Chapter Fifteen: Dublin, Tallaght October 1914-February 1915

Telling the parents that Willie had joined the British Expeditionary Force had been only slightly less nerve--wracking than the terrible interview with Paddy five years ago, when they had all sat down and hashed out the particulars of dowries, allowances, and trust funds for Joe. Molly rang Fa at the Bank rather than chancing on Mummy at the house. When he came on the line, he was brisk and cheerful; it was the middle of a Wednesday afternoon and he had probably just come back from lunching at his club.
‘Hello, Molly!’ he boomed into the phone. One never could convince him there was no need to shout at short distances. ‘How are my grandchildren? Are you calling for Pat about the fishing?’ In the anxiety of the last several days, she had forgotten to tell Paddy her father had invited him fishing at Uncle Frankie’s in Cavan.

‘No,’ she murmured distractedly. ‘The children are fine. It’s not that...’ She took a deep breath. ‘Daddy, I have something to tell you.’ There was a long pause on the line. She had not called him Daddy in ten years.
‘What’s the matter, dear?’ he asked, graver.
Her throat closed with tears. She could hardly speak. She gasped, forcing her voice over the constriction, ‘I’ve heard from Liam. Fa, he’s joined up!’ She leaned her arm on the wall. ‘I got a letter from him on Monday. He didn’t want me to tell you.’ She was crying now. ‘But I felt I must. All I could think was how I would feel if it were Joe!’ She could not go on, but wiped her face with her hand and tried to get control of herself.
‘Oh dear,’ Fa said worriedly. ‘Well,’ he sighed heavily. ‘You are right, my dear. It was right to tell us.... Can you come out at the weekend? News such as this should not come on the phone.’
‘Yes,’ she managed, choking back tears again. ‘Yes, I’ll come out on Sunday after chapel. Paddy has a meeting, though he offered to come.... Shall I bring the children?’
‘Yes,’ Charles said, after a moment. ‘It will soften the blow.... You are all right, coming out by yourself?’
She smiled now. ‘Yes, Fa, I’m not that fat yet.’
‘Very good. We’ll see you then. About luncheon?’
‘Yes. We’ll be there.’
‘Very good,’ he said again in the same businesslike tone. Someone must have come into his office. ‘Good bye now, dear, and thank you for ringing.’
‘Bye, Fa.’ She put up the phone and rang off, leaned against the wall for a moment with her eyes closed. Thank god, Fa would soften Mummy up. She didn’t want to think about the scene on Sunday.

It was a stiflingly hot day. En famile they went to the early Mass at St. Francis Xavier’s, and afterwards she changed the children into play clothes of piqué and sandals. They were excited to be going out to Grandfa’s house; they loved the dogs and horses, Mrs. Lymon’s sweets and Joe’s stories. Grandfa always took them into the village for an ice cream if it was warm. They clambered into the car in the back of the lane and watched as Dada cranked the engine for her. Paddy stood beside the driver’s side of the Lanchester in shirtsleeves and uniform trousers, the summer sun shining copper on his hair.
‘You’ll be all right?’ He pushed up his glasses.
‘Yes.’ She looked at him askance from underneath the brim of her broad hat. It was more a hope than a certainty.
‘Well and good,’ he said. He leaned awkwardly because of her hat, and kissed her. ‘Good--bye, so. Chin up!’ he smiled. She backed the car up a little, away from the garden wall.
‘Oh and mind the third gear!’ he shouted over the engine. ‘It’s sticking!’
She wriggled the gearshift lever for the third gear and nodded at him. He stood in the lane, waving them off. Sally and Joe waved out the tiny back window until they were in Gardiner Street; it was only when they came to Dorset Street that they sat down.

It was a beautiful day. The sun sparkled over Dublin Bay as they came along the rise of the hill at Clontarf. Fairview strand was crammed with holidaymakers and the doors of the bathing huts, standing shoulder to shoulder against the seawall, were flung open to reveal their charming dollhouse interiors. Howth strand was likewise crowded and as they came into Baldoyle the usually empty village streets were lined with motors. You would hardly think there was a war on, she thought, as she turned left onto their road. Between the banks and ditches, the road shimmered as the heat rose in the noontime air. It was humid here, the banks smelling of fuscia and privet, bramble and Queen Anne’s lace. In their lane, the overhang of trees made a shady bower and she remembered how Paddy had kissed her here on their return from the Marine Hotel. It seemed ages ago.

They came to the driveway and the dogs Trevor and Tullah came lolloping. She brought the car to a crawl so as not to run them down and by the time she came to the end of the long drive, Joe Moran was out waiting for her, grinning like the Christmas fool.
‘Fine day, Miss Molly!’ he called, and to the dogs, ‘Go way, you devils, ye demons... Ah come along now Miss, there’s grand just a bit more. Now, there... perfect!’ She shut off the engine. ‘Ah you’re as fine a driver as ever I saw, Miss.’ He opened the door of the Lanchester for her. She saw his blush at her great belly, but otherwise he treated her no differently than he always had. She let the children out of the back and they were all over him.
‘Hush now,’ she said, smiling. ‘Let’s go and see Grandfa and mamma first!’ The front door opened and Bridgie was there in cap and summer apron, stouter now than in former years, but otherwise the same.

‘Miss Molly! And the wee anes! Come in come in! Master and Missus is just setting down to luncheon.’ Bridgie patted the children as they streaked by. ‘Oh you must be tired, Miss, after your drive, and in your condition!’ It was the same every time she had come these last six months.
‘No, thank you, Bridgie,’ she said going into the hall and taking off her gloves. ‘I really am splendid. Not tired at all.’ In the front parlour, the summer covers were on the furniture. Patsy was away, on holiday in Cavan since the beginning of the war, where she was to stay until further notice, the parents being afraid of their proximity to the English coast. All was gentle peace in the house. She heard the children shouting and squealing in the back and her father’s voice, laughing. But she was filled with dread.

‘There you are, my dear,’ Fa said from the sofa when she had gone through to the sunny back parlour. Joe and Sally were sitting on either side of him.
‘O do come in Mary, and sit,’ Grace said from the old dresser that served as a buffet. ‘You make one nervous, standing about.’ She turned fully and looked Molly over, dressed as she was in her fashionable white summer frock and cross--strap shoes. Her hems were six inches above the ankle and the frock was thin batiste. Molly waited for the criticism she knew was coming, for her mother was of the school that believed pregnant women should sit knitting baby shawls, never to be seen once the condition was obvious. Come it did:
‘Oh, Mary,’ Grace exclaimed, ‘how can you wear that in your condition! You look obscene!’
Molly took off her hat and laid it on the side table

‘We went to the beach, Grandmama!’ Sally announced. Bless the child for a diversion! ‘An Mummy took us swimming!’ Oh dear....
‘Did you?’ Grace asked coolly. ‘Like that?’
‘I have a bathing costume,’ Molly said dryly. ‘We all went down to Kingstown. Even Dada went swimming, didn’t he Joe?’ It was almost impossible to get Paddy anywhere near water unless it was for angling, but the weather had been very hot.
‘Yes!’ Joe exclaimed. ‘An we caught mussels and winkles an the man at the hotel made ‘em up for our tea!’
Sally scowled, making a face. ‘They were nasty,’ she declared.
Molly saw Grace’s expression of disapproval and put her hand on her hip. ‘Really, Mother, I’m perfectly fit! The doctor encourages fresh air and exercise. Would you rather I muffled myself in the draperies?’ Grace was unmoved by this tale of beach combing. Running about with the husband on the strand in confinement was not her idea of how ladies of their station went on. When she was first getting big with Joe, her mother had dragged out some sack coats that she and Grandmother Jacobs had worn. They were voluminous, heavy, and richly trimmed -- of beautiful fabrics -- but claustrophobic. Grace was offended when she turned them down, and even more so when she went out in simple loose blouses, tunics, and jumpers. Her mother would never see her as anything but a raging scandal, but at least she didn’t wear trousers in public. She went to the buffet to fetch the drinks Grace was pouring out.
‘Come along, darlings,’ she said to the children, ‘and have your luncheon. You can bounce on Grandfa later.’

