He kept his socks on in bed. She wouldn’t have liked that if she’d known, but he had always found that if he got into bed with cold feet, he usually woke up in the morning with cold feet. He didn’t sleep through till morning though, as the army came in at each end of the street at about two o’clock and began a house-to-house search. He heard the disturbance in his sleep first, a confused dream of shouts and bangs and running feet. It was the sudden sound of breaking glass that made him open his eyes. He got out of his bed and climbed on to Brendan’s to peer out through the small window. Half the people in the street seemed to be outside, standing in silence, watching the organised destruction. He shifted his legs so that he could lean forward to see whose house they had reached. His knee banged against something hard under the covers. He groped under the clothes with his hand and his fingers found something even colder than his feet. He got off the bed and pulled back the clothes. A gun lay on the crumpled sheet. He looked at it unhappily. He didn’t know anything about guns, but there was no doubt about what it was. No toy. Black and cool. No plastic bang-bang toy.

They were hammering on Mrs O’Toole’s door now. They wouldn’t be there too long. One old lady and her hens can’t be too much of a menace. He hoped they wouldn’t worry the hens too much or they might go off laying and she depended on the eggs. The gun was still there. He heard his mother moving in her room. Dressing. She wouldn’t like to be turned out into the street in her nightie. His heart was leaping in his chest and throat. He watched his hand creep out very slowly and his fingers hover for a moment before touching it again. Cold. What a stupid place to leave a gun. He could hear them running up Mrs O’Toole’s stairs and banging open the cupboards in her room. He picked up the gun. There was nothing else to do. It was surprisingly heavy. He wondered was it loaded. Oh, God. His father was snoring. He must have had a lot of drink taken. He looked around the room. Oh, God. His mother put curlers in her hair every night. He wondered if she would take them out or cover her head with her blue woollen scarf. Please God. His school bag was lying on the floor by his bed.

‘Joe.’

‘Yes, Mam.’ He whispered the words.

‘Are you awake, Joe?’

It was the sound of more glass breaking that made him move.

‘I’ll be right down Mam.’

‘I can’t wake your Daddy.’

He opened the straps of the school bag and pushed the gun down among his books. Meisse agus Pangur Bán and the equilateral triangle. He pushed it well down to the bottom. He adjusted his English grammar. You couldn’t see it if you only looked. He fastened the straps again and slung the bag over his shoulder. ‘Joe, are you deaf?’