“We were mastering our master”

“We were mastering our master” is the narrator’s compact description of how the children gradually built a shared defense against their father’s violence. The expression does not mean that they gained control over him or escaped his power. Their mastery lay in reading his moods, warning one another, gathering after beatings, and finding moments when they could turn fear into play. In the household, survival depended on solidarity; the improvised performances gave that solidarity a voice.

From Survival to Solidarity

The expression follows a description of the children’s hard-won ways of protecting one another. Close in age, they drew together as natural rivalries gave way to the demands of living under their father’s rule. They understood that reporting a sibling’s complaint or seeking their father’s favour could bring ostracism from the others. When a beating was over and the immediate storm had passed, they gathered around whoever had been hurt. Their comfort affirmed that the punishment had been unfair, easing misery while strengthening their shared anger.

This closeness also took the practical form of vigilance. The children learned to read their father’s moods and send warnings quickly, so that they could disappear or adopt a look of abject misery. Such tactics did not protect them from his worst excesses, but they could soften what followed and make it more bearable. The account emphasizes that these defenses developed instinctively and became more effective over time. The phrase’s central verb, “mastering,” therefore describes a limited and hard-earned competence: the children could not command the household, but they could learn its dangers together.

Their solidarity also kept them from being drawn in by their father’s good moods. They understood that a temporary display of charm could leave them more vulnerable to the next attack, which was never far away. The expression marks the result of a gradual process, not a sudden victory. The children’s band formed over years, as shared observation and mutual loyalty became a counterweight to the authority governing their daily lives.

The Household Turned into a Stage

The children gave their bond an audible form in impromptu concerts, performed when they believed the coast was clear. Monica played an imaginary piano, Rosaleen took up the drums, and the narrator played the trumpet. Their instruments were invented, but the performance drew on the familiar sounds and complaints of the household. In their mock speeches, the children reproduced their father’s exasperation at being surrounded by a large family, along with his threats to send them away and his appeals for patience. The comedy depended on recognisable details: the children were not borrowing an abstract voice of authority but reshaping the phrases and grievances heard at home.

That imitation reverses the usual direction of speech in the house. Their father’s complaints ordinarily asserted his control; in the children’s performance, those complaints became material they could arrange, repeat, and answer together. The jokes did not erase the beatings or make the children safe. They made it possible, for a moment, to treat the language that enforced their subordination as something that could be performed rather than simply endured. The shift is modest but decisive: their father remains the household’s master in practical terms, while the children acquire a shared, comic understanding of the role he occupies.

Discovery and Its Cost

Once, and only once, their father came upon the children while they were improvising. The siblings expected to scatter, but the sight of him left them frozen in place. He roared at them when he recovered from his amazement. The narrator answered that they were only fooling and play-acting, and Monica added that they were only codding. Their father turned the interruption toward work, invoking the carrots he had ordered weeded and thinned before he left and threatening to teach them a lesson. Even in this brief encounter, the performance remains exposed to the authority it mocks.

The narrator does not think the father was able to admit what he had seen and heard. For a time afterward, the children posted a sentry before playing, making surveillance part of the conditions of their amusement. But the caution did not end the concerts. They eventually broke into play without warning, especially when they knew their father was away. Their practice thus continued in a changed form: first protected by a lookout, then recovered in spontaneous bursts during his absence. The episode shows both the limits and persistence of their resistance. Discovery could impose caution, but it could not make the children relinquish the play altogether.

Meaning and Limits of the Expression

The expression’s force comes from the tension between its confident sound and the vulnerable circumstances behind it. “Mastering” suggests command, yet the children’s actual methods are warnings, concealment, performed misery, comfort after punishment, and play timed around their father’s presence. Their achievement is not to overturn his authority but to prevent it from isolating them completely. What becomes manageable is their response to his power, especially when they meet its effects together.

The performance also has clear boundaries within the family. Breedge adored her father but knew the consequences of going over to his side, and she never joined the play. The narrator’s brother and Dympna were too young to take part. The concerts therefore express a particular, gradually formed sibling alliance rather than a universal or effortless rebellion by every child. Read in that context, “We were mastering our master” names a fragile collective resource: the children could not stop the next attack, but they could comfort one another, recognise the pattern of their father’s moods, and briefly make a comedy out of the voice that ruled them.