Tom finished his breakfast, gathered up his schoolbooks and the two romantic novels that Miss Rolleston had given to his mother for returning to Sister Conheady’s library at the convent. He bundled them into his schoolbag and left the gate-lodge, running on the road that led to the pier even though he knew he was early. He always arrived at the pier before the ferryboat had begun its journey from the quays on the other side. A couple of donkey-carts were usually there before him, their churns of milk unloaded and waiting. The donkeys would nibble the short grass, or stand patiently, until their owners returned with an empty churn from the creamery lorry. Often when they had no meal or other purchases to collect in the town, the men would wait on the island also, and the empty churn would come over on its own, in the charge of the ferryman. The island women brought their baskets of eggs to the shops on this ferry, which was the first of the day. Sometimes they brought live chickens or turkeys, which they would sell if they were offered a good enough price; if they weren’t they would bring them back again. Drunk Paddy was occasionally on the early-morning ferry, but at that time of day he didn’t shout at the seagulls, telling them he was penniless, like he did on the way back. Red-eyed and wild, he made the journey to the mainland when he had smoked enough fish to sell to Renehan’s fish sheds on the quays. Three girls went over to work in Renehan’s fish sheds and another four to attend the convent school that Tom would continue to attend himself until he was old enough to pass into the Christian Brothers’.

Neither Drunk Paddy nor any of these girls was there when Tom arrived that morning, but the usual row of churns was on the pier, the men who had brought them standing silently near by. Two women in shawls conversed quietly some distance away, their baskets at their feet. Tom climbed on to the low stone wall that protected a field where a couple of the Rollestons’ cattle would graze later in the year but which now was empty. He jumped down again and kicked a pebble, trying to send it the same distance each time, moving it in a square. He heard the engines of the ferryboat cough into life, and a moment later saw it and its wake of foam.