‘There’s the Grapes?’ tried Big John.

‘There’s always the Grapes,’ I agreed.

And alewards we went about the familiar streets. The town was in carnival: Tropic of Lancashire in a July swelter. It would not last. There was rain due in off the Irish Sea, and not for the first time.

ERNESTINE AND KIT

TWO LADIES IN their sixties made ground through north County Sligo in a neat Japanese car. The sky above Lough Gill was deep blue and the world was fat on the blood of summer. The speed limit was carefully abided and all the turns were slowed for. There was the carnival air of a fine Saturday in June. A vintage car show had drawn a crowd in 1920s boaters and blazers to Kilmore; the old Fords and Triumphs honked cheerfully in the sun, and the ladies as they passed by smiled and waved. There was a lengthy queue for the ferry ride to the lake isle of Inishfree, there were castles to be visited, and way-marked walks to be hotly trailed. All the shaded tables outside the village pubs were full and tinkled with glasses and laughter, and children played unguarded in the cool of the woods.

‘When it gets a good old lick of weather at all,’ Ernestine said, ‘this is one powerful country.’

‘No place to compare,’ Kit sighed, and the summer growth swished heavily against the Toyota’s side windows on a tight bend after Tully.

Ernestine was big, with the high colour of a carnivore, and her haunches strained a little against the capacity of her cream linen trousers in the confined space of the driver’s seat. Her mottled, fleshy arms were held tensely erect as she steered – she had learned to drive later in life. Kit, slightly the younger, was long-necked, tightly permed, and thin as a cable. She had a darting glance that scanned the country they passed through and by habit she drew her companion’s attention to places and people of interest.

‘Would they be hair extensions?’ she wondered, as they passed a young blonde pushing a pram along the roadside verge.

‘You can bet on it,’ Ernestine said. ‘The way they’re streaked with that silvery-looking, kind of …’

‘Cheap-looking,’ Kit said.

‘Yes.’

‘Gaudy!’

‘A young mother,’ Ernestine said.

‘Got up like a tuppenny whore,’ Kit said.

‘The skirt’s barely down past her modesty, are you watching?’

‘I am watching. And that horrible, horrible stonewash denim!’

‘Where would the whore be headed for, Kit?’

Kit consulted the road map.

‘Leckaun is the next place along,’ she said. ‘Only a stretch up the road from here. Her ladyship is headed into a pub, no doubt.’

‘Drinking cider with fellas with earrings and tattoos,’ Ernestine said. ‘In by a pool table. In a dank old back room. Dank!’

‘You can only imagine,’ said Kit, and she made the sign of the cross. ‘A jukebox and beer barrels and cocaine in the toilets. The misfortunate infant left to its own devices.’

‘Would we nearly stall for a while in Leckaun, Kit?’