The Liberation of Brigid Dunne

by Patricia Scanlan

  “Bien.” Mother General Aloysius gazed sternly at the dumbfounded partygoers. “This is a sad state of affairs. Oui? I would ask from the bottom of my heart that not a word of this goes outside of this room. I beg your discrétion in the matter.” She glanced over at the cluster of nuns standing beneath the picture of the Sacred Heart. They lowered their eyes under her penetrating scrutiny. Aloysius did not want gossip about Brigid sidling from convent to convent and over to the Mother House and beyond. Brigid’s fall from grace was catastrophic for her, and at this hour of her life. There but for the grace of God went any of them. The Mother General gave a little shiver. She too had her secrets.

  Una went out into the hall. Imelda was at the hallstand, stony-faced, rooting for her coat. “I’m getting the bus driver to bring you home on your own, right now,” Una said coldly. “Because I’d say the rest of your family would like to lynch you.”

  With her head held high, Imelda marched out to the bus and never looked back.

  * * *

  Maura gave a discreet tap on the sturdy white door with the old-fashioned round brass knob.

  “Please, leave me be.” Mother Brigid’s voice had a hint of a tremor. Maura, ignoring the plea, opened the bedroom door. Brigid was in her dressing gown, sitting in her rocking chair and looking out at the darkness of the windswept night. A flash of irritation crossed her face when she saw who it was. “I asked to be left alone, Maura,” she said coldly.

  “I hear you. And I will leave you alone. But drink this first.” She handed the nun a round brandy goblet half-full of amber-gold liquid.

  Brigid sniffed it disapprovingly and made to hand the goblet back. “I don’t want alcohol, thank you. I rarely drink it.”

  “Tonight, everything’s changed,” Maura retorted. “Drink it! It will save you tossing and turning all night.” The women stared at each other in the mellow glow of the lamplight. In that moment, they were no longer employer and employee, religious and lay. A sisterhood, as old as time, bonded them together.

  “Drink it, Brigid, and don’t look back!” Maura bent down and gave the elderly woman a kiss on the cheek and a quick hug, and slipped quietly out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  The last thing she wanted to do was to look back. The past was the past; what good was it to rake it up, like Imelda had just done? It only brought resentment and sadness, Brigid thought bitterly, trying to ignore the memories that crowded in around her.

  PART TWO

  The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

  L. P. Hartley

  Chapter Fourteen

  Brigid and Imelda

  1954

  “Tidy up that bedroom of yours, you pair. And then, Brigid, you wash the eggs. Imelda, you can start black-leading the range—”

  “That’s not fair! How come she always gets to wash the eggs?” Imelda protested indignantly to her mother, who stood in the door of their bedroom with a vexed look on her face.

  “Because you’re too rough and you break them, miss,” Elizabeth Dunne snapped. “We’re not made of money that we can afford breakages. And then I want you to bring the tay over to your father on the bog, Brigid. You go to the well and get the water, Imelda; then the pair of you can help me finish wallpapering the parlour.” Elizabeth issued her instructions and hurried downstairs to pluck the chicken she’d left softening in a bucket of boiling water.

  “I wish this bloody Station was over. There’s so much work to do, on top of the usual,” Imelda groused, pulling her check pinafore over her head. She loathed the pinafores that her granny made for her. She wanted to be wearing tricot blouses with black velveteen ties, and taffeta skirts that swirled around, just like June Allyson and Debbie Reynolds wore.

  “It’s our turn to have the Station. It’s an honour to have it, and we won’t have to have it again for a few years,” Brigid said glumly, shoving her brogues into her half of the wardrobe she shared with her sister. They had half a rail each in the musty, mothball-scented, old-fashioned mahogany wardrobe. The left-hand side was Brigid’s. Always a higgledy-piggledy mess. Shoes in a heap on the bottom shelf, her camogie stick sometimes straying into Imelda’s territory, much to her annoyance. Imelda’s part was arranged neatly. Clothes hanging in order of length, shoes paired side by side. Magazines in a neat pile on the bottom.

