The Linen Queen

by Patricia Falvey

“Your instructions for the first Linen Queen appearance,” she said, and turned on her heel and marched away.

  I stared at the envelope and then thrust it in my pocket. I would have to wait until my shift was over before I could stop and open it. While I threaded the yarn around the bobbins I let my mind wander. Maybe I had been called to the mayor’s house, or maybe to a party at some rich oul’ feller’s mansion, or maybe a reception at Derrymore House where Carlson himself lived. I was so away in my imagination that I jumped when the closing horn blew.

  I raced down the stairs with the rest of the spinners. Their spirits had lifted. It was Friday. They would be off for the weekend.

  “May as well enjoy it,” one woman called. “Sure the rumor is we’re going to be working our arses off soon now that the war’s come home to us.”

  She was right. The mills would be called into service making supplies for the troops.

  I sat down on the stone wall beside the wee river that ran past the mill grounds and ripped open the envelope.

  “Och, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I cried aloud. “It must be a joke.”

  The next morning I climbed down from the tram in Mullaghbawn, a small country town not far from Newry, to be greeted by Billy Taylor, a manager at the Queensbrook Mill. I looked around for Mr. Carlson, but there was no sign of him. Instead I came face to face with Mrs. McAteer. She looked me up and down. I hadn’t been sure what I was supposed to wear so I wore the blue frock I had worn the night of the competition, and the same high-heeled shoes. I carried the sash and the tiara in a cloth bag, along with a linen tablecloth and six serviettes in a plastic wrapper, which had been left for me to pick up in the mill office. Mrs. McAteer gave me a smirk and said nothing.

  As I walked with Billy Taylor up the winding road from the tram station I breathed in the fresh air. I looked up at Slieve Gullion, the mountain that dominated much of the landscape in the area. It was green and fresh and was dotted with wee white cottages and sheep grazing on the slopes. How different it was from the mill or Queensbrook itself. I briefly envied the people who lived out here. But the thought was short-lived. We reached the top of the road and came to a white wooden gate that led into a feld where they were holding the annual Armagh County Pig Fair. As we entered, the smell of swine and manure nearly choked me.

  “Put on the sash and the tiara,” Billy Taylor said, “and smile.”

  A group of older men came rushing forward to meet me—farmers in suits they probably only ever wore to Mass and to funerals, and the mayor himself with a gold chain big enough to strangle a horse hanging around his neck. I shook their rough hands, smiling as best I could. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs. McAteer. The oul’ bitch had come to spy on me. If I put one foot wrong, I knew, I’d have my title taken away sooner than I could spit.

  The men led me to a pen containing about a dozen huge, noisy pigs.

  “The judging is about to start,” cried one of them. “We’ll have a winner soon. Would you like a drink, love—or something to eat?”

  The idea of eating or drinking anything in this place sickened my stomach so I refused as politely as I could.

  “Ah, she has to keep the lovely figure, you know,” said one oul’ feller in a cloth cap as he slapped me on the behind.

  I gasped and tried to step away from him, but my heels sank farther into the mud.

  “Let’s walk around,” said Billy Taylor, and he took me by the arm.

  A large crowd had assembled. Children ran about with balloons and toffee apples while their parents sat at picnic tables eating and talking and laughing. A brass band played in the background. A pair of young boys pointed at me and laughed. Several wee girls with sticky hands surrounded me, touching my arm and my sash and looking up at me with wide eyes. I felt like an eejit.

  “How long do I have to stay?” I muttered to Billy Taylor.

  “Long enough to tie the ribbon on the winner.” He laughed.

  “What?”

  He was right. A half an hour later I was struggling with a huge, angry pig, trying to tie a blue ribbon around her neck. Her hooves scraped my dress, leaving muddy rings all over it. Finally I had to get down on my knees while two of the farmers held the pig steady enough so I could tie the bow. As I finished, a flash caught me in the eyes. I looked up and there stood a boyo with a camera grinning at me.

  “Merciful God,” I said aloud. “You’re not going to print that, are you?”

  “I am indeed,” he said. “You looked lovely. Far better looking than herself.” He nodded towards the pig.

