As I trundled Robert home, I was exasperated to think that he had been where I might never go and that he didn’t even realize his luck. He was in great good humor. He waved his arms and pointed at people and objects that interested him and even talked a little, but I could make no sense of his language, and anyway none of his remarks seemed to have to do with the barrel, which he had apparently forgotten. He was unable to tell me what he had seen, and by the time he got old enough to express himself, it would all have passed from his memory. Not from him would I ever learn how the nuns looked, if they were young or old, if they were pretty or ugly, if they smiled at him, or nodded to him, or tried to take his hand or stroke his head, as other strangers did. He never would be able to tell me what the inside of the convent looked like. Worst of all, I realized that no matter what I heard, I would never really know for sure if the nuns slept in their coffins, with stones for pillows.

The Day We Got Our Own Back

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ONE AFTERNOON some unfriendly men dressed in civilian clothes and carrying revolvers came to our house searching for my father, or for information about him. This was in Dublin, in 1922. The treaty with England, turning Ireland into the Irish Free State, had just been signed. Those Irish who were in favor of the treaty, the Free Staters, were governing the country. Those who had held out for a republic, like my father, were in revolt. My father was wanted by the new government, and so he had gone into hiding. He was on the run, sleeping one night in one house and the next night in another and sometimes stealing home to see us. I suppose my mother must have taken us to see him several times, but I only remember visiting him once, and I know I found it very odd to meet him sitting in a strange person’s house and to leave him there when we were ready to go home. Anyway, these men had been sent to find him. They crowded into our narrow little hall and tramped around the house, upstairs and downstairs, looking everywhere and asking questions. There was no one at home except my mother, my little sister, Derry, and me. Emer, my elder sister and my mother’s chief prop, was out doing errands. Derry was upstairs in bed with a cold. I was settled comfortably on a low chair in our front sitting room, threading a necklace. I was five.