But these women would be dealt with, and the sins of their flesh would be discussed in his drawing room with champagne bubbles and Cuban leaf smoke, and in many other drawing rooms, and good or bad sex, no matter, there was a hefty life sentence, incarceration of the body of the woman, of her mind, and of the baby, the Holy Trinity, things good in threes/things bad in threes, and they’d soften our women coughs for us, forever in penal servitude. There was an appropriate way of solving pregnant women in Ireland. Apparently. As they decided on the fate of young women and their children, with their robes and their God and their cocks and their cigars and champagne, and sure, wasn’t it only good for us? And weren’t we only lucky? For their own good, and the good of the child. A bastard. For the good of everyone, for it was contagious, hoorish behaviour, like galloping consumption, and men were poisoned with a spell of passion by these young women, girls, by their hair and their eyes and the way they might wash a cup or iron your shirt and all the fleshy bits of the body women have, poisoning them all, and the awful way they might look at you, to damn you, or talk to you, or walk along beside you. Everyone must help solve it for the good of us all. And if it wasn’t a good solution, locking them up in hellholes, which turns out it wasn’t, it was a fucking criminal travesty, then, now, hush, God would be good to the incarcerated women and their sold or dead children. And if God wasn’t good, which he didn’t seem to be, not turning up for work in these places, then we all must be good and virtuous, and nice, and act appropriately, and maybe best not to talk about it at all, for what is talk but weak, and cheap. Now, now. And not bring shame, no more shame, for until, praise be, God might come back for us. And see how secretive and virtuous we all are, and oh, how many cannot recollect. And oh. Wasn’t it only the way, only the way of us? And wasn’t it what we all deserved?

They say Ann Hegarty didn’t stay long in Clifden after returning from America. A motor car was called for and she was brought back into Galway, past the stone bridge at Oughterard, thatched cottages, and red doors. Half doors. They stopped at the Angler’s Rest Hotel, where her stubbly chauffeur, who had been quiet the entire journey from Clifden with the pregnant girl in the back seat, took her in to the bar of the hotel for some Guinness, and after he settled her into the snug, the lady of the house brought a large glass jug of Guinness with two tulip glasses, and he poured. She was given a half-pint, for he insisted iron was good for the baby as he stroked her thigh and sure he could do no more damage, he whispered. And he bought another large jug for himself, before they left, in broad daylight. Ann was sickened from the Guinness pooling and churning in her belly, so she sat, faint, on the white garden seat outside the front of the hotel, and two young boys came over, offering her a basket of fish they had just caught; five silver bodies lay on some straw in the wicker, fat and blue around the centre, dead and resting in the afternoon sun. Five fresh jelly eyes, bulging and shiny, staring back at the young woman.