And there she is, already in a steam from the walk. The mush on her so tight you’d think she’d had a bleedin facelift. And I don’t know if I wasn’t a bit worried for her, because she had this awful high blood pressure and Joe was very fond of her.

But leaving that aside.

‘Big Macker’s getting out Monday,’ she says.

‘Oh,’ I says, ‘I have a barring order agin him and that’s official,’ I says.

She says, ‘You must be the cruellest girl in Dublin.’

‘Oh,’ I says, ‘I don’t know, but, he won’t be coming anywhere near us – and that’s official.’

‘You can say official as often as you like,’ she says, ‘but it don’t make it right.’

‘So what is right?’ I says. ‘Beating the living crap outa your wife?’

‘He never done that,’ she says. ‘Everyone knows he is innocent, he never touched his wife.’

‘Who are you talking to, Mrs Brady? Who’s this standing in front of you? Hello? I am his fucking wife.’

‘You are,’ she says, ‘and God help him. And I want me wheelier back,’ she says.

‘Your what?’ I says.

‘Me wheelier.’

‘But sure that’s like twelve years old,’ I says.

She meant the fucking wheelier she bought for us when Billy was born, for the love of God.

‘I fucking want it anyhow,’ she says.

So I go to the ould cupboard where it was and I just gave it out to her.

And she turns about, with a very black look to her, and away she goes back down along the canal, with the ould wheelier, all stained with the puke and shite of yesteryear.

That would try the patience of a saint. And I’m no saint.

What do you reckon she was after? Me to take him back, me to feed him, wash his clothes? Maybe to save herself the bother, I don’t know. Or maybe she was trying to do the right thing by her own son, I don’t know. But if there’s ever a vacancy in the diplomatic service I hope they don’t fill it with her.

Anyways I was standing there again in the little living room and I was crying. Me two lads were at school, thank God.

Everyone cries, don’t they? It’s just natural.

Tension and that.

There’s a good deal in life to make a woman cry, and that’s just the way of it. Which is the why women are so nice to women in general, and get on, and like to have a drink together, and sing a few ould songs, like me da used to.

I was sorta thinking those thoughts.

Me da.

Me poor dead da, yeh.

Oh, torrents of tears then.

Yeh.