The sound or sight of the TV in those days used to make Jonathan Adams unsure of his own sanity. In it was stored a horrific blasphemy, a soul-destroying accusation. There was nothing worse than to see your own self-image transposed, violated, dehumanized. In Matti Bonner’s kitchen Jonathan Adams sat perplexed as he watched wild dogs roam the plains of South Africa or mountaineers whispering to each other over walkie-talkies while they hung suspended in the high crackling air. And each time the labourer looked at him the Sergeant wondered, yet no word of condemnation was uttered. Matti Bonner kept his silence.

He kept his silence right up until the last night when Matti stepped out into the dark night, looked around and said: “All right, Sergeant. It’s safe, you can go.”

“Thank you, Matti.”

He stepped into the dark and turned back once to see Matti still standing at the lit kitchen door. He stood there, framed in the small doorway, till the Sergeant had regained the safety of his house, then Matti went in. Not till the following day when the Sergeant saw him hanging from the birch, did the silence of the labourer turn into one long note of defiance.

Now, along with the image of himself in Duke Street, came another image that would accompany Jonathan Adams for the rest of his life – that of Matti Bonner, hanging in his Sunday trousers and vest, shoeless, from a tree. As he had been dressing himself some demon had gripped him and he’d fled barefoot across the fields to the spot he’d chosen, where all the villagers as they stepped out of church would find him. They would see the tears the barbed wire had made in his trousers and the bloody welts across his thighs. He’d run uncaring through fences. What torment had driven him forward in such haste? Jonathan Adams did not know. When Matti died, Jonathan Adams was shocked at how quickly all signs of the labourer disappeared from the world. What work he had done in the village was quickly absorbed. New and more elaborate defences went up. And Jonathan Adams could no longer holiday in the Catholic dimension. The only kind witness to his other nature had departed this world.

When he began to live in a world of fear, Jonathan Adams felt an outsider in Northern Ireland. He began to look for an escape. He was too old for Australia. He was too old for South Africa. He thought of Canada. Then one day Maisie brought up the question of the house she’d fallen in love with in Belmullet. The Sergeant was taken aback. “I miss the Republic,” said Maisie.

“It’s . . . it’s inconceivable,” he replied, “that you should even consider it. You must be out of your mind.”

“We could live there during the summers,” she continued wistfully. “Lord Mountbatten does. Judges do. Why shouldn’t we?”

“I don’t believe you’re sensible.”