28
Mrs Bailey made a huge fuss on seeing me, went,
“Oh, by the holy, look at the state of you.”
She wanted to move me to a room on the ground floor because of my leg, but I was having none of that. I loved where I was, said,
“The exercise is good. I need to keep moving.” Janet, the chambermaid, burst out crying, threw her arms round me, wailed,
“We thought you’d been killed.”
I went with the saying of my youth, the defence against emotion, said,
“Sure, you can’t kill a bad thing.”
I could feel her tears soak through my shirt and was more affected than I’d ever admit. Here, if fragmented, if ancient in years, was family.
She finally released me, said,
“And all the weight you’ve lost, you’re like a Biafran.” To a certain generation in Ireland, despite the number of world famines si
