Ralph de Bricassart: How will we live without him?
Meggie Cleary: We will. Your God gathers in the good ones... and leaves the living to those of us whom fail. Your greedy God! There is no peace with him.
Dane O'Neill: Mom, is this you? Oh, you were beautiful.
Meggie Cleary: Were? Oh the cruelty of youth.
Fiona 'Fee' Cleary: It was a lovely dress. Blue wasn't it?
Meggie Cleary: No, Mum, yours was blue.
Ralph de Bricassart: Meggie's dress was rose. "Ashes of Roses", it was called. And in it, she was the most beautiful thing any of us had ever seen.
Ralph de Bricassart: What kind of man is this Luke O'Neill, who roams about and doesn't even make a home for Meggie?
Fiona 'Fee' Cleary: The ambitious kind.
Meggie Cleary: That dear and gentle God who has taken from me everyone that I've loved most in the world. One by one. Frank, and Hal... and Stuie... and my father. And you, of course. Always you. If God is merciful... left me no-one else to grieve.
Ralph de Bricassart: He is merciful, I know you can't see that now, but he is. He spared the rose. He sent the rain.
Meggie Cleary: Oh Ralph... who sent the fire?
Ralph de Bricassart: Fee, she's your daughter. It's as if you never remember that.
Fiona 'Fee' Cleary: Does any woman? What's a daughter? Just a reminder of the pain... a younger version of oneself... who will do all the same things, cry the same tears. No, Father. I try to forget I have a daughter.
Young Meggie Cleary: Oh Father. I'm so glad I'm not dying. What would I ever do without you?
Ralph de Bricassart: Oh silly. You'll never be without me.
Answer: When Fee was very young, she had an affair with a man and became pregnant. To avoid a scandal, she was quickly married off to Paddy Cleary, a good and honest man, but someone far below Fee in social class. The eldest son (from Fee's previous relationship) never felt that he fit into the family, and both he and the second eldest son left home early on and met premature deaths. Neither character appears in the TV series, they are only mentioned. Stu and Hal are killed later in the story.
raywest