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UNCLE SAUL AND THE EYE-TEST.

It is the Spring of 1948. I am ten, living with my mother in a rented house which is

also a doctor’s surgery.

I am alone in the house.

The doorbell jangles. I open the door a squidgeon. Uncle Saul forces his bulk into

our hall, saying, mysteriously, “Jamie, a wee word afore your Ma gets back.”

His slate-grey eyes try to lift a smile, but before it gets shoulder-high, he pushes me

into the living room.

“Uncle Saul,” I protest, “what are you doing?”

“You’re goin’ to help me, boy,” roars Uncle Saul. He sits down at the table where I

was doing my homework. He holds me facing him. Large hands clamp my thin arms. I

smell the oil, and then the coal-smoke of the steam-engine my uncle drives, and feel

sickish.

“It’s lucky for me your Ma’s looking after this surgery for Doctor Trent.” Uncle

Saul laughs without mirth. “He’s givin’ me the Company’s check-up Friday week.” He

looks at me through slitted eyelids. “D’ye see?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I quiver.

“It’s like this,” Uncle Saul goes on. “I’m fit as a fiddle, but having a bit of trouble

with my eyes.” He pauses, as if giving me another chance to guess what he wants.

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“Are you going blind?” I see him tapping round Belfast with a white stick.

“I mean,” Uncle Saul’s mouth tightens. “I want to take a look at the eye-chart that’s

hanging in his surgery.” He gives me a bit of a shake.

He tells me he wants to learn it by heart, so that when the doctor comes to examine

his eyes, there’ll be no trouble with his sight.

“That’s cheating,” I tell him, amazed that he should think of such a thing.

“Come on,” says Uncle Saul, ignoring my words. “You let me into that surgery. I’ll

copy the eye-chart.”

“It wouldn’t be right,” I say.

Uncle Saul tells me he knows more about what’s right than I do. And do I want

cousins Arthur and Joseph to starve if he loses his job? Not to mention Aunt Alice and

himself?

“But, if you’re going blind,” I begin to argue.

“Damnit, boy. I’m not goin’ blind,” explodes Uncle Saul.

“But you have to be able to see the signals clearly.” I feel all the horror of a train

crash with hundreds of people killed.

“I can see the signals,” says Uncle Saul. “I know the signals like the back of my

hand, so just let me into that surgery.” He gives me another shake.

“Can’t.” I’m glad to say. The surgery is locked and Ma has the key. It’s Uncle

Saul’s opinion that the key is hanging up somewhere, and I know where it is.

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“Ma keeps it in her bag.” I glance at the clock, hoping she’ll be back to rescue me.

“Ask her for it when she comes back.” My voice squeaks.

He tries again. Do I ever go into the surgery while she’s cleaning there? Yes. Well

then, there’s half-a-crown, to go and see Laurel and Hardy at the Hippodrome. Next

time she goes in to clean, write down what’s written on the eye-chart, so he can learn it

off by heart. He’ll call round for it the day after tomorrow.

“I don’t want to.” I hand him back his money. He won’t take it. He folds my hand

over it.

“Write down what’s on that chart, Jamie,” he orders, putting his face close to mine.

“I won’t do it,” I stammer. I wish he had never come.

“Do it,” says he, ice-cold, with a murderous look. “I’ll be back Thursday, and,” his

voice sinks ominously, “don’t tell your Ma.”

He goes then. I really believe he will murder me if I don’t do what he says. After

he’s gone, I cry, because I feel so alone and miserable and vulnerable. “Where are

you,” I cry out to my absentee father.

I wish my father didn’t just come home to move us from house to house, and then

go back across the water. I dry my eyes. I can still smell Uncle Saul in the room yet. I

open the window. I open the back door.

“What’s the matter with you,” Ma asks, taking the groceries through to the kitchen,

when she comes back.

“Nothin’,” I reply.

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“Good,” says she.

Later, sitting on the wall overlooking the back entry where all the bins are, I tell

Tom, who lives next door, about Uncle Saul and what he wants.

