‘Where are you going?’ she asked, coming into the kitchen with the brush in her hand.

‘Brendan asked me to wake him before I went out.’

‘I’ll bring him a cup of tea in a few minutes. You get along to school.’

‘What does he want waking for anyway?’

‘Maybe he’s going to get a job. First in the queue.’

‘Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t.’

The streets were full of soldiers. He passed two patrols on his way to school. Some walked backwards, they all turned constantly, their guns apparently casually looped through their arms, their hands and eyes tense. Joe always felt he couldn’t run when they were about, had to walk with a casual air and measured steps as they did, in case he upset their balance of things.

It was a beautiful day with huge sailing clouds. Below in the river a ship hooted mournfully and seagulls floated on the wind just under the clouds. It was no day for school. The closed dusty windows, the dry air and the smell of Jimmy McCafferty’s feet. No day for geometry.

A pigeon sat on the wall outside the classroom and picked unmentionable things out from under its wings with great enjoyment. Pick, fluff, burrow. Claws gripped on the stone coping. Pick, twitch.

‘Joe Logan, what is the angle I have underlined? Do I disturb you? The name of the angle?’

‘The angle …’

‘Precisely.’

She re-underlined the angle fiercely. The chalk broke, giving him a moment’s respite. As she stood up, slightly flushed from stooping, with the broken piece of chalk in her hand, she stared him straight in the eye.

‘The angle?’

‘Ob …’ said Jimmy McCafferty out of the side of his mouth.

‘Obscure,’ said Joe, hopelessly.

Someone laughed.

She put the chalk down on her desk and dusted her hands on her tweed backside.

‘Obtuse is the name of the angle, Joe Logan, and it is also the name for people the like of you.’

‘I meant obtuse. The other word just slipped out. Honest I meant obtuse. The … other word has been running through my mind … you know …’

‘I’m glad,’ she said, with a menacing smile, ‘to hear that something is running through your mind. More poetry, I presume.’

There was a long silence.

Bugger, he thought bitterly, why can’t they ever leave you alone.

‘Well?’ Her voice was raised almost to shouting pitch.

‘Something like that, miss. I’m sorry.’

The pigeon unfolded its wings and shivered.

‘You will stay behind after school. In the meantime you will attend to the class. Obtuse is the word. Repeat it after me. Obtuse.’

‘Obtuse.’

When he next looked out of the window the pigeon had gone. Bloody obtuse of it, he thought.

Kathleen was waiting for him when he came out. He saw her hunched figure on the wall as he came down the road, the familiar trail of smoke wisping away from her. He ran the last few yards. She looked up at him and smiled.