  They slept in a brass bed with a long bolster pillow and a patchwork quilt their aunt had made. Brigid liked the cheerful quilt with the navy and white squares. It brightened up the room, darkened by small windows and elderly mahogany furniture. Imelda’s side of the double bed was always made immaculately, sheets stretched, the woollen Foxford blanket straightened neatly under the coverlet. Brigid’s side of the bed was always lumpy where she left the sheets as they were, pulling the quilt over the blanket, not caring whether it was rumpled or not underneath.

  “I don’t know what the fuss about the bedroom’s for,” Brigid observed crossly, cursing when a pile of books fell to the floor. “The neighbours won’t be coming up here.” Imelda didn’t answer. She was studying her spots in the oval mirror on the windowsill. Brigid shoved the books under her side of the bed. Out of sight was out of mind.

  She heard the sound of voices downstairs, then her mother laughing, and guessed it was their neighbour Patsy, from across the field. The neighbours always mucked in when there was a Station being held, no matter who was hosting it.

  The custom of the Station, an old tradition from Penal times—when it was forbidden for priests to say Mass in public, so they were forced to hold it in people’s homes—was still practised in every townland and parish in the country. Imagine not being able to go to Mass in a church. Imagine having to attend Mass at a Mass Rock, out in the open, no matter what the weather, Brigid mused, glad she’d never had to stand outside in a howling gale and lashing rain to practise her faith. Irish Catholics had been persecuted in those terrible times. She shouldn’t be so grumpy about it being their turn to offer up their home to the service of God.

  It wasn’t the idea of the Station that was really at the core of her annoyance; she dreaded that the Larkins, who owned the land next to theirs, would be coming. Her stomach coiled into knots when she saw any of that family. They would probably be next to be chosen for the Station and, knowing the Larkins and their propensity for showing off, it would be a big hooley.

  For months now, her parents had been preparing for the great honour of hosting their family and neighbours for the religious celebration in their home. Brigid’s father and her two younger brothers had whitewashed the house, painted the gate and pillars, tidied up the yard and garden, while their mother had organized a massive spring clean. Every nook and cranny in the house had been cleaned. The windows were sparkling. The smell of fresh paint permeated the air. Holding the Station meant best foot forward for everyone in the family, Elizabeth told her daughters when they grumbled about the extra work they had to do, as well as their usual chores of feeding hens and calves and bringing fresh water from the well, two fields away, come hail, rain, or shine.

  Brigid picked her satchel off the floor and rooted for the tuppence-worth of sweets she’d bought for her brothers after getting paid on Friday. It was a little treat they looked forward to. She’d bring the sweets over to the bog for them, to cheer them up. She’d stopped buying a treat for Imelda since her sister had started being so spiteful to her before Christmas. Brigid couldn’t understand why her general snippiness had reached a whole new level. “She’s so mean to me, Mam. She says really nasty things to me,” she complained to her mother.

  “Ah, take no notice of her. You were like that at her age. Turning into a teenager makes girls moody. The pair of you have my heart scalded with your humours and rows. You should be like me and Peg—best friends,” Elizabeth sighed.

  “We’ll never be best friends like you and Auntie Peg,” Brigid said morosely.

  “Let me give you a piece of advice: count your joys instead of your woes; count your friends ins
tead of your foes. You and Imelda will need each other sometime, and that’s the truth,” Elizabeth advised her daughter briskly before hurrying off to churn her butter.

  Would she ever need Imelda? She didn’t think so, apart from needing her right now to make the bed, Brigid mused, dropping thruppence on the floor when she took the sweets out of her bag. She picked it up and put it back in her tartan purse. “Come on and make the bed,” she ordered Imelda, who eyed the shiny silver coin enviously.

  “You’re lucky you have your own wages. All our money is going on this Station thing and I’m not even getting paid my egg money because Mammy needs it for provisions to feed all these people,” Imelda moaned, shaking the feather bolster and straightening the bottom sheet.

  “Oh, stop giving out, Imelda. I’m giving all my wages up next week. Mammy and Daddy are excited about the Station and they want to put on a good show. We don’t want to disgrace ourselves in front of the neighbours and let them think we’ve nothing,” Brigid retorted.

