Bronagh O'Shea was always waiting. She had waited until she was eighteen to marry, and now she spent her married existence waiting again. When she wasn't waiting for Donald O'Shea, her husband of seven years, to get out of bed and come through for breakfast, she was waiting for him to come home for his dinner. Waiting for him to find gainful employment since the accident had left him unable to do farm work. Waiting for him to sober up, waiting for the day when his sexual appetite hadn't been depleted by the painted grotesques of the Cannon Town whorehouse and he might be able to satisfy her own appetites the way he had on their wedding night when life together with him in this new world out West had seemed so full of promise.
The sun was setting over the corn husks, and for a moment the evening breeze dropped to nothing and the husks froze still, and it seemed that even the sun stopped its golden descent towards them. When the breeze picked up again and the glowing disc in the purple sky resumed its trajectory, Bronagh realised that during this motionless long moment of apprehension she had been holding her breath, her lungs expanding so far that the pressure of her bust against her tightly corseted dress was almost painful.
Bronagh exhaled, and her proud chest descended as gradually as the sun, the exposed pale domes of flesh beneath her chin undulating as gently as the corn in the breeze.
It was dark when she returned home from her walk, and Donald still had not returned from the town. He had told her he would be looking for work, but his absence at this late hour suggested to the young Irish bride that he had instead found cheap liquor and cheaper hussies, not that there was enough cash in the O'Shea household budget for even the very cheapest of either. Donald would have run up more debt, and would be gambling his way towards yet more in an inebriated attempt to pay it off, his so-called friends laughing at him behind his back as their own pocketbooks fattened at his - and Bronagh's - expense.
Bronagh prepared a supper of cornbread and soup, ate some herself and left the rest on the stove top, and retired to the front room where she sat at her sewing machine to begin work letting out another dress.
The repetitive sound of operating the sewing machine often had the unwelcome effect of clouding her mind with darker thoughts of self-blame, especially when the activity was necessitated by the continued expansion of her bosom. Pecuniary limits rendered the purchasing of new underwear and outerwear to accommodate its belated burgeoning impossible, and so she was forced to amend her existing wardrobe.
Donald had barely looked at her since some caprice of Mother Nature had caused her bosom to develop, at the unusually ripe old age of twenty-two, from the two discreet teacup sized portions of tender pink flesh (which had always been such tempting morsels for her husband, ten years her senior) to orbs that would need not teacups but mixing bowls to contain their bulk.
'Fat,' he had slurred at her one evening from the armchair, in one of his more abusive spells of drunkenness, bourbon bottle near empty in his weak grip. 'How did you get so f-fat? Ssslip of thing you were when I bloody married yer arse. Sssslip of a th-thing.'
Bronagh had fought back the tears and stood to leave the room, but the proud straightening of her back had forced the front of her dress apart with a loud rip, the void opening nearly far enough to expose her delicate soft pink nipples. Donald roared with laughter at his young wife's ironic misfortune, it, in his liquor-soaked mind proving his point right there and then, and had laughed himself to a deep, snoring sleep while Bronagh lay awake, sobbing alone in the bed they had for the briefest of periods shared together so happily.
The house was still dark when Bronagh returned from her evening walk. Either Donald had returned while she had been out and had gone straight to bed, or - more likely - he would not be back until the early hours of the morning, either still drunk or wrestling with a hangover that would make him even more bad-tempered than he was drunk or sober.
Indeed, there was no sign of Donald. Bronagh left some stew and pie on the table in case he was hungry when he arrived back home, and retired to the bedroom.
Her bosom's late development troubled her. If these steeply swelling mountains of pink flesh were as soft and malleable as the pendulous pairs she would sometimes see exposed at the ladies bathhouse them they might be more easily squeezed into existing corsets and dresses, their mass more widely distributable across and around her slim upper torso. Sitting at the small dressing table in the corner of the bedroom she snapped open the ribbed foundation garment and gave a small whimper of relief as her two globular breasts reasserted themselves, surging forwards in defiance, pink nipples perking snootily aloft. Regarding herself by candlelight in the grubby mirror, Bronagh came to the grim conclusion that they seemed to have grown again. She placed a hand on either breast and pressed her fingers gently into the barely yielding flesh, and was reminded of her visits to the farmers' market, probing honeydew melons for ripeness. Her own melons felt distinctly underripe, despite their exaggerated volume. Perhaps they would settle down soon, and she would be spared not only the tedious ritual of letting out her clothes, but also, she hoped, the ridicule of Donald, who clearly saw the appearance of these mammary menaces as a sign that Bronagh was in the throes not of a belated stage of pubescent maturing, but rather of the early onset of a middle-aged spread.
The cotton and lace nightgown, a present from Donald in those briefly happy early days of marriage, used to drape evenly from her shoulders and hang discreetly around her ankles, covering her body with comprehensive modesty. Now, Bronagh's imperious bosom held it outwards and upwards, its hem now dangling just below her knees.
She awoke to the sound of snoring from downstairs. Donald had barely made it through a few mouthfuls of stew before slumping face-first onto the table and passing out. He reeked of liquor. Not bothering to wake him, Bronagh donned her overcoat and set out to catch the carriage that would take her into Cannon Town for her weekly visit to the women's bathhouse.
