Frank begins work as a telegram boy

Frank begins work as a telegram boy at fourteen, entering paid employment after a childhood in which he has already helped care for younger brothers and earned money through other people’s work. The post-office job gives him his first wages and a new name for himself: a workingman. Yet it is not a secure escape from poverty. As a temporary boy he has less pay and fewer protections than permanent staff, and the money he earns must serve both immediate family needs and his hope of leaving Limerick for America.

Getting the Job

Aunt Aggie tells Frank that he has the job and should return on Monday. His clothes, however, are so worn and poorly washed that she considers them an embarrassment to the family. She takes him to Roche’s Stores and buys a shirt, a gansey, short pants, stockings, and discounted summer shoes. She also gives him two shillings for tea and a bun on his birthday. Frank is moved by the contradiction: he resents Aunt Aggie’s manner, yet she spends money on the clothes he needs to begin work. At Arthur’s Quay, he pauses by the River Shannon so that others will not see him cry on the day he turns fourteen.

On Monday, Frank washes his face and uses water and spit to flatten his hair. The Abbot jokes about his smart new clothes, and the post-office staff and other telegram boys tease him too. The new outfit is not simply a change in appearance: it signals his entry into a workplace where he will be judged before he has delivered a single message. Frank is told to wait at the end of the bench until his turn to go out.

Temporary Work and Its Rules

The post office distinguishes sharply between permanent and temporary telegram boys. Permanent employees have uniforms, waterproof capes, two weeks of annual holiday, and the option of taking further examinations to become postmen or clerks. The clerk’s position offers indoor work selling stamps and money orders. These are described as steady, pensionable, and respectable jobs. Temporary boys, by contrast, cannot remain in the position past sixteen; they have no uniform or holidays, receive less pay, and risk dismissal after a single day’s illness. They must provide their own protection from bad weather.

Frank is issued a black leather belt and pouch, but bicycle shortages mean that his first deliveries will be on foot. He is instructed to take the farthest address first and work back, delivering six telegrams without wasting time. He is warned against stopping at pubs, betting shops, home, or chapels, and told to keep working even in the rain. The rules make the job a test of endurance and obedience as much as a source of wages: the temporary worker is expected to deliver promptly, with little allowance for rest or personal need.

One of Frank’s first deliveries is addressed to Mrs. Clohessy at Arthur’s Quay, where Paddy’s mother recognizes him after he has grown. The route brings the formal work of the post office into contact with people and places from his earlier life. From the start, the job is both an official duty and an extension of his movement through Limerick’s streets and neighborhoods.

Wages, Family, and the Meaning of Work

At the end of his first week, Mrs. O’Connell gives Frank a pound—his first wages. He walks along O’Connell Street, imagining that passersby will recognize him as a workingman with money in his pocket. They do not. The scene measures the distance between having earned a wage and being acknowledged as an adult: Frank feels changed, although the crowd sees only another person going home from work.

His first plans for the pound are divided between pleasure and the future. He imagines a meal and a film at the Savoy, where he could sit downstairs rather than in the cheaper seats at the Lyric Cinema. But when his younger brother Michael asks for food and somewhere to stay, Frank takes him for fish and chips, lemonade, a film, chocolate, tea, and buns. Michael talks about going to America to sing and dance, and Frank begins thinking again about saving for his own passage. He concludes that he must put away part of his weekly pay if he is ever to leave Limerick.

The pressure to save exists alongside the household’s immediate need for food. When Frank’s father loses his job after Angela complains at the factory gate, he blames her for giving the employers an excuse to dismiss him. Earlier, while the family is walking through Brooklyn, Angela obtains credit at an Italian grocery by promising to pay later, and the shopkeeper extends food because he trusts her and sees her children. The family eats eggs, toast, and jam after the long walk, then reuses the twins’ washed diapers. These episodes show the fragile material conditions against which Frank’s wages acquire their value: paid work offers a resource, but not a reliable guarantee against hunger or insecurity.

Frank’s experience of work also grows out of earlier, unpaid and low-paid responsibilities. When his mother is in bed and the twins are hungry, he and Malachy try to feed them from what the family has, including bread softened in sour milk. When he helps his uncle distribute newspapers, he carries eight papers under each arm through the rain and collects customers’ money while his uncle keeps the tips. Later, on John Hannon’s coal deliveries, Frank helps move bags from the float to houses. Hannon’s sixteen deliveries make the strain of the work visible: bags must sometimes be carried down long backyards, and a handcart is unaffordable at two weeks’ wages. Hannon urges Frank to stay in school and imagine a future beyond Limerick. The telegram job formalizes a pattern already established in Frank’s life, in which a child’s labor is drawn into the family’s effort to get by.

Routes, Risk, and the Wider City

The job takes Frank beyond the post-office bench and into a city sharply divided by work, wealth, and status. On some deliveries he encounters clerks and maids who accept telegrams without thanking him; on others he travels to large houses set behind gates and long drives. Priests and nuns also receive messages, but Frank observes that their households employ maids and that a tip is unlikely. The work gives him a moving vantage point from which to notice who lives behind walls, who serves them, and who must carry messages between them.

That vantage point is not free of danger or indignity. To earn extra money, Frank and his companions later write threatening letters for people seeking to collect debts. He earns enough in two days to put eight pounds toward his passage to America, while his mother believes the improved supper comes from ordinary tips. Frank recognizes that she would be distressed if she knew how he had raised the money. The telegram boy’s work thus becomes entangled with a shadow economy: the bicycle and delivery routes that make him useful also allow him to circulate through the city and pursue income beyond his official wages.

The post-office job is a beginning, not a final destination. Frank’s first pound briefly makes him feel that he belongs among working people, but his early calculation is already directed toward departure. By his nineteenth birthday he is still saving for America. When his employer, Mrs. Finucane, dies, he takes money from her purse and trunk and removes her ledger; he destroys the ledger by throwing it into the River Shannon. That later decision is not part of the first week at the post office, but it completes the line of purpose that begins with the first wage: earning money is bound to Frank’s effort to secure a way out. The telegram job gives him a foothold in paid work, while its insecurity and the poverty around him ensure that employment alone cannot settle the question of escape.