Peeling Oranges by James Lawless Page B

English. It’s ironic, she loves Bible passages. She asks me to repeat them and learns them by heart. Her memory is faultless.
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    In 1939 the Civil War ended in Spain, and my mother returned to Patrick. She asked Peg to keep an eye on Muddy discreetly without entering into any arguments. As regards having children, there was plenty of time. There was no need to rush into anything, not like some of the unfortunate women in the Dublin tenements who had no choice in the matter.
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    When England declared war on Germany in 1939, de Valera and Franco kept their countries neutral. Initially, the wily Caudillo was anxious to join up with Hitler in the wake of early German victories – France was beaten and England was expected to collapse. Most European diplomats – including Patrick Foley – believed that the Germans would conquer England. Franco would have liked a share of the spoils. However Hitler, flushed with victory, rebuffed the predatory general.
    Nevertheless by 1940, the Führer began to woo Franco, and on the twentieth of October he crossed Europe in an armoured train to meet the Spanish head of state at Hendaye.
    In return for joining forces with Germany, the Spanish dictator made considerable demands. He wanted territories in France and North Africa together with military and economic aid, and would only join Hitler after Germany had successfully defeated Britain.
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    On her return to Spain, my mother went walking with Patrick through the Madrid streets:
    It was good to feel her on my arm, like an assurance, like carrying a little piece of Ireland around with me in exile. M was struck by the poverty all around her. She had thought of Ireland as the only poor country. I have no objection to her doing social work, but it seems to have made her light-heartedness disappear – the more she examines the world of the have-nots. I don’t know if it is a good thing. The poor may be poor but they are indigenous; they don’t suffer that wrenching of heart strings only known to the likes of us.
    As they walked the paseo, they witnessed the victims of war in the streets: men with a shirt sleeve or a trouser leg dangling; the sound of crutches striking stone; women in black widows’ weeds; blind vendors sitting on stools on street corners; child beggars, barefooted and emaciated; the icy look of hunger which not even a Spanish sun could thaw:
    M was amazed on seeing used tooth brushes and half cigarettes on sale in the shops, and fountain pens on HP; but the smell of the dead men’s clothes, she said, was just the same as in the Iveagh market at home.
    ‘The poor are the same all over. Remember in The Grapes of Wrath? Such poverty among the poor farmers in America.’
    ‘Would you like to go over there?’ I said.
    ‘Me?’ she said.
    ‘You got the offer before.’
    She tried to smile. ‘I’m sorry, Patrick. Was I getting carried away?’ She pulled my collar up. There was a cold bite in the air. ‘Try to straighten up,’ she said, and then touched my face with a gloved hand and kissed me. I felt a longing for her, a hopeless longing.
    ‘You could go,’ I said, ‘if you really wanted to.’
    ‘Look, the queues are starting,’ she said, changing the subject, ‘the long winter queues’.
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    My mother was grateful to Patrick for helping in Gearóid MacSuibhne’s escape, but it is clear that she was still solicitous about the IRA man’s welfare, especially among those whom she simplistically deemed ‘the Germans who kill Jews and other races’. If they took a turn against him – and Gearóid could fly off the handle very easily – God knows what they would do to him. He could wind up in a concentration camp or worse.
    Suggested experimentation with AI was another matter. She considered the whole idea sick. ‘We don’t need to deepfreeze our love. Love should never be put on hold.’ She said that such a thing was not for human, Christian life. She still believed that there was plenty of time to