‘Fuckers are washin’ diesel up there again,’ John Murphy said. ‘The Hourigans? Of course, they’d a father a diesel-washer before ’em, didn’t they? Cunts to a man.’

‘Cunts,’ Bill Knott confirmed.

Outside, the rain continued to hammer away at our dismal little world, and the sky had shucked the last of its evening grey to take on an intense purplish tone that was ominous, close-in, biblical.

‘Sky is weirdin’ up like I don’t know fucking what,’ I said.

John Murphy grabbed my elbow as I passed along the bar – he was aggressive, always, once the third pint was downed – and he said, ‘I s’pose you know that possessed fuckin’ she-devil above in the house will put me in the ground?’

‘John,’ I said, ‘I really don’t want to hear about it.’

‘I mean literally, Caoimhin! She’ll fuckin’ do for me!’

‘John, your marriage is your own private business.’

‘She’s fuckin’ poisoning me! I swear to bleedin’ fuckin’ Jesus! I can taste it off the tea, Caoimh!’

‘Would you go again, John?’ I indicated his emptied stout glass.

‘Oh, please,’ he said.

They were all nutjobs. This is what it came down to. This is the thing you learn about habitual country drinkers.

‘Mick’s a man of sixty,’ Vivien Harty said, awed at the persistence of her husband’s desire, ‘and he’d still get up on a cracked fuckin’ plate.’

Just then a cacophony erupted:

From the hillsides, everywhere, came the aggravated howls of dogs. These were amped to an unnatural degree. The talk in the lounge bar stalled for a moment in response but, as abruptly, it resumed.

‘The tiramisu?’ Mick Harty said. ‘You wouldn’t know whether to eat it or smear it all over yourself.’

Nadia, one of my Belarusians, came through from the supper room and sullenly collected some glasses.

‘The arse on that,’ John Murphy said.

‘Please, John,’ I said.

‘Two apples in a hankie,’ he said.

I believed all nine of my staff to be in varying degrees of sexual contact with one another. I housed them in the dreary, viewless rooms at the back of the hotel, where I myself lived during what I will laughably describe as high season (the innocence), and my sleepless nights were filled with the sound of their rotating passions.

‘Thank you, Nadia,’ I said.

She scowled at me as she placed the glasses in the dishwasher. I was never allowed to forget that I was paying minimum wage.

The dogs had stopped; the rain continued.

It was by now an hysterical downpour, with great sheets of water streaming down from Mweelrea, and the harbour roared in the fattening light. Visibility was reduced to fourteen feet. This all signalled that the west of Ireland holiday season had begun.

‘He was thrun down,’ John Murphy said, speaking of a man he had lately buried. ‘He went into himself. He didn’t talk for a year and a half and then he choked on a burnt rasher. You’d visit and he’d say nothin’ to you but he’d know you were there all right. The little eyes would follow you around the room.’