What he’s seen at the convent has nothing to do with them and anyway there was nothing they could do. His wife also cautions him to leave well alone. As the friendly proprietor of a local cafe reminds Bill, “Those nuns have a finger in every pie” and he could be damaging his own daughters’ futures if he’s too vocal about what goes on at the convent. It would be “the easiest thing in the world to lose everything” by going up against the all-powerful Catholic Church. But to challenge the nuns about the girls in their care cut put his own family at risk.
According to the townsfolk, they’re “girls of low character” and “common, unmarried girls” sent to the convent to do penance for shaming their families with illegitimate babies.īill’s conscience is uneasy over the girl in the coalhouse. Rumours abound about the kind of girls who live at the convent, attend its training school and work in its laundry. That’s all you need do,” she had pleaded with him.
He’s encountered some of these girls himself on previous visits, on their hands and knees “polishing their hearts out in circles on the floor”. He’s familiar with the gossip that the girls are not being trained for anything they’re really ill-used, poorly fed skivvies. The tension in Small Things Like These revolves on what Bill Furlong does next. Locked inside the coal house, he finds a young girl with bare blackened feet who frets about her hungry baby. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, 1985, Bill makes an unexpected discovery while dropping off a delivery at the convent on the edge of town. Though the family have little money to spare on luxuries, there is always a hot meal awaiting him at the end of a long day. After his own inauspicious start in life as the illegitimate child of a young maid servant, through sheer graft Bill Furlong has become a successful coal and timber merchant.
Set in County Wexford, Ireland, Keegan portrays a gentle, loving father who counts himself fortunate in his marriage and his five healthy, well-mannered daughters. it’s a tale of one man’s courage and kindness a lone voice in a small town whose residents have turned a blind eye to callous acts taking place on their doorstep.
There’s a moral dilemma at the heart of Claire Keegan’s haunting novella Small Things Like These.
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