Galway Review 8 - April 2020

after all. It seems the only way women can get respect
in this country.’
‘Ah don’t say that, love,’ Robbie’s voice was matterof-fact,
his eyes burning up the newsprint.
It was a cold morning. The ash in the grate stared
back at the chilly room without as much as a taunting
wink to say it had once been a fire.
‘It’s hard to get it right,’ she said out loud.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ said Robbie on automatic pilot,
his head stuck in the newspaper.
Opening the heavy curtains she squinted through the
melted part of the frosted window where her eyes met
the high wall at the back of the house. A boundary wall
too high to climb over but not too dense to pass
through! That clump of moss, courageously clinging to
its nether regions spoke of a beyond. Her imagination
escaped through it a thousand times a day to occupy
some other world time or space that offered less welldefined
possibilities.
‘Now I know what’s bugging you. It’s this isn’t
it?’ Robbie piped up prodding the newspaper with his
long index finger. Rhoda pulled her eyes from the wall
and its vague promises as he began to read out loud in
an important voice:
‘Some Bishop,’ he looked over the rim of the paper,
‘took such exception to something on that “Late Late
Show” he phoned in, or rather got his secretary to phone
in to object. Something about the colour of a nightdress,
it says here. I suppose you were watching it?’
‘What else?’ she snapped.
32