“Half-a-crown,” he exclaims.

I tell him I don’t want it, and I don’t want to do what Uncle Saul says I have to do.

“Give it to me then. I’ll go see the Bowery Boys in the Royal Cinema, and tell you

all about it when I get back.”

I give it to him, glad to get rid of it.

“What’s so wrong with doin’ what he wants?” Tom asks.

“It wouldn’t be right.” I wonder why I have to explain it to him. “Look, if he’s

goin’ blind, and he can’t see the signals, he might kill hundreds of people.” I shudder.

“And it would be my fault.”

“Mix up the letters a bit,” Tom says, hopping down off the wall.

“But then he’d fail the test.”

“He won’t kill nobody then.”

“He’ll get the sack.”

“Then he can keep spuds in it,” says Tom, and goes off, laughing.

I don’t sleep too well that night. I lie there, tossing and turning, and hating Uncle

Saul for what he is doing to me. When I fall asleep I dream of being chased down a

railway track by Uncle Saul in his engine.

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At school I can’t concentrate, and get kept in to fill three black boards with lines: “I

must pay attention in class.” By the time I get home, I’ve decided to do it. I’m too

afraid not to. I’m too afraid to mix up the letters like Tom said, even though I’d like to

do that. I’ll do it and hope that Uncle Saul’s eyesight is not as bad as I think it is.

“What kept you?” Ma asks.

I tell her and she says: “Well, you won’t do that again.”

“Have you cleaned the surgery yet?” She hasn’t. “I’ll give you a hand.”

“Wonders’ll never cease,” she remarks.

When I am struggling upstairs with the upright Hoover, my stomach is churning. I

tell myself I haven’t done anything wrong yet. That it’s not too late. I don’t have to do

it. But Uncle Saul is coming tomorrow. Ma helps me through the door with the

Hoover. She looks at me, worried.

“You all right?”

I try to look surprised that she’s asked such a question. I put the plug in the socket.

She switches on the cleaner and begins to push it busily back and forth. I take the

opportunity to note down what is written on the eye-chart hanging on the wall.

Again, I don’t sleep well that night. In my dreams, Mr Patterson, my Sunday

School teacher, who is also a policeman, keeps telling me that even if my mother

hasn’t seen me, God has. He knows I’ve done wrong.

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Next morning, I want to throw away the piece of paper, but I don’t. I tell myself

that it isn’t too late to get rid of it, and make some excuse to Uncle Saul when I see

him.

This time he meets me in the street, and just holds out his hand. I give him the

paper like it was a hot coal I’m glad to get rid of. He never even says thanks. Just

walks off.

“You’re sickening for something,” Ma says. “Want to tell me about it?” She sits

down, ready to listen. I’ve been kept in at school again, and have come home looking

absolutely miserable.

“Nothing’s the matter,” I lie.

She tells me my father is on his way home again.

“Will he be movin’ us again?” I am anxious to know, for if he moves us to another

house, I won’t have Tom for a friend.

“I hope not,” Ma says. She looks as worried as me.

Saturday morning Tom brings me a Superman comic, bought with Uncle Saul’s

money. I don’t want it. I still feel bad.

I trudge, next day, to Sunday School and tell Mr Patterson, the policeman. I expect

him to arrest Uncle Saul, and me as well. Next minute we’re down on our knees.

“Lord,” says he to the ceiling, “into your hands we commit Uncle Saul, the sinner. If

he’s one of your elect, call him in. If he’s not, call him off. As for wee Jamie, here.

He’s no better sense than to fear Uncle Saul, so he’s not to blame.”

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I’m not to worry. I worry until the Friday evening Uncle Saul turns up, after work,

for his medical.

“Off by heart,” he gives me a broad grin. I hate him.

I am going upstairs when the doctor calls me into his surgery. He gives me some

notes to take down to Ma for filing. As I leave, I glance at the eye-chart.

“That’s not the right eye-chart,” I exclaim.

“Good observation, Jamie,” says the doctor. “No, that’s new. I got it today.”

