Joe travelled everywhere on the bicycle Pierre had given him. It was too big, so his feet tiptoed the pedals. He had to stand on them to pick up any speed. It had a broken spoke and a rusty chain, went clickety-clickety as he cycled. People knew when he was coming and waved. It reminded him of home, where no one went unnoticed, even if the attention wasn’t always welcome. Sometimes he’d look out to sea and fancy that he was back there, and know that across the grey expanse he could touch America. Not that he wanted to go to America, like his Uncle Gerald, but the sound of the place rolled off the tongue and the idea of the vastness of the ocean, its infinity, thrilled him.

Like the birds, those fragile specks floating in the firmaments from pole to pole. Did they understand infinity? Emptiness?

Once a week, more often if he could, Joe pedalled to the farm. Geoffrey had pointed out the best place to watch them, hidden in a dell on the upper field. There were birds in the town, but the special ones, those that hopped off by mistake on the coast, they wouldn’t be found there. They were on the shore, feeding and prancing and circling and screeling. He saw other birds too on his travels, ones he’d never seen before: the short-toed treecreeper with its little white breast and long curved beak, hopping up the tree trunks, hunting for grubs, and all manner of noisy little warblers foraging in the foliage.

If he was to be a saint, Joe thought, let it be St Francis, with birds on his shoulder and a community for friendship. St Francis had never had to eat alone. Joe wasn’t cut out for godliness. Try as he might to offer up his loneliness as proof of his suffering, he couldn’t get used to solitude. He’d never lived on his own before now. He’d always had family, or the boys at St Xavier’s, or his fellow seminarians at St Benignus’ for company.

It was time, Joe decided, to take the matter of the boxing club into his own hands. At least twice a week – more in the summer – he’d had the companionship of the boys and he missed it more than he could say. He knew the lads by name, and where they lived. If he spoke to them, or their parents, explained things, he was sure he’d be able to win them round into coming back. Time was always a good healer, and it was water under the bridge now, surely? If one returned, the others would follow. Tommy Dauvin was a case in point. The lad had shown promise, and interest. Sometimes stayed behind to help Joe tidy up, ask questions, ‘And is it true you beat Jacky Quinn himself?’ Joe knew his address, near the Parade Gardens.