After luncheon the children went out to pester Joe in the stables. Grace laid her napkin on the table.
‘Your father tells me you have news of Willie.’
Well, that was to the point. Molly looked at Fa, who nodded. She moved her chair from the table, for the baby was awake and active, pressing uncomfortably against the lip of the table. He had exquisite timing! She smoothed his bottom fondly for being such a trooper. It would amuse Paddy that he performed so well on cue; better than Joe or Sally being sick....
‘I do,’ she mused, fiddling with the silver, uncertain as to how to go on. She certainly wasn’t going to tell them that he had been writing to her for years. Bad enough she was going against his wishes now. ‘I, um, had a letter from him at the beginning of the week.’
‘High time!’ Grace sniffed. ‘How is he?’ Even she could not quash a mother’s concern for her only son. Molly looked at her plate.
‘Um, he’s well. At the moment.’ She looked up, her face flushing. ‘He’s joined the RIF,’ she managed in a strangled voice. ‘James Herrick is with him.’

To her utter consternation, Grace uttered a cry, flinging herself into Fa’s startled embrace, crying ‘Charlie, O Charlie! What shall we do, to lose all our sons!’ And she began to sob, the most wracking terrible sobs, wailing against Fa’s shoulder. Molly sat in shocked silence for a long moment before she realised that the door to the hall was open. She struggled up from the chair, strode across the room and closed it. Appalled, she shrank against the door, considered fleeing, but was too numb to move further. A dim memory played in the back of her mind, paralysing her. She had been very small. Before they moved to Baldoyle... it would not come, but the fear of that half--remembered scene gripped her. Her mother had been this way then too.... She was very small, standing at the top of the third floor stairs, looking down ----

Her father was murmuring, ‘Gracie, Gracie, my dear!’ over and over again as he virtually held her up while her mother become more unreachable by the second. He looked around, wildly when he didn’t see her in the chair, and ordered,
‘Fetch Bessie!’
Molly stuttered in terror. ‘W--who?’
‘Lymon! Quick, girl!’
Twenty--three years and she had never known their cook’s first name. Her legs wobbly under her, she unbolted the door and made her way into the kitchen, one hand on the wall. She stood in the doorway, scarcely able to get her voice out of her throat,
‘Mrs. Lymon,’ she croaked.
The housekeeper turned round from the stove.
‘Mother of God, Miss Molly!’ she exclaimed, rushing over, ‘sit down! Whatever is the matter? Is it the child, girl?’
She was led to a straight chair before the kitchen door.
‘No,’ she mumbled, blinded by the dazzling light outdoors.
‘Mummy --’ Mrs. Lymon bolted down the hall and left her sitting in the sunny patch by the kitchen door. All she could think was that the children must not know, must not see, but she was too numb and strange too go out to them. She felt sick. Her ears rang. She heard Joejoe and Sally out in the stable, laughing and scurrying, and old Joe’s voice floating up once in a while....

She must have fainted for the next thing she knew she was lying on the sofa in the back parlour and Ellen and Bridgie were rubbing her hands and fanning her.
‘Here she is, sir,’ she heard Ellen saying.
Fa’s face appeared above her. She was confused. What had happened?
‘The doctor is upstairs,’ Fa said, ‘looking after your mother. He’ll be down presently.’
She tried to raise her hand, but couldn’t. ‘I feel so strange --’ her tongue was thick and speech uneasy.
‘Hush now, girl. You’ll be all right in a little.’ Fa soothed.
She remembered Joe and Sally were in the stable--yard. ‘Fa, I must go to the children --’
‘You don’t mind them, Miss Molly,’ Bridgie said. ‘Aunt Bess’s lookin’ after ‘em in the kitchen. They’re fine.’
She felt sick again and began to cry. ‘I want Paddy,’ she blubbed.
‘We rang, but he’s out,’ Fa said in that same tone. ‘We’ll try again in a little.’ If she could have cried at that she would have for all she wanted was to go home, but she was so weak, the tears just rolled down her temples and into the sofa cover.
‘Ah, doctor!’ Fa said, moving aside. ‘My daughter fainted.’
‘So I see,’ the old man said kindly. ‘Eh, gel? Hullo there!’ he drew up a chair and sat before her. ‘Eh!’ he said again. She decided she liked him. He reminded her of Dr. Powers at the Mater. She closed her eyes, drifting. He gave her violet--water and spirits of benzoin and after a time she felt better.

They kept her resting on the sofa until teatime, when the children came in and had tea with Fa. They played with George’s old soldiers on the floor until six, when Paddy arrived. He had taken a taxi from Dublin, and was still half--dressed in the Volunteer uniform. He looked pale and shaken, and as he came across the room, she was never so glad to see him! By this time, she was reclining on pillows brought from the linen cupboard and before them all he gathered her up in his arms, crying,
‘Thank god, darling, I was frantic when I heard----’ He kissed her face and looked her over and his loving care made her cry again. He took them home, but not before he had words with Fa in the study. She couldn’t hear but a word or two, but heard him pacing, and heard his voice ringing deep with the round tones of Kerry. Oh, he was very angry with the parents for upsetting her! And poor inept Fa who had to bear it all! He was miserable. She assured him dully that she was not angry with him -- for she could hardly remember anything between sending the children out to play and when she found herself on the sofa. It was all a fog. When they were at home alone in bed, Paddy held her so tightly it upset the baby, and kept murmuring, ruefully, ‘I knew I should have gone! I should have gone! That bloody woman!’ Until she turned, tears in her eyes, and kissed him fiercely with a lover’s kiss for the first time in five months. Despite everything, she loved him. When it really mattered, he had always been there for her. How silly to be in love with one's own husband! So they kissed like old lovers and fell asleep entwined, as they had not done for a very long time.

Fa came to see her the next afternoon, taking the tram up from the Bank. Dr. Powers would still not allow her out of bed, though she felt well, so Fa had to trudge up the stairs with his bad leg and see her in the bedroom. He looked terrible.
‘I’m very sorry, my dear,’ he said, looking at his hands. ‘We have not had an incident like this in many a long year.’
She went cold. Since George died? Since we lived in this house when I was small? ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she murmured, and smoothed the cover over her lump. She needed a manicure. She would have one in Grafton Street once they let her out of bed; she would buy a new hat... Her mind ran to anything but what Fa was implying. Her mother had had rages for years -- all Molly’s life -- but they were behind closed doors.

