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women:
    ‘Why do women have to be last,’ M said, ‘like the end of a snake?’ M would not march last. She could not march with Cumann na mBan, as they were declared illegal, but she could march with the Irish-speaking Conference of Saint Mobhi from the northside. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I wish I was Amelia Earhart and I could soar above them all.’
    They made their way to Wynns hotel where they had tea and scones. She told him that she had been a supervisor at Jacobs biscuit factory for several years. However, when a number of girls had been sacked for joining a trade union, she left in sympathy with them.
    And apart from attending night classes in Cumann na mBan and doing charity work in the tenements, she worked full-time in her mother’s shop:
    I am fortunate to have met this bright and beautiful girl. But somehow I feel inadequate in her presence. She is so vibrant. She thinks the idea of travelling is romantic. She had a chance, she said, of going to America a few years ago. A student in the College of Surgeons had eyes for her but her mother wouldn’t let her go. Besides, she said, with a grin on her face, she only half-liked him anyway. I wasn’t sure if such a confession was intended to generate or banish a jealousy. She made no comment about my stoop.
    ***
    They went to the cinema. My mother was hesitant to go at first. If members of Cumann na mBan saw her, what would they think? She enjoyed the chocolate Patrick bought her. ‘If you keep buying me this,’ she said, ‘I’ll soon be as fat as a pregnant woman.’
    Then Patrick met Gearóid.
    Gearóid bumped into them as they were coming out of the cinema. He appeared out of a shadow, Patrick asserts. His hair was dishevelled and he was unshaven, his chin carrying a bristle of perhaps two or three days growth. My mother, still in the dream of the film, didn’t notice how distraught he looked. He asked her accusingly in Irish why she was supporting a ‘foreign culture’. My mother gave one of her heartiest chuckles and said she didn’t give a damn. Patrick noted how Gearóid glared incriminatingly at him before storming off. My mother realised her faux pas. She told Patrick that Gearóid was always very touchy, and she spent the rest of the evening brooding over the stupidity and falsity of motion pictures. Patrick observed:
    She discarded her light-hearted alter ego. She retreated deep into herself, her hurt registering on her face, her arms enfolding her into a protective space.
    He teased her, saying she was acting like the sean bhean bhocht, but she turned to him and told him – deadly seriously – that Gearóid had put a player’s eye out once with a hurley stick. She said it was put down as an accident but it was due to something the player had said, some slight he had made of the republican movement. She was just telling him that for his own safety. She could handle him all right; and Muddy. Both of them had known Gearóid since he was a child. He was like part of their family, but she said Patrick would have to be careful because he came from outside the walls. That’s why she didn’t want him calling to the shop.
    A fear has entered my bones. I fear for M. I feel she is trapped somehow, stuck to Liberties’ walls and streets by the blood of its martyrs. I would like to have the strength to wrench her free from this underworld.
    ***
    Patrick walked with my mother in the Phoenix Park after the special children’s Mass. He writes that the place looked like it was covered with snow with all the children dressed in white and the little girls in their veils, singing like angels. ‘A wonderful sight to behold.’ They found themselves joining in the singing (‘it was infectious’) of Faith of our Fathers and Ave Maria. Listening to the music and doting on the children, a tear came to my mother’s eye. ‘She would make a good mother,’ Patrick writes, ‘but would I be able to do the business?’
    Because of the international flavour