3. She is coming in to pick me up from school.
I am in reception class, with Mrs Hartop, and being allowed to continue playing at the table where you sort things by shape or colour while all the other kids are packing up and going home. I’m afforded this extra few minutes because my mother is catching up with Mrs Hartop. They are both laughing and smiling, and Mrs Hartop grabs my mother’s arm at one point in that ‘oh no, stop it’ way you sometimes do to emphasise how little you want someone to stop it. They are at the back of the class, and I am proud that Mammy knows the teacher so well, because none of the other parents talk to her at all. She sticks out her hand in a wordless gesture that means we’re going and as I cradle my head to her knee she tells me to say goodbye.
4. We are on a bus on Bishop Street.
My mother is carrying shopping bags, and the plastic handles are digging into her fingers. The bus has either stopped for a long time, or has just been interrupted by the army. We are at the bottom end of Bishop Street, with the river on our left and Moore Walk on our right, just before the turn toward the dump, and the Brandywell. It’s a bright, sunny day, and there is a bomb somewhere on the road. The sunlight is coming in the window at such an angle that I have to cup my hand slightly over one eye to see the driver, who is talking to a soldier through the window. He looks bothered but not upset. Mammy, looking worried, puts her shopping down and holds my hand very tight. She is chewing her thumbnail. There are two more soldiers outside, not looking in but talking to each other; both are carrying machine guns, and are beside two armoured cars in which sit several other soldiers. There is a woman at the front of the bus, near the driver, who jokes with him after the soldier departs. We are not allowed to leave the bus. Instead we reverse back up Bishop Street until we can turn and take a detour some way back. I say the words ‘bomb scare’ for days afterwards.
5. She is dancing with Daddy.
We’re all in the kitchen with Mammy, when Daddy enters with a rose, or bouquet of roses, for Mammy. It’s Valentine’s Day or their anniversary or something, and he gives her a decidedly PG kiss on the cheek as he presents the flowers, with great theatricality for our benefit. Groans of displeasure ring out as he does so, and he takes delight in the sincere mortification evoked by his showing Mammy affection. Emboldened, he places a rose between his teeth like a crooning heart-throb and affects a Lothario facial expression, all arched eyebrows and tilted head. He takes Mammy by the hand and leads her around the kitchen, cheek to cheek, in an improvised waltz, the rose still in his mouth. There are squeals of laughter, and he sings something schmaltzy and adoring into her ear. Mammy is blushing and laughing, and I am screaming with delighted horror.
6. I am eating a Penguin bar.
It’s a Friday. Mammy has got off early, maybe. Someone is early, I can feel that for sure. It’s me, Fionnuala and Conall, the three youngest. We are sitting at the giant kitchen table, with a Penguin bar each and some lemonade. This is a party. It’s special, because Mammy doesn’t usually let us have chocolate or fizzy drinks, but on Fridays before the school ones come in, we have this little treat among ourselves. Mammy is asking us about our days, genuinely interested to know what we’ve been up to.
7. We are sitting in a caravan.
We’re in Westport, Mayo, and Mammy and I are sitting in the caravan, the old caravan that is too small for all of us but seems perfect for just us two. My friend Andrew and his mother are here too, because they’ve been staying in the same caravan park, and it was a surprise that they are there, and his mum comes in. They are speaking quietly in the back part, while we play with toys at the table to the side, both very confused as to how friends from school have somehow appeared, fully formed, 150 miles from our usual haunt, across a border where accents are unfamiliar and even the sweets are different. It is nine or ten at night, the light is dimming, and one or both of us has been woken up to see the other, so we can play while they chat. Mammy and Mrs McIvor are friends because they gave birth to us in adjacent hospital beds, he arriving three hours after me. Mammy is talking about hospitals again, and smiling for Mrs McIvor, and saying that things are in God’s hands. Mammy’s hands are in Mrs McIvor’s, who has clasped them between the handkerchief she’s been using to wipe her eyes.
8. She is in her bedroom.
It must be early in the morning, because the curtains haven’t been opened yet. Daddy isn’t in the room, so he may be in the kitchen or has already left for work. I’ve come into their room to find Mammy placing small foam pads in the front of her dress. The relative murk in the room is accented by two or three ineffably small slivers of sunlight that slice, wafer-thin, through the dark curtains. Mammy is not remotely fazed at seeing me come in, and as I sit on their bed she carries on, saying something to me I can’t place, as she sprays some perfume on her wrists and neck. I see the individual drops of the perfume ascend as motes of dust, as they pass over her shoulder and through the sunbeams poking through the window.
You may have noticed that there were more memories there than the five I previously mentioned. This is because, over the course of writing this book, three more have resurfaced, bringing the total to a slightly more respectable eight. Even light reading on the subject suggests that memories are scarcely trustworthy things, so I don’t really know how many of these are fully real recollections drawn from focusing on aspects of my life that were too painful to consider for the past three decades, or half-fudged fakes contrived from going over other people’s stories and looking at old photographs.