Frank removes Sean’s facial scabs with a knife

Francis (Frank) McGahern’s removal of young Sean’s facial scabs turns an episode of treatment into a lasting source of fear. In John McGahern’s retrospective account, the sores heal, but the knife, the procedure’s rigid sequence, and Sean’s response make the scene an intimate instance of care entangled with coercive authority.

Background and Treatment

Sean’s face was covered with scabs from a childhood disease that the narrator identifies as probably impetigo. Francis (Frank) McGahern kept him from school and drove him to a doctor in Carrigallen. They spent a long time at the surgery amid much argument; Sean, frightened and confused, could not understand what was happening. They then went to a chemist, probably for an antiseptic lotion or ointment.

At home, Francis ordered Bridgie McGovern to boil water and gathered a basin, mirror, towel, and sharp knife. He disinfected the water and the knife, then removed all the scabs. The narrator recalls not simply the act but its form: a sequence so fixed that, to the child, it resembled an execution. The medical purpose did not make the scene feel safe; the knife and the father wielding it defined Sean’s experience of the treatment.

Immediate Outcome

The treatment worked. The sores healed, and the knife left no scars. That physical result stands in sharp contrast to the fear recorded in the scene: the cure ended the visible injury, but did not dissolve Sean’s apprehension of his father. The account holds practical efficacy and emotional harm together without treating one as a cancellation of the other.

Fear and Its Aftermath

The next time the blue Baby Ford arrived, Sean ran to a large chestnut tree near the house, a tree the children were used to climbing, and hid there. From his hiding place he could watch the house and the car. He heard his name being called but stayed in the tree; only after the car had left, as the calls grew more anxious and constant, did he go back inside.

The later hiding gives the earlier treatment its continuing consequence. Sean’s fear had become anticipatory: the arrival of the car was enough to send him away from the house, even before his father approached him. In the memoir’s wider account of a tense household, this small sequence makes visible how a frightening act can persist beyond its practical end, shaping a child’s response to the next visit.