‘Tommy, stop, would you?’ she protested as she pushed his hands away. On any other night she would have giggled and a play fight, which only ever ended in the bedroom, would have ensued. ‘Tommy, we have to think. What are we to do about Harry and that brute, Cleary? Could you imagine him coming home with his hands bleeding like that if we were still living in the four streets? Sister Evangelista would never harm a hair on a child’s head, even if Miss Devlin had sent him to her office.’

Harry had been so stoical when Tommy had returned home and applied the iodine to the bleeding, raw cuts on his hands. She’d had to fight back her own tears as well as wipe away Harry’s. Her brave little soldier had turned a ghastly shade of white and she’d felt his legs buckle beneath him. Tommy had grabbed him and held him fast to his own chest. Maura saw the anger in his eyes as their son tried his best not to cry out again. Now Tommy released his hold and took his wife’s hands.

‘Maura, I got worse when I was a kid. The Brothers are brutal, all right, but they make a firm fist of turning us into good earners.’

Maura knew exactly what her husband was doing and it was no use. He had done it every day since they had moved to the west coast. ‘Save your breath, Tommy. You try to put a gloss on everything that happens here but you aren’t going to make me feel any better. You can’t put a shine on a turd and that man belongs in a midden. This is serious – and anyway, they teach you nothing. You can’t flamin’ read; if you could, we wouldn’t be here. All you know, our Kitty taught you. Are you really such an arse feck?’

Tommy had the good grace to look embarrassed, if a little crestfallen, and Maura instantly felt guilty.

‘Jesus, why did God make men such eejits?’ she asked. ‘They turn out good workers, I’ll give you that, but Tommy, our kids spend more time in school on their catechisms and writing in the Gaelic than they do on their tables. This school is in the last century. I know for a fact it’s not as backwards as this in Galway or Dublin. But here we are in the forgotten land, stuck behind the mountains where no bugger comes because the roads are too bad.’

Tommy bent to switch off the standard lamp by the plug. ‘Aye, well, there’s more to school than maths and reading and the Brothers, they run schools all over Ireland. They know what they are doing.’

‘Tommy, are you mad? What more is there?’