James Cagney, White Heat
To keep the account balanced, I should mention my mother. Ann had said, “You talk about your father a lot. I know you think about him all the time, but you never say anything about your mother.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
Terse.
My father highly rated Henry James. It was an unlikely choice. A man, working on the railway in the West of Ireland reading an American from a totally different world. He said, “James seems so polished and stylish, but beneath there lurks…” He didn’t finish. That “lurks” was enticement enough to a child of darkness.
In What Maisie Knew, the nine-year-old child says, “I don’t think my mother cares much for me.”
I knew my mother didn’t have a lot of grá… for anyone. Least of all me. She is the very worst of things, a snob, and she’s from
