Under the Hawthorn Tree

at Mother, waiting for her reply. She nodded her head silently.
‘Under the hawthorn tree in the back field,’ she whispered. ‘The children always played there and its blossom will shelter her now.’
Dan motioned to Michael and they left the cottage and disappeared up to the field carrying a spade.
‘We’ve no coffin,’ said Mother hoarsely.
Kitty looked around the cottage and begged Eily to help her. Eily cleared her throat. ‘What about using grandmother’s wooden chest?’
Kitty and Eily pulled it out from under the old bed and lifted it onto the blanket. Mother walked over and nodded silently. Kitty began to take out the family treasures and

THE AIR FELT COLD and damp as Eily stirred in her bed and tried to pull a bit more of the blanket up to her shoulders. Her little sister Peggy moved against her. Peggy was snoring again. She always did when she had a cold.
The fire was nearly out. The hot ash made a soft glow in the gloom of the cottage.
Mother was crooning quietly to the baby. Bridget’s eyes were closed and her soft face looked paler than ever as she lay wrapped in Mother’s shawl, her little fist clinging to a piece of the long chestnut-coloured hair.
Bridget was ill – they all knew it. Underneath the wrapped shawl her body was too thin, her skin white and either too hot or too cold to the touch. Mother held her all

THE AIR FELT COLD and damp as Eily stirred in her bed and tried to

was snoring again. She always did when she had a cold.The fire was nearly out. The hot ash made a soft glow in the gloom of the cottage.

would be the risk that Tom Daly would

THE AIR FELT COLD and damp as Eily stirred in her bed and tried to pull a bit more of the blanket up to her shoulders. Her little sister Peggy moved against her. Peggy was snoring again. She always did when she had a cold.
The fire was nearly out. The hot ash made a soft glow in the gloom of the cottage.
Mother was crooning quietly to the baby. Bridget’s eyes were closed and her soft face looked paler than ever as she lay wrapped in Mother’s shawl, her little fist clinging to a piece of the long chestnut-coloured hair.
Bridget was ill – they all knew it. Underneath the wrapped shawl her body was too thin, her skin white and either too hot or too cold to the touch. Mother held her all day and all night as if trying to will some of her strength into the little one so loved.
Eily could feel tears at the back of her eyes. Sometimes she thought that maybe this was all a dream and soon she would wake up and laugh at it, but the hunger pain in her tummy and the sadness in her heart were enough to know that it was real. She closed her eyes and remembered.
It was hard to believe that it was only a little over a year ago, and they sitting in the old school room, when Tim O’Kelly had run in to get his brother John and told them all to ‘Make a run home quick to help with lifting the spuds as a pestilence had fallen on the place and they were rotting in the ground.’
They all waited for the master to get his stick and shout at Tim: Away out of it, you fool, to disturb the learning, but were surprised when he shut his book and told them to make haste and ‘Mind, no dawdling,’ and ‘Away home to give a hand.’ They all ran so fast that their breath caught in their throats, half afraid of what they would find at home.
Eily remembered. Father was sitting on the stone wall, his head in his hands. Mother was kneeling in the field, her hands and apron covered in mud as she pulled the potatoes from the ground, and all around the air heavy with a smell – that smell, rotting, horrible, up your nose, in your mouth. The smell of badness and disease.
Across the valley the men cursed and the women prayed to God to save them. Field after field of potatoes had died and rotted in the ground. The crop, their food-crop was gone. All the children stared