Fa looked startled. ‘Your mother has alw--’ he began.
‘I don’t want to know,’ she ground out pointedly, meeting his eye. She stared at him stonily. For years you have taken her part, made my life a misery. You drove Wills away, drove George to drink and it killed him. You will now not tell me it is because my mother is insane. She felt betrayed by all of them. No one had told her. Not Fa, not the Aunties, not Frankie and Violet up in Cavan. Her nerves were taut, and she wished he would leave.
Her father looked heartbroken, coloured vividly. ‘She’s taking laudanum now,’ he said, almost desperately, as a kind of apology. ‘The doctor assures us that such measures will be enough.’
‘I don’t want to know,’ she said stonily, again.
Charles looked up, and there were tears in his eyes. His voice broke when he spoke, ‘Molly! What else am I to do?’ he pleaded.

He would push. He loved her better than any of them, could not see beyond Mummy’s needs to their own. It had always been so. She winced; shuddering with the tide of nerves his words brought. In a moment she would have him thrown out, father or no.
‘Please leave it alone!’ she exclaimed. She looked at him, and all those years of pain were before her, vividly. They had been so distant from her! She was careful now with her own children. She spent the greater part of every day with Sally and Joe, and was always interested in what they had to say. They would never be sent away to boarding school as she had been. Paddy would never allow it, for one, and she did not want it in any case. She was shaking violently.
‘Don’t you think we have suffered as well? Do you think she’s the only one? Must it all be for her? For God’s sake, Fa! Leave it alone! Leave me in peace!’ She was crying, shaking, and brushed the tears away angrily. He came to her but she flung off his hand.
‘Leave me alone! Go away! Please go away!’
Reluctantly, painfully, he did. She did not speak to him again until October, when it was necessary.

She read the papers every day now for news of the war. The Times, the Independent, the London Times -- which was better -- if she could get it from the newsagents’, but it was often gone before she got there. She had to scan the papers very carefully for word of Irish regiments. She cut out the headlines of the commencement of war, and such dispatches as mentioned the RIF, and some of the Paris and London photos to paste in a scrapbook, but she would put in none of the Belgian pictures. They were ghastly, and she thought it obscene that a newspaper could print such things. She said as much to Paddy one afternoon and he laughed.

‘My little conscie!’ He said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Conscientious objector,’ he drawled, kicking the newspapers on the floor out of the way and stretching out his legs. ‘A pacifist.’ He drank some tea. ‘Someone who objects to war generally on principle.’ He looked down at her as she sat on the floor, littered with papers and cuttings. ‘Whatever is next?’ He teased. ‘Women’s suffrage? Vegetarianism? Labour agitation? Maybe I should introduce you to the Sheehy--Skeffingtons!’
She regarded him balefully. ‘Social reformers!’ She scoffed, going back to the papers. ‘What a bore.’ She looked about and realised she’d left the scissors on her desk. ‘Oh do help me up, won’t you?’ she said to Paddy.
He laughed again, putting aside his cup. ‘All right.’ He took her hands and pulled her up. ‘Did it never occur to you,’ he asked in amusement, ‘that you oughtn’t to sit on the floor any more? What if no one was with you?’
She raised her chin at his teasing. ‘I should find a way,’ she said coolly, and went to fetch the scissors.

She received a letter from Liam after the battle of the Marne in September. The Irish Fusiliers had been at Mons also in August. The very day, in fact, that she had received his letter telling her he had joined up. She knew by the time the letter arrived that he was at least alive; she had gone over the casualty lists three times. He wasn’t very chatty, but then he hated writing letters and Paddy pointed out that they were probably censored as to what they could say in case the post should fall into German hands. That had not occurred to her, but of course it was sensible. She had to look these places up in Paddy’s Geographical Annex and found that they were both practically on the French border. She answered Liam’s letter as he had instructed her to do in care of the BEF Headquarters in Paris. Paris seemed such a long way from the trenches of Belgium; she wondered how it would ever reach him.

She had the picture he sent her enlarged and copied. One she sent to the Aunties, one to Frankie and Violet, and another -- reluctantly -- to Mummy and Fa. One she kept for herself on her desk. She chose a big, ornate silver frame that Liam would have sneered at. It amused her to see him standing so stiff and proud surrounded by opulence. It reminded her of old times. The original photo she kept in her handbag in a small plain leather case and carried it with her everywhere. When she told Mick of Liam’s joining up, one day when they were at luncheon at Bewley’s he asked if she had a picture. She pulled it out of her bag.
‘There he is,’ she said fondly, ‘the old darling. It suits him actually, the uniform.’ Mick was squinting at the photo, holding it at an angle to the light.
‘He’s a very handsome chap.’ He said at last.
‘So he is,’ she said thoughtfully. With any luck he would live to be a handsome old chap.

‘I was thinking of going over myself,’ Mick said suddenly.
The teacup she held rattled on the saucer and she stared at him. ‘Have you gone mad too?’
‘Oh, not as a soldier,’ he assured her. ‘As a correspondent or an ambulance driver or like that. Holy God, I could never kill someone!’ He crossed himself superstitiously.
‘Well, that’s something,’ she muttered, shoving the photograph wallet back into her bag.
‘Molly,’ he chided.
She glared at him. ‘Well you can hardly expect me to greet the news with rousing cheers,’ she said tartly. ‘I don’t see why you would want to put yourself in the middle of that hell if you didn’t have to. It’s not even our war.’
‘Spoken like a socialist,’ Mickey said, reaching for the last sandwich. He leaned and kissed her. ‘I’d have expected you to be out there with Lady Aberdeen, recruiting.’

‘Whyever would you expect that?’
He shrugged. ‘Being as chummy with them as you are, and your relation in the House of Lords and all --’
‘Hush!’ She looked around. ‘The whole cafe doesn’t need to know.’
‘Oh, slumming?’ he said, mocking her accent. ‘As if they wouldn’t know the moment you opened your mouth.’ He leaned his elbow on the table. ‘Why are you so against me doing a good deed for my fellowman?’
‘Perhaps because,’ she retorted, ‘I don’t wish to lose everyone I care about.’ All they seemed to do was quarrel. The only time there was real peace between them was when he was painting, and then he was absorbed and she was thinking of something else.
‘Even the Germans don’t bomb military hospitals as a matter of course,’ he muttered into his teacup. ‘If only for fear of hitting their own men.’
‘But to be an ambulance driver you must go out to the Front,’ she persisted. ‘They are sometimes shelled.’
‘You’ve been reading the papers,’ he said dryly.
‘Every day.’ She sighed. She wanted to ask him if he liked her anymore, for he was often terse. But she could not bring herself to speak the words. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Too much betrayal made one wary of begging more.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, startling her out of her morosity.
‘Mm?’ She looked up.
‘I’ve been run off my feet at the paper since this blasted war began, and it makes me cross,’ he admitted.
‘Then why do you want to go out there in the midst of it, in any way?’ she asked earnestly.
He tossed his hair from his eyes. ‘Shite, I dunno.’ He threw the napkin on the table. ‘Maybe I feel guilty. Maybe it’s hard to read all that day after day. I want to do something.’
She put her hand on his on the table. ‘I know.’ She winced. ‘I dread the papers, but I can’t not read them. What if I should miss that he had fallen? I could not forgive myself.’ She looked up, deeply into Mick’s blue eyes. ‘My brother was my first and dearest friend. We are very close in --’ her voice broke and she looked away -- ‘in age. I am the only one in the family he writes to. How can I bear to lose him?’ she asked the ceiling cornice. She pulled her hand away and rose ungracefully from the table. ‘Excuse me!’ She strode away to the ladies lav before he could say a word, pulling her hat down farther over her eyebrows.

