“I was talking tay Alice yosterday.”

“I wouldn’t be capable of taking on wha’ she did.”

“He took a fair knock.”

The whole carriage shook.

“Whold awne.”

“That’s nice.”

“It’s lovely, lovely. It’s lovely out be Portstewart.”

“Now that he’s through he’ll blow it all in Israel.”

Away from the track the sea spun like a flat disc. There was a sheep down on one knee eating. At Coleraine a crowd of football fans and university professors got on. Beyond Coleraine cattle were searching among the dark-grassed dunes. The train turned away from the coast and headed inland.

“Now that he’s through,” the woman said with a touch of pride, “at the end of the day, he’ll blow it all in Israel.”

The floor under Jack shook. “That’s nice,” he said, imitating her voice. His bladder suddenly eased, and he sought the chain that was not there. He found the foot pedal. The water gushed down the toilet bowl. He felt his way back to his seat and sat down. He looked up and found the same steel-blue eyes fixed upon him. He shifted uncomfortably and smiled.

But the smile was not returned. He suddenly realized that he was looking into the same bad unrelenting eye. He had returned to the seat he had occupied earlier, opposite the man in the carriage for non-smokers.

The man’s lower lip curved upward with the disdain of the abstemious.

Jack stood.

“God help us,” he said. Deeply embarrassed he returned along the carriages, but now he could not find where he had been. He tried remembering who had been sitting across from him, but his mind was blank. He saw empty seats and any one of them could have been his. He walked along the two carriages searching, but the faces had changed. He could not recognize anybody. Then he saw his bag, and he sat down again opposite the two women. Outside, large fields of potatoes had now appeared. He grew mesmerized by the flowering potato fields. The white flowers, the mounds of earth where the round roots nestled. Soon to be picked, laid in furrows and moved in bags to a market somewhere. In Mullet they’d winter under turf and mould. In Inisheer they’d lie uncovered in a shed. In Cleggan they’d be under sand. After boiling they’d be drained, teemed, and bursting floury out of their steaming skins, they’d be served.

As he watched, the electric wires dipped and rose, then were suddenly halted by a pole. Then they started again, swooping down and off. They’d fling themselves high onto the grips of the trapeze. Take off and, at the next juncture, just as Jack was becoming hypnotized, the wires swung away out of sight from the rails.