about that poor little bugger, Quasimodo Dooley, carried off with the consumption after all his trouble talking for years like an Englishman so he could be on the BBC which is no fit place for an Irishman anyway. Peter is talking to the men and Mikey, sipping his first pint, whis- pers to me, I don’t think I like it, but don’t tell my father.Then he tells me how he practices the English accent in secret so that he can be a BBC announcer, Quasimodo’s dream. He tells me I can have Cuchu- lain back, that he’s no use to you when you’re reading the news on the BBC. Now that he’s sixteen he wants to go to England and if ever I get a wireless that will be him on the BBC Home Service. I tell him about the marriage certificate, how Billy Campbell said it has to be nine months but I was born in half the time and would he know if I was some class of a miracle. Naw, he says, naw.You’re a bastard.You’re doomed. You don’t have to be cursing me, Mikey. I’m not. That’s what they call people who aren’t born inside the nine months of the marriage, people conceived beyond the blanket. What’s that? What’s what? Conceived. That’s when the sperm hits the egg and it grows and there you are nine months later. I don’t know what you’re talking about. He whispers,The thing between your legs is the excitement. I don’t like the other names, the dong, the prick, the dick, the langer. So your father shoves his excitement into your mother and there’s a spurt and these little germs go up into your mother where there’s an egg and that grows into you. I’m not an egg. You are an egg. Everyone was an egg once. Why am I doomed? ’Tisn’t my fault I’m a bastard. All bastards are doomed.They’re like babies that weren’t baptized. They’re sent to Limbo for eternity and there’s no way out and it’s not their fault. It makes you wonder about God up there on His throne with no mercy for the little unbaptized babies. That’s why I don’t go near  the  chapel  anymore. Anyway,  you’re  doomed. Your  father  and mother had the excitement and they weren’t married so you’re not in a state of grace. What am I going to do? 254