On 28 October she received a letter from Liam in the morning post. It was a relief to read his small, spidery scrawl on the envelope. He was alive! As for the last week there had been word of an ongoing battle at someplace called Ypres in Flanders. She was getting quite good at marking the battle sites. She had bought a map at Eason’s and stuck it in her scrapbook and pencilled in whenever she read of engagements of the 87th RIF. The BEF were moving west and north as the Germans massed along the Flemish border. There had been heavy fighting at the Marne, and as the days dragged on and there came no word of the conclusion of the fighting at Ypres, she grew apprehensive. There was talk of conscription generally in the United Kingdom if the war dragged on into the New Year. It caused a rage in the Dublin papers.

Liam’s letter was terse as ever, but not quite as cavalier now. She wondered how he was faring in the wet and cold. There were rumours of a shortage of food at the Front, and his letter confirmed it. It was written in pencil on cheap grainy paper:

‘20 October 1914
My dear Molls --
Writing this very early in the morning. You will have heard we came
through a push. It has been a miserable time, but I’m well, so you needn’t fear.
Only the good die young. I did meet a dishy French bird in a village we bivved
at, but ‘I had to leave her’ as it goes.
Will you be so good as to send me a tin of chocolate or ginger biscuits,
and a packet of Barry’s? Funny, the things that you miss.
I’m well, don’t worry. I miss you darling. Write to me.
--Liam.’

The next day she met Liz Talbot, Susanna Eustace, and Sarah Berry -- now Sarah Edgeworth, Lady Beaufort -- for luncheon at the Shelbourne. They met in the foyer where Liz and Sarah were sitting in their stately afternoon frocks, Court gloves, and order decorations. Only their tiaras were missing. Sarah was in town for the changing of the guard at the Lodge: the Aberdeens were being recalled and in their place the Home Office was sending as Viceroy Lord Wimbourne and his wife Alice. All the Irish peers were in obligatory attendance, despite ‘the emergency’ as the war was being called. Molly had declined, with a note of apology to Lady Aberdeen, because of her advanced pregnancy. It was one thing to gad about town, quite another to shock the old ladies. For whatever the reason that brought Fay to town, Molly was glad to see her again; she had not since Sarah’s wedding, in pomp and circumstance, in St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast two years ago.

‘I don’t have to call you ‘your Grace’, do I, Fay?’ She teased.
‘Not in private, darling,’ Sarah dimpled. She embraced Molly. ‘Look at you, Gerry, you’re positively plumy!’ She looked round the little group, her blue eyes dancing. ‘None of the rest of us could look so posh if we were ready to pop any moment.’ Molly wore a new black and brown striped suit with a pale pink shirtblouse, striped stockings and the most raffish of plumed hats. She wasn’t about to be seen in the Shelbourne in a frumpy cardie and housedress.
‘Don’t remind me,’ Liz rolled her eyes. ‘When we went to Sally’s christening, when James was just three weeks everyone was asking me when he was due. He was with the nurse! And Gerry could fit into her beautiful things already! I was green.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ Molly said to Sarah, ‘I had things made. I was still quite podgy.’
‘You aren’t going to talk about nappies and nursery routines, are you?’ Susanna complained. ‘I’m famished.’
‘Only a little,’ Fay said. ‘How’s my namesake?’
Molly laughed. ‘Bright as a button! And her Dada’s darling. I ought to be jealous. Oh, you should see her! I have a photo somewhere here----’ She opened and closed her handbag, for they were still standing in the foyer. ‘Oh, I’ll find it later! I can’t believe I haven’t sent you one. She’s a beauty, I will say. Masses of hair, just her father’s colour ----’ she broke off as the steward had secured their table in the west reception room.

They sat down at the table and before the soup was ordered they had showed off their children to each other. Liz had her James, who was Sally’s age, and Susanna’s daughter Gabrielle was nearly two.
‘I have a surprise for everyone,’ Fay said coyly over the champagne, ‘Neddy’s to have an heir.’
‘I knew it!’ Hobbles said, ‘the way you were going on!’
‘A toast,’ cried Liz, raising her glass, ‘to the last of the maidens!’
There was excellent salmon and Dublin Bay prawns, but they hardly noticed what they ate; the afternoon was too full of laughter and old memories. Sarah looked around the room and asked,
‘Gerry, wasn’t this where your reception was?’
‘The very place,’ Molly said gaily. She was giddy and it felt grand.
‘Oh I say, with that dashing husband of yours charming the photographers!’ Sarah said. ‘Who would have known Pat could dance so well?’
‘I did,’ Molly murmured wickedly.
‘The only one of us to catch the real prince rather than the frog,’ Liz teased.
‘I’m telling George,’ Susanna said.
‘I wouldn’t call Ned and Dicky frogs,’ Molly said. ‘Sloths, maybe...’ The waiter went by with a tray of sweets. ‘Oh, jolly good, is that the pudding today? Look out, Diz, they’ve chocolate meringue --’

‘Thank you, darling,’ Hobbles said, ‘for sticking up for poor Dicky. I owe a debt to that little scene of Pat’s. Dicky was so overcome with sentiment that he proposed...’
‘It took him long enough,’ Molly rolled her eyes. ‘I thought we’d have to paste you to his office door to get him to notice you.’
‘And after all that, it was Hob who got the butterflies!’ Liz crowed and they burst out laughing; Susanna’s barrister husband still collected butterflies and they went on expeditions at the weekends.
‘I suppose it’s better than trout flies,’ Sarah said, sighing comically. Molly looked at her.
‘Ned isn’t an angler?’
Fay nodded. ‘Every chance. I’m a pond widow!’ she put her hand to her forehead in melodrama fashion.
‘We’ll have to come up in the summer, dear,’ Molly said. ‘We can have a good time while the men have their rods out on the estate....’
Liz choked on champagne. ‘Gerry, you’re horrid!’ she gasped.
Molly pulled an innocent face. ‘Did I say something amiss?’ It was good, o good, to lark about again. She had missed the happy innocence of life.

When Liz and Fay had gone, Molly asked Hobbles if she had heard from her brother.
‘I had a letter from Liam yesterday,’ she added.
Susanna pressed her hand. ‘Yes, thanks. Gosh, I was dying to ask you, but couldn’t with all that palaver,’ she looked up in the direction of the foyer after their departed friends. ‘Erik said they did well at the Marne, but that Mons was awful. They have practically no trained officers, you know, and those few they do have are being called the Contemptibles. It’s dreadful! He said they were harried to the Marne by HQ, and that several of the men were ill.’ It confirmed Molly’s worst fears. ‘But Liam is well?’ Susanna pressed earnestly.
‘Yes. I checked the papers this morning. I look for Erik too, every day!’ They exchanged a glance.
‘They’ll make it through!’ Hobbles said, shaking Molly’s hands in hers. ‘And we’ll have a grand party out at Blackrock like we used to do in the summertime!’
But the words rang hollow, tinged with fear. They were a talisman only, hopes against an uncertain future.

