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men to try, and women to deny.” What d’you think of that?’
    Magda almost repeated it but caught herself in time.
    ‘She was a daft old biddie who knew no better. She had an unhappy life, did Auntie Winnie. Her husband ran off with a girl who worked the boats. I don’t know what it means to this day.’
    The old lady smiled at the Sacred Heart bold as brass, straight at the figure of Our Lord doing His suffering and everything on the wall.
    ‘What what means?’
    ‘You’re not listening. Worked the boats. I’ve told you twice, her husband ran off with a girl who worked the boats.’ And old Mrs Borru gave Magda an absolutely beatific smile. ‘Doesn’t it sound romantic? She worked the boats . It makes me think of the Far East in hot climes, like in those sailing poems we used to learn at school. We were made to stand up and recite Masefield and Wordsworth and Coleridge.’
    ‘Poems?’
    The old lady was rambling now, so perhaps it was becoming less sinful with each passing minute. Magda decided to stay, but was disappointed the talk had come down to poems when it had been horrid but fascinating.
    ‘Coleridge.’ Mrs Borru smiled. ‘I loved the ones about romance. Coleridge was a strange stick, right enough, with more strings to his bow than a man ought.’
    ‘Was he?’ Magda knew nobody by that name in the St Cosmo.
    ‘How does it go? The red leaf, last of its clan, dances as often as dance it can. Isn’t that lovely?’
    ‘Lovely,’ Magda said guardedly, ready to say a swift Glory Be in case it wasn’t lovely at all but something truly foul.
    ‘I thought of a red leaf trying to dance when it was going to fall, just like all the rest.’
    ‘I see,’ Magda said, who didn’t.
    ‘Red was the colour you were forbidden when I was a girl,’ Mrs Borru said. ‘You got your legs smacked good and hard if you were seen in red knickers, or petticoats, or a dress. I always longed for red shoes, after reading that Coleridge poem.’
    ‘Did you get some?’ Magda asked, drawn in deep now despite the wicked side to the talk.
    ‘No, bless you. Different when I was married. It didn’t matter then because my husband bought me some. We’d gone to England. We lived over a shop and I got cast-offs and seconds from their stock, and one was a red woollen dress that hugged my shape. I went mad in that. I danced as often as dance I could.’ She giggled, a marvellously happy sound to Magda. She loved people to laugh, even old Mr Vennoshay whose teeth clacked when he had a good laugh if he’d forgotten his sticky stuff for his false plate.
    ‘You danced?’
    ‘I just told you. I danced for my husband in our flat and in our bedroom. Women forget they have a duty to their man, to please. That’s how you stay together. They forget that these days. It’s the way they get divorced.’
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘Don’t you read the papers?’
    ‘No,’ Magda said truthfully, because she hadn’t the lettering. Also, it seemed a tragic waste of money to go spending on newspapers with racing results and what the Taoiseach was on about in the Dail when everybody else talked of it all the time anyway.
    ‘I’ll miss Jim.’ The old lady’s eyes filled, to Magda’s consternation.
    ‘We all shall, Mrs Borru.’
    ‘I’ll miss him more than anybody, God’s truth. It’s comforting to have a man nearby, even though we’re too old to even see each other. I always kept an ear out to listen after Jim, how he was getting on, even after he went to sleep for good.’
    ‘A shame, God rest him.’
    ‘Don’t you just go saying that, girl. You mean it or don’t go saying it at all, d’you hear?’
    ‘Yes, Mrs Borru.’
    ‘He wore me out sometimes. He would take his time getting to the spillage. We never made a mess in the beds, did we? You didn’t notice any mess, did you, after we’d done it during the night?’
    ‘No,’ Magda said faintly. ‘I didn’t know.’
    ‘We did it once in the summer house. It was mortal hot. Jim