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was like a mad thing. I was frightened, like being a girl again, scared some nun would come along and send us out to St Andrew’s where the lunatic people all get sent when they’ve been up to no good.’
    ‘A dreadful risk.’ Magda imagined being sent to the mad house of St Andrew’s.
    ‘He had his thing out and I started on it like a crazy woman. It went everywhere, all over my clothes. You know what we did?’
    ‘No?’
    ‘I said I’d stumbled against the fountain, y’know, where the birds splash, that bird bath? It wasn’t even filled, so I had to get a watering can from the gardener’s and fill it in the little pool and carry water to the bird bath then we could pretend I’d stumbled and got myself wet.’
    ‘I remember washing your dress, Mrs Borru.’
    ‘I know. That’s why I’m telling you.’
    ‘I’d best get on, Mrs Borru.’
    Suddenly the old dear’s eyes took on a wicked glint.
    ‘Here,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘Are you the girl who pinches my tablets?’
    ‘What?’ Magda paled.
    ‘You’re the girl who pinches my tablets.’
    ‘No. I mean…’
    ‘Shhhhh,’ Mrs Borru said, and closed her eyes smiling.
    That was the day Magda cleaned up after poor Mr Brannigan, and got took home by Bernard after a new old man was brought in. Magda let Bernard do the thing to her. She was being compassionate to a kind man, which was what God intended, same as Mrs Borru to old Mr Brannigan. It was how Bernard began it regular, usually twice a week but sometimes more often unless he had duty when there was racing at the Fairyhouse or Leopardstown.
     
    She was shaking, so shocked was she, when the new man, who was seventy-two and riddled with lice and fleas and Heaven-knows-what, had to be cleaned by the two-blanket method and sundry lotions poured on the festering sores that blotched his skin. The Garda Siobhana brought him because he was going for trial after a fight in Connelly Station.
    That was how Sister Stephanie said the Gardai were to take Magda home afterwards, as a kindness, seeing she’d worked six hours extra without overtime money, because there was never that at the St Cosmo. And the Gardai were three hours over their own time, so Bernard said he’d come back on his way after signing off in the police station, which he did. And he ran Magda to her girls’ resident block, and saw her up to her door, and when Mrs Shaughnessy saw it was the Gardai shesank back into her doorway further along the landing. Magda explained to the old toot that there had been things going on at the Home today which made it all right.
    Then she made some tea and Bernard sat down, and Magda said she’d scramble some eggs and would Bernard be wanting some. He said yes that would be grand. And she was pleased because she had cleaned up in the sluice at the Home, so she was able to let him see her wash her hands before she buttered some bread while the eggs were doing. The bread was soda bread that was too friable for making sandwiches, like most of the old men wanted to eat their scrambled eggs, but she was glad when Bernard said it didn’t matter one bit, and made thick sandwiches with two slices of soda bread on each side, larded with Kerry Gold and hang the cost.
    She was glad too he liked brown sauce instead of the red tomato sauce, and that reminded her of the red dress that Mrs Borru said she’d worn while dancing for her husband and spouting the poetry about the red leaf dancing, the last of its clan. That made Magda feel she too had rights in certain things and smiled across at the eating man.
    He was stout and thick, head and neck like a bull’s, with hands that seemed too soft for most men. She felt embarrassed letting him see her bold as brass and natural as anything eating away, quite like they were man and wife, which was something beyond normal how-de-do. But still she had her eggs but didn’t of course make butties from it, which wasn’t quite proper. Ladies in the old TV pictures they