The Young Wives

by Elaine Crowley

Genres: Family Life; Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

A wonderfully compelling saga of the lives, hopes and dreams of four young wives. Sheila Brophy's hopes and dreams are those of any young Dublin girl. She longs to fall in love. Fergus is older than her, in the British Army and fond of his drink, but he loves her and Sheila doesn't hesitate when he proposes although their marriage will mean leaving Dublin. In November 1961 Sheila finds herself and her twin baby girls with three other young women on their way to join their husbands stationed in Germany. The young women are plunged into a very different life from the ones they have left. They become friends, sharing their worries, secrets, disappointments and troubles. Elaine Crowley creates a community bound together by the special intimacy that comes when a group of people is thrown together and living far away from their homes and families.

Release date: July 25, 2013

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 410

Sample

Sheila Brophy sat watching her mother feeding the white satin brocade under the foot of the sewing machine. A sheet was spread
on the floor in front of the machine on to which long lengths of bridal material going through the machine would land.


Sheila loved being in the room when her mother was sewing. The stuff had a gorgeous smell. The machine had a garland of flowers
painted on its front. Sheila often tried copying them on to paper with her crayons but they never looked right. She also liked
the sewing room because while her mother was using the machine they had great chats. But only when the work was simple like
sewing straight seams. Now her mother was making the skirt, long straight seams, so Sheila could chat and ask questions. ‘You’ll
make my wedding dress, won’t you, Mammy?’


Without raising her head her mother replied, ‘Of course I will, love. Didn’t I make your First Communion one and wasn’t it
the most beautiful dress in the chapel? Everyone stopped to admire it. It’ll be the same with your wedding dress.’


‘Yeah, but …’

‘But what?’

‘I’d like a pink or a lemon dress for my wedding. I don’t think white is a nice colour. It’s all right for knickers and vests
and petticoats. Will you be long? I’m freezing, so I am.’


‘Another half an hour. Your father’ll be back from the pub about then and you know what he’s like when he’s drunk. All over
me with a fag hanging out of his mouth and an inch of ash on it, not minding where it falls. Drop that on the dress and it’d be destroyed. And don’t worry about your wedding dress. You’re only eight. By the time you get
married white might be a nicer colour.’


‘When he comes in sure you won’t fight with him?’

‘I never fight with him.’

‘You do sometimes shout at him.’

‘That’s not fighting. And I only shout when he starts blathering about the Rebellion and his time in the IRA.’ She talked
without altering the rhythm of the treadle. ‘Telling how he only took to drink after his hero, Michael Collins, was killed.
Michael Collins was the hero of hundreds and thousands; they didn’t all take to drink.’


‘Who was Michael Collins? And why did my daddy take to drink?’

‘Ask your father about Collins, he’ll be only too delighted to tell you. And as for the drink, I really don’t know. Some men
and women can take it or leave it. Your father’s not one of the lucky ones.’ She sighed as she stitched the last couple of
inches, clipped the thread and the material fell in a silky heap on the sheet.


‘Why does he drink?’

‘God alone knows. I suppose it’s a kind of flaw in a person’s constitution. To tell you the truth I don’t really know.’ She
went to the front of the machine and picked up the material from the sheet, folded and laid it on her cutting table. While
doing it she told Sheila how every Catholic took the Pledge when they made their confirmation. ‘It’s a promise never to let
drink pass your lips. Not everyone keeps it. Your father’s one that broke his Pledge.’


‘Would that be a mortal sin?’

‘Ah, no, love, I think it would be only a venial one.’

‘Then Daddy won’t go to hell?’

‘I’m sure he won’t. He’s harmless in drink. All he wants to do is fall asleep. He’s a good man but he’d be better if he left
the gargle alone. And I’d be in pocket. If it wasn’t for my dressmaking you wouldn’t be in the Loretto Convent, nor Lily Comerford’s
dancing school. He earns good money in the Corporation and then there’s his pension.’ Mrs Brophy was now wiping the machine’s surface and told Sheila
to bring the brush so she could sweep up the threads.


When Sheila came back she asked her mother what a pension was. And she explained it was money paid every week to old people,
widows and soldiers who were wounded in the war or had been years and years in the army.


