Read Peeling Oranges for Free Online

spotted her earlier. He noted in his diary for that month:
    Saw a beautiful blond girl coming out of Whitefriar Street church. She smiled at me as she passed. She sauntered along unhurriedly, apparently without a worry in the world.
    He had run out of cigarettes and stumbled upon a shop in the Liberties called Woodburn’s (at first he thought it was an advertisement for Woodbines). To his surprise, he discovered the same girl he had seen in Whitefriar Street standing behind the counter.
    ‘I do remember you,’ she said. She had such a joyful giggle. I wanted to ask her out but I lacked the courage. It would be too rash, too soon; one must follow decorum – that’s why I’m a diplomat I suppose. I bought my cigs and bade her good day.
    ***
    The following day he returned to the shop, bought a large bar of chocolate and then gave it to my mother. They chatted. The shop wasn’t busy except for some little street urchins who came in to buy halfpenny mixtures. He was taken by how she dealt with them with great patience, opening and closing glass jars. She told him, opening the wrapper on the chocolate, that it was a treat to eat things which weren’t broken or bruised. He asked her what she meant. ‘Broken biscuits from Jacobs,’ she said, ‘and Tomás used to bring bruised fruit home from the market.’ She explained that Tomás was her brother who had been killed by the Tans. Patrick said he was sorry to hear about her brother but she said it was all right; it was a long time ago. She told him her mother had said he died ‘before disappointment’. She said they used to throw a lot of the plums into the dustbin if they if they couldn’t find a Peeler. She laughed. When he asked her if she could not sneak something from the shelf, she took a brooch from her blouse and held the pin upright. ‘As straight as that?’
    He finally plucked up enough courage to ask her to come out with him. She said she would, but that it was better not to call for her at the shop. She didn’t say why.
    As I cycled home to Rathfarnham, I wondered how someone as beautiful as she had not married as yet. Then who am I to talk at my age? I figure she is in her late twenties. I feel an outsider in the Liberties. Their twisting lanes and walls contain secrets unknown to me.
    ***
    They met at the Pillar, as agreed, and proceeded to walk along the broad thoroughfare of O’Connell street, observing all the hustle and bustle as the city made ready for the Eucharistic Congress. They saw diminutive, veiled virgins being trained for procession, and boy scouts and girl guides of different countries rehearsing. There were flags and banners everywhere. They were stopped by a group of young men who were marching imperiously along the street. They asked them if they were wearing their scapulars. My mother chuckled and said no but she was wearing her suspenders. The men were not amused as they marched away and Patrick records that he himself was taken aback by the brazenness of my mother’s retort.
    He told her that his family had moved to the suburbs to avoid the consumption epidemic. He said everyone who could got out. He records my mother taking umbrage at this. She said it wasn’t true, that Muddy lived for a time in a house in Aughavanagh Road; but she nearly died from the loneliness and returned to live over the shop again after a couple of months. He realised he had offended her and apologised. By way of atonement he told her that the people in the suburbs were not as nice as Liberties’ people, and she was soon in good form again.
    Patrick records my mother teasing him, saying he was not a true blue when he told her that his deceased father, a builder’s surveyor, had married a girl from Wicklow. She was amazed when Patrick told her he was an only child.
    The first day of the Congress the cavalry led the procession followed by cardinals and bishops and judges and all the dignitaries until the last appeared, and they were simply listed as the