part 2

The book tells me all about King Alfred and William the Conqueror and all the kings and queens down to Edward, who had to wait forever for his mother, Victoria, to die before he could be king. The book has the first bit of Shakespeare I ever read.

I do believe, induced by potent

circumstances,
That thou art mine enemy.

The history writer says this is what Catherine, who is a wife of Henry the Eighth, says to Cardinal Wolsey, who is trying to have her head cut off. I don’t know what it means and I don’t care because it’s Shakespeare and it’s like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words. If I had a whole book of Shakespeare they could keep me in the hospital for a year.

Patricia says she doesn’t know what induced means or potent circumstances and she doesn’t care about Shakespeare, she has her poetry book and she reads to me from beyond the wall a poem about an owl and a pussycat that went to sea in a green boat with honey and money and it makes no sense and when I say that Patricia gets huffy and says that’s the last poem she’ll ever read to me. She says I’m always reciting the lines from Shakespeare and they make no sense either. Seamus stops mopping again and tells us we shouldn’t be fighting over poetry because we’ll have enough to fight about when we grow up and get married. Patricia says she’s sorry and I’m sorry too so she reads me part of another poem which I have to remember so I can say it back to her early in the morning or late at night when there are no nuns or nurses about,

The wind was a torrent of darkness among

the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed

upon cloudy seas,

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over

the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding—

Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the

old inn door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a

bunch of lace at his chin,

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of

brown doeskin,

They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots

were up to the thigh.

And he rode with a jeweled twinkle,

His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jeweled

sky.

Every day I can’t wait for the doctors and nurses to leave me alone so I can learn a new verse from Patricia and find out what’s happening to the highwayman and the landlord’s red-lipped daughter. I love the poem because it’s exciting and almost as good as my two lines of Shakespeare. The redcoats are after the highwayman because they know he told her, I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.

I’d love to do that myself, come by moonlight for Patricia in the next room not giving a hoot though hell should bar the way. She’s ready to read the last few verses when in comes the nurse from Kerry shouting at her, shouting at me, I told ye there was to be no talking between rooms. Dipthteria is never allowed to talk to typhoid and visa versa. I warned ye. And she calls out, Seamus, take this one. Take the by. Sister Rita said one more word out of him and upstairs with him. We gave ye a warning to stop the blathering but ye wouldn’t. Take the by, Seamus, take him.

Ah, now, nurse, sure isn’t he harmless. ’Tis only a bit o’ poetry.

Take that by, Seamus, take him at once.

He bends over me and whispers, Ah, I’m sorry, Frankie. Here’s your English history book. He slips the book under my shirt and lifts me from the bed. He whispers that I’m a feather. I try to see Patricia when we pass through her room but all I can make out is a blur of dark head on a pillow.

Sister Rita stops us in the hall to tell me I’m a great disappointment to her, that she expected me to be a good boy after what God had done for me, after all the prayers said by hundreds of boys at the Confraternity, after all the care from the nuns and nurses of the Fever Hospital, after the way they let my mother and father in to see me, a thing rarely allowed, and this is how I repaid them lying in the bed reciting silly poetry back and forth with Patricia Madigan knowing very well there was a ban on all talk between typhoid and diphtheria. She says I’ll have plenty of time to reflect on my sins in the big ward upstairs and I should beg God’s forgiveness for my disobedience reciting a pagan English poem about a thief on a horse and a maiden with red lips who commits a terrible sin when I could have been praying or reading the life of a saint. She made it her business to read that poem so she did and I’d be well advised to tell the priest in confession.

The Kerry nurse follows us upstairs gasping and holding on to the banister. She tells me I better not get the notion she’ll be running up to this part of the world every time I have a little pain or a twinge.

There are twenty beds in the ward, all white, all empty. The nurse tells Seamus put me at the far end of the ward against the wall to make sure I don’t talk to anyone who might be passing the door, which is very unlikely since there isn’t another soul on this whole floor. She tells Seamus this was the fever ward during the Great Famine long ago and only God knows how many died here brought in too late for anything but a wash before they were buried and there are stories of cries and moans in the far reaches of the night. She says ’twould break your heart to think of what the English did to us, that if they didn’t put the blight on the potato they didn’t do much to take it off. No pity. No feeling at all for the people that died in this very ward, children suffering and dying here while the English feasted on roast beef and guzzled the best of wine in their big houses, little children with their mouths all green from trying to eat the grass in the fields beyond, God bless us and save us and guard us from future famines.

Seamus says ’twas a terrible thing indeed and he wouldn’t want to be walking these halls in the dark with all the little green mouths gaping at him. The nurse takes my temperature, ’Tis up a bit, have a good sleep for yourself now that you’re away from the chatter with Patricia Madigan below who will never know a gray hair.

She shakes her head at Seamus and he gives her a sad shake back.

Nurses and nuns never think you know what they’re talking about. If you’re ten going on eleven you’re supposed to be simple like my uncle Pat Sheehan who was dropped on his head. You can’t ask questions. You can’t show you understand what the nurse said about Patricia Madigan, that she’s going to die, and you can’t show you want to cry over this girl who taught you a lovely poem which the nun says is bad.

Table of Contents