Black Harvest Read online

  They were all dressed by six. Prill was ready first and waited in the kitchen, staring out listlessly at the wildness of fields and sky. She hadn’t washed or combed her hair, or cleaned her teeth; there was a foul taste in her mouth and her head pounded. But her body was nothing to do with her any more. She didn’t care.

  “Come on, Prill,” Colin said rather nervously. “We’ve got to wrap up. Look at the weather.” He bent over her and did up the buttons of her cardigan. It was Mum’s, an old holey thing she wore in bed. “What have you got this on for?” Now he was close to her he could see how sunken her eyes were, and how her skin glistened. It had that awful greenish pallor they’d noticed in Alison.

  “You can’t go like this. Where’s your anorak? It’s raining. Where did you—?” She cut him off. “Listen, listen to it. That’s what I could hear in the night. It’s what woke me. I wasn’t asleep. I knew.” She stood up and grabbed his arms, so fiercely that it hurt. Oliver was standing in the doorway with a jersey half pulled over his head.

  The cry of the child was very loud now. Just for a moment it sounded as if she was in the room with them. Then the noise faded, melting into the wind as it howled round the house. They listened and it came again. Now it was thin and far away, now the gale brought it back to them, and it was no longer a child’s voice but older and deeper, a low weeping, a voice with all the sadness in it that they had ever felt.

  The three children stared at each other, then looked away. They were beyond everything now, beyond hunger, beyond tears. As they stood together outside, trying to keep upright in the teeth of the wind, Colin banged the door shut and double-locked it. Inside, Jessie started howling.

  Prill started to cry. “We can’t leave her, Colin. It’s cruel. I’m going back.” She turned round and made for the door. She believed they would never get away from this place, never break free. She wanted to be with Jessie.

  The gale howled down the track, almost blowing them over. Stones and gravel were hurled up at their faces, battering them like giant hail. Colin shouted, “Prill, she’ll have to stay there for a bit. She’s too weak, she’ll hold us up. Oliver says he’ll go and tell the vet, the minute we get to Ballimagliesh. Oh, come on, can’t you?”

  But Prill stayed where she was, her fingers twisted round the big front door knob, wrenching at it, as if she was trying to pull it off. “I’m not going without her,” she sobbed. “Let me into the house. We can. I’ll carry her.”

  Colin hesitated and took a step towards the bungalow, feeling in his pocket for the keys. He’d hated shutting the door on Jessie, and now she was just behind it, howling and scratching pitifully. Perhaps they could—

  “No,” said a voice behind him and his shoulders were being gripped very tight. “Turn round, walk away from her. It’ll take us all our time to get up the track in this wind. I’ll deal with Prill. We can’t take Jessie, and that’s final.”

  Colin spun round. The voice was unfamiliar, loud, piercing, unnaturally high. It was the voice of someone used to being obeyed. It was Oliver.

  He’d pushed Colin away and gone back to Prill on the step. They were fighting. Prill was screaming. “No! No! Leave me alone! Why should I do what you tell me, you don’t understand about Jessie. I’ve seen you kicking at her, don’t think I’ve not—” She broke off suddenly; there was a sharp crack and Colin saw Oliver strike her very hard across the face.

  She was taller than he was, and to get her down off the step he had wrapped both his hands round her arm and was tugging violently. Colin winced, that must be horribly painful. As he watched, she let out an agonized scream. Oliver was clawing and pulling wildly at poor Prill in his efforts to get her away from the bungalow. “Prill,” he was shouting. “You must come with me. We must get away from this house. Trust me, Prill!”

  She was now spreadeagled against the door, staring down at the puny little boy in absolute terror. “No, no,” she was moaning, but her voice was less certain, and her body sagged a little, as if her knees were giving way.

  Colin came up and stood on the other side. “Come on, Prill,” he said quietly. “Oliver’s right.” He put his arm round her shoulder and helped her off the step. Oliver stepped quickly between them and the house, spreading out his bony hands to the howling wind. But Prill had given in, and she walked away without another word.

  Very slowly they inched forwards, clinging together for safety, and at last reached a fork in the track where a narrow path went off into a field, towards the trees near Donal Morrissey’s caravan.