Uncle Saul will never believe it. I go down to my mother.

“Doctor Trent’s got a new eye-chart,” I tell her.

“That’s nice,” says she.

“Will you tell Uncle Saul that?”

“Why?”

“He thinks the old one’s still there. He’s learned it off by heart.”

How do I know that? I tell her. She begins to laugh. “Serve him right. He’ll get a

quare gunk.” Then she says, “God works in mysterious ways.”

“You think God worked all this out?”

“God works everything out.”

“Everything?” I think of my father across the water and never at home. Of how

many times he’s moved us from house to house. I tell her that.

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“Well, maybe not everything. Your father had choice. God could have found him

work here as well as anywhere else.”

“Doesn’t he like being with us?”

She files the notes away, pushes the drawer closed. “Come on,” says she, “let’s take

care of your Uncle Saul.” She gets a half crown from her purse.

He’s sitting alone in the waiting room.

“Well, Saul,” Ma says. “What’s this you’ve been up to?”

“Lizzy?” he eyes her distastefully.

“I’m not offering you anything to eat,” she says. “The last food I made for you was

twenty-years ago, when you threw it down the yard because it wasn’t on the table

when you came in.”

“You’re a hard woman, Lizzy.” say he.

“No harder than yourself. Here’s your half crown, and never come into my house

again, interferin’ with what’s mine.”

She throws the money at him and he catches it deftly. There doesn’t seem to be

anything wrong with his eyes.

“By the way,” she says, sweetly, “the doctor got a new eye-chart today. The old

one’s in the bin, and the two of them aren’t the same.”

With that we leave. I see Uncle Saul’s jaw dropping, then his eyes hardening with

anger as it firms up again.

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After a while he clumps up the stairs to the surgery. A while after that he comes

down with a much lighter tread. He sticks his head round the door of our living room.

“You’ll be glad to know, that I’ve been given a clean bill of health. My eyesight’s

fine. I only need glasses for readin’.” His head disappears. He slams the front door.

Reading Superman, I wonder why God needs to work in mysterious ways at all.

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ANSWERING.

Nell ran to answer the ’phone before it rang off. If it wakened her husband...

To say she ran was an exaggeration. She was eighty-nine with congestive heart

failure and osteoporosis, so placing one foot in front of the other and proceeding

slowly in a forward direction until she had to sit down and rest, was running.

It was twelve feet from where she sat. Bright red, attached to the wall beside the

medical emergency pull-cord.

An infinity of bi-sections stretched between her and the purring instrument.

She began her journey, needing to cover the distance before her husband stirred to

awareness.

Once that happened...

The girl she had been at fourteen danced out before her, skipped effortlessly across

the floor, and down the years, and picked up the jangling candlestick telephone in one

hand, unhooking the ear-piece with the other.

She immediately heard the voice of her mistress.

“Gerald, darling. The coast is clear.”

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Nell looked out of the window. From where she stood she didn’t think the coast

was all that clear. There seemed to be a mist, and in the mist a freighter was steaming

down the Lough. In fact you couldn’t see the other side of the Lough at all.

“Yes,” her mistress’ voice went on. “He won’t be back tonight or tomorrow night.

He’s gone again on business. Nell, the maid, goes home after six o’clock.”

A smooth male voice, “I’ll come at seven, Gloria, my sweet.”

Nell replaced the earpiece with a click, and put the ’phone down again.

She went on dusting and cleaning, and didn’t hear her mistress come down the red-

carpeted spiral staircase.

“Nell!” The hardness of the voice made her jump. “You listened in to my

conversation.”

“I didn’t Mrs Chambers. Honest I didn’t. I knocked it over.”

“Don’t lie, you stupid girl. Of course you did, I heard your breathing on the

extension.”

Nell looked at the frostbitten face.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Chambers,” she said. “I didn’t mean to. It won’t happen again.”

“You can be quite sure of that,” said Mrs Chambers. “When you put on your coat to

go home tonight it will be for the last time. I’m terminating your employment.”