  I wanted to take his camera and push it into his face. Instead I stood up as gracefully as I could and smoothed out my dress. I reached into my bag and presented the pig’s owner with the linen tablecloth and serviettes. I waved at the crowd and grabbed Billy Taylor’s arm.

  “He seemed to appreciate the linens,” said Taylor.

  “Aye, much good it’ll do him beyond in the mud hut where he lives.”

  I knew it was a mean thing to say, but at that minute I didn’t care. All I wanted was to get back on the tram and go home to Queensbrook and pray no one I knew would ever see the photo of myself hugging a pig.

  If I’d thought that time moved slowly while I had waited for the Linen Queen competition to come to Queensbrook, it was like a speeding train compared to the snail’s pace at which my life crawled by afterwards. There were days when I thought I would go mad. I worried that I would fall into a depression like Ma but, unlike her, never climb out of it. I tried to put a brave face on matters, but hope threatened to slink away like a fox after a kill. I fought to hold on to it.

  And now, as if to add insult to injury, I was stuck with the obligations of the Linen Queen title with no end in sight. Ever since the pig fair, I’d been called upon to attend every kind of function you can imagine. I smiled as fat-bellied men cut ribbons in front of new shops, I smiled as mud-booted farmers paraded their prize cows at market fairs, and I smiled as petty officials presented one another with medals and plaques. And all I got out of these events were leers and foul proposals, and the occasional slap on my behind.

  “My bloody face is sore from all the grinning,” I complained to Gavin one afternoon in March as we sat in our usual place up on the Flagstaff.

  Gavin shrugged and lit a cigarette. “I thought that’s what you wanted,” he said. “To be the center of attention.”

  “I wanted the money,” I said, cadging a fag from him and lighting it.

  “Oh, come on, Sheila, you wanted the attention too. You know you did.”

  I took a long pull on my cigarette and slowly let out the smoke.

  “OK, you’re right, I did,” I said. “But this isn’t what I bargained for. I thought I’d be going to glamorous dinners and dances and not feckin’ pig fairs out in Mullaghbawn.”

  Gavin laughed. “You’re the queen,” he said. “You have to be gracious to all your subjects wherever they are.”

  “Feck off !” I said.

  Gavin leaned back on his elbows and looked out towards the lough and then back down towards Newry port. I followed his gaze. A boat sat in Victoria Locks on the Lower Fathom Road waiting for the tide so she could sail out.

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  “Danny Boyle. The Elm’s waiting for the tide.” He smiled and took a puff on his cigarette. “I remember when I was young and my da’s boat had to wait at the locks,” he said. “I used to run down and bring him cigarettes, and maybe some soda farls Ma had just made. He’d be there for hours. Sometimes when he knew it would be a long delay, he’d climb up the hill and surprise us.”

  I said nothing, just let him enjoy his memories.

  “Seems a long time ago, doesn’t it, Sheila. We were innocent then.”

  “Aye.” I smiled.

  “Remember the night you saw your da’s ghost up on this very hill, and you followed him all the way home?”

  I stubbed my cigarette out on the grass and lay back. “Gavin, you know I don’t believe in all t
hat palaver of ghosts. It was my imagination, that’s all.”

  “It was the night the Sheila Rose sank all the same,” said Gavin.

  Gavin believed in ghosts, and the fairies, and signs and premonitions. It was strange how different we were—after all we’d both been reared out in the country listening to sailors tell stories around the fireplace on dark nights. All the sailors were superstitious, including my da. I used to love the stories though. And I know I believed them at the time. But somewhere over the years my innocence had leached out of me along with my trust in other people.

  “D’you remember the wee dog you found, Sheila? The one that had its paw caught in a rabbit trap?”

  He was in a strange mood today. “Aye, the one my ma poisoned!” I said.

  Gavin shrugged. “You have no proof it was her did it. But I remember how you cried over that wee thing. It wasn’t long after your da died.” Gavin reached over to touch my arm, but I pulled it away.