‘But me daddy isn’t any of them things and he wasn’t in a war.’

‘The Rebellion was a war, not a long one but a war all the same. Later on, when we had our own government, men who’d fought
in the Rebellion got pensions and good jobs. That’s how your father got his.’


‘Where did he work before he was a soldier?’

‘You have me moidered with your questions. He didn’t work, he was in a seminary going to be a priest.’

‘A priest!’ Sheila exclaimed. ‘I’m glad he left that place. He couldn’t have been my daddy if he was a priest.’

‘He could not. Now you go into the kitchen and build up the fire, there’s a good girl.’

‘No, I don’t want to. I want to keep on talking.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Mrs Brophy. ‘I’m going to tack the yoke and it’s a tricky job, so do as you’re told.’

Sheila’s pretty face looked angry and she stared defiantly at her mother who stared her out. ‘It’s not fair, so it’s not,’
Sheila said, pouting her beautiful mouth, but she went to the kitchen, put coal on the fire and blew with the bellows until
new flames licked the coals. Then she sat in the rocking chair with the Evening Herald and read the Mutt and Jeff comic strip.


In a little while her mother came into the kitchen. ‘Thank God I got the yoke together,’ and glancing at the clock she said,
‘Look at the hour of the night and him not in.’


‘He said he’d get me fish and chips from Burgess’s.’

‘And carry them home inside his overcoat. They’ll be in mush and his coat destroyed with grease.’

‘Sh, I think that’s Daddy now. I heard the key in the lock.’ Sheila ran into the small passage to greet her father. They came
into the room. Mr Brophy’s trilby was pushed to the back of his head, a hand on Sheila’s shoulder, the other one clutching
the parcel of fish and chips to his stomach.


His wife lit the gas under the kettle and said over her shoulder, ‘A nice hour of the night to come home.’

‘Ginny, darlin’, sure it wasn’t my fault, the chipper was packed. Look at your mammy, Sheila, isn’t she the beautiful woman.
The black curly hair of her and the dark eyes dancing out of her head. Amn’t I the lucky man to have two beauties, for you’re
the image of her.’


‘Will you stop blathering and give me the fish and chips.’

He fumbled with the buttons on his overcoat. The greasy parcel smelling of the most tasty fish and chips in Dublin fell to
the floor.


Mrs Brophy wet the tea and told Sheila to pick up the parcel and bring it to her. ‘And you,’ she told her husband, ‘take off
that coat and jacket. I told you, didn’t I, the chips would be bet into each other.’


‘They’ll still taste gorgeous, Mammy.’

Her mother shared out the food, poured the tea, and she and Sheila sat to the table and ate the fish and chips off the white,
vinegar-soaked paper with their fingers. Mr Brophy was sitting in an armchair still wearing his hat.


‘Are you going to have some?’ his wife asked.

‘I won’t, they mightn’t agree with me at this hour of the night.’

‘Suit yourself. I expect your belly’s full enough.’

‘Comfortable, you might say. Aren’t you up very late? You’ll be jaded in the morning.’

‘It’s Saturday tomorrow, Daddy.’

‘So it is, I forgot.’ He yawned twice, then fell asleep.

‘Look at him, the poor unfortunate. God’s curse on the same drink and them that make and sell it. And you pray every night
to Our Lady that you’ll never marry a drunkard. Finish your tea and then go to bed. You won’t do well in the Feis tomorrow
if you’re jaded.’ She kissed and hugged Sheila, and Sheila gently kissed her father’s cheek before she left the room.


Ginny began to tidy the kitchen. She washed the delft, emptied the teapot, wiped the oilcloth covering on the table. Screwed
up the fish and chip papers tightly and put them in the fire, and placed the guard in front of it. Then she took off her husband’s
hat, loosened his collar and tie. ‘My poor fella,’ she said and smoothed his hair and kissed his cheek. From the rocking chair
she took a big crocheted shawl of many colours and put it over him, and left the light on in the kitchen, knowing that after
an hour or two he would wake and not be able to find his way in the dark.


She went to bed. She prayed to the Sacred Heart. Beneath the statue the little red shaded lamp cast a ruby glow. Ginny prayed
for God to spare her until Sheila was reared and that her husband would turn over a new leaf. She prayed for her dead parents
and relations, for friends who were sick, those with troubled minds, and lastly for herself that she might have a happy and
not sudden death. Before she fell asleep she thought about the dancing competition tomorrow.


