Tom hurried in South Main. Street, past familiar windows and doorways. ‘Hey, mister,’ Humpy Geehan shouted out at him from the steps of Lett’s Arcade. ‘How’re you, Humpy?’ he called back, which was how he’d heard other boys replying to the greeting. A cluster of bicycles leaned against Morrissy’s windowsills, a horse and cart was tied to a lamp-post outside Myley Flynn’s. People crowded into the confectioner’s and tobacconist’s before going on to the knife-throwing. Two dogs fought in the middle of the street. A girl was waiting outside Traynor’s Picture Palace.

Beyond South Main Street the houses became taller. Brass plates indicated the services of Surgeon Woulfe and K. J. Ikely, B. Dent., of doctors, and solicitors who were also commissioners for oaths. Crowds hurried on the promenade, a bustling movement surging in the direction of the Zodiacs’ music. World’s Most Dangerous Act! fresh posters proclaimed. Regularly Performed Before Royalty! They were stuck on to the promenade lamp-posts and the telegraph poles and the sides of the bandstand; they decorated the flaking yellow walls of a billiard-hall where nobody played billiards any more.

‘Is it Tom?’ someone behind him said, and he knew without turning round that it was Holy Mullihan. ‘Are you out on your own, Tom?’

I here was no reason why Tom should have been frightened of Holy Mullihan, for he was not a bully, indeed rather the opposite. It was just that there was something about him, something in his manner and his way, that caused apprehension when his company continued for too long. Holy Mullihan had a widow’s peak and soft dark hair on his upper lip. His wrists protruded from the frayed cuffs of a black jacket, and the ends of his trousers scarcely reached his boots. His black tie was tightly knotted within a soiled collar; his Adam’s apple bobbed noticeably in a scrawny neck. Holy Mullihan was never seen in the company of the boys who were his own age at the Christian Brothers’, preferring to draw younger boys aside in order to conduct conversations with them about religious matters. He had already declared his intention of entering the priesthood.

‘Will we go together, Tom?’ he suggested now. ‘Isn’t it great to see the people out enjoying themselves?’

‘Will we be late?’

‘As long as there’s people to watch, the entertainment will go on. It’s a hard way to make a living, Tom.’

In his excitement Tom didn’t mind the company of Holy Mullihan, although normally he would have tried to get away from him. The music was now so loud that conversation in any case was difficult. You had to shout, the way you had to on the ferry, and Holy Mullihan’s voice was always kept very low, hardly more than a whisper. He had raised it in order to say what he’d said already, but as they walked together on the promenade he didn’t say anything else.