The end is the beginning

  THE END IS THE BEGINNING Bridget Kehoe from Pleasant Street, friend and bridesmaid to Jane Quinn, sister of Lizzie, the wife of Lawrence Cregan of Addison Road, Fairview, minor personages in an unfolding story. When Dublin erupted in blood and destruction on Easter Monday, 1916, Alice, her sister, Annie, her aunt, Nan and uncle, Tommy were living on the upper floor of a building on Burgh Quay, across the river from Sackville  Street. They were, to use a colloquialism, "in the thick of it". Jane whose second daughter, Jane, had died five years earlier and who was herself living with her new husband on Arran Quay sought the assistance of her friend, Bridget who arranged for Jane's daughters, Alice and Annie, to be accommodated in the house of her sister and family in Fairview. So Alice met Bruddy, aspiring book-maker, and eldest son of Lawrence and Lizzie and the seeds of a liaison were sown culminating in their marriage in 1920 five years after Alice's first, fateful and doomed marriage to her beloved, Charlie. The summer of 1901 blazing hot on the Portsmouth coast. Armed men uniformed sweltering, for despatch anytime to southern Africa, frontline of the Empire.  An Irish family, three young daughters, one just born, recently from Glasgow. Jane, young, vibrant, overwhelmed by responsibility, Private Quinn of the Royal Marines, newly enlisted, boot maker, dream chaser, raconteur. Mother and child at rest in the garden beneath the apple tree, shaded from light. Alice and Jane climbing up, out of sight, to see the boats stretching, at intervals, to the horizon.  At the shore, near the creek, two marines amble aimlessly. One, the Irishman, strips off. The other looks on, bemused. Once naked he runs towards the water and  dives in surprising the children playing at the edge. He swims out until no longer visible. His friend waits, wondering. A fishing boat moves hearse like towards the shore, watched from afar by the drowned man's daughters Charlie and Alice, young love, marry in Dublin in 1915. She a seamstress, he ambitious to get away from a suffocating and impoverished town, takes a steamship to New York City,  Alice to follow. She , family tied, Europe warring, shillied, country rebelling, Dublin burning, shallied. Charlie, in Hell's Kitchen, waiting, wondering, worrying, lost and alone, escapes. America war bound. Over there across the blood soaked ocean by naval vessel to Portsmouth and on to the French frontier. Battle jammed, lice ridden, mud drenched beside his fellow volunteers of the 69th Regiment, "The Fighting Irish", surviving gun pounding and gas poisoning. In July 1918 a new offensive, at the river Ourcq. Amongst the dead, Charles Chambers, his widow mourning him in Dublin City.