  “Of course it was her that did it!” I said. “You know rightly it was. She was always jealous of anything or anybody that took attention away from her. Just like she hated me for all the attention Da used to give me.”

  I didn’t like thinking about the past. A pain always bored into my stomach like a screwdriver when I did. I had to concentrate on the future, I told myself. I had only myself to rely on. I hoped the war would be over soon. Then I would be on my way. I wasn’t going to let the weight of old memories paralyze me.

  I pulled another cigarette out of Gavin’s pack and lit it.

  “Can we change the subject?” I said. “This is bloody morbid.”

  Gavin sat up. “Not much good news about the war,” he began.

  I sighed. “Can you not talk about something happy for once?”

  “There’s not much to be happy about. The war isn’t going well.”

  “Well, I for one wish they would either bomb us and get it over with, or that one side would win once and for all. This bloody limbo is giving me the pip. And the rationing is driving me mad.”

  “Be careful what you wish for, Sheila,” said Gavin.

  The priests always told us that there was a place between heaven and hell called purgatory where you were sent if you had not lived a good enough life to go to heaven, but had not sinned badly enough to go to hell. It was a limbo where you had to wait for something to happen—good or bad.

  As the summer days of 1941 crept by one by one we all waited in such a limbo. Was the Blitz of Belfast a one-time event? Would Hitler not bother again with the rest of us? Would we be able to go on about our business? Or would we be caught in the hellfires of more bombings? Every noise made us jump out of our skins. Every wail of a siren, every whiff of smoke made us clutch our chests and hold our breath. The York Street Flax Spinning Mill in Belfast had taken a direct hit the night of the blitz, and Ma was convinced all mills in the North would be targets. But so far, no danger had come to Queensbrook. Belfast had been bombed several more times. The stories of the dead and wounded were awful to hear—bodies unrecognizable from burns thrown in unmarked coffins, orphaned children wandering the streets, people numb with the shock of it all. Dublin was hit once, and then Dundalk, but the Germans said both were mistakes—after all, the Free State was neutral. Everybody believed they had meant to hit Newry instead. We craned our necks every night of the week, searching the sky for Jerry bombers.

  But besides the dread, there was also a thrilling sense of excitement. New rules had been ordered and auxiliary brigades set up to enforce them. We were to cover all windows at night with black curtains or shades so that the Jerries would not be able to see any lights. We had to cover the lamps on cars and bicycles and inch our way along the ink-black roads at night. Auxiliaries patrolled the roofs of buildings. In case a bomb dropped and started a fire they were ready with sandbags to douse the flames. To many of the young ones, like myself, it was all great craic, while the old people blessed themselves and prayed and recalled stories of the Uprising. Those in the auxiliary took it all very seriously though, puffing out their chests at the importance of their jobs. Chaps whose life had never amounted to more than signing on at the dole when they were out of work suddenly had a new meaning in their life. Others of them simply liked barking orders at the rest of us. I shrugged and laughed at them.

  Besides the heightened sense of excitement the war brought, it also heightened my recklessness. If I was going to be bombed to kingdom come I might as well have a good time before I went. I began going out more, dancing and carrying on flirting with the lads. Ma and Aunt Kate gave me no peace about my attitude. One Friday night in the late summer I was decked out ready to go to a dance in Warrenpoint when Ma started in.

  “Oh, no you don’t, my girl,” she said, puffing away on her cigarette. “You’ve no call to be gallivanting tonight. We have a full day’s work tomorrow and we should be grateful for the overtime. We need to save what we can before the bombs fall on us. Look what happened to the York Street Mill.”

  It was her same old blather. She moaned every day about the mill being destroyed. My patience was stretched thin. I had stayed behind because she was so afraid the night of the Belfast Blitz. Now it almost seemed to me as if she were taking a queer pleasure in the thought we could all be blown up. I didn’t want to believe she was astray in the head, but I sometimes wondered. It was only when she put her hand out for my wages every week, figuring the amount to the exact penny, that I realized she was cute as a fox.

  “Where’s the rest of it?” she said tonight.

  “What rest of it? That’s the lot.”

  “I heard you girls got bonuses.”

