He was way ahead of himself. He saw himself alighting from the train. He saw himself searching for his ticket. It’d be in his little pocket. On the crowded ascent to Botanic Avenue he looks around for Catherine. She is standing at the back of the crowd watching his face for his reaction. She is tremendously happy.

I’ll arrive, thought Jack, I will.

The train shuttled forward linking his various lives, each in its separate compartment, each swaying gently on. Sometimes he’d find himself in one compartment, sometimes in another. It was painful looking back. Occasionally uproariously funny. A brief patch of Northern light caught his eye as the train hooted. The carriages pulled against one another as if they might sever the chains that linked them. They entered the next tunnel.

“Where’s Mammy?” asked a father across the aisle.

“She’s a wreck,” the child answered, and everyone laughed.

Jack feared that he would carry the present despair of his mind into whatever proceedings lay ahead. His mind, alienated by the journey, was trying to undermine any happiness that was to come when the journey was over. He tried to correct this tendency by dreaming ahead. But his mind continually trapped him in the present. There was nothing after. He tried to think of the carriages ahead. Then he recalled the eye of the man in the grey suit.

I’m exaggerating everything, he thought. Jesus! I’m frightening myself.

He ordered a fourth miniature and gulped half of it down. He might regret this some day, he thought. He did not feel drunk, but empty. What am I worried about? he asked himself. But he could not reason beyond the fact that this was Northern Ireland, people die here. Yet it wasn’t that. What was it that was worrying him? And he knew such worry would make him blind to another’s feelings.

Then he cheered himself by thinking, Well, on arrival I’ll see all my fears were unfounded. So his happiness would be all the greater. But the further now that the train plunged into the late morning the more alien he felt. The veins on the back of his hands began to pulsate.

In the seat behind him there was a sudden outburst of ribald laughter. Only then did his consciousness take in the voice that was speaking. Someone fell against his seat.

“Sorry,” said the youth.

“It’s all right,” said Jack.

“Taig cunt,” said the youth.