Colette

Colette is a younger prostitute who works in the brothel. Early in the play she complains about taking a communist as a customer.

Meg Dillon

Meg, Pat's spouse, is responsible for running the brothel. Pat claims to have found her on the street and taken her in. She shares his sardonic sense of humor and dislike of hypocrisy and is particularly critical of Miss Gilchrist's pious twittering. Meg is a romantic Irish nationalist and something of a sentimentalist: she sighs for the Irish fighting spirit of by-gone years and mourns for the Belfast prisoner. But she is also quick to point out the problem in Pat's pride in the past and his contempt for the present generation: to her, there is no difference between the two periods of fighting.

Meg and Pat spend a considerable amount of the play bickering about Irish nationalism. Their fights are a way...