Not so their mother. ‘Who in God’s name would marry a woman who barely knows how to thread a needle?’ she demanded, giving Chrissie a cuff across the head so hard that it knocked her from the stool. Chrissie’s face burned but her eyes remained dry. She said not a word to her mother, but once she’d left the room she whispered to her sisters, ‘Am I worried? I don’t think so. There are more ways of satisfying a man than sewing a button on his shirt.’
‘Chrissie,’ Rosie cried shocked. ‘Take care, Mammy would take the strap to you if she heard such talk.’
‘That’s why I’m not telling her,’ Chrissie said, with a defiant toss of her head and the three girls giggled together.
But, although Rosie had help with the basic sewing, she embroidered the night gowns and pillowslips by herself, for she had a knack for it and eventually a week later, with her wedding only days away, she said with satisfaction, ‘No-one could have a better bottom drawer than me.’
Chrissie had watched Rosie finish the last rosebud on the neck of the cambric gown, and snip off the thread and said, ‘Aye, it’s a fine nightdress right enough. And now, with all the work you’ve done on it, don’t you let Danny tear it from your back. Tell him to go slow.’
‘Chrissie!’
Chrissie paled instantly. She’d not heard her mother come into the room and now she watched her approach with dread. The first slap snapped her neck back, but the second on the other cheek with the back of the hand, scored a line down Chrissie’s cheek from Minnie’s rings. ‘We’ll have no more of that sort of dirty talk. You can just be thankful your father is out.’
Chrissie’s face with the scarlet handprint on one cheek and the other oozing blood from the deep graze had wiped the smiles from Rosie and Geraldine’s faces. Rosie wondered if she should say something – intervene, but in the past when she had tried that, it had only made things worse.
She wouldn’t risk it and waited till her mother left the room again before reaching for Chrissie’s hand. ‘I don’t care,’ Chrissie said defiantly as tears she wouldn’t let fall, glistened in her eyes. ‘I hate her! She’s a cow.’
‘Hush, oh hush,’ Rosie said putting her arms around her distraught sister. ‘Never say things like that, Chrissie. Think them if you must, but never say them. Mammy would kill you if she heard. But I’ll tell you what,’ she added, hoping to turn the subject from their mother, ‘Danny can remove the nightdress in any way he chooses and if he’s too slow, I’ll help him, so I will.’
Chrissie’s smile was tremulous, but it was at least a smile and both Rosie and Geraldine were glad to see it. Rosie gave her sister another hug and returned to her seat before her mother should come in
Connie had offered Rosie the loan of her wedding dress, to save the young couple money and when Rosie had seen it, shimmering satin with an overdress of lace and a large train, she felt her eyes fill with tears at her generosity. A neighbour woman ran up dresses of white satin for Rosie and Danny’s sisters on her treadle sewing machine and they were decorated by Sarah and Elizabeth with beads and little pink and blue rosebuds.
Then, Minnie announced she was going to Dublin to buy clothes for Seamus and Dermot. ‘The trousers on the suit your father wears for Mass have worn thin. They’re always shining on the knees and don’t hold the crease for five minutes and the jacket is downright shabby.’
Rosie knew she was right, but she worried at the expense of it, what with them already paying out for the reception although it was being held at Danny’s house as it was bigger ‘Oh Mammy, Daddy will be fine in what he has,’ she protested. ‘Don’t be spending money like this.’
‘Och, sure aren’t you the first to be married?’ Minnie said and a rare smile touched her lips for a moment. ‘We’ll do the job properly or not at all.’
‘But Dermot, Mammy. He’s just a wee boy. What does he need?’
‘I want him in a sailor suit,’ Minnie said. ‘In the paper it said they were the talk of the place in England. Won’t he look a little dote in one. Of course you’d get nothing like that in this town, but I’m sure to find something in the fine shops in Dublin.’
Rosie knew then why her mother was making the trip. It wasn’t for her father’s suit at all. The material could have been bought at the drapers’ in the town and run up by a seamstress the way it was always done, but, Dermot had to be dressed as a wee sailor on her wedding day. She said nothing, she had no wish to argue with her mother now and anyway there was little point. Her mother was blind and deaf to reason where the child was concerned.
Dermot didn’t care whether he had a sailor suit or not. He didn’t even want to go and see his Rosie marry a man who would be taking her away and he said so forcibly and shed so many and such bitter tears that Rosie felt immensely sorry for him. So little had been denied Dermot in his young life that he thought he just had to say that he didn’t want Rosie to go and she wouldn’t. It was a shock for him to realise that Rosie was going ahead with her plans, regardless of what he thought. ‘Don’t you love me any more? he asked plaintively.
‘Dermot, Of course I love you. I’ll always love you.’
‘Not as much as you love Danny Walsh.’
‘I love you differently,’ Rosie corrected. ‘It’s all part of growing up, getting married and leaving home. Nearly everyone does in the end and I’ll not be far away. You can come and visit as often as you are let.’
Dermot scrubbed at his wet cheeks with the sleeve of his jersey. ‘It won’t be the same.’
Rosie, moved by the sadness in Dermot’s face bent down and put her arms about him. ‘I know it won’t and I can’t do anything to make that better, but I want you to remember something always.’
‘What?’
‘That you are very, very special to me. My own wee brother and wherever I am you will always hold part of my heart.’
Dermot was only slightly mollified by Rosie’s words, but he did at least begin to see that whatever he did or said, would change nothing and the days rolled by one into another.
The day before the wedding, Rosie felt herself looking around her home, seeing her room, her sisters, her parents and little distressed Dermot in a new light, knowing soon she was leaving them behind her. She loved Danny and oh without a doubt she longed to be with him, longed to be his wife, longed for fulfilment and to be loved with intensity, but it was a big step nonetheless, whereas for Danny, little was changing. He’d have a wife certainly, but he would still be living at his own house and with his family still around him. It wouldn’t be the same wrench for him at all.
It wasn’t that Rosie disliked Danny’s parents or siblings and they’d gone out of their way to make her welcome in their home. It was just that she was nervous of leaving. Her home had never been a bed of roses and since Dermot’s birth, it had been liberally strewn with thorns, but it had been familiar and she knew she would miss her sisters greatly.
Minnie didn’t help her daughter’s unease at all, when she spoke to her the night before the wedding. She chose to talk to her after her sisters and Dermot had made their way to bed and Seamus was doing one last round of the farm before turning in. ‘There are things about marriage that women don’t talk about,’ she began.
There had been no lead up to the conversation. Rosie had stared at her mother slightly appalled and a little embarrassed. It was too late for this type of discussion.
Evidently, Minnie didn’t realise this, for she went on. ‘You must let your man do as he pleases once you are married. It’s what you’ll promise to do before the priest and congregation tomorrow. You don’t have to enjoy what he does, most women don’t, but you must endure it. He may hurt you at first, this fine husband of