Ante Room Part III

Miss Cunningham, the nurse keeps on being friendly with Reggie. Agnes however is now torn between her feelings for Vincent and her love for her sister. He tells Agnes that he loves her..and they are both tormented by their love for each other. Divorce in a Victorian Catholic family is out of the question, and even if it were not a Catholic family, as her brother in law, Vincent could not marry Agnes. Miss Cunningham hints to Reggie that she would take care of him, if his mother dies and that his mother is ill and in pain and she is struggling to stay alive for his sake, which is not fair to her. Danny, her husband is hurt as he can see that Teresa loves Reggie much more than she ever loved him. Then Reggie and Miss Cunningham announce that they are getting married. Agnes is rather shocked, but her doctor admirer tells her that Miss Cunningham,as a nurse is well aware of Reggie's condition and that she is willing to look after him and have a sexless marriage.. and he will be content with her, if his mother dies. He points out to Agnes that although she does not much like Miss Cunningham, she is not a bad person and she's a good nurse. She is not well off and its understandable that she should be ready to make a marriage with him, with its various limitations so that she will have a comfortable home.. Agnes can see that he's right and that Reggie will be cared for and his mother will be able to die in peace knowing that her son will be all right.

The Ante Room Part II

Agnes is lovely and intelligent and has devoted herself to looking after her mother and the house. Her feelings for Vincent, her brother in law, she keeps secret. She loves her sister Marie Rose, and is surprised when Marie Rose suddenly arrives at the house, without her husband. She has come to see her mother and support her, while she is seeing the doctors. Marie Rose is rather silly and flighty but she is good natured and loves Agnes very much. She tells her sister that she and VIncent are not getting on and she left him behind because she does not want to have him around her. Agnes knows that Marie Rose is silly, rather snobbish and not very clever, but she still loves her and is upset to hear that her marriage is not working out. Reggie is very frightened that his mother is going to die, and he refuses to believe it. He depends on her very much to give his life some purpose and to show him affection. He is surprised when the nurse who is looking after his mother begins to show him a little kindness, trying to calm him down about the probablity that Teresa will die soon. She is from a modest background and like governesses, she knows that the families she works for dont see her as a lady and look down on her. Agnes and Marie Rose are not all that nice to her... and begin to wonder why she is being friendly with Reggie. The famous doctor arrives to examine Teresa... and then to Marie Rose's amazement her husband suddenly turns up at the Mulqueen house. She does not want to share her room with him and cries on Agnes' shoulder.

Ante Room Part I

This is another of Kate O'Brien's novels, which is related to her first novel "Without my Cloak". Teresa Mulqueen is the daughter of John Considine, and she did not make a grand marriage unlike her sisters. Her husband was given a job in the family firm, but he was never very intelligent or good at the job. Teresa had several children, and her favourite, her eldest son, Reggie, has been rakish and contracted a sexually transmitted disease which is slowly killing him. Teresa has cancer and she's very ill. A famous surgeon from England is coming to see her, to advise on whether another operation would help her or if she could stand it. She wants to try and live a bit longer, to look after Reggie but she is getting weaker. The Mulqueen house is being run by Agnes, her daughter who is single and very beautiful. Agnes is admired by the local doctor but she has been in love for some time with Vincent, the husband of her younger sister Marie Rose.

Pray for the Wanderer Part II

Matt Costello has had some success with his plays in London and the US. He feels he needs a break from London because he has been involved for some time with a married English actress who does not want to get a divorce. He is very fond of his brother, Will who has a farm near Mellick, and his wife Una is a very sweet good natured woman. He finds it hard to be apart from his mistress but it seems as if their affair is doomed. However he does not like the new Ireland that has come along since the separation from England. As a writer, he finds the censorship and narrowness of mind very depressing. He feels that it destroys art, and that apart from literature, Ireland has no great art unlike other Catholic countries. He supported the fight for Irish independence but is dismayed by what he sees the country has become. (Its believed that this novel was written to hit back at Irish censorship as it came soon after Mary Lavelle, Kate's "Spanish" novel was banned in Ireland. Largely because of its having a lesbian character and the heroine engaging in an adulterous relationship). Una's sister Nell is a supporter of De Valera and a devout Catholic, and although she is attractive and intelligent, he finds himself at odds with her... Una had hoped that he and Nell might get along as Nell is a teacher and well read, but they dont. Nell lives with her aunt who is also a devout and narrow minded Catholic, and her cousin Tom lives with them. He is more open minded and Matt learns that years ago, Tom and Nell were engaged. As cousins they had to get a dispensation from Rome to marry, but in that time, Nell found out that Tom had had an affair with a shop girl, who had his child. He has supported the child and remained in touch with the girl, and she later married a man of her own class, but Nell becomes positively hysterical that Tom was thinking of marrying HER when he had seduced a young woman and made her pregnant.

