CHAPTER 1

KNOCKNASHEE, DINGLE PENINSULA,

CO KERRY

April 1938

GRACE FITZGERALD studiously applied a modest scrape of butter to her
morning toast as her older sister, Agnes, while spreading a lot more
butter on her own toast and marmalade as well, grumbled on and
on about all the immoral shenanigans in the sleepy town of
Knocknashee.
Today’s diatribe was mostly to do with Peggy Donnelly, and the
new range of pink and mauve cardigans and scandalously short
skirts – barely reaching the knee – she’d put in the window of her
shop, the wearing of which was bound to lead to dreadful behaviour
among the young people of the town.
‘So we won’t be shopping in Peggy’s until they’re taken down. I
don’t know what’s come over her. Grace, are you listening to me?’
Agnes leaned in and pointed with her knife.
‘Yes, Agnes,’ Grace replied gazing down at her plate. Secretly, she
thought Peggy’s new display brightened the place up and doubted
very much it would lead to naked dancing and satanic rituals on the
strand. But she couldn’t say that sort of thing to Agnes, not even as
a joke.

Anyway, she didn’t want to be cheeky to her sister. She was
entirely dependent on Agnes, who had been like a mother to her
as she was often reminded – since their parents died.
It had been horrible, and so sudden; it still upset Grace to think
of it. Eddie and Kathleen Fitzgerald had served as the master and
mistress of the school attached to this big stone house. They were
on their way back from one of the islands dotted off the coast,
where they’d set up a school for the island children and visited twice
a year to bring more resources for the only teacher, a past pupil of
theirs who had married an islander. On the way back to
Knocknashee, their little boat was caught in a squall and capsized,
and they drowned.

Grace had just turned eleven when it happened. The Fitzgeralds’
only son, Father Maurice, had been away on the missions in the
Philippines and couldn’t come home. So it was Agnes, the second
oldest at twenty-six, who had to take over the running of the
household and the school. Grace had been a surprise baby, arriving
many years after her parents were sure their family was complete.
Together she and Agnes ran the school now, though her sister
had no desire to be a teacher. Unlike their parents, who had been
much loved, Agnes had no vocation for it. But she did it anyway, she
said, to put food on the table for Grace. It was a big sacrifice for her,
because it had meant giving up on her plans to marry Cyril Clifford,
the son of the local hotelier.
Before Mammy and Daddy drowned, Agnes had been sure of a
proposal from Cyril. They’d been doing a strong line together for
years, and he was considered a fine catch; it was just a matter of
time before he put a ring on her finger. But after the accident,
everything changed.

If Agnes married, the law required her to give up teaching, and
Cyril could hardly be expected to take over responsibility for Grace
as well as a new wife and any future children they might have, so
until Grace was old enough to look after herself, the marriage was
put on hold.
Grace knew to be very grateful, because Agnes could have solved
the problem in a second by putting her into an orphanage, the same
way Charlie McKenna’s children had been sent away when the
postman was left unable to cope after his wife died in childbirth.
To make matters even worse for Agnes, a year after their parents
died, Grace contracted polio and was rushed to the hospital in Cork.
Agnes tried desperately to keep it quiet – people were so
frightened of the disease – but of course it got out. And Cyril wrote
to Agnes, saying his parents were afraid of him catching polio from
the furnishings in her house, and then guests would be put off
coming to their hotel, and that it would be best all round to
discontinue what he referred to as ‘their friendship’. Poor Agnes was
humiliated and disgraced in front of the whole place when he
married a woman from Limerick not a wet week after he’d finished it
with her.

For the next four years, Grace was in hospital. Agnes was unable
to visit because the school board forbade it on account of the risk to
the schoolchildren in her charge. Agnes had to manage everything
all alone, with a broken heart. No wonder she’d become so unhappy
and saw badness everywhere.
Grace had been lucky by comparison. She’d had to have a lot of
painful operations and therapies, but at least she’d been well looked
after in Cork. The consultant, Dr Warrington, had such a bright, kind
face; just the memory of him cheered her up. He went so far and
beyond for his patients. His wife was a wonderful woman too; she’d
put Grace through her school exams, as she did all the children. The
couple had no family of their own, and all their loving energy
seemed to go into nurturing the suffering youngsters in their care
whose lives had been devastated by the terrible disease.
One of Grace’s happiest memories was when Mrs Warrington told
her she was so clever that she should train as a teacher at one of
the new colleges instead of learning on the job as lots of rural
teachers did. Though it turned out the doctor’s wife had
overestimated Grace’s abilities.