Sheila was a great little dancer. Already she had won two silver cups and had ten medals. She might win another tomorrow either
for the hornpipe or slip jig. Sheila looked gorgeous in her dancing costume: the saffron kilt, black short jacket, white blouse
with a flounce on it. The saffron fringed shawl fastened with a Tara brooch gave it the finishing touch.


There was a lot of envy and begrudgement among some of the mothers. Leppin’ if their children didn’t win. Sheila was tall
for her age, and many a one said she lied about it and entered with children younger than her so she had the advantage. To herself, Ginny said, God help their senses getting their hair in a knot about a dancing competition. I love
to see her win, but when she doesn’t I take it in good part. She does as well. If she sulked and carried on I’d have her out
of the dancing in a minute. There’ll be times in her life when to be disappointed, even angry, will be justified. But only
over important things. And children’s dancing competitions aren’t that important.


On Saturday morning Sheila woke and looked at her dancing costume hanging on the wardrobe door and on a chair her black patent
hornpipe shoes with their big silver buckles on the front of each shoe and beside them the soft leather brown pumps she would
wear to dance the slip jig. On the back of the chair hung a pair of hand-knitted lace-patterned snowy white socks.


She wanted to jump out of bed and put the clothes on. Then she thought of her hair being done – her mother combing her long,
thick, black, curly hair into ringlets – and wished her hair was straight. If it were she’d have it wrapped in rags the night
before and no pulling and tugging. Sometimes she’d get in a temper, stamp her feet and cry and shout that she didn’t want
ringlets. And her mother would tell her that nearly every girl in the competition wore them except for a few whose mothers
were copying American fashions and having the girls’ hair bobbed and worn with a fringe. And a right show they were.


Her mother came into the room and told her to get up, her breakfast was almost ready. ‘Afterwards you’ll have to get the bread
for me and then we’ll go to Camden Street for the messages.’


‘Is my daddy up yet?’

‘Are you losing your senses? When on a Saturday does he stir before eleven or twelve? Come on now, hurry up. You won’t feel
the time flying before we have to go to the Feis.’


On Saturdays and Sundays they had a cooked breakfast, during the week porridge and fried bread or toast. Sheila ate a rasher,
two Hafner’s pork sausages, two rings of black pudding, one of white pudding and an egg. When she had eaten everything else
she sucked every bit of fat from the bacon rind. ‘I’m glad you don’t cut the rind off, Mammy, only nick it in places. I love
sucking it.’


‘Who cuts it off?’

‘Teresa Donnelly’s mammy. D’ye remember, I had my tea there once and it was rashers and eggs and no rinds on the rashers.’

‘I never heard of anyone doing that. Another American fad, I suppose. Finish that tea and get washed and dressed, and go for
the bread.’


Sheila and her family lived in the Iveagh Buildings: apartments built by Guinness. The flats were in a compound with high
iron gates. Some were one-bedroomed and some, like Sheila’s, had two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen-cum-living room and a
parlour. Her mother said that it was great place to live. Five minutes from the centre of the city, less than that to Stephen’s
Green and Grafton Street. The same distance to Sheila’s convent and less to Lord Edward Street where Mr Brophy worked.


But her mother had told Sheila as a secret that she was saving up for a purchase house. ‘This place is grand, I’ve nothing
against it really. But wouldn’t it be great to have your own garden.’


‘There’s the park round the corner,’ Sheila said.

‘The park’s not the same as your own garden. And there’s always oul fellas out of the Iveagh lodging house stretched on the
benches and in the alcoves, sleeping and snoring and full of Red Biddy. You’re not to go in there on your own.’


‘I don’t want to move away. I love it here.’

‘Don’t worry, love, it’ll take me years to get a deposit saved. Maybe so long that you’ll be married and living somewhere else.’


‘I want to get married,’ said Sheila, thinking of a long veil and wedding dress, ‘but I’ll never move away from you. I want
to live beside you.’


‘So you will. I tell you what, we’ll buy two houses next door to each other, how’s that?’

