“Is it a dream to think we might get living together peacefully in the South?”

He said: “What I should do is go ahead and find some work on the boats.”

“You could stay in our house.”

“I’d rather we had a place of our own.”

“I don’t know where I might get a job.” She looked at him. “Are we really moving?”

“Yes.”

“And you are going to leave me here.”

“I’m broke. I couldn’t stay even if I wanted to.”

“When are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about your class? What will they think?” she asked. “Are you going to leave them, too?”

She picked a piece of broken glass out of her cigarette pack.

“Do you think we are suitable people,” she said, “to be together?”

“I wish we were.”

“We’ve had terrible times.”

“There’s worse.”

“But we have not experienced it.”

She pushed back her hair.

“Do you know that Helen Wynne goes to Mass? I’m beginning to think she’s right. We don’t believe in anything but we suffer for breaking the rules all the same.” Then she looked at him: “What we should do is go off the drink for a while.”

“Yes.”

“Things are going out of control.”

“Yes, they are.”

“You do accept that.”

“Yes, I do.”

The first morning of their sobriety Jack received a phone call from Sara asking him to advise Catherine to watch Glenroe on RTE the following evening.

“Did she say why?”

“No.”

“Can it be possible what I’m thinking?”

“You should ring your mother.”

Catherine did, only to find that Sara had already been in touch with Maisie.

“And where,” Catherine asked Jack, “are we going to see RTE up here?”

“There’s a club I know that has RTE.”

“In the Falls?”

“No, actually just a little ways from here.”

“A Protestant club?”

“Aye.”

“And they have RTE?”

“Yes. To watch the races on Saturday.”

On Sunday evening they were seated before two pints of lager in the empty club. A single-bar electric fire was on behind the bar, and to their left, a roaring coal fire. Songs of Praise was on the BBC when Jack asked the barman to switch over to RTE.

“Her sister,” said Jack, indicating Catherine, “is appearing in an Irish soap.”

“You’re codding me.”

“I’m not.”

“Well, fuck.” He switched to RTE and sat down beside them. “What’s the story?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It used to be about sheepfarmers in Wicklow.”

“Fuck,” said the barman.

Beside them, Catherine sat sober and correct.

“Is that her?” asked the barman when the programme started.

“Not yet,” said Jack.

A marital row had broken out in a farmhouse. She accused him of having an affair. The man went off into the night.