‘Did you come home in an airplane?’

‘Train and boat.’

‘Aye.’ Mr Logan’s voice was disappointed. ‘More sense, I suppose. Cheaper. Safer. You never can tell.’

He stirred his tea.

‘Aye. Train and boat. Many’s the time I did that crossing myself. Euston station, and the great greyness. I was young … and from Dublin too. I’ve done it from there. I wasn’t a cripple then, I can tell you. No. The seagulls follow the boat. Do they?’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘All the way sometimes. It never took a feather out of me that journey. A whole crowd of us together. We’d earn a few bob and then come back. Rich. My whole days.’ Tears trembled suddenly in his voice. ‘If you get my meaning. Whole. Once I was whole. Then.’

Brendan pulled a chair up beside him and sat down.

‘It’s all right, Dad. I know.’

‘Look at me now. If I’d known you were coming, son, I’d have stayed in. Something to look forward to. Something to make a day.’

‘I told Mam.’

‘Not the day. Not the time, you didn’t.’

‘I thought I’d surprise you all.’

‘Tell you what, son. We’ll hop down, you and I, and have a quick one. See the boys. We’ll be back before your mother gets home. Just one. What do you say?’

‘Fine.’

‘But …’ said Joe.

‘We’ll be back,’ said his father firmly, ‘in plenty of time. Just to say hello to the boys. Just … Have you a couple of dollars?’

Brendan patted his pocket.

‘Good lad. I had a bit of a bad day on the horses.’

‘Mam …’

The old man pushed himself up with speed from the chair. His face had become almost lively.

‘Ah give over, boy. Child.’

Brendan watched his father with a detached amusement, almost as if he had never met the man before.

‘What’ll I say to her? She’ll be upset.’

‘Don’t go yammering on like that. There’s no need for her to be upset. My son and I …’ He took Brendan’s arm and stood holding it for a moment to get his breath back. ‘We … yes. We’re just going to say hello to the boys. Hello. Just tell her that. There’s no harm in that at all.’

‘They said they were only going to say hello.’

He sat across the table from his mother, pushing the last of his chips around on his plate through the shiny egg yolk. He hated runny yolk. She would never take the time to make the eggs hard. She always made him eat up. The chips glistened with the yellow stickiness. He couldn’t look at her face anymore, it was closed and angry. She had eaten nothing. She hadn’t even put a plate for herself on the table, just smoked cigarette after cigarette, her fingers plucking them angrily from her mouth when they were too small to smoke any more and crushing them to death in a saucer.

‘You said it,’ she said. ‘Fifteen times you said it. You shouldn’t have let them go.’