I can still remember the first time I saw him. Strutting up to us in his jeans and mock leather jacket, hair all combed back and greased with brylcreme. He looked like a cross between Elvis and James Dean - rebel without a voice I used to tease him. He was a fine looking young fella though. All the girls were mad about him but it was me he picked out. Came up to me, all macho like, with two bottles of Double Diamond gripped by the neck between his fingers. We used to go dancing together to the Jetland Ballroom all the time after that. It's just a supermarket now, all the memories gone and faded away like the show-bands that used to play there.

He was mad about the rugby back then. Sometimes, I used to go along to the matches with him, just to please him. I remember the night that Shannon won the Charity Cup. We stood around down by St Mary's church slugging back bottles of beer and singing 'There is an Isle' until we were hoarse with it. That was the first night we ever did it together, under the trees behind the Customs House. It wasn't much by way of romance but I suppose there's a first time for everything and that was ours.

After that we did it whenever we could. Up the river- bank by Plassey in the long grass all the summer that followed until the evenings began to get short and cold again. The best was down in his Aunt's house. She was old and bed ridden half the time so we used to go down there some evenings to keep her company and have it off on her sofa in the parlour once she was asleep. We were as cosy as two bugs in a rug all that winter on the sofa in front of the fire.

I remember the night I told him my news. I'll never forget the way he looked at me. He was like a trapped animal, pacing back and forth, muttering to himself all the while. Fuckin' ejit he kept calling me. How could I let it happen? Fuckin' ejit. Didn't I know what I was doing? Fuckin' ejit. It's the girl's job to make sure she doesn't get caught. Fuckin' ejit !

It takes two to tango I answered him back. And that was the first time he ever hit me. It wasn't much of a belt I suppose, a short fast back- hand slap. It would have just been more noisy than painful if it hadn't been for his ring, the signet ring I bought him for our first Christmas together. It caught my lip and split it. I started crying, dabbing the blood on my lip with the end of my jumper while he kept walking up and down muttering fuckin' ejit over and over, hands in his pockets, swinging kicks in the air every few minutes. That was Valentine's night, 1963 when I was nineteen years old.

We were married in early May. It was a short, quick, no frills shotgun affair out in Ennis where no one knew us. He looked smashing in his new brown suit and cream check shirt. I wanted to wear white. My da might have left me but my mother wouldn't have it. She said I had shamed them enough without flying in the face of God trying to crack on I was a virgin when everyone on the street knew I was up the pole. That was the way things were then. People took these things to heart I suppose. So I stood there at the altar in my powder blue two piece and vowed love, honour and obedience for the rest of my days and nights.

We moved in with his Aunt. She wasn't around for very long though. She was moved into the city home when she got real bad, so we just kept paying the rent and stayed there ever since. We were like kids playing house for a while but he soon got tired of playing the family man. He would go out drinking with his cronies more and more and stay out later every time. I was tired, worn out with being pregnant and trying to look after the house. We didn't have much. He could never hold down a job. Always had to put be putting someone straight, anyone who was pushing him around. That usually meant the foreman. We never had money for extras. There would be some weeks when I'd be dodging the rent man or let the telly money go until I got the final demand letter threatening to repossess it.

But still he always had enough to go off to some match or other and come home well oiled in the small hours of the morning. He'd come into the bedroom, waking me up by switching on the light overhead, with a white paper parcel of greasy fish and chips. Thought you'd like these he'd say. Go on will you, have some he'd say, if he thought I wasn't sitting up for them. I'd sit there, picking at them on my lap, all queasy from the smell of the drink, fags and chips. He'd be scurrying his greasy fingers in around them too, hungry from drinking, anxious to finish up this little bit of foreplay and get down to business now that I was awake.

Some nights I wouldn't sit up at all, hoping maybe that he'd just eat them himself and sleep it off. One night, half-asleep I pushed him back and said I was too tired. The pain on my mouth from the thump he gave me woke me up. I just lay there conscious only of the throbbing pain his fist left my across my face.

It wasn't for long. Nothing ever lasted long with him and then I could get up again and put a wet cloth on my face. There was one night when he never came home at all. I was sitting at the foot of the stairs the next morning when he finally came through the front door. I must have been really stupid back then. I was worried sick that something might have happened to him. He laughed at me. He fell into company he said and couldn't get away and that was the holy all of it. He just sauntered up the stairs. I followed him, still upset over his carry on, shouting at him that he didn't give a damn about me or the state I was in. He always said afterwards that he wasn't going to hit me but he turned around so fast that I thought he would. I put up my hands over my face to protect myself. I lost my footing on the step and fell backwards down the stairs. All I remembered afterwards was me being lifted into the ambulance with him saying over and over to a few neighbours that it was an accident and that he hadn't laid a finger on me.

