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making time to write I have a man very hard on socks and workmen need three meals a day with jugs of tea and bread in between. My darling you will always have a message from me if only a postcard when I cannot make time for a letter. I would know if you were dead. Perhaps you are on your way here. Be sure to bring a candle a Christmas candle we need a bit of light to shed on things. So many misunderstandings. I was going across to you you were coming across to me but I was motioned back told to sit down and wait and that you would be with me seven years from this day. If you would get yourself photographed front face and silhouette and
    send it to me I will send postal order by return. Make sure the photographer catches the spill of your hair and your trim black beard. I have been told that you will be with me openly seven years from this day. Better call at night after the lights are out. Sometimes a well-dressed lady on horseback rides by here with leaflets to distribute, things on her mind I reckon. Once there was a child with her riding double. Walk right round the house in case of spies and then tap on the window a good smart rap and I’ll sit up. We could go to the boathouse in Googy Park, boat half rotten but we’ll be safe enough off over there on the island no one to split us asunder. Write to me I am weary weary of the pen weary of asking.

    Dilly struggles for air, for breath, her eyes refusing to peel open, the very same as if they’ve been glued together, pandemonium, shouting, “Get Counihan, get Counihan.” She is fighting someone off, a nun, a nun’s face, and a nun’s white habit, stiff as plaster of Paris, the voice telling her, “You’re all right, you’re all right now,” and she is being led back from the stairs, back to her own bed, hoisted almost, two of them, one on either side helping her, not able to feel the ground, not caring, their laying her back in the bed and such a look of consternation on the poor nun’s face.
    “I think I was in Yankee land,” Dilly says apologetically.
    “Only for Nurse Aoife finding you, you’d be in Kingdom Come … thank the good Lord and our Blessed Lady and His angels and saints … I’ll get Doctor Counihan to come and see you.”
    “It was those pills, they sent me sky-high … I’m back to myself now … I don’t need a doctor at all,” she says and wonders timidly if there is a chance of a cup of tea.

    No longer agitated, just a little wanderish, she sees her life pass before her in rapid succession, like clouds, different shapes and different colors, merging, passing into one another, the story of her life being pulled out of her, like the pages pulled from a book.

    Part II

    Mushrooms

    we were beyond in the bog footing turf, three girls and Caimin and me. The small brown stooks like igloos in rows along the bank, gaps in them for the wind to circulate, to dry them out. When we’d finished someone said that the tinkers had been driven out of the Caoisearach, sent packing in their caravans, themselves and their children and their ponies and that there was bound to be mushrooms because wherever there were horses or ponies the mushrooms always sprang up.
    Creena was the smartest of us at finding them. She had eyes in the back of her head and the minute she came on a crop she commandeered them, folded her bib to make a pouch, to bring them home for her mother to cook in milk as a broth. There were two kinds of mushrooms, the domes like eggcups, snug in the grass, and the taller ones with smudgy brown mantles that quivered. We devoured them raw, but Eileen said they were gorgeous roasted on hot coals, held at the end of the tongs and flavored with a pinch of salt.
    The Shannon Lake way below and suddenly Caimin was shouting, calling, “There she goes, the ship bound for America,” and we looked and we couldn’t see it because there was nothing whatsoever on that lake, only round towers and islets, but we pretended, we all pretended that we