Mr Murdie had observed enough alcoholic bonhomie to grow mistrustful of bonhomie altogether. It was, as he knew, a slippery and deceitful customer. He had watched it sway into gross sentimentality and lurch into frightening belligerence. That is why when Mr Murdie’s regulars sometimes slumped over the counter at the end of the evening and told him – amid slurred, urgent confidences – that they actually loved him, loved him as a best, best friend, Mr Murdie answered with an economical wee smile, and the words, ‘Aye well if you really love me, boys, you’ll clear off to your beds now and let me wipe the counter.’

Mr Murdie knew that Mrs Murdie really loved him. She wasn’t much of a drinker, though, and so she hardly ever said it.

When I walked into the Whistle Bar, where Murdie was the manager, and enquired of him whether they needed any barmen, I had reason to believe that he would help me out. Big Jacky and he had played together in a showband called the Janglemen when they were in their late teens. Mr Murdie had played the guitar and Big Jacky had been on the drums. I had seen a picture of them in their stage suits, with both of them managing somehow to look eighteen and forty-five at the same time. But there was an expression of subtle pride on Murdie’s saturnine face beneath a glossy Brylcreemed quiff, suggesting that a secret craving for flamboyance had been momentarily satisfied.

Murdie remained a friend of Big Jacky’s, and he would call round to our house on some nights to play cards and eat bacon sandwiches. When I was small he had a habit of greeting me with the words: ‘What happened – did your school burn down?’ This threw me into a pleasurable confusion. I hadn’t the least idea what Mr Murdie meant. Why on earth would my school burn down? And yet the thought that it might burn down some day was unsettling but exciting. If I woke up one morning, and Big Jacky just said, ‘No school today, son. It’s burned down, I’m afraid,’ would that be the business of school over for good, would I ever have to go again?

When I got a bit older, I used to reverse the charges and ask Murdie: ‘What happened – did your bar burn down?’ This was less of a joke than it seemed. Two of the bars that Murdie had worked in really had burned down. One was razed at a time when sectarian furies were running conveniently high in Belfast, and the owner torched it himself for the insurance money. The other was intended to act as a city-wide warning to those who chose to ignore the final reminders on their protection money. Murdie kept silent as a Sphinx throughout, observed all that happened, found himself fresh employment and carried on pouring customers’ whiskey.