I lost the baby --- a boy, I found out later. Who knows, maybe it was for the best. He might have only ruined him and taught him his ways. He might have turned out like him and made someone else's life miserable. Then again he might have been more like me. Maybe I could have brought him up to be decent man. He'd be thirty odd now. What does it matter. Water under the bridge. It was all so long ago.

There were complications they told me. I wouldn't be able to have children again they said. I think that was when life ended for me. Then he was so nice to me for a while again. He'd bring me home the odd bag of Lucky Numbers or Liquorice Allsorts. But it didn't matter to me anymore. Anyway, after a while he went back to his old ways and life got back to normal. He'd drink, he'd hit and then sleep it off. He would never say sorry the next day. I don't think he knew how. He'd just bring home another bag of sweets or something and there would be no more said. All sorted out. Back at square one again.

All these years, we've never had a holiday. Well, not a proper one anyway. We took the odd day trip excursion by bus to Lahinch or Kilkee. But I'd end up sitting on the strand eating periwinkles while he got scuttered in some pub watching horse racing or something. I got away myself a few times with my sister Lily and her husband George. There was only a couple of years between Lily and myself so we were always close. They were very comfortable. They had a car and a caravan in Ballybunion. Lily would bring me down for a week with them every summer when their kids were small. They were always good to me that way. I used to feel embarrassed because I had nothing. They'd always put you at your ease the way you didn't feel you were imposing. We're family George would always say to me. And he used to mean it too. He wasn't just being polite for Lily's sake. I always thought she was lucky to have married such a decent man.

Of course, himself always hated me being so close to Lily. He resented George too. He couldn't understand his gentleness or decency. I remember when their fifth little girl was born, how he made a laugh of it. Poor Georgie he said. He must have been given a sissy mickey the way he could only fire out girls. I said, at least they had their kids and the kids had a good home. He got mad at me. There was nothing wrong with his tackle he said. He wasn't the one with the gearbox trouble he said. He could bring me the proof of it into the house by the hand if I wanted. He kept on taunting me, daring me to bring it all out in the open. He couldn't even do that much for himself.

I screamed at him to stop. I wanted to block it out. I knew for years there had been others on the side. I heard whispers along the line of his having a child by someone else. I guessed it but I didn't want to know it for sure. I knew those Christmas Days when I wouldn't see him 'til late in the evening, that it was more than porter kept him out. I knew the extra money he made doing odd nixers didn't come into our house. I lived in fear of seeing his eyes in the face of a child in the shop or at Mass or something. I always felt it, knew it in my heart and soul, but I just didn't want the proof of it.

Lily was a grandmother for the first time when she was fifty. George made a big fuss for her birthday that year. He bought her a beautiful engraved watch and took her off to Spain for two weeks. They went there every year after that. They always went back to Santa Ponsa, year after year they went. Lily loved it. The sunshine, the beaches, the little markets. It all sounded so exotic. Not for the likes of me I used to say to her. Lily said I'd love it. You could get nice ordinary food there as well. You didn't have to be eating any spicy stuff that would run the guts out of you. Some day, I would say to her, some day maybe.

Poor George has never been the same since Lily died last year. She was only fifty-eight. Imagine. That's not old at all these days. I don't feel I'm old. Still, at least he has his daughters and grandchildren around him. It's more than I'll be able to say when this fella is gone. Jesus, just look at the state of him now, all hooked up with tubes and drips and stuff. A stroke they said it was. They came down from the pub to tell me he had collapsed and was taken to hospital. That was two months ago now. He's never regained consciousness. Slept his way into a new millennium, like one long hangover after a lifetime of drink. Complications the doctor told me. They put him on this life support machine that just pumps air in and out of him. Looking at him now, you'd think he was just asleep, except for there's no snoring or farting out of him.

The doctor was very kind. He explained it all to me. He said he was brain dead and had no realistic chance of ever coming out of the coma. He went through all the papers with me and I've signed them now. We're going to switch off the machine today. He says he'll come back in a while after I've had a chance to say my goodbyes. I hope he it won't be much longer. Sitting here with him just brings it all back to me. I'll be glad to have it over with finally. It won't be so bad being on my own. I took out a little policy on him years ago, paid in by the week. I never told him though. If he knew about it he'd have only cashed it in on me and pissed through it with his cronies. No, this is my little pot.

The insurance man said it would all be sorted out in a few weeks. I'll get about seven thousand pounds he said. I'm not spending more than seven hundred on the funeral. Then I'll find out about getting in the central heating. And I'm going to go on a holiday. Somewhere nice and warm, near the sea. Santa Ponsa, maybe. I've never been out of the country before. I've never been up in a plane either. I'll need a passport, I suppose. I'll have to find out about that. Yeah. Santa Ponsa. That'll be nice. Lily always raved about Santa Ponsa.