Читать книгу The Lost Diaries - Craig Brown, Craig Brown - Страница 80

Oh Jasus. Oh Jasus oh Jasus oh Jasus. Oh Jasus. Will you look at that? asks Dad. I look down at me plate. Oh Jasus, he asks, was there ever a child like him for the greed and the gluttony, the gluttony and the greed? And now the others are staring at me plate, and they’d take a pitchfork to me head out of jealousy if we hadn’t sold the pitchfork to Ma McGubbins to pay for the last season’s hay which they needed to feed the donkey to pull the peat to buy another pitchfork to replace the one they’d sold to old Ma McGubbins.

How’s he get to have two peas? says Malachy. Oh Jasus, is tis birthday? Dad snatches one of me peas and cuts it in half, snatching half for himself and placing the other half in his top pocket for safekeeping, alongside last year’s moth. Malachy caught the moth in his sock and Dad said he’d keep it for our St Patrick’s Day fry-up, moths cook beautiful in batter he said though their wings can prove a mite chewy, it’s all that flying they do, Jasus who’d be a moth in this day and age? Malachy says moths are Protestant, ye’ve never seen a moth with a rosary, now have you, he says, but Mam says they’re good Catholics, and all that flitterfluttering is them making the sign of the cross to the good Lord, is it not.

So I’m cutting me remainin’ pea into four and spreading the quarters round the plate to give an impression of quantity when there’s a swoosh from the chimney and Great Grandma McCourt emerges covered in soot, her false teeth close behind. She’s been out whorin’ agin, whispers Alphie. Jasus, how can ye tell? I hiss back. She’s suckin’ on a cough-drop, says Alphie, they always pay her in cough-drops. But is it not a mortal sin? I ask. Will she not be condemning her soul to eternal damnation?

Not for a cough-drop, snaps Mam. Maybe for a sherbet lemon or two toffees, now shaddup and eat your pea or you won’t be getting your mouse-tail for puddin’.

FRANK MCCOURT ^*

The trouble with staying in places like Windsor Castle is that you so rarely meet anyone of interest. Bumped into the Reagans as I was going up the stairs. Dull little couple. He’s making a goodish stab of being President of the USA, she has a reasonable figure but eyes too far apart. Feel sorry for the pair of them. Should I put him on the board of the Tote? Might give him something to do.

WOODROW WYATT