In the fields among cow shit and wet yellow moss, we’d swing a hurl and knock a sliotar back and over to each other, my brothers and me. The ball came back harder and faster than it went from me, and often struck me hard, between my floating ribs, vulnerable, the pelvis reaching up to defend. The smash of the ball to the hollow made me cry and fall over, like children are allowed to do, panting uncontrollably.

This empty sack is now riddled and eating me. Great peach. Brown stone. The body remembers.

Ah, what in the hell would girls know about sport, go in, go inside to your mother and ready us some food, and then come back out and you could whitewash the gable end of the cowshed, I’ll mix it for you, because that’s a terrible job entirely, the mixing, and one you’d probably get wrong, you wouldn’t know the right measures. You’re always drawing attention to yourself. It’s embarrassing to be straight about it. And why haven’t you any friends? But sure who’d be your friend? You can be very difficult. Give up those books. You have a lovely face. Use it. You should try to be less difficult. It’s an awful way to be in the world. Now g’wan, inside, ready the food. And come back out. And do a proper job, not the cunt of a job you did the last time.

I’d get the measure perfect.

Well now and I declare to Christ the light is closing in on us, so if you bring the sandwiches to the field and then I’ll have the lime mixed and you can get on with your job as quick as you like. I can’t trust you with the mix. Quick.

Quickening.

Good girl.

I could tell the size of the field by looking at it. The square foot of the cowshed to the litres of the mix. Meters. Grammes. Kilo. Milli. Centi. Magnitude. Feet. Inches. Pounds. Hands. Length. Mass. Time. Electromagnetism. Thermodynamic temperature. Luminous intensity. Quantity of substance. Sfumato. Fast-dying fresco. Warm water. Oil and Venecolori. Lapis Lazuli. Colorito vs Disegno. Caravaggio’s painting was found. Hanging over the fireplace in a dining room. Society of Jesus. Hydrated lime. Near Dublin. It was the hands they recognised. Salt. The Taking of Christ. Telltales. Light. Closes. In. Around. Us. Mixture will be thinner than paint. Stings my eyes. Judas. Two graduate students found a mention of Caravaggio’s painting in a notebook in Italy. Be meticulous. Notice things. Cut in the corners with precision.

Ah, sure what would a girl know about mixing and painting. Amn’t I right, lads?

Father added the hydrated lime hurriedly to the salt water – instead of first dissolving it in warm water, he hadn’t the patience – clumsily, as every job. I rolled the whitewash all over the gable of the cowshed. Mother arrived in a pixie with her overcoat and cut in the narrow spots for me, we stayed silent the whole time. When I was finished, I dumped the leftover contents of the whitewash into the neighbour’s field, where Father never looked and the neighbour never told. He had, of course, got the mixture wildly wrong. We could all keep our secrets around him, safe inside our heads, until they’d leak into all our cells and their memory, their future prints, would seep out, like all noxious poison does eventually.