‘Tragedy.’ He thought about his father for a moment. She nudged his arm. ‘Here we are. This is where we get out.’

They got up and swayed to the top of the stairs. As they were going carefully down, the bus gave an energetic leap sideways round the corner which nearly threw them one on top of the other out on to the road.

‘Hey,’ said Joe, alarmed for a moment.

‘Hey. Hey.’

The bus stopped and they got out, each a little red in the face.

A few houses were scattered along the sides of the road, a bar, a bicycle shop and an old railway station house with unused level crossing gates, now rusted shut. The wind thrummed gaily through the telegraph wires above their heads. Kathleen hitched her bag firmly on to her shoulder and set off up a narrow road with high tattered hedges on either side. She walked with a swing in her movements, like a real country girl, he thought, placing each foot with confidence on the stony road. Her stride was longer than his, and he had almost to run to keep beside her.

‘It’s a good step,’ she said, nodding up the hill ahead of them. ‘But it’ll do neither of us any harm.’

‘You’re not from Derry, are you?’

‘I’ve only been here a couple of years. My parents would turn in their narrow graves if they knew where I was.’

‘Why?’

‘That was a silly thing to say. I don’t think they’d really mind. Worry. They’d worry. They were never too keen on the North. Like a lot of people down there. They looked on the border as a sort of necessary protection. Keeping out some awful plague.’ She sighed. ‘They were simple people. Nice. Very nice when you look back on them.’

Through a gate he could see long brown fields stretching below them. Rooks pecked through the furrows fastidiously. Away in the distance lay the shine of water. The tree-tops were flattened by eternal wind.

‘Nice.’ She repeated the word, aware of its inadequacy. ‘But hopeless people.’

He didn’t like to ask the question that was first in his mind.

‘Where did they live?’ he asked instead.

‘Wicklow.’

‘Oh.’

It meant little to him. Just a name from a page in a book. Green shading on a map.

‘On a clear day you can see Wales from the top of the hill behind the village. Quite clear. Big blue mountains.’ She spoke with pride.

‘Wales.’

‘Yes.’

‘That must be nice.’

She laughed.

‘I don’t know why I told you really. I always used to hope I’d see Wales when I got to the top. Another world. Like outer space or something. Am I walking too fast for you?’

‘Well …’

She slowed down, groping as she did so in her pocket for the cigarettes and matches.

‘My father had the only pub in Ireland that never made any money. My mother was a teacher. I get my brains from her and my bad habits from him.’