The floor creaks under him and when he pisses for ages into the cham-
ber pot we have to stuff our mouths with coats to stop the laughing
and Mam hisses at us to be quiet. He grumbles away above us before he
climbs down to get his bicycle and bang his way out the door.Mam whis-
pers,The coast is clear, go back to sleep.Ye can stay at home today.
We cant sleep.Were in a new house, we have to pee and we want
to explore.The lavatory is outside, about ten steps from the back door,
our own lavatory, with a door you can close and a proper seat where
you can sit and read squares of the Limerick Leader Laman Griffin left
behind for wiping himself.There is a long backyard, a garden with tall
grass and weeds, an old bicycle that must have belonged to a giant, tin
cans galore, old papers and magazines rotting into the earth, a rusted
sewing machine, a dead cat with a rope around his neck that somebody
must have thrown over the fence.
Michael gets a notion in his head that this is Africa and keeps ask-
ing,Wheres Tarzan? Wheres Tarzan? He runs up and down the back-
yard with no pants on trying to imitate Tarzan yodeling from tree to
tree. Malachy looks over the fences into the other yards and tells us,
They have gardens.Theyre growing things.We can grow things.We can
have our own spuds and everything.
Mam calls from the back door, See if ye can find anything to start
the fire in here.
Theres a wooden shed built against the back of the house. Its col-
lapsing and surely we could use some of the wood for the fire. Mam is
disgusted with the wood we bring in. She says its rotten and full of
white maggots but beggars cant be choosers.The wood sizzles above
the burning paper and we watch the white maggots try to escape.
Michael says he feels sorry for the white maggots but we know hes
sorry for everything in the world.
Mam tells us this house used to be a shop, that Laman Griffins
mother sold groceries through the little window and thats how she was
able to send Laman away to Rockwell College so that he could wind
up as an officer in the Royal Navy. Oh, he was, indeed.An officer in the
Royal Navy, and heres a picture of him with other officers all having
dinner with a famous American film star Jean Harlow. He was never the
same after he met Jean Harlow. He fell madly in love with her but what
was the use? She was Jean Harlow and he was nothing but an officer in
the Royal Navy and it drove him to drink and they threw him out of
the Navy. Now look at him, a common laborer for the Electricity Sup-
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