‘Maura, I’m dying of thirst out here,’ a voice called from in the bar as Maura dropped to her knees to face her son.

‘Harry, what in God’s name is wrong? Tell me?’ Harry held out his hands and Maura’s own hand flew to her mouth. ‘God in heaven, who did that to you?’

Harry tried to speak, but his throat was tight and his tongue thick, no words came. Maura stared at the red weals across the palms of her son’s hands and, as she turned him around, across the back of his legs too. Harry was Maura and Tommy’s clever son. The sensitive, helpful, caring boy who had assumed the role of junior parent since Kitty’s death, whenever Angela let him. Maura threw her arms around him and pulled him into her.

‘Maura!’ a voice roared from the front. ‘Have I to pour my own fecking drink? If I do so, I take it I won’t be paying for it, will I?’

Maura pulled back and looked her son in the eyes. ‘Harry, who did this to you?’ she asked again.

The children attended the school of the Christian Brothers and Harry and the boys were in Mr Cleary’s class, a civilian teacher who made Maura’s flesh crawl. ‘He’s no Miss Devlin, either in looks or nature,’ she had said to Tommy when they had signed the children up at the school.

Harry took in a deep breath and shuddered. ‘Mr Cleary, with his stick.’

‘Why? Why in God’s name would he do that?’

Harry found his voice. ‘I couldn’t say the Hail Marys in the Irish, I got mixed up.’

Maura almost swore under her breath. ‘Here, let me wash the blood away,’ she said, turning on the tap. Harry flinched as she held his hands up under the running water and she heard the inn door open and close again, more voices, more demands for her attention, but she would not leave her son.

‘Wait, can’t you?’ she shouted back. ‘You won’t die of thirst in five minutes!’

The response was a muted grumbling. She took a clean hand towel down from the shelf above the sink and ripped it down the middle. She pulled Harry’s face into her apron and stroked his hair, muttering a prayer under her breath. ‘You brave little soldier,’ she whispered as she kissed the top of his head, inhaling the scent of him. Then, taking each hand, she wrapped it in the cotton, making a bandage. Her son looked up at her, his eyes brimming with a mixture of pain and love. Her breath caught in her throat. ‘You go upstairs now. Have your Cidona and biscuits and when daddy is back from Liam’s, we will talk about this.’

*