Rum and Coke by Julia O’Faolain
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The short story “Rum and Coke” (1996) written by Julia O’Faolain takes place in Ireland in the higher catholic environment. Our narrator is the son of a catholic Irish senator, who is trying to preserve Ireland as a state in the teaching of the Irish Catholic Church. As the story continues, our narrator discovers that his father is having an affair with a younger woman, Artemis Sheehy, and she is pregnant with his father’s child. The two of them had been arguing and his father had a stroke in Artemis´ room. They move his father to his own hotel room, to avoid questions about why the senator was in Ms. Sheehy’s room, and they call a doctor. The father dies a couple of nights later, while our
He is not at the hospital because the nurses believed that he made his wife nervous. This is understandable because, a woman, when she is going to give birth, is in a lot of pain, so the reader does not give further notice to it. The reader is not given any hints that our narrator’s wife is giving birth to our narrator’s father’s son, and it is not a thought that you would think yourself, because it is a very unusual situation. Had the reader gotten the knowledge about Senator Leary’s affair with Artemis, Senator Leary’s stroke and our narrators and Artemis’ convenient marriage right after, before we knew that Artemis was pregnant, the puzzle would add up, considering the importance of a good reputation in a higher standing Irish catholic family. The structure is therefore necessary for the rest of the story, so it does not seem irrelevant that our narrator is telling us this, right before he will become a ‘father’. When a story is based on flashbacks, like this story is, it is called a frame story. And when the story begins in the middle of a situation, like this story also does, it is called an in medias