“Ach, Mrs. Chambers. No. Please we need the money. Da broke his spine and can’t

work.”

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“You should have thought before you listened in.”

“I just wanted to hear what it was like. Please, I never heard a telephone before.”

“Get on with what you have to do,” said Mrs. Chambers. “Your pay will be ready

when you leave.”

Nell went into the kitchen and got down on her knees before the big cooker and

began to cry and to scrub the red-tiled floor.

What was she doing scrubbing the floor if she was sacked?

The lady wouldn’t pay her, otherwise.

She couldn’t go home empty handed.

And when she told her mother.

“It’s into the mill with you then.”

“What did I do that was so bad, Ma?”

“Such an innocent,” said her mother. “She was afraid you would have let the cat out

of the bag, sometime.”

“She has no cat, Ma.”

“Lord save us,” said her mother.

Her fourteen-year-old self came slowly back towards her, head bowed. When she

reached her, she looked up, smiled, put her hand on her arm and said, “Let me help

you.”

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They went on, and her twenty-six year old self hurried before her towards the red

concrete and glass telephone kiosk at the corner of the street. She waited outside the

box. When the ’phone rang she went in, and lifted the heavy black receiver.

“Tommy,” she said, breathlessly into the mouthpiece. “Is that you?”

“Nell, yes. It’s me.”

There was a silence.

“I got your message,” she prompted. “You said you’d ’phone me. Well?”

He cleared his throat. “You and me,” he said.

“Yes?”

“We’ve been going steady.”

“We have?”

“Look. Listen. I want to ask you...”

“What?”

“Give me a chance.”

“Go on then.”

“I’ve got a steady job.”

He worked in the Shipyard.

“You’ve got a steady job,” she said.

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“Well then?”

“Well then, what?”

“What about us getting married?”

“I don’t know about that,” she said.

“Let’s meet later,” he said, giving a time and a place.

“Right. See you, then.”

Twenty-six came out of the ’phone kiosk, and walked down the street towards her.

Even in her mill overall, with a day’s dust on her turban, she looked beautiful and

radiant.

Later of course she’d said yes, but before they could be married Tommy had gone

off to Spain and all her hopes and dreams had been killed by a bomb at a place called

Guernica.

She’d married Tommy’s brother, Arthur, because he had a steady job as a porter in

the Hospital.

As her smiling 1934 self came to her, she nodded to Fourteen, and said, “I’ll take

the other arm.”

But Nell needed a rest before going on. They placed her on a chair near her drop-

leaf table. She drew breath in short, sharp sniffs, through her nose. The veins in her

neck were engorged. Her curved back was aching.

The red ’phone was ringing loudly, and the Nell of last year was on her way to

answer it. She moved faster then, than she did now. Even so, before she got to it,

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Arthur, who was a year older, and had no trouble with legs or heart, came in from the

hallway and lifted the receiver.

“What do you want now?” he shouted, abruptly.

“Give me the ’phone, Arthur,” Nell said.

“You leave me alone,” Arthur shouted into the mouthpiece.

“Arthur.” Nell said, holding onto the table.

Arthur dropped the receiver and it hung spinning the coils out of its lead. He went

out again. Nell got to the phone.

“Hallo,” she said.

“Mom?”

It was Tommy who had gone to the America in 1956.

“Tommy? Yes. Is everything all right?”

“Who was that?” he asked.

“That was your father.”

“It didn’t sound like Pop. What’s the matter with him.”

“His head’s away, but apart from that, nothing’s the matter with him.”

“Are you OK?”

“I get a bit breathless from time to time, but apart from that I’m all right.”

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Arthur came in again.

“It’s Tommy,” she said.

“Who’s he when he’s at home?”

“Our son,” she said.

“What son?”

“The one who went to America. Here, talk to him.”

He took the receiver.

“I know your tricks,” he said. “You’re not foolin’ me. You’re him. So get lost.”

Nell rescued the ’phone before he broke the connection.

“See what I’ve to put up with,” she said. “He thinks you’re the man next door

who’s blowing smoke through the wall into his bedroom. I get this every time the

phone rings.”

