The Woman on the Bridge

by Sheila O'Flanagan

Genres: Historical Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A stunning historical novel from multi-million-copy bestselling author Sheila O'Flanagan

Dublin. The 1920s. As war tears Ireland apart, two young people are caught up in events that will bring love, tragedy - and the hardest of choices.

In a country fighting for freedom, it's hard to live a normal life. Winnie O'Leary supports the cause, but she doesn't go looking for trouble. Then rebel Joseph Burke steps into her workplace. Winnie is furious with him about a broken window. She's not interested in romance. But love comes when you least expect it.

Joseph's family shelter fugitives and transport weapons. Joseph would never ask Winnie to join the fight; but his mother and sisters demand commitment. Will Winnie choose Joseph, and put her own loved ones in deadly danger? Or wait for a time of peace that may never come?

Ireland's tumultuous independence struggle is the backdrop for an unforgettable story of courage and heartbreak, in which heroes are made of ordinary people. Inspired by the story of Sheila O'Flanagan's grandmother, The Woman on the Bridge is the unmissable, compulsive new novel from a bestselling author.

Readers love Sheila's books

'Do I rejoice when a new Sheila O'Flanagan book hits the shelves? I do' Roisin Meaney

'One of my favourite authors' Marian Keyes

'Sheila writes with such verve and positivity and emotional intelligence' Veronica Henry

(P)2023 Headline Publishing Group Limited

Release date: April 27, 2023

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 448

Sample

Winifred was measuring out a length of fabric, pushing the sky-blue silk along the brass ruler at the edge of the wooden countertop with the tips of her fingers and enjoying the feel of the delicate material as it brushed her skin. She didn’t need to use the ruler; she instinctively knew exactly how much she was measuring out. But Mrs Kelley, the owner of the city-centre drapery shop where she’d worked for the past five years, insisted on fabrics being measured exactly, no matter that Winifred’s estimate was as precise as any ruler. And so Winifred did as she was told, even when, like today, Mrs Kelley wasn’t in the shop and there was nobody to check if she followed the rules or not.

Her fingertips moved to the rhythm of the large white enamel clock on the wall behind her, its slender second hand ticking by the black Roman numerals, while she lost herself in visions of how the blue silk dresses would look when they were finally made. She wished she could afford to have a silk dress of her own, but Winifred’s clothes were hard-wearing and practical, for a life that was hard-working and practical too. Nevertheless, she was imagining walking down a long staircase in a blue evening gown, picturing herself smiling graciously at the people around her, when the enormous stone came crashing through the shop window. She shrieked as it rolled along the narrow display area before thudding onto the wooden floor like a miniature cannonball. She abandoned the billowing waves of silk to duck beneath the counter, while razor-sharp shards of glass cascaded around her.

The shouts and yells of the people running along the narrow street outside grew louder and angrier. Then she thought she heard a shot being fired.

‘No, no, no,’ she gasped as she tried to slow the frantic beating of her heart. ‘Please let it not be anything to do with Mrs Kelley. Please let them keep running. Please don’t come in here. Please.’

Although the reasons to target Kelley’s Fine Fabrics were slim – Alice Kelley wasn’t blatantly taking one side or the other in the War of Independence that was raging across Ireland – it didn’t mean that someone, somewhere mightn’t have regarded the shop as fair game. The atmosphere in the city was becoming more tense with every passing day, and the least thing could lead to unexpected violence. Last month there’d been a skirmish between republicans and the Royal Irish Constabulary right outside the door, which had led to it bursting open and two men rolling across the floor before the republican was arrested and marched outside again. Winifred was beginning to think that working in a drapery shop was almost as dangerous as being a Volunteer.

The shouting grew louder, and beneath the counter, Winifred tried to make herself smaller. All she wanted was a quiet life, she muttered to herself, but how was anyone supposed to have a quiet life when the last few years had been so emotionally charged and explosive?

It had started with the Easter Rising in 1916, when groups of republicans seized control of buildings across the city, and Padraig Pearse, one of the leaders, had read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on the steps of the General Post Office. The resultant military action by the British, who vastly outnumbered the Volunteers and kept them under siege as they pounded them with artillery, did more than anything to turn the tide of public opinion against their rule. Until then, many families had been, if not supportive of the British presence, at least ambivalent about it, and a large number had regarded the Rising as unnecessarily provocative, but the high civilian casualties and the subsequent execution of the ringleaders by firing squad changed many minds and hearts.

