Sometimes he had to admit to himself what he would admit to no one else – he was getting old. In wet weather his knees and shoulders ached all the time, and there were mornings when it was very hard indeed to get up and face the day. All his life he had thought about so many things, but never about being old. Age had crept up on him while he was busy elsewhere. His body was not the body he knew, but he was trapped in it. Trapped in flesh from which the strength was fading. Once he awoke in the middle of the night, shaking as if he had a chill. ‘What’s wrong?’ Gormla asked, but he would not tell her. Brian did not want to be old. He remembered when he was young and strong. He remembered when he was a little boy, the youngest of a large family, running and laughing and playing rowdy games from morning till night. That was all behind him now. The friends, the fun, the freedom of childhood.
