Margaret is thrown into the rhubarb bed

The episode in which Margaret, the narrator’s younger sister, is thrown into the rhubarb bed is a childhood memory of domestic violence in which a small child’s flight brings her into her father’s reach. Francis (Frank) McGahern pursues and shakes Margaret while Susan McGahern tries to stand in his way; afterward, his attention turns to the children’s noise rather than to the violence itself. The scene makes the household’s imbalance of power visible in a few abrupt gestures, and its garden setting holds both the ordinary brightness of childhood and the nearby refuge of darkness.

The household and its refuge

The remembered incident belongs to a domestic world in which escape routes mattered. The living quarters had two entrances, one from the hallway and dayroom and another through the scullery into a small concrete yard. Beyond that yard stood Francis’s workshop, a turf shed, and a slated lavatory. The rough lawn between shed and lavatory held the rhubarb bed. In summer, white butterflies flickered above its leaves, an image of movement and light that the surrounding account sets against the children’s fear.

The lavatory was dark, and after beatings the children instinctively ran toward that darkness. Margaret’s flight across the yard therefore follows a familiar geography of danger and attempted refuge: she runs from the house toward the place where the children sought shelter, but Francis catches her before she gets there. The garden is not simply a peaceful backdrop. Its open doors, yard, rhubarb stalks, and lavatory mark the short distance between the family’s ordinary surroundings and the threat that can erupt within them.

The pursuit and assault

Margaret is described as the most wilful of the girls, stubborn in energy and, then and later, the child most likely to cross her father. At the time of this incident she is not much more than three. She runs from the house, and Francis pursues her in full uniform. The day is heavy, hot, and still; beyond the netting wire, the Tarred Boat is moored below the barracks, and the river seems not to move. The stillness of the setting sharply contrasts with the suddenness of the violence.

The family is gathered at the back around Susan. She does not make a dramatic movement: she simply stands in Francis’s way as Margaret passes. He is so angry that he does not pause. He sends Margaret spinning into the rhubarb bed; she reaches down among the stalks to steady herself and gets back to her feet. Before she can reach the lavatory, Francis catches her, lifts her, and shakes her violently. She is too paralysed to kick or cry out. He eventually puts her down without further chastisement. The sequence turns on the child’s brief recovery of balance followed by the father’s renewed physical control: she gets up, but her attempted escape ends in his grasp.

The parents’ opposing responses

Susan’s intervention is physically slight but consequential. She stands in Francis’s path rather than pulling Margaret away, and the account does not suggest that this stops him from striking or shaking the child. Her response afterward is measured: “They are very young,” she says. The words place the children’s age at the centre of the moment, answering Francis’s anger with a reminder of their vulnerability rather than a counterattack.

Francis responds with an exclamation of distress and reproach: “God. O God, O God,” followed by, “You’d think those children were brought up in a field!” He then complains that there is “no peace” since the children came, that their noise can be heard as far away as Boyle, and that no peace or work is possible amid their racket. The complaint shifts attention from his actions to the inconvenience he attributes to the children. As the narrator observes, Francis seems to have no sense of what he has done or that Susan might be hurt. The contrast is not merely between anger and calm: Susan registers the children’s youth, while Francis frames their presence as an affront to his peace and work.

Significance in the family’s history

The scene is recalled against the broader account of life after Susan is no longer at home: the children are then exposed to their father’s scoldings, sudden rages, and beatings. The memory of Margaret’s assault shows that Susan’s protective presence had never made the household safe; her intervention could place her in danger without reliably stopping Francis. The later account of the children’s vulnerability therefore has an earlier counterpart in this episode, when their mother is still with them and already trying to shield them.

Margaret’s defining stubbornness is presented through action rather than explanation. She runs, reaches for the rhubarb stalks to stand, and tries to continue toward the lavatory; her father’s violence interrupts that movement. Around her, the butterfly-filled garden and the unmoving river register a world that seems calm while the family’s conflict breaks into it. The episode’s force lies in that collision: the father treats the children’s noise as the disturbance, while the narrative records the assault and the mother’s failed attempt to protect them as the deeper breach of peace.