" Dilly, do not ever forget your own people.” My brother came with me to wait for the mail car. He took off his brown scapulars and gave them to me, it being his way of saying goodbye. “In your letters, better not mention politics,” he said. He had a secret life from us, he was a Croppy Boy, so many young men were, but dared not speak of it for fear of informers. "

― Edna O'Brien , The Light of Evening