My heroine was Maggie, wife of Bill Donovan, a maltster and captain of the local hurling team (not unlike hockey).
My home, almost newly built, was big and bleak. My father, aged 50, had married a girl of 18 and, to put it mildly, she was a disturbed person.
Maggie’s house, a remnant of a former age, consisted of two rooms, a living roomand a bedroom. Sitting on a stone floor next to a blazing fire, I would be enthralled as Maggie, nursing the baby, would tell tales of her younger days and her many boyfriends. Her mother, Mrs. Carey, worked for the “gentry” – we called them “planters”. The wife was a Pakenham, a forebear of the late Lord Longford. We heard, astonishingly, that these people wore pure silk underwear, which had tobe washed each day!
Once, when Maggie’s mother had to work late, she said her daughter must not leave home and she locked the door.
Said Maggie, “I guessed my mother would b a long time so I decided to escape through the window. However, my shoes were very muddy, and as my mother hidden the shoe polish, I used black lead, normally used to clean fireplaces.
Strutting through Middleton Main Street it began to rain, and as I walked, I left trails of black lead on the pavement – I was ashamed of myself”.
During World War I Maggie worked in London, in a munitions factory, probably Arsenal. Billy got the Military Cross, and another man, Cosgrove, got the Victoria Cross in the Dardanelles.
Another family were the Bennets, the main employer in the village. They lost their only child a week after joining the army to fight beside Cosgroe in the Dardanelles. Nowadays, the malting store is a block of flats, and new houses are spring ing up everywhere. My old house, sold by my nephew, is a Chinese takeaway. My niece lives in one of our old houses in the village.
Rose Lynch
23-Apr-2007
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