–  I used to mazurka with Malachy McCullen! It was a great dance, very fast and you had to really move from corner to corner! Those were the days!

This is the kind of guileless opener offered by the woman who did not dance with my father in nearly fifty years of marriage, abandoning him to widows and aunts for the waltzes he loved at weddings because she thought taking to the floor was ‘nonsense, ridiculous nonsense’ and he was no less than an eejit? She always mouthed the word ‘eejit’ because he was, after all was said and done, her husband and deserving of a modicum of respect.

The mazurka is not the worst bomb Mammy’s dropped but somehow it’s the one that bounces around my head from corner to corner. Every time she wheels past me, in Malachy McCullen’s arms, her skirts are higher, her smile is wider and her hair, always rollered weekly into submission in my lifetime, is flying in damp ribbons.

I know Malachy McCullen. I still see him at the post office collecting his pension, smelling to high sheep heaven in a wet wool coat and barely able to push one foot in front of the other. His nose is long, the dark hairs racing each other to get out of it are long and his earlobes graze the collar on his coat. He looks like he’s melting. I offer her these details to verify we are talking about the Maestro of Mazurka.

–  He was quite a dish back in the day! she says.

–  Your mother wasn’t always your mother, sighs my father.

The walk to The Hill is a welcome buffer between me and his postcard. The hedges are alive with small birds; the many pigeons and rooks keep to the high branches of the trees and take off for a quick nervous circle as I pass by. The lush slopes of Dergmoy climb to meet the other hills. The stone walls are bleached white in the sunshine. I see that the pink rhododendron hedge over at Arthur Rowley’s farm is in full bloom as I get to the top and turn for the house where I was born and battered.

The whole place is taking on a disused air; the lack of children or the lack of love is dragging it down. It would be easy to think it had been abandoned, until the sound of the television carries down the hall. Mammy will stay put with her game-show hosts and quizmasters until she’s administered to.