‘Kept in again?’

He nodded.

‘I thought I’d wait a while and see if you came.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It’s a great evening.’

‘Aye.’

‘Tomorrow’s Saturday.’

‘All day.’ He quoted his mother.

‘I’d a sort of plan … if … well … you know … if …’

She dropped her cigarette butt on the pavement and squeezed it out with her toe. They started to walk along the road.

‘If …?’

An army truck drove past. The soldier sitting on the back with his gun on his knee whistled at Kathleen. She paid no attention. The whistle annoyed him.

‘If …?’ he demanded.

‘Oh yes. If you liked we might go up Grianan. I’d bring the food.’

He didn’t answer.

‘The weather might stay good. What do you think?’

‘I thought you were cross with me’

‘Cross?’

‘Something like that. I just thought …’ He looked past her at a leafless tree that waved at him across someone’s wall, twiggy fingers trembling. He raised his hand in greeting and then blushed at his own foolishness. ‘Well, I don’t really mean cross …’

Their feet were in step, in, out, one, two, rhythm, down the steepening hill.

‘I don’t often get cross,’ she said, considering the matter. ‘I keep quiet and calm and terribly reasonable and then suddenly, whammm.’ She waved her hand in the air flamboyantly. ‘It’s beyond crossness. Mad I get. You see cross women peering out from behind curtains … anyway, why would I be cross with you?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘Let’s forget whatever it was then. Tomorrow …?’

‘Yes. That would be great. Smashing.’

He felt extreme excitement rising inside him like the froth rushing up in a bottle of coke that you’ve just given a great shaking.

The road widened and the crouching houses changed to rectangular blocks of flats, bleak, unwelcoming. Across the road the windows of the high flats were multicoloured with shining lights and above them again the street lights in the city were like small green flowers on their tall stalks.

‘It’s quiet,’ he said.

‘Thank God for small mercies.’

‘Where are we walking to?’

‘I don’t know. Wherever our feet take us.’

He laughed.

A motorbike came down the hill behind them and puttered to a stop.

‘Caught in the act.’ Brendan’s voice called from across the road. He was holding on to the back of a leather-coated friend.

‘Oh, hello,’ said Joe. He stopped walking and stared without enthusiasm at his brother. He was conscious of Kathleen beside him, her head slightly bent forward, her hand groping in her bag for her cigarettes. For a moment the two brothers were motionless, each one watching the other, animal-like, then Brendan turned to his friend and said something. The engine vroomed, slowly they moved off. Brendan raised a hand. Joe nodded. As he turned towards her she was lighting up.

‘That was my brother.’

She shook the match and dropped it on the ground.

‘Yes.’

‘Brendan.’

They turned and their feet took them up the hill again.