Eamon comes back from the lavatory and Peter goes in with an American magazine, Collier’s, that has pictures of girls in a beauty con- test.Eamon says,Do you know what he’s doing in there? At himself.Five times a day he goes in. Every time a new American magazine comes in with the women’s underwear he goes in. Never done going at himself. Borrows magazines to take home unbeknownst to Mr. McCaffrey and God knows what he does with himself and the magazines all night.If he fell dead in there the jaws of hell would open wide. I’d like to get into the lavatory myself when Peter comes out but I don’t want them saying,There he goes, new boy, first day on the job, already at himself.Won’t light up a fag oh no but wanks away like an oul’ billygoat. Mr. McCaffrey returns from van delivery and wants to know why all the magazines aren’t counted out,bundled and ready to go.Peter tells him,We were busy teaching the new boy, McCourt. God help us, he was a bit slow with the bad eyes you know but we kept at him and now he’s getting faster. Gerry Halvey, the messenger boy, won’t be in for a week because he’s entitled to his holidays and he wants to spend the time with his girlfriend, Rose, who’s coming back from England. I’m the new boy and I have to be messenger boy while he’s gone, cycling around Lim- erick on the bicycle with the big metal basket in front. He shows me how  to  balance  papers  and  magazines  so  that  the  bicycle  won’t  tip over with me in the saddle and a lorry passing by that will run over me and leave me like a piece of salmon in the road. He saw a soldier once that  was  run  over  by  an  army  lorry  and  that’s  what  he  looked  like, salmon. Gerry is making a last delivery at Easons kiosk at the railway station at noon on Saturday and that’s handy because I can meet him there to get the bicycle and he can meet Rose off the train.We stand at the gate waiting and he tells me he hasn’t seen Rose in a year. She’s over there working in a pub in Bristol and he doesn’t like that one bit because the English are forever pawing the Irish girls, hands up under the skirts and worse,and the Irish girls are afraid to say anything for fear of losing their jobs. Everyone knows Irish girls keep themselves pure especially Lim- erick girls known the world over for their purity who have a man to come back to like Gerry Halvey himself. He’ll be able to tell if she was true to him by her walk. If a girl comes back after a year with a certain class of a walk that’s different from the one she went away with then you 345