He rides the descent to Collooney. He wills it along the track. Collooney is the last stop before Sligo and as always an encumbrance – he is anxious again; he wants this stop done with; the train must hit Sligo town on the clock. If the time is out, he will know it is out, and it will be an aggravation. Collooney brings on three passengers and he cannot help but mutter at them as they move along the aisle.

‘Ye’d be as quick to get the bus, lads,’ he says.

Sea’s hint on the air, and the surge of the motorway beside, and it is the gulls that are flung about now on the breeze, and the back gardens of the terrace houses are a peripheral blur – unpainted fences, the coiled green of hoses, breezeblock – and his eyes water they are focused so hard on the seconds of the Casio watch …

10.08.53

10.08.54

10.08.55

… and he knows it is all to the good now, as the train eases into the station, as its surge diminishes, and dies.

10.09.15 – the arrival has been made within the named minute of the schedule, and there is a lightness to Donie’s step as he walks out through the station; the stride is jaunty, the arms again swinging.

It is time to head down to the Garavogue river and have a check on the ducks.

Where the river breaches before the bridge, the current is quick and vicious. Often here, in summer, a mallard fledgling is swept away from its brood, and more than once Donie has climbed down the stone steps – one careful plimsoll at a time to gauge each step for slickness – and he has made it with great trepidation across the rocks where the water diverges, and more than one family he has remade, the tiny damp fowl held carefully in his hands. On a morning two years ago, schoolgirls applauded as Donie went about his work. The delicate thrum of life fluttered within his cupped palms.

This morning, all seems to be flowing well enough, but he keeps an eye on things, duck-wise, for the full half-hour anyway.

Now the satchel.

Donie has taught himself to ignore the presence of the satchel on his back until quarter to eleven precisely. If he does not, the sandwiches and the biscuits will not survive even the train journey. He sits on a bench further along the riverside than his usual bench but it is not a major annoyance. Often enough, the usual bench is taken, especially on a summer morning, and he is resigned to the fact. It just means that this will not be a 100 per cent day, a day when everything falls into place just as it should. A sadness but a mild one.

From the satchel he takes first the larger of the foil packages and carefully unpicks the ends of the foil and releases the warm smell of the bread. Two sandwiches, halved, of white bread, ham, spread, and nothing else. When it comes to sandwiches, Donie is straight down the line. No messing.