The summer of Grace’s leaving cert, when she was sixteen, she’d
finally been allowed home from the hospital. Dr Warrington had
driven her to Knocknashee from Cork himself so she didn’t have to
take the train and bus alone, and like his wife, he’d told her he was
sure she’d do very well in her exams. But when the results arrived,
she’d failed so badly that Agnes was too kind to even show them to
her; she’d put the letter into the fire instead.
It was probably for the best, as Agnes said. Even if her marks
had been good enough, Grace would never have been able to go to
teacher training college in Limerick or Dublin; she’d never manage
alone, not with a twisted leg in a calliper. And though that door was
closed, a window opened. Agnes persuaded Canon Rafferty, the
chairman of the school board, to appoint Grace as her teaching
assistant. For a small wage from the Department of Education, she
could take the four- to eight-year-olds off Agnes’s hands.
Grace knew this was good of Agnes, and it was also kind of her
sister not to take a penny of her wages for her bed and board. The
polio meant she could never be married, not now that she was a
cripple, so Agnes insisted that every penny Grace earned went into a
savings account in the post office so she could pay someone to look
after her when she was left alone in the world.

Unfortunately this meant Agnes had to pay for everything out of
her one wage, and a lot of scrimping and saving went on in their
house as a result, hence the tiny scrape of butter Grace allowed
herself for her toast. At times she felt guilty for even existing.
Agnes had moved on to another topic now. ‘And as for that Tilly
O’Hare girl, walking off the bus from Tralee into the square wearing
a shirt and tie over her skirt, and her hair short like a man’s. Bad
enough she wears her dead father’s overalls around the farm, but a
shirt and tie! I don’t think she’s right in the head. Every seed, breed
and generation of the O’Hares were…peculiar. So you’d better stay
away from her, Grace.’
Grace took a bite of her toast as a way to hide her grin. She
rather wished she’d been there to see it when Tilly got off the bus
and caused such a scandal in the town. Agnes was a firm believer in
always looking respectable. Today she was wearing a long black
skirt, though almost everyone wore knee-length now, and a
buttoned-up black cardigan with a white blouse underneath. With
her fair hair set in waves, light-blue eyes and heavy tortoiseshell
glasses, she looked forbidding, but Grace assumed that was her
intention.

‘I mean,’ her sister continued, with a deep sigh, ‘that brother of
hers, Alfie, going off to Russia. In all honesty, what would take a
Christian God-fearing man to that cradle of sin? And her older sister,
Marion, shacked up with a married man above in Dublin? Did you
ever hear the likes? No shame.’
Agnes pursed her lips in such a way when she said that last bit
that Grace nearly laughed, because it put her in mind of Flossie the
tabby cat’s bum; she had to bite her lip to keep a serious face. It
was a shame, because it wasn’t as if Agnes was ugly. She would be
pretty if she only smiled a bit more.
‘So I have your word? You’ll have no more to do with her?’
Agnes’s china-blue eyes were fixed on hers.
Grace hesitated. She usually went along with whatever Agnes
said she should or shouldn’t do, or who she should or shouldn’t talk
to. But Grace was very fond of Tilly, who had written to her a lot
while she was in hospital. Those letters had been a lifeline for her.
Agnes had been far too busy with her work to write; by the time
she’d marked the books of the whole school, because she had no
assistant, the most she had time for was a card at birthdays and at
Christmas.

‘Tilly was my best friend from school, Agnes,’ she reminded her
sister carefully.
‘Maybe she was,’ said Agnes, looking very put out. ‘But that was
when you were twelve years old. You didn’t see her at all while you
were in hospital, and you’ve barely seen her in the year since you’ve
been back. It won’t be any trial to you not to see her at all.’
Grace remained silent. She hadn’t told Agnes about Tilly’s letters
so as not to sound like she was criticising her sister for not having
written more herself. And she tended not to mention the times she
and Tilly got together for a walk on the beach, because she knew
Agnes might not approve.
‘I don’t ask for much, Grace,’ said Agnes, with another deep sigh.
‘God knows you are a worry to me with your flighty ways, but I care
for you and ask for nothing in return. I don’t mind one bit having to
pay for everything in this house out of my own wages while yours go
into a savings account. And all I want in return for all my sacrifices is
a commitment to stay away from the likes of Tilly O’Hare, and if you
can’t grant me that one small request, well, ’tis a sorry state of
affairs, I must say…’

Grace shrunk inside. She knew she was a burden to Agnes. Being
so young when their parents died; then catching polio and driving
Cyril Clifford away; coming home from the hospital with her right leg
all twisted and shorter than the other, thus ensuring no man would
ever look at her, let alone marry her; failing all her exams; being too
soft on the bold children in her care because she didn’t understand
how to teach properly. How could she go against her sister, who was
only trying her best to keep her respectable, in the way a
schoolteacher had to be