Pray for the Wanderer by Kate O' Brien

This was one of Kate's mid life novels and it is set in Ireland in the 1930s, the age of De Valera. Kate was not a radical but she was liberal minded and when she lived in Spain she sympathised with the Spanish republic and disapproved of the conservative faction who ruled Spain. She lived in Ireland for some time as an adult but in her later years she moved to England and lived there till she died. Her novels were less popular and she was not well off but she preferred England to the conservative little state that Ireland had become after it gained independence. She had been brought up a Catholic but as a young woman she began to lose her faith. Probably some of this was to do with her realising that she was a lesbian which was forbidden by the Church. However she thought of herself as a European and she regarded Catholicism as part of the wider European tradition and did not entirely reject it. She found Irish Catholicism narrow and depressing and unintellectual. Her hero in Pray for the Wanderer is an Irish playwright - Matt Costello -who lives in London and he comes home for a short holiday to see his brother and his brother's family. More will follow.

Without my Cloak, Part V

Christina tells him that she is settling into New York life and when he tells her he still loves her and wants her to come home and marry him, she refuses. She knows that their class differences will make it impossible for her to become part of his family. Denis is confused. He wants to rescue her and doesnt know why she is so reluctant to accept his offer of marriage. Then she tells him that she has had an offer of marriage from someone in New York and she's going to marry him. Denis doesn't believe her, at first and thinks that she is making it up to save him from having to marry her and take her back to Ireland. But when he meets her employer, he can see that the man, who is quite a bit older than Christina, does love her and perhaps she will be happy with him. She seems so determined to stay in New York, and he knows that she's right about the problems of her marrying into the wealthy Considines. Sadly, he goes back home. He is now close to his 21st birthday and his father is trying to cheer him up by giving him generous presents and a promotion in his job. He is pleased in one way but then suddenly he ralises that he's being trapped, and that he does not want to be trapped. He decides to walk out on the family, and disappears for a day. His father is badly shaken. Then Denis returns towards the end of the day and meets Anna Hennessy, the daughter of a wealthy Catholic businessman, who is intelligent and attractive. She and he start to talk and he decides that he will stay in Mellick and try to pursue a relationship with her. She is more suitable to marry him than Christina was, and he finds himself falling for her. Im not so keen on this ending as it seems rather callous of Denis to leave Christina, whom he claimed to love, in New York...and he seems to rush into this new relationship with Anna.

Without my Cloak Part IV

Denis is drawn towards Christina, but knows his family would be horrified at the bare idea of his being friendly with a peasant girl who is illegitimate and the child of a servant. But within a short time, he and she become lovers. He feels like he is deeply in love with her and doesn't know what to do. Then he goes to meet her, one evening and she does not turn up. He finds that his uncle Tom, who is parish priest of the area covering the river, was walking late one night near his home and heard the two young lovers talking. He goes to Christina's aunt and tells her that they must send Christina away to prevent the 2 young people from falling into sin. Her aunt does not care much for her niece, and is willing to push her into going abroad, especially as Fr Tom is willing to pay for her to go away. Denis is furious when he discovers that Christina, who feared going to a big city, has been forced to go-. She has relatives in New York and Fr Tom has paid for her to go there, and given her some money.. Denis angrily tells his uncle and relatives that he and Christina were lovers and they are even more horrified. He says that he is going to America to find her. They know they cant stop him.. but are scandalised that he has been having sex with a girl and that she is a servant's child. Denis sails for America and when he gets to New York, he finds that Christina's aunt who lived there with an abusive husband has moved away from the city and noone knows where she is. So Christina had noone to give her a home when she arrived. He spends weeks searching the waterfront and the poor areas to see if she has found some work and a place to live there. When he has almost given up hope, he finds her one day. She has a job in a small diner and the owner is not unkind to her, but she has to work very hard.