and I can see he is all manliness and sparkling

charisma and wavy brown hair and shiny brass buttons

and God only knows why but I run over, pluck

the apple from between his clean, symmetrical teeth

and shriek as he chases me behind the box hedges

whereupon we fall to the ground, panting.

He slips his hand in mine and I break a sweat.

His fingers are calloused, muscular and warm –

yet I can feel music pass through them.

THE MIRACLE of his wet tongue in combat with mine.

His moustache, scratchy as sand used to scour pans.

Big brass buttons pressing into my breastbone.

I could see bits of myself melting in them.

Private Henry Robbins was a handsome man,

his hardness made me feel so soft and spongy.

My skirts and drawers spread about me like petals.

My bones were blazing coals; my blood molten.

His fingers parted my plaits then curlicued my hair.

The night’s cool breath caressed my nakedness.

My butterfly breasts were touched for the first time.

His skin peeled off, wrapped around mine.

My brain had grown wings and flown to the moon.

No one had ever told me – the exquisite pleasure.

How could something so delicious ever be wrong?

The speed at which he unbuckled without fumbling.

He slid into me and when I opened my eyes to scream

without sound, there standing high above us,

erect as the tall statue of Oliver Cromwell in town,

was Mamó, monstrous against the royal-blue sky.

High-necked, arms crossed, she shook her head,

and worked her lips: ‘Fil-thee. Turn-coat. Whooo-re.’

HE WAS so dashing marching in the parades,

straight-backed, shiny-booted, blowing his bugle

beautifully, winking at me when he passed,

making my cheeks flush and the other girls jealous.

And when he was off quelling another Fenian uprising,

I prayed Mamó would forgive me.

And when the bump that became Mary Jane showed,

thanks be to God he married me, and quickly.

Mr Mallory (of all people) had to give me away

when Uncle Lorcan wrote saying he wasn’t going

to dance with the Devil on his mother’s grave.

He kept to his own in London. It’s come to this.

You might be my niece, Emma, but it’s goodbye.

My English soldier loved his ‘little Irish lass’ to bits,

but forbade the speaking of Gaelic in our house.

‘Can’t have my two girls plotting against me.’

Mary Jane was a water-babby, trying to catch fish

in the river, or splashing about when it rained.

But the summer her bones grew longer than mine,

the local harvest failed and I committed my second

cardinal sin: we set sail for England.

CHAPTER 4

Seven Dials, London, 1880 –

THE SWEATY armpit of London: the seven septic

streets of sore-raddled Seven Dials welcomed

the Robbins’ family into its flea-infested embrace:

a windowless dungeon in a collapsing tenement

in a yard without water or sunlight at the end

of an alley running slimy with effluence.