False hopes, as it happened. It had begun to rain when Molly came downstairs from getting the children ready for their dinner. It was Kate’s half--day and Rosie had been looking after them while she frolicked at the hotel. As she came into the hall the windows rattled with a clap of thunder. Weary, she went into the parlour to sit in the quiet for a little before Paddy got home from the college and the bustle of evening began. She closed her eyes, leaning back in the big stuffed chair. The rain was lulling. Her back hurt. She must remember the next time she went out for so long to wear slippers rather than court pumps, but she had so wanted to look smart today! The front door bell rang. After a few minutes she heard Rosie at the doorway.

‘Ma’am?’
‘Yes, Rose?’ She opened her eyes and looked at her over the wing of the chair. The girl had the hall salver in her hand.
‘A telegram for you, ma’am. I paid the man.’
A shudder went through her. She was on her feet in an instant, stalking across the room with more alacrity than she’d shown in a long time, towards that grey envelope on the tray. Her hand shook as she tore it open with a fingernail. It was from the War Office. Dear God. The worst news, as the first words relayed: ‘Regret to inform you that Pvt. Wm. C. Clennaghan, 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers killed in action--’
The room reeled. She clamped her hand on poor little Rose’s shoulder. Her ears were roaring. I must sit down! She took a step, but never made it to the chair.

She was still on the floor when they roused her, Rose, Kate, MacElwee, and Mick.
‘Here she is,’ Mick said. His face was pale. ‘You certainly gave us a fright,’ he said.
‘We’ve rung the doctor and the professor, Mrs.,’ MacElwee said. They could have said ‘We’ve cut off your legs, ma’am,’ and she would have felt the same. There was a dull ache in her back that she knew was not from falling. There would be no time to mourn tonight... Misery added to grief. The baby stirred and the leak became a gush.
‘Then let them hurry.’ Her births were always easy and fast. With Sally, the doctor had not been in the house ten minutes. Even the miscarriage she had only lasted three hours.
‘Mother of God,’ Kate squeaked, jumping back.
‘Give over,’ MacElwee said, elbowing her aside. For once, Molly was glad of her brusque and efficient manner. ‘Give us a hand, Micko,’ she said, sliding her arm under Molly’s right shoulder. ‘Don’t you mind, Ma’am,’ she said to Molly in an almost gentle tone. ‘We’ll have you looked after. Rose, fetch that linen from the table downstairs!’
‘But it’s not clean!’ Rose protested.
‘Go on, girl! It’s to wipe the floor!’
Rose fled.

She was wobbly on her legs, but managed to be half--led, half carried to the sofa, where they deposited her on a dust cover Kate had found in Paddy’s book room. Mick sat with her, her head pillowed in his lap, muttering Irish nonsense and going white and silent when she clutched his hand.
‘Oh damn,’ she muttered when it was done.
‘What!’
‘I’ve ruined my new suit.’
They were alone in the room, Rose gone to fetch clean linens, Kate keeping the children away upstairs, and Mac on the telephone harrying Dr. Powers. Mick laughed now, ruefully, and brushed her hair from her forehead with his fingers.
‘What a silly girl you are, to think of something like that now!’ he said.
Behind him, the door crashed open against the wall.

‘What in hell goes on here!’ Paddy shouted. He dropped his satchel on the floor with a thud. Mick nearly dropped her on the floor, he got up so fast.
‘It’s not what you’re thinking, Paddy --’
‘What would it be other than what I saw, you bastard!’ Paddy snarled. ‘To come in and find the country boy with his arms around my wife!’ He stalked forward, but Mick for all his pacifism was no coward. He faced him down while she closed her eyes and tried not to moan again, but she felt so heavy----
‘Stop it, before there is more grief this day,’ Mick was saying. The thin paper of the telegram rattled. ‘There is what you saw --’
‘Your brother!’ Paddy sneered, coming round the sofa. ‘Your goddamned brother! It’s your bloody brother and damned Castle family have caused me more grief than for two lifetimes!’

She stared at him in horror. This was the monster of the nightmare days after Bloody Sunday. He had been normal for months ---- She caught her breath, hissing. Things were happening fast now.
‘Please,’ she managed roughly, holding out her hand to him. He recognised her malaise for what it was.
‘Mother of God,’ he exclaimed, running his hand through his hair. ‘Mallaidh arun ----my god,’ he was beside her, holding her up, his arms around her, murmuring in her ear,
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, darling I’m sorry.’
Whether he was or not she didn’t care at the moment. All she wanted was his help. She didn’t care if Mick was there, what Paddy had seen, or how Mick felt that she had turned to her husband after he had said such things to her. There would be a lifetime to sort out feelings; her child was three weeks early.

Mick had left in a hurry, and they were only at the first landing, she and Paddy and Mrs. Mac, when the doctor arrived. Rose was down in the kitchen and the bell rang for what seemed like half an hour before she answered it. Paddy was swearing and Mac was tutting and it would have been comical hadn’t she been so frantic that the child would come on the stairs.
‘Hold off, hold off, Mrs. Leary,’ Dr. Powers called as he bounded up the stairs behind them.
‘I don’t know how,’ she blubbed.
They did manage to get to the bedroom, in the end, but it was hardly the sedate scene pictured in the magazines. She was still in her fine, ruined new suit, half off the bed. Once the baby was safely wrapped and warm, the doctor said,
‘I think, Mrs. Leary, you had ought not to go out too much toward the end next time.’ He looked at Paddy. ‘Eh, professor?’

Now Paddy was asleep on the bed beside her, just having finished his round of childminding. She looked at the clock in the dim lamplight. It was twenty past two. Kate was dozing in the chair beside Joe’s old white wicker basket, where the baby slept. She heard his soft breathing and was reassured by it. She had wakened nearly every hour since ten. She was dozing when she heard a noise, and was instantly awake again. Across the room, standing beside the basket, opposite to Kate’s chair, was her brother!

It was no figment. He was as real and solid as she had last seen him. He stood in unfamiliar clothes, in the once spruce uniform of the RIF, a uniform now faded and muddy and bloodstained, crumpled and ragged by what experiences she could only imagine. His hair fell across his brow as it had always done, but his pale face was lined and weary; he was no more the dashing young man of the photograph. He stared at her intently, his eyes pale and luminous in the shadowy light and his hand, grimy and marked by dark blood, was on the basket edge. He looked down into it, touched the poor wee baby, and looked back up at her. He did not speak – he moved completely noiselessly – but she felt the cold message of the grave in his glance. No sooner had she thought this than he disappeared, as if he had never been.

