The evening sun, slanting across the furrows, caught for an instant the blade of the plough. Some distance away Lionel’s three sheepdogs, crouched around an open gate, suggested protection, although he in no way required it. They were dogs who disdained the attentions, and the commands, of others; they followed him wherever he went. He called them now, and they came to him swiftly. ‘Good girl, good girl,’ he murmured to the horse, releasing it of its burden and leading it from the field.

On the ferryboat Haverty and the ferryman talked about racehorses. The Gullet had failed, making it three times in a row. Market Rasen was mentioned, and Towcester and Aintree, which Tom at first assumed to be the names of other horses and then realised were English race-courses. Butt Nolan was advising Persian Prince, the ferryman said.

‘I have to go down the town first,’ Haverty revealed when he and Tom stepped on to the quay. ‘I have five minutes of business.’

So they turned to the right when they came to South Main Street, and entered Spillane’s public house at the bottom of Michael Davitt Hill. ‘Lemonade and biscuits for the boy,’ Haverty ordered, having also delivered his own requirement. Tom had never been in a public house before although he had once or twice been in the grocery attached to one. Often when something his mother wanted for cooking wasn’t available in Meath’s or Dungan’s or the London and Newcastle he had to try in other places, usually unsuccessfully. Very little had ever been available in Spillane’s grocery, no rashers because there wasn’t a bacon machine, no jams or jellies, no packets of peas or cornflour. But in the bar lemonade and biscuits were supplied without difficulty.

Men were standing at the counter, leaning their elbows on it; a few were sitting at tables. Mr Coyne, of the garage, was there; and Mr O’Hagan from the post office. There were other men whom Tom did not recognise. The exterior of Spillane’s—its blue paintwork and the raised marbled letters that spelt out its title, the advertisements for tea and Bisto in one window, whiskey and porter in the other—suggested a greater promise than either grocery or bar fulfilled. A murkiness prevailed in the latter, and its occupants as a result had acquired the nature of shadows. Exposed to the daylight, those men whom Tom did not recognise might have at once become familiar.

Mr O’Hagan, seated with Mr Coyne, spoke to Haverty about the racehorse called The Gullet. Butt Nolan deserved hanging, he said. Butt Nolan had sold him inside information for the usual consideration, the result of which being he’d placed money on an animal that had difficulty in walking let alone winning a race. The skin of Mr O’Hagan’s face was white, his pale moustache was lank; he wore wire-rimmed spectacles, behind which his eyes were melancholy. Mr Coyne had a stomach that protruded, a gleaming bald head and a small moustache. His eyes were like two rosary beads, so minute that they disappeared into the fat of his face when he laughed or frowned. He had eleven children, all of them girls. Mr O’Hagan was a bachelor.