Galway Review 8 - April 2020

It’s French for three people living together, intimately. I
think’, she added with less conviction when she saw the
outrage on his face.
‘There’s no such thing as that. Anyway how do you
know about it whatever it is?’
‘I read, whenever I get the chance, and not the
sports pages of the newspapers.’
‘Oh, I know.’ His voice whirred past her ears like a
stone on its way to the flesh of an adulterous
woman. Somewhere out East. ‘It’s those books you’re
getting over from England, I suppose.’
‘Do you see anything wrong with what she said?’
‘If you came out with the likes of that on television,
and you probably would, I’d be mortified,’ said Robbie,
his cigarette dancing between his lips. ‘Morto’ I’d be
and nothing short of it.’
‘You’d be morto, and how would I ever get to be on
television?’
‘No way, I hope. You on television, may God
preserve me. You’d probably bring your soapbox with
you, to tell them about your own sex life.’
‘Sex, sex, sex! It’s the only sin in the book. You can
do anything else you like from robbing a bank to
cheating your employer to back-biting your neighbour to
ill-treating a child but mention the dreaded sex and you’ll
even wake up the priest in the Confession Box. He’ll
switch to red alert in case he might miss something –
really wicked. If sex is so terrible why is it part of life at
all? We didn’t ask for it. At least I didn’t.’
‘God invented it, I suppose, but,’ Robbie hung his
head.
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