Terrified, she tore stumbling out of bed and over to the basket.
‘Baby, baby,’ she murmured, with shaking hands, taking him up. There was a small purpled mark on his cheek, as from a blow, on the side Liam had touched and when she lifted him he did not start. She shrieked and nearly dropped him.
It roused the room. Kate started up, and so did Paddy. Swearing,
‘What the hell-- Molly, for Jaysus sake, that are you doing?’
She was bouncing the baby in her arms frantically, crying, ‘Come on, come on! Oh baby!’
‘Kate!’ Paddy barked at the terrified girl, ‘Get that damned light on! Molly, give over darling,’ he said in a gentler tone, reaching for the child. He took him from her nerveless fingers and she watched him check pulses and chest. Paddy had him all unwrapped, poor wee mite, in his lap on the bed. He was muttering too, ‘come on, boy, come on son, ah Jesus – Kate! Ring that bloody doctor! Now!’ he bellowed. Kate fled.
Molly came near slowly. She had never seen Paddy cry, but he was crying now, trying every means to breathe life into their tiny boy. She would never call his Volunteers boy scouts again. He knew a thing or two.
‘I saw him, Padge,’ she murmured, sitting down on the bed. ‘I saw Liam.’
He looked up at her.
‘I saw him standing by the basket. He was in his uniform. He touched him,’ she looked down at their dead baby, poor dead baby, ‘and he looked at me with such eyes—-- He came for him, I know it.’ She took a shuddering breath, the long--held grief rising, and wept.

They called him William Charles, in a quick baptism with plain water before the doctor came, and sat holding him and murmuring prayers for the dead. Since she had known him, Molly had not loved Paddy Leary better than in that quiet half--hour. They cried together, as they had never done for anything, and her heart broke. The Mahaffys and all his friends had said what a sensitive man he was and she had not believed it. She had only seen him passionate about Ireland before -- once in a while about her. He presented himself always as a strong, tough man. But she should have believed his poetry and art and romantic allusions were no mere sham.

Rosemary came with Cate and Mrs. Leary, bringing with them a baby dress.
‘He should have something new,’ Trina said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘Poor wee thing.’
Paddy put his hand on his mother’s shoulder. ‘Thank you Mammy.’
‘Shall we dress him, Molly?’ Rosemary asked. ‘He’ll need a wash.’
‘No!’ She cried instinctively, clutching him. ‘Don’t take him away, not yet!’
‘But –‘ Rosemary began.
Trina shook her head. ‘Sure,’ she said, coming to see the boy, ‘there’s plenty of time. We’ve no rush at all.’ Trina met her eye. She had lost a child in her youth.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
‘Not at all,’ Trina murmured, pressing her hand.

Going to the funeral was more than she could face, but there would be a row if she did not. Paddy had rung her parents with the doubly bad news, and they did come, awkward though it was. They were not the sole representatives of her set; Liz, Susanna and Sarah were there with their husbands. Tom MacDonagh came, Paddy’s literary friend. There were flowers or cards from the Mahaffys, Professor Tyrrell, and many others she didn’t know: the Clarkes, the DeValeras, the MacDermotts, and the Pearse brothers. There was nothing from Mick Rafferty, not even a private note, and she remembered it. Kate said he was out of town on an assignment but she didn’t believe it. That put paid to everything, in her mind. She would not see him again.

Three days after the funeral she developed a fever and by the evening was confined to bed. The doctor was furious that she had not gone straight back to bed after being out for she was still in confinement, but she felt well. Then the fever became influenza and that bronchitis, so that by the middle of November the doctor talked of putting her in hospital. She was so vehemently against this that Paddy wondered why she balked. She lay against the pillows, coughing, scowling at him through it. She would have to tell him. After all that had happened it could hardly matter. When the fit abated, she drew a breath, rattling, and said flatly,
‘Because when I was sixteen, I had TB. I loathe hospitals.’

‘Holy god!’ he exclaimed, pacing the floor. ‘Why did you never say this before?’
‘I thought it would put you off,’ she said, coughing again.
He stopped and looked at her, running a hand through his hair, speaking in the slow, sharp way that he did when he was angry. ‘You have had a fatal disease for nigh on ten years –‘
‘It’s in remission,’ she argued, shaking her head.
‘Ten years,’ he repeated, ignoring her. ‘And you never fucking bothered to tell me, because it might put me off! For Christ’s sake woman! If I’d needed an excuse to get shut of you, I damn well could have found one before this! Molly, for the love of God!’ He came near and she shrank away. He did not strike her as she had thought he would, but took her shoulders as he sat on the edge of the bed.
‘I’m here because I love you,’ he said, his voice resonant with Kerry. His dark eyes were blazing. ‘I married you because I love you, and not from duty. I stood up to your blasted family because I love you. I might have left over this girl or that-- Christ knows, I’ve been no saint -- or damned Mick Rafferty ----’

She started at this.
‘Yes!’ he nodded. ‘I know! I’ve known from the day he came into this house. I’ve seen the letters he sends, intercepted a few, I don’t mind saying -- Can’t you imagine what a hell it’s been to see you run after him? Model or no, I can feel what’s there between you.’ He ran a hand through his hair again. ‘I don’t know if you’ve lain with him,’ he said frankly, ‘and I don’t want to know. But if I find certain evidence of it, I’ll kill him, and that’s no blather.’ He shook his head slowly and she believed him, remembering the pistol he kept in the bottom of the wardrobe.
‘Can’t you imagine,’ he went on, ‘what a hell it’s been to watch you lavish love and care on that brother of yours, who never gave anyone anything but worry, while you treat me so coldly? I stay because I love you.’ He paused, closing his eyes for one long moment, and when he opened them again they glittered with tears. ‘Molly, will you not believe that? Will you not let me love you?’

His face was so haggard. There had been weeks of sleepless nights for them both. She remembered when the baby died, and how gentle he had been. She had wanted to say then, just how much she did love him, in the midst of death and grief, but the words would not go past her aching throat. She touched his face. Her beautiful young man.
‘Padge,’ she croaked. A rush of fear swamped her, and she gasped, her face crumpling. ‘I can’t!’ She wailed at last. ‘I can’t! It hurts too much!’ She shook her head violently, the tears running down. ‘I lose everyone I love! I can’t! I can’t!’ she was coughing again, breathless, with the old deep cough. She coughed and cried, and buried her face in his chest. His arms were around her, and he was murmuring in Irish.
‘I know sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I know about Vincent.’ He was rocking her in his arms like a child. She cried harder at the name. Cried and cried. She had always been alone with no one to care or comfort, except this man, this strange, contradictory, violent, gentle, tolerant, intractable man. Liz had called him the only prince of the lot. Perhaps she was right.

‘You’re safe with me, mo ‘gra,’ he said when she had worn herself out with crying. ‘I will never leave you.’ He moved away a little to look at her. He smelled so comfortingly of tobacco. He had taken off his glasses, and looked so young and handsome. They had been through so much. He was smiling.
‘The first time I kissed you, in the lane, I wanted to tell you how I loved you. I was afraid. It is such a risk. I won’t die if you say you love me, Molly. I’d live on it.’ One of his Irish heroes couldn’t be half as eloquent. She choked on tears, raised her face and kissed him.
‘I do love you Padge.’
He smiled. ‘There now,’ he said, in tones rough with feeling. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ His embrace left her breathless and coughing but relieved. The dark past receded a little. For the first time since their golden summer she really believed she could be happy.

