After the letter I sent, saying goodbye, I upped sticks and moved meself and the boys out to Portrane. There was a job going there in the loony bin cleaning up after the loonies. Awful nice people some of them. Some of them are just animals, make you weep. People destroyed by something, I don’t know. Gone back to nature. And the people looking after the loonies, some of them need their heads examined too. Shocking strange goings-on. It’s like a madhouse sometimes. Well, yeh, it is a madhouse.

Portrane as you may know is by the sea, it’s a seaside place, with a beach and all, which was lovely for Jack and Macker. Oh, they loved it there. And we had this fucking little tin hut in the grounds and they was down on the beach all times of the day, and went to fucking school in the village and everything. Oh, yes, oh, yes, happy days, and Joe should a’ known what he was missing, what he lost, not that he would ever a’ gone out so far from Dublin, he could only be happy breathing the air of Dublin, Joe’s blood had Liffey water in it.

I felt it myself too. I used to lie in me doss on me own with the boys breathing in the little room next door, even in the long nights of August when it’s daylight till eleven – isn’t that the fucking nicest thing about Ireland? – I used to lie there and it was nice, yeh, it was lovely, but – it wasn’t my Dublin, it wasn’t Parnell Street, Cumberland Street and all the little dusty corners of things that I knew.

There was a fella there right enough, in the drugs department he was working, funnily enough, but, it never came to anything. It would a’ been nice to get a bit of a ride off a’ him, but, ah, I couldn’t be bothered.

No, that isn’t true.

To tell you the truth, I was a bit afraid of having anything to do with a fella. Because, marriage, you know, and going out with fellas – been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I mean, got the fucking T-shirt. Didn’t I?

I’m like anyone else, I love a nice ride, I do, but, I don’t know.

Stupid, since the ride was probably going free that time. A nice red-headed lad from Donabate he was.

Ah well.

Anyway, he was a bit on the neurotic side. You know? A man in need of rescue. But, fuck that.

Maybe it’s not our job to be rescuing people. Maybe that’s fucking God’s job. Or your woman in the Phoenix Park. Or maybe there’s only one or two people you have the strength to rescue, because it takes a huge fucking effort. Your kids maybe, your innocent kids, or your fucking husband.

Light on Joe.