17
The Diary of James McLevy
They say the child is father to the man. I shall not dispute that assumption.
My own childhood was spent staring into the face of a madwoman. My mother.
Madness is such a strange visitation. The mad do not realise that they are so. They merely see a different world where everyone else is a demon in disguise.
It took some time to realise the insanity before me. It was quiet and insidious. I wonder how much seeped into my soul, a fear that never leaves me.
Most of the time, she was normal. A dressmaker. Good at her job. The room was clean. Then her eyes would shift to a far country and she would pour poison in my ears.
She would take to her bed and lie there in the most terrible stillness, her hair raven black on the pillow.
Black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat. So said our neighbour, Jean Scott, a wee round woman, scolding and kind, who took pity on such a boy as I was, birthed to insanity.
She lay on the pillow. Maria McLevy. Her mother was Italian, her father was bog Irish and my own father, she insisted, was an angel of God who came to her one night.
The son of a madwoman and an angel. Who am I to argue?