Oisín McGann - Ancient Appetites

'It was as if the dead had risen from their graves. People who were little more than skeletons wandered the roads, their clothes hanging on them like ragged curtains. I saw starving children with swollen bellies; it was the oddest sight – fat bellies on bodies that were little more than skin and bone. Gerald told me later that it's a side effect of hunger that can be caused by gas or water retention. The oddest sight. It's hard to describe a starving person's face… It's… It's like they've died, but their soul hasn't left their body. And they have a horrible look of despair. I heard there were rotting corpses in the roads and the ditches and lying out in fields in the middle of nowhere. You could smell them when you passed them – there's nothing as bad as the stench of decaying flesh. If the poor didn't die of hunger, they were killed by disease. It was everywhere. I remember Mother being terrified that we would catch the fever. A lot of children did. You didn't have to be poor to fall sick, and it was a horrible way to die.'

He fell silent, his eyes on the rough road that would lead them back to the house. He remembered being appalled at the way people had lived in some of the tribal villages along the Congo River. It had seemed unbelievable that human beings could still live in such squalor in this day and age – in this Age of Enlightenment. The sooner the Industrial Revolution reached Africa the better. But now, seeing through Tatiana's eyes the poverty that surrounded them here at home, he realized that industry was doing nothing for his own people. Peasants here lived in worse conditions than anything he had seen in the Congo or in the shanty towns on the Cape. It was no wonder so many of them were getting worked up about it. Not that it gave them an excuse to go around murdering people.

It was like Tatiana said: there was plenty of work to do. Anybody who wanted to improve their lot only needed to put their backs into it. And if the rebels thought they were going to change things by attacking his family, they had another think coming.

'Nathaniel,' his sister said into his ear, 'how much of this land is ours?'

'All of it,' he told her. 'Everything you see.'

It was Francie's day off and he normally spent it with some of the other lads from the stables if he could. He got one day off a month and Dublin was too far away for him to visit his family unless he could get a lift there and back. But his father had sent him a message to meet him in a pub near the estate, so once he had finished his chores for the morning, he cleaned himself up and got ready to go out.

On the way out he stopped in to look at the big velocycle, as he so often did. He had managed to touch it a couple of times now and he thought it might be starting to trust him. He dreamed of being allowed to take it out for a walk… or a roll, or whatever.

It appeared to be in a bad mood when he looked over the wall at it. It was twitching and rubbing its front wheel against the wall, making frustrated grunts. Francie knew the signs. Something was irritating it, and it was fidgeting like a horse with a stone in its hoof. He licked his lips, thinking about how much trouble he could get into if he interfered with an engimal. But after helping to blow up a crowded cemetery, the risk of trying to ease an expensive machine's discomfort was small potatoes. He slowly climbed over the wall and lowered himself into the stall. The engimal turned to look at him.

'There y'are, Flashy old thing,' Francie said in a sympathetic tone. 'I'm not goin' to hurt yeh. And yer not goin' to hurt me either, are yeh, Flash? No, yer not. I'm just goin' to get in here and see what's up with yeh. And then we'll make it all better for yeh. How's that sound, eh?'

He edged closer, nervously noticing how the velocycle had bunched up as if ready to lunge forward. Stretching out his hand, he kept making soothing noises.

'Sssh,' he told it. 'There y'are now. That's it, Flash. Let's see what's wrong.'

Going down on one knee, he gently stroked the engimal's front wheel, sliding his fingers up to its right front leg, which it had been rubbing against the wall. Flash trembled with tension but made no move to stop him. He realized it wasn't just being aggressive. It was afraid. He knew then that it must be in pain. Feeling around the metal muscles of its leg, Francie's fingers found their way down to where its ankle joint held the wheel. Something jagged and sharp was caught there and the engimal flinched when he touched it.

'That's it, isn't it, boy?' he said softly. 'Let's just have a look and see what yev got there.'

It was a piece of rusty wire, wrapped around the axle joint where it met the wheel. It had probably got caught up out on the road somewhere. He tugged carefully and Flash flinched again and growled.

'It's all right there, lad,' Francie reassured it. ''S just a bit o' wire. Not to worry – we'll have it out in no time.'

Getting a better grip, he pulled the end out and, with tender movements, unwound the rusted wire. He could see where it had chafed against the engimal's metal skin. The last tangled length of wire grated against the wheel and Flash let out a sudden snarl, slamming Francie back against the wall. The boy winced as the back of his head whacked off the wood, but he didn't panic as the wheel crushed his torso against the wall. The wire had cut the crook of his index finger and he sucked on it, eyeing the machine. There were flecks of rust in the cut, and he stretched over and washed the finger in the water trough. He took his time doing it, determined to show he wasn't afraid of the engimal.

Flash did not release him, but it didn't lean any harder either. With its weight, it could have crushed his chest like a matchbox. Stroking the wheel that was pressed against his ribcage, he reached in and finished unwinding the offending wire, pulling it free.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. There now,' he said at last. 'How's that for yeh?'

The velocycle hesitated for a moment and then backed away. It made a noise that sounded like a mixture of apology and grudging appreciation. Francie stared at the magnificent machine with a hint of a smile on his face.

'You 'n' me,' he said breathlessly. 'We're goin' to be friends… aren't we?'

F rancie met his father in the smoky atmosphere of McAuley's, a pub not far from the Wildenstern estate. This was the first time Shay had ever come up here to meet him. Francie sat on a stool at a rough wooden table beside his father, sipping on a pint of warm stout and wiping away the foamy moustache it left on his top lip.

'There'll be no more robbin' from nibbies and clodhoppers,' Shay was saying to him in a lowered voice. 'It's rich folk and nothin' else for me from now on. Absolutely deffiney – no more small-time. What's the point in robbin' from them as don't have a ha'penny worth takin', Francie? Sure it's these toffs' fault that we're thieves in the first place, yeh know what I mean? I wouldn't be such a gouger if I hadn't been oppressed since I was born.'

Francie listened quietly, wondering what his father wanted. He didn't point out that his mother had been born into the same circumstances as Shay, and was as saintly as any woman alive. Being poor didn't make you a thief. His ma had never stolen a thing in her life and she'd tried to teach Francie to be the same. There wasn't a hope of that with Shay around.

'We're goin' to be like that English fella from the stories,' his father was saying. 'Yeh know… the one who lived in the woods and robbed the rich to give to the poor. Wha' was 'is name?'