Ma said, prim and satisfied, “He hadn’t got much choice. Tessie’s da had always let her away with murder, so he had—and look where that got him—but after that he’d hardly let her go out the door, only to go to work and he walked her there himself. I wouldn’t blame him; everyone was talking about it. The little gurriers were calling things after her on the street, all the aul’ ones were waiting for her to turn up in trouble, half her friends weren’t allowed to speak to her in case she turned them into hoors as well; Father Hanratty gave a homily about loose women weakening the country, and that wasn’t what the men died for in 1916. No names, mind you, but everyone knew who he meant. That put a stop to Tessie’s gallop.”

Straight across almost half a century, I could feel the feeding frenzy: the whirling hysteria of it, the double-speed pump of adrenaline as the Place smelled blood and went into attack mode. Those weeks had quite probably sown the crazy seeds in Tessie Daly’s mind. “It’d do that, all right,” I said.

“And serve her right! Taught her what was what. She liked messing about with the fellas, but she didn’t want the name for it, did she?” Ma was sitting up straight, with her virtuous face on her. “She started going with Matt Daly straight after—he’d been making goo-goo eyes at her for years, but she’d never paid him any notice. Not till he came in useful. He was a decent fella, Matt was; Tessie’s da didn’t mind her going with him. It was the only way she was allowed out the door.”

I said, “And that’s what Da has against Matt Daly? He nicked his girl?”

“That was most of it. Sure, they never liked each other to start with.” She lined up the silver gizmo with three more like it, flicked a minute speck of something off the side, picked out a twee little Christmas-tree ornament from the to-do pile. “Matt was always jealous of your da. Your da was a million miles better-looking than Matt, so he was, and he was popular—not just with the girls, the fellas thought he was great as well, a great laugh . . . Matt was a boring little bollix. No go in him.”

Her voice was layered with old things, triumph and bitterness and spite twisted together. I said, “So when Matt was the one who got the girl, he rubbed it in?”