The one time Joe loved solitude was in the birdwatching, the stealth and silence of his footstep, the communion with the creatures, at one with them, in that moment. He’d focus his field glasses on the birds on the shoreline, his favourite. The red bills and legs of oyster catchers, listen, squee, squee. Or the laugh, soft at first, slow, working its way into a cackle, like two old biddies joking at some other’s expense, then he’d spot the speckled plumage of the dunlins, and after, dancing into view, his favourite, the sandpipers, skittering across the sand, too fast to count, for all the world like a class of colleens doing a jig. If the boxing took the edge off his loneliness, the birds took the edge off his doubts. That was his cross. Doubts. In the shadow of the birds, he would weep, and feel better.

Company would shatter that. But he owed Pierre a favour, and he should be charitable. Besides, birds weren’t to everyone’s taste. Sitting, still as a stone, hours on end, for what? A rare glimpse, at the most. A chough, perhaps, Pyrrhocorax, red bill, red feet. Pierre’s friend would soon get bored. I’ll give it a miss this week. Thank you all the same…

‘All right,’ Joe said. ‘But I’m busy, what with the boxing and all.’

‘No rush,’ Pierre said.

Pierre was already at the junction, with his friend.

A woman. Why had he assumed the friend would be a man? They had propped their bicycles against the wall, and stood gazing at the harbour, cigarette smoke unfurling from their cupped hands. Pierre had to charge Joe for cigarettes now, supply and demand, he’d said, scarcity puts up the price. He’d imported tobacco seeds from France, promised that, come the end of the summer, he’d have a home-grown crop, free of charge, for him.

‘I can even get you a machine, if you want,’ Pierre had said. ‘So you can roll them, neat, like.’

Joe was tempted to turn back, but Pierre had seen him, was walking towards him. Joe ran his finger inside his dog collar. There’s no reason, he thought, on the face of it, why he shouldn’t take a young lady birdwatching.

‘Father O’Cleary,’ Pierre held the handlebars steady while Joe scrambled off his bicycle. ‘I want you to meet my friend, Gertrude.’

She stood beaming, brown hair in a short bob, plump, plain face and a round, buxom body. Joe recognised her. The nurse, from the boxing match. She held out her hand.

‘Call me Trude,’ she said. ‘Like your Trudy, only spelt with an “e”.’

She was German. Pierre hadn’t told him that either.

‘Thank you for taking me with you,’ she went on. Her English was very good. ‘I love nature. Birds. Wildlife.’