Eventually on the seventh evening, there was a knock on the door. And in he came. But without bidding them a good evening or goodnight, he went straight to the loft and rummaged around till he found an old flute that had once come from an uncle in America. And he brought it down to the kitchen, shook the dust off it and began to play.

He played the most beautiful music that was ever heard. And all his brothers gazed at him in wonderment.

‘Where did you learn music like that?’ they asked.

But he looked at them in equal astonishment.

‘I haven’t a fucken clue,’ says he. For he couldn’t even remember where he had been for the seven nights.

There was one night in Kerry, when the Vet was asked to go out and admire some exotic breed of horse in the hills above Killorglin.

‘I’ll mind her till you get back,’ Hughie said. ‘I won’t let any of these Kerry haverels be troubling her.’

It was all good fun. Harmless banter. A bit of craic.

But it was early evening, and the pub was quiet. Almost empty. They sat in the corner and he started looking into her eyes and telling her the secrets of the flute.

Flute music is like a long ribbon in the wind, says he. That’s the only way he could describe it. He stood erect and blew through the long black cylinder and she could almost see the blue ribbon issue from the other end and dance around him. A ribbon getting longer and longer as he played. She could see anything he imagined. She could believe anything he said.

‘It’s a passion, Birdie,’ says he. ‘And passions like that can’t be harnessed.’

Sometimes, says he, he could play so long that the ribbon grew and grew, in circles round him so that it was like a whirlpool, and he was inside it, and smothered by its soft, silky feeling.

‘Such poetic talk, Mr Donoghue,’ says she. ‘But I know what you mean,’ she said. He could feel the texture of a tune like silk in his fingers, says he.

‘And the colour changes all the time,’ he said. ‘Slow airs are blue ribbons. Jigs and reels are like red silk. Leaping like flames. And do you know something, Mrs Delaney? Polkas for some strange reason, and I’m good at the polkas, I always see them as black.’

Then he played her a tune. A polka. ‘The Dark-Haired Girl’, he said was the name of it. A black polka, he said. And for a moment, when he played the flute, Birdie thought there was no other sound in the world. There wasn’t even a world. It was like travelling in space. Being out there in the black ocean of eternity. Floating along in deep silence. That’s how it was for a few minutes.

The evening sun slanting in the window. Glowing red. Promising another good day. He finished the tune.

‘When music enters the world,’ says he, ‘the world withers away. And nothing exists but emptiness and ribbons of silk.’