“That sounds too, awfully bad, Mom. What about Sylvia and Ruth, Mom. Don’t

they help?”

“Ruth helps. Sylvia’s in England and I only see her at set times.”

“I hope to come over sometime next year, Mom.”

“Bring my grandchildren, Emma, and Paul.”

Now Fourteen and Twenty-Six were bringing her forward again. Eighty-eight

turned to them.

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“I hate that man,” she said. “I wish I’d never married him.”

The small living room filled with her former selves from 1938 until 1969.

“There were good times as well as bad,” they told her. “He always had a job.”

“I was nothing but skivvy to him.”

1939 came forward with 1941, and 1945. They carried babes in arms. Tommy, and

Sylvia, and Ruth.

“We were happy,” they said. “Oh how happy we were.”

Eighty-eight said, “I haven’t been happy since.” And then nodding towards Sylvia

held by 1941, “She gets herself pregnant and disgraces us all. We should have had the

house to ourselves but instead, she and her husband George, and the baby, Jennifer, all

come to live with us for ten years, and me still the skivvy.”

“We coped,” said she of that time. “No-one went hungry, and eventually they left

and found a place of their own.”

Eighty-eight was not to be deflected.

“And then that man, in there, goes off his head.

“It happened so slowly,” said the 1970s to the 1990s, emerging, “that we never

noticed, until Ruth and her husband caught on.”

The ’phone stopped ringing.

Her present self, murmured, “I’d hate to put him away. The doctor says he’s

dementing, God help him. There are times he doesn’t know me, but I’d miss him.”

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“Don’t cry,” said Fourteen, stroking her cheek. “Please, don’t cry.”

They reached the red ’phone and Nell lifted the receiver and dialled 1471. She was

told the number of the caller, and the time of the call and recognized it as that of Ruth

her daughter.

She dialled 3, as instructed and sat on a chair at the telephone.

Ruth answered.

“It takes me a lifetime to answer the ’phone nowadays,” Nell said.

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SOMETHING’S GOT TO GIVE.

He came blasting through the louvred batwings into the kitchen, calling her name -

Marta, and singing out - Rambling Rose Of The Wildwoods. With surprising suddeness

his legs rubberized. His knees went akimbo. His arms splayed out before him. He felt

nothing. He heard nothing. He saw the pores in the Chinese slate with which he’d paved

the kitchen. His eyes imploded in a hail of white and red sparks.

*

Marta Henry kept the chain on the door, and looked at the grizzled man on her

doorstep.

Oh, it’s you, she said. I paid my debt. I served your sentence.

Mrs. Henry, said Judge James Nesbitt. I’m dying. Invite me in. I need to sit down.

Marta looked for truth in his eyes. She slipped the bolt and opened the door wide. He

panted his way across the threshold. She closed the door and he followed her to the

kitchen. She held the batwings open for him, then seated him at a pine table. She made

them both a pot of tea, and put a plate of biscuits before him.

You’re living, again, in the same house, he said.

That surprises you?

Yes. Greatly.

I thought I’d come back.

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She waited for the judge to go on, but he dipped a biscuit in his tea, and sucked it into

his mouth. He repeated the motion, noisily. He had failed, considerably, from the time he

had come to see her in prison.

You’ve come to ask again why I killed him?

He looked at her with rheumy eyes.

I have, he said. This time, I hope you’ll tell me.

Nothing’s changed, Marta said. I still have the right to remain silent.

Humour a dying old man. Tell me why you killed your husband?

The police had charged her with murder. She had refused defending counsel. He had

explained to her, at the time, the difference between the charge of murder and that of

manslaughter.

I waited by the side of the door, she said, with my iron frying pan, and when he came

into the kitchen, I brought it down as hard as I could on the top of his head.

I know how you did it, said Judge Nesbitt. I want to know why you did it.

I said at the time, I was guilty as charged. It doesn’t matter now.

It keeps me awake at night puzzling about why you did it.

A dying man should be thinking of other things.

