whats up with you, Frankie, and the two eyes in your head all gone
brown?
I have an infection, Seamus.
Yerra, youll be over that before youre married, Frankie.The eyes
need exercise.The blink is great value for the eyes. I had an uncle with
bad eyes and the blink saved him. He sat an hour ever day and blinked
and it stood to him in the end. Wound up with powerful eyes, so
he did.
I want to ask him more about the blink and the powerful eyes but
he says, Now do you remember the poem, Frankie, the lovely poem of
Patricia?
He stands in the aisle between the beds with his mop and his
bucket and says the highwayman poem and all the patients stop their
moaning and the nuns and nurses stand and listen and on and on goes
Seamus till he comes to the end and everyone goes mad clapping and
cheering him and he tells the world he loves that poem hell have it in
his head forever no matter where he goes and if it wasnt for Frankie
McCourt and his typhoid there and poor Patricia Madigan with the
dipteria thats gone God rest her hed never know the poem and there
I am famous in the eye ward of the City Home Hospital and all
because of Seamus.
Mam cant come to visit every day, its a long way out, she doesnt
always have the money for the bus and the walk is hard on her corns.
She thinks my eyes look better though you cant tell with all that brown
stuff, which looks and smells like iodine and if its anything like iodine
it must burn. Still, they say the bitterer the medicine the quicker the
cure. She gets permission to take me for a walk around the grounds
when the weather clears and theres a strange sight, Mr.Timoney stand-
ing against the wall where the old people are with his eyes raised to the
sky. I want to talk to him and I have to ask Mam because you never
know whats right or wrong in a hospital.
Mr.Timoney.
Who is it? Who do we have?
Frank McCourt, sir.
Francis, ah, Francis.
Mam says, Im his mother, Mr.Timoney.
Well, then, the two of ye are blessed. I have neither kith nor kin nor
Macushla my dog.And what are you doing in this place, Francis?
I have an infection in my eyes.
228