He completed the tying of his shoelaces, then straightened up. He buttoned his waistcoat and drew on his jacket.

‘Is it true?’ he said again.

‘I never told you a lie, boy.’

That in itself was a lie, but he knew by looking at her that what she was reporting about the bridge was the truth. More than once it had crossed John James’s mind that the bridge might be given a title of some kind; he had even imagined permission being sought for his father’s name to be carved on a stone. The Rollestons were the island family; they had been humane at the time of the potato blight; they had given generously, seeking no reward. Words on the bridge might have remembered that, through a memorial to one of them.

‘Ah, pet, don’t go being a crosspatch. Didn’t I tell you I’d lend you the money for a motor-car? I wouldn’t go back on a promise, pet, no matter what you say to me.’

‘We don’t need a motor-car.’

‘Come back into bed, honey.’

She made a kissing sound, smiling at him. She threw the bedclothes back and held her breasts towards him. She told him to forget about the bridge, she told him to forget about everything. There was no one like him, she said. ‘Don’t be a crosspatch,’ she urged again.

‘I’m not a crosspatch.’

He longed to do as she invited. He longed to loosen his tie and slip it from his neck. He longed to undo the buttons of his waistcoat with dawdling anticipation, and to be drawn again into the warmth of her bulk. But he shook his head and left the bedroom.

‘There’s a thing I have to tell you, Tom,’ his mother said in the kitchen of the gate-lodge. She turned from the range and placed his tea in front of him: a plate of fried bread and a narrow rasher of bacon. ‘The bridge is going to be called after Cornelius Dowley.’

Tom knew. They’d been talking about it in the convent. ‘Shh,’ one of the girls had reprimanded, suddenly realising that among all the renowned exploits of Cornelius Dowley there was the blowing to pieces of Tom’s father in mistake for someone else.

‘I heard it,’ he said.

‘What did they say, Tom?’

‘Only that.’