She did not go with them, but seemed to disappear into some hole in Jack’s memory. One minute she was being showered with soot, the next minute the ropes that held her swung in the wind, the wet soot lay round the pole, but she, who a second before had been distraught and hysterical with laughter, was gone.

The rain fell loudly.

As he walked the town, he was followed by the sound of coins tumbling, extraterrestrial sounds and muffled explosions. Unlit Christmas stars and coloured bulbs hung above the streets. A small, dark-skinned fat man, bowed over so that his chin was tucked into his chest, came towards him pulling a suitcase on wheels. The man stepped out of the rain into the doorway beside Jack. He had enormous old-fashioned glasses behind which his mischievous eyes were perked up in elaborate gaiety. He turned his head sideways and looked at Jack.

“The best film I see in a while was Crocodile Dundee,” he said.

“You go to the pictures?” asked Jack.

“Oh the young women love me,” he told Jack. “They like to gee-gee with me,” he smiled. “The Irish women like the Jew.”

He asked Jack to pull his suitcase for him. He was eighty years of age and had been selling parts for spectacles round Ireland since the Second World War. Jack walked ahead pulling the case while the old man, unabashed, followed behind describing his unbelievable sexual conquests. He held up a hand to stop the traffic. “The Irish,” he told Jack in the middle of the street, “lack self-esteem,” and the two of them trundled forward. They continued up another sidewalk through shoppers hurrying between showers. “Over there,” said the old man, and they crossed the road again. They had reached a bed-and-breakfast. The Jew handed him a brown paper bag containing two ham sandwiches.

“Take these, please,” he said.

Jack took the bag. The Jew entered the hallway. He stood on the battered lino talking to himself, then headed off down the corridor trailing his case. Jack stepped up onto a weighing scale that stood in the doorway of a chemist’s shop. He dropped a five-pence piece into the slot and watched the hand swing to nine and a half stone. First he thought, I’ve lost a stone, and then he thought, as he looked at the hand quivering round the figures, that’s me, that’s the weight of a human body. That’s who I am.

He was putting off the moment when he would go into the pub. It was the type of day when anything might happen. The warning signals were there. The distorted perspective, the disturbing thoughts, the loud voice of his consciousness. He went to a draper’s and bought a shirt and a pair of trousers. I need shoes, thought Jack. “I’ve been wearing the same pair of boots for the last two years,” he said. “Well, that’s no good,” replied the assistant. “Go across the street to Burke’s. Here,” he said, “you forgot your lunch.” He handed Jack the sandwiches. Jack stood in a doorway again. More people hurried by.