At times like this Mam tells us to stay inside.We have nothing but bread and tea and she doesn’t want the tormenting neighbors to see us with our tongues hanging out, suffering over the lovely smells floating up and down the lane. She says ’tis easy to see they’re not used to hav- ing anything the way they brag about everything. ’Tis a real low-class mind that will call out the door and tell the world what they’re having for the supper. She says ’tis their way of getting a rise out of us because Dad is a foreigner from the North and he won’t have anything to do with any of them. Dad says all that food comes from English money and no luck will come to those who took it but what could you expect from Limerick anyway, people who profit from Hitler’s war, people who will work and fight for the English. He says he’ll never go over there and help England win a war. Mam says, No, you’ll stay here where there’s no work and hardly a lump of coal to boil water for the tea. No, you’ll stay here and drink the dole when the humor is on you.You’ll watch your sons going around with broken shoes and their arses hanging out of their trousers. Every house in the lane has electricity and we’re lucky if we have a candle. God above, if I had the fare I’d be off to England myself for I’m sure they need women in the factories. Dad says a factory is no place for a woman. Mam says, Sitting on your arse by the fire is no place for a man. I say to him, Why can’t you go to England, Dad, so we can have electricity and a wireless and Mam can stand at the door and tell the world what we’re having at dinnertime? He  says, Don’t  you  want  to  have  your  father  here  at  home  with you? I do but you can come back at the end of the war and we can all go to America. He  sighs,  Och,  aye,  och,  aye. All  right  he’ll  go  to  England  after Christmas because America is in the war now and the cause must be just. He’d never go if the Americans hadn’t gone in. He tells me I’ll have to be the man of the house, and he signs up with an agent to work in a factory in Coventry which, everyone says, is the most bombed city in England.The agent says,There’s plenty of work for willing men.You can work overtime till you drop and if you save it up, mate, you’ll be Rock- efeller at the end of the war. We’re  up  early  to  see  Dad  off  at  the  railway  station.  Kathleen O’Connell at the shop knows Dad is off to England and money will be 218