‘Getting on for nine.’

Brendan yawned and stretched his arms above his head.

‘That’s a nice girl.’

‘Who do you mean?’

‘You know well who I mean.’

‘I’m taking her for a drive today.’

‘Did you ask her?’

‘Of course I asked her. I went round there last night before I went to meet the boys. She was just clearing up after you.’

Joe felt his face getting red.

‘She made me a cup of tea.’

‘And you asked her?’

‘For God’s sake, Joe, are you thick or something? I asked her and she said yes … If you want to know she said she’d be delighted.’

‘Can I come?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I said no.’

‘Please Brendan.’

‘No.’

There was a long pause.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I want to have a good time. And I won’t have a good time with you playing gooseberry in the back seat.’

‘She’s my friend.’

‘Don’t you want her to enjoy herself?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then shut up.’

‘I hope it rains. Pours. And you run out of petrol and get a puncture.’ He went out of the room and slammed the door.

‘What was all that about?’ asked Mam from her usual Saturday morning position by the stove.

‘All what?’

‘All that yelling and door-banging?’

‘Nothing.’

‘There’s enough trouble in this house without you and Brendan fighting. Did you bring me down your dirty clothes?’

‘No.’

‘Then go and get them, and Brendan’s while you’re at it.’

It was a horrible Saturday. Brendan went out without a word to anyone, whistling as he clattered down the stairs and out the hall door. The house quivered with the cleaning it was getting. Joe seemed permanently in the way. There was trouble in the city and she wouldn’t let him go out. His father never left his bed and she had Joe running up and down the stairs with trays and papers and angry messages all morning.

‘Run up and tell your Daddy to turn the radio down. My head is splitting with the noise of it.’

Fed up. And the sun was shining with summer brilliance, showing up the dirty streaks on the windows and the grey cracked paint.

‘Run up with a cup of tea for your Daddy and see if he’s alive at all.’

Bored. He could see in his mind the sun on the lough and the leafless trees bending in the wind and hear her light laugh blown away with cigarette smoke.

‘Bring me down the pillow slips from your Daddy’s room and tell him it’s time he got up.’

Bone-bored.

He wondered what sort of a car Brendan had borrowed. He had once seen a sleek blue bomb of a car sliding down the Strand Road, with curving silver horns, like dragon’s heads. It wouldn’t be one like that anyway. That was for sure.

‘How did you get your shirt so dirty this week? It’s like a rag.’

There wasn’t even a cloud in the sky.

At about three his mother was out in the yard, flapping the sheets to remove the creases and folding them over her arm before hanging them on the line. There was a knock on the door. It was his friend Peter on the step.