Small Things Like These

Furlong is the son of a single mother who worked as a domestic servant for Mrs. Wilson, a wealthy Protestant widow. His maternal relatives disowned them, but Mrs. Wilson kept Sarah Furlong employed. Furlong was born on April 1, 1946, April Fool’s Day. Some people wondered if he would turn out to be a “fool.”

Furlong grew up under Mrs. Wilson’s protection, and her high social status as the owner of the formally British aristocratic “big house had given him some leeway, and protection” (9). After leaving school, he went on to technical school; when he graduated, he did the same jobs that his men do now before he worked his way up to becoming a business owner.

When Furlong met Eileen, a woman with whom he would later go on to have five daughters, Mrs. Wilson gave him money to get started in life. Some people said that this was because one of her own—a Protestant—fathered him. This resonates in his name, William, which is that of the colonial British monarchs. However, as Furlong’s mother died from a brain hemorrhage when he was 12, he never discovered his father’s identity.

Now, in 1985, Furlong feels more inclined to think of the present and Kathleen, Joan, Sheila, Grace, and Loretta, his five daughters, who are all strong students at the only good girls’ school in town, St. Margaret’s. He feels lucky and proud of his accomplished children. However, he notices that men are beginning to look at them, a fact that makes him uneasy before he goes to sleep. Although his family does not have much in the way of material possessions, he realizes there are others who are far worse off; local businesses are failing, and some children are going hungry. He is also conscious that young people are emigrating from Ireland to both England and America in search of better lives. Still, Furlong determines to continue doing his best for his girls.

On the first Sunday in December, the Furlongs go to see the Christmas lights being turned on. The sight of a man dressed up as Santa Claus upsets the youngest daughter, Loretta, and she does not want to go near him. At home, the family goes through its traditions of making Christmas pudding and writing letters to Santa. Sheila asks Furlong if Santa answered his letters as a little boy, and he lies to her.

He recalls a Christmas morning in his boyhood after he prayed for either his father or Santa to come and give him a jigsaw puzzle. When Mrs. Wilson gave him A Christmas Carol, he was so disappointed that he plunged his hands in icy water until he could no longer feel his pain. However, she intended the gift to be pedagogical: Furlong should read it to improve his vocabulary. He read the book by the following Christmas, and after winning a spelling test, he believed that he mattered as much as any other child. Throughout his childhood, he looked for evidence to see if any passing men might be his father, but he could not find any. After his marriage, he thought about asking Mrs. Wilson if she knew his father’s identity, but he could not summon the courage to do it. A year later, she died of a stroke.

Later, as Furlong is eating toast with his girls, he has the uncanny intuition that “there might never again be another night like this” (19). He and Eileen read the girls’ Christmas requests to Santa. Eileen asks Furlong what he wants for Christmas, and he asks for a book, perhaps Dickens’s David Copperfield, which he has not yet read. She notices that he is moody. He tells her not to worry, although he wonders about the purpose behind his constant working and whether anything matters more than Eileen and the girls.