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of the Congress, there were hundreds of interpreters in city churches. Patrick acted as Spanish interpreter, attached to the Pro-Cathedral. Men and women were segregated by the Church, so he and my mother had to attend separate sodalities. They arranged to meet afterwards at White Friar Street.
    When the Dutch girl guides concluded their procession with a fascist salute to the cardinal legate, Patrick had this to say:
    Maybe it is due to my own touchiness, but I am amazed how the fascist salute is accepted as a norm by all nationalities in the Church. If they warn of the dangers of other ideologies such as communism, why don’t they equally warn of the dangers of fascism? No one has raised a voice against it.
    ***
    He reflects on my grandmother and Gearóid:
    I am glad M told me about G. I thought she did not want me around the shop because of her mother, who is like Maud Gonne in her widow’s weeds mourning for her husband and her son. I thought that perhaps her mother might have objected to the age difference between M and myself. But she was polite to me when I met her. She spends most of her time in the back room and leaves most of the running of the shop to M. She never invited me into the back of the shop. She is fond of G. Perhaps she sees him as a surrogate son. (M told me his mother died young and his father was killed by the Tans). I think he is in the ‘movement’. I think the shop is being used as a ‘safe house’. I’m not sure. G is a rather surly character, or maybe it’s just that I don’t know him or understand him. He strikes me, not as an ideologist, but as a vindictivist, as one out to settle old scores. There is tension in his presence. He appears suddenly as if from nowhere. He is a denizen of darkness, fading in and out of the pitchy labyrinths around the Liberties. He speaks only in Irish to M. She told me that an English soldier said to G at the Pillar once: ‘Got the time mate?’ G refused to answer. He just pointed to the fáinne on his lapel. ‘Hey’, said the Englishman, ‘he don’t speak English. How many of the Irish is illiterate?’ M says that if we were all as stubborn as G, the Irish language could be saved.
    ***
    After sodality, Patrick escorted my mother home. They bought a ‘one and one’ in Rocco’s in Wexford Street, which my mother claims was the first chip shop in Dublin. She teased Patrick. She asked him if she knew the origin of the term ‘one and one’. ‘Of course’, said Patrick, ‘a fish and chip; it was before the Italians got the lingo.’ And then she said she’d like an ice cream from Capello’s. Patrick wanted to know if it was her birthday. She just laughed as they rambled up Cuffe Street.
    As they headed back towards the Woodburn shop, they saw Gearóid coming out and caught a glimpse of my grandmother with her black shawl ruffled by the wind. She stood in the doorway for a moment, Patrick records, and then disappeared into the back before they could reach her. Gearóid looked disapprovingly at Patrick and rattled on in Irish to my mother. He was very irate. He said that the Northern pilgrims were being stoned in Lisburn and Belfast. When he had finished his spiel, he pushed past them rather brusquely. My mother shouted after him in Irish, asked him to wait a moment. She apologised about the film, asked him not to be angry, that there was no harm in it. He turned and scowled at her, said there was harm in it and that she was drunk on foreign capitalist rubbish. He glowered at Patrick, saying how she insulted him in front of a stranger. My mother pleaded with him, but he pulled away.
    After the women’s Mass, Patrick asked my mother what the sermon was about. She said that they were told to be helpful towards their parents and brothers. With Tomás gone, she said she looked upon Gearóid as her brother now. ‘And wives...’ She laughed and threw back her hair, ‘should inspire their husbands with the sweet fragrance of their goodness and virtue