He said his prayers as he lay there, although he knew he should have knelt by the bed the way she liked him to, the way she did herself. Then he thought again about the knives flashing through the air and the woman’s naked legs and arms, and the things the man had said. When he’d been standing on the quays with Holy Mullihan he’d heard other girls screaming and he’d guessed that the man was putting the scarf over his eyes.

‘Goodnight so, Tom.’

She asked him if he’d said his prayers and then she took the glass off the lamp and blew the flame out. Her own lamp cast her shadow on to the wall, making her much bigger than she was.

I’m glad you enjoyed it, Tom.’

‘When she kissed him he knew her crossness had gone. His cheek retained the soft impression of her lips and he could feel her saying to him that it wasn’t he who had caused the crossness, although in fact she didn’t say anything. He knew it wasn’t even Haverty who had caused it, by making them late. When he’d asked her once she’d said the crossness came and went, caused by nothing at all.

3. Cornelius Dowley

Honeysuckle again scented the dusty road, the fuchsia hedges reddened. Villana and her grandmother had tea beneath the strawberry trees, Tom went on his usual errands. By July the iron supports of the bridge had been set in concrete, twelve on the mainland, twelve on the island. Alien, perfectly upright, the line of their height on either side sloping to meet the level of the land, their graceless presence was only ugly. The girders that were to stretch between them lay among rocks and gorse, those resting on the ground lost in a growth of cowparsley and meadow daisies. Sheds of corrugated iron had been erected, trees felled, undergrowth cleared. The place of the bridge had already acquired a personality that had not been there before, a fleeting spirit of its own, imposed by labourers.

In the Rose of Tralee boarding-house, on a hot afternoon of that same July, Mrs Moledy ran the tip of her tongue over her lips and called John James her king. Earlier she had sprinkled the sheets with eau de Cologne, which was her way. As casually as she could manage, she said:

‘Darling, is there no chance at all I could be invited?’

‘Invited to what?’

‘The wedding breakfast, pet. I wouldn’t come to the church; that wouldn’t be permitted for me. But what harm would there be in attending the breakfast afterwards? I’d only stay five minutes.’

He made a motion with his head, indicative of shaking it.