‘The China Factory’ is the title story of the debut collection of short stories by Irish writer Mary Costello.
Costello’s narrative is woven from the social architecture of working-class rural Ireland, where life pivots around the church. Costello’s worlds are very real, allowing us to enter the lives of her characters. A woman reflects on her past, casting her mind back to when she was 17. The teenager, shortly to leave for college, takes a job for the summer as a “sponger” in a china factory. Her mother drives her unwilling daughter to ask a neighbour, Gus Meehan, for a lift to the city every day for work.
“That’s an awful way to live” her mother says when they get into the car to leave. “The people who went before him would be ashamed.” But it happens that Gus is a distant relative. Gus’s life was ruined by a harsh upbringing, and, later, excessive drinking. His story is told indirectly as the story progresses.
The woman recounts: “I could smell the previous night’s alcohol seeping from his pores. I could smell other smells too and I tried not to think of his body. When he spoke, he hung his head a little and lowered his voice. I knew he was trying to deflect from his body and in the effort his words came out full of apology and shame.”
The story unfolds as the girl integrates herself into the life in the factory, knowing that it was temporary for her, but not for those who will work there permanently, including Gus. The other girls are appalled that she shares a car with Gus. “How d’you stick it – the BO?” She denies being related to him. “They’re a bit strange from your part of the country, aren’t they?”
She has told no one that she is leaving for college in the autumn, and dreams about her future. The china they make forms a metaphor for a more gracious life, the factory Visitor Centre selling gilded plates to wealthy American tourists.
Gus’s deeper character is revealed to the young woman through her daily interactions with him. He talks about the factory brochure, “Earth, water, air and fire – that’s what goes into the china. Who’d have thought it? …The same stuff as we’re all made of…”
A dramatic event occurs where Gus intervenes to stop a gunman – a mentally ill relative of one of the other girls. The men exchange quiet words. Later, the woman reflects: “I wonder if it was to the man or to his madness he spoke?”
First published in The China Factory, The Stinging Fly/Canongate, 2012
A Personal Anthology 