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I packed again. Before I left, I bought myself a gramophone & sat beside the gas fire, winding it up again – John McCormack records, thinking of Eileen – I hear you calling me, you called when the moon had veiled her light, just before you went from me into the night. I came, do you remember? Mrs Hayes read me like a book in broad daylight. I heard her telling Nellythere was no fool like an old fool & she said it in front of me so I would hear it. There was no sign of Marcel, she said he died with the loneliness after Eileen but she wasn’t one bit upset. I wouldn’t put it past her to kill him. She made eyes in the mirror behind me everydayI searching & she knowing full well where Eileen was. & other days when I thought that if I had to hear John McCormack again, I would throwmyself out the window& I would be glad to feel the black ground thundering to meet me.

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