1648 was a year shy of Cromwell’s landing in Ireland, and already the inn at Killary fjord was in business – it would see out this disaster, too. Now random phrases and images came at me – the sudden quick-fire assaults that signal a new idea – and I knew that they would come in sequence soon enough, their predestined rhythms would assert. I felt a new, quiet ecstasy take hold.

The gloom of youth had at last lifted.

A CRUELTY

HE CLIMBS THE twenty-three steps of the metal traverse bridge at 9.25 a.m., and not an instant before. Boyle station, a grey and blowy summer’s day. He counts each step as he climbs, the ancient rusted girders of the bridge clamped secure with enormous bolts, and the way the roll of his step is a fast plimsoll shuffle as he crosses – the stride is determined, the arms are swinging – and he counts off the twenty-three steps that descend again to the far-side platform. The clanky bamp of the last metal step gives way to a softer footfall on the platform’s smooth aged stone, and the surge of the Dublin–Sligo train comes distantly, but now closer, and now at a great building roar along the track – the satisfaction of timing it just right – and the train’s hot breeze unsettles his hair. The train eases to a halt, and his hair fixes; the doors beep three times and airily hiss open: an expectant gasp. He takes his usual place in carriage A. There is no question of a ticket being needed but the inspector sticks his head into the carriage anyway to bid a good morning.

‘That’s not a bad-looking day at all,’ Donie says.

It is his joke to say this in all weathers. He said it throughout the great freeze of Christmas and the year’s turn, he said it during the floods of November ’09. Now a roar comes out of the north, also, and the Sligo–Dublin train pulls in alongside, and its noise deflates, with the passengers boredly staring – it is at Boyle station always that the trains keep company, for a few minutes, and for Donie this is a matter of pride. Boyle is a town happily fated, he believes, a place where things of interest will tend to happen.

The beeps and the hissing, the carriages are sealed, and the Dublin train heads off for Connolly station, but Donie’s train does not yet move. The schedule declares his train will leave for Sligo at 9.33 a.m. and he becomes anxious now as he watches the seconds tick by on his Casio watch.

9.33.35

9.33.36

9.33.37

And when the seconds ascend into the fifties, his breath starts to come in hard panicked stabs of anxiety, and he speaks.

‘We’d want to be making a move here, lads,’ he says.

It is a painful twenty-eight seconds into 9.34 a.m. when the train drags up its great power from within, and the doors close again and the departure is made.