Jack moved along behind the throng of single men who comported themselves like labourers at a hiring fair. They merrily pushed each other forward. The ones pushed forward kicked backwards. Jack watched over their heads. He never took his eyes off the Adams girls. He was trying to stifle the beat of his heart against his shirt. In the melee, he slipped a hand into his trousers to straighten his penis against his sweating stomach. The palms of his hands slithered. Then Sara flounced over, all confident, and swung him out onto the floor because Catherine wouldn’t. She plonked her flat groin against him. “You have to be kind to my sister,” she said. The nub of her touched him mischievously, yet she stared unashamedly into his eyes as she danced round to where her sister sat, and much to Catherine’s disguised shame handed him on to her. “You’re a real ladies’ man, aren’t you?” said Catherine. The tips of her breasts glanced off his chest. The brief touch of her shoulder in his hands. Then Catherine returned him to Sara, and so for a number of dances he went backwards and forwards between the two women. “I like Catherine a lot,” he told Sara. She excused herself with a fey curtsy. He smiled weakly to himself, then turned proud and mellow as Catherine slid into his arms. “This dreadful music must be from your time,” she smiled. Her damp forehead dropped onto his shoulder and her left arm encircled his waist. She took the two strands of lace that held the cuffs of her dress and tied her wrists together behind his neck, and so they shuffled in a winding fashion between the two poles that held the tent aloft.

She undid her cuffs, and slid one hand under his jacket onto his shirt.

“Where are you now?” he asked.

“Belfast,” she said.

Her other hand cooled his as it lay along his thigh. And all the time her eyes never left his eyes. So the three sets passed. Catherine let him go. He stood uncertain in the middle of the floor like a man who has just walked out of a cinema.

Jack rejoined the men. And the sisters, much giddier now, as if they knew some awful secret about him – had they felt the slender arch of his cock against his stomach? – began dancing with each other again.

After Ladies’ Choice, things were not the same. The tension among the crowd had dropped. The women had spoken. Those left with no one looked round them in dismay. They gazed in desperation at those who like themselves had been overlooked. Pride ran the gauntlet of more refusals. All sat down to wait on the Planxty concert to begin. Some couples stayed in each other’s arms like people drowning.

“Oh, dear Jesus,” he whispered.