  Oliver stopped and pulled them all to a halt. “Come on!” Colin shouted, above the gale. “Let’s keep on going.” He wanted to keep Prill on the move. She was in a state of near hysteria, and if she broke away now and ran back, there would be another struggle. This time she might win.

  “This is the way,” he heard. “This is the way we must go. He’s waiting for us.”

  It was the same strange, high-pitched voice, a sound so piercing it hurt the ears. And there was such authority in it, such assurance. How could it be the voice of a small boy like Oliver? Colin was frightened. He turned round in the path and looked at him. Prill released her grip on his arm and looked too.

  The boy was standing just below them by a broken stile. The overgrown hedge that bordered the field was being blown right over by the wind. He could have crouched under it for shelter. But he stood well away from it, in the middle of the track, his arms thrust out towards them and his head thrown back, almost as if he gloried in the storm.

  The face and body were Oliver’s, but he was someone they no longer knew. And there was a stillness about him. It was as though they were looking out of darkness towards a steady point of light. The world had gone mad and wild; land, sea and sky were locked together in a riot of noise. And in the eye of the storm stood Oliver, in that place of peace where all the tumult ended.

  “We must go to the old man,” he repeated. “He’s waiting for us.”

  Colin and Prill looked at one another. They both knew they had to obey him, but they didn’t know why. Why should they turn their backs on the village, on the kindly priest, on the chance of finding a vet for Jessie? Why go instead to a stinking caravan and a crazy old man who’d threatened to set his dog on them? But Oliver had already turned his back and climbed over the stile. And they followed him.

  In the open fields it was almost impossible to stand. The landscape was a dirty yellow blur, earth and sky became one as the rain whipped at their faces and made their eyes stream. The sea thundered down below and the copse of stunted trees was flattened like wind-blown hair.

  The old blue van rocked gently in the middle of the fields, looking like Noah’s Ark. There was a light inside and smoke poured from the chimney. The old man was at his door, looking up at the sky. He whistled for his dog, then he saw the three children. For a second he stood quite still, then shouted to them. But the wind drowned him, so he put his hands to his mouth and called again, beckoning them over.

  Very slowly, Colin started walking, but Prill stopped on the muddy path. “Come on, Prill,” Oliver said. “The wind’s dropped a bit. Let’s get under cover while we can. He’s waiting for us.”

  She looked into his eyes, searching for the person she’d once known, the fussy, self-opinionated little boy who’d threatened to spoil their holiday. But that Oliver had gone. “He’s waiting, Prill,” this boy repeated; his voice was harder now, and his fingers were plucking at her.

  This time she didn’t snap or make jokes. She didn’t say, “You and your old people, you’re obsessed with that dirty old man.” She simply took the hand he held out to her and followed him across the field.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE OLD MAN could see that Colin and Prill were frightened, though the younger boy seemed very anxious to get inside. He held the door open for them. The older ones didn’t move, but Oliver’s foot was already on the step. “We must go in,” he said loudly. “He’s been expecting us.” But they backed away. In the end Don
al Morrissey pulled them inside himself.

  The girl looked ill, she was shaking uncontrollably and she was wringing wet. “You,” he said roughly, making her sit down in the one armchair by the stove. Put this round yourself, do. Get warm.” The smelly blanket he was thrusting at her made Prill’s flesh creep, but she didn’t dare refuse it. She pulled it round her trembling shoulders. It stank to high heaven but at least it was dry. Very gradually her teeth stopped chattering.

  “You boys,” he was grunting, pulling more covers from a bed and spreading them on the floor, “Sit on these. It’s food you’ll be after now, I’m thinking.”

  The dog sidled up to them nervously, sniffing them all in turn, then sitting down at Oliver’s feet. He touched it gingerly, but he had eyes only for Donal Morrissey, eyes that were now curiously bright, big with expectancy in the light of the smoking oil-lamp. Prill stared at him. He was waiting for something to happen.