Winifred, who’d been fifteen at the time and hadn’t much cared who was running the country, had been shocked at the executions. But listening to her parents, she’d also thought that an armed uprising was a dangerous way to go about things. Her father, Thomas, insisted that there had to be a peaceful political solution, and would often bore Winifred and her sisters with his thoughts on what type of solution that could be. Not, he would admit, that the British seemed unduly interested in such a thing.

In any event, the Rising had let the republican genie out of the bottle. Almost three years later, a new provisional Irish government was formed at the Mansion House in Dublin, where a declaration of independence was read out and a new constitution established.

And that had led to war.

There were still people shouting and chanting outside the shop. Winifred realised she was holding her breath. As though they could hear me breathe over their own yelling, she said to herself. I should go outside and tell them to move on.

But she stayed where she was.

The War of Independence was a guerrilla war. And much as Winifred’s views had evolved to agree with its ideals, she was tired of the escalating raids and reprisals. She was tired of never knowing what she might get accidentally get caught up in. She was tired of the fighting on the streets, of the restrictions and the curfews, of the undercurrent of anxiety that was with her from the moment she woke up in the morning until she finally went to bed each night, relieved at surviving another day without a major incident. She desperately wanted the fighting to be over, but as she hugged her arms around her knees and continued to shelter beneath the counter, it seemed that peace was as far away as ever. The British had no intention of leaving, and as long as they were in the country, not a day would go by without trouble of some sort. It was a permanent feature of living in Dublin, no matter how hard she tried to avoid it. Not just of living in Dublin, of course. Of living in Ireland. Of living. And it was exhausting.

She recognised the names that were being chanted. They were all prisoners in Mountjoy gaol who’d died on hunger strike earlier in the year. The hunger strikers were considered to be martyrs by most people, and even her father (who remained a pacifist despite – or maybe because of – what had happened to him in 1916) had read the reports of the deaths with fury at an administration that had allowed them to happen. Winifred couldn’t imagine what it would be like to voluntarily stop eating. In the course of her nineteen years, her family had gone through times of extreme hardship, when her parents had struggled to put food on the table. And even though they were now, if not well off, certainly in less straitened circumstances, the idea of refusing food was almost impossible for her to imagine.

Perhaps, she conceded as she pulled at a loose thread in her calico skirt, if it was for the sake someone she loved, she’d consider not eating. And then she would have to chain herself to the gates of Dublin Castle like some of the more militant women had done to highlight the sacrifice she was making. Perhaps she’d even have her photograph on the cover of the nationalist newspaper, The Freeman’s Journal.

Who am I kidding? she asked herself as she banished the image from her mind. She was as much of a pacifist as her father. Her mother, too. ‘Keep out of harm’s way,’ Annie O’Leary would beg her every day, and every day Winifred promised she would. There’d been enough pain and suffering in their lives already. No sense in adding more.

She took another deep breath and tried to control her racing heart. But it was hammering in her chest and pounding behind her eyes, making her dizzy. ‘Everything will be fine,’ she repeated over and over again. ‘Nobody will hurt you. Nothing will happen to you.’ But even when she realised she was right, and nothing would, because the shouts and the running footsteps had receded, she stayed where she was, unable to move.

Feckers, she thought, when she finally found the courage to lift her head and blink away the tears of relief that filled her wide brown eyes. Scaring me like that.

The bell over the shop door rang as someone pushed it open. Winifred gasped and remained motionless, her arms hugging her knees, the metallic taste of fear in her mouth.

‘Hello? Anyone here?’

It was a male voice, deep and rich, and the accent was a Dublin one.

Winifred stayed where she was.

‘Anyone? Are you all right?’ A pause before he continued. ‘If you’re unhurt, I’ll leave. I’m not here for trouble.’

Winifred emerged slowly from her hiding place. Splinters of glass fell from her dark hair and rattled onto the wooden floor. She shook out her skirt and more glass landed at her feet. Then she looked at the young man in front of her. In his twenties, she estimated, he was tall and thin, his arms and legs seeming too big for his body, his face gaunt yet composed. Black hair peeked out from beneath his flat cap, and he wore a green serge jacket over a faded shirt and matching trousers. The buttons on the jacket were brass, and she could see the harp etched on them.

Relief that he seemed concerned rather than aggressive flooded through her, and she allowed herself to feel angry. She exhaled slowly and drew herself up to her full height.

‘And what’s all this about?’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Do you think that throwing stones through the windows of decent working people is an acceptable thing to do, no matter what you’re protesting about? Is this your idea of—’

‘Stop!’ He put up his hand. ‘The stone was a mistake. I’m here to tell you that. And to make sure you’re not injured. Although,’ he said with a note of concern, ‘you are. Your face.’

