Johnny Jack Johnny held up his hands: they were coated with a stinking black substance – the likes of which Ellen had never seen.
‘But didn’t you lift them like the priest told you?’ she asked.
‘Some did, but most didn’t. Sure, we kept watchin’ them day and night, and there wasn’t a sign on them. They were the best crop ever – ’til now,’ the man said, shaking his head.
‘And are they all gone?’ Ellen wasn’t going to let up. There must be some hope – there had to be.
‘Every last one of them that was left in the ground is gone – like we never put them down at all,’ Johnny Jack Johnny said disconsolately, the murmurs of despair from those around him rising in a chorus of lament for their lost crops, and for themselves.
‘God’s pity on us all. What are we to do with the long winter bearing down on us?’ Johnny Jack Johnny asked of no one in particular, knowing no one could answer him.
By now the villagers had heard the worst. Those who had not lifted all their potatoes rushed to the fields. Without waiting for loy or slane, they tore into the lazy beds with their bare hands, hoping against forlorn hope that this blight hadn’t reached here, hadn’t come the extra five or six miles up the valley to Maamtrasna.
Ellen watched as one by one the frenzied diggers recoiled from the lazy beds, nothing in their hands save a mass of putrid black matter. The people remained where they were, immobilized by despair – fields of dead men, kneeling.
Like the contagion itself, grief spread among the stricken people. Some threw themselves upon the source of their grief, the diseased lazy beds, in desperate supplication, digging their fingers deep into the cruel, unresponsive earth.
Ellen, too, was seized by panic. She couldn’t think straight. Her first instinct, as always, was for the children. Somehow she got her unwilling legs to move, slowly at first, then running to the cabin, taking what seemed an eternity. She drew them to her. All three were sobbing, terrified of what was outside their cabin door without being fully sure why, but caught in the hysteria that swept on every side of them.
‘Shssh now. Where’s your father?’ she asked.
‘There he is!’ Patrick punched his finger urgently towards the mountain, glad to speak, glad to break through the tears.
Ellen followed the line of Patrick’s finger. A number of shapes were hurtling down the mountain at a dangerous rate of descent. Ellen could just about distinguish Michael, Roberteen and Martin Tom Bawn, half running, half sliding, knocking stones and shale before them, as they careered down to the village and the awaiting calamity. By now the cries of despair had dissolved into sobbing and the keening normally reserved for the wakes of the dead.
Michael ran straight to the cabin. Through the dust and sweat, Ellen could see the fear on his face. Neither of them spoke, only bundled their small family closer in to them.
In the fields, husbands, wives and children did the same, until everywhere were hapless little bundles of people cut loose from life. Hopelessly hanging together. Each thinking the same thought. Wondering when death would claim them.
Fear driving his body onwards, Michael O’Malley for the second time that morning climbed the mountain. This time the ascent which normally took him a leisurely forty-five minutes was completed in twenty-five. He was the first to reach the ridge. Behind him was young Roberteen and, a ways further back, Roberteen’s father.
Michael ran across the soft peaty ground, avoiding the swallow holes. His eyes were fixed on a small dip to the far side of the marshy area, where a few years ago it had occurred to him to try out some seedlings from the lazy beds below. The hardy lumper had grown well here and he had gradually extended the area of this mountain crop of potatoes. The natural fall of the land conspired with the planters to keep what was planted hidden from view, safe from the landlord’s prying eyes. Only his next-door neighbours, with their own crop growing alongside Michael’s, knew of this place. Each harvest-time the three of them would spirit away their secret crop, under cover of dusk, to their cabins below.
Michael found it hard to understand why more villagers hadn’t followed their example in reclaiming some of the wasteland to provide a little extra food for themselves and their families. Perhaps they had been deterred by what had happened over in Partry. There Pakenham had discovered his tenants’ secret potato patches, and had rewarded their enterprise by levying extra rent. ‘This extra ground which I have allowed you to cultivate in justice demands extra rent,’ he had told them. ‘How could I be seen to act even-handedly towards all of my tenants, as any good landlord should, if I were to grant additional acreage to some, and not to others, and all paying the same rent?’ So those who had worked harder, and made good land out of bad, were even worse off than before.
Here, on the far side of the lake from Tourmakeady, they were well away from Pakenham and the prying eyes of his toady, Beecham. The crop should be safe from the landlord, at least.
Michael slowed down just before he reached the dip where the potato patch was. Roberteen, still running, came up behind him. Together they stood on a lip of ground overhanging the dozen or so lazy beds, waiting for the older man to catch up with them. When he did, the three of them continued to gaze down on the stalks blowing hither and thither, gusted this way and that by the mountain breeze. Each was reluctant to make the first move, holding back the moment when they must discover that which they most feared.
Roberteen was the first to say it. ‘Look, Michael – look there, on the leaves.’
But the keen eyes of Michael and the older, silent watcher had already taken in the white substance which lay fleecelike on the green leaves. It was almost beautiful, glistening in the half-light of the October sun. Like mountain fog – a will-o’-the-wisp that hadn’t lifted.
Michael had never seen its like before. He looked first at the others, then slowly stepped down on to the patch. He went to his knees beside the nearest lazy bed and gingerly reached over to touch the mysterious mist. It felt as it looked – soft and dewy, yet sticky too. He tried to brush it from the leaf, but unlike the dew it did not melt with the heat of his hand. He took a closer look. This furry down was growing out of the green veins of the leaf. As he made to examine it, the smell that accompanied the rot assailed his nostrils. Panic setting in, he plunged both hands into the mound of earth, frantically searching for the hard uneven roundness that would tell him the lumpers were safe.
But there were no lumpers, just a stinking mass of putrefaction. He withdrew his hands in disgust, staring in dismay at the foulness dripping from his fingers.
‘They’re lost!’ he shouted.
The watchers, still and silent until now, jumped down beside him.
‘God save us, Michael – what is it?’ Martin Tom Bawn asked.
‘I’ve never seen the likes of it before today … It looks and smells like the very melt of hell,’ Michael whispered.
‘’Tis an evil thing, surely,’ young Roberteen added. ‘A fearful evil thing,’ the boy repeated in hushed tones.
‘And is there nothing at all down there, Michael?’ the older man asked.
Michael did not answer. Instead he said, ‘We have to be quick. What we’ll do is this: Martin, you start on the beds at the far side, and turn every bit of them – maybe there’s some can be saved. Roberteen, you start there in the middle and work towards your father, and I’ll start here and work in towards you.’
The three men set to their task without any great heart, but knowing that they must do it. If a few potatoes could be saved, it might carry their families just that bit further through the winter.
What was most frightening, thought Michael, was the speed with which the blight had struck, and then spread, destroying all before it. He noticed, as he worked along the lazy beds on his hands and knees, that the white fleece on the leaves was already rotting, turning each leaf