No more of that.

I will go to Inishfall. But not yet, not yet. Not until my work is done. When there is no more left to do, I will follow the Culhanes to their fallen island. I will go to Inishfall.

57

It was almost winter when the Culhanes set out for Inishfall. There was chimney smoke in the darkening air, the weather was getting colder, the evening was falling earlier and earlier as they tidied up the house in Sandycove and got themselves ready for the journey westward.

Time to go.

They knew they had to get away. One Tuesday in October Richard, anxious for the flavour of his previous life, had borrowed Peter’s car (they had sold Richard’s Nissan to pay for legal costs) and driven up to UCD. The café in the Quinn School was full of people he recognized. They sat at their tables with their laptops and their £3 coffees and they looked at all the places where Richard wasn’t standing. Richard sat at an empty table near the window and drank an espresso. He had ordered an espresso because he knew it was the thing he could drink the quickest.

Barry Fox was wiser: when his prison term was over he enrolled at the University of Manchester and is now studying for a degree in Social Policy.

Of the three Harry’s Niteclub boys, Stephen O’Brien proved to be the most successful at re-establishing a kind of southside life. He insisted, as loudly and as often as he could, that of the three boys convicted, his role in the fight had been the smallest, the least significant. I don’t think Richard or Barry blamed him for this. They understood what he was trying to do. Nowadays I think Steve studies Business at one of the Dublin technical colleges.

Peter and Katherine Culhane knew they had to leave because they no longer had anyone to talk to who wasn’t Gerald Clinch or Namwali or their only son. For a short time Father Connelly had continued to call to the Sandycove house, but when the manslaughter trial collapsed even his patronage rapidly ceased.

Peter had become aware that he and Richard rarely spoke and never touched. They had never been particularly affectionate, but now Peter sharply missed the unimprovable gratification of being hugged by his child. He watched his wife and son drift around the house and realized they needed to be somewhere else.

So it was Peter who made the decision. ‘Why don’t we go to Inish-fall for a couple of weeks?’ Richard and Katherine agreed. They were both aware – or they both suspected – that the family would stay in the big white house on the island for longer than a couple of weeks. They wondered if Peter felt this way. He had become, in the aftermath of the trial, inscrutably polite, attentive to irrelevant nuances of politesse and good behaviour. He helped Richard pack his bags, insisting that they take with them Richard’s rugby boots. Richard waited until Peter had left the room and unpacked the boots. He knew he wouldn’t need them.