I hate mysteries, the Judge said. I’ve got to know whether or not I gave you a just

sentence. I may not be able to do anything about it now, but I have to know if I made the

right decision.

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I’ve never told anyone, said Marta, and I’ll go to my grave without telling anyone.

Another cup of tea before you go?

Here’s your hat, said Judge Nesbitt. What’s your hurry?

Exactly.

I never fathomed you, he said. Will you not tell me?

No.

Judge Nesbitt shook his head in bewilderment, then scratched his white thatch.

The papers bid up to a million for your story, he said.

I turned them all down, she said.

I suppose I may as well go, said the Judge, getting up, slowly.

I’m sorry you wasted your time, she said.

On the doorstep he said to her, Your sentence might have been shorter if I’d known the

circumstances.

Or longer, said Marta.

He must have done something terrible to you? Sympathetically.

Nice try, M’Lord.

Well, I’ll try again, Mrs. Henry. When an irresistible force, such as me, meets an old

immovable object, like you. Something’s got to give.

He saw her pupils constrict, and her mouth twist to one side, as she blanched.

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What is it? he said.

Go, she said.

She closed the door, and stood with her back to it, catching her breath. The Judge

knew nothing. How could he? It had to be pure coincidence.

She’d kept it to herself. As soon as she’d brought the pan down on the crown of his

head, and saw him lying there, spread-eagled on the floor, she knew she’d killed him.

She’d got down on her knees beside him, and cradled him in her arms, sobbing: Bring

him back, bring him back, bring him back, bring him back, bring him back.

She’d fled to the kitchen for respite, and she’d told herself: If he follows me I’ll crown

him. He’d followed her.

Had she meant to kill him? Later, during the time of taking tasteless food off tin trays,

she felt the relief of being free of his aberration.

She should have separated from him, or divorced him, but she’d stayed and suffered.

On remand, there were times when she’d been tempted to tell the priest in the prison.

She hadn’t. She knew he’d say: And for that you killed your husband? What sort of a

woman are you? After the act, the reason she did it seemed so inconsequential.

She’d pleaded guilty, and kept absolutely silent. She frustrated all attempts by Judge

Nesbitt to elicit mitigating circumstances.

During her uncomfortable, and unpleasant, years in jail, her husband’s voice and face

gradually faded from her memory.

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She’d come back to the house sure she was free of him. Until the Judge’s remark she’d

neither heard Matthew’s voice in her head, nor been able to visualize his face.

Now leaning against the door, she cried out:

Oh, God......

And heard his voice singing in her head:

...Our help in Ages Past.

No, she gasped. I can’t....

...Tell a walz from a tango, sang his voice.

In her mind she could see his face, smiling at her with childlike ingenuity.

She was going to say: This is more than I can stand. She got as far as: This is...

...My lovely day. It is the day...

Don’t, she yelled. She held her hands tightly against her ears but still she heard.

...you, step on my blue suede shoes.

You’re....

.... you’re driving me crazy. What can I do?

Desperately, she turned and opened the front door and fled into the street. Judge

Nesbitt was just about to get into a large black car. She called his name. He looked

towards her, and straightened up.

What is it, Mrs. Henry? he asked in genuine concern at the fear on her face.

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She got into the back seat of his car, and he followed her.

Tell your driver to go, she said.

Drive around, Charles, said the Judge.

The car started, and slid smoothly away from curb.

Collect yourself, my dear, said Judge Nesbitt. Then tell me what happened.

Why did you have to come? said Marta. You brought him back to me. I can hear him

again. I can see him again. I thought he was gone for good.

Who?

My husband. He’s in my mind. Interrupting me, as he always did when he was alive.

He sang at me. After every two words I spoke, he sang at me.

Was that why you killed him?

You’ve no idea what it was like. How terrible it was. I lost all my friends because of

him. Then there was only the two of us. I put up with it as long as I could.

And what was the last straw? asked Judge Nesbitt.

Nicky, our cat. I found her lying in the road one day. She’d been run over, and when

he came home from work, I said:

Matthew, something....

