Gussie drove the new black Opel Vectra straight into the gable wall of Joyce’s Spar shop on the outskirts of the village of Camlough. His body burst through the windscreen, but his legs got caught in the collapsed steering wheel, slamming his torso on to the bonnet of the car with a ferocity that smashed the face and the front lobe of his skull like an egg, breaking all the bones in his body, and in particular his backbone, which snapped clean in four places, destroying forever his spinal chord. Leaving him silent and immobile for what might remain of his life.

The mystery was that there were no flowers in evidence at the scene, though there was a porcelain dinner set on the passenger seat. Brightly coloured cups and saucers, and cheerful dinner plates and side plates, all painted in various blues. The box flew out the gap where the windscreen used to be a split second after Gussie. It flew like a cannonball, and exploded on the gable wall of the Spar shop with a soft whoosh that the entire village heard, and the street was drenched in china chippings as tiny as confetti. And could anyone give a satisfactory answer as to where that porcelain dinner set had come from? Or who owned it? Or did he buy it? And for what, or for whom? No. Nobody could answer that.

3

OH BIRDIE, BIRDIE, BIRDIE; you’re an awful woman. The nurse said to read him letters. Tell him news of any special messages or of old friends who might call. Tell him everything. It would all help. The voices of old friends sometimes could have miraculous effects.

And you agreed. You phoned everyone you could. Relations. Friends. People in the school in Mullingar.

You went through his old books and copies in the room upstairs to see could you find old numbers. People he knew at school. People he knew at university. Anyone. Everyone. And for a day or two you even tried to talk to him yourself. But you couldn’t bear his face.

So then you brought people to see him. And they told him the results of football matches and what they had been doing the previous night. Who they had a pint with. What colour the new wallpaper was. How much they had won on the scratch card. How cold it was on the bicycle that morning.

They told him that old Vincent Fagan was in with a brain tumour. Down the corridor. And that Tommy McCarthy was selling the garage. And Eddie Touhy was in as well. With thrombosis. And he had been put in the women’s ward because of the overcrowding. Eddie! In with the women! Imagine that, they said. And the teacher in the school was being sued by the parents for sexual abuse and the headmaster had been suspended. But there wasn’t a peep out of Gussie.

The local news was read out to him. Prayers were said in his ears. Scriptures were declaimed from the Bible.