  Colin was peering curiously round the caravan at the boxes and all the bags of old rubbish. The table was covered with newspapers and ancient books. Old Donal must spend hours poring over them. He analysed the various smells, dog, peat, and some kind of stew. There was a big pan of it, bubbling on the stove.

  Prill looked at the old man as he shuffled about. As the wind tore across the fields, the van swayed on its moorings and the gale battered at the thin walls. “Here,” he said. “You want warming.” She sat up jerkily. He’d pushed a tin bowl into her hand and was ladling something into it, a fatty broth with cabbage strips and lumps of bacon floating on top. When they all had a bowl he fetched a loaf and tore pieces off it. “Dip this in,” he said. “You need food inside you.”

  Prill’s stomach heaved. The spoon he’d given her was caked with bits of dried-up food. The soup seemed to consist of grease and old scraps of meat and vegetables. The smell of it made her feel sick. She put the spoon down, trembling in case the old man got angry and forced her to eat. Then, without knowing why, she looked up into his eyes.

  Donal Morrissey was staring down at her intently. Suddenly he seemed immensely tall and his eyes burned into her. Prill stared back, as if hypnotized; she knew that face well, all her dreams were about it, bony, gaunt and fleshless. She recognized the domed forehead from which the wisps of hair, once a wild auburn, sprang back. All that had happened to them was in this face.

  What was going to become of them now, shut up in this caravan with this strange old man? Her body began to tremble and she pulled the filthy blanket round her more closely, so he wouldn’t see. The storm still raged round outside and the van was rocking. Then the wind hurled something down on the roof with a great clatter. The sudden noise was deafening and Prill’s hand flew to her mouth, forcing a scream back.

  They had not escaped. The terrors of the house had followed them across the wild fields. She would not look through the tiny windows in case she saw the stick woman staring in at her; she would breathe in the smell of the blanket, it was better than the foul, rotten smell of the land.

  Donal Morrissey saw her terror and didn’t understand. Her brother was shivering too, hunched over the puttering stove, staring up at him out of a wild, white face. The storm was still blowing strongly. They couldn’t leave yet. He looked from one to the other. Then he knew what to do; he would show them his treasures.

  He pushed a chair over to the stove and sat down next to Prill. “See this? That boy brought it. I cleaned it up.”

  She looked into his cracked palm. “What is it?” she whispered.

  He rattled the silver nut against her ear. “Found it, so he says. Dug it up when he was making a hole to play in, outside Moynihan’s bungalow. And this too, wrapped round it. Cost money that would. It’s silk. Would have rotted otherwise surely. Oh, they were fine folk.”

  “Who were?” said Colin, edging forward, fingering the silver nut. “Who did these things belong to? Who were these rich people?”

  The old man was muttering to himself as the two children examined Oliver’s relics. But he never took his eyes off them. He didn’t want the tiny things to be dropped. The floor was full of cracks.

  “It’s a baby’s rattle,” Oliver said clearly. “The handle’s missing, but that’s what it is. It’s probably got a little stone inside it, to make the noise.”

  “But where exactly did you find it?” Prill asked. “Did you really dig it up and—”

  “And why didn’t you tell us?” Colin broke in impatiently. “It could have been very important. Why keep it a secret?”

  “It is important,” Oliver answered calmly. “But I couldn’t tell anyone, not straight away. I was waiting.”

  Colin and Prill exchanged bewildered looks. Why had he waited? Did he mean for this moment? Had he known all along that the night of terror they had just lived through would end here, in this caravan, with Donal Morrissey?

  “Why keep it a secret?” Colin said again.

  “Because sometimes things can’t be told, till the right time comes. You’ve got a secret, too. You must tell him about it.”

  The two boys looked at one another, and Colin knew that he meant the writing in the tunnel. But how could Oliver know about that? Had he been spying on him? It was impossible.

  The old man had fished out other things to show them. “Perfect, this one is, they’re the same. See?” He thrust the silver rattle on its carved handle under Oliver’s nose, his eyes glittered and his voice was breathy with excitement. “Didn’t know I’d got this, did you? Or this? Your bit of silk came from this piece. It was a shawl, I reckon. And look at this, will you? It was her prayer book.”

