any sleeping souls, there was no sign of them at the windows.

Behind him, Tatiana made appreciative noises and gaped in wonder at how the world looked when seen from the back of a speeding monster.

'I've decided what I'm going to do with my life,' she called to him over his shoulder.

He slowed the velocycle down to quieten it.

'Are you going to find a suitable husband, marry well and have a crowd of children?' he asked hopefully.

'There is more to the life of a modern woman than marriage, Nathaniel,' she chided him. 'Women today must have a purpose. I made up my mind after the explosion. I am going to educate myself in medicine and set up hospitals, like Florence Nightingale or Mary Seacole.'

'Oh?'

'Yes. I'm going to bring health to the common people.'

'That's very decent of you,' he said to her. 'God knows they need it.'

'That's what I thought,' she went on. 'I see them sometimes at the side of the road on the way to town or when we're out riding. Some of them don't look very well at all.'

They were coming to what looked like the end of the track. Flash's bright eyes picked out a pile of rubble. As they drew closer, Nate saw it was the remains of a cottage. The turf cabin had been demolished by some terrible force. There were tracks on the ground around the wreckage and he drew in a sharp breath. He was about to turn round and head back down the trail when Tatiana looked over his shoulder.

'What's that?' she asked.

There would be no pleasing her now until she had seen all there was to see. He pulled Flash to a halt and let her get off. She looked taller somehow, in her boy's clothes. Wandering around the tumbled turf blocks and the broken wooden beams of the roof, she kicked some straw thatch over to see what lay beneath. Nate was gazing grimly at the twin sets of serrated tracks that criss-crossed the area around them, each track more than two feet wide and each pair more than two yards apart. He knew these feet. Nothing had feet like Trom. He looked over to where the ridges of potato plants should have been; the staple diet for peasants. The family's potato plot had been churned up and crushed by the massive engimal.

'This was a house,' said Tatiana. 'I've seen these before, but I've never stood in one. I never realized how small they were.'

She pushed a beam out of the way and paced the length of the whitewashed wall.

'It's smaller than my bedroom,' she remarked. 'I wonder where they put all their things.'

'They probably didn't have a lot of things,' he told her.

'But still – it's so small' she persisted. 'And it's been flattened. What do you think happened?'

'An engimal came through here,' Nate said to her. 'A really big one.'

'My God, people could have been hurt. Shouldn't someone try and catch it before it does any more damage?'

'Someone already has,' he muttered. Then, raising his voice, he said: 'Look, we need to go, Tatty.'

'I'm coming, I'm coming. It's just as well; these trousers are starting to rub between-'

'I don't need to know, Tatty' he said, cutting her off.

'What happened to the people, do you think?' she went on. 'I expect they've moved into one of their other houses.'

'I doubt they had another house, Tatty. Somebody will have taken them in, I suppose. If not, they'll have gone to the poorhouse… Although most people would rather die than end up there.'

'Really? Why? What's so bad about it?'

He thought about it for a moment. He knew very little about the poorhouses.

'I don't know.'

'I can't see how they can be that bad – I mean, they're there to look after people, aren't they? Although Charlie Parnell says people die in there all the time. He says he heard that they take children away from their parents.'

'Oh? And how long has Charlie Parnell been trying his luck?'

'Nate, don't be crude,' she giggled, blushing. 'Anyway how can somebody be so poor that they live in this poky little shed of a thing when there's so much work to do around here? Don't they want to work? Father's always saying there's so much to do. Why don't we pay poor people to do it? They wouldn't be poor any more if we did that, would they? Then everybody could live in proper houses.'

'I don't know, Tatty.'

'I think it's terrible,' she went on. 'Look, they don't even have room for a piano. There doesn't even seem to be a sink or a bath. How did they keep clean?'

'I don't know!

'It doesn't really seem fair – us being so rich when they're so poor, does it?' she mused.

'Our wealth is good for the country' Nate said. 'If we weren't rich, things would be a lot worse. We create jobs, we pay wages and buy goods, and all that money we spend here trickles down to the poor, you see? It's all for the best.'

Tatiana nodded slowly. Then, looking at the wrecked cottage, she added:

'Perhaps it should trickle a little quicker?'

'Come on, let's get out of here,' he urged her impatiently.

'Maybe I'll set up a hospital right here.' She climbed onto the saddle behind him.

'That would be very noble,' he said, growing more and more exasperated.

Turning Flash round, he found that some wire from the wreckage had become tangled in the velocycle's front wheel. He reached down and pulled it free, wrenching at it with unnecessary force and making the engimal flinch. It was time to head back to the house, he decided. Seeing Trom's tracks had spoiled his good mood. He had loved the huge engimal as a child – the great, dull, clumsy brute had been a constant source of wonder for him… until he had found out what it was used for.

Tatiana leaned her chin on his shoulder.

'Nate, do you remember the Famine?' she asked over the sound of Flash's engine.

'A little bit,' he replied. 'I was very young.'

'What was it like?'

He found himself thinking of the bog bodies that lay a few miles away in Gerald's laboratory and he shuddered slightly. They reminded him of the nightmarish things he had seen as a child.

'I don't remember a lot,' he said. 'It didn't affect our lives much. But sometimes we'd take a coach into town and Mother would pull the blinds to stop me from seeing what was outside. That just made me curious, of course, so I peeked out whenever I could.