And above all else she prayed. She prayed for him at all times and hours, and especially when he was doing his exams. The Primary Certificate in national school. The Intermediate Certificate, and the Leaving Certificate in the secondary college.

After that he went to university. And Birdie went to church. Who could count all the mornings Birdie knelt at the altar. A penny candle flickering at the feet of the Blessed Virgin. And though he scraped through his BA and his Higher Diploma in Education by the skin of his teeth, she rejoiced nonetheless, as if he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Science.

Little did she ever think that she’d be praying for him at the hour of his death. Little did she know what was up the road on that Sunday morning when he came from the hospital to visit her. A male nurse waiting in the car outside. Gussie came in and tried to give her an account of what was happening to him in the hospital. She stared at the wall for twenty solid minutes and all she could do was wonder what did she do wrong. What terrible neglect on her part had caused her golden boy to end up in a mental asylum?

She made the tea. Gussie smoked one cigarette after another until she had to open the kitchen door. She could hardly breathe. She wanted to hold him, but she was too old.

2

IT WAS THE SAME when the Vet died. Alex could never drink hospital tea, which came around every afternoon in a huge silver teapot already mixed with milk, lukewarm and without any kick to it. The trolley never stopped at Alex Delaney’s bed. Instead, Birdie would hand him a bun from her basket, a coconut bun, and she would pour a cup of tea from her own green thermos flask. Every day she brought him a flask of freshly brewed tea, from the finest Assam leaves available in McNamee’s swanky grocery store, where they still had a bell on the door that tinkled as you entered, and still had large drawers of real tea behind the sagging counter.

But the end was unexpected. It happened in a flash. It was two in the afternoon. Alex was halfway through the bun. There was about half of it left in his hands. And it was crumbling onto the bed sheets. His eyes were closed. She knew he was sleeping. He often did that. Fell asleep for a moment or two in mid-sentence. And then he would return.

‘Don’t spill crumbs on the sheets,’ says she.

That woke him suddenly and he said sorry, and then he looked at her. He looked into her. He looked through her. He was only a skeleton in the bed. As if a tornado had swept through him. And he was exhausted. And his skull sank into the pillow like an egg in a basket of straw. But he reached out a bony limb and patted her on the head. He smiled so intensely that she wanted to hold him, and hug him, but she felt too old.