‘Why did you come back?’

Brendan took the cap right off the bottle again and looked at it in silence, or looked at something.

‘I had to come,’ he said eventually. Carefully he screwed the top on again and then moved the bottle across several squares on the oilcloth. The squares were red and white, scarred here and there by cigarette burns.

‘Why? Had to?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘I’m not thick.’

‘You’re too young.’

‘Mam doesn’t want you home.’

‘I know.’

‘She thinks, you know, you’ll get mixed up with the Provies.’

‘You were always her pet.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

Brendan shook his head.

‘Are you?’

‘Am I what?’

‘Going to get mixed up …’

‘Shut your damn face.’

He thumped his fist on the table and the bottle danced for a moment.

‘Of course I’m not. I just couldn’t stay there with this … this … you wouldn’t understand. Dad …’

‘He won’t understand. That’s for sure. He doesn’t understand anything. He’ll just think you want to be a hero … like him.’

‘You’re a brat.’

‘You’ll never get a job here anyway, if that’s what you’re looking for.’

‘I have shekels.’

His hand moved to his pocket and touched what might have been a bulging wallet.

‘I worked hard over there. I have …’

‘I remember the day you went away,’ said Joe.

‘Aye.’

Brendan rubbed his hand over his face in an unhappy gesture. Joe got up and went and stood beside him. He didn’t like to touch him, but he stood as close to his brother as he possibly could.

‘Are you not well?’

‘I’m tired. It’s odd being here. It’s … Nothing in here has changed. You’ve grown. How dare you grow while I wasn’t looking?’

They both laughed suddenly with relief.

‘I think I’ll have that cup of tea after all.’

‘Ok.’

Joe went out to the scullery and filled the kettle. He wouldn’t have known Brendan. He’d have passed him in the street too, he thought. His face after all those years was pale, city-coloured, like so many others who had gone away and come back. Like some of the ones from the prisons too. Their faces had the same look. It couldn’t be all that fantastic if your face got like that. Shekels, that was a good word. He’d say that to someone. Someone like the girl on the wall. It was a word she might like. It sounded like gold and silver rather than dirty old pound notes. He carried the kettle into the kitchen and put it on the stove. The coal bucket was empty. He picked it up. His brother was sitting at the table staring at the dresser across the room as if it were a million miles away. Hills, rising gently into mountains. Mixing colours, moving light, shadows. Clouds that sometimes smothered the whole world. He had never been on top of a mountain and looked down at the world. That would really be something. He hadn’t even been up on the city walls, not that he could remember anyway. Great curls of barbed wire and corrugated sheeting stopped you now. But Brendan would have other visions in his head. Out in the yard an evening drizzle had settled in. Greyness dropped from the grey sky, covering the walls and the sloping roofs. Mrs O’Toole’s hens crooned softly in the next yard. There was a smell of smoke carried down with the rain. Somewhere something was burning. Back in the kitchen Brendan still stared into space. Joe rattled the cinders down to the bottom of the stove and then poured the coal in on top of the glowing embers. The kettle began to murmur.