I can’t go back. I’m never going back.You can come here any time you like. His eyes glint with tears and that gives me such a pain in my heart I want to say,All right, I’ll come with you. I’m only saying that. I know I’ll never be able to face Laman Griffin again and I don’t know if I can look at my mother. I watch Michael go up the lane with the sole of his shoe broken and clacking along the pavement.When I start that job at the post office I’ll buy him shoes so I will. I’ll give him an egg and take him to the Lyric Cinema for the film and the sweets and then we’ll go to Naughton’s and eat fish and chips till our bellies are sticking out a mile.I’ll get money some day for a house or a flat with electric light and a  lavatory  and  beds  with  sheets  blankets  pillows  like  the  rest  of  the world.We’ll have breakfast in a bright kitchen with flowers dancing in a garden beyond,delicate cups and saucers,eggcups,eggs soft in the yolk and ready to melt the rich creamery butter, a teapot with a cozy on it, toast with butter and marmalade galore.We’ll take our time and listen to music from the BBC or the American Armed Forces Network. I’ll buy proper clothes for the whole family so our arses won’t be hanging out of our pants and we won’t have the shame. The thought of the shame brings a pain in my heart and starts me sniffling.The Abbot says, What’s up with you? Didn’t you have your bread? Didn’t you have your tay? What more do you want? ’Tis an egg you’ll be lookin’ for next. There’s no use talking to someone who was dropped on his head and sells papers for a living. He complains he can’t be feeding me forever and I’ll have to get my own bread and tea. He doesn’t want to come home and find me read- ing in the kitchen with the electric lightbulb blazing away. He can read numbers so he can and when he goes out to sell papers he reads the electric meter so he’ll know how much I used and if I don’t stop turn- ing on that light he’ll take the fuse out and carry it in his pocket and if I put another fuse in he’ll have the electricity pulled out altogether and go back to gas, which was good enough for his poor dead mother and will surely suit him for all he does is sit up in the bed to eat his fish and chips and count his money before he goes to sleep. I get up early like Dad and go on long walks into the country.I walk around the graveyard in the old abbey at Mungret where my mother’s relations are buried and I go up the boreen to the Norman castle at Carrigogunnell where Dad brought me twice. I climb to the top and Ireland is spread out before me, the Shannon shining its way to the 298