  “Well you heard wrong.”

  “They’re after bombing Dublin by mistake,” said Ma. “It could be us next. And how can you be out enjoying yourself when there’s young ones being killed up in Belfast every night of the week? And if they’re not bombed, sure they’re crouching in air-raid shelters afraid for their lives.”

  I had heard the same line over and over again for months.

  “You know you could be doing some good instead of going to dances, Sheila.” Saint Kate was on her soapbox again. “You could volunteer with the auxiliary. Many of the young ones are doing it. Mrs. McAteer tells me Mary and her friends spend all their free time making bandages for the soldiers and—”

  My temper got the better of me. “Will you look at who you’re talking to, Kate?” I cut in. “Can you see the likes of me making fecking bandages?”

  “Selfish!” cried Ma. “Always was. The father spoiled her, you know. Ruined her. She’ll always be a selfish girl.”

  My cheeks began to burn. “Selfish, is it?” I cried. “And what’s that money in your hand this selfish daughter is after giving you? And why did this selfish daughter stay here to look after you when she could be long away from here?”

  Ma flicked her cigarette ash into the fire. “It’s your duty to look after me, and me not a well woman. It’s—”

  A fit of coughing silenced her. I turned for the door. Kevin staggered up behind me and the smell of his breath almost knocked me over. He put a rough hand on my shoulder. “You look nice, darling,” he slurred. “I’ll bet the young lads will be all over you tonight.”

  We rode along the shore road towards Warrenpoint. Tommy Markey, a Newry lad, had borrowed his da’s car. Tommy was good-looking and he had a big notion for me. If I hadn’t my mind set on going away I might have taken him more seriously. As it was, he was just one more boyo with a crush on me. Patsy and Kathleen were with us along with a couple of lads from the mill. Patsy acted as if there’d never been any trouble between us, and I went along with her. But deep down I knew I’d never feel the same about our friendship. We hung out of the windows singing a chorus of Vera Lynn’s “The White Cliffs of Dover.” You’d not have thought there was a war on at all the way we were carrying on. I breathed deeply, inhaling the fresh sea air, glad to be away from the stifling house in Queensbrook.

  We drove alongside the Clanr
ye River and down past Narrow Water Castle, an old ruin that was now a private house owned by some rich old fellow. Eventually the river opened out into Carlingford Lough, a stretch of water that divided the North of Ireland from the Free State. Across the lough we could see the Cooley Mountains as we passed Omeath and Carlingford, both towns in the Free State. Our excitement grew as we entered the small beach town of Warrenpoint. At eight o’clock in the evening it was still light as day, and the August air was warm. In the North of Ireland summer days were long and nights were short. I loved the long, light evenings. A carnival was set up on the beach, with roundabouts and music and stalls selling toffee apples and ice cream. People strolled on the promenade or sat along the sea wall. The mood was festive, as it always was during the summer. I felt a stone weight leave my shoulders. I loved the excitement of this town, and I loved the smell of the sea.

  Tommy drove along the Sea Road looking for a safe place to park the car. Three-storied white terraced houses, known as the Seven Sisters, lined the road overlooking the lough. As I looked on down the road towards Rostrevor, the Mourne Mountains came into view on my left-hand side. We were bound for the Castle Hotel for a big Friday night dance. It was going to be a great night altogether. We tumbled out of the car, Patsy and Kathleen and I smoothing out our skirts and our hair as we waved to bands of young people who milled outside the hotel. I dragged my feet following the rest of them inside. Instead I turned and looked out over the water. How I loved being beside the sea. It reminded me of the good times with Da. I walked over to the sea wall and lit a cigarette. I lingered for a minute, remembering, then shrugged and turned and walked on in after my friends.

  The high-ceilinged ballroom in the Castle Hotel was packed with young people. A stage was set up at one end and soon a band would be in full swing playing the top hits of Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw and the other popular American bands. I couldn’t wait to get out on the dance floor. I’d have no shortage of partners, and I planned to dance the feet off myself all night. As I looked around, I saw Gavin at the bar, sitting by himself drinking a pint. I went over to him.