‘Fucken cunts!’

But she’s dead now, Birdie. She doesn’t be talking like that now, does she? And she did use that language. But not any more. No. You were at the funeral. And that’s years ago. How many years ago is it? Oh, very hard to say that. And you’re still there, Birdie. Still tapping your fingers. Passing the time. Waiting for Coronation Street.

3

HUGHIE WAS THE FIRST to visit her. His hair oiled like the axle of a cart, and combed in straight lines. His fingers agitated in his trouser pockets, and his shoe tapping the ground as he stood, hoping Birdie wasn’t at home, or that she might not hear the bell. After walking up the drive, he now regretted his sudden rush of compassion.

Birdie opened the door.

‘Long time, Mrs Delaney,’ says he. ‘Long time. How are ye?’

She was dumbstruck.

‘I was in the hospital on Tuesday,’ he said. ‘For tablets. There’s a clinic on Tuesdays. For the nerves. And I seen the child in the queue. He must be going through a bit of stormy weather.’

That was the day the pair of them decided to visit Gussie in the psychiatric ward. Neither of them knew what was coming.

Birdie felt weak when she saw his withered features at the door, but she let him in, and sat him down in the front room before saying anything. They sat for two hours in the armchairs opposite each other, with an electric heater drying the air to an unbearable tightness, and the light slowly fading from the sky. Before he left, it was twilight. The hour between the dog and the wolf, as Hughie used to call it.

Only when he said he’d go did she comment on the fading day, and he got up to flick the light switch. The moment he switched on the light, he could see his reflection in the window. It was that dark.

He said he heard that Gussie was going through a bit of stormy weather. Said he’d be glad to go into the psychiatric ward with her, if she needed support. Said he knew that place like the back of his hand. A bit of a stormy patch. But he’d be out in a week.

Birdie had enormous loyalty to the Vet, and she rarely pictured him lying in the cold clay of the old graveyard.

Instead, she sometimes imagined him standing under the trees near the church door, where he had waited for her all those years before, when she came on her father’s arm to marry him. And she was a long time staring at the electric fire, thinking to herself how Hughie had a terrible rim of dirt round his neck, and how he must have no comforts at all in that old cottage he lived in. But she didn’t dare say much.

‘You were great on the flute,’ says she.

He said he hadn’t played it for years. He was leaning back in the chair and stretching his legs so that he seemed very comfortable there. And it was nice to have someone to talk to for the evening. Especially with Gussie in the psychiatric ward. And both of them tried to sustain the moment as long as possible.