  “That’s crooked!”

  “I don’t care!”

  “Don’t care was made to care.” Imelda glowered at her older sister.

  “Oh, shut up. I’m going to wash the eggs.”

  “You got that job cos you’re the favourite.”

  “Ah yeah, washing hen shite off eggs, I’m the favourite all right,” scoffed Brigid, throwing her eyes up to the holy picture of a sad-eyed Jesus with a bleeding heart that hung on the wall, beside Imelda’s poster of Paul Newman, and feeling quite the martyr herself. “And I’ve to traipse over to the bog,” she added for good measure.

  “I’ve to traipse over to the well,” countered Imelda, not to be outdone in martyrdom, flouncing out the door to do her chore.

  * * *

  It was a clear, sunny morning, the salty sea breeze blowing in from the Atlantic and across the hills, rippling through the clumps of gay yellow daffodils planted on either side of the freshly painted green gate. Normally Brigid would enjoy the walk through the fields to where her father and brothers were cutting turf. He wanted a supply in for the fire when they were having the Station. Today, though, her heart was heavy. She wanted to be far away from Ardcloch, and the daily, repetitious grind that was never ending. She wanted to be away from the past that intruded on her present, every day.

  She hated her job over in Glencarraig, where she worked as a maid for the doctor and his wife. How Brigid longed to take the bus to Galway or Limerick, or—the dream of all young girls living in rural Ireland—to the bright lights of Dublin. The sophisticated capital city had big department stores, cinemas, cafés, and buses. What bliss it would be to live in a house with indoor plumbing and electric lights, and to have heating that wasn’t dependent on a range or a sputtering, smoky fire. Imagine being able to go to the pictures in proper cinemas instead of the galvanized tin-roofed shed in Ardcloch—that dump was no more a real cinema than the Dunnes’ hen house—where, if it was a wet Saturday afternoon, the sound of the rain hammering down on the red roof would drown out the actors’ voices, forcing the audience to lip-read.

  Brigid had asked her parents if she could look for a job in Dublin or Galway, but her father had said she was needed on the farm to help her mother and grandmother, especially now that Granny was getting older and less able to run her own smallholding. “Perhaps in a few years, pet,” he said, “but not right now. The boys have to be educated as well. You did well that we could afford to get you to Inter Cert level. Plenty around here only got their Primary Cert. John will be going to ag college next year, if he gets a scholarship, so it wouldn’t be the best time for you to leave us. Sure, I’d be lost without you,” he declared, his blue eyes crinkling, his tanned face creasing in a smile. Even though she loved her father, it wasn’t what Brigid wanted to hear. What was the bloody point of having her Inter Cert if she couldn’t put it to use? You didn’t need a cert to do housework in Dr. Murray’s house!

  Brigid climbed over the stile into Low Field, her wellies sinking into the mud on the other side. Was this to be her life? She was sixteen, and still stuck in the back of beyond. What, she wondered despairingly, could she do to escape from the binding ties of family and home?

  * * *

  Imelda pulled back the curtain under the press and rooted for the polish box to start black-leading the range. Her mother had finished plucking the chicken and was preparing mash for the calves. Sometimes Imelda reckoned the calves and the cattle were more important to her father than she and her siblings were. His whole life revolved around the “stock”—buying, selling, rearing, milking them—and it was those large, slobbery animals, chewing their interminable cuds, that decided the financial circumstances of the Dunne family. Imelda loathed them.

  She wanted to be a costume designer in Hollywood, like Edith Head, and design glorious gowns for Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly and all the film stars who filled the pages of Photoplay magazine. Photoplay was her bible. Her Auntie Peg, Elizabeth’s youngest sister, had emigrated to Boston, and the previous year she had sent them a package with a few of her old magazines, along with cuttings and magazines about Jack Kennedy’s wedding to Jacqueline Bouvier. Auntie Peg adored JFK. Everyone in Boston did, she wrote to Elizabeth. Imelda wasn’t interested in politicians, but she thought she was in heaven, immersed in the magazines her aunt had sent, reading about the film stars and studying their fashion.

