O Miss Pinkie said – she dropped the Mrs once her divorce came through although being a Catholic it didnt amount to much- if I could have my life over again and had the wisdom I have now and a lot of understanding of the human machine Id have lived differently and not married the **** I  did but there you go we must live forward and not backward although at times we wish we could but we cant so there you are and as a child coming from a strict Catholic family church going and the Mass were our Sundays highlight or so it seemed at the time and the priest as often at our house as a neighbour or a member of the close family and would come and sit and drink and eat and say things about others and how so and sos daughter had gone by the  wayside and needed taking in hand and my father said any daughter his going by any wayside would get a good tanning of their backside and the priest saying that is a way going from homes now but my father said not here Father not here and it was true as my sister knew as she was many a time feeling his hand on her backside if she step out of line and me too now and then and my mother stood in his shadow and said do as your father says and would shake a finger at us if she thought we were out of step with our fathers wishes and a cousin wanted to join the Little Sisters and encouraged me to go too and talked me into it when I was old enough and with my fathers blessing- blessing being his agreement or his say so- and he said I know what men are like youre better off there with the Sisters than with with some of the specimens around here in Glasgow to wed and bed so I joined the Little Sisters as did the cousin and were set to become brides of Christ but I couldnt settle to it never had the vocation for the life what with all those maidens and their narrow views and the cousin went first and within a month or two was out with a man named Scott and before you could say hows your ***** off for spots she was up the aisle dressed in the white with the thin rod of a man beside her and within a seventh month she dropped a babe- his we assumed- and then just before I was due to take my simple vows I left too much to my fathers annoyance and being put out by it he said nothing to me for months on end turned his back on me if I entered the house- lived after leaving with my cousin her her thin man and the babe in a room in the attic- but he came around and knowing he could no more put me over his knee he used his words to have a go at me if I stepped beyond his likes then I met the man who was to be and was my husband and on the first date- the cinema where else- it was kiss kiss and fiddle fiddle in the back rows with others also so inclined and after a few weeks he had me in his bed-he lived in digs as he called them- and I knew nothing then about *** or anything relating to that side of matters and I was surprised by what he was doing and where and how and I said is this how it is? and he said it was and had always been so and so it was and I got to enjoy it after the first few times and then we had our child a boy and then my husband got a job away a lot and then he started having it with other women or girls while away and I had it fewer and fewer times until one day I found out about them all and I said no more with me and he said good and left and that was it and I brought up our son on my own until he left home to get a job abroad and I was alone and began needing to work myself having no husband to support me and it was there that my met young Baruch-Benedict he called himself but I liked Baruch better- and at first I never thought about him and *** and that because he was nineteen years younger than I was and I was old enough to be his mother but he had that way with him and he said can I come to your place I want to read you some my my writings and so I said yes and he came and I gave him whiskey or wine and I put on music on the record player and he read his work and I watched him read and sensed him near me and the drink softened him up and the music got to him and he said I need you and I said in what way? he said in what way and I went and undressed and came back in a kimono and he said I looked like a Japanese woman he once saw in a book and he drank more and then he undressed and so it began almost every other night after work in the evenings hed come around and we had drinks and he brought some Mahler and  we played that and it became our love music and he had me in ways id not been had before and played at spanking me prior to ******* me- as he called it- and it reminded me of my father- the spankings not the *** of course- and it made me tingle and sometimes it was on my double bed often or not if we couldnt make it on the sofa with the Mahler symphony blaring away and the glasses empty and him over me and I eyeing him or closing my eyes imagining him and sometimes he was underneath me and it was him and me and Mahler and his hand on my behind and him in me and hed say come on come on and I was becoming out of breath feeling my age or so it seemed then he met some young girl and that was it I was alone again and sat listening to Mahler and I drank my ***** thinking of him knowing he would leave after all he was just a boy I was getting to be older but wanting to recall our nights together and Mahler and whiskey and that time we had it on the carpet the carpet soft and thick and he saying wheres the fence where can we ride? and we laughed and that time at work in the wash room where I got him stiff as a rifle and ready to shoot but it was too public and he had to walk it off but then he left work and it became a mere echo of former days my hair less dyed letting my hairs become different coloured greys.