‘Don’t mention Spillane’s,’ Haverty said when the water had been crossed and they were walking away from the pier. The music had accompanied them all the way across, the same couple of songs. Then suddenly, finally, it had ceased. ‘Say yourself and myself went to the knife-throwing,’ Haverty directed. ‘Never mind about the other.’ Miss Rolleston had asked him to enquire of Mr O’Hagan if he’d take charge of one of the traps or the governess-car on her wedding day, because there’d be people staying at the house who’d want conveying to the ferry. Years ago, before he passed the post office examination, Mr O’Hagan had been in charge of the stables at a house that got burnt down, and in those days he used to help at Carriglas on a social occasion. ‘That’s why I had to go into Spillane’s,’ Haverty explained. ‘To ask him if he could fix to be on his holidays on August the twenty-sixth. Well, I asked him and he said he would.’

In the gate-lodge kitchen Tom’s mother was darning a vest, with the lamp drawn close to where she sat. He could tell at once that she was cross, even though she didn’t say anything. He could tell she was thinking she wouldn’t have let him go if she’d known he’d be out so late.

‘You should have come!’ he exclaimed, unable to disperse his excitement. ‘You never saw the like of it.’

But when she spoke it was to tell him to go in to bed. ‘Hurry and wash yourself now.’

He washed at the sink. All the time he wanted to tell her about Mr Coyne and Mr O’Hagan, how he’d had biscuits and two bottles of lemonade, how Mr Coyne had given him a ha’penny to throw down for the Zodiacs. He even wanted to tell her the story Holy Mullihan had passed on to him, how St Francis of Sales had appeared in a field.

‘Goodnight so,’ he said.

I’ll come in in a minute.’

He took the lamp she’d lit for him while he’d been washing himself, and in the bedroom he shared with her he took his clothes off and got into bed. Before she came to bed herself she would fold across the shutters to keep the draught out. When it rained the water oozed in at the window and dripped off the windowsill, whether the shutters were drawn or not. She said it was unhealthy.