Angela's Ashes

by Frank McCourt

  Patricia says she has two books by her bed. One is a poetry book and that's the one she loves. The other is a short history of England and do I want it? She gives it to Seamus, the man who mops the floors every day, and he brings it to me. He says, I'm not supposed to be bringing anything from a dipteria room to a typhoid room with all the germs flying around and hiding between the pages and if you ever catch dipteria on top of the typhoid they'll know and I'll lose my good job and be out on the street singing patriotic songs with a tin cup in my hand, which I could easily do because there isn't a song ever written about Ireland's sufferings I don't know and a few songs about the joy of whiskey too.

  Oh, yes, he knows Roddy McCorley. He'll sing it for me right enough but he's barely into the first verse when the Kerry nurse rushes in. What's this, Seamus? Singing? Of all the people in this hospital you should know the rules against singing. I have a good mind to report you to Sister Rita.

  Ah, God, don't do that, nurse.

  Very well, Seamus. I'll let it go this one time. You know the singing could lead to a relapse in these patients.

  When she leaves he whispers he'll teach me a few songs because singing is good for passing the time when you're by yourself in a typhoid room. He says Patricia is a lovely girl the way she often gives him sweets from the parcel her mother sends every fortnight. He stops mopping the floor and calls to Patricia in the next room, I was telling Frankie you're a lovely girl, Patricia, and she says, You're a lovely man, Seamus. He smiles because he's an old man of forty and he never had children but the ones he can talk to here in the Fever Hospital. He says, Here's the book, Frankie. Isn't it a great pity you have to be reading all about England after all they did to us, that there isn't a history of Ireland to be had in this hospital.

  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 doe-skin,

  They fitted with never a wrinkle, his boots were up to the thigh.

  And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

  His pistol butts a-twinkle,

  His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled 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 fiddler's fart 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, God, 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 lov
ely poem which the nun says is bad.

  The nurse tells Seamus she has to go and he's to sweep the lint from under my bed and mop up a bit around the ward. Seamus tells me she's a right oul'bitch for running to Sister Rita and complaining about the poem going between the two rooms, that you can't catch a disease from a poem unless its love ha ha and that's not bloody likely when you're what? ten going on eleven? He never heard the likes of it, a little fella shifted upstairs for saying a poem and he has a good mind to go to the Limerick Leader and tell them print the whole thing except he has this job and he'd lose it if ever Sister Rita found out. Anyway, Frankie, you'll be outa here one of these fine days and you can read all the poetry you want though I don't know about Patricia below, I don't know about Patricia, God help us.

  He knows about Patricia in two days because she got out of the bed to go to the lavatory when she was supposed to use a bedpan and collapsed and died in the lavatory. Seamus is mopping the floor and there are tears on his cheeks and he's saying, 'Tis a dirty rotten thing to die in a lavatory when you're lovely in yourself. She told me she was sorry she had you reciting that poem and getting you shifted from the room, Frankie. She said 'twas all her fault.

  It wasn't, Seamus.

  I know and didn't I tell her that.

  Patricia is gone and I'll never know what happened to the highwayman and Bess, the landlord's daughter. I ask Seamus but he doesn't know any poetry at all especially English poetry. He knew an Irish poem once but it was about fairies and had no sign of a highwayman in it. Still he'll ask the men in his local pub where there's always someone reciting something and he'll bring it back to me. Won't I be busy meanwhile reading my short history of England and finding out all about their perfidy. That's what Seamus says, perfidy, and I don't know what it means and he doesn't know what it means but if it's something the English do it must be terrible.

  He comes three times a week to mop the floor and the nurse is there every morning to take my temperature and pulse. The doctor listens to my chest with the thing hanging from his neck. They all say, And how's our little soldier today? A girl with a blue dress brings meals three times a day and never talks to me. Seamus says she's not right in the head so don't say a word to her.

  The July days are long and I fear the dark. There are only two ceiling lights in the ward and they're switched off when the tea tray is taken away and the nurse gives me pills. The nurse tells me go to sleep but I can't because I see people in the nineteen beds in the ward all dying and green around their mouths where they tried to eat grass and moaning for soup Protestant soup any soup and I cover my face with the pillow hoping they won't come and stand around the bed clawing at me and howling for bits of the chocolate bar my mother brought last week.

  No, she didn't bring it. She had to send it in because I can't have any more visitors. Sister Rita tells me a visit to the Fever Hospital is a privilege and after my bad behavior with Patricia Madigan and that poem I can't have the privilege anymore. She says I'll be going home in a few weeks and my job is to concentrate on getting better and learn to walk again after being in bed for six weeks and I can get out of bed tomorrow after breakfast. I don't know why she says I have to learn how to walk when I've been walking since I was a baby but when the nurse stands me by the side of the bed I fall to the floor and the nurse laughs, See, you're a baby again.

  I practice walking from bed to bed back and forth back and forth. I don't want to be a baby. I don't want to be in this empty ward with no Patricia and no highwayman and no red-lipped landlord's daughter. I don't want the ghosts of children with green mouths pointing bony fingers at me and clamoring for bits of my chocolate bar.

