Having survived over 200 days of a hunger strike and eight years of incarceration, a sentence the Prices finished serving at the Armagh women’s prison in Northern Ireland, all Dolours can ask herself is, What was it all for? In their release hearing, Dolours affirms that she will dedicate her life to nonviolence; she is done with the armed struggle. Marian matches her sister’s attitude in front of the board but makes her intentions clear when they get home: Like their father, Albert, and their late mother, Chrissie, Marian doesn’t believe in retirement. She seems almost disappointed that they didn’t commit “the ultimate sacrifice,” as Albert puts it: “Only dead people make the pantheon.
” Dolours seems eager to restart her life and leave the past behind. She falls in love with the actor Stephen Rea, who had starred in the theater production the sisters attended in London the night before the bombing. Dolours is happy to hang with the theater crowd until everyone starts asking intrusive questions about her guilt and her drinking.
It’s true that Dolours starts drinking almost immediately after arriving home from Armagh — at breakfast, she spikes her coffee with whiskey. Stephen is sweet and caring, but the transition to civilian life is bumpy, even with the help of alcohol. “I did things, and I don’t even know what I think about them,” she cries.
In their 30s, she muses, “people become respectable,” but it’s one thing to settle down with a partner.