‘Nothing wrong with ME.’

‘Keep that up, it will change.’

And slammed the door. Scrawled all over the paper was ‘S.W.A.L.K., a heart, I love you stallion, and LIPS’. I said, jeez, who could this be? Tore it open, praying to hell-and-gone it wasn’t incendiary. I already knew it was explosive, a book fell out. Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice. Swore, this fuck again. I was very tired of the guy. Still, the book had a nice feel to it. Old leather cover, gold-leaf pages and one of them index fingies you see in bibles. She’d written a note, what a surprise.

‘My David, David Mia

Without you

What warehouse of the soul

awaits me now.’

Deep, I said, very friggin’ deep.

I used the index and read:

‘And I remember Spain

at Easter, ripe as an egg

for revolt and ruin

though for a tripper

the rain was worse

than the surly

or the worried or the haunted faces.’

I wasn’t getting this. Maybe he was one of those guys you had to hear aloud. So I cleared my throat, looked around a bit self-consciously and took my shot.

‘The churches full of saints

tortured on racks of marble

and the Escorial

cold for ever

within the heart of Philip

as if veneer could hold

the rotten guts

and crumpled bones together.’

Yeah, well, some people had a flair for it. The Doc, now he’d read the telephone directory and you felt moved. I reckon the Irish always sound as if they mean it, as if it’s personal. Us lot, we’ve always one ear open for the hint of ridicule.

My old man, he fancied his voice. Sunday evenings he’d read to my mother and I from the Good Book. All the Old Testament stuff. Jeez, he was hot for that fire and brimstone, unmerciful punishments and ferocious suffering. The torment of the damned got him hot. Silly fucker would drone on about begots and begats.