Two

My mother had two sisters. Eileen was a married woman living behind just up the way, and Bernadette was a nun who lived in England. Most Irish families had nuns and priests in them. It was nothing unusual. I loved my aunts fiercely, Eileen because she made me flower girl at her wedding and Bernadette because she used to take me on holidays.

There was an old house in Scarborough that once a year would be vacated by the nuns who lived there, for whatever reason, perhaps a pilgrimage, and Bernadette and I would sleep in their little rooms surrounded by their small things, and I loved every minute of it. We would drive from Portsmouth, singing songs and telling stories on the long journey. Once or twice one of my brothers might be brought as well, sometimes my mam, but mostly it was only me.

On those holidays Bernadette would organise our days on a list that she would keep in the flat front pocket of her black handbag, and strike each event through with a blue biro as we completed it, the sheet of paper pressed against her hand. I relished the routine, being woken and washed and fed with a good breakfast, and then dressed and brushed and teeth done and coat on and out the door to wherever we were going.

On picnics she would gently spread a small white napkin out on the grass between us, and fuss in her bag, taking out a little packet with perfectly cut sandwiches that she laid down on the napkin, and then a bag of cut apples, and a flask of tea. ‘We will have to share that cup, now,’ she would tell me. I didn’t mind; I would have drunk from her hand, I loved my Auntie Bernadette so much.

At dinner time she would make potatoes and vegetables and serve them hot with gravy and butter and some salt that she would sprinkle from pincered fingers across my plate.

In the convent there was all kinds of old furniture and old books, and huge fireplaces, and a long clock on the wall that ticked and hummed on the hour because the chimes were gone on it. In the evenings, we would sit in the drawing room and Bernadette would light a fire, because of course even in summer it would get cold in an old house, keeping me in my coat until she got it going. She would break small sticks that we had gathered in the grounds, and I loved the way her knuckles would flex, and her fingers would press away until the twigs snapped. We would have rolled and tied paper into pretzels as firelighters the night before – we did that before we went to bed, about ten each would do – and so she would take those and light them and force them in among the sticks, and before long a good fire would be taking and the room would warm up.

On some evenings Bernadette would read, and the room would be so quiet except for the sound of her page turning. I would draw or write, play around with the tassels of the huge velvet curtains around the windows for a while, or find some object to make a character out of. Sometimes s