Malachy Returns for Christmas and Leaves Again

Malachy’s Christmas return is a short-lived promise of renewal that ends in renewed abandonment. He writes that he is coming home two days before Christmas as a new man, bringing gifts and expecting his sons to obey Angela and their religious duties; instead, he arrives late, empty-handed in any practical sense, and departs for London on Christmas Day after drinking. The children’s hoped-for reunion becomes another measure of what his absence costs them.

The promised return

A letter announces that Malachy will be home two days before Christmas. He says everything will be different, calls himself a new man, hopes the boys are good and obedient to their mother, and promises each of them something for Christmas. His language offers the family a picture of reform and parental care before his conduct can be tested against it.

Angela takes Frank to the railway station to meet him. The station’s usual animation—arrivals and departures, people waving and calling goodbye, the train moving through steam, and tracks leading toward Dublin and the world beyond—gives way to a cold, nearly midnight wait. A railway worker offers them a warm place in the signal tower, reached by a ladder at the far end of the platform. Angela climbs it with difficulty, while the promised homecoming remains uncertain.

When the train finally arrives, men with suitcases hurry from the carriages, milk cans clank onto the platform, and workers unload newspapers and magazines. Malachy is not among them. Angela suggests that he may have fallen asleep in a carriage or missed the train because the boat from Holyhead was late, but Frank tells her that his father is not coming and is drunk in England. Angela rebukes him for speaking that way about his father. Frank falls silent, keeping to himself the comparison he makes between Malachy and the signal-tower worker, who had offered sandwiches and cocoa.

Arrival without repair

Malachy appears at the house the next day with his upper teeth missing and a bruise beneath his left eye. He blames the rough Irish Sea, saying his teeth fell out when he leaned over the side of the boat. Angela asks whether drink or a fight was really responsible; he denies it. The visible injuries make the homecoming a stark contrast to the letter’s claim that he is a new man, while his explanation leaves the cause unresolved.

When Michael reminds him that he promised the children something, Malachy produces a box of chocolates from his suitcase and hands it to Angela. She opens it to show that half the chocolates are already gone. Rather than throw the gift away, she closes the box and puts it on the mantelpiece, saying they will have chocolates after Christmas dinner the next day. The small remnant of the promised treat is preserved as a family pleasure, even as its incompleteness exposes how little the return has delivered.

Angela asks whether Malachy has brought money. He says times are hard and jobs scarce. She points out that there is a war on and work is plentiful in England, then accuses him of drinking the money. Frank and his brothers repeat the accusation until they are shouting; Alphie begins to cry. Malachy answers by asking for respect for their father, but the appeal to authority cannot answer the charge that he has again failed to bring wages home.

Drink and the Christmas departure

Malachy puts on his cap, saying that he has to see a man. Angela tells him to go but warns him not to return drunk, singing “Roddy McCorley” or anything else. He does come back drunk, though quietly, and passes out on the floor beside Angela’s bed. The promised new beginning has already given way to a familiar domestic pattern: he returns to the house, but not as a dependable provider or a sober companion.

The family’s Christmas dinner is possible because Angela has received a food voucher from the St. Vincent de Paul Society. It consists of sheep’s head, cabbage, floury white potatoes, and cider. Malachy says he is not hungry and will have tea; Angela urges him to eat because it is Christmas. He again declines the meal, then says that if no one else wants them he will eat the sheep’s eyes, claiming they are nourishing. The boys react with disgust as he washes them down with tea and smokes the rest of his Wild Woodbine cigarette.

After eating, Malachy puts on his cap and goes upstairs for his suitcase. Angela asks where he is going. He says London. She stresses the day—Christmas, the day of Our Lord—but he replies that it is the best day to travel, because people in motor cars will give a workingman a lift to Dublin and think of the hard times of the Holy Family. His religious comparison recasts his departure as a practical journey, even as he leaves his family on the day meant to gather them together.

As the children eat their chocolates, Malachy watches them, lifts the latch, walks out, and shuts the door. The closing gesture completes the visit without reconciliation or provision: the children keep the gift, but their father is gone again.

Significance of the episode

The sequence turns on the gap between Malachy’s letter and the household’s experience. His promise of a changed life briefly makes a homecoming imaginable; the missed train prolongs that hope, and his eventual arrival supplies only an explanation for his injuries, a partly eaten gift, and no money. The scene’s reversals are material as well as emotional: an anticipated family reunion becomes a night of waiting, and a promised Christmas present becomes a box with half its contents missing.

The episode also sets Malachy’s repeated drinking against the family’s immediate needs. Angela must rely on charitable food assistance for Christmas dinner, while the children confront their father over the money they believe he has drunk. His departure for London follows almost at once, leaving Angela and the boys to manage without the wages and dependable presence implied by his letter. The family’s economic hardship is not separate from the broken promise; it is what makes that promise matter.

The station, the suitcase, the mantelpiece, and the door mark the visit’s progression. The station offers routes outward toward Dublin and beyond, but Malachy’s arrival does not bring the family a way out of poverty. The suitcase carries a depleted gift and then carries him away again; the chocolates remain on the mantelpiece and are finally eaten by the children as he watches. His departure closes the episode with a visible separation, repeating the instability that the announcement of his return had seemed to interrupt.