She was a long time getting well. She was in hospital for a fortnight in November and convalescent in the house until after Christmas. She had lost a great deal of weight – she only weighed nine stone – and still had bouts of grief, but it was a normal and healthy kind, and by the New Year it was only occasional. At the end of January she went to Tallaght to stay with the Aunties for a month without the children, though Paddy brought them at the weekends for a few hours. He drove her out there himself and stayed for dinner before taking the children home.
‘How shall you manage?’ She asked him in the foyer as they were leaving. It was dark already. She worried about Sally going to bed without her.

‘Ah, we’ll do well enough, don’t you worry,’ he said, kissing her. ‘We’ll have them eating oatmeal and praties every day. We’ll be great.’
She shook her head at him.
‘Are you sure you have everything?’ He asked. She had brought a trunk and four cases, not including hatboxes.
She smiled. ‘I’ll ring you if I think of something.’
‘Do anyway,’ he said. He smiled wickedly. ‘You can tell me a thing or two.’
‘Hush you!’ she cried, looking over her shoulder. ‘You’ll shock the old ones.’
He only laughed. ‘Slan, Mallaidh. I won’t say goodbye.’ He opened the front door wider. ‘Say good night to your Mammy!’ He called to the children. They waved from the back of the car. Paddy turned to her again.
‘Miss me.’
She nodded, smiling. ‘I will.’
With a speaking look, he turned and walked away towards the car.

When she went into the parlour again Aunt Caro looked over her glasses at her easel and said,
‘That is a fine young man you’ve married. We had our doubts about him at first --’
Aunt Aggey harrumphed from the card table where she sat with Maggie. Caro glared at her.
‘-- But he’s proved himself. He’s a credit to you, Molly.’
‘Father wouldn’t like him,’ Vera said from the sofa, flipping the pages of her book. She had lost the bookmark again.
‘Father never liked any of the natives,’ Caro said, going back to her painting.
‘What about Grandmother?’ Molly asked.
‘Hardly the same thing,’ Maggie said. ‘She wasn’t from the bo--’
‘That will do, Maggie –‘ Caro barked. ‘Molly knows perfectly well where her husband came from. Come here my dear,’ she beckoned from the easel. ‘You have a good eye. What do you think of these peonies?’

It was plain that Aunt Caro was cultivating her friendship; it was she who had issued the invitation, on hearing from Mummy of Molly’s lingering illness, she who offered reasonable solutions to every difficulty that came to Molly’s mind. When the visit was proposed, after Christmas, the last thing Molly had wanted was to spend an entire month immolated with the Aunties who were, apart from Caro, as desiccated a troop of old wrecks as you’d want to find in the Pale. They lived in a world removed from the modern, hovering somewhere about 1897, in manners, clothes, and customs, as near as Molly could figure. It had always been so. They hadn’t got on the telephone until last year. They still didn’t have electricity or a motor, but made do with gas and oil lamps and with a pony trap to do their shopping and to go to church in the village. So her arrival among them caused something of a stir. It was a novelty at least, gave them someone else to quarrel with. Fa had used to say, when they lived at the seaside in Killiney that it was a surprise none of them drowned each other in the sea. Caro was the only one had remained single out of choice; their brother Jocelyn said that no one would have the others.

Lying awake in the early morning with the sounds of breakfast being laid downstairs, she felt like a schoolgirl on half--hols again. No husband, no children to look after, not a single thing to do all day. The guestroom was as pristine as a convent. The linen smelled of irons and damp; there was a warm extra blanket and a hot water bottled at the end of the bed. The furniture was covered with fancywork, and the daintily papered walls by family pictures, hunting prints and more needlework done by the Aunties when they were girls. By her mother too. It was orderly and feminine, with all the sensuality of a lavender sachet. No man had ever walked down that hall, whistling and half--shaven, to kiss his woman awake for an early morning shag or come in that door after a day’s march to throw his muddy boots in the corner, smelling of rain and sweat, complaining in blistering language of the brats of Dublin. No, those secrets were foreign to this room, and she found that oddly offensive, unnatural. It made her want to do something shocking just to disrupt the abnormal tranquillity. She considered wasting half an hour lolling naked on the bed– it would be something to tell Paddy, he liked to hear her idle fantasies -- but it was too cold. The heat from the downstairs fireplaces, newly laid, hadn’t yet reached the upper registers. Instead, she resolutely got up, put on her dressing gown and went down the hall to the lav to brush her teeth.

After breakfast, she went for a walk with Caro. It was cold enough for overcoats, and Caro looked a sight, bundled in an old cardie, low--crowned hat, wellies, and coat that had belonged to her father. You’d hardly have thought she was of the gentry; she looked like the women in the Liberties in Dublin who sold old clothes out of street stalls. But she was not to be underestimated, as Molly found out. She set off at a brisk pace, out the kitchen garden gate and along the road that led towards a stand of trees. All around them, the sky was lowered in mist and the grass slick with frost.
‘I love Ireland on mornings like this!’ Caro bellowed over her shoulder, flinging her arm to encompass the landscape. She was like a stream engine, puffing and blowing as she walked, her breath white plumes in the air. ‘It puts the vim in one!’ She kept walking in this way for a mile, well into the copse of trees, while Molly struggled to keep up. It was uphill, and Caro was
nearly sixty, but she rolled on relentlessly until they came out the other side of the stand of trees and there threw herself against the stone fence, watching with crossed arms as Molly came up.

‘That’s not bad,’ she said. ‘We’ll have you playing tennis again by the end of the month!’
‘I doubt it,’ Molly said, leaning a hand against the fence. The cold air hurt her chest.
Caro took out a cigarette case and matches, lit a cigarette and smoked it greedily. Conscious of her staring, she said, with a jerk of her head toward the house,
‘That lot don’t care to see me smoke. They’d rather pretend I didn’t, it being ungenteel and all – ha! – and this preserves their noble air of ignorance.’
Molly had caught her breath now. ‘What else do you do that they disapprove of? I say, Caro, I never knew you were such a bolter.’
‘It runs in the family, my dear. What? Did you think you and Willie were the only ones?’ She shook her head. ‘Not by a long chalk, my dear.’ She blew out smoke sharply. ‘I forgot to thank you, by the bye, for the photograph you sent of Willie. That was jolly nice of you.’
‘Aunt Maggie wrote,’ Molly said.
‘I know,’ Caro barked impatiently. ‘From duty, but it’s not the same. She never liked the boy.’

She looked over the fields towards the village and the sea farther on. ‘He is just like Father. Just like.’ She shook her head, mashing out her cigarette on the wall. ‘I wasn’t in the least surprised to hear that he’d bolted, nor that he’d joined up. Father did the same thing, was always doing it, even here. He never could be steady and sedate. That’s what drove them mad, as if they were the arbiters of what he did. I mind, before he died he was in Bray at the races, chasing some bit of skirt – oh yes – and Maggie made a scene reminding him of his duty. Pish!’ She threw herself off the wall. ‘You don’t know why we left Killiney do you?’ She quizzed.
‘Mummy said it was because the sea air was bad for Aggey’s rheumatism.’ But she expected she was about to hear the truth.
‘Oh, codswallop!’ Caro scoffed. ‘Grace’s as bad as the rest! No! We left because four of the village families came forward at once asking for money for their brats. It was hard times for them I’ll grant you, but it was too like a dunning. Gave Vera the vapours, it did.’