And he starts to sing: .... something in the way you walk.

It’s Nicky, our cat....

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.... the cat came back, he sings. I thought he was a goner but the cat came back.

Matthew, I said. Listen....

.... List’ to me while I tell you, of the Spaniard who blighted my life.

Nicky is dead, I shouted. Killed in the street.

Lying there in the street where you live, he sings.

This is not funny...

....Funny, but it’s true.

That’s when I ran to the kitchen. I could stand it no longer. I told myself I’d crown him

if he came after me. I meant to crown him. He charged in calling my name - Marta, and

singing - Rambling Rose Of The Wildwoods. He always did that when he wanted to make

amends. But I crowned him anyway. Can you believe that?

I believe you, said the Judge. I believe....

.... for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows, sang Marta. She couldn’t stop

herself. She had seen the musical notation forming in her mind in slow motion, and leave

her lips like greased lightening. She looked out the window, and ahead could see the

spires of the Cathedral. Maybe if she went there and prayed. Confessed all before God.

Asked forgiveness. She reached over and touched the driver’s shoulder.

Take me...., she began.

The driver looked at her through the driving mirror, and said: Pardon me....

....if I’m sentimental when we say goodbye, she sang.

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It isn’t real, she thought, This can’t....

....be love, because I feel so good, she sang, interrupting her own thinking.

She reached for the door handle, but Judge Nesbitt, prevented her from opening the

door.

You can’t do that, he said. Not while the car is moving.

Moving, moving, moving. Keep those doggies moving, rawhide, she sang.

The Judge struggled to keep her wrists imprisoned, and called to Charles to drive to

the nearest hospital.

She needs a doctor, he said.

Oh, doctor I’m in trouble. Well, goodness gracious me, sang Marta.

MY MOTHER WAS NOT A SENTIMENTAL WOMAN.

My mother was not a sentimental woman. She stood on sturdy legs and had a stubborn

mindset, and it was probably this that caused my father to be absent in Scotland and

England during the time of my growing up.

He would come home from time-to-time, listen to my mother’s complaints about our

current habitation, remove us to another house and then be off again.

So it was that we were moved from a house in Great Victoria Street to a couple of

rooms in a farmhouse on the Flush Road above Legoneil. This now meant that I had to

travel to my two schools in Belfast; to my weekday school and to my Sunday school.

What I am about to tell you took place on a Sunday. I was ten years old at the time and

that would make the year 1947.

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From the farmhouse I walked a mile to the bus stop from where the bus took me to

Smithfield Bus Station.

There was a newsagent’s in Winetavern Street that I always looked into before going to

Sunday school. It was owned by a man named Francie and his wife and they kept a

selection of American comics; sixpence each.

If all went well that day, I thought, I’d be going home with a Superman and a Captain

Marvel, because my Sunday school teacher was giving a penny a verse for memorizing

Isaiah 53, and I knew all twelve verses off by heart.

I got my shilling and I got my comics, and I got my bus home. I sat in the long

backseat behind the cavity of the door opening. Just before the bus moved off a well-

dressed woman with a cardboard box with holes in it sat beside me.

During the journey I was distracted from my reading by mewing sounds coming from

the box. I looked towards it more than once.

“Kittens,” the woman said. “Would you like to see?”

I nodded, and she took the top off the box and I saw two tabby kittens crawling over

each other. They looked blind.

“They’re nice,” I said.

“Would you like to have them?”

“Don’t you want them?”

“We have others,” she said. “I’m just trying to find someone to give them to.”

“I’d like them,” I said.

She handed me the box and instructed me on how to look after them.

I got off the bus and walked home, from time-to-time looking in at my two kittens. I

still remember my singing heart.

It stopped singing when I showed them to my mother.

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“Where’d you get these?”

I told her. My mother could “Humph” and she “Humphed”.

“They’ve got the mange,” she said. “It’s not your fault. You weren’t to know. I’ll have

to drown them.”

My protests were useless. She drowned the two kittens.

As I said, my mother was not a sentimental woman.