Look, he says to us, look at my face. It’s okay, he says to us. Don’t worry. It’s alright. But why did they do it to you, Da? Peter says to him. I did it to myself, he says. Why, Da, why? Peter’s crying. Have you never heard of the mortification of the flesh? he says to us. Have you never heard of the imitation of Christ? he says to me and my brother, we’re both looking up at him in terror, and he takes down his trousers in front of us, he drops his trousers and his underwear is soaked in blood. He’s crucified his cock, I says to myself, oh no can you crucify your cock, please no, and my ma, she says to him, you’ll traumatise them for life, you’ve got them all scared like little white mice, she says, and then he pulls his pants down, and it’s the first time I ever saw my father’s penis, and it’s all wrapped in barbed wire, all round his waist, his groin is wrapped tight with barbed wire, biting down into the flesh. You’ve never lived, he says to us, and he stumbled then and he put his hands out in front of him, and he fell, and he rolled over onto his side and he passed out and me and my brother and my ma were left to drag him to the bathroom and to wash his wounds and to pick all of the barbed wire out his poor, suffering flesh.

*

In bed, on the mattresses, on the floor, this is 1977, and I says to Tommy, Tommy, I think it’s a religious thing, I think it’s like your opus Dei, I think my da was involved in it too, it’s a religious thing to do with suffering and pain, and Tommy says to me, no, you’re wrong, it’s not a religious thing at all. But they’re onto something, he says. There’s a way of telling the future through pain, he says to me. That’s the secret of the IRA, he says. And all the top brass is in on it. It’s suffering that causes the future, he says. Thing is, he says, you can always call its bluff. And then he rolls over and he starts snoring, quietly, like an innocent little baby without a care in the world.

*

Two Irishmen, Tommy and Sammy, go to an art gallery, in that London, for the first time ever.