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34. The hardness of the people that would walk over you if it affected their pockets. I would have to close down the whole hotel, the travellers would be gone as fast as a burst of gunfire. She said that Eileen was a hard case herself with her cause & I said, but did you see howshe wouldn’t leave Donnacha in the lurch? Mrs Hayes’ eyes filled up then most unexpected. She told me that he started out as one of the Fianna, Countess Markievicz’s boys. & that made both of us crythinking how he was so young running messages back then, wearing his own small uniforms. Not even eighteen when theyswung him. Was that legal? I still don’t know& I am afraid to ask. 86
page 89
35. I sawher in the ward with her white face & the two black plaits. Her hair had grown out in the prison, she had the widow’s peak – her light bodybarelymarking the bed. A nun with a pink face like a marshmallow squeezed hard into a white coif stood over her with the priest & the Blessed Sacraments. Eileen onlyspoke of Mrs Donavan & Flora. Almost as if theywere there beside her, with their faces covered in the white of an egg & their four vain elbows sitting in the four halves of lemons whitening them. It’s me, Babe Cronin, I said. Eileen, don’t you knowme? Her eyes blackened in her white face as she spoke, Mrs Donavan taught me darning & fancydarning. I could do the Peacock’s Eye but all I darned was men’s socks & theywere always on the run. 87

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34.

The hardness of the people that would walk over you if it affected their pockets. I would have to close down the whole hotel, the travellers would be gone as fast as a burst of gunfire. She said that Eileen was a hard case herself with her cause & I said, but did you see howshe wouldn’t leave Donnacha in the lurch? Mrs Hayes’ eyes filled up then most unexpected. She told me that he started out as one of the Fianna, Countess Markievicz’s boys. & that made both of us crythinking how he was so young running messages back then, wearing his own small uniforms. Not even eighteen when theyswung him. Was that legal? I still don’t know& I am afraid to ask.

86

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