Margaret

Margaret, usually called Maggie, is Sue’s sister and John McGahern’s aunt, a figure whose care for the family persists through illness, bereavement, and the prospect of remarriage. She acts with practical resolve, but her letters and encounters also show the cost of grief: she is trying to help the children carry on while struggling to pray and sleep after losing her sister. Her role brings together intimate family loyalty and the limited choices available to women in the world of the book.

Identity and Family Role

Margaret is the sister of Sue and an aunt to John McGahern. The surviving scenes do not give a full account of her earlier life, but they establish her as an active presence in the family’s crisis. She corresponds with Francis (Frank) McGahern, responds to his advice about Sue’s health, and later addresses the consequences of Sue’s death, including the children’s clothing and their father’s proposal of marriage.

Her attention is often expressed through ordinary, useful things. In a letter to Francis, she identifies a coat she thinks he is looking for and lists two school bags and two pairs of stockings, one each for Monica and Margaret. The inventory recalls Sue’s own busy work knitting and sewing for the children in her spare time. Margaret’s practical concern therefore keeps Sue’s care visible even as the household must manage without it.

Care During Sue’s Illness

Margaret’s correspondence shows both her involvement and her impatience with advice that does not meet the immediate reality of Sue’s condition. Francis had written about hazel nuts carried on the person and offered other counsel. Margaret answers that she has received two letters from him, full of advice, but has simply passed them on; while Sue is getting better, she says, she does not mind. Her response is brisk rather than ceremonious, and it makes the distinction between speculative remedies and the hope of recovery plain.

Later, Margaret comes by bicycle in great excitement after hearing of a young woman who has won a gold medal in her finals at the London Hospital and returned home. She asks John to go with her to see whether the woman might nurse Sue. The possible nurse lives only a few miles away, on the far side of Garradice, and the journey is charged with hope: as they cycle along the narrow roads, it seems to them that everything might be made whole again if the woman could be persuaded to come.

At the house, an old woman in black answers the door. Margaret explains why they have come and points John out, while he waits holding the bicycles. The young woman is home to rest, the old woman says; she is worn out by the bombings and other events in England. The visit does not secure the help Margaret is seeking, but it reveals the urgency with which she tries to find another way to care for her sister. Her excitement gives way to the limits imposed by the potential nurse’s own exhaustion.

Grief and the Marriage Proposal

After Sue’s death, Margaret’s letters move between domestic arrangements and the shock of continuing life. She deals with snaps and negatives Francis has requested, probably for a memorial card, and describes seeing the children of her brother Jimmy and Bridie Keegan. They are well and happy, and looking at them does her good; at the same time, she describes their mother as heartbroken beneath an effort to keep up appearances. Margaret’s account holds comfort and grief together without suggesting that one cancels the other.

She is similarly cautious when Francis raises the possibility of marrying her. Margaret says she has only recently begun to think about it and does not expect him to consider it for at least twelve months. If, after that interval, he still thinks it right, he may mention it again. She will pray that God sends him a suitable person if that is for the best, but wonders how he can be so eager to marry when he had loved Sue. She adds that he knows best, while making her central concern unmistakable: Sue’s children must not be forgotten.

The narrator is surprised that Margaret entertains the proposal, though his sisters see the matter differently. He describes her as devastated by Sue’s death, unable to sleep easily and unable to pray at the grave because painful memories and questions overwhelm her; she has to enter the church before she can pray. Her hesitation is not simply a timetable for remarriage. It is framed by bereavement, religious ideas of self-sacrifice, and concern for the children’s future.

The narrator also places the proposal within the material circumstances of the time. A deceased wife’s sister might marry the widower to safeguard the children and prevent the arrival of a potentially hostile stepmother. Positions were scarce, particularly for women; Margaret had a shop and probably some money, and the narrator considers that her liveliness and attractiveness may also have drawn Francis. He observes that marriage would place her in Francis’s power. The possibility she weighs is therefore both a family duty and a transfer of authority, not merely a private romance.

Receiving John After the Funeral

In the middle of a hot summer, John leaves Cootehall by bicycle for Drumshanbo, then takes the single-carriage train to Ballinamore. The remaining wagons carry coal from the Arigna pits. His uncle Pat is not at the station, so John wheels his bicycle to Margaret’s shop. As soon as they greet one another, both burst into tears. Margaret lifts the counter leaf, leads him inside, and sends the new girl out to serve in the shop; she wipes and dries his face before they talk.

John finds himself unable to stop talking. Margaret makes tea and cooks a substantial fry with halves of tomato, then a great luxury. The welcome is at once emotional and practical: she gives him room to speak, attends to his tears, and feeds him. The shop, which belongs to Margaret’s working life, becomes a place where he can briefly set down the difficulty of returning to the landscape associated with his mother.

That evening, Pat cycles with John to Sue’s grave on Margaret’s bicycle. They pray in the church and approach the grave by the sacristy door. The large limestone cross has not yet been erected; fresh clay lies between the path along the church wall and the footpath leading to Dolan’s gate. John cannot imagine his mother lying in the coffin beneath it. Wilted flowers rest on the clay beside a small rosemary bush Margaret has planted in a corner. When John remarks on the size of the plot, Pat answers that the man who will eventually occupy it will want plenty of room. Margaret is not present in this exchange, but the grave’s rosemary and the earlier scene of her receiving John connect her care to his continuing effort to face the loss.

Narrative Significance

Margaret’s importance lies in the way care persists without undoing grief. During Sue’s illness, she turns hope into a bicycle journey in search of a nurse; after Sue’s death, she remembers the work Sue did for the children and considers what Francis’s proposal might mean for them. When John comes to the shop, her response is immediate and bodily—tears, a handkerchief-like act of drying his face, tea, and food—rather than an explanation of what grief should feel like.

Her story also complicates the language of self-sacrifice. She is willing to consider marrying her sister’s widower, but asks for time and insists that Sue’s children remain at the centre of the decision. The narrator’s account makes clear that this choice is shaped by religious expectation and economic scarcity as well as affection and family loyalty. Margaret appears neither as a simple substitute for Sue nor as a passive instrument of Francis’s plans: her delay, questions, and conditions register a judgment of her own, even within a structure in which marriage could place her under his power.