  Seamus says a man in his pub knew all the verses of the highwayman poem and it has a very sad end. Would I like him to say it because he never learned how to read and he had to carry the poem in his head? He stands in the middle of the ward leaning on his mop and recites,

  Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot in the echoing night!

  Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!

  Her eyes grew wide for a moment, she drew one last deep breath,

  Then her finger moved in the moonlight,

  Her musket shattered the moonlight,

  Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him--with her death.

  He hears the shot and escapes but when he learns at dawn how Bess died he goes into a rage and returns for revenge only to be shot down by the redcoats.

  Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,

  When they shot him down on the highway,

  Down like a dog on the highway,

  And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

  Seamus wipes his sleeve across his face and sniffles. He says, There was no call at all to shift you up here away from Patricia when you didn't even know what happened to the highwayman and Bess. 'Tis a very sad story and when I said it to my wife she wouldn't stop crying the whole night till we went to bed. She said there was no call for them redcoats to shoot that highwayman, they are responsible for half the troubles of the world and they never had any pity on the Irish, either. Now if you want to know any more poems, Frankie, tell me and I'll get them from the pub and bring 'em back in my head.

  The girl with the blue dress who's not right in the head suddenly says one day, Would you like a book for to read? and she brings me The Amazing Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss by E. Phillips Oppenheim, which is all about an Englishman who is fed up and doesn't know what to do with himself every day even though he's so rich he can't count his money. His manservant brings him the morning paper the tea the egg the toast and marmalade and he says, Take it away, life is empty. He can't read his paper, he can't eat his egg, and he pines away. His doctor tells him go and live among the poor in the East End of London and he'll learn to love life, which he does and falls in love with a girl who is poor but honest and very intelligent and they get married and move into his house in the West End which is the rich part because it's easier to help the poor and not be fed up when you're nice and comfortable.

  Seamus likes me to tell him what I'm reading. He says that story about Mr. Ernest Bliss is a made-up story because no one in his right mind would have to go to a doctor over having too much money and not eating his egg though you never know. It might be like that in England. You'd never find the likes of that in Ireland. If you didn't eat your egg here you'd be carted off to the lunatic asylum or reported to the bishop.

  I can't wait to go home and tell Malachy about this man who won't eat his egg. Malachy will fall down on the floor laughing because such a thing could never happen. He'll say I'm making it up but when I tell him this story is about an Englishman he'll understand.

  I can't tell the girl in the blue dress that this story was silly because she might have a fit. She says if you're finished with that book I'll bring you another one because there's a whole box of books left behind by patients from the old days. She brings me a book called Tom Brown's School-Days, which is hard to read, and no end of books by P. G. Wodehouse who makes me laugh over Ukridge and Bertie Wooster and Jeeves and all the Mulliners. Bertie Wooster is rich but he eats his egg every morning for fear of what Jeeves might say. I wish I could talk to the girl in the blue dress or anyone about the books but I'm afraid the Kerry nurse or Sister Rita might find out and they'd move me to a bigger ward upstairs with fifty empty beds and Famine ghosts galore with green mouths and bony fingers pointing. At night I lie in bed thinking about Tom Brown and his adventures at Rugby School and all the characters in P. G. Wodehouse. I can dream about the red-lipped landlord's daughter and the highwayman, and the nurses and nuns can do nothing about it. It's lovely to know the world can't interfere with the inside of your head.

  It's August and I'm eleven. I've been in this hospital for two months and I wonder if they'll let me out for Christmas. The Kerry nurse tells me I should get down on my two knees and thank God I'm alive at all at all and not be compla
ining.

  I'm not complaining, nurse, I'm only wondering if I'll be home for Christmas.

  She won't answer me. She tells me behave myself or she'll send Sister Rita up to me and then I'll behave myself.

  Mam comes to the hospital on my birthday and sends up a package with two chocolate bars and a note with names of people in the lane telling me get better and come home and you're a great soldier, Frankie. The nurse lets me talk to her through the window and it's hard because the windows are high and I have to stand on Seamus's shoulders. I tell Mam I want to go home but she says I'm a bit too weak and surely I'll be out in no time. Seamus says, 'Tis a grand thing to be eleven because any day now you'll be a man shaving and all and ready to get out and get a job and drink your pint good as any man.

  After fourteen weeks Sister Rita tells me I can go home and aren't I a lucky boy that the day will be the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. She tells me I was a very good patient, except for that little problem with the poem and Patricia Madigan, God rest her, and I'm invited to come back and have a big Christmas dinner in the hospital. Mam comes for me and with my weak legs it takes us a long time to walk to the bus at Union Cross. She says, Take your time. After three and a half months we can spare an hour.

  People are at their doors on Barrack Road and Roden Lane telling me it's grand to see me back, that I'm a great soldier, a credit to my father and mother. Malachy and Michael run up to me in the lane and say, God, you're walking very slow. Can't you run anymore?