Our front room in Belfast clamoured for no such attention. It had a brown 1950s sofa with wooden legs, and a fraying green armchair. A low, rectangular coffee table provided a stationing point for mugs of tea. Big Jacky accommodated himself in the armchair while I extended myself on the sofa, where years of pressure had made convenient buttock-shaped dents. When the aunts came to our house, I could see that the sparseness of Big Jacky’s taste dismayed and unsettled them. They fluttered around, hunting for a corner on which to perch. They besieged my father with pointless knick-knacks: fringed, furiously patterned cushions, knowing china squirrels with nut-packed cheeks, Belleek pottery sweet-dishes and embroidered tablecloths, to take the edge (although they never actually said this) off his spartan, miserable life with his peaky, odd son. He thanked them politely and pressed them to take some more tea. When they had gone, he put the things away carefully in a cupboard, and brought a small selection back out only before their next visit.

One day when we had waved off Aunt Mary, amidst a rapid hail of queries and promises, Big Jacky sat down in his armchair and took out his pipe. Pressing the springy tobacco into the bowl, he sighed and said: ‘Normal service resumes.’ He lit up, and took a puff. Then he said: ‘They drove your mother mad too.’ That was it. The pipe smoke drifted my way. I drank it down with the brandy-glow of conspiracy.

After Big Jacky died, normal service never resumed again.

3

A few days after I heard what Titch had done in McGee’s shop, I was walking past his house down to the chippy. I looked in the window: Titch was beached on the floor of the front room with a pint glass of orange squash beside him, and his mum was lying on the sofa with her shoes off. They didn’t see me, because both of them were in hysterics at some crappy film on the television.