Breedge

Breedge is one of the McGahern children and the first of the girls to marry. Trained as a nurse in England, she appears at once confident and vulnerable: she can pursue a profession, but her strong attachment to her father shapes how she interprets his approval and how difficult it is for her to resist his control. Her return to his home after her marriage and business collapse exposes the limits of the welcome he claims to offer.

Family and early position

Breedge grows up in a household where her father’s authority determines the children’s room for action. During a period when the children began to play only after posting a sentry, she did not join their sudden, improvised games. The narrator describes her as adoring her father while understanding the consequences of taking his side. Her position within the family later becomes more distinct after Katie McManus returns to the barracks: Katie takes charge of the youngest children, Dympna and Frankie, and Breedge and Frankie are increasingly treated as a younger, different family from the older siblings.

The available account gives Breedge a path out of Ireland through nursing. Because the sisters’ interrupted education left them with few prospects beyond menial work at home, the narrator and the girls considered training in England, where hospitals paid nurses during their training rather than charging the fees demanded in Ireland. Breedge and Rosaleen applied to several London hospitals before their father learned of the plan. He objected at first, complaining that he had not been consulted, but the prospect of a lifelong profession, wages during training, and no expense to him gradually changed his position. A local example also persuaded him: he travelled to Boyle to contact Matron Harrington, whose daughter had become an assistant matron at Whipps Cross Hospital. Breedge and Rosaleen were accepted by several hospitals and chose Whipps Cross. Their father even obtained a list of the religious services available there to Catholic trainees.

Nursing and marriage

Breedge joined Rosaleen in England later that summer, and both sisters qualified as nurses. The professional training was a practical form of security, not simply a change of place: in England they could earn while learning a skilled occupation that was difficult to obtain at home. Yet Breedge’s first marriage soon drew her into a different set of expectations.

She met Con O'Brien in an Irish dancehall in London. He came from Kanturk in Cork, had left school at fourteen to work in his father’s bakery, and combined that trade with music: he played saxophone and sang in a small-town dance band. After the band folded, he went to England, found work on building sites, and hoped to become a star in another band. Breedge was captivated by his appearance, confidence, fashionable clothes, and knowledge of current music. Con, in turn, was attracted by her beauty and self-assurance, and especially impressed that she was a trained nurse and the daughter of a sergeant. They became engaged almost immediately.

Breedge expected her family to share her enthusiasm when she brought Con home. In the conservative world of the barracks, his jewellery, fashionable outfits, heavy drinking, and talkativeness made him seem like a figure from a pantomime. Her father offered only grudging approval: “If he does you, Breedge, I’m sure he’ll do me.” Breedge was hurt, but after returning to London she turned the remark into what she understood as an endorsement. Her attachment to her father made even faint approval carry great weight.

When the wedding took place in London, Breedge asked her father to travel there and give her away. She had postponed entering nursing school in order to attend his wedding, but he did not come; he sent a small cheque towards the expenses instead. The contrast between Breedge’s accommodation to her father and his limited participation marks a recurring imbalance in their relationship. Her affection remains strong even when his conduct falls short of what she hopes for.

The failed business and return home

By 1960, Breedge was living with Con and their baby in a London bedsit, with another child on the way. Con found building work intolerable and wanted to leave England. Breedge had saved enough for a deposit on a house, but Con proposed using that money to buy a mobile fish-and-chip van and operate it around crowds at matches, race meetings, markets, shows, and dances. They bought the van with the house deposit. Breedge and Con’s family peeled and sliced potatoes while Con travelled from town to town selling food.

The business had potential, but Con lacked the instinct to make it prosper. When he made a good amount of money, he celebrated rather than building on the success. Life in the already overcrowded council house grew tense. Breedge stayed mostly in the small room Con’s family had given them, and she seldom saw her husband; when she did, he was often tipsy. Con, meanwhile, was content to spend his time on the road or with old friends. After selling out following a hurling match, he fell asleep at the wheel on the way home. He was unhurt, but the van and the enterprise were ruined.

Distraught, Breedge turned to her father, who drove to Kanturk to bring her home. She left her daughter with Con and his parents-in-law. Her father’s public declaration that his house was open to every family member did not mean that he would accept the demands of an adult child in need. The narrator judges that Breedge would have been a light burden: she adored her father, would have helped in the house and fields, and needed only meals while she recovered. Instead, her stay soon became a source of irritation to him.

Affection and control

Breedge stayed in Grevisk for three months. Her father complained to the family about her presence and treated her pregnancy as a reason to avoid addressing the question of how long she could remain: “Owing to her condition [her pregnancy], I evaded the issue and shall give no answer to anyone but Con. I don’t like it.” The wording makes clear that he regarded Con, rather than Breedge, as the person to whom an answer was owed. Though her father had gone to Kanturk in response to her appeal, he used psychological pressure to make the refuge difficult to sustain.

He later reported with satisfaction that Con had arrived with his mother and taken Breedge home. Breedge’s return to her husband ended the stay without resolving the conditions that had driven her from England or the wreck of the business. Her narrative therefore closes this episode not with independence secured by professional training, but with a return shaped by competing family authority. Nursing had given her a qualification and a means of earning; it had not freed her from the emotional ties and household hierarchies that continued to govern her choices.