Characters | Muriel Batley

John’s Irish wife has had her dreams crushed by the failure of his career and their inability to have a child.  A life in Croydon is not what she anticipated, and she has found his role as the errand boy of her country’s historic oppressors increasingly hard to bear.  The trip to New York, albeit in Second Class, promises to be a welcome respite, but the encounter with the patrician Lord Manton and his Anglo-Irish wife is for her the final straw.