Oh my Jesus. The destruction. Who could tell you the proper tale of that? There was motor cars in weird places, you know, and every shop window was gone, blown out on the tarmac. At first I thought there was no noise, but it must a’ been me ears or something, like I was swimming under the sea or something, because suddenly the noise came back on, screaming and such, and another sort a’ noise, the fucking silence in the gaps between the noise, I don’t know.

There was a parcel of something on the road in front of me. That’s what I seen anyway. It looked like a parcel, with the wrappers blown off, meat or something, I thought it must a’ been taken out a’ a butcher’s shop and dropped by someone, I mean, I was only a child that time, I didn’t know. It was square, like the butcher cut it for someone, you know. But of course it wasn’t out ’a a butcher’s. No, no, it was a bit a someone.

Oh, my God. I never told this to no one before. I never. I’m shakin’ to think about it.

Me skinny little legs for fuck’s sake.

And Patty Duffy, the greatest woman that ever kept a shop, I tell you, the pride a’ Parnell Street herself, a lovely big comfortable round woman, kneeling beside this poor man, like a fella in a war film with his legs blown completely off, oh he was, and Patty kneeling beside him, and whispering, yeh, yeh, and stroking his hand, like a mother. Oh, Patty Duffy, you were a saint that day.

They never even known who put them bombs there. Put them in cars and parked them and let them go off. So the bombs would kill the poor shoppers. It was about five o’clock I think it was. I think so.

You know, when you or anyone’d be shopping, and then heading home for the bus maybe, or if you were local, just heading home.

In Dublin. Heading home in Dublin. The place that I love.

There was a French lassie killed, I remember me mam telling me that. There was a couple killed just the like of Joe and me, with their two baby girls. Jesus. There was a baby killed not even born inside its mammy. Its mammy was its grave.