nal  apparatus.  Say  your  rosary,  Francis,  and  pray  for  your  internal apparatus. Mam  visits  me  on Thursdays. I’d  like  to  see  my  father, too, but I’m  out of danger, crisis time is over, and I’m allowed only one visi- tor.  Besides,  she  says,  he’s  back  at  work  at  Rank’s  Flour  Mills  and please God this job will last a while with the war on and the English desperate  for  flour.  She  brings  me  a  chocolate  bar  and  that  proves Dad  is  working. She could never afford it on the dole. He sends me notes. He tells me my brothers are all praying for me, that I should be a  good  boy,  obey  the  doctors,  the  nuns,  the  nurses,  and  don’t  for- get  to  say my prayers. He’s sure St. Jude pulled me through the crisis because he’s the patron saint of desperate cases and I was indeed a des- perate case. Patricia says she has two books by her bed. One is a poetry book and that’s the one she loves.The other is a short history of England and do I want it? She gives it to Seamus,the man who mops the floors every day, and he brings it to me. He says, I’m not supposed to be bringing anything from a dipteria room to a typhoid room with all the germs fly- ing around and hiding between the pages and if you ever catch dipte- ria on top of the typhoid they’ll know and I’ll lose my good job and be out on the street singing patriotic songs with a tin cup in my hand, which I could easily do because there isn’t a song ever written about Ireland’s  sufferings  I  don’t  know  and  a  few  songs  about  the  joy  of whiskey too. Oh, yes, he  knows  Roddy  McCorley. He’ll  sing  it  for  me  right enough but he’s barely into the first verse when the Kerry nurse rushes in.What’s this, Seamus? Singing? Of all the people in this hospital you should know the rules against singing. I have a good mind to report you to Sister Rita. Ah, God, don’t do that, nurse. Very well, Seamus. I’ll let it go this one time.You know the singing could lead to a relapse in these patients. When she leaves he whispers he’ll teach me a few songs because singing  is  good  for  passing  the  time  when  you’re  by  yourself  in  a typhoid room. He says Patricia is a lovely girl the way she often gives him sweets from the parcel her mother sends every fortnight. He stops mopping the floor and calls to Patricia in the next room, I was telling Frankie you’re a lovely girl, Patricia, and she says,You’re a lovely man, Seamus. He smiles because he’s an old man of forty and he never had 195