“It was a Lee Enfield with sights and they’d settled for our bedroom. I could hear their every move above my head. The window must have given them a clear view. Hours went by. There wasn’t a sound. We just waited.”

“Same as them,” said her husband.

“Then, when it came, it didn’t sound like a shot.”

“They never do.”

“It was like someone had dropped an egg. I thought I’d only imagined it. Then the three lads went by us. They untied us. They even apologized. ‘You can give us two hours,’ they said. But within a half an hour came the policemen. A soldier had been killed in Rake’s Avenue.”

“Corporal Wilson,” said the husband. “He took it in the head.”

“Considering what had happened in our house,” she continued, “they were not bad to us, the police.”

“I saw his name in the papers. He was Manchester, wasn’t he, Sue?”

“He was Manchester all right. Derek Wilson I think it was.” She drank. She caught Jack’s eye, then looked away. “I couldn’t bear to sleep in our room after that,” she added.

The bar was filling up with men in brightly coloured clothes and local women in white skirts and trousers and white shirts, and belts slipped at the waist so that they hung towards the groin. The gardener was drinking alone though surrounded by people. Once the gardener had turned and said to Jack: “You don’t fool me!” Now he was pinned in by all the newcomers yet he took no notice of them. He was a constant man, round-shouldered, soft, and his legs were wrapped round the stool like a young boy’s.

“Are you high?” she asked

“I am,” Jack replied.

“He’s high,” Sue told her husband.

He nodded, went to the bar and called a round. He returned without the drinks. Jack went up to get them, and ordered another round. He searched in his pockets but found he had no money left.

“You wouldn’t have the lend of a tenner?” he asked the gardener.

“You must be joking,” he said.

“I didn’t think so. Will you put it down to me, Hugh?”

“Your friend owes for one as well.”

“It’s getting confusing,” said Jack. Then he found the money in the pocket of his shirt. He paid Hugh and returned to the couple. “This is your round, I think,” he said, “and this is mine.”

“Aren’t they the same either way?” said the husband.

“Except that one is paid for and one is not.”

“Which one is not paid for?”

“Yours.”

“Right. I’ll look after that. Then tomorrow we’ll drive down round Blacksod Bay.”

“I like it here,” Sue told Jack. “I really do.”

Jack asked him what trade he was in.

“Fireplaces,” he replied.

“Fireplaces?” asked Jack.

“Have you heard of Grampian rock?”

“Jack would not understand you,” his wife said.

“It looks good,” explained the man.

“I can’t believe it when I wake in the mornings and see the sand dunes from my bed,” she continued. “Then I hear the sea. I can actually feel the waves. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”