She’d love a cup of tea but there’s no way of boiling the water till Malachy pulls a loose board off the wall between the two upstairs rooms.Mam says, Well, ’tis off now and we might as well chop it up for the fire.We boil the water and use the rest of the wood for the morning tea but what about tonight and tomorrow and ever after? Mam says, One more board from that wall, one more and not another one. She says that for two weeks till there’s nothing left but the beam frame.She warns us we are not to touch the beams for they hold up the ceiling and the house itself. Oh, we’d never touch the beams. She goes to see Grandma and it’s so cold in the house I take the hatchet to one of the beams. Malachy cheers me on and Michael claps his hands with excitement. I pull on the beam, the ceiling groans and down on Mam’s bed there’s a shower of plaster,slates,rain.Malachy says, Oh,God,we’ll all be killed,and Michael dances around singing,Frankie broke the house, Frankie broke the house. We run through the rain to tell Mam the news. She looks puzzled with Michael chanting, Frankie broke the house, till I explain there’s a hole in the house and it’s falling down. She says, Jesus, and runs through the streets with Grandma trying to keep up. Mam sees her bed buried under plaster and slates and pulls at her hair,What’ll we do at all, at all? and screams at me for interfering with the beams. Grandma says, I’ll go to the landlord’s office and tell them fix this before ye are all drowned entirely. She’s back in no time with the rent man. He says, Great God in heaven, where’s the other room? Grandma says,What room? I rented ye two rooms up here and one is gone.Where is that room? Mam says,What room? There were two rooms up here and now there’s one.And what hap- pened to the wall? There was a wall. Now there’s no wall. I distinctly remember a wall because I distinctly remember a room. Now where is that wall? Where is that room? Grandma says, I don’t remember a wall and if I don’t remember a wall how can I remember a room? Ye don’t remember? Well,I remember.Forty years a landlord’s agent and I never seen the likes of this. By God, ’tis a desperate situation alto- gether when you can’t turn your back but tenants are not paying their rent and making walls and rooms disappear on top of it. I want to know where that wall is and what ye did with the room, so I do. 276