IAN CROSS: The God Boy Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it. Not sure whether I liked him in such a mood—honestly, you would have thought he was at a football match, and his team was winning—I picked up my schoolbag from my bedroom, gave my face a quick rub-over in the bathroom, streaked back down to the kitchen, anxious to be out and about. Dad had gone back upstairs, and Mum was finishing clearing the table. 'All serene,' I said. ‘Am I all spit and polish?' I was trying to cheer her up, you see. 5 She wiped her hands on a tea towel and took a deep breath as she looked at me. Even if I say it myself, I couldn't help noticing that the sight of me seemed to do her good. For a minute there, a look came across her 10 face, as though she had suddenly thought of something cheerful. I think of her most at those times, when I was standing before her, and she looking me over, so tall and strong-looking, with sometimes a bit of a smile on her face, other times putting her hands out to hold me by the shoulders, eyeing me up and down, fixing up my collar, or making me roll up my sleeves 15 properly; times like this morning, nearly the last morning of all, when she made me feel that nothing too bad could ever happen to me while she was around, and that she would always be there when I came home from school. 'That shirt is lasting well, she said. ‘Now keep yourself clean until Father 20 Gilligan comes.' Father Gilligan came to school once a week for confessions, and she was always keen on my clothes being clean for him. I pretty well always had to wear a clean white shirt, as I did this day, for his coming. It certainly made it hard after school though; a white shirt is a handicap when you 25 want to muck around. 'It'll be as clean as when I put it on,' I told her. I felt almost sick with wanting to tell her how I felt, and because I couldn't think of words to suit my feelings, I came up with the next-best thing. 'I'll go down to see Molly if you really want me to, Mum,' I said. 'I don't really want you to go,' she said quickly. So quickly that it seemed the words were right there on the tip of her tongue. 'Sometimes Mum knows what is best, that's all. But you forget all about it for a while yet. Forget all about it.' 'All right,' I said, though what she said was mixed up. She knew best, 35 she didn't really want me to go, yet she suggested that I should go. 'And don't say a word about this to your father. Not a word.' That came out quickly, too, and louder, and I blushed, thinking of the morning before. She gave me a peck on the forehead as Dad came back down the stairs, just bumped me with her lips, and I went back out to the passage and out 40 the back door. How does Cross make this brief moment of contact between Jimmy and his mother deeply moving?