She’d call to the butcher and the baker and the vegetable stall on the street, and she’d order what she required, and pay them, and then later that evening, or maybe the following morning, the messenger boys would bring it all out to her back door. The messenger boys on their bicycles, with box-baskets strapped onto the front handlebars, pushing their way up the avenue, and whistling through their teeth and standing every few seconds to comb the Brylcreem into their black waves of hair.

In town Birdie would indulge herself in a venomous bout of complaining and whingeing. As if it was a burden to be well-heeled. She’d go on moaning relentlessly about the house. About the size of it. It was too big. And too far out of town. And she had to cycle the lonely road every Friday to do the messages. Wasn’t that terrible? And Gussie on the carrier! And if the road wasn’t lonely, then it was too busy, with all them tinkers, and you wouldn’t like to be caught in crossfire with a pair of them latchicos on your way home. Oh now, there was nothing but trouble. And so many rooms in the new house. Well, you wouldn’t believe it. Impossible it was to keep them all clean for his lordship. Who? Alex. Mr Delaney. The Vet! Oh, of course.

But no one gave her any encouragement. Men in brown shop coats with smiles like lacquered doors stood silent until she finished.

‘Oh give me the Earl Grey! Mr Delaney doesn’t like the cheap tea.’

Down Main Street she scooted with defiant glee. Past the terraces where her childhood friends were boiling pots of crude greasy stew and skivvying for battalions of children and useless husbands, or past drapery shops where some of them were still serving behind the counter and facing the joyless destiny of middle age in spinster corsets. And them were the ones that said she’d never get a ring on her finger! The ones who said her tits were too withered to suckle a child! That’s what they said all right. And by Jesus, sometimes she pedalled as furious as a spider climbing up out of the bath and she’d say, by Jesus I’ll cut the fucken socks off them today.

She grew a forest of enemies. And drew occasional fire from shopkeepers and friends who were sick to the back teeth of Birdie and her perfect life.

Alex was a man who wore strong aftershave, white shoes, pressed cream or grey suits, and bright yellow ties. Her enemies didn’t need great imaginations to concoct the most exotic of scenarios for that costume.

What was he doing in Cork? they wanted to know. As if the southern city might be a place like Sodom or Gomorrah. And why did he leave it? And how come a man so apparently gifted in the arts of husbandry should have left it so late in life to find a mate? Did she ever think of that?