Billy was the firstborn, he used ta give me goosebumps when I seen him, in his cot, that time he was born in the Coombe. I used ta kiss him, you know, on his little nose, real proud I was. Well, he was mine, wasn’t he? I helped Janet get him feeding at the breasts in the first days, would you believe, she was having awful trouble with it, and she was weeping she was. ‘I’m no fucking good at this, Joe,’ she says, and I said to her, ‘It’s the most natural thing in the world, the cows do it, the birds do it, it’ll be no bother to you, Janet,’ I said. ‘The birds don’t do it, Joe,’ she said, but she was laughing, that little laugh she had, heh heh heh, and I don’t know, maybe the little taps inside her got a shake or something, but the milk suddenly came. Oh, Jesus.

Billy was killed of course.

Jack and little Macker, me own sons. Makes me arms ache to think of them.

You can’t help wondering what your sons look like, especially if you never do see them.

I wrote the hundred times in the Joy and said a hundred times I loved her and I was sorry, sorry for what I done, acting like a bowsie that fucking time Ireland lost, but you know, a hundred letters can’t wipe out a sin, no, and I know that.

I know it only too well because I wrote the letters and she didn’t come.

But also even the worst sin can’t wipe out a love, you know?

But I was saying.

Jumping around a bit in me story.

Sorry about that.

I was talking about when I was to get out of prison, and the plan I had.

I’ll be out next week, I was thinking, and they’ll give me my bundle at the gate, and by Jesus I’m going to set the world to rights.

Because I knew I done everything myself, fucked it all up, and it was no one else’s fault.

She’s the loveliest woman in the world. You know the ould song, that the lad with the silver hair used sing, ‘If you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world, will you tell her – that I love her?’

All right, you’re looking at me maybe and thinking this fucker’s a dangerous-looking bastard. He’s probably just a scaghead like the rest of them.

But I never done drugs, no, I did not.

Maybe you think if you sat up close to me, I’d be smelling, not even washed, you know, or give you some fucking disease, or I’d as soon knife you as look at you, like one of them geniuses down in the ’98.

That I’m some bastard like that.