The brothers came through the clubhouse door to a mild effusion of hollers and hellos from the handful of patrons already ensconced. There was the teenage barman Mikey Reilly with his pink cheeks and sawdust crew cut. There was Softly Broughan, recently retired half forward for the county senior football team, dubbed Softly for his loping running style and ability to ghost between the opposition lines. Softly now managed his father’s haulage company out of Westport. He was a vivid dresser and was tonight arrayed in a baronial waistcoat with fobbed pocket watch, cornflower neckerchief and a champagne bomber jacket of distressed leather. On the arm of Softly was not his fiancée, the solicitor Stella McIlenden, but one of Stella’s younger sisters, Denise, a primary schoolteacher and finalist in the 2014 Mayo Rose of Tralee heats. The pensioner Peader Ginty was there with the tank of purified oxygen snugged into the tartan trolleybag he was obliged to wheel around with him everywhere, and his scowling daughter Moira, herself in her fifties, in the leather jacket and narrow black clerical trousers she favoured, the dark glasses she never took off on account of her chronic photophobia.

‘Anyone clap eyes on that peacock outside beyont in the goals?’ Bimbo asked.

‘I did not,’ Softly said, ‘but in any case I’d wager that would very much be a pheasant you were looking at, Bimbo.’

Bimbo looked Softly up and down.

‘You look like Kanye, kid,’ Bimbo said.

‘Kid, I am Kanye,’ Softly said.

Rory and Eustace slid on to a pair of stools in front of the taps.

‘How’s the form, Mikey?’ Rory said.

‘The form remains legendary,’ Mikey said, already working on their Guinnesses.

‘A round of cheese toasties as well,’ Rory said. ‘We’re running on fumes here.’

‘Onions and mustard?’ Mikey asked.

‘Load them beasts up,’ Rory said. ‘And three packages of Tayto while you’re at it.’

Mikey turned to the shelves behind him and the brothers regarded his neck, bright pink, savagely sunburnt.

‘That’s an awful scalded neck you have on you there, Mikey,’ Eustace said.

‘I was up on the roof of the mother’s house listening to an MMA podcast this afternoon and didn’t I only fall asleep,’ Mikey said.

‘Gutted for you,’ Rory said.