His grandmother would be frightened to be in a room with him, which was why they couldn’t go and see her in her house; his grandfather would be frightened to be near him at all. ‘We’ve mongrels enough,’ he’d heard Mr O’Hagan complaining, kicking at a dog that had climbed up on another one by Mr Coyne’s petrol pump. Mongrels were any old dogs, sometimes peculiar-looking, the street-corner curs that gathered dust and fleas, carelessly born also. ‘God takes back a soul,’ Holy Mullihan said; a soul was only on loan. There was a man out in the hills beyond the town who had a terrible disease, a man who lived alone in a hovel, blinded in both his eyes, hardly able to walk.

Holy Mullihan said he was like that because he’d been born in sin.

Hearing the sound of his returning footsteps on the gravel sweep, Villana turned down the page of her novel and with her cigarettes and lighter in one hand went to greet her husband. She poured him sherry. She made him tell her about his day. She listened to the detail of disputes that had arisen, and to his courthouse gossip. She was restless until, once more, he touched upon her girlish beauty and what it meant to him.

Letters came for John James. They were letters of apology, all of which he burnt without reading a second time. In passing, the money was mentioned, a statement to the effect that it didn’t matter, that between friends money never did. But in subsequent letters the sum referred to appeared to matter more. Attention was drawn to the circumstances of its withdrawal from the Munster and Leinster Bank, to its time in the hat-box, to its eventual arrival on the island. A loan had been agreed, one letter in particular stated, though no arrangement had been made for how it might be repaid, and in what manner.

John James swore. He cursed the woman. His leg ached. No loan had been agreed; the banknotes had been foisted on him in public, the cause of acute embarrassment. Clearly he would have to return the money since he had no claim to it. Clearly he had no option but to make another journey to the boarding-house. Without quite knowing why he did so, he waited until a Monday afternoon came round again.

‘Oh, honey! Oh, my darling boy!’ She wept as soon as she saw him. The apologies that had been written down poured again from her lips. She would kneel before him if he required it. She had suffered a sunstroke that day, she wouldn’t have spoilt the wedding occasion for worlds.