Читать книгу The Rat-Pit - Patrick MacGill - Страница 7

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HOW lifeless the scene looked; the hollows white with snow, the gale-swept edges of the rocks darkly bare! Norah Ryan stepping timidly, suddenly shrieked as her foot slipped into a wreath of snow. Under her tread something moved, the snow rose into the air as if to shake itself, then fell again with a crackling noise. The girl had stepped upon a sleeping woman, who, now rudely wakened, was afoot and angry.

“Mercy be on you, child!” roared the female in Gaelic, as she shook the frozen flakes from the old woollen handkerchief that covered her head. “Can you not take heed of your feet and where you’re putting them?”

“It’s the child that didn’t see ye,” said the beansho, then added by way of salutation: “It’s cold to be sleepin’ out this mornin’.”

“It’s Norah Ryan, is it?” asked the woman, still shaking the snow from her head-dress. “And has she been along with you, of all persons in the world?”

“Is the tide out yet?” asked a voice from the snow.

A face like that of a sheeted corpse peered up into the greyness, and Norah Ryan looked at it, her face full of a fright that was not unmixed with childish curiosity. There in the white snow, some asleep and some staring vacantly into the darkness, lay a score of women, some young, some old, and all curled up like sleeping dogs. Nothing could be seen but the faces, coloured ghastly silver in the dim light of the slow dawn, faces without bodies staring like dead things from the welter of snow. An old woman asleep, the bones of her face showing plainly through the sallow wrinkles of the skin, her only tooth protruding like a fang and her jaw lowered as if hung by a string, suddenly coughed. Her cough was wheezy, weak with age, and she awoke. In the midst of the heap of bodies she stood upright and disturbed the other sleepers. In an instant the hollow was alive, voluble, noisy. Some of the women knelt down and said their prayers, others shook the snow from their shawls, one was humming a love song and making the sign of the cross at the end of every verse.

“I’ve been travelling all night long,” said an old crone who had just joined the party, “and I thought that I would not be in time to catch the tide. It is a long way that I have to come for a bundle of yarn—sixteen miles, and maybe it is that I won’t get it at the end of my journey.”

The kneeling women rose from their knees and hurried towards the channel in the bay, now a thin string of water barely three yards in width. The wind, piercingly cold, no longer carried its burden of sleet, and the east, icily clear, waited, almost in suspense, for the first tint of the sun. The soil, black on the foreshore, cracked underfoot and pained the women as they walked. None wore their shoes, although three or four carried brogues tied round their necks. Most had mairteens (double thick stockings) on their feet, and these, though they retained a certain amount of body heat, kept out no wet. In front the old woman, all skin and bones and more bones than skin, whom Norah had wakened, led the way, her breath steaming out into the air and her feet sinking almost to the knees at every step. From her dull, lifeless look and the weary eyes that accepted everything with fatalistic calm it was plain that she had passed the greater part of her years in suffering.

All the women had difficulty with the wet and shifty sand, which, when they placed their feet heavily on one particular spot, rose in an instant to their knees. They floundered across, pulling out one foot and then another, and grunting whenever they did so. Norah Ryan, the child, had little difficulty; she glided lightly across, her feet barely sinking to the ankles.

“Who’d have thought that one’s spags could be so troublesome!” said the beansho. “It almost seems like as if I had no end of feet.”

“Do you hear that woman speaking?” asked the aged female who led the way. “It’s ill luck that will keep us company when she’s with us: her with her back-of-the-byre wean!”

“You shouldn’t fault me for me sin,” said the beansho, who overheard the remark, for there was no effort made to conceal it. “No, but ye should be thankful that it’s not yourself that carries it.”

The sun was nearing the horizon, and the women, now on the verge of the channel (dhan, they called it), stood in silence looking at the water. It was not at its lowest yet; probably they would have to wait for five minutes, maybe more. And as they waited they came closer and closer to one another for warmth.

The beansho stood a little apart from the throng. Although tall and angular, she showed traces of good looks which if they had been tended might have made her beautiful. But now her lips were drawn in a thin, hard line and a set, determined expression showed on her face. She was bare-footed and did not even wear mairteens, and carried no brogues. Her sole articles of dress were a shawl, which sufficed also for her child, a thick petticoat made of sackcloth, a chemise and a blouse. The wind constantly lifted her petticoat and exposed her bare legs above the knees. Some of the women sniggered on seeing this, but finally the beansho tightened her petticoat between her legs and thus held it firmly.

“That’s the way, woman,” said the old crone who led the party. “Hold your dress tight, tighter. Keep away from the beansho, Norah Ryan.”

The child looked up at the old woman and smiled as a child sometimes will when it fails to understand the purport of words that are spoken. Then her teeth chattered and she looked down at her feet, which were bleeding, and the blood could be seen welling out through the mairteens. She shivered constantly from the cold and her face was a little drawn, a little wistful, and her grey eyes, large and soft, were full of a tender pity. Perhaps the pity was for her mother who was ill at home, maybe for the beansho whom everyone disliked, or maybe for herself, the little girl of twelve, who was by far the youngest member of the party.