The Grace Girls

1. Chapter 1
   
2. Chapter 2
   
3. Chapter 3
   
4. Chapter 4
   
5. Chapter 5
   
6. Chapter 6
   
7. Chapter 7
   
8. Chapter 8
   
9. Chapter 9
   
10. Chapter 10
    
11. Chapter 11
    
12. Chapter 12
    
13. Chapter 13
    
14. Chapter 14
    
15. Chapter 15
    
16. Chapter 16
    
17. Chapter 17
    
18. Chapter 18
    
19. Chapter 19
    
20. Chapter 20
    
21. Chapter 21
    
22. Chapter 22
    
23. Chapter 23
    
24. Chapter 24
    
25. Chapter 25
    
26. Chapter 26
    
27. Chapter 27
    
28. Chapter 28
    
29. Chapter 29
    
30. Chapter 30
    
31. Chapter 31
    
32. Chapter 32
    
33. Chapter 33
    
34. Chapter 34
    
35. Chapter 35
    
36. Chapter 36
    
37. Chapter 37
    
38. Chapter 38
    
39. Chapter 39
    
40. Chapter 40
    
41. Chapter 41
    
42. Chapter 42
    
43. Chapter 43
    
44. Chapter 44
    
45. Chapter 45
    
46. Chapter 46
    
47. Chapter 47
    
48. Chapter 48
    
49. Chapter 49
    
50. Chapter 50
    
51. Chapter 51
    
52. Chapter 52
    
53. Chapter 53
    
54. Chapter 54
    
55. Chapter 55
    
56. Chapter 56
    
57. Chapter 57
    
58. Chapter 58
    
59. Chapter 59
    
60. Chapter 60
    
61. Chapter 61
    
62. Chapter 62
    
63. Chapter 63
    
64. Chapter 64
    
65. Chapter 65
    
66. Chapter 66
    
67. Chapter 67
    
68. Chapter 68
    
69. Chapter 69
    
70. Chapter 70
    
71. Chapter 71
    

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names,

characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the

author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Ebook Published 2012

by Poolbeg Press Ltd

123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle

Dublin 13, Ireland

E-mail: [email protected]

© Geraldine O’Neill 2005

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Typesetting, layout, design, ebook © Poolbeg Press Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781781990858

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.poolbeg.com

About the Author

Geraldine O’Neill grew up in Lanarkshire, Scotland. She now lives in County Offaly with her husband Michael Brosnahan, and teaches in the local National School. She has two adult children, Christopher and Clare

Acknowledgements

I would like to give a big thanks to Paula, Kieran and Gaye and all the staff at Poolbeg for being so supportive and enthusiastic about my work.

Thanks to my agent, Sugra Zaman, of Watson, Little Ltd., London for all her guidance and advice and a special thanks to Mandy Little who worked admirably with me and
The Grace Girls
in Sugra’s absence.

A warm thanks to all my Scottish friends who help
ed with the research for
The Grace Girls,
including my nephew Nicky Mallaghan and Bob and Helen Orr, and also to my father who happily guided me through the dance-halls of the fifties.

Thanks also to my old teaching friend and fellow polio-survivor, Margaret Lafferty, for enlightening me about the ‘lacquer-bug’!

I’d also like to express gratitude to my Swanwick friend, renowned Scottish writer, Margaret Thompson Davis, who gave me great encouragement in the days before I was published.

Thanks to Patricia Dunne for accompanying me to Cavan amidst the ice and snow and for partnering me on the dance floor.

Thanks as always to Chris and Clare and to Mike for his unfailing love and support.

A final acknowledgement to all the polio survivors out there, especially those who did not escape as lightly as I did.

Also by Geraldine O’Neill

Tara Flynn

Tara’s Fortune

Aisling Gayle

This book is dedicated with love to

my father and mother, Teddy and Be-Be O’Neill,

who always encouraged me to

dance to my own music.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,

Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Let him step to the music that he hears,

However measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau

Chapter 1

Scotland, November 1955

It was raining. A thick, sleety sort of rain that could easily turn into snow. The first snow this winter. It had been cold enough for it the last few days, Heather Grace thought hopefully, having always retained a childish pleasure in snow. And it wouldn’t be that unusual – she often remembered walking to school in a late-November snow. But it wouldn’t be walking to school in the snow now, or catching the bus into the office in Wishaw. From now on it would be walking up to the old Victorian station to catch the train into Glasgow. Right into the middle of the city.

She sat sideways on the stool in front of the kidney-shaped, walnut dressing-table, in the bedroom she shared with her younger sister, Kirsty – her brown eyes gazing out into the dark, drizzly evening, and over the shadowy, square back gardens of her neighbours. But these were not gardens where frivolous flowers grew, as most of the men grew only the earnest potatoes and carrots, turnips and cabbages they had been reared with back in Ireland.