‘My face?’ Winifred whirled around to look in the mirror behind her. She saw a thin line of blood from a cut just above her eyebrow tracing its way along her cheek. ‘Disfiguring us is the plan now, is it?’ She turned around again. ‘When people aren’t safe from their own kind in their place of work . . .’

‘You think you were safe before?’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘The Brits never sent a rock through my window,’ retorted Winifred.

‘I really do apologise, Miss . . . Mrs . . .’

‘O’Leary,’ she said. ‘Winifred O’Leary.’

‘Are you the owner of this shop?’ He was unable to keep an element of surprise from his voice. Winifred knew that this was because she looked even younger than her age, and certainly didn’t have the presence of someone like Mrs Kelley, even if she already knew enough to be a shop owner herself. She’d worked there ever since she’d turned fourteen, and there wasn’t a question about fabrics she couldn’t answer.

She looked at the man again, struck by the fact that although his eyebrow had moved earlier, his eye hadn’t. In fact, she realised, only one of his hazel eyes moved at all. The other remained staring at a fixed point behind her head. It was disconcerting.

‘I’m not the owner, but I am the person in charge,’ she replied. ‘And I can tell you now that someone is going to have to pay for the damage, and it’s not going to be me.’

‘A minor inconvenience for Ireland’s cause,’ he said.

‘Oh for the love of all that’s holy!’ She glared at him. ‘A minor inconvenience? The window has to be replaced. The name repainted. The displays redone. The shop cleaned. And as for my fabric . . .’ she gestured towards the blue silk that now lay flat and limp on the counter, ‘I have to get rid of this. Nobody wants a dress with glass fragments as decoration.’

He smiled.

‘And you can take that smirk off your face too,’ she added.

‘It’s not a smirk,’ he assured her. ‘I was just smiling because of course you’re right, you shouldn’t have to pay. Even if many people and businesses are willing to accept that these things happen in a time of war.’

‘Spare me!’ cried Winifred. ‘When Mrs Kelley returns, she’ll want her shop looking as perfect as it always does, and how am I supposed to do that with no money to pay for repairs?’

‘If you’re the person in charge, surely you can find some?’

She gave him a withering look. ‘You think business is easy right now? More than a year into this damn war and you imagine droves of women are rushing in here to buy nice fabric for clothes or for their homes? When they’re afraid they could be pulled off the street at any time? Or that their house could be raided? You men are all the same! It doesn’t matter where you’re from. Every single thing has to be resolved by fighting.’

‘Not our choice,’ he said. ‘And not only men either. There are plenty of women ready to fight for the cause.’

‘I’ll give you that,’ she conceded, knowing that women’s organisations like Cumann na mBan were active in the struggle and protested daily outside the prisons. ‘But it would be better to negotiate.’

‘They don’t want to negotiate. When we win, and we will, you’ll appreciate us. However,’ he added, glancing towards the blue silk again, ‘straitened times or not, you clearly have customers willing to spend a lot of money on fine cloth. Who would they be?’

‘None of your business,’ she retorted. Then her brow creased with worry. ‘It’s an Irishwoman,’ she said. ‘A good woman. Yes, she has some money, but the fabric is for dresses for her and her daughters, and I don’t —’

‘Forget it.’ His tone was impatient. ‘I don’t need the details of your customers. I don’t care who’s buying your silk.’

‘I bet you do,’ she said in return. ‘But it really is nobody you need worry about. Nobody of interest to you.’

‘Nice material.’ He rubbed it between his fingers, then murmured, ‘“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths . . .”’

‘Poetry now, is it?’ Winifred snorted. ‘The rest of us are having to put up with bullets in the streets and rocks through our windows. But Yeats can write poetry to a married woman and people think he’s a genius.’

‘You’re not an admirer? But you know his poetry?’

‘You sound surprised.’ She shook her head, and more fragments of glass fell from her hair. ‘I’m an educated woman, my mother sent me to school. It means I can’t be swayed by honeyed words. Only by actions. And the action I’ll be swayed by is if you fix the window of this shop.’

He lifted his eyebrow again.

‘What’s bothering you now? My words or my demands?’

‘Neither.’ He nodded. ‘You’re right in every respect.’

‘So?’ She glared at him. ‘Will you give me the money?’

‘I’ll do more than that,’ he said. ‘I’ll arrange for the window to be replaced for you.’

‘You will, will you?’ Her tone was sceptical.

‘What time do you open in the morning?’ he asked.

‘Half past nine,’ she said. ‘Nobody buys fabric before half past nine.’

‘Someone will be here,’ he promised.

‘And in the meantime?’ She put her head to one side. ‘I’m missing a window. The shop isn’t secure. You think I can go home and leave it open to any aul’ bowsie who walks by so that he can help himself to bales of my fabric?’

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘But I don’t see how . . .’

‘That’s the trouble with revolutionaries and rebels,’ she said. ‘You think of the moment and not the aftermath. Once you’ve got what you rebelled about, there’s no plan.’

‘I assure you, Mrs O’Leary, we always have a plan,’ he said.

‘A plan to fix my window before the morning?’

‘I can’t fix the window until then, but I can secure the shop. Do you have wood? Or old crates? I can use them to board it up for you. But before that,’ he added, ‘you really should attend to your face.’

‘There are crates in the storeroom,’ said Winifred, opening the door that led to it. ‘And there are nails and a hammer too.’

‘I’ll get on with it then, while you do something with that cut.’

Winifred shrugged and turned away from him. She looked at her face in the mirror again. The gash above her eye had already begun to crust over, but she knew it should be disinfected. She followed the man to the storeroom, where she found the antiseptic lotion and cotton wool that Mrs Kelley kept in a small tin box that had once contained Oxo cubes. She dabbed her face, wincing at the sting of the antiseptic, and then fixed a small bandage over it. She wondered if she’d have a scar. Not that it mattered; a scar wouldn’t mar her beauty, because Winifred wasn’t beautiful. Even her own mother described her as plain, although Annie O’Leary would occasionally concede that she had nice eyes. Which was true. Winifred’s brown eyes added a spark of mischief in a face that might have lacked conventional beauty but was full of character.

Those dark eyes narrowed as she watched the republican bring slats of wood onto the shop floor and begin to survey the broken window. He was so sure of himself and his cause, so sure he was going the right way about it. And so insistent that he had a plan too. Everyone has a plan, she thought, until they run into the opposition’s better one.

He whistled as he hammered the wood into place. He was a quick, efficient worker, and it didn’t take long until the gap was covered by the wooden slats. The interior of the shop was now dim, and she turned on the single electric light so that she could see to clean up.

‘Do you have another brush?’ he asked when she began sweeping the glass.

‘In the storeroom,’ she said.

He fetched it and began sweeping too. They worked in silence until the counter and the floor were free of glass.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Half past nine.’

‘I’ll say thank you when it’s done,’ she told him.

‘Of course.’

‘But in the meantime, I’m obliged for you helping me tidy up.’

‘You’re welcome, Mrs O’Leary.’

He tipped his cap to her, opened the door and left the shop.

Winifred leaned against the countertop and released a breath she didn’t even realise she’d been holding. She was trembling now from the shock of it all. The stone through the window had frightened her, but the shop door opening had terrified her. She hadn’t known who might come in and what might happen to her as a result.

She’d been lucky.

She smoothed down her skirt again, then looked at the clock. There was still an hour to go before she was supposed to close the doors, but nobody was going to come into a shop with a boarded-up window. And nobody was going to come in while there was still trouble in the streets. So she turned out the light, walked out of the door and locked it carefully behind her.

She turned onto an almost deserted Sackville Street and crossed the bridge, stepping carefully between the tram tracks before walking along the quays. The city was quiet; whatever flashpoint had caused the riot was now over. The sun shone from a milky blue sky and a light breeze carried the strong malty smell from the Guinness brewery further up the river, causing her to wrinkle her nose in disgust. The few people still around were walking with a sense of purpose, clearly eager to be somewhere else. Winifred walked with a sense of purpose too.

It took her just ten minutes to reach her family home in East Essex Street; two adjoining rooms in a tall building facing north towards the Liffey. It was a well-maintained property in a city that had many seriously overcrowded tenements, and the rooms were surprisingly spacious. Just half a dozen families lived in the building, and each tenant had an individual door. Years ago, eight O’Learys had lived together, but now it was only Thomas, Annie and Winifred. Her oldest sister, Katy, was married and living in the country along with her younger brother, Tom, who Annie had sent to stay with her at the start of the war. She had hoped he would be safer there than in the city, but there were daily reports of fighting in the country too, and Winifred knew that her mother was torn between wanting her son near her and hoping that he really was better off with his older sister.

Katy had only been to Dublin once since her marriage, and Winifred thought that living outside the city didn’t really suit her, because although she was unquestionably the prettiest of all the O’Leary girls, with her long curly hair and soft, creamy skin, she’d looked thin and worried when she visited. And it wasn’t that anyone wouldn’t be worried with the country in the state it was in, but Winifred couldn’t help wondering if it was married life, living in the country or the war that had put the frown lines on her sister’s forehead and left dark circles under her eyes. But they hadn’t had time to share confidences, not that they ever had very much. Katy had always kept her own counsel.

Two other sisters, Mary-Jane and Rosie, had moved to England shortly after the Rising. Their reasons for leaving weren’t political. The two girls had worked at the Jacob’s biscuit factory on Bride Street, but had been fired for inappropriate behaviour and had struggled to find anything else. When their mother learned that their inappropriate behaviour had been laughing as they packed biscuits, she’d asked the Irish Women’s Workers Union to help. But after Rosie admitted that their laughter had been because their supervisor, Mr Potts, wore his few strands of hair in a way that tried to hide the fact that he was almost completely bald, the union representative had suggested that protecting workers who laughed at the boss was hardly what it was set up for. She told Annie that their aim was to improve working conditions for women and girls, not intercede for those who’d mocked their employers. Annie had been furious, retorting that young girls were entitled to have a bit of fun at work. ‘But not at the boss’s expense, Mrs O’Leary,’ the rather austere woman from the Union had said. ‘Not for being disrespectful.’

Annie hadn’t wanted her girls to leave the country, but in the end, the move to England had been a good one for both of them, because they’d found well-paid jobs. At first, Annie had worried how two Irish girls would fare in London, especially given the attitude of the British press, which frequently portrayed the Irish as ungovernable drunken louts. But after a year, Mary-Jane had married an Englishman and was now settled in Kent, and Rosie, who was working in a London hospital, had recently written to say that she was seeing a young man herself. A pilot, she’d said, underlining the word four times. From Belgium and very handsome. This last had been underlined four times too.

In any event, as both Annie and Winifred sometimes said to each other, it was all very well fighting to get the British out of Ireland, but the girls were doing well in England and it seemed churlish to shout slogans when they were benefiting from being there.

As for Winifred’s youngest sister, Marianne, she was no longer living at home either, being in service to a doctor’s family in Pembroke Road. Annie hadn’t particularly wanted Marianne to go into service, but the Desmonds were good employers and Marianne talked about learning what she could from the doctor so that perhaps one day she could work for him rather than the household. As a secretary, she’d said, or an assistant. Annie had her doubts, particularly as Marianne’s writing was poor and she’d been known to faint at the sight of blood, but she kept them to herself. Her daughter was happy and that was the most important thing. It was, in fact, Mrs Desmond who’d ordered the blue silk from Kelley’s. Marianne was due to pick it up before the end of the week.

And now there’s just me, thought Winifred as she climbed the stairs and put her key in the lock. The last girl at home. She pushed the door open. Her mother, who was scrubbing the wooden table with carbolic soap, looked up at her in surprise.

‘What are you doing here so early?’ she asked, a note of concern in her voice. And then, as she saw the bandage on her daughter’s face, ‘What happened?’

Winifred told her about the stone through the window and her encounter with the Volunteer.

‘Dear Mother of God.’ Annie shook her head. ‘Will it ever end? What was today about?’

‘I’m not really sure. They were shouting the names of the hunger strikers, but I don’t know why. They were released weeks ago.’

‘Though more have been imprisoned since,’ remarked Annie.

Winifred nodded.

‘Yer woman was supposed to be giving a speech today,’ Annie recalled. ‘The Countess.’

‘Markievicz?’ Winifred looked surprised. ‘I thought she was on the run.’

‘Still giving speeches.’ Annie dropped her scrubbing brush into a metal pail and put it in the corner before drying her hands on a well-worn towel.

‘She’s brave,’ acknowledged Winifred. ‘Stupid, maybe. But brave.’

‘She has the luxury of being stupid,’ said Annie. ‘We don’t.’

Stupid wasn’t really the right word for the woman who was a leading light in the republican movement, Winifred mused as she slipped off her shoes and rubbed her tired feet. Perhaps rash was a better description. Nevertheless, Winifred couldn’t help admiring the fact that the Countess had the courage of her convictions. She very much doubted that if she herself had been born to an English baronet and brought up on the family’s country estate in County Sligo she’d have thrown her lot in with the Irish freedom fighters and taken up arms against the considerably better-financed and organised British.

Even more to admire was that the Countess had been appointed as Ireland’s Minister for Labour. It was heartening, Winifred thought, to see women in positions of power. Not that the Countess could do much, given that at the time of her appointment she’d been imprisoned in Holloway, but Winifred liked her ideas. Now, despite her release, she was staying at safe houses, only emerging to make rousing speeches about women’s rights and Irish freedom.

‘Your head’s in the clouds again,’ said Annie as she reached past Winifred to get her coat, which was hanging from a peg on the door.

‘Just thinking about the Countess,’ Winifred said. ‘She’s amazing really. She could be living in luxury, but she’s t. . .