‘Where’s your car?’ she demanded.

‘What?’

‘I said where is your car?’

He said he didn’t have one any more. No. He didn’t. And why not? Why did he not have a car any more? She was getting into her courtroom rhetoric, the voice gradually rising, the rage coming to full throttle. Why?

‘I sold it,’ says he.

Yeah. He had sold it. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, he sold his car. And why does a man sell his car?

‘Because I have no job at the minute. You know that.’

Exactly! ‘Because he has no job at the minute.’ And now let us proceed. Who is the geezer at the front door? Who is that boy outside my front door, dozing in his fancy big car?

‘You know who it is. I’ve explained about the hospital.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You have already explained.’ She left a pause. A long pause. A delph-rattling, earth-shattering pause. And then, a thousand years later, she added a whisper, ‘It’s yourself, Gussie, you should be worried about now. Not me.’

6

HE HAD BEEN there before. In Connemara. Years ago. When he was a child. He went to the Irish summer college, to learn the language by mixing with the native speakers. Birdie has found the photographs. She can pick them from behind the cellophane of a leather photo album and hold them at a distance to make out the faded details. Where are they? Here they are! All the Polaroids he had taken home with him.

But what is that noise? And where is she? It takes a second but yes, Birdie is in the bed. It’s the middle of the night.

So naturally she wonders about a strange noise. She listens again. It’s coming through the wall. It’s the sound of someone in the next room. Someone waking before their alarm perhaps? Someone going to the toilet maybe? No. It’s nothing like that. It’s probably the Vet walking about in the other world. That’s what it is. Yes. The Vet.

It’s that kind of night. Silent and windless. And it’s nowhere near dawn and her feet are cold.

She raises herself out of the bed. Stands erect. Wobbles. Leaves the room. Negotiates the stairs, one at a time and goes down to the front room that looks out on the lawns and the avenue. Stooping carefully, she plugs in the two-bar heater and sits on the sofa.

But she has forgotten the leather photo album. So she must go back up the stairs. A long slow ascent until she is back once more in the bedroom. And there it is lying on the duvet. OK. Now back down the stairs. Gingerly. Gingerly. Down one at a time. Bit of a wobble. Stop. Sit. First move the feet. Now move the bum. And again move the feet. And again move the bum. Until finally, exhausted, she lands down on the bottom step, clutching her leather album. And she walks back into the drawing room where the two-bar heater has warmed up the room and she can put her feet up close to toast her toes. But they’re not cold now. They have already warmed up from all the travelling up and down. Up and down like a fucken yo-yo.