A Ration Book Victory
1877. Dressed in her Sunday best, five-year-old Philomena (Queenie) Dooley attends church with her family in Kinsale, Ireland. Shunned as ‘tinkers’, they sit at the back, but a prosperous farmer’s boy catches her eye. She and Patrick Mahon become friends “for ever”. This is before his sister Nora comes between them, and Queenie marries Fergus Brogan instead.
1945. Queenie is now a grandmother. She is bartering ration book ‘points’ for eggs in the street market when she learns that Father Mahon has collapsed and is in hospital. Mattie McCarthy, née Brogan, has her suspicions about Granny and Father Mahon. Though he’s in the care of doctors, Queenie has faith in ‘spirits’.
Jo Sweete, the second Brogan girl, bows her head in church, praying to be blessed with children as her sisters have been. Ida and Pearl are fighting. Billy knows that Aunt Pearl is his ‘real mother’. Pearl’s husband, a rich gangster, is a bad influence. Ida and Jeremiah are discussing their growing removals business, contemplating a move to East Ham, when a V-2 shatters the entire street. Very soon, however, the war is over and the Brogan girls celebrate VE Day in style in front of Buckingham Palace.
These are just a few snippets from the first part of the ‘story’, which is really a sprawling saga with a profusion of characters and a thicket of sub-plots: very much a soap opera. The easy dialogue and the colloquial style bring the ‘good ole’ days’ of the war era to life. The conclusion of the war marks the end of the fearful waiting for husbands to come home and the joy and release of VE Day, which vividly comes across. Book 8 in the ‘Ration Book’ series.