‘Grandfather’s children?’ Molly ascertained. What a stunning thought! It was an entirely new view on the family! No wonder Mummy had fits about Paddy.
‘The very spawn,’ Caro agreed. ‘Oh, I don’t hold it against them. He was very dashing, and a gentleman. Who wouldn’t? But it was rather a bad show to come forward en masse. We did set up a relief fund – unrelated to the progeny – and they were looked after in that way. But the girls felt they couldn’t hold up their heads in the village after that, so we left.’ They had moved in 1900, a year of bad fishing on the coast. The weather had been dreadful, a pervasive miasma of fog and damp, but the deeper reason for their leaving struck Molly as the truer.
‘Do you never hear from them?’
‘Oh heavens no!’ Caro shook her head. ‘They never would harry us here. They’re too afraid of the lawyers.’

They walked back more slowly than they had come out. The mist was clearing and a feeble sun began to show through the cloud cover. In the field beside the road, men were now out at the spring harrowing.
‘Molly,’ Caro said, looking out across the field. ‘Have you thought about what you shall do now that Willie is gone?’
‘How d’you mean?’
Caro squinted at her, her hands balled into the pockets of her coat. ‘Between you and Patsy there is now a very considerable fortune, or at least, there will be. What will you do with yourself if that young man of yours goes overseas?’
Molly smiled. ‘He won’t.’
‘He is one of Mr. Redmond’s Volunteers, you said.’
‘He is a Sinn Feiner, one of the Gaelic League. He will not go. He has said he will not.’
‘Even if conscription is imposed?’ Caro pushed back the low brim of her hat.
‘Even then.’ She wondered why Caro was so concerned about her livelihood. There had always been more than enough money, so much she didn’t think about it.

‘At any rate,’ Caro went on, ‘you shall have to do something with yourself once the children are at school, once all this goes.’ She spread out her arm to encompass the landscape.
‘All what?’ Molly frowned.
‘Our way of life.’ Caro mused, head down. ‘It will go, with the war, mark me. Ireland will never be the same after Home Rule…. So,’ she cocked her head, challengingly, ‘what shall you do, my dear, to make your way in this new order?’
She was silent, stupefied. Mick and Paddy both had talked about the wreck of the class system, but they were radicals. It was chilling to hear Caro say the same thing with such great calm.
‘I’ve no idea,’ she admitted at last. She shook her head, thinking. ‘I have music –’
‘You could go back to that,’ Caro agreed.
‘Gardening…. I suppose I could learn design. M—an artist I know in Dublin says I have a good eye.’
Caro regarded her sharply. ‘And so you have.’ They were coming up to the house. ‘Think on it my dear. I should hate to think of you being caught out.’ Her aunt pressed her hand at the garden gate. ‘Come up to my room, won’t you, when you’ve changed. I’ve something I’d like to show you.’

She had never been in Caro’s room before. When they were children they were never allowed upstairs in this house, and when they had become adults the habit was so ingrained that they did not think of entering private rooms. It was a revelation. Gaudily painted ala Orientále in blues, greens, and purples, the walls were trimmed with gilding, and the windows hung in purple velvet and bright, spring--green silk. The ceiling was dark--blue and spangled with streaks of gold --stars, she supposed --and the floors were laid in rush matting so that they were silent when walked on, with rich small carpets strewn over it. There were candlestands everywhere. Even in the light of morning the room was dim and mysterious with the flickering light. The walls were hung with Caro’s own expressionistic work -- nothing like what she painted downstairs before her sisters’ eyes. Molly thought of Mick, and how he would love it.

‘I thought you’d like it,’ Caro smirked of her speechless staring from the bed where she sat drawing. There was a strange sort of lamp on the stand, long, with a tube of wicking.
‘What is that?’ She pointed like a child.
Caro rolled her eyes, then leaned over to grab the thing and shake it. ‘This,’ she explained, as if to a child, ‘is a hookah. Haven’t you ever read Lewis Carroll?’
Molly shook her head. It felt like one of Paddy’s impromptu lectures. In fact, the room reminded her of him, too, with his penchant for things Eastern.
‘I told Gracie you shouldn’t go into that convent,’ Caro muttered. ‘What do you and that young man of yours have in common?’ Paddy and Caro had talked for two hours about Symbolist poets yesterday. Caro waved her hand. ‘Never mind, I can guess.’ Her expression softened. ‘Come here my dear, and I’ll show you what I promised.’

She went over to the bed, not a little irritated at being called ignorant, and peered into the box Caro had produced from under the far side of the bed. It was the sort of cigar box Sally and Joe would have kept seashells in. The cover and sides were painted orange and blue and yellow and green in tiny swirling patterns. Inside this amazing treasure was another: a letter from Caroline Tunney to her married sister in Wicklow. The date was 1858. The writing was so small that it was difficult to read, but the form was beautifully even. The gist of the letter, and Caro’s reason for showing it to her, came in the third paragraph, near the end:

‘I wish I could express to you, my dear Mary, how my heart swells at the thought of
going abroad. I know Papa has foresworn it, but I should like nothing better than to make my own way in the world. To bind myself to tradition, when I want so much to study! fly! is an intolerable burden to me. Little enough it would matter to him to hand over my dowry to me or a husband. Who is to say the former would not be to better use? If I may study not merely drawing, but anatomy and zoology, how happy I would be! If in the course of this I should meet a gentleman of similar mind, I would not turn such an offer away unconsidered, but I would be my own mistress first.’

This was the milksop of a grandmother, who died of consumption after too many children too close together? Molly thought of the picture of her grandmother downstairs. That genteel woman had written these words! It was unbelievable! She thought back on her own longing for freedom, to play as a pianist in the concert halls of Europe. To be her own mistress first. Where had that dream gone? It had not died with Paddy Leary; it was smothered by the cares of motherhood. She would be the first to admit that she did not play as often as she used to do. her days were too taken up with other things. She was disturbed by the letter, and what it was supposed to mean.

‘I don’t understand,’ she frowned, handing it back.
‘I read this,’ Caro said, folding up the letter again, ‘whenever I think I might be missing something by not having married. I read this when the girls are quarrelling over nothing, and when I feel the pall of this life.’ She shook her head. ‘Wealth is not enough. Children are not enough,’ she smiled ruefully, ‘even freedom is not enough. What is enough, what matters is what we do with what we are given.’ She looked up, and her grey eyes were earnest. ‘You are a talented girl, Molly. Don't waste yourself. You had dreams, I know. So did Mother. Use them! It doesn’t matter if they make you famous or not -- I have no desire to be Sarah Purser -- but that you let out all those dreams and live. Don't be aimless. Especially in the times to come! That was Willie’s problem, and look where it led him. Father’s too.’ She nodded. ‘That young man of yours, he’s different. He has dreams --’ she smiled, ‘-- oh yes, as you’ve heard! And he makes them happen. He didn’t come to be that brilliant at his age in the wilds of Kerry by letting his dreams gather dust. Take a leaf from his book. Once this war is over, you go back to your concert playing. He won’t gainsay you. And you won’t be ill so often. Eh?’
It was something to think about.