Irish Independent

Bravery embodied by women with naked ambition to paint a picture of rude health

- Keane’s Kingdom Billy Keane

ANNA-MARIA QUIGLEY had never exposed her new chest to anyone. Anna had a double mastectomy and now she was sitting up topless at the counter of John B’s drinking a shandy. The place where her breasts used to be was covered up by her hands. Anna was shaking and very timid.

I said to her: “If there’s any problem you don’t have to…” “No, I want to do this.”

Anna travelled from Portrush in the North to be here for a publicity event in aid of baretocare.info, an Irish breast cancer charity.

The bar is quiet enough with just a couple of locals in for an evening drink.

Anna told me her story before she took off her clothes.

“My partner Jade died of ovarian cancer in 2008. I’m here for her tonight. I had breast cancer and a double mastectomy. I was diagnosed with a similar gene to the one Angelina Jolie has. It’s called the BRCA2 faulty gene and one in 400 women has this. I was told it was a very high percentage that I would get ovarian cancer or a re-occurrence of breast cancer so I decided to have my ovaries removed.”

Bex Toland is on her left and she is topless and voluptuous. Bex is 28. Siobhan Heapes is on Anna’s right. Siobhan is 53, feisty and committed. Anna whispered: “I’ve never done this before.”

I was going to hug her but wasn’t sure if it was appropriat­e. The two girls put their arms around Anna. I have seen many acts of tenderness in this old pub and many signs of love but this was the finest expression ever. The three moved in near together as one, like a curtain closing.

Bex, the youngest, raised her arms, like a footballer lifting up the Sam Maguire, Anna laughed and slowly dropped her hands.

The plastic surgeon did a good job. Last week I wrote I had never seen a bad-looking woman. Anna is beautiful, feminine too, with a smile that melts hearts and changes old attitudes.

The photos were taken by David Hegarty and the plan was to get publicity but this was more than about getting the word out. This is about saving lives.

There are two bodypainti­ng events organised by the breast cancer charity baretocare.info and they take place in November, in Dublin and Cork.

The girls slipped off the high stools and made their way upstairs for the painting. There was a single pink ribbon painted on their bare backs.

I got to thinking as they were being painted. Back when I was a boy the women used to come in here to our pub dressed in long black shawls. One man, Maurice Stack, who was over 80 when he told me the way it was, said: “Bill, if a man caught a glimpse of a woman’s ankle in the old days, he’d be in a bother all day long.”

These were cover-up-or-bedamned days. The history of Ireland was to be seen on the clotheslin­es at the backs of the houses in William Street where I grew up. There were the big pink and blue knickers which have been described by my Blarney friend Paddy O’Regan as “double gusset, interlocki­ng passion killers, elasticate­d below the knee”. There beside the big knickers, billowing in the breezes like a flotilla of sailing ships going in to a large harbour, were the smaller younger women’s underwear, easily suspended and secured by just the one clothes peg. It was a tale of two knickers.

I give enough time for the undercoat to be applied and I go upstairs with Ken Hughes who is the event organiser. Ken is a retail genius and he was the one who came up with this idea along with another Corkonian Eimear Tierney, a writer and more fun than any woman ever. I lost five pounds in the last couple of weeks with the

Anna told me her story: ‘I had breast cancer and a double mastectomy as there was a high chance of ovarian cancer’

worry of it all. Sometimes I worry too much. It often feels like I’m a custodian of John B’s rather than a bar man. What if it all goes wrong? What if some lad says something horrible to the girls?

Anyone can walk in to a pub and switch from seemingly decent to a lunatic in seconds. Some of my customers stayed away. One woman walked out when she heard what was going on. I didn’t eat or sleep all week. I told as much to the girls and such was my state of mental disarray I prefaced my talk to our three models with: “I want to make a clean breast of this.”

Up over the pub in our sitting room there were masterpiec­es unveiled before me in a room where my dad often read out scenes from his newly written plays for my mom.

It was a drama without any drama. The girls were calm and strong. The three artists came on a long journey. Thanks to Stephanie Power, Ruth McMorrow and Ciara Patricia Langan, who formed a bond with their human canvasses.

Anna had a soaring eagle painted on her front and she was copper coloured with red spiky hair. “Can anyone see me?”

On went extra layers of paint but already I could see she was changing before our very eyes. Anna was beginning to get in to her role like an actress about to go on stage.

Bex was good fun and told us of how she found freedom by taking off her clothes for the cause during a naked bike event.

All three women had terrible health problems and body issues. They spoke openly and honestly. I realised just how little I knew about what women go through just because they are women.

Back when I was young if a woman went in to hospital it was dismissed by the man as “women’s troubles”. But the girls were for everyone and in no way anti-men. Said Siobhan: “Men, too, must check themselves.”

She said to herself and everyone else, like a captain trying to rally the troops before a big game: “You’re a f***ing miracle.”

None of my three girls up there in our sitting room would ever be able to have a baby. Women’s troubles.

Bex gave a whoop. She had some journey and some story to tell but she’s strong now.

The girls were getting ready to go downstairs and the bar was full.

Anna the Eagle, buoyed up by her new friends, said: “We are real women.” And so they are.

When we were small my dad would sit us up in his lap and tell us stories here in our sitting room. He oft times postponed the end for another night.

If you are good, I will tell you more next week about a never-tobe-forgotten night in our pub.

In the meantime girls, check those breasts.

 ??  ?? At John B’s (l-r) Anna-Maria Quigley, Siobhan Heapes and Bex Toland leave their mark
At John B’s (l-r) Anna-Maria Quigley, Siobhan Heapes and Bex Toland leave their mark
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 ??  ?? on Billy Keane. Photo: David Hegarty
on Billy Keane. Photo: David Hegarty

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