There was silence between them as she waited for more.

‘You don’t have to rhyme,’ he explained.

‘Oh, I know.’ She smiled at him. ‘It’s very short. I like it. I’d like more of it.’

‘That’s the way it came into my mind.’

‘It’s nice. A sort of picture really.’

‘It’s a present for you.’

He blushed and turned quickly to look out of the window.

‘I … mean … I’ll write it down and give it to you … if … well, you know.’

‘I would like that very much, Joe. No one has ever given me such a lovely present before.’

‘Ah, go on.’

The top of a double-decker bus is a beautiful place to be. You rock rather than roll along, getting a giraffe’s-eye view into other people’s lives and over the straggling hedges that normally hide the countryside from sight. At the checkpoint before the border a soldier clattered up the stairs, his gun crooked into his elbow. Kathleen opened the shopping bag and held it out towards him.

He rummaged.

‘Ta love.’

He looked at Joe and grinned.

‘Got any dangerous weapons on you, mate?’

Joe shook his head.

‘Lost your tongue?’

‘No.’

‘One of the silent types.’

The bus vibrated under them. The soldier didn’t seem in any hurry to go.

‘Is he your brother then?’

‘No,’ said Kathleen gravely. ‘Just a friend.’

‘Bit young, ent he, for a girl like you?’

‘Maybe he’s older then he looks. Maybe,’ she suggested, ‘he’s ninety-three. Or is it ninety-four, granddad?’

‘Ninety-seven on Sunday,’ said Joe, his voice crackling with old age.

‘Just a couple of fruit and nut cases,’ said the soldier, and went down the stairs again, dangerous weapons clanking and creaking all over him. They laughed. Joe looked out of the window as the soldier stepped down on to the road. He looked up at them and waved. Joe didn’t wave back. Kathleen hesitated a moment and then as the bus began to move she leant across him and flapped her hand against the glass.

‘Why?’ asked Joe.

She touched her ring nervously before she answered.

‘I don’t suppose he exactly likes being here, any more than we … He’s a kid. Something like that … Do you think he knows what he’s doing here?’

‘I’ve heard them coming in the night …’

‘I know. I know.’

The bus lurched over the ramps … Brown hills rose up from the sides of the valley and, on ahead, misty blue mountains.

‘I feel the way you do too, most of the time, but then I know … I know really … they’re not all bad. Like I said, kids. I know there are the toughies too. I saw one in a pub in Belfast one night crying because he wanted to go home.’

Joe thought about that.

‘Mind you, he was drunk … but nevertheless.’

‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘Drunks do cry.’

‘They usually mean what they’re crying about. We may find it boring or funny even, but it’s tragedy to them.’