“I can’t bring myself to eat.” He indicated the bottles. “I was drinking with priests from Castlebar.”

“That will happen,” nodded Hugh. “I remember a few years ago I got off a boat in Killybegs and I ended up drinking with Russians.”

“Russians?”

“Russians are serious.”

“In the next few years we are going to have a lay church,” said Jack, unexpectedly. “Did the Russians tell you that?”

“No,” said Hugh.

“That’s what the priests told me.”

“That’s a good thing to know,” said Isobel uneasily.

They sat there in the cold watching the fire take.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’d like to know,” he explained, “why she didn’t come. I’d like to know what kept her away.”

“I’m sure she had her reasons,” said Isobel.

“Then why did she write to me, hah?” he said angrily.

As they were getting into the car he said: “Don’t go yet. Give me a few minutes and I’ll take a lift with you.”

They carried bags of bottles to the front wall. Then they took a bag of rubbish and burned it in a steel rain barrel at the end of the field. The smoke went flying across Gleann Thomáis. The fire was still burning as they hurried in the car through the failing light to Belmullet. “The truth is,” said Jack, “that I’ve been fooling myself. She was never coming.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Hugh.

A Christmas tree had been erected in a corner of the hotel. Bells jingled on the toilet door. Hugh appeared behind the bar. Thady, full as a tick from drink, sauntered in. Jack ordered a drink and paid for it with money he had secreted in his top-right shirt pocket.

“Wild day,” he said to the gardener.

A Derry couple, who had arrived to the Mullet Peninsula for Christmas, joined Jack. They sat down at his table after Thady left. Jack was glad they did because Northerners understood drunkenness. They seemed not to notice that Jack was very drunk. He found it hard to keep his eyes open. His throat was hot. The man began explaining to Jack how the Catholics of Derry had had enough of the Provisionals. If they ever get power, he was saying, he would be the first up the coast to kill him – the man at the top.

“Can we talk of something else?” asked Jack.

“There’s Catholics hate him,” he said. “We know who he is.”

“I don’t know that we should talk about it.”

“We know who he is,” the man continued. “We know the very house he stays in when he comes over to Donegal.”

“I took you to be a peaceful man,” said Jack.

“I never said I was against violence, did I, Sue?” he replied. “The Northerner is by nature a military man. We are reared to it. When you were playing with your dick I was learning how to use a –”

“That’s nice,” interrupted Sue. “That’s really nice”.

“I know him,” he continued. “I know where the car turns, what gear the driver will be in on the hill. I know my Donegal. I may not know Mayo, but I know Donegal. At the end of the day someone has to take him.” He drank. “The Donegals are soft. Fuck. And they make him welcome. They do not know the real man. I know him,” he said. “I know what he stands for.”