‘Sorry,’ he said. He didn’t quite know why.

‘Drink your tea while it’s hot.’

‘Yes.’

‘I sometimes think you’re a little wanting.’

‘Ah, Mam …’

‘Three times I ask you a question and you just sit there like a gaum.’

‘I was thinking.’

His father seemed to have gone asleep. His head was right down on his chest, his eyes were shut. He too was ignoring the tea that steamed in front of him.

‘What did you ask me? I’m sorry.’

‘About the girl …’

‘I know nothing about a girl, Mam. I only said it off the top of my head. Something to say. You took me up. That’s all. You took me up.’

‘Aye’ breathed the old man across the table. ‘You took him up.’

‘Drink your tea.’ Squinting up towards the light she threaded her needle and continued with her darning.

It was late when Brendan came in, long after closing time. Joe had lain awake, not because he wanted to, but because sleep wouldn’t come. He had listened to his parents getting themselves to their beds, the shufflings and creakings, the little grunts and moans that people make as they do the normal things of life, the sounds they are never aware of themselves. The clink of glass on glass in his father’s room, the rattle of springs. The interminable rise and fall of his mother’s voice as she prayed. She would have a hole worn in the floor by her bed one of these days. Footsteps from time to time in the street, brisk on the wet pavement, people making their way as fast as they could from one place to another, heads pulled down inside protecting collars, their faces shining like the streets with the smear of rain. It was strange, he thought, that at night you could even hear the furniture make breathing noises. There was no such a thing as silence, and you only became aware of this at night.

He didn’t hear Brendan’s steps approaching the house. The first thing he heard was the creaking of the stairs and then the sound of the door opening slowly. Through a crack in his eyes Joe watched his brother drop his clothes on to the floor and climb naked into bed. That would drive Mam wild if she ever found out. She hated that. To her, it was sinful as well as unhygienic.

‘Joe.’ A whisper.

‘Are you awake?’

Joe didn’t answer.

Brendan sighed and then turned over and in a few minutes began to snore.

Brendan woke up the next morning as Joe was dressing. He put a white arm out from under the bedclothes and touched the window pane. There was a hopeful glitter of sun on the glass.

‘A good day for a drive.’ He folded his arms across his chest, outside the blankets, and stared at the ceiling.

‘If you had a car.’

‘I have.’

‘Go on.’

‘I have the loan of one. For the day.’

‘Oh.’

‘What’s the time?’