  She planned to emigrate to Boston, too, after she’d finished her Inter Cert exam in the summer. She’d made the decision last autumn, when her first love had tossed her casually aside, betraying her in the most cruel way. It had left her heartbroken. Imelda hadn’t told anyone of her plans, but she was sure her parents would agree. She’d be one less mouth to feed, and she could send money home from America. Perhaps when Brigid had to take on all the chores, she would appreciate all the work Imelda had put in. She would not miss her older sister one little bit.

  “Imelda, would you run upstairs and bring me down my glasses, like a good girl. My eyes are tired.” Her mother interrupted her reverie.

  “OK, Mammy,” Imelda sighed, noting that her mother looked weary. All this work for the Station was wearing her out. When Imelda was a success in Hollywood she would pay a maid to do her mother’s housework, she decided magnanimously, sashaying up the narrow stairs. Golden rays of sunlight slanting in through the landing window dazzled her, casting a warm opaque glow on the wall at the top of the landing. Pretending it was a spotlight and she was an acclaimed designer, ascending to the stage to collect the Oscar for Best Costume Design—presented, of course, by her idol, Paul Newman—she bowed and waved to an imaginary audience. For a few brief moments, Imelda’s cares drifted away and she was happy.

  * * *

  The house was full to bursting, people crowding into the kitchen and hallway, chatting and laughing. The buzz of anticipation rippled through the throng as the Dunnes’ family, neighbours, and friends awaited the arrival of the parish priest and his curate. The priest, Father O’Connor, an affable Kerryman, and Father Foster, the curate, a bitter little man who had never had a parish of his own because of his fondness for the bottle (and a whispered past that had seen him moved from two former parishes), would shortly be arriving in Father O’Connor’s battered old green Ford Anglia. Father O’Connor was a dreadful driver, and the curate always carried a hip flask filled with whiskey so he could take the odd nip to soothe his nerves.

  Elizabeth took a last glance around the parlour. The table was set for the priest’s breakfast. Her best linen tablecloth adorned the table. Two serviettes lay folded neatly on two side plates. The reverend gentlemen would be tucking into half a grapefruit each with a cherry in the centre, and sprinkled with caster sugar, then boiled eggs and toast. John was on call to toast at the fire with the long toasting fork. He was an expert at it, and never burned it. On a small side table beside the fire, covered with an embroidered Irish linen tray cloth, sat a silver salver with two cream candles in brass candlesticks, a crucifix, and holy water.
The priest would bring his own Mass set to celebrate the sacrament.

  Confessions would be heard in the parlour before Mass, and afterwards, when the sacraments were ended, the priests would be served their meal first, followed by a setting for the men, and finally the women would sit down to eat their food and chat and relax after all the excitement.

  Elizabeth’s two nearest neighbours had been helping her out since early morning, making sandwiches of ham and cold roast beef, and egg and onion. They had used shop-bought, sliced bread for the sandwiches, a rare treat, and Elizabeth had rapped Sean on the knuckles when she caught him stealing one. There were loaves of currant bread and brown bread cooling on the kitchen window. She’d borrowed extra teapots for the gallons of tea that would be made. There was a rich fruitcake she’d baked a month ago, and apple tarts and scones brought by neighbours and friends. Herself and Tom and the children had worked hard to have everything right, and Elizabeth permitted herself a small frisson of pride, knowing that when people spoke about the Station held in the Dunnes’ home they would not be found lacking.

  “Here they are,” she heard a shout. Hastily removing her apron, and patting her hair in place, Elizabeth went to the front door just in time to see the green car pull up in front of the gate. Nodding to her husband to follow her out, she went to greet the guests of honour.

  * * *

  “Thank God that’s all over,” Brigid declared, stretching out in the bed, exhausted after spending the day making tea, offering food to their guests, washing up the dozens of dirty cups and plates, and doing the final clearing up when everyone had gone. “We won’t have it again for another few years.”

  “I won’t be here for the next one, that’s for sure.” Imelda yawned and got into bed beside her. She’d rolled her chestnut hair in three curlers that gave her a side wave like Rita Hayworth’s.