‘Will you leave me alone? Will you get up and behave yourself?’ She said something else but again Tom couldn’t hear what it was. The porter told her to have sense. ‘D’you love me?’ the girl said.

‘Amn’t I telling you? You’re great altogether.’

‘You said you loved me the other night.’

The porter’s face bent into hers again. He moved his knees so that she could put her arms around his neck. He murmured and she murmured back, and then suddenly he stood up and shouted at her.

‘That’s the end of it so. That’s the finish of the whole caboodle as far as I’m concerned.’

She covered herself. She sat up on the grass, buttoning her blouse. Neither of them noticed Tom standing there although if they’d looked they would have seen him straight away.

‘You’re a right bitch,’ Briscoe shouted at the girl.

Tom gasped again. He could feel a hotness at the back of his neck, creeping round into his cheeks. As quietly as he could, he went away, his eyes still wide.

‘A right little convent whore!’ Briscoe’s voice shouted, and in the same rough voice he swore at the girl, calling her names Tom thought only the boys at the Christian Brothers’ used. Crossing an expanse of heather to the cliffs, he walked along the cliff edge, now and again looking down at the waves breaking over the black rocks far below. A piteous note had come into the girl’s voice when she’d asked the porter if he loved her. She’d whimpered when he’d abused her.

Tom knew it was what Holy Mullihan meant, with all histalk about sinning. Once he’d gone with Neck Daly and Deso Furphy to the goat field behind the corn yard and they’d waited for one of the goats to climb up on another. Neck Daly said there wasn’t an animal that existed that didn’t do that. ‘Even two rats,’ he’d said. The older boys had eyed Tom closely to see what his reactions would be, and he’d guessed that was the only reason they’d brought him with them. It was how he’d come to be born himself, he’d thought afterwards, his mother and father in a field somewhere because they weren’t married. ‘That’s filthy dirty, Tom,’ Holy Mullihan had said when he’d found out about watching the goats. Holy Mullihan found out about everything; he had eyes in the back of his head. ‘Don’t ever do that again, Tom. Give me a promise now.’ Neck Daly and Deso Furphy would have told him to take a running jump at himself, but Tom promised because it was easier.