Read Online 1949 by Morgan Llywelyn - Free Book Online Page A

once remarked to Felicity Rowe-Howell as they stood at their easels in art class, mixing flesh tones on their palettes, “is some variation of brown. Creamy-beige or pinky-beige or yellow-beige or bronze or mahogany or ebony. Considered objectively, there’s not much difference between any of us.”
    Fliss had laughed. “Try and tell that to my father. He believes we English are vastly superior.”
    Ursula tensed imperceptibly. “Do you agree with him?”
    â€œI never really thought about it,” said Fliss, putting down her brush. “Some of us are downright ratty. My brothers view women as little more than an exotic form of masturbation.”
    Ursula had struggled to conceal her shock, but in time she grew accustomed to Fliss’s risqué remarks. Some of the European girls at Surval were much more explicit.
    They unwittingly had made Ursula aware of the childlike innocence of the Irish.
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    As she emerged from the train station in Dublin, Ursula raised one gloved hand to shade her eyes from the spring sunshine. There was none. The air smelt of recent rain and rain to come.
    She stood still for a moment, feeling Ireland seep back into her pores. An Ireland lacking the luxuries Europeans took for granted and many of the basic amenities as well. Ireland with its fixed ideas about good and evil, Celt and Saxon, Catholic and Protestant. Republican and Free Stater.
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    A rank of taxicabs was waiting at the curb. Ursula signaled to the lead driver. “Number sixteen, Middle Gardiner Street,” she directed.
    â€œWould you not walk from here?” the man asked in surprise. “You’d have to carry them suitcases but it would cost ye nuthin’.”
    Ursula smiled. “I prefer to take a cab, thank you. And will you please go the long way ’round?”
    â€œHow long, miss?”
    â€œWest along the quays as far as Smithfield Market, then back to Parnell Square, then over to Middle Gardiner Street.”
    He said dubiously, “Do you know where you’re going at all?”
    â€œI do know,” she assured him.
    â€œIt’ll cost ye,” he warned.
    As they drove through the familiar streets north of the Liffey, Ursula recalled the city sounds of her childhood. Iron-shod hooves ringing on cobblestones as carriages and jaunting cars and heavily laden drays competed for space. Bicycles hissing along. Tram bells clanging. Small boys shouting raucously, drunks bellowing as they emerged from pubs, neighborhood women calling to one another from open doorways.
    Street traders crying, “Coal blocks!” “Dublin Bay herrins!” “Five oranges for tuppence!” “Rags bones and bottles collected!” Organ-grinders with hurdy-gurdys. Veterans of the Great War busking on corners, playing fiddles and tin whistles or singing the ballads of an earlier age.
    Now, Ursula observed, the horse-drawn vehicles were slowly giving way to automobiles. Otherwise it appeared to be the same northside Dublin she had always known. Pungent and rowdy and idiosyncratic. A place where many people lived and died impoverished; where tuberculosis and enterids and typhus cast long shadows. How strange that it had changed so little, when she had changed so much!
    The postwar era was a time of grinding poverty for Dublin’s lower classes. Infant mortality was endemic. The poor had no sanitation; they fetched their water from communal outdoor taps and survived on little more than cabbage and potatoes, or bread with a bit of dripping. The pawnbroker was almost a member of the family. Men’s suits were pawned on Monday and reclaimed in time for Mass the following Sunday.
    Short-term survival, not long-term economic recovery, was the preoccupation of the Free State government. During the Civil War roads and bridges had been destroyed and numerous buildings burnt, doing great damage to the infrastructure of the country. Much of Dublin waited to be rebuilt.