‘That’s all they were. Younger than Brendan.’

‘Enemy soldiers. What sort of a traitor do you think you are to moan over enemy soldiers?’

‘I’m no traitor and you know it. Sit down and take your tea and get a hold of your wits, if you have any.’ She laughed as he moved slowly across the room to his chair. ‘If you ever had any.’ She sat down herself at the table and Joe pushed a cup of tea over to her. She held her hands out in front of her and looked at them. She opened them and shut them, moved her fingers stiffly. Her fingers absorbed her, the swollen joints, the scraped look of the skin, the white flecks on her ridged nails.

The old man began to sing again.

‘A nation once again …’ An ancient, destroyed voice.

She dragged her eyes away from her hands and looked up at him.

‘It’s old buggers like you should be shot, with your talk and your singing of glory and heroes.’

‘Freedom …’

‘What’s freedom?’

‘Don’t be a fool, woman. You know well what freedom is. Didn’t I fight for freedom? Didn’t I give my health? What did Pearse, God rest him, say about freedom?’

‘Well, you don’t remember, that’s for sure. Have they any more freedom down there than we have up here?’

‘You misunderstand …’

‘Is there a job for every man? And a home for everyone? Have all the children got shoes on their feet? Are there women down there scrubbing floors to keep the home together because stupid, useless old men are sitting round gassing about freedom? Singing their songs about heroes?’ Her voice had risen almost to a scream. He looked at her in silence for a very long time. Then he started to move towards the door, crippled with pain. The pain she had inflicted on him. The pain of the world of forgotten heroes. At the door he turned. ‘You are disgusting. Disgusting.’

‘Did they even give you a pension?’

‘I talk about freedom. You talk about shoes and pensions.’

‘Take your bloody fairy tales out of this house before I …’ She began to cry hopelessly. That’s two people have cried today, thought Joe. I wonder how many more.

His father shuffled down the passage and pulled his muffler off the hook by the door.

‘Before what?’ He taunted her. ‘I’ll get out of my own house in my own good time and no befores or beafters from you.’

She rubbed at her face.

‘Ah, go,’ was all she said.

They heard the hall door open and then close and the shuffling of his feet on the path. She clasped her two hands round her cup of tea.

‘God forgive me,’ she prayed. ‘For the thoughts in my head.’

‘Drink your tea, Mam.’

He was frightened by tears. Not by children’s tears of rage or pain, nor his father’s blubberings of self-pity, but adult tears like hers and Kathleen’s which made him feel that the world might crack open suddenly.