Sheila clapped her hands and said, ‘That’s great. I never want to leave you and Daddy.’

On her way to the baker’s Sheila stopped to talk to other little girls from the flats. She was the only girl from the Buildings
who went to a private school. Her friends didn’t mind that but other girls called her names. ‘Stuck up, who does she think
she is? She’s no better than us.’


Sometimes a couple of them would try to pick a fight. But Sheila was tough and would stand her ground, daring them to touch
her. Then walk away chanting, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.’


The only time she avoided the bullies was when the Poppies were being worn. The majority of the men in their families had
been in the British army. They celebrated the Armistice and their children, though few if any had ever seen the sky over England,
went round the Buildings in gangs shouting ‘Up the Poppies’. In other streets, where there were as many families with allegiance
to the Free State, one lot shouted ‘Up the Poppies’ and the other half responded with their war cry of ‘Up the Lilies’, the
lilies being the emblem of the Easter Rising. There was seldom anything to it but the shouting of the slogans. And the next
day it was all forgotten until the following year.


Sheila’s father had explained to her that because he hadn’t been a British soldier on Poppy Day she was to come straight home
from school into the house. ‘Not that I think for a minute one of the children would hurt a hair of your head. All the same,
it’s better to be sure than sorry. D’ye see, there’s a gang of them and only one of you.’


Sheila wanted him to tell her more about the Lilies and the Poppies. He promised that he would when she was older.

After chatting to her friends she left the compound, walked to the end of Bride Street and into Johnson, Mooneys and O’Brien
on the corner of Kevin Street. Though it was only twenty minutes since she had had her breakfast the smell of the newly baked
loaves and turnovers made her feel hungry.


The woman serving knew her. Asked how her mammy was and about the Feis, while she wrapped white tissue paper around the two
crusty loaves. ‘Don’t you be picking that bread on the way home.’


‘I won’t,’ Sheila said. ‘I have to do another message for my mammy. Can I leave the bread till I come back? I wish the bread
was white like it used to be. It’s grey because of the war, isn’t it?’


‘The same feckin war and that oul Antichrist Hitler. All the lovely young fellas getting killed. And poor unfortunate people
in England being blown to bits. Not to mention our own in Dublin, them poor people on the North Strand blown to smithereens.
But sure it was in forty-one, you wouldn’t remember it. And we’re giving out about the dark bread and the half-ounce tea ration.
And shaggin’ robbers selling it on the Black Market for a pound a pound. I’m telling you if Ireland lay the other side of
England, Hitler would have invaded us already.’


Sheila thought how her father always praised Hitler and that a nun in school had a map on the wall and when the Germans were
winning, pinned flags on the map to show how well they were doing. She nearly told Maggie but, remembering her husband was
a soldier in the British army, didn’t. Instead she asked her again if she could leave the loaves.


‘You can,’ said Maggie, ‘so long as you’re not telling me lies about the message for your mammy.’

‘As true as God I’m not,’ said Sheila, smiling at the woman and thinking at the same time, that’s a venial sin I’ll have to tell in confession. Then off she went across the road
to look in at the rag pickers. The rag store had a long open front. There were two women climbing through the raised pile
of rags, picking and sorting, throwing anything wearable into one of three crates along the wall, into the second one was
thrown torn woollen clothing and the third crate received rags. The wearable items were sold on to second-hand clothes dealers
who in turn sold them to the poor; torn woollens were bought by the makers of ‘shoddy’ who processed them into an inferior
type of woollen cloth; the rags were used to manufacture paper.


Sheila had a vague idea of all this. One of the rag pickers lived in the Buildings and sometimes came to chat with her mother
after she had washed and changed. Many a time Sheila had heard the woman say, ‘I wouldn’t darken your door, ma’am, coming
straight from that kip. The filth of the city, that’s what we handle. Never knowing who’d worn the things, what complaint
they were dying from. The bad disease, consumption, the smallpox. That’s bad enough but the stinking bandages, lint, cotton
wool saturated in blood and pus. It’s a sin against God for that carry-on to be allowed.’


In the course of these conversations between the rag picker and her mother Sheila learnt about the second-hand clothes. Shoddy,
the real rags, going to paper mills and how the stinking acrid smoke which made her eyes water and her throat sore came from
the burning of the soiled dressings.


