A child ran across the island, but it was not one of her grandchildren, nor her son, and it was not Tom. The child had red hair. He ran over the rocks and the heather and the gorse. He clambered down a cliffside and ran on the shingle of the shore and then on the sand. ‘What’s his name?’ Finnamore Balt said, serving the food in the dining-room, holding out a dish of carrots to her. The red-haired boy hid himself in a cave, but then he had to run on again. He had to climb up the cliff at Elador’s Bay because there was nowhere else to go. ‘That boy was killed at Passchendaele,’ Finnamore Balt said, but she contradicted that, reminding him that it was Villana’s father who had been killed at Passchendaele. ‘Then he was killed on your avenue,’ Finnamore Balt said, but she knew that was wrong also. ‘Mr Balt asked me to marry him,’ Brigid said, looking up from the bread she was making, her face delighted in the kitchen. And Linchy came in and said the man who’d taken his life from him had had his name put on a metal plaque. He died for our fair land, the pronouncement declared, and Kathleen Quigley said it was a holy disgrace, that Brigid was staying on and she was being asked to leave.

Abruptly, Mrs Rolleston awoke, her dream still vivid. Recently, Finnamore Balt had begun to haunt her dreams, appearing in all sorts of roles, like a figure in a fantastic comedy. It would be after midnight by now. The last twinkle of lights on the sea would be extinguished, and darkness would be there until dawn. She imagined the silent town, and walking from the quays to church, of going into Meath’s, which she used to quite often, of walking up to the bandstand.

Again she closed her eyes, hoping that sleep would come, but it didn’t immediately. The red-haired boy ran over the rocks again, his feet bare, the jersey he wore ragged. He ran on the paths the sheep made in the heather, and by the edge of the sea because the sand was easier to run on than the shingle was. ‘He is myself when young,’ Finnamore Balt said in another dream, and everyone in the dining-room laughed.

4. Wedding Preparations

‘It’s like you’d walk up to the Cross and spit on Our Lord,’ Holy Mullihan said. ‘When your mother committed the sin, Tom, another thorn was established in the crown.’