‘I’ll not write.’

‘You’ll write. I don’t want him coming back here. He has a good job over there. He’s out of trouble. Do you want him in trouble?’

She turned round from the stove and held out the spoon towards him in a gesture of appeal. Hot fat spotted the floor.

‘Can you not see?’

‘If Brendan wants to come home we have no right to stop him. I see that.’

‘You could advise him. He’s been away two years. He doesn’t know what it’s like here. Advise him. That’s all I ask.’

Three forks, three knives, three cups, three plates, butter, jam, salt, milk. Father’s hands lay still amongst the cutlery and china. Strange ornaments.

‘He’s a man.’

Ketchup, pepper, bread.

‘I’ll not interfere.’

Sugar, gritty crystals in a blue bowl.

‘He must judge. Have his own opinion.’

‘I’m feared for him. He’s not wise.’

‘A poor reflection on the way you brought him up.’

She put the teapot carefully on a blue-rimmed plate on the table before she spoke.

‘We,’ she said, her mouth tight and tired. ‘We brought him up. I slapped him when he was bold and petted him and tried to tell him what was right and what was wrong. You told him fairy stories about yourself and the Movement. Your flowering youth. Your great days. Hero that you were.’

‘You have to tell them something. I told no lies.’

‘May God forgive you.’

Abruptly she turned back to her cooking.

Joe watched as his father lifted his hands from the table and covered his face.

‘Fairy stories …’ began the boy and then stopped.

‘Lies, you might say. Never mind what he says.’ Her voice was as cold as the sleet outside.

The man got up from the table and walked slowly to the door. He didn’t say a word. He took his coat down from the hook and pulled it round his shoulders. As he opened the hall door a cutting wind blew down the passage past him. Joe made a gesture towards the table.

‘Let him go,’ said his mother.

The door slammed.

The next day was dour, there was no wind to blow away the smell of the night’s burnings. His mother was scrubbing the step as he left for school. Steam rose gently around her crouching body.

‘Mind you come home straight from school,’ she said, as he jumped across the wet step on to the pavement. Upstairs the curtains were still pulled across his father’s window. He would be snoring up there in his stale unhappy room. When he woke his head would be thick with last night’s drink and the webs of his fairy tales.

He managed to get through school without any trouble. The words of his poem were at his tongue’s tip when they were needed. He shook his head at his friend Peter when he asked him to go and play after school, remembering her words and the shining water on the step, the shape of her hand fitted around the scrubbing brush.