The rag store was forbidden her along with St Patrick’s Park. She sidled into the store and watched the women working. Her
mother’s friend was singing ‘South of the Border’ as she picked and threw. The acrid smoke irritated Sheila’s throat and she
coughed. The two women looked round and her mother’s friend ploughed her way through the rags. ‘How many times have I heard
your mammy threaten to cut the legs off you if you set foot in here?’ Sheila looked contrite and hung her head. ‘And you can stop looking sorry for yourself. You’re a bold child and disobeying
your mammy is a sin. You’ve made your Communion; you should know all about sin.’


Sheila began to cry. ‘Ah, come on now, love, sure I’m only telling you for your own good. Go on home. Here take this.’ She
took a penny from her overall pocket. ‘Buy a Fizz Bag, it’ll clear your throat.’


Sheila managed a few more tears and sniffs before taking the money, then said, ‘You won’t tell me mammy, sure you won’t?’

‘I should but I won’t, that’s if you promise not to do it again.’

‘As true as God,’ Sheila promised and ran out of the rag store. Next door to it was a huckster’s shop. It sold coal by the
stone, paraffin oil, sticks, bread, stale cakes, babies’ soothers, potatoes and cabbages, on Fridays and Wednesdays fish that
wasn’t very fresh and Fizz Bags.


Sheila bought one for a ha’penny, stuck the liquorice tube in her mouth and took a long suck of sherbet. Then went on her
way past the police station, which had once been the Archbishop of Dublin’s palace. She paused to look up the narrow street
a little further along and gaze at the beautiful house which faced down the street and wondered, as she did many times, who
lived in it and how they must be very rich. As she turned into Patrick’s Street she heard the Angelus bell and knew it was
twelve o’clock. The bell was being rung in Francis Street where she had been christened and made her First Communion. She
thought about confession and how she had two venial sins on her soul and by going to the park would commit another one. Venial
sins she knew weren’t too bad. A good Act of Contrition would make her soul spotlessly white and she could receive Communion
in the morning.


But at the park gates she hesitated. She could see the men sleeping on the benches and the pigeons waddling about searching
for worms or crumbs. She loved pigeons. Their mauve and silvery coloured feathers. If only she could catch one, she thought, and bring it home, get a cage for it,
wouldn’t that be grand. There were purple and yellow flowers, small ones in the flowerbeds. She didn’t know what they were
called. She only knew the names of wallflowers, roses and tulips, the flowers girls brought to school for the altars.


At the right-hand side of the park St Patrick’s Cathedral’s grey stone spire pointed to the sky. Once she had stood in the
porch, the doors were open. She could see into the church and didn’t like what she saw: all the raggedy flags and you could
smell the cold. She wasn’t sorry it was a Protestant church. She was glad that bad king had robbed it from the Catholics.
And she wasn’t sorry that because she was a Catholic she’d go to hell if ever she went into it. What Catholic would want to
when their own chapels were gorgeous: all the lighted candles shimmering, the lovely statues and the holy pictures? She decided
not to commit the third venial sin and, feeling very holy, ran all the way to the bakery, collected the bread and went home.


‘I thought you were baking the loaves it took you so long. What kept you?’

‘The shop was packed,’ Sheila lied.

‘Wash your face before we go out. You’ve been sucking sherbet. Where did you get the money?’

‘I found a ha’penny in the gutter.’

‘Isn’t the weather grand, thanks be to God,’ passing women said to Ginny as she and Sheila set out for Camden Street.

‘Your man has tea in today. And the price is still the same,’ another woman told Ginny.

Ginny agreed that the weather was grand, hoped it would hold and thanked the woman who had told her about the tea. There were
no tenement houses in Wexford or Camden Street, though families lived over the shops. Neither were there rag stores, beautiful
houses, chapels nor churches. Only shops, crowded shops, butchers, fancy bakeries, greengrocers, provision shops, pork butchers,
public houses, drapers and shoe shops. And by the kerb old prams, from which women, wearing black shawls, whose faces were
rosy or weather-beaten, sold fruit, flowers and fish. They called out their wares and prices, cajoling the passing women to
buy from them: ‘Jap’ oranges, lovely bananas, Kerr Pinks the flouriest potatoes going. Are you buying, ma’am? If you’re not,
stop mauling the fruit.’ Ginny knew most of the dealers – many of them lived in the Buildings. She knew who was honest and
those who would put a mouldy orange at the bottom of the brown paper bag.


