“I gather that your weakness for authority is based upon how quickly you can forfeit that authority for another.”

“Could I have that again?” asked Mr Adams smiling. “The subordinate clause, please?”

Mr MacDonagh laid down his cigarette.

“You jest, a mhaistir.”

“I am a bit too old,” said Adams, “to be starting Dostoevsky. I have always taken my orders from above.”

“And I suppose you believe in the law and order of the British Army and the RUC.”

“I do, Mr MacDonagh.”

“Hah!” said the teacher triumphantly.

They stared at each other a while.

“Perhaps we could take a break?”

“Suit yourself,” said MacDonagh, then he strode to the door. “You are all at sea.” Behind his glasses anger opened the white of his eyes as he descended the stairs. He was chuckling to himself in the manner of a man remembering violence done to him. He stepped into the kitchen, put his coat on the back of a chair, and stood there working his hands.

“Are ye at it again?” asked Mrs Adams.

“Your good man,” he pouted, “has no sense of history.”

“He is,” said Maisie, “a demanding man.”

“He drives me to say things I don’t mean.” The teacher sat and looked at the upper air. And just as he had the cup in his hand they heard the door open above.

“Tarraing anseo, Mac an Du,” came the Sergeant’s voice.

“Agh!” said the befuddled teacher. “The pain of it.” He shook his head as if to clear his ears, made a gargling sound that had Maisie reaching a cloth to her lips to cover up her merriment, then he returned to his penance above. But at tea time MacDonagh would have his revenge. He returned to his favourite topic – a hatred of prostitutes. This was certain to make the Sergeant wince. Then, instead of ancient Ireland, more recent events were discussed. MacDonagh would have the Sergeant know that the Irish language begins in the soul, like all passions for beautiful things. And this the old scholar could not deny.

It soon became obvious to Jonathan Adams that his pleasurable search among the early Irish myths and antiquities had led him back inexorably, even contemptuously, to events in contemporary Ireland, a place where he did not want to be at all, having had his fair share of it in previous lives. He must listen to his daughter Sara ask after syphilis; his daughter Catherine after Republican jails. If they had not decided to speak Irish over tea none of this would have happened, all could, perhaps, have passed pleasantly in an English well used to censoring such prejudiced memories. For at table, even among themselves, the North was never discussed.