There were a few men like her father who grew roses or hydrangea bushes under the front windows, or straight lines of wallflowers or marigolds at either of the path leading to the front door of the house. Apart from those odd floral glimpses of colour in the summer, most of the houses in the mining village remained stoically grey or stony beige.

There was a slight knuckle-tap on the bedroom door, then Sophie Grace came in carrying a plain pink mug in one hand, and a china mug decorated with freesias and the word
Mother
in gold handwriting in the other. A short while before she had changed her knitted working jumper for a soft grey fitted cardigan with pearls, which showed off the trim figure that the bubbly Kirsty had inherited. Unlike her petite blonde sister, Heather had taken her mother’s height, but her Irish father’s stocky, more athletic build and his almost black, glossy hair.

‘I have the dinner nearly ready. We’ll have it the minute your father and Kirsty get in,’ Sophie announced, in her local Lanarkshire accent. Unlike her Irish-spoken husband who had come over from Ballygrace in County Offaly in his twenties, Sophie was more Scottish, having been born in Motherwell to an Irish father and Scottish mother. Her allegiance at times leaned more towards her birth country and, tellingly, she had picked traditional Scottish names for her daughters, unlike her in-laws who came down very firmly on the more Irish side. ‘What time did you say your film started?’

‘Twenty past seven,’ Heather said. ‘Thanks for hurryin
g everything up on account of me.’

‘Well,’ her mother said, smiling fondly at her, ‘it’s not often that you go out on a Thursday night so I suppose we can make a wee bit of an effort for you.’

‘I was just weighing up all this about Glasgow . . .’

‘Are you having any second thoughts?’ Sophie asked gently, jostling for a space on the busy dressing-table for the pink mug. She moved a small, navy glass bottle of Avon perfume and the turquoise plastic basket that held the hair-rollers and pins.

‘Nope.’ Heather smiled, catching her mother’s eye through the mirror. She reached over to the transistor radio on her bedside cabinet, to turn down Connie Francis. ‘I think . . . I’m definitely going to take it.’ She put the last spiky roller in her long dark hair, and deftly stuck a small plastic pin through it to secure it. ‘I’m going to hand my notice in at the office in the morning.’

Sophie patted her daughter’s shoulder then sat down on the end of Kirsty’s single bed.

‘As your father and I told you, hen, it’s your own decisi
on. We’re very proud of you getting such an important job – you’ve done well for yourself.’

Heather took a sip of the hot tea, enjoying the chance to talk things out with her mother on her own. ‘I’m really excited about it in one way, but if I was to tell the truth . . . I suppose I’m a wee bit nervous about it as well.’ Her newly plucked dark brows creased. ‘It’ll feel funny travelling all the way into Glasgow on the train every day,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but to be honest, I can’t stick the thought of snooty Mrs Anderson being my boss for ever and going on the same bus to the same office for the rest of my life.’

‘A lot of people do . . .’ Sophie said thoughtfully, ‘and
you’re still only nineteen.’ She took a mouthful of her tea.

‘I
know
.’ Heather swung around on the stool to face her mother. ‘But it’s too good a chance to miss – a job in a
big
office in Glasgow. It’s a real step up for me, and if I don’t take the chance of it now, I might never get it again.’

Sophie nodded her head. ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say.’

‘My Auntie Mona wasn’t exactly enthusiastic when I showed her the letter last night, was she?’ Heather said, rolling her eyes. ‘Talk about doom and disaster.’ She gave a giggle now. ‘You’d think I was going to Sodom and Gomorrah the way she was goin’ on, instead of Glasgow.’

Sophie smiled now. ‘Och, don’t pay any heed to what she says. If I listened to everything your Auntie Mona says, I’d never put my nose outside the door. She’d have me tied to the sewing machine and if I ran out of work, she’d have me down on my knees scrubbing and cleaning all day. Then when my own house was spotless she’d expect me over in the chapel to start scrubbing there as well, or maybe polishing the brass on the altar.’

‘She doesn’t half go on when she gets the bit between h
er teeth, does she?’ Heather said tutting. ‘And she expe
cts
every­body
in our family to be right holy-willies just because she’s the priest’s housekeeper. She’d have us at early Mass every weekday before work if she had her way.’

‘Och, she doesn’t mean any harm. It’s the way she was brought up in Galway with her uncle a priest and her auntie a nun. She feels she’s got to keep up the family’s standards even though she hasn’t seen some of them for years.’ Sophie rolled her eyes now, looking exactly like an older version of her daughter. ‘She’s nearly worse about housekeeping than she is about religion. I was in trouble with her again this afternoon for forgetting to bring in the washing. She’d warned me several times that there was rain forecast, and there I was, sitting down and all relaxed listening to
The Afternoon Play
on the wireless when she landed at the back door carrying the basket and the washing, telling me how she’d saved it from getting a real soaking. You should have seen her face when she realised I was sitting down doing nothing.’