  Oliver took the rattle and the square of silk from the old man, looked at them quickly, almost politely, and gave them to Colin. No, he hadn’t seen them before, but his face showed no surprise. It was calm, almost self-satisfied. He looked like someone solving a difficult puzzle, methodically, piece by piece; someone very confident, who had no doubt that he could complete it.

  Old Donal took the reddish cloth from Colin and spread it over his knees. Then he put the prayer book on top of it. “This was hers. They were all hers, all these things. They’d been kept from the old days and passed on to her.”

  “Who?” said Prill. “D’you mean your mother?”

  The old man opened his mouth but it was Oliver who answered.

  “His grandmother. He means his grandmother, Bridget Morrissey. She was born in Ballimagliesh but she went away to live in the north, in County Donegal, when she got married. I’m right, aren’t I, Mr Morrissey?”

  “Aye, you are, boy. She did so.”

  He didn’t seem at all surprised by what Oliver had said. There was an understanding between them. It was almost as if the boy was willing him to unfold his story, just for the benefit of the other two, but as if he knew the facts already and didn’t need to be told.

  Donal opened the prayer book and showed them what was written inside.“ ‘Bridget Morrissey, Ballimagliesh, 1865.’ See that? She was seventeen when she wrote that. It’s a fine hand, so it is. They could all read and write. That’s a hundred years old, that is, but these…older still, these are.”

  “I don’t understand,” Prill said flatly. “I just don’t understand any of it. Why are these things you dug up so important, Oliver? How does he come to have things like them? And I don’t understand about the grandmother. Can’t he explain to us?”

  Colin exchanged looks with Prill. They both felt certain about one thing now. In these keepsakes they would find the key to all that had happened to them. That was why Oliver had brought them here.

  “You lived with her in Donegal, didn’t you?” Oliver said to the old man, taking no notice of Prill and Colin. “You didn’t leave till you came here, to work on a farm?”

  “So I did, but she… Well now, she stayed here till she was married. The Morrisseys were Ballimagliesh people, born and bred. Wealthy too, they were, in the old days. There are Morrisseys buried in the Chapel of Our Lady, above Ballimagliesh Strand.”

  “I know
,” Colin said. “I found a headstone in the ruins. It had Morrissey on it.”

  He shot a look at Oliver and the boy’s bright, confident eyes looked back, eyes that said, “I knew. That was your secret, wasn’t it? I was waiting for you to tell him that.”

  Old Donal thrust his face right up against Colin’s. “You’ve been down the tunnel then, where they were? Those names – it was her told me about those names, Bridget told me, before she died at Kilmacrenan. First thing I did was look for them, when I came to Ballimagliesh. They’d written their names in that hiding place, by the strand. She’d seen them too.”

  “And it was the same Morrisseys?” Colin said quietly.

  “So it was. Ah, the poor souls, no rest for them, no refuge, no one to bury them, all perished.” The old man’s voice cracked and he stared into the flames of the stove. He seemed to have forgotten the three children. His mind had taken a well-trodden path where nobody, not even Oliver, could follow.

  “They died when the harvests failed, didn’t they?” Oliver prompted him. “When everyone died?”

  “All of them. All the Morrisseys. And no one to bury them. Others were thrown into pits of lime, dozens together, like animals.”

  “You mean in the 1840s?” Prill said. “In the years of the potato famine?”

  “In the great hunger.”

  Colin and Prill fell silent, but Oliver was strangely excited and stood up suddenly. Without realizing it he’d grabbed the old man by the shoulder. Donal was startled for a second, then he laid his grubby hand on top of Oliver’s, and kept it there, as though he wanted comfort.

  “There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” the boy said shrilly. “It’s all clear to me now, except for one thing.”

  One thing… Prill and Colin exchanged hopeless looks. They were still totally bewildered.

  It seemed that the Morrisseys buried in the graveyard above the Yellow Tunnel were the old man’s remote ancestors. In those days they were prosperous. Only the rich would have toys made of silver and wrap their babies in silk. Years later his grandmother’s family had died in the famine. They had scratched their names in the rock in that tunnel above the beach.