Brendan Graham - The Element of Fire

The two girls she put together into the tub. She was not so worried about them. But even from Katie they might have taken something; and much as she didn’t want to think of it, she had to be careful about that too. Disease passed from person to person, even from the dead to the living. Ellen thought the girl would be shy about letting her touch her. This proved not to be the case. Mary, though, seemed to recoil from the girl, not wanting their arms and legs to touch, get entangled. Maybe it was a mistake putting them in the bath together, so soon after Katie. She was as gentle as she could be with Mary, kept talking to her.

‘Katie is with the angels in Heaven, with the baby Jesus … with –’ She paused, thinking of Michael, the hot steam of the tub in her eyes. ‘I was too late … too late a stór … but they’re looking down on us now … it was hard, Mary, I know … and on Patrick … and Katie too, with your poor father laid down on the Crucán and me fled to Australia. What must have been going through your little minds?’ Maybe it would have been better if she had taken Annie and with the three of them, crawled into some ditch till the hunger took them instead of her splitting from them. But how could she have watched them waste away beside her, picked at by ravens, their little minds going strange with the want of a few boiled nettles, or the flesh of a dog. She thought of the boy and his brothers – or any poor manged beast that would stray their way. She had had to go, it was no choice in the end – leave them and they had some chance of living, stay and they all would surely die.

Mary, head bent, said nothing, her hair streaming down into the water, red, lifeless ribbons. What could she say to the child? She pulled back Mary’s hair, wrung it out, plaited it behind her head.

‘God must have smiled … when He took Katie. He must have wanted her awful badly …’

Mary turned her face. ‘Then why did He leave me?’ she asked limply, boiling it all down to the crucial question.

‘I don’t know, Mary,’ she answered. ‘There were times when I prayed He’d take all of us. He must have some great plan for you in this life,’ she added, without any great conviction.

How could the child understand, when she couldn’t understand it herself – the cruelty of it – snatching Katie from them at the last moment. She fumbled in her pocket, drew out the rosary beads.

‘The only thing is to pray, Mary; when nothing makes sense the only thing is to pray, Mary,’ she repeated.

Already on her knees, arms resting on the bath, Ellen blessed herself.

‘The First Joyful Mystery, the … the Annunciation,’ she began.

They had to have hope in their hearts. The sorrow would never leave, she knew, and maybe there would never be full joy in this life. But they had to have hope, keep the Christ-child in their hearts.

She and Mary passed the Mysteries back and forth between themselves, each leading the first part of the Our Father, the Hail Marys and the Glory be to the Father as it was their turn. Once, before the Famine, there were five of them – a Mystery each.

The silent girl gave no hint that she had ever previously partaken of such family devotion, merely exhibiting a curious respectfulness as the prayers went between Ellen and Mary through the veil of bath-vapour – the mists of Heaven. Ellen’s clothes were sodden, her face bathed in steam, the small hard beads perspiring in her hands. The great thing about prayer was that you didn’t have to talk to a person while you prayed with them. Yet souls were joined talking to each other, while they talked to God. She beaded the last of the fifty Hail Marys. There was only so much time for prayers and she whooshed the two out of the tub before they could get cold.

Afterwards, she boiled all of the clothes they had worn, along with her own, before at last climbing into the tub herself. It was a blessed relief. When she had finished rinsing out her hair she lay there, head back on the rim of the tub, her eyes closed. Everyone and everything done for. A little snatch of time to be on her own. Just her and Katie.

The memories flooded back to her. How when she’d send Katie and Mary to the side of the hill for water, they would become distracted, forget. Instead, would lie face-down on the cooling slab of the spring well, watching each other’s reflections in the clear water. Then, when she called them they would scamper down the hill to her, pulling the bucket this way and that until half its contents was left behind them. The times when she did the Lessons, teaching them at her knee what she had learned at her father’s knee, passing it on. While Mary would reflect on what she had learned, Katie just couldn’t. Always bursting with questions, one tumbling out after the other, mad to know only about Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen of Clew Bay, or Cromwell and his slaughtering Roundheads. God, how Katie had tried her patience at times! The evenings, when as a family they would kneel to say the rosary, Katie’s elbowing of Mary every time the name of the Mother of God was mentioned, which was often! At Samhain once when the spirits of the dead came back to the valley, Katie had thrown one of the bonfire’s burning embers into the sky. No amount of argument could shake her belief but that she had hit an ‘evil spirit’ with it.

That was Katie, a firebrand herself, filled to the brim with life. But she had the other side too; like the time she had dashed to the steep edge of the mountain as they crossed down to Finny for Mass. It had put the heart crossways in Ellen. But Katie had returned safely and clutching a fistful of purple and yellow wildflowers, a gift for her mother.

Her fondest memory of Katie was of the time when Annie was born. Katie had crept to her side, to be the first one to see ‘my new little sister’. Like an angel touching starlight, one tentative finger had stretched out to touch Annie’s cheek. How Ellen herself had cried at the beauty of the moment, then laughed at her own foolishness. Katie, as always, asking the ever-pertinent question. ‘A Mhamaí , why are you crying when you’re laughing?’ And she couldn’t answer her. They had lain there together, she and Katie and Annie, into the gathering dawn; touching, whispering, rapt in wonder until the others came. Both of them now snatched from her, Annie in far-off Australia, Katie on her own doorstep.

‘You in there!’ The loud rap at the door startled Ellen. ‘You’ve been there all night, we have others waiting!’ The gruff voice of Faherty’s cousin was matched by further rapping.

‘I’m sorry,’ she called back, clambering out of the tub, ‘I’m coming.’

She was relieved when she opened the door to find he had gone downstairs. Briskly she padded along the corridor, marking it with her wet footprints, the only sound ringing in her ears, not that of the gruff innkeeper but a child’s question.

‘Can we make wonder last, a Mhamaí ?’

And her answer, those two and a half years ago. ‘Yes, Katie, we can.’

Back in the room, Patrick, Mary and the girl were already asleep. She dried herself freely, nevertheless, keeping at a discreet distance from the window in The Inn’s west wing. The window looked out across the Carrowbeg river. Directly opposite she could see St Mary’s Church, with its imposing parapet. The thought of the boy with the sack being evicted from the House of God because of his wretched condition angered her. Why had she felt responsible for the boy – as she had for the silent girl? Why for some and not for others, when thousands were dying? Faherty had told her thirty-nine poor souls had received the last sacraments in that day alone.

‘And it’s the same every day, ma’am. Monday to Sunday. They say there’s thirty thousand of the destitute getting outdoor relief around here – they’ll be joining with them soon enough.’