The Boldness of Betty by Anna Carey

Author:Anna Carey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

It’s three days since the tram men walked out, and Dublin feels very peculiar right now. I said this to Samira this morning, when I walked into McGrath’s shop on my way to the picket line.

‘It’s peculiar in here, anyway,’ said Samira, as she rubbed at the worn shop counter with an old rag and the remains of a battered tin of lavender polish. ‘We barely sold a thing yesterday, only tobacco and a few tins of condensed milk. All the women are trying to save their pennies in case more strikes are on the way.’ She scrubbed at a particularly greasy spot on the counter. ‘Mrs McGrath is talking about closing the shop in the afternoons. Most of our sales are in the mornings.’

‘What’ll you do then?’ I said. ‘Will you still have a job?’

‘Maybe.’ Samira looked absently at the cloth in her hand and then back at the counter. ‘Have I cleaned this bit before?’

‘Samira!’ I snatched the cloth out of her hand. ‘You’re away with the fairies again.’

‘I’ll be grand,’ Samira assured me. ‘Sure, I can work only mornings for a few days. And it’ll give me time to practise my lines. It won’t be forever.’

‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t feel like Mr Murphy and his pals are going to give in any time soon.’

It really doesn’t. The tram workers are still out on strike – or at least a good lot of them are. They went on a big parade through the centre of the city on Wednesday. It was a grand sight, all of them marching past our picket line and around O’Connell Street like a veritable army, with their union badges in their buttonholes, singing new words to the tune of ‘A Long Way To Tipperary’:

It’s the wrong thing to crush the workers

It’s the wrong thing to do

It’s the right thing to wipe out tyrants

Murphy and his crew!

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