Sheila breathed in the myriad smells, all pleasant except those coming out of the public houses. The sweet smell of fruit,
of pungent cheese which made her feel hungry imagining the hard red cheese on a cut of buttered bread. Not much scent from
the spring flowers except the bronze and red velvety wallflowers. And overpowering all other smells the aroma of sweet biscuits,
chocolate and all other delicious things being baked in Jacobs, whose factory was at the corner of the street.


Nearly everyone was in good humour, laughing and joking with the butchers as they haggled over the price of a sirloin, a piece
of corned beef, silverside, tail-end or brisket. While waiting to be served the women gossiped with each other. They carried
marketing bags, the majority of which were made from black American oilcloth, and clutched purses in their hands.


As Sheila and her mother went from shop to shop she became fidgety, tugged at her mother’s coat and asked when were they going
home.


‘When I’m ready,’ was her mother’s reply. If Sheila persisted nagging she would be warned to behave herself, if she still
persisted she was slapped and ordered to wait outside. She was delighted. She loved the street, the noise, the horses and
carts driving by. Sometimes the horses raised their tails and expelled balls of manure without pausing in their trot. She
would walk a way up the street, stopping now and then to look in a toyshop window. Occasionally she’d walk as far as the beginning
of Camden Street to look at the stills on display outside the De Luxe picture house.


She loved going to the pictures, especially cowboy and Indian ones. She’d cry when a child was stolen by the Indians. But
the end was always a happy one. She used to think that the film stars lived at the back of the cinema and wonder why she never
saw them in the street until her father explained what films were.


Before very long her mother would catch up with her, as she did on this Saturday. ‘I got everything except the ribbons for
your hair.’ Sheila grimaced as she thought of her ordeal when the ringlets were made. In a drapery her mother bought several
yards of wide green ribbon and then they went home. ‘Daddy’s gone out,’ she said when they went into the house.


‘Doesn’t he always,’ her mother retorted as she unpacked her messages.

‘I wish he’d come to the Feis, so I do.’

‘He never will, love. Few men do. I wouldn’t fight with him over that. I wouldn’t want him to anyway.’

‘But why?’

‘Well, for one thing he’d be half cut and for another it’s not a place for men.’

‘Why isn’t it?’

‘Don’t be moidering me – it just isn’t. Go and give yourself a good wash, scrub your knees. You don’t want people seeing dirty
knees under your lovely kilt.’


The Feis was being held in a hall the other side of the Liffey. There were all sorts of Feis: ones for poetry, music, dancing and Irish speaking. When she was in the primary school
Sheila had been entered in one for Irish. Her mother and father were thrilled and convinced she would win first prize. ‘I
can see you getting a silver Fainne and before you know it the gold one,’ her father encouraged. Ginny made her a turquoise
panne velvet dress with a hand-crocheted ecru collar.


Being the best in the class at Irish, Sheila had no worries about the competition. But once she was on the stage with other
competitors, judges and the sea of faces looking up at her she lost her nerve, couldn’t answer some questions and answered
others wrongly. She cried all the way home on the bus.


But she was never nervous when dancing. Holding her mother’s hand, they walked down Winetavern Street across its bridge and
up the side of the quay. Her mother pointed and said, ‘That’s the Four Courts. There was trouble there during the Civil War.
Your father will tell you all about it one day,’ as they passed a large imposing building. Sheila was only half listening.
It was just recently that she had been up the quays and there was much to occupy her mind. The Liffey, how it smelled differently
when the tide was in or out, the seagulls screaming and swooping, the barges laden with barrels of porter. Sometimes there
were swans. Lots of antique shops. Often there were dolls in the windows, beautiful old-fashioned dolls. She wanted to stop
and look at them, but there was no time, her mother always told her.


They arrived at the turn into a street where the Father Mathew Hall was. Before turning into it her mother pointed to the
facing bridge. ‘That, so they